What Beauty Page 10

CHAPTER 10

  I have patrons. We meet for poker once a month, on Thursdays. I’m the resident alien, with no money but what jingles in my pockets; no family pedigree; no position in society; no funny accent from across an ocean (unless you compare NY with Chicago, between which lies an ocean of grain and lumber and hillbilly mountains and highway). Yet, like every card game worth playing, there is a trump suit: I bend creative, and the FaceCards don’t.

  My relationship with the FaceCards wasn’t something that Alex-the-art-weasel or Harvey-the-collector understood. They came from different eras, different societies. They didn’t know their history. What Alex and Harvey didn’t hear in their own words was that they, too, were arts patrons. Our definitions differed by terms such as “business” substituted for “nurture.” Let me describe my experience this way.

  NYC is famous for its hoi polloi spotting celebrities among the masses. They marvel at how celebrities lead ordinary lives on the same ordinary streets where ordinary people stumble, trip, and grind out cigarettes under a shoe. Celebrity sighting is not my hobby, and I’ve only seen the one, Karen K, whom to most people wouldn’t count as a celebrity, for a whole list of reasons. But I know such a species exists — celebrities — and plenty of “hospital born” NYers join in the hunt.

  A neighbor once spotted Keith Richards buying a hotdog on Fifth Avenue, in the Flatiron district. For weeks afterward, he told everyone he knew about his “Stones” sighting. Not to be outdone, the friend would immediately jones on his own recent sighting. At this point, the one-upmanship got heated. “Did you say anything?” “To HIM? You don’t talk to Keith!” “Why not? That’s bullshit. They’re just like you and me. I said ‘Hey’ to Lauren Bacall last summer … maybe it was winter … she was in Zabar’s, standing in line like the rest of us. I think she bought the Scottish lox.” “Which archeology project did you say you dug her up from?” “Fuck you! Bacall was a real beauty in her day!” Society begins to break down once the ad hominem attacks roll out.

  What I lack in sightings, I make up by actually knowing people. Viscount Bruce, Freifrau Joyous Frisse, the Maharani Smrtee, and Baron Raspe are “otherly famous” celebrities who are not now, nor ever shall be, household names, topics of dinner conversation, or sought in the crowd strolling across Bryant Park’s green lawn. You shan’t see paparazzi chase them into limousines. They will not pass around husbands and wives like a lot of heirloom milk glass.

  Viscount Bruce is my inside man in the group. He came to my Wicker Park studio (near Chicago’s Six Corners) in the 1980s, where he bought one of my “red” paintings and two steel sculptures. On a series of visits, the viscount found me likeable, and we became friendly. “The man out front of the canvas and rock,” the viscount called me. For a month or so he brought by a different “very good friend” every other week from the Continent. They, too, bought some of my art, and, like the viscount, slipped an extra sum into the patronage envelope (“Cash IS king,” said one Duke of something-something-Dalmatia).

  The viscount is a native of Sussex, and spent the best part of his life in Bombay, “frittering in the family business” (of which details I haven’t required nor asked after). Though vaguely royal (his family is pre-Windsor), the viscount displays the tribulations & tics of the ordinary man: fleshy lower lip that droops (a genetic trait, something you can detect in old black-and-white photos mounted on his study wall), a bit of a lazy eye (“It helps me unnerve Whist rivals — the buggers think I’m cheating, what?”), and a frivolous, almost coquettish, laugh.

  When we parted in Chicago after his third purchase, he offered me an open invitation to visit him at his NY apartment if I ever came to the “World’s Capitol,” as he called his soon-to-be adopted home. Then he handed me an envelope with several thousand dollars in it, of which he said was the sum of a collection he took up between his friends as a farewell gesture. “To keep you from having to live as a jobber, some bloody roofer or something equally dangerous to those exquisite hands, dear boy.” Yes, I have patrons. So Viscount Bruce was not surprised when I sent a note upstairs at his Park Ave & 83rd St address, to which he immediately invited me in for a re-acquaintanceship sherry. Chicago had been a few years past, and the viscount — invitation notwithstanding — wasn’t sure what to make of me. I took him to the Beehive to dispel any doubts, showed him my honeycomb, and impressed on him some early, raw sketches of the city in charcoal and pencil: landscapes, people, city streets, coffee houses, hole-in-the-wall bars. “Splendid,” he asserted, and straightaway bought two pieces, which he had me sign before he sealed them in frames. When I told him I was moving onto sculpture exclusively, he responded “Splendid, indeed. You’ll do fine, lad. Remember the words of Epicurus: ‘The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it.’ Bloody invigorating spirit, don’t you think?”

