Still Lives(7)

“Lowbrow euphemisms abound,” he says.

As we banter, Kevin’s tweediness recedes, and I am more aware of his height, his broad shoulders. If we were dancing partners, the top of my head would rest right under his chin.

“So where is the queen of art?” he says.

“Not here yet. That’s her gallerist, though. Nelson de Wilde.” I point out a lithe, silvery man as he joins a cluster of the Rocque’s board members.

Nelson de Wilde’s relationship with Kim Lord is historic—after The Flesh, when she was only twenty-one and he was an unknown gallerist, he paid her a significant monthly stipend to complete Noir, a group of paintings in which she depicted herself as fifteen different black-and-white film stars. Despite the poor critical reception, the show sold out at huge prices. Nelson must have been holding the same financial expectations for Still Lives. He is wearing gray tonight, which makes his closeshorn hair look more metallic than ever, but his mouth hangs down and both his hands are plunged deep in his pockets. Mine would be, too, if I were about to watch millions of dollars in commissions disappear.

Kevin asks me why Nelson looks perturbed.

I tell him it must be preshow jitters.

“How’d you get this job?” he says. “You have an art history degree?”

“Not exactly,” I say.

“Communications? Journalism?”

I don’t want to talk about my past, so I cast about quickly for someone else to identify. I gesture at Brent Patrick, striding from the bar in steel-toed boots. “He builds the shows. You should talk to him. He used to be a big set designer on Broadway.”

I don’t add that Brent quit his New York life because his wife, Barbara, suffers from schizophrenia and they moved to L.A. for a new treatment program. Unfortunately, Barbara’s condition worsened in the program, and she had to be institutionalized. It’s a tragic story, and almost justifies Brent’s bullying condescension toward everyone upstairs, even the curators. (“Because they don’t actually make things,” Yegina explained once. “Neither do half of the artists we show,” I said. “Well, he hates them, too,” she said.)

But Kevin should meet Brent because Brent is unbelievable at his job. He can take an artist’s flimsiest idea and transform it into a real experience—it is Brent who envisions the lighting, the path the viewer takes, and even sometimes the artwork’s actual construction. “You know the Executed show we did last year? Jason Rains?”

Kevin nods vaguely.

“Brent was the genius behind it,” I say, watching Brent slug a shot beneath a battered stop sign. The sign looks absurdly red and shiny now that it is surrounded by white linens and lilies, and I wonder if some lowly production assistant had to soap it clean for tonight. Some of the graffiti on the nearby tunnel also looks fresh and bright, and, is it me, or did someone fill those glass vases with broken windshield pieces? This kind of stagy urban decadence is Brent’s legacy on Broadway; his set for Rent was nominated for a Tony. But I bet it rubs him the wrong way here. This party isn’t art. It’s commerce.

As if on cue, Brent glances up at the stop sign, then shakes his head grimly and clomps away.

“He created the whole set,” I say. “Jason Rains just watched.”

“You think I can interview Kim Lord?” asks Kevin, but just as I’m about to struggle with a lie, one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses arrives on the red carpet and everyone stops breathing.

The actress is wearing jeans and a yellow blouse, platform sandals, a gauzy gold scarf in her hair. She is blond, willowy, and tall, and on anyone else this outfit would look suitable for a picnic. Yet as the actress gently spins for the flashing cameras, she rewrites the entire occasion around her. She’s showing up for a real party, not another stuffy fund-raising affair. When she smiles the gleaming, genuine smile we’ve all adored on giant screens, people start talking again, louder, chattier, leaning into one another.

“That’s—” I say.

“I know,” Kevin mutters, and writes something in his notebook. The last sun lifts from the staircase, and the real crowds start pouring down, a happy, upbeat mob: TV sitcom stars, famous architects, young sculptors looking gawky in their finery—and, far back at the line, Greg. Lean as a fox, in a dark-blue suit. Alone. Seeing him hits me like a punch to my sternum and I swallow the last sip in my glass. I tried so hard not to be here. Greg’s face looks different, but it always looks different to me now, with its thin fringe of stubble and keen expression. This isn’t the Greg who lounged in the hammock next to me peeling a purple mangosteen, or the Greg who helped me lug a secondhand couch into our new Hollywood apartment and hugged me as we surveyed its ruined gold grandeur. Nor is it the Greg who sobbed at our kitchen table when his mother died. He is no longer any of those people. He is Kim Lord’s boyfriend. She sent him ahead. Or he came ahead of her, to have more time hobnobbing with the rich patrons he hopes to woo to his gallery.

“I take that as a no,” says Kevin.

“Huh?”

“Kim Lord’s probably booked for interviews.”

“Probably,” I say.

I see Greg make his way to one of the cocktail stations. A server, a skinny brunette, passes him and thrusts out a tray of crackers heaped with rare beef. Greg stares at the red offering, then shakes his head. The server’s eyes stay on him after he walks away.