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10





The Super Bowl of the Art World


It was December, which in Miami Beach had only the most boring meteorological significance. Imagine a picture book with the same photograph on every page… every page… high noon beneath a flawless, cloudless bright blue sky… on every page… a tropical sun that turns those rare old birds, pedestrians, into stumpy, abstract black shadows on the sidewalk… on every page… unending views of the Atlantic Ocean, unending meaning that every couple of blocks, if you squint at a certain angle between the gleaming pinkish butter-colored condominium towers that wall off the shining sea from clueless gawkers who come to Miami Beach thinking they can just drive down to the shore and see the beaches and the indolent recliner & umbrella people and the lapping waves and the ocean sparkling and glistening and stretching out to the horizon in a perfect 180-degree arc… if you squint just right, every couple of blocks you can get a skinny, thin-as-a-ballpoint-refill, vertical glimpse of the ocean—blip—and it’s gone… on every page… glimpse—blip—and it’s gone… on every page… on every page….

However, at high noon, or 11:45 a.m., to be exact, on this particular December day, Magdalena and Norman were indoors… in the distinguished, if itching-scratching, company of Maurice Fleischmann, along with Marilynn Carr, his “A.A.,” as he called her… short for art adviser. In fact, he had begun using that as her nickname… “Hey, A.A., come take a look at this”… or whatever. With dignity, insofar as that was possible, the four of them sought to keep their place in a line, more or less, less a line, in fact, and more like a scrimmage at an Iranian airline counter. Two hundred or so restless souls, most of them middle-aged men, eleven of whom had been pointed out to Magdalena as billionaires—billionaires—twelve, if you counted Maurice himself, were squirming like maggots over the prospect of what lay on the other side of an inch-thick glass wall just inside a small portal, Entrance D of the Miami Convention Center. The convention center took up an entire city block on Miami Beach. An ordinary person could walk past Entrance D every day for years and never be conscious of its existence. That was the whole point. Ordinary people didn’t know and musn’t know that billionaires and countless nine-digit millionaires were in there squirming like maggots… fifteen minutes before Miami Art Basel’s moment of money and male combat. They all had an urge.

The maggots!… Once, when she was six or seven, Magdalena had come upon a little dead dog, a mutt, on a sidewalk in Hialeah. A regular hive of bugs was burrowing into a big gash in the dog’s haunch—only these weren’t exactly bugs. They looked more like worms, short, soft, deathly pale worms; and they were not in anything so orderly as a hive. They were a wriggling, slithering, writhing, squiggling, raveling, wrestling swarm of maggots rooting over and under one another in a heedless, literally headless, frenzy to get at the dead meat. She learned later that they were decephalized larvae. They had no heads. The frenzy was all they had. They didn’t have five senses, they had one, the urge, and the urge was all they felt. They were utterly blind.

Just take a look at them!… the billionaires! They look like shoppers mobbed outside Macy’s at midnight for the 40-percent–off After Christmas Sale. No, they don’t look that good. They look older and grubbier and more washed out… the whole bunch are americanos, after all. They’re wearing prewashed baggy-in-the-seat jeans, too-big T-shirts, too-big polo shirts hanging out at the bottom to make room for their bellies, too-tight khakis, ug-lee rumpled woolen ankle-high socks of rubber-mat black, paint-job green, and slop-mop maroon… and sneakers. Magdalena had never seen this many old men—practically all were middle-aged or older—wearing sneakers. Just look—there and there and over there—not just sneakers but real basketball shoes. And for what? They probably think all these teen togs make them look younger. Are they kidding? They just make their slumping backs and sloping shoulders and fat-sloppy bellies… and scoliotic spines and slanted-forward necks and low-slung jowls and stringy wattles… more obvious.

To tell the truth, Magdalena didn’t particularly care about all that. She thought it was funny. Mainly, she was envious of A.A. This americana was pretty and young and, it almost went without saying, blond. Her clothes were sophisticated yet very simple… and very sexy… a perfectly plain, sensible, businesslike sleeveless black dress… but short… ended a foot above her knees and showed plenty of her fine fair thighs… made it seem like you were looking at all of her fine fair body. Oh, Magdalena didn’t doubt for a second that she was sexier than this girl, had better breasts, better lips, better hair… long, full, lustrous dark hair as opposed to this americana’s sexless blond bob, copied from that English girl—what was her name?—Posh Spice… She just wished she had worn a minidress, too, to show off her bare legs… as opposed to these slim white pants that mainly showed off the deep cleft of her perfect little butt. But this “A.A.” girl had something else, too. She was in the know. Advising rich people, like Fleischmann, about what very expensive art to buy was her business, and she knew all about this “fair.” If somebody called it “Miami Art Basel,” thinking that was the full name, she would inform him in some mostly polite way that it was officially Art Basel Miami Beach… and that those in the know didn’t call it “Miami Art Basel” for short. No, they called it “Miami Basel.” She could fire off sixty in the know cracks a minute.

At this very moment, A.A. was saying, “So I ask her—I ask her what she’s interested in, and she says to me, ‘I’m looking for something cutting-edge… like a Cy Twombly.’ I’m thinking, ‘A Cy Twombly?’ Cy Twombly was cutting-edge in the nineteen fifties! He died a couple of years ago, I think it was, and most of his contemporaries are gone or on the way. You’re not cutting-edge if your whole generation is dead or dying. You may be great. You may be iconic, the way Cy Twombly is, but you’re not cutting-edge.”

She didn’t address any of this to Magdalena. She never looked at her. Why waste attention, much less words, on some little nobody who probably didn’t know anything anyway? The worst part of it was that she was right. Magdalena had never heard of Cy Twombly. She didn’t know what cutting-edge meant, either, although she could sort of guess from the way A.A. used it. And what did iconic mean? She hadn’t the faintest idea. She bet Norman didn’t know, either, didn’t understand the first thing Miss All-Business sexy A.A. had just said, but Norman created the sort of presence that made people think he knew everything about anything anybody had to say.

Iconic was a word that was beginning to pop up all around them, now that there were just minutes to go before the magic hour, noon. The maggots were rooting amongst one another more anxiously.

Somewhere very nearby, a man with a high voice was saying, “Okay, maybe it isn’t iconic Giacometti, but it’s great Giacometti all the same, but no-o-o-o—” Magdalena recognized that voice. A hedge fund billionaire from Greenwich?—Stamford?—someplace in Connecticut, anyway. She remembered him from the BesJet party two nights ago.

And some woman was saying, “Koons’d die at auction right now!”

“—Hirst, if you ask me. He’s high as a dead fish after fifteen minutes in the sun.”

“—what you just said? Prince is the one who’s tanked.”

“—the fish that’s up there at Stevie’s, rotting its forty-million-dollar guts out?”

“—iconic, my ass.”

“—svear, ‘de-skilt’ vas vot she said!” (“—swear, ‘de-skilled’ was what she said.”) Magdalena knew that voice very well, from last night at the dinner party Michael du Glasse and his wife, Caroline Peyton-Soames, gave at Casa Tua. She even remembered his name, Heinrich von Hasse. He had made billions manufacturing… something about industrial robots?… was that what they said? Whatever else he did, he had spent so many millions buying art at Art Basel in Switzerland six months ago, people were talking about him at practically every party she and Norman and Maurice had been to.

“—about to see it! A measles outbreak, baby!”

“—and no time to kick the tires!”

