The Museum of Desire: An Alex Delaware Novel(52)
The name of the exhibit was literal: loose acrylic renderings of the same white candle in various stages of liquefaction over a black background.
We took one-page bios from a stack on a card table. Dugong’s bio specified little beyond his birth in Key West, Florida, and his work on fishing boats. On the flip side, a brief note by the gallery’s owner, Medina Okash, was even less informative. Written in the least comprehensive language on the planet: artspeak.
Geoffrey’s assumption of the identity of an endangered benthic mammal: simultaneously idiomatic and conceptual.
Growing up near the Atlantic, the pedestrian impulse would be to morph-adopt-become a local avatar: the manatee.
With incisive contrariness abandoning all notions of entitlement, loftiness, and class, Geoffrey made the excruciating choice to lade his consciousness with the unknown, a snouted denizen of African/Pacific/non-Atlantic nobility: the dugong.
Swimming against all tides, neap, ebb, and tsunami, represents Geoffrey’s approach to making art.
Be unexpected. Be woke. Be brave.
The candle is by nature transitory. So is life. So is reality. So is meaning.
Everything changes.
Everything melts.
Milo said, “Now I understand.”
We edged past a couple of the paintings. A man with a narrow goatee long enough to be constricted in two spots by gold rings said, “I did this one when I was thinking about migraines and perspiration.” Midforties, long, wild curly gray hair, deeply tanned, hawk-face. When he spoke, nothing but his mouth moved.
The woman listening to him said, “Sweat purifies. Lakota or Chumash?”
Beard-ring walked away from her. She turned to a bald, scowling man behind her. “I like his attitude, maybe we should buy one.”
“Are you fucking crazy? He’s an asshole.”
“Exactly, Dom. We could use some of that energy. A little pushback to the Warhols.”
Bald walked away. The woman, alone, saw us and smiled.
Milo said, “When I hear sweat, I think Turkish bath.”
“That’s true,” said the woman. “Are you an artist?”
“More of a craftsman.”
“What’s your medium?”
“Rare.”
We walked away. The woman looked at the painting, then into her purse.
* * *
—
We made our way to a corner with another card table, this one used for empty glasses. Our bubbly, untouched, found a home. Milo worked his phone and pulled up an image.
Pie-faced woman in her thirties. Blue-gray eyes, pageboy dyed the purplish gray of an old bruise, complexion pale enough to suggest Kabuki makeup.
Medina Okash was more into biography than her featured artist. Born thirty-six years ago in Seattle, B.A. in fine arts from the University of Oregon, certificate in curatorial science from the Gurnitz Institute in Bern, Switzerland, employment at a minor New York auction house followed by stints at Lower Manhattan art dealers.
She’d opened her own gallery six months ago.
Her mission statement: Be fearless.
Armed with the image, finding her was simple. Same everything except for the hair, now electric blue. She held glasses in both hands, drank from each in turn as she nodded at whatever a pair of men in matching black suits and red T-shirts was telling her. Identical twins down to the anorexia. They traded off speaking, one sentence at a time.
Medina Okash’s head moved from side to side, following the duet. A couple of times she threw back her head and laughed loud enough to be heard over the crowd.
Milo said, “Friendly, maybe that’ll extend to us.”
The merriment seemed staged to me. I said nothing as we waited. When the twins drifted away, we walked up to her.
Appraising smile. “Hi, you two.”
Milo said, “Good show.”
“Geoffrey’s a force to be reckoned with.” Okash looked at her drinks, then at our empty hands. “Don’t like Prosecco? It’s muy tasty.”
Milo patted his gut. “Moderation.”
“Is for people who doubt themselves,” said Medina Okash, placing a fingertip on his gut and rotating slowly. “Feels luscious and gorgeous to me.”
Milo managed a smile. The things we do in the call of duty.
She switched to me, fingertipping my turtleneck precisely over my navel. “A little more L.A.-toned for you…ooh, an innie. So where do I know you guys—the Harrison thing last month? Or was it Art Basel Miami?”
Milo flipped his lapel just wide enough to show her his badge.
Generally that evokes shock. Medina Okash’s affect didn’t change. “Police. Let me guess: Benny.”
Milo nodded. “We came by earlier but you were closed.”
Okash took in the crowd behind us. “Obviously, this isn’t really a good time so if you could come back tomorrow—ya know, scratch that. Time is nothing more than the longest distance between two places.”
I said, “Tennessee Williams.”
A painted eyebrow arched. She knuckled my arm lightly. “A cop who appreciates literature. Let us chit and chat.”
* * *
—
We followed her to a door at the back of the gallery. She opened it and waited as we stepped through. Brushing Milo’s arm as he passed. Doing the same to me and adding an instant of hip-to-hip pressure.