  A few weeks later (only a couple days after my first date with Belinda) Viscount Bruce introduced me to three new exiled courtiers, three “very good friends.” We first met at a private auction; they were buying and had asked for advice, and my eyes bugged out of my head at the bids called out through the night. Somehow I mentioned poker that evening, a comment that garnered appreciation and much talk. And the rest, as the bard said, awaits the reaper.

  “Peers of their realm, on the run,” was the viscount’s description of the baron, maharani, and freifrau, punctuated with a weary grimace I don’t think he understood was something I could easily detect as regret. I was led to understand that, like himself, the others had fled from home and country; reasons unknown, murky, or plainly fabricated. But what did I care? These were nice people, funny people — their ages ranged from forties through seventies, older men and younger women, the perfect set for casual poker — oddlings, with capital charms and dockside flaws. They also happened to be cultured and loaded. A double-bonus for me.

  Now we gather every third Thursday at one of the exiles’ uptown suites to play five-player stud or draw. Nothing is wild and no stupid kid games are allowed. We pit strategy with good-fellowship, topped off with icy gin-tonics (spring and summer) served in nine-inch pillar tumblers, or brandy served neat (fall and winter) in bulbous snifters. I feel gauche if there’s cause to cancel a night, and have worked around interruptions with a simple, “Sorry, poker tonight.”

  Tonight at eight o’clock on the nose, jewels jangling, spectacles fitted onto the ends of noses, tumblers topped up, our five-some sit around a square-legged table with guilt fluting. Its thick green felt is tight to the pinch, and shows only a few blemishes. A sestet of matching chairs doesn’t fit our modern sense of comfort, but Maharani Smrtee won’t bow to breaking up the set. The table terrifies me. The style is Louis XVI, and comes from the beheaded king’s Orleans chateau. The maharani, a Himachal Pradesh daughter in love with Paris, snatched the set at auction. What frightens me are the five tumblers filled brim-high with gin & fizz; should I knock mine over by accident or dumb luck, I think the maharani could wheel out one of Robespierre’s guillotines from a back room. She’s quite the avid collector.

  While Viscount Bruce unwraps a fresh deck of cards, Baron Raspe counts colored chips to make stacks for everyone. Freifrau Frisse passes newly minted stacks to each player while trying on different poker faces: false tells, steely eyes, a smart winner’s grin.

  “It’s our converzzzation, you understand, Meester Minus,” Maharani Smrtee is telling me. From the minute I walked in the door tonight, she’s been determined to teach me the historical verification and justification for Rule by Bloodline. “A small nod to Neapolitan air-IS-ta-crassy — this being already the late middle eighteenth century, before your Master Jefferson wrote his ideas for some new democratic expression that had already expired with the Greeks after Darius and Xerxes conquered that little empire on the peninsula. Nothing but an olive grove today, so no harm, true-true. Darling Joyous, your pearls are lovely. Of course, Mr Minus, I flirt just a leetle. My English is much better after a tall drink.”

  “You know, the
Neapolitans were highly sexed,” says Freifrau Frisse, fitting a cigarette into a jade quellazaire. Her comment makes Baron Raspe lift his furry eyebrows, the color of silver tarnish, and threatening to leap from his forehead. He proffers a lighter’s yellow flame to her fresh cigarette. “And their bromide was cards,” continues the freifrau, who puffs light smoke rings into the air. “Of which they played nightly in each others’ homes. Salons, they claimed. Ja, freulein! Little enough conversation took place. No pole games – that’s a wink, my young cavalier — at least not the variety of talk that was found in Parisian salons.”

  “Nor in the Shimla variety,” Baron Raspe says. He pushes one cheek out with his tongue, and the group laughs. I have no idea what they’re talking about.

  “We should emulate one or the other tonight,” says Viscount Bruce. He, like the baron, is dressed in black tie. Not too fancy a cut, but undoubtedly Saville Row. They have yet to warm to American tailors. I feel shabby wearing a regular tie (and colored! blue!), but at least I slipped myself into a black suit and white shirt. The viscount says, “My vote is for Naples cards. Minus, would you like to shuffle? I’ll call the game. Joyous, you may deal.”

