While Agnes showered and had breakfast I did an online search of ‘artists in New York’. It was about as much use as searching ‘dogs with tails’. The few who had websites and bothered to pick up the phone answered my request like I’d suggested they waltz naked around the nearest shopping mall. ‘You want Mr Fischl to do a … doodle? For a charity lunch?’ Two put the phone down on me. Artists, it turned out, took themselves very seriously.
I called everyone I could find. I called gallerists in Chelsea. I called the New York Academy of Art. All the while I tried not to think about what Sam was doing. He would be having a nice brunch in that diner we’d talked about. He would be walking the High Line, like we were meant to. I needed to be back in time to take that ferry ride with him before he left for England. To do it at dusk would be romantic. I pictured us, his arm around me, gazing up at the Statue of Liberty, dropping a kiss on my hair. I dragged my thoughts back and racked my brains. And then I thought about the only other person I knew in New York who might be able to help.
‘Josh?’
‘Speaking?’ The sound of a million male voices behind him.
‘It’s – it’s Louisa Clark. We met at the Yellow Ball?’
‘Louisa! Great to hear from you! How are you doing?’ He sounded so relaxed, as if strange women called him every day of the week. They probably did. ‘Hold on. Let me take this outside … So what’s up?’
He had this way of making you feel instantly at ease. I wondered if Americans were born with it.
‘Actually, I’m in a bit of a bind and I don’t know many people in New York so I wondered if you might be able to help.’
‘Try me.’
I explained the situation, leaving out Agnes’s mood, her paranoia, my utter stammering terror faced with the New York art scene.
‘Shouldn’t be too hard. When do you need this thing by?’
‘That’s the tricky bit. Tonight.’
A sharp intake of breath. ‘Oooh-kay. Yeah. That’s a little tougher.’
I ran a hand through my hair. ‘I know. It’s nuts. If I’d known about it sooner I might have been able to do something. I’m really sorry to have bothered you.’
‘No, no. We’ll fix this. Can I call you back?’
Agnes was out on the balcony, smoking. Turns out I wasn’t the only person who used the space after all. It was cold and she was swaddled in a huge cashmere wrap, her fingers faintly pink where her hand emerged from the soft wool.
‘I’ve put out a number of calls. I’m just waiting for someone to get back to me.’
‘You know what they will say, Louisa? If I bring them stupid doodle?’
I waited.
‘They will say I have no culture. What can you expect from stupid Polish masseuse? Or they will say that nobody wanted to do it for me.’
‘It’s only twelve twenty. We’ve still got time.’
‘I don’t know why I bother,’ she said softly.
Strictly speaking, I wanted to say, it wasn’t her doing the bothering. Her chief concern right now seemed to be Smoking And Looking Moody. But I knew my place. Just then my phone rang.
‘Louisa?’
‘Josh?’
‘I think I have someone who can help. Can you get over to East Williamsburg?’
Twenty minutes later we were in the car headed towards the Midtown Tunnel.
As we sat in traffic, Garry impassive and silent in the front, Agnes called Mr Gopnik, anxious about his health, his pain. ‘Is Nathan coming to the office? Did you have painkillers? … Are you sure you’re okay, darling? You don’t want me to come bring you anything? … No … I’m in the car. I have to sort something for this evening. Yes, I’m still going. It’s all fine.’
I could just make out his voice at the other end. Low, reassuring.
She hung up and gazed out of the window, heaving a long sigh. I waited a moment, then started running through my notes.
‘So, apparently this Steven Lipkott is up and coming in the fine art world. He’s had shows in some very important places. And he’s …’ I scanned my notes ‘… figurative. Not abstract. So you just need to tell him what you want him to draw and he’ll do it. I’m not sure how much it will cost, though.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Agnes. ‘Is going to be disaster.’
I turned back to the iPad and did an online search on the artist’s name. With relief I noted that the drawings were indeed beautiful: sinuous depictions of the body. I handed the iPad to Agnes so that she could see and in a moment her mood lifted. ‘This is good.’ She sounded almost surprised.
‘Yup. If you can think of what you want, we can get him to draw it and be back for … four maybe?’ And then I can leave, I added silently. While she scrolled through the other images, I texted Sam.
How you doing?
Not bad. Went for a nice walk. Bought souvenir beer hat for Jake. Don’t laugh.
Wish I was with you.
A pause.
So what time do you think you’ll get off? I worked out I should leave for the airport by seven.
Hoping for four. Will stay in touch xxxxx
New York traffic meant it took us an hour to get to the address Josh had given me: a scruffy, featureless former office building at the back of an industrial block. Garry pulled up with a sceptical sniff. ‘You sure this is the place?’ he said, turning with effort in his seat.
I checked the address. ‘That’s what it says.’
‘I will stay in car, Louisa. I am going to call Leonard again.’
The upper corridor was lined with doors, a couple of which were open, music blaring. I walked along slowly, checking the numbers. Some had tins of white emulsion paint outside, and I walked past an open door revealing a woman in baggy jeans stretching a canvas over a huge wood frame.
‘Hi! Do you know where Steven is?’
She fired a battery of staples from a huge metal gun into the frame. ‘Fourteen. But I think he just went out for food.’
Fourteen was at the far end. I knocked, then pushed the door tentatively and walked in. The studio was lined with canvases, two huge tables covered with sloppy trays of oil paints and battered pastel crayons. The walls were hung with beautiful oversized pictures of women in various states of undress, some unfinished. The air smelt of paint, turpentine and stale cigarette smoke.
‘Hello.’
I turned to see a man holding a white plastic bag. He was around thirty, his features regular but his gaze intense, his chin unshaven, his clothes crumpled and utilitarian, as if he had barely noticed what he’d put on. He looked like a male model in a particularly esoteric fashion magazine.
‘Hi. Louisa Clark. We spoke on the phone earlier? Well, we didn’t – your friend Josh told me to come.’
‘Oh, yeah. You want to buy a drawing.’
‘Not as such. We need you to do a drawing. Just a small one.’
He sat down on a small stool, opened his carton of noodles and started to eat, hoicking them into his mouth with rapid strokes of his chopsticks.
‘It’s for a charity thing. People do these doo– small drawings,’ I corrected myself. ‘And apparently a lot of the top artists in New York are doing them for other people so –’
‘ “Top artists”,’ he repeated.
‘Well. Yes. Apparently it’s not the done thing to do your own and Agnes – my employer – really needs someone brilliant to do one for her.’ My voice sounded high and anxious. ‘I mean, it shouldn’t take you long. We – we don’t want anything fancy …’
He was staring at me and I heard my voice trail off, thin and uncertain.
‘We – we can pay. Quite well,’ I added. ‘And it’s for charity.’
He took another mouthful, peering intently into his carton. I stood by the window and waited.
‘Yeah,’ he said, when he had finished chewing. ‘I’m not your man.’
‘But Josh said –’
‘You want me to create something to satisfy the ego of some woman who can’t draw and doesn’t want to be shown up in front of her ladies who lunch …’ He shook his head. ‘You want me to draw you a greetings card.’
‘Mr Lipkott. Please. I probably haven’t explained it very well. I –’
‘You explained it just fine.’
‘But Josh said –’
‘Josh said nothing about greetings cards. I hate that charity dinner shit.’