“See it—like it—buy it! That’s all you—”

“Art Basel in Basel?” That was A.A. piping up again. “Have you ever been to Basel? The only place worse is Helsinki. There’s no place to eat! The food is not anywhere near as good as the food here. The fish tastes like it arrived in the backseat of a Honda, and the price—”

“—keep his hands off my adviser, for Christsake.”

“—think you’ve got a fifteen-minute reserve, but five minutes later—”

“—the price is twice what it is here. And Basel’s so-called historic hotels? I’ll tell you what’s historic—the basins in the bathrooms! Aaaagh! They’re that old kind. You know what I mean? You could have somebody scrub them day and night for a week, and they’d still look gray like somebody’s old bedridden grandmother with bad breath. No shelf space and these old gray metal cups screwed into the wall they expect you to put your toothbrush in? You just—”

“I’m what?”

“—what I said. You’re rude. Gimme your mother’s phone number! I’m gonna tell her on you!”

“Whattaya gonna do—get Putin to slip an isotope into my cappuccino?”

As covertly as possible, Fleischmann lowered his hand to the crotch of his pants and tried to scratch the itch of his herpes pustules. He could never do it covertly enough to fool Magdalena, however. Every two minutes at least, Fleischmann shot one of his sixty-three-year-old looks at her… pregnant with meaning… and lust. Norman’s diagnosis was that they were one and the same. The meaning was… lust. The very sight of a gorgeous girl like her was live pornography for a porn addict like Fleischmann… better than a strip club. Gross as they might be, Magdalena loved those looks. Those pregnant lustful looks she commanded from every sort of man—she loved it, loved it, loved it. First they looked at her face—Norman said her knowing lips insinuated ecstasy, even when she didn’t have the faintest smile. Then they looked at her breasts—her somehow perfect breasts. She was aware of it all the time! Then she would see them searching her crotch… expecting to find what, in God’s name?

All the old men in this wriggling infestation of maggots… if she cared to walk up and down and cock her hips before them… their riches… they’d melt! They dreamed of… depositing them into… her.

It was as if one of those storybook fairies children love so much had waved her wand over Miami… and—Wanderflash!—turned it into Miami Basel… The spell lasted no more than one week, one magical week every December… when the Miami Basel “art fair” went up in the Miami Convention Center… and swells from all over the United States, England, Europe, Japan, even Malaysia, even China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, even South Africa, todo el mundo, came down from the sky in swarms of private planes… to buy expensive contemporary art… or to see the swells buying it… to immerse themselves in their mental atmosphere of art and money… to breathe the same air they did… in short, to be where things are happening… until the fairy waved her wand again a week later and—Wanderflash!—they disappeared… the art from all over the world, the private planes from all over the world, the swell people who had descended from the sky from all over the world, and—poof!—every trace of sophistication and worldliness was gone.

At this very moment, however, all these creatures remained under the fairy’s spell.

Miami Basel wouldn’t open to the public until the day after tomorrow… but to those in the know, those on the inside, Miami Basel had already been a riot of cocktail receptions, dinner parties, after-parties, covert cocaine huddles, inflamed catting around for going-on three days. Almost anywhere they were likely to enjoy a nice little status boost from the presence of celebrities—movie, music, TV, fashion, even sports celebrities—who knew nothing about art and didn’t have time to care. All they wanted was to be… where things were happening. For them and for the insiders, Miami Basel would be over the moment the first foot of the first clueless member of the general public touched the premises.

Magdalena would have remained clueless herself without Maurice Fleischmann. She had never even heard of Miami Basel until Maurice invited her, along with Norman, to the fair… at Norman’s prodding. Socializing with a patient was very much frowned upon in psychiatric practice. The psychiatrist’s effectiveness depended in no small part upon his assuming a godly stance far above the patient’s place in the world, no matter what it might be. The patient must be dependent upon his paid god, not the other way around. But Norman had Maurice mesmerized. He thought his “recovery” from his “disease” depended entirely upon Norman, in spite of the fact—or maybe because of the fact—that Norman kept telling him that he was not suffering from a disease but a weakness. For his part, Maurice felt rather special taking Norman around, because Norman was on television a lot and was seen by so many people in Miami as a celebrity. Nobody would suspect that Fleischmann was Norman’s patient. They were two well-known men who traveled in the same circles, at the same altitude. What could be remarkable about that?

Every day Fleischmann and his driver, a little Ecuadorian named Felipe, had picked up Norman and Magdalena from the Lincoln Suites, after Norman’s last appointment, in a big black Escalade SUV with dark-tinted windows. The first stop, the first day, was the insiders’ opening event—a cocktail party known as Toffs at Twilight. A man named Roy Duroy staged that party every year at the hotel he owned, The Random, on Collins Avenue, not all that far south of the Lincoln Suites. The Random was a typical hotel of the much-touted South Beach Retro boom. A clever developer like Duroy would buy a small, crabbed hotel, eighty years old or more usually, give it a lick of paint and some in-room computer outlets, change the name from the Lido or the Surfside to something hip and flip like The Random, and pronounce it an Art Deco architectural gem. Now you had a small, crabbed gem. The rear of the property was its saving grace. It overlooked an inlet from the ocean. Duroy had put a lot of big umbrellas with magenta, white, and apple-green stripes out there. Very colorful, these umbrellas, and Toffs at Twilight was already going strong when Maurice, Norman, and Magdalena arrived. A hundred, two hundred Miami Basel insiders were crammed around tables under the umbrellas, drinking, or milling about between the umbrellas, drinking. Everybody was drinking and kicking up a noisy surf of big talk and haw haw haw haw haws! and scream scream scream screams!

What bowled Magdalena over was the stir Maurice’s very presence created. Roy Duroy himself immediately rushed up and gave him a big bear hug. His flattery fluttered down on Maurice like rose petals. A big real estate developer named Burt Thornton—even Magdalena had seen him on TV and in the newspapers—rushed over and all but licked Maurice’s alligator-hide moccasins. So many people came rushing over to Maurice, he stood there for an hour without moving six inches from where he first came upon the colorful umbrella-scape. Magdalena had always known that Maurice was a billionaire who had “influence.” Nevertheless, what she had never been able to get out of her mind was Norman’s photograph of Maurice’s crotch rotting with herpes pustules. But now, at Toffs at Twilight, she was looking at a Maurice el Grande.

Meantime, Norman was sulking a bit. Nobody had recognized him so far. He had even given up his laughterrrahHAHock hock hock strategy for attracting attention. He groused to Magdalena that all Roy Duroy wanted was Maurice’s backing for some out-to-lunch dream of turning The Random into a chain operation, and Burt Thornton just wanted Maurice to intervene to keep North Tryon Street Global from foreclosing on him for an enormous loan for a development that hadn’t panned out.

The three of them got back into the big black Escalade and headed off to the High Hotel, also in South Beach, where BesJet, which leased private planes to corporations and the mighty rich, was having a cocktail reception… even louder this time, the roaring surf… the big talk, the haw haw haw haws! the shriek shriek shriek shrieks!… Magdalena was stunned. Across the room she spotted two movie stars, Leon Decapito and Kanyu Reade. No question about it! Leon Decapito and Kanyu Reade!—in the flesh! ::::::Leon Decapito and Kanyu Reade… and me… we’re guests at the same cocktail party.::::::… But not even stars like them could have commanded more attention than BesJet gave Maurice. The president of BesJet rushed over to him, flashing every tooth he could squeeze into his grin. When they shook hands, the president clasped his left hand over their mingled fingers, as if sealing a vow. Five times he must have told Maurice that tomorrow the 170th BesJet flight heading specifically to Miami Basel would be landing. He no doubt knew Maurice had his own plane. He just wanted him to have the word, because in Miami, among all the nobs who could afford private flights, Maurice’s seemed to be the word. Norman was growing positively glum. They went from the BesJet party to a swell, expensive restaurant called Casa Tua for a big dinner given by Status, the new magazine that had become very hot by ranking people in every area of life you could imagine.