  Freifrau Frisse raises her head. She’s piled her black hair high tonight, gathered with a thin string of pearls wound twice around, like a holiday garland. She has squeezed herself into a simple, white Chanel blouse, which helps her shoulders square up to the round table (something to see, I assure you). The open collar presents her pillowy cleavage as perfect female ornaments, powdered to exude a flowery bouquet that rises above the liquor and tobacco odors. On the table her hands clasp furtively, fingers interlocked, displaying only two rings as accessories, a diamond and a ruby, each set in platinum; her eyes move this way and that, taking in the competition. Baron Raspe folds his big belly over the table’s edge, and coughs twice into a sausage-finger hand. Maharani Smrtee shakes her bracelet-festooned wrist, gold and silver hoops adorned by a rainbow of gemstones. The jewels highlight her skin tone, like toasted walnuts, and when she mixes the cards in her hand, the bracelets rattle like cobras threatening to strike. Viscount Bruce unwraps a cheroot and places it firmly in the corner of his liver-lipped mouth, to remain unlit through the evening (but growing progressively darker from its absorption of saliva).

  Before the cards are dealt, tattle bounces around like a game of hot potato. Gestures of preparedness set eyes to spy. Age-spotted hands silently tap the chips. Painted nails scratch the green felt beside the cool drinks. Our bottoms wriggle to set us upright in these awful chairs. And the subtle sounds of throat-loosening distraction-cum-intimidation. This is how the night begins.

  Our opening hands play out in silence, but for Hoyle’s customary bets, raises, folds, and mumbled gratuities over chips gathered and stacked in a micro-demonstration of redistributed wealth. I count $11.40 in total pots through four hands. Viscount Bruce wins twice, while the baron and maharani each pull one pot to the good. The freifrau seethes; her diamond rings glitter beneath the chandelier when she twitters her fingers after each loss. My mind is hardly in the game, and yet I can’t grab any outside thought long enough to see it clearly. Between hands, I feel rude by looking around the room and not chatting with my card mates. Only because its opulence ceases to surprise me.

  The room is modeled in French Empire to match the card table and chairs. It lacks only a mirrored ceiling to be the copy of a Versailles apartment — but a card room with mirrors? A naughty thought, and unthinkable. The maharani’s Claude Gillot is framed in gilt wormwood above the black fire grate, taking up space like a Murphy bed. Twin settees angle toward the grate. On the opposite wall hang a quartet of impressionists — two of Renoir’s dancing couples’ portraits, a Matisse, and one of Modigliani’s “man with a hat” series — set between gold sconces whose white-wick candles flicker in a draft from the window side of the apartment. Outdoor sounds jump through the glass like a cat burglar (a scuffed sole across the carpet can be a car driving on rain-wet pavement), so soft as to wake you only when he’s closing the door behind him. Above us hangs a three-tier chandelier. Its bright candle bulbs illuminate the room without throwing annoying prisms, the benefits of cut crystal medallions. Nothing in this room is common. The parquet floor is finished cherry, with just the one Berber rug lying beneath our feet, scarlet as a new poppy.

  “Minus, you’re distracted,” Maharani Smrtee says. She smiles with her kind, gentle manner. I think princesses must be taught how to do this from an early age. While princes may scowl (usually at the father, where green-eyed usurpation is cast upon the throne), the princess is always the light of any kingdom. “Oh, Brucey,” says the maharani, “let’s hear Minus tell us about his idea while we play another hand, shall we? There’s no reason to keep him sweating until the gaming is shot. By then we’ll be tired and lunging at the biscuit tray.”

  “Or falling onto it,” Viscount Bruce says, which gets them all to laugh.

  “I don’t want to hurry us,” I say, and for an unknown reason show my teeth like a performing dog.

  “I agree with the viscount, Minus,” Freifrau Frisse says. “We don’t have to be so snooty and formal. Let’s leave protocol to the kings and queens we left behind, ja?”

  The table rumbles on its legs with more laughter.

  “I guess it’s settled,” says Viscount Bruce. “Or…?” He checks a look to his left, at Baron Raspe, who clicks the heavy mouthpiece of his pipe across his front teeth before muttering solemn agreement. Only the baron smokes profusely on poker night. He keeps his pipe on a pedestal table by his side during the game, sitting in an ebony dish. The pipe bowl is as big as an ice cream scooper. “Go to, Minus,” Raspe tells me. “We’re all eyes.”

  Do I correct him? No. Happiness is a satisfied patron.

