Park Lane South, Queens

“Yes.” The young man in his expensive suit nodded, his sudden light dawning. “Yes, I see that. He’s expressing his irrevocably disappointed self, isn’t he? The conquering power of darkness! Gad, it’s marvelous. More than anyone else, he has his finger on the pulse of decadence.” They gripped their heaving chest cavities, the both of them, overwhelmed by the wonder before them. Claire was inspired herself, only not by the painting. It was the two of them that got her. Had she brought along that Olympus she could have taken the two of them from the rear, the way they stood there bent, deferential and solicitously awestruck in front of the ill-looking painting, groveling meekly at the foot of some critic’s approval.

There you go, she told herself. If you thought about work as much as your bloody pride and righteousness, you’d have a camera right here, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t be worried about what a dishonest detective thought of you. You couldn’t create art and worry about what people thought. This artist certainly didn’t, and look where it got him: a show in trendy Soho.

“Having fun?” Stefan came up behind her. “Don’t you love his work?”

Claire didn’t know what to say. To voice the obvious cop-out, “Well, it’s different,” would have been a lie. It was certainly no different than all the other current, atrocious mediocrities. But then, what did she know? “It’s very big, isn’t it?” she smiled.

Stefan paused. He was disappointed in her. “You don’t understand it. I see that.”

“Hmm. I guess not.”

“What he’s trying to say,” Stefan explained patiently, “is that there’s no point to it all. All the effort. The miracle of birth … it just ends up in death. The beauty of creativity … goodness itself … it becomes polluted by society, … it wilts and it rots.”

“It certainly does.”

“It’s very pure, you see. In its essence.”

“Oh.”

Annoyed with her, he scanned the room. “Uh-oh! Look who’s here! Jupiter Dodd! Now the heads will roll.”

“Who’s he?”

Stefan looked at her, appalled. “Only the biggest art critic on the East Coast, that’s all. He’s deadly.”

“Really? He looks harmless enough.”

“Don’t let that docile demeanor fool you. He eats up artists and spits them out for the sheer fun of it. Once he even shot one of them.”

“Not really.”

“Yes. About ten years ago. This young artist was poking fun at him in a Village paper. Doing caricatures and that sort of thing … ribbing him. Dodd walked into the city room and shot him, point blank. Oh, there was the devil to pay. He was ruined of course. Had to leave town for five or six years and by then everyone had forgotten him.”

“How did he make his comeback, then?”

“Comeback? I’m talking about the artist. Jupiter Dodd was an overnight sensation. The toast of the town. Still is. And he hates women. Utterly. Where are you going?”

“I’m going to have a closer look at him.”

“Claire,” he sneered. “Darling. One doesn’t just walk up to Jupiter Dodd and introduce oneself. You don’t talk to him. He talks to you.”

“Is that right?” Claire disconnected his hand from her sleeve. She hadn’t had the slightest desire to talk to the man, but the way Stefan put it to her irked her to no end. Got her Irish up. She approached the dapper little man and extended her hand. “How do you do.” She gave him a direct smile. “Claire Breslinsky.”

“Ah,” he said, looking past her at someone else and flagging them with his eyes.

“I wanted to introduce myself,” she groped. She could feel Stefan watching with vindictive triumph. “… because I’m doing a book on … um … faces. Faces in the art world, and I thought”—she had him now. Good God. Was there no end to people’s vanity?—“well, I rightly thought that a face like yours ought to be included. That arch sense of aristocratic sensitivity. You know what I mean. Black and white, I’m afraid.” These fancy schmancy types always went for the subtle. She knew what she was doing, too. He was all ears. If there was one thing every snob believed, it was the manifest validity of his own importance. One of the prettier cosmopolitan sluts was dangling herself before Stefan. Annoying, but not fatal. Stefan’s eyes were still on her. She had just been ready to find herself contemptible and stop the silly game. Now she felt fired up, in gear for the chase. She was running amuck with it, chattering rapid fire nonsense, but she was enjoying herself.

“Larson in Paris? You don’t say,” Dodd said. “I thought he was dead.”

“Dead? I should say not. He’s got the cleverest, glossiest printing setup in Europe.” All lies, of course. But it wouldn’t hurt to throw in a little butter-up for an old friend. “He’s who’s backing me. Surprised you haven’t heard anything about him lately. Strictly innovative stuff. You know.”

“Hmm. Yes. Well of course I had heard. Word gets around but then you never know. And you think it really ought to be just a one side, one face sort of thing? Not left page face, right page full length?”

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