No step over a threshold and through a door had ever given Magdalena such a status boost before… and no sooner did she step into the dining room, amid a hundred or more people, than she spotted the celebrated faces of Tara Heccuba Barker!… Luna Thermal!… Rad Packman!… She couldn’t get over it. She was breathing the same air they were! But the Status people couldn’t have made a bigger to-do over any of them than they did over Maurice. In his remarks, the editor in chief of Status mentioned Maurice twice…

Finally, after dinner, Norman got a break. A big moonfaced woman recognized him and brought over a couple of others, and soon Norman was the star of a big conversation cluster eager to hear the eminent Dr. Lewis go on about pornnnahhHAHAHock hock hock addiction. In no time eight or nine people were gathered around him.

Magdalena, standing next to Maurice, found herself engulfed, by default, in a conversation cluster consisting of Maurice and three of his courtiers, all middle-aged men. The only one Magdalena recognized was Burt Thornton, who popped up on TV a lot… some real estate fiasco… or something like that… The other two were Somebody Herman and Somebody Kershner. Maurice was holding forth on the pitfalls of “pyramided mortgage payments,” which she gathered was Mr. Thornton’s problem. She had never felt more out of place. She would have been afraid to utter a peep, even if she had known what on earth they were talking about. But she was even more afraid of leaving this cluster and trying her luck in a room full of old people now on their feet and getting ready to depart for one what’s happening après-party party or another. A group of them stopped when they reached the Maurice Fleischmann cluster, and some man stepped up—“Maurice!”—and embraced him in the manly version of women’s air kisses among social equals. They separated, and ::::::¡Dios mío! I’ve never seen such a gorgeous man in my life!:::::: Maurice began some rapid introductions. “Sergei, this is Burt Thornton… Burt, this is Sergei Korolyov.”

“Ees my pleasure, Mr. Zornton.”

“Oh, it’s my honor!” said Burt Thornton.

Sergei Korolyov’s European accent—was it Russian?—only made him more gorgeous to Magdalena. He looked young, at least for this crowd—midthirties? He was as tall as a girl could ever hope for, and built. Men didn’t come any handsomer, either. A square jaw, amazing blue eyes—and his hair was a thick light brown with some blond streaks, combed back in long waves. It was romantic. And so charming, the way he smiled and the tone of his voice as he greeted “Mr. Zornton” and made those three words, “Ees my pleasure,” sound as if he actually meant it. Just before Maurice introduced him to Mr. Herman ::::::he glanced at me—and it didn’t just happen, either!:::::: Just as he was introduced to Mr. Kershner ::::::he did it again! Now I know he means it!::::::

Maurice must have noticed it, too, because he said, “Oh, and Sergei, this is Magdalena Otero.” The gorgeous man turned to Magdalena. He smiled the same politely charming smile. He reached out as if to shake hands—and bowed and lifted her hand and air-kissed the back of it and said, “Miss Otero.” But when he stood up, he had added a slight insinuation to the smile, and he poured his eyes into hers for far too long—then left with his party. ::::::¡Dios mío, mío, mío!::::::

Magdalena whispered to Maurice, “Who is that?”

Maurice chuckled. “Someone who’d like to make friends with you, I gather.” Then he filled her in.

Norman was happy, too. Now at last they realized who he was. What a lift! Such a lift that Norman was ready to roll to an after-party given by something called the Museum of the Instant, in the Design District, where a performance artist named Heidi Schlossel would be performing a piece of art called De-f*cked. Everybody at the Status dinner was talking about it. Magdalena had never heard of the Museum of the Instant, the Design District, performance art, or performance artists, let alone one named Heidi Schlossel. Norman was only marginally better informed; he had heard of the Design District, although he didn’t know where it was. Maurice, now a certified big shot at Miami Basel, was dying to go.

Magdalena took Norman aside. “This performance art thing—it’s called De-f*cked. We don’t know what it is. Do you really want to risk taking”—she pointed behind her toward Maurice—“to something like that?”

“It’s a museum,” said Norman. “How bad could it be?”

Back into the Escalade… and off to the Design District, which seemed to be in an area of abandoned warehouses and small factories. The Instant Museum was a mess… and too small for all the Miami Basel insiders who flocked there… The only halfway-decent-sized gallery in the place had hundreds of worn-out black tires piled up against one wall. A jacklegged, unpainted wooden stanchion bore a sign:

NATIVE TRASH OF THE DAY

—Collection of the Instant Museum



A recorded rhythm track boomed out over a speaker system, BOOMchilla BOOMchilla BOOMchilla BOOMchilla… From behind a mound of filthy black tires steps a tall figure in black. She has chalky white skin… and long black hair that comes cascading down upon the puffed and pleated shoulders of the academic robe she has on, the kind you graduate in. But this one is voluminous. It sweeps down to the floor. She isn’t smiling.

She stands there motionless, without a peep, for about thirty seconds. Presumably, this is Heidi Schlossel.

She brings her hands to her neck and undoes some sort of clasp. The robe falls from her shoulders suddenly, completely, clump. It must have weighed a ton.

Now she stood stark naked in front of a big puddle of heavy black cloth… rigid, erect. Her face was a blank… She looked like one of the undead in a horror movie… without a stitch on.

Magdalena whispered to Norman, “Let’s leave—now!” She nodded toward Maurice. Norman just shook his head… No.

The stark naked woman appeared to be fifteen years too old and fifteen pounds too heavy to play this role, whatever it was. She began speaking in the dead voice of the undead. “Men have f*cked me… they have f*cked me, f*cked me, f*cked me over, over-f*cked me—”… on and on with this I Was a F*cking Zombie poem—until all at once she inserted a thumb and two fingers into her vagina and pulled out a length of sausage and came alive, as it were, and cried out, “De-f*cked!”—and out came another sausage linked to the first—“De-f*cked!”—and another and another—“De-f*cked!” and “De-f*cked!” and “De-f*cked!” and “De-f*cked!” Magdalena couldn’t believe how many link sausages the woman had managed to stuff inside her vaginal cavity!

Maurice had his hand clasped over his crotch. But instead of stroking it with his hand, he was rocking his body back and forth beneath his hand… so as not to be detected.

Magdalena nudged Norman and whispered on the loud side, “Maurice!” Norman ignored her. His eyes were fixed on Ms. Schlossel. So this time Magdalena didn’t bother hiding it behind a whisper. “Norman! Look at Maurice!”

Norman glowered at her… but did look at Maurice. He just stared at first… calculating… calculating… then he let out a deep, self-denying sigh and put his arm around Maurice’s shoulders… tenderly… and leaned close to him and said… in a voice you would use on a child… “We have to go now, Maurice.”

Like an obedient child who knows he has disappointed his parents, Maurice let himself be led out of the Museum of the Instant.

Maurice was silent… and penitent… but Norman acted cross. He kept shaking his head from side to side, without looking at either one of them.

“What’s wrong, Norman?” said Magdalena.

“There’s supposed to be a great after-party at some gallery near here, the Linger, in Wynwood, wherever that is.” He kept shaking his head. “But I guess that’s out.”