  “It’s simple, really,” I begin. “My proposal is to offer a subscription deal, with matching discounted prices.” I hear the calm in my voice; inside, my organs dance a Cha-Cha. “As subscribers, you’ll agree to make a monthly purchase of a single piece from my reserve works. New pieces will come later. Soon. I deliver on beauty, quality, value, and –”

  The baron clicks his pipe stem across his teeth. “How do you see its value to rise, young man?”

  “See here, Baron.” The viscount sits up and calls order with a fist clenched into a gavel. His combed hair shines chromium silver under the lights, commanding attention and respect. But I need to control this pitch, so I bring them all around with a word. They humble themselves and pay attention.

  “You all own pieces of my work already,” I explain. “My art is known, but not so much my name … not as much as I would like it to be. This will change when two things happen.” Now I have their “eyes.” Freifrau Frisse claws at the felt as Viscount Bruce sets down the deck of cards. “I’m working on new sculpture ideas. In six months I’ll have pieces for a show. Eight months, tops. As you purchase my archived work, word of mouth will spread. It’s how the game is played, right? Okay. So, before the show opens, you’ll have reserved about a quarter of what I plan to open with. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to work in my studio.” My mouth has dried out. I pick up the tumbler of liquor and tonic, only to notice my hand vibrating. The gin tastes funny. Another mouthful pulls me back to the pitch. “I’m onto something that is new for me, and new for modern art – I think.” The hesitation is from my editing out the word “unique.” Not yet, I tell myself. Not before this comes together. This?

  “Well.” Viscount Bruce picks up the cards and begins to shuffle. His eyes rise in thought. Baron Raspe is more demonstrative: “More, young man, more.” His moist yellow teeth glitter in the chandelier’s glow. Those hoary eyebrows ride high, like caterpillars sailing to Earth from a tree branch. “I want details. What have you got in your heart’s locker? We should want to know. Tease us, at least!” He looks at his blue-blooded companions. The ladies have their heads together. The viscount serenades us with successive bridge shuffles. I’m thoughtful, but silent, brooding on the baron
’s encouragement, or demand. Perhaps this is the reason I’ve hesitated. A siren sound comes through the open window, then bends as it grows distant.

  “The locker is full,” I tell them. The bridge shuffle stops; the maharani and freifrau lean forward; the baron sucks on the end of his pipe, holding a lighter up and ready, thumb on the trigger. I place trust in their education: “When I tap my heart and head with my hammer, these days, the sound does not echo. I’ve been cutting keys this past spring.” A game of “WhoDunnit?” passes for looks on my FaceCards. The baron strikes the flint wheel, making the women jump; the viscount fans the cards in a smooth arc.

  My FaceCards remind me of characters in an Agatha Christie story: Baron Raspe has the look of a Hercule Peroit, though far from Ustinov’s portrayal, and the ladies can easily be dowagers on some junket cruise, looking for adventure, intrigue, and a bit of twilight romance; for the sinister role, Viscount Bruce owns the silver hair, the military mustache, and the stone-cold midnight eyes for the assassin’s disregard (and whose guess is it that he wasn’t his King’s hired man before needing to flee? Or was he only pensioned away, sent for an exile’s existence because of his age, or old-fashioned opinions, neither wanted at court any longer?). He catches me in a jester’s smile, does a double take from his resumed shuffling. But my eyes have jumped to the ante pile. And what about me? What role am I to play? The butler, or even the victim.

  Baron Raspe sucks hard on his pipe. Through a blue cloud he calls a tune. “Cards, anyone?” The subject of subscriptions is abandoned. Their trust is extravagant, but I know it isn’t simple, and has been hard won. I expect to be handed an envelope tonight that contains a thousand dollars, my patronage for the month, which makes me want to lose hands with chivalric right. Poker continues. I get dealt two aces, a pair of threes, and a king. I check, see to the freifrau, see a raise by Viscount Bruce, and make my own raise of fifty cents. Everyone folds. My take is a laughable six dollars.

  For a while I’m left alone with my thoughts. They’re thinking of my proposal and my enthusiasm, masked in its cryptic remark. But there are two things I know about the FaceCards: they like intrigue (it reminds them of their courtier days), and they have enough money to invest in artwork. For them, I’m a safe bet. Actually, one safe bet; I don’t flatter myself enough to think that these exiled aristocrats aren’t also investing in other, younger, newer but otherwise gifted artists with the promise of career longevity.

