Still Lives

“And then I suppose you told him about me and Greg,” I say.

“Why are you so afraid of what people think?” Yegina asks.

Her exasperation hurts. I open the rice container and pour the curry on it. I eat a spoonful. The warm coconut flavor clogs my mouth.

“Just call him,” says Yegina.

“All right.” I swallow. “But—”

“Good.” Yegina gives an enormous yawn and makes that burrowing noise again. “I’m really tired.”

“Did Rick the ranch hand stay over?” As soon as the question slips out, I regret it.

There is a silence, and then Yegina says slowly, “If you hadn’t gotten so bombed last night, you might know.”

My phone feels hard against my cheek.

“Rick the ranch hand has a wife and a daughter,” says Yegina. “And I am pursuing Hiro, the new grant writer. Hiro is very courtly and hasn’t proposed a date yet, but I can sense his interest from the delicate increase in his stammering.” She pauses. “What happened with you and Greg anyway? Did he stay over?”

“No.”

“Something happened.”

“Nothing happened,” I lie. I can’t tell her about Greg giving me the flash drive. I don’t want to entwine her in anything dangerous, and since Cherie’s call, Kim’s disappearance feels more dangerous than ever. But I never lie to Yegina, and it makes my weak stomach quiver.

“And how was it?” she murmurs. “The nothing?”

“Greg told me that he’s the police’s main suspect. That’s all. He was pretty upset.” In my mind’s eye I see my kitchen window last night and, in it, Greg’s rage-distorted face, watching me. What was he seeing?

Yegina yawns again.

“He isn’t guilty,” I say, my voice shaking because I don’t know what to believe.

She snorts. “Not of murder,” she says. “He isn’t innocent either. Now please go eat your crinkly lunch alone and let me sleep.”





13

Of all the startling news I’ve received in the past twenty-four hours, Greg’s comments and behavior nag me most—what he and Kim fought about, why he possessed the flash drive, and what or who spilled blood in his studio basement. I should be thinking about what to do next—send Cherie the flash drive? Use her to get a message to Greg? How does he need me now? Why does he need me? Deep down, do I still believe he’s innocent?

Yet instead, as I drift on my yellow couch, listening to a helicopter ratchet the southern sky, my brain keeps routing me to a different question: why Kim would suddenly want to donate her entire show to the Rocque’s permanent collection. Also, why hadn’t she told Greg? The loss of millions would weigh on her mind, wouldn’t it? She didn’t strike me as rich. Neither is Greg, and it’s quite possible that she owed him for living expenses. It’s also quite possible he’s leveraged to the hilt right now. Was that what they really fought about—money?

Yet Greg genuinely didn’t seem to know about Kim’s plan until I told him, and his reaction would be typical of any gallerist. The donation makes terrible business sense, short term and long term. Even if Kim can swallow the financial blow, she will sacrifice a pivotal reputation-building moment with collectors eager to purchase her work. It took years for her to complete this show. The Kim Lord I know is deeply ambitious. And her gift to the museum flies in the face of a main objective of artist and gallerist: to develop a wealthy and steadily more glamorous provenance.

Provenance is the chronology of ownership of a work of art. Who owns what. Who bought what from whom. The record of exclusive possession. Ownership is listed on every wall label, and it’s written in a history that accompanies every object when it’s sold. If a famous collector buys a sculpture, that sculpture will sell for a higher price the next time it goes on the market, sometimes hundreds of thousands more. Dealers know this. They keep long waiting lists of purchasers so that they can control who gets what, and which sales are known to the press. In Britain, collector Charles Saatchi practically made the career of Damien Hirst when he bought the artist’s first major animal installation, a glass case with maggots feeding on a rotting cow’s head. Saatchi later paid for Hirst to create his famous formaldehyde shark. Public display of the works catapulted them both to fame. And some could say that Hirst made Saatchi, because if Saatchi ever sells the shark, he’ll probably get millions. The artist-dealer-collector triad is a symbiotic relationship, soaked in cash. Most of the time, the transactions happen behind closed doors.

Who owns Kim Lord’s work? Who wants to own it? Could a collector have frightened her with his demands, with his obsession, enough to make her decide not to sell any of Still Lives? It’s not easy to find the right information to illuminate the situation. Kim’s gallerist, Nelson de Wilde, might know, but he would never share anything about his clients, and sometimes, especially when an artist’s value is declining, different gallerists and consultants can sell a piece several times in quick succession, and it’s hard to keep track of who owns it.

My cell starts buzzing. It’s still lying on the floor, where I dropped it after I hung up on Yegina, and I have to strain to reach. The number on the screen has a New York area code. Kevin. Reluctantly I answer.

“Can’t tell you anything. I mean nada. Cherie doesn’t breach her clients’ privacy,” he says. “But can we meet somewhere cool? I’m flying out tonight and I want to give you something.”


For a repository of dreams, the Chinatown wishing well is a surprisingly dumpy sculpture: a hunk of lumpy grottoes, smiling gold Buddhas, and blue-lettered luck signs. The well resembles an altar instead of a hole, and although it’s supposed to replicate some famous cave in China, it seems more like a shrine to a bygone era when Chinatown bustled with actual Chinese residents. Pennies and pigeon droppings scatter the tin cups placed in front of WEALTH, LOVE, and VACATION. Nearby, shops sell bamboo plants, brass tins of tea, and hoary brown roots in big barrels. In the distance, the freeways carry constant streams of cars downtown. Yet here, by the well, it is perpetually hushed and still. Whenever Yegina and I walk past it on the way to our favorite dumpling shop, I feel like we are walking sideways through time, that we are connected to neither past nor future.

I’m staring at the sign for LOTTO, wondering about my choice of meeting place, when a penny sails over my head and plinks a metal cup.

“I got it in SUERTE,” a voice says from behind me. “What’s suerte?”

Kevin’s wearing his tweed again, but it works tonight because there’s a chill, and because he’s going home to New York.

“Luck, I think.”

“Why is everything else in English and SUERTE’s in Spanish?” he says.

“Suerte sounds luckier, I guess.” I pull out my pennies and aim for MONEY’s metal cup, missing wildly.

“You in shock?” Kevin says.

“Yeah. I mean, I just saw Greg last night. Now he’s in jail.” I explain about the ranch, the ride, the fall, but not my drunken outbursts. “He’s not guilty. He didn’t even care that they were searching his gallery and studios.”

We chew over the known details of Kim Lord’s disappearance, though I still don’t tell Kevin about the press release and Kim’s intended donation to the Rocque. I secretly think Kevin knows something about Greg that he’s not telling me. “Did your sister tell you if there’s going to be an arraignment tomorrow?”

I understand a bit about police procedure from Jay Eastman, who was tracking the arrests and prosecutions of the drug dealers in Vermont. The fact that it’s Sunday today changes the usual timetable and gives the cops extra hours with Greg, but not many. They could hold him overnight, but if they’re not going to charge him by Monday afternoon, they have to let him go.

“No idea. My sister is a vault,” Kevin says, but his voice rises.

He’s lying. I wait, hoping.

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