Later on, Magdalena asked around and was told that the Linger, a large gallery, wanted to show its “private collection” of photorealistic pornographic paintings, whatever photorealistic meant, and sculptures of homosexual orgies.

Why was there so much pornography in this so-called cutting-edge art? Magdalena wondered. For what earthly reason? How in God’s name did they justify it?… And just who was more upset about not being able to see it all, the patient… or the doctor?

But by last night it was as if nothing had happened. Here were the three of them, Maurice, Norman, and herself, plunging into another round of parties and receptions before dinner… and dinner was really something last night. Michael du Glasse and his wife, Caroline Peyton-Soames, were the hosts. Michael du Glasse and Caroline Peyton-Soames!… the most glamorous couple in Hollywood, if you asked Magdalena… a dinner for a hundred people at the Ritz-Carlton… and Magdalena Otero, lately of Hialeah, was their guest… and for one sublime and unforgettable moment she had touched their right hands with hers.

In five minutes, presumably, a pair of doors in the glass wall would open, and these old men, these old maggots, would have first crack at the treasures that lay on the other side… Miami Basel!… For two hours these maggots, and these alone, would have the exclusive run of the whole place… whatever in the name of God “the whole place” was…

“—f*ck off? You f*ck off, you fat—”

“AhhggghHAHAHHHHock hock hock hockdjou see that big ox trying to slip between those two people? Got stuck between themmmmaaagghHAHHHHock hock hock hock! Couldn’t get his belly throughahhHock hock hock!”

Maurice Fleischmann looked at Norman blankly. Then he looked around among his fellow squirming maggots to figure out what had made Norman eruptttock hock hock like that. He couldn’t. He was nonplussed. But Magdalena now understood. Norman cackled when he felt insecure, especially in the presence of people who made him feel defensive or inferior—Fleischmann, for one. It was a way of taking over from them in conversation. Anybody, even a real swell like Fleischmann, had to have a heart of stone not to manufacture a smile and a few chuckles and play along with a bighearted guy who’s being swept away, convulsed, paralyzed by laughter over… God knows what. Why even bother with Fleischmann’s conversation—when he already controlled Fleischmann’s poor porn-mad mind? Why?—it all dawned on Magdalena. It was very important to Norman to keep his boat at a place like the Fisher Island Marina—but he didn’t own any property there. Maurice Fleischmann made it happen. Or Norman’s presence amidst the most important VIPs of all the VIPs of Miami Basel, the richest of the rich, the likeliest of the likely big spenders, the deepest of the plungers—all of them slithering over and underneath one another to get first crack at the wonders of ninety thousand square feet of art for sale. What was Norman doing here? Maurice Fleischmann made it happen.

Some sort of dustup at the very head of the line… the big ox yakking away, angrily, by the looks of him… a stack of tires—of fat—forming on the back of his neck every time his chin bobs up. ::::::Look at what he’s wearing!… an ordinary white T-shirt, the kind that’s meant to be underwear. Just look at him!… it’s stretched over his swollen belly… making him look like one of those big plastic gym balls… it’s hanging outside his jeans, a really gross pair of Big Boy BodiBilt jeans.::::::

Magdalena tapped Norman on the arm. “Norman—”

“Yeah, that’s him,” said Norman. “But wait a minute… This guy is too muuuuchHahhhHAHAHock hock hock!”

By the time he got to his cackle, Magdalena couldn’t help but notice, he was no longer aiming his little performance in her direction, but Fleischmann’s.

“A second ago the guy was trying to crash the line four or five places from the front… and nowwwahHHHHock hock hock he is the front!”…

Fleischmann looks put out. He doesn’t even feign a smile over Norman’s cackle. He’s worried. He sidles over and takes a look.

“Hey, A.A.,” says Fleischmann, “come over here. Isn’t that Flebetnikov?”

“Oh, yes,” she says, “the very one.” Fleischmann leaned close to A.A. and lowered his voice: “That bloated bastard. He knows I’m interested in the Doggses—and look at him. He’s literally shoved people aside with his big sumo gut, and now he’s right up against the door.”

A.A. lowered her voice: “And therefore he’s going after the Doggses himself? Don’t you think—”

“He’s got billions of dollars, and he’s a Putin thug, and ��Therefore, I’m gonna grab anything you want, just to show you you don’t have a chance against me.’ ”

“Who is he?” said Norman.

Fleischmann clearly resented Norman’s interrupting a confidential conversation. “Perhaps you’ve heard of Russian oligarchs.” Then he turned back to A.A. and was saying, “Now, the only thing—”

It was the “perhaps” that got Norman. Was Fleischmann by any chance adopting the patient peevish tone one uses with dimwits? Norman wasn’t going to put up with that for a moment.

“Heard of them?” he said. “Try heard from them ahaaahhhHAHAHAHock hock hock! Three different psychiatrists have brought me in as consultant with these characters. Have I heard of themmmeeaaahHAAAHock hock hock!”

Magdalena knew that was a lie.

“Well, I seriously doubt you ever consulted for one that obnoxious,” Fleischmann said curtly, probably wondering how he had lost control of the conversation.

Without another word, Fleischmann walked away from Norman, over to a wall of the entryway, and took a cell phone out of an inside pocket of his jacket. He looked back to make sure that nobody could overhear him. He spoke to somebody for four or five minutes. When he returned to the group, he was in a better mood.

“Who’d you call, Maurice?” said Magdalena.

Fleischmann gave her a coy boy’s flirtatious smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know!”

At that moment the entire mob of maggots grew quiet. From out of nowhere a woman had appeared on the other side of the glass wall, a blond, bony, gristly americana trying to look young in a pair of Art World Black stovepipe pants and an Art World Black T-shirt with a deep V-neck. Thank God a Miami Basel STAFF ID was hanging from her neck. Mercifully, it covered part of the sternum bonescape where her cleavage was supposed to be. She unlocked the glass doors, put on a brittle smile, and gestured down the hall. The maggots remained silent, eerily so, as they began the big push through the doorway.

Flebetnikov popped through like an immense cork. He lost his footing for a moment in the hallway beyond and had to do a little hop to regain his balance. His great T-shirt-swathed belly pitched and yawed. He led the pack… with both elbows jutting out, as if to make sure no one passed him. Magdalena noticed for the first time that he was wearing what looked like basketball shoes. She looked down at Fleischmann’s feet. He had on sneakers, too!… tan sneakers practically the same color as his poplin pants… not so obtrusive as the Russian’s, but sneakers nonetheless… On! Into the Art World! Faster!

Now all four of them, Magdalena, Fleischmann, Norman, and A.A., squeezed through the door. The gristly woman in Art Black had wisely stepped back, out of the way of the pumped-up old men. It wasn’t a stampede exactly… not some utter loss of control such as pushing… but Magdalena could feel the pressure… One man was so close behind her, she could hear him breathing stertorously near her ear. She was being swept along in a tide of old bones dying to get in there, whatever there was.

A little hallway opened up into the main exhibition hall. The place must have been the size of a city block all by itself… the ceiling was—what?—three stories high?—four stories?—all in darkness. The lights were below, like the lights of a city—the lights of incredibly long rows, streets, avenues, of booths—of galleries from all over Europe and Asia as well as the United States… must be hundreds of them! Art for sale! A gigantic bazaar… just lying there, spread out before these, the most important maggots… All theirs!… See it! Like it! Buy it!

The clump of frenzied old men began to break apart… they began to regain their voices, but all were drowned out by a bellowing voice just inside the entrance.

“Gedouda my vay, imbecile! I cromble you and your biece a baper!”

It was Flebetnikov, trying to maneuver his big belly past a security guard who stood between him and all the irresistible treasures beyond… The guard was in a dark blue-gray uniform with all sorts of cop-look-alike insignia on it, including a shiny badge. Magdalena knew the type at a glance… Not just any security guard, but a classic Florida redneck… thick buzz cut of reddish-blond hair… meaty, fleshy… huge forearms stuck out of his short-sleeved shirt like a pair of hams… In one hand he held an official-looking document up before Flebetnikov’s face.

Flebetnikov swatted it aside and stuck his face directly into the redneck’s and roared in his deepest voice, spraying spittle, “Now you gon’ ged ouda my vay! You onderstond?” With that, he placed the heel of his hand against the redneck’s chest, as if to say, “—and I mean it! You either get out of my way or I’ll throw you out of my way!”

Big mistake. Faster than Magdalena would have thought he could move, the redneck bent the arm of the hand that touched him into some sort of hold that locked Flebetnikov up, his voice, his body, his soul. Not a peep out of him. He seemed to know instinctively that here was a good old country boy who would happily beat a fat Russian senseless and feed him to the hogs.

Magdalena turned toward Fleischmann and Norman—but they were no longer beside her. They were three or four feet ahead. Fleischmann nudged Norman in the ribs with his elbow, and they looked at each other and grinned. A.A. was ahead of them, walking at a terrific pace, heading presumably toward the Jeb Doggses to nail down the advantage, now that the security guard had terrified Flebetnikov and stopped him in his tracks.

Maggots were rooting and slithering all over the place with their advisers, scurrying toward the booths of their dreams. Over there!—a shoving match!… Looked like the two hedge fund managers—from someplace in Connecticut?—Fleischmann had pointed out… Even farther ahead of Magdalena now a HahaHHHHock hock hock hock cackle, and Norman’s looking back at the two chubby little pugilists… but not Fleischmann. He and his A.A., Miss Carr, are all business, about to head into a booth. A big, hearty maggot—Magdalena remembered him from the line—comes up from the side, smiles, and says, “How’s it going, Marilynn?” A.A. looks at him for a split second with a wary look that asks not who but what is this… creature?… attacking, assaulting her attention at a crucial moment like this? She ignores him.

Norman follows them into the booth and stands beside them… them, and a tall man with gray hair, although he doesn’t look all that old, and eerie pale-gray eyes like the slanted eyes of a husky or whatever those dogs that pull sleds through the snow up near the Arctic Circle are called.

A.A. says, “You must know Harry Goshen, don’t you, Maurice?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” says Fleischmann. He turns to the man with the eerie eyes and gives him a chilly little smile, and they shake hands.

So pale, those eyes… they look ghostly and sinister… He wore a pale-gray suit, too, and a light-blue tie… the only man in a coat and tie Magdalena had seen all day… black shoes so highly polished, the crease between the toes and the arch of the foot shimmered. He had to be the owner of the gallery… or a salesman at the very least… Rich collectors, she had just seen, dressed in rags and sneakers.

Fleischmann and A.A. and Arctic-eyed Harry Goshen stood before a row of stout maple boxes, each three or so inches high and anywhere from nine to twenty-four inches long, unpainted, unstained, but lacquered with so many coats of clear lacquer, they screamed at you. This man Harry Goshen opened the lid of a big one… completely lined, lid and all, with chocolate-colored suede… and lifted out a big, round slab of transparent frosted glass, maybe two inches thick… you could tell by the strain on Harry Goshen’s hands and arms and posture, the damned thing was heavy. He turned it at about a forty-five-degree angle… the translucent glass flooded with light and there, somehow carved deep into the glass… exquisitely carved, in the smoothest detail—

“Sort of, you know, Art Deco,” A.A. said to Fleischmann.

—in bas-relief, a young woman with long curving locks—

A.A. was holding up some photograph. “Pretty much like him, don’t you think?”

—and a young man with short curving locks… were f*cking… and you could “see everything,” as the saying goes, and “everything” was flooded with translucent light.

Norman was so excited, a foolish grin spread over his face, and he leaned way over to get the closest possible look at “everything.” Fleischmann looked totally baffled. He kept switching his eyes from the pornographic carving to A.A.’s face and back to the glass and once more to A.A.’s face… What am I supposed to think, A.A.?

Pale-gray-eyed Goshen takes a round slab from another lacquered box… turns it until… there!… it becomes a man and woman… fornicating in a different way… another slab… anally… another… three figures, two women and one man, fornicating in an anatomically improbable combination… another… two women and two men… fornicating… fingers, tongues, mouths, whole forearms, disappearing into filthy places… Fleischmann now frantically looking from the light-flooded glass to Marilynn Carr… back and forth… Time is of the essence… others will be here any moment… Flebetnikov, to be specific… Magdalena moves closer… Fleischmann looks at his A.A…. pleading… She turns her head ever so slightly, meaning no… Magdalena can hear her saying… in the lowest of voices, “Not iconic Doggs”… Another… fornicating… Fleischmann looking frantically at Marilynn Carr. Without a word she nods her head up and down ever so slowly… meaning yes!… Fleischmann immediately turns to the ghostly husky, who says in a ghostly low voice, “Three.” Fleischmann turns to Marilynn Carr, looks at her desperately… She nods her head up and down slowly again… Desperately Fleischmann turns to the ghostly Goshen and mutters from deep in his throat, “Yes”… and Goshen pastes a red dot on the lacquered box containing the slab… Now looking back and forth so rapidly… whispering, giving signals desperately… Goshen says, “Two and a half.” Fleischmann, hoarsely, “Yes”… another red dot on another lacquered box… Barely forty-five seconds have elapsed.

A bellow! A roar! Here he comes. Flebetnikov’s T-shirt-upholstered hulk must have gotten loose. He’s heading this way. He’s furious; he’s roaring in Russian, for somebody’s benefit… then roars in English, “Anodder hole in his nose he vants, dad son ma bitch!”… Goshen acts as if he doesn’t hear it or just doesn’t care… No raging Russian is going to interrupt this streak! Flebetnikov growls and roars and vows to put yet anodder hole in the son ma bitch’s nose. He’s coming closer. Fleischmann seems calmer, but he still accelerates his mission… another red dot (“three and a half”)… another red dot (“one”)… red dots red dots red dots (“two,” “four” for the orgy scene, dear God!… then “nine one seven”—)… all these red dots. ::::::That must be what they mean when they talk about the “measles.”::::::

If those numbers meant what Magdalena was beginning to believe they meant, Fleischmann had just spent 17 million dollars, or $17 million minus $83,000, assuming 917 meant $917,000, in less than fifteen minutes. And if Marilynn Carr, with her fair white thighs and English bob, got 10 percent from the seller, the ghostly husky, and 10 percent from the buyer, Fleischmann, she had just made $3,400,000 for herself, assuming Norman had explained the commissions accurately.

Flebetnikov’s Russian roar was drawing closer and closer.

A.A. said to Fleischmann, “Why don’t we get out of here? I know Flebetnikov. He’s not a rational person.”

For the first time since this whole thing began, Fleischmann smiled. “And miss all the fun?”

Fleischmann insisted on waiting for Flebetnikov. He stood right outside the entrance to the booth. A.A. looked very nervous. Fleischmann was suddenly the picture of happiness.

Flebetnikov arrived, roaring in Russian. A tall, dark, anxious-looking man was by his side.

“That’s Lushnikin,” A.A. whispered to Fleischmann. “He’s the art adviser for most of the oligarchs.”

Flebetnikov was growling like a bear. He roared at Lushnikin in Russian… something ending with “Goshen.” For the first time he noticed Fleischmann. He appeared startled; also wary. Perhaps guilty?

“Comrade Flebetnikov!” boomed Fleischmann. “You interested in Doggs?” With his thumb he indicated the booth behind him. “I was, too. But all the good stuff is already gone. At Miami Basel you got to be fast. See it, like it, buy it.”

From Flebetnikov’s expression you couldn’t tell whether he detected the sarcasm or not. He blinked. He looked bewildered. Without another word he turned and entered the booth, yelling, “Lushnikin! Lushnikin!”

Fleischmann departed, chuckling to himself, no doubt envisioning the red-dot desolation and defeat awaiting the Comrade inside the booth. Norman was practically on Maurice’s heels, Norman and A.A. Norman had a hazy smile on his face, an interior smile so to speak. He was thinking of himself transformed into a rich man by just being there when it all happened, if Magdalena knew anything about it. He didn’t even look to see where she was, he was so deep into his imaginary world. He had walked thirty or forty feet down the row before her existence occurred to him. He didn’t want to get separated from his glorious friends, but he hesitated long enough to swivel his head this way and that. When he spotted her, he beckoned her with a big sweeping motion of his arm… without waiting for her, however. He wheeled about on one heel and continued in Fleischmann’s glorious wake.

Not knowing what else to do, Magdalena began walking after him. On either side, within the booths near the entrance… red dots. It was astonishing. So many pieces had been sold so fast… Red dots, red dots, red dots… “The measles outbreak”… but of course—that was what they had been talking about! All the red dots… 17 million dollars’ worth in Fleischmann’s case. Who knew how many more millions all those other red dots represented?! Then it began to make her sick. Think of how shallow and wantonly wasteful these people were! These americanos! Think of Fleischmann spending almost 17 million dollars on seven obscene pieces of glass… $17 million in thirteen or fourteen minutes, for fear a fat Russian might lay hands on this idiotic stuff first… all for show!… a 17-million-dollar personal exhibition… Norman didn’t see that… He was absorbed by it. A little Cuban girl named Magdalena no longer existed, did she. Norman had put her out of his mind. Her resentment rose up like flames. Arson it became. She took grim satisfaction in feeding the fire. That bastard. ::::::Norman, you’re a disgusting suck-up to money. No display of money strikes you as trashy, does it. Insulted me! Why should I put up with him any longer?::::::

Involuntarily, unbidden, four things popped into the Wernicke’s area of her brain: her BMW… registered in the name of Dr. Norman Lewis, since he, in strict point of fact, owned it; her pay… which she received in the form of a check signed by Dr. Norman N. Lewis; her apartment—her home, as she now thought of it—property of Dr. Norman Lewis; the extra money she needed in a clutch to keep up the payments on her student loan… providentially provided by Dr. Norman N. Lewis… The rebel streak in her was fading fast.

She shucked off her pride and trooped on toward the VIP lounge. A row of four-foot-high modular partitions had been assembled to compel all who would breathe the same air as very important people to pass through an opening at one end manned by a security guard. Another big redneck. Suppose he wouldn’t let her in? He was like a caricature of the breed. What if he gave her a hard time?

The man took a cursory glance at the laminated VIP ID around her neck and waved her in. This one had Couldn’t Care Less written all over him.

The only symbol of one’s exalted status in the FIZ (Fuggerzberuf Industriellbank of Zurich) VIP room was the mere fact that one had been allowed in at all. Otherwise, the place was nothing but a sea of what is known in commercial real estate as “Contract furniture,” simple modern chairs and small tables made of as much plastic as possible. The very important people therein could sit down, take a load off, go get a drink, and tell war stories of the Miami Basel battles for hot items, which is to say, exchange very important gossip.

Way out in the sea, Magdalena sat at a table with Fleischmann, A.A., and Norman, whom she was now pointedly ignoring. She figured she owed herself at least that much self-respect. Madame Carr was suddenly the life of the party. Magdalena wondered if Norman or even Fleischmann had any idea, out of 3.4 million possible answers why. At the moment, she was answering a question from Norman… Norman, who had once told Magdalena, “Be careful asking questions. Asking questions is the surest way of revealing your ignorance.” Be that as it may, Norman had asked a question, and Marilynn Carr was saying, “How did Doggs learn how to work in glass? He doesn’t work in glass or anything else. Don’t you know about No Hands art and De-skilled art?”

“Oh, I guess I’ve heard about it—but no, not really,” Norman said lamely, or lamely for Norman.

A.A. said, “No cutting-edge artist touches materials anymore, or instruments.”

“What do you mean, instruments, A.A.?” said Fleischmann.

“Oh, you know,” she said, “paintbrushes, clay, shaping knives, chisels… all that’s from the Manual Age. Remember painting? That seems so 1950s now. Remember Schnabel and Fischl and Salle and all that bunch? They all seem so 1950s now, even though their fifteen minutes came in the 1970s. The new artists, like Doggs, look at all those people like they’re from another century, which they were, when you get right down to it. They were still using their hands to do little visual tricks on canvas that were either pretty and pleasant and pleased people or ugly and baffling and ‘challenged’ people. Challenged… Ohmygod—” She broke into a smile and shook her head, as if to say, “Can you believe the way it used to be?!”

“Then how does Doggs do it?” said Fleischmann. “I guess I never really asked.”

“It’s actually fascinating,” said A.A. “He got hold of, Doggs did, this call girl, Daphne Deauville, the one who cost the governor of New Jersey his job?—and on the strength of that she gets a job as a columnist for the New York City Light? I couldn’t believe it! So anyway, Doggs gets a photographer to take some pictures of him… well, f*cking her brains out”—lately it had become daringly chic for women to use f*cking in conversation—“and doing this and that… and sent the photographs off to Dalique, and Dalique got their elves to reproduce the photographs in three dimensions in Dalique glass, but Doggs never touched the pieces—never. He had no hand at all in making them. And if he touched the photographs, it was just to put them in an envelope and FedEx them to Dalique, although I’m sure he has an assistant to do things like that. No Hands—that’s an important concept now. It’s not some artist using his so-called skills to deceive people. It’s not a sleight of hand. It’s no hands at all. That makes it conceptual, of course. That way he turns what a manual artist would use to create… an effect… into something that compels you to think about it in a deeper way. It’s almost as if he has invented a fourth dimension. And there you’ve got the very best, the most contemporary work of the whole rising generation. Most of Doggs’s work in this show is iconic. Everyone who sees one of yours, Maurice, will say, ‘My God! That’s Doggs at the outset of his classic period,’ because I’m convinced that’s what his work is. It’s cutting-edge, and at the same time it’s classic. That kind of work isn’t available every day! Believe me!… Maurice… you have… really… scored this time.”

Really scored… Fleischmann looked very pleased, but his smile was the baffled smile of someone who can’t explain his own good fortune. Obviously he hadn’t understood a word of A.A.’s explanation. That made Magdalena feel better, because she hadn’t understood a word of it, either.

Rather than just sit there looking like 17 million dollars’ worth of bafflement, Fleischmann stood up and excused himself to A.A. and said he’d be right back. Fleischmann was hemmed in by other tables, and so Magdalena stood up and moved her chair to give him room. She happened to look about. Her heart jumped inside her rib cage. There he was, about four tables behind her chair—the Russian she had met so briefly, so profoundly! after dinner last night—and he was staring straight at her. She was so startled and excited, she couldn’t think of what to do. Wave? Run over to his table? Get a waiter to take a note? A flower? A handkerchief? Her tiny heart-on-a-string necklace? Before her mind stopped spinning, he had turned back to the six or seven people at his table. But she was sure. He had stared right at her.

What? Now it was Norman. He stood up and asked A.A. if she by any chance knew where there was a men’s room. ::::::Maybe he doesn’t want to just sit there while I beam black rays at him.:::::: A.A. pointed way off in that direction, the direction Fleischmann had headed in. “It’s over in the BesJet lounge,” she said. “This lounge doesn’t have one.”

Without so much as a glance at Magdalena, he headed off that way, too. Now there were just the two women, A.A. and Magdalena, on opposite sides of the table, clueless as to what to say to each other.

A lightbulb went on over Magdalena’s head. This was her chance! When she sat down, her back was to the Russian. But A.A. was facing him. Up to this point, A.A. had not said a single word to her. She hadn’t so much as looked at her. Now Magdalena stood up and beamed a terribly big smile at A.A. Was it a grin? In any case, she was determined to hold it on tight. She headed around the table toward A.A., holding the smile, the grin, so tightly above and below her teeth, it began to feel like a grimace. A.A. looked nonplussed. No, it was more than that. She was wary. Magdalena’s approach was so contrary to what A.A. expected. This clueless little girl who had turned up with the famous porn doctor… Magdalena had read all that in her face, that and her wish that the clueless little girl would do the appropriate thing—kindly stop grinning at her and keep away from her… and evaporate. Oh, Magdalena could read all that and more within that frame of bobbed blond hair, parted on one side and swept right across her brow and eye to the other… but there was no turning back now, was there… not after so much bolted-in-place grinning… and so she pulled up a chair, the one Fleischmann had been sitting in, right up next to A.A.’s… until their heads were barely twenty-four inches apart… But what was she going to say? No Hands popped into her head—

“—Miss Carr—Marilynn—may I call you Marilynn?”

“Certainly”—with a standoffish glare that said, “Call me anything you want and then fall through a hole in the floor. Okay?”

“Marilynn”—Magdalena was aware that her voice had acquired a sound she had never heard inside her skull before—“what you said about No Hands art, that was so-o-o-o fascinating! What makes it important?”

Just being turned to for her expertise took some of the chill off A.A.’s countenance. But then she expelled a big sigh, the sigh of someone who knows she’s about to undertake something laborious… and useless. “Well,” said A.A., “are you familiar with the expression ‘All great art is about art’?”

“No-o-o-o…” Magdalena maintained the congenial smile and wide-eyed fixation of someone who has a great thirst for knowledge and has found the fountain.

Another tedium-loaded sigh. “It means it’s not enough to create an effect in the viewer. It has to reflect, consciously, upon the art—” She stopped abruptly. She leaned toward Magdalena in an intimate, confidential way. “Actually, do you mind if I ask you something? What’s your relationship—how do you know your friend Dr. Lewis? Somebody was saying he’s a prominent psychiatrist… pornography addiction or something?”

Magdalena didn’t know what to say. She was his girlfriend? They were just friends? She worked for him? At this moment, it didn’t matter. The main thing was, she was directly in the line of vision of the Russian, Sergei Korolyov. Should he suspend his interest in his own tablemates long enough to look at her, she wanted him to see a young woman who was happy… to the point of merriment… engaged in a confidential conversation at her table, obviously a part of her crowd, whoever they were, perfectly comfortable in the mental atmosphere of VIP lounges… and the inner circles of the Art Basels of the world—in short, a beautiful creature who belongs, who is at home where things happen.

“Oh, I work for him,” she told A.A. “I’m a psychiatric nurse.” Sounded better than plain nurse.

“And so he just invited you to Miami Basel for the VIP opening?” said A.A. “Nice boss.” She looked into Magdalena’s eyes with an insincere, insinuating smile.

::::::Bitch! What do I say to that?!:::::: Her brain digigoogled for an answer and simultaneously wondered if she looked as flustered as she felt. After too long a pause: “I think Mr. Fleischmann got the VIP passes. He’s so-o-o-o generous!”

“Yes, he is,” said A.A. “So anyway, Dr. Lewis—”

“And he really trusts your judgment,” said Magdalena.

“Who does?”

“Mr. Fleischmann. Anybody could tell that!” Magdalena was willing to try anything to steer the conversation away from Norman. And thankgod! flattery brought a sincere smile to this woman’s English-bobbed face.

“I hope so!” said A.A. “You know, he really did very well today.”

“I wish I knew half as much as you know about art, Marilynn. A tenth as much. A hundredth as much. I have to admit, I’d never heard of Jed Doggs before today.”

“Jeb,” said A.A.

“Jeb?”

“You said ‘Jed.’ It’s Jeb Doggs. He’s beyond ‘emerging artist’ now, and I think he’s beyond ‘rising star,’ too. He’s made it. He has real traction. I’m very happy for Maurice… and he’s going to be very happy when he sees what an upward trajectory Jeb Doggs is on.”

::::::I’ve done it! I’ve pushed this vain bitch off of me ’n’ Norman and onto herself.::::::

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Korolyov turning away from the others at his table to look ::::::not at me:::::: at something over there. As he turned back, his head stopped in mid-arc. ::::::He’s staring straight at me… he’s still staring… still staring!::::::

Magdalena couldn’t play it cool any longer. She broke eye contact with A.A., even though AA’s lips were still moving. She looked straight at him. A.A. was looking straight at her. ::::::But I have to take the chance!:::::: She put on a smile that was meant to say, “Yes, this is me, the girl whose hand you held too long!… and yes, you are welcome to do it again!”

Korolyov smiled back in a way that said to Magdalena, “Oh, don’t worry. I will.” And he kept that smile on his face for several beats too long. Magdalena compressed her lips in a way meant to say, “I’m bursting with emotion and anticipation! Please hurry!”

Korolyov turned back to his tablemates… and A.A. said, “Friend of yours? Sergei Korolyov? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t think of any other nurse who knows so many heavy hitters. I’m not implying anything, but I notice you and Fleischmann are Magdalena and Maurice”… another insinuating smile.

::::::I’m so stupid! Why did I have to tell her I was Norman’s nurse? Why did I even have to say “nurse” at all? Why didn’t I just say, “Oh, we’re friends”… and let her take that any way she wanted? Now I’m going to have to say, “Well, I do work for Norman—but we also date.” Date! These days date is a euphemism for f*ck. Stupid! Stupid! But that’s the only way out! A.A. has her face stuck right into mine. Now she’s got this—this poisonous look on her face, and she’s arching her eyebrows in a way that says, “Okay, why are you taking so long? I asked you a simple question. What are you trying to hide?” Damn! and Damn! again! Well… here goes.::::::

“Uhh… the thing is, I work for Dr. Lewis—Norman—like I said. But we’re also dating—”

—A whispery “Ahhhhh…” came out of A.A.’s mouth. She couldn’t hold it in… an irresistible ahhhhhh <<<I’ve landed a big fish!>>>—

“—and Norman and—” Magdalena paused for one beat. ::::::“Mr. Fleischmann” or “Maurice”? Uhhh… Maurice.:::::: “Norman and Maurice are good friends, and so I’ve gotten to know him, too.”

A.A. gave Magdalena a super-toxic smile… Gotcha now, don’t I!… Oh, Magdalena knew what was going through her mind. <<<Aha! So the great sexpert’s f*cking his own nurse’s brains out! I can dine out on this one!>>>

Just then… thank God. Here came Norman and Maurice, returning, weaving their way between the tables. They looked very jolly, very pleased about something. A moment ago, she wanted them to stay away long enough for the handsome Russian to make a move. Now—be thankful for small things! The two men were back and that was bound to change the subject, the subject being <<<The good doctor f*cks his naughty nurse.>>>

“You’ll never guess who I ran into over at the BesJet VIP room!” Maurice was pumped up with pleasure. He was grinning and his eyes went back and forth from A.A. to Magdalena and Magdalena to A.A., twinkling—no, more than that… sparkling, shining, beaming. “Flebetnikov! Was he pissed! He was growling! He was roaring! You should have heard him! Some damned martinet—that was the word he used, martinet—how does he know martinet? He’s so bad at English—some damned martinet of a security guard held him back. ‘Some damn stupid redneck’—I don’t know where he picked up redneck, either—on and on about ‘some damn stupid redneck.’ He was lucky some damn stupid redneck didn’t come over and empty his big fat tub for him. By the time he finally shakes the redneck, he’s telling me, all the best stuff was gone. ‘All da bes’toff vas gon!’ ”

“So what did you say?” said A.A.

Norman chimed in. “AahhhHAHHHock hock hock you should’ve heardddahhhock hock hock, MauriceeeegghehehehahhhHAHAaghhhock hock hock! He tells the guy—he says, ‘Gosh, that’s terrible! I’m going to try to find someone who is on the boardahhhHAHHHhock hock hock! ‘Whose work were you interested in?’ he’s asking the guy. ‘Dosunt matter. Is all gon!’ ” Norman has to show he can do a Russian accent just as well as Maurice, of course. “And get thisss-s-s-s-s-sAHHHH hock hock hock! Then Maurice puts his arm around the guy’s shoulders and says, ‘That’s awful! I’m so sorRRAHAHAHAhhry!’ He’s so sorRRAHahahAAAHhhhry! I thought you were gonna shed some tears for himaahhhHAHAHAHAHHock hock hock hock!”

“Whatever,” said Fleischmann. “But he had it coming. He’s the kind of guy who just keeps pushing, keeps pushing, keeps pushing—the same way he pushed everybody aside until he was the first one through that door.”

Magdalena found herself feeling sorry for the fat man. Maurice Fleischmann, who had connections everywhere, he had the power to get some big redneck to take care of this big bear of a Russian billionaire with one telephone call. She lowered her eyes while she pondered. She didn’t notice the tall figure coming up behind Fleischmann until he had almost reached the table. Yes, it was him, finally, the Russian, Sergei Korolyov. She could actually feel a surge of adrenaline trigger her heart into a split second of fibrillation. ::::::Damn! Why has he waited so long? Now he makes up his mind… after Maurice and Norman have come back! Now there’ll be nothing but the usual when men with high opinions of themselves run into each other. They’ll spend the whole time trying to think of not totally obvious ways of showing off. Women’s rights? That’s a laugh. Women don’t exist when men like these meet… unless they happen to be stars of some kind themselves… We’re just here. We just fill up space.::::::

“Maurice!” Korolyov said in the heartiest possible manner. “I might have known I’d see you here!” (“I my-taf knohhhwn I’d zee you here!”) With this, he gave Maurice the sort of manly hug European men give each other—if they are on roughly the same social plateau. Then he gestured in the general direction of the exhibition. “See anything you liked?”

“Oh, a couple of things,” Maurice said with a knowing smile in order to make it blatantly clear that Oh, a couple of things was meant as a choice piece of understatement. “But first let me introduce you to my dear A.A., Marilynn Carr, my art adviser. If you want to know anything about contemporary American art… anything… you have to talk to Marilynn. She’s been a tremendous help today. She saved the day! A.A…. Sergei Korolyov.”

“Oh, I know!” said A.A., standing up and taking Korolyov’s extended hand into both of hers. “This is such an honor! You’ve given us—Miami—our first art destination!”

Korolyov chuckled and said, “Thank you. You’re much too kind.”

“No, I mean it!” said A.A. “I was at the dinner that night at the museum. I hope you know how much you’ve done for art in Miami—those gorgeous, gorgeous Chagalls!” ::::::Gushing all over the man, monopolizing his attention, showing off… Oh, those gorgeous Chagalls!… and I don’t even know what a Chagall is.::::::

A sudden dreadful thought ::::::Maybe it’s A.A. he has come over to meet in the first place. Look at her! She has his hand in hers—both of her hands—and she won’t let go!::::::

Magdalena studies his face for clues. ::::::Thank God! He’s giving A.A. nothing but room-temperature formal politeness.::::::

Meanwhile, Maurice is rigid with impatience, both elbows locking his arms into right angles at waist level… frustrated by this interruption in his obligatory round of introductions. Finally he cuts off A.A.’s gusher by saying in a loud voice, “—and Sergei, this is Dr. Norman Lewis. You’ll remember Norman from the other night at Casa Tua?”

“Oh, yes!” said Korolyov. “Someone at our table said that she had just seen you on television. You were talking about—I’m not sure what she said.”

“Hello again, Mr. Korolyov!” Norman was very cheery. “I’m not sure which show she was talking about, but probably addiction. That’s usually the subject.” ::::::Usually… which show… probably!… Have to get across the fact that you’re always on television, don’t you, Norman!:::::: “I have the hopeless obligation to tell people there’s no such thing as addiction, medically. They don’t want to believe that! They’d much rather believeaahhhHAHAHAHock hock hock hock—believe they’re sickkahHAHock hock hock hock!”

Maurice didn’t want to linger on that subject. He hastened to direct Korolyov’s attention to Magdalena.

“And you’ll remember Magdalena, Sergei.”

“Of course!” said Korolyov. “I remember very well.” He extended his hand; and she hers. He held her hand for far too long without saying another word. He gave the same look he had given her from his table, the same message, except that this time he poured great gouts of it into her eyes… before saying, “It’s very nice to see you again” in a perfectly uninflected, polite way.

Then he turned back to Maurice and reached into an inside jacket pocket. “Please, let me give you my card. I don’t know anything about contemporary American art. I just read about it… Jeb Doggs and so on…” ::::::Does he already know about Maurice’s “triumph” somehow?:::::: “… but I do know a bit about nineteenth-century Russian art, and early twentieth century. So if there’s anything I can possibly help you with… and let’s keep in touch in any case.”

He extended a card toward Maurice, and Maurice took it. He extended one toward A.A. and she took it… Oh, thank you so much gush much gush gush much. Korolyov extended one toward Norman, and Norman chuckled, stopped short of a hock hock hock hock outright laugh, and took it. Then Korolyov extended one toward Magdalena and she reached up, and he slipped the card down past her fingers and placed it upon her palm and pressed it into her hand with his fingertips, anchoring them with his thumb on the back of her hand, and poured gouts and gouts and gouts of himself into her eyes ::::::for far too long!:::::: before turning away.

And that bit with the card ::::::Now I know… That didn’t just happen!:::::: the serotonin was flooding her bloodstream, with no chance of uptake anytime soon. From that moment on she began to plot plot plot plot concoct concoct concoct concoct some way to see him again.

Norman hadn’t noticed anything unusual. But Maurice’s lust antennae must have quivered, because about ten minutes later he said, “Have you met Korolyov before?”

“Only the other night,” she said, straining to keep the tone offhand, “when you introduced me.”

Sergei Korolyov—he was so gorgeous!