  “How are your lovely doggies?” asks Maharani Smrtee. “I want a puppy just like Chief.”

  “Your co-op board would throw a fit, your Highness,” says Viscount Bruce.

  “You would take him for me,” says the maharani, with a girlish pout. “I’ll pay your dear Mrs Emily to feed him, and Minus can walk him. All I have to do is play, play, play!” She practically screeches. I wonder if this is how the phrase “She’s a real princess!” was coined. She makes smoky eyes at me. “Though you must watch him closely in the park. I just read the other day that people are stealing dogs off their leashes. To sell them. They put adverts in the paper. Wonky bastards!”

  Her use of profanity spouts laughter. Foreigners love to use English profanity. It’s never so harsh to their ears as the bad words from their native tongue. Just as well, they think Americans like to hear profanity because of its liberal use in Hollywood films. I’m sure this is true.

  “It’s the homeless,” Baron Raspe says flatly as he picks up newly dealt cards and tornado shuffles them in his hand. “They’ve got nothing else to do but watch people, and then boom! They strike, quick as vermin.”

  The freifrau frowns. “How is some homeless gesindel able to put dogs for sale in a newspaper? They don’t have credit cards or addresses.”

  “They don’t need anything from our world. They put a bundle of stolen puppies in a basket and head up to Harlem. It’s easy money for the bag ladies. Blacks love the dogs.”

  “Those people don’t like German Shepherds, Bertie,” says the viscount. “Makes them think the police are chasing them. Ha-ha!” Ha-ha’s rise through their ranks, while I’m left mute. “They want pit bulls that’ll fight in the ghetto streets and abandoned parks.”

  My chair feels as though tacks have sprung up from the plush cushion. I pull my ears in; this is the class and cultural differences that are impossible to explain to them, or explain away. A rap on the door quiets the group, and, as if on cue, the maharani’s butler, Harold, enters behind a cart on which he’s arranged three trays piled with sandwiches, cheese and fruit, and little cakes. Harold wears white gloves and white tie. His shoes tap on the floor as he walks, heel to toe. His hair is frostily white like the frozen leaves of a hedge, while his skin is black as the night is long.

  “Just in time, Harold.” Maharani Smrtee mimes a swoon, regally elegant, of course. “I’m so hungry I could drop from this chair.”

  Harold nods his reply, or perhaps that he’s been acknowledged at all. The gesture might also hold a secret smile that hides the spit he’s spread on all the sandwiches. I’m not certain which of these can be true, although I’m the only one who notices a brief grimace before he leaves. His casual gaze across the heads of the aristocrats as he closes the door becomes the authenticity of honor for all that they can only imagine.

  We break for snacks, and I excuse myself. In the hallway outside the parlor, all is quiet, although I hear through a far door leading to the kitchen the wrinkle of radio voices. The hallway is lit, as are the maharani’s paintings. She hangs her moderns here, eight of them flanking a woolen runner. None is the best of his movement. An art encyclopedia would call them representational: “Mid-level painters of the abstract expressionist, surrealist, and pop art movements.” Much like the FaceCards themselves, to their regents, I suppose.

  On the walls, among a Gorky, Donati, and Goode, I find my “August Storm” — nearest to the toilet door. It’s a violent landscape with equally discordant colors. A movement-bending representation, I think (if my opinion counts). I no longer admire this picture because this conflict with color signaled the first steps to my abandonment of painting, although I still like its expression of emotional calm. This very strength is what I notice most, tonight. Five years on from its completion, I would not have guessed such spirit was in ascendance. Too late for me. Yet here they hang, in a private collection. This ought to be solace of some kind; I’m part of the movement, a member of a small society (getting smaller every year). Whether admired on a hook in a museum, or coveted by a collector, posterity is a word attached to your legacy. Would Karen K recognize all these works? I turn away and grip the bathroom door handle, and don’t look back.

  When I return to the parlor I grab a cucumber sandwich on a dish and wander over to the coffee table between the sofas, where the fireplace whispers cool air from its mouth. Four thick museum catalogs lie stacked on the table. I slide out the bottom volume from the pile and thumb through it from back to front. A handbill used as a bookmark is wedged between pages whose facing photographs show Rauschenberg’s “Monogram” sculpture from two views. I notice how the taxidermied goat, girdled by a rubber tire, carries a human quality on its mouth. Ironic mirth comes to mind. The handbill that marks the page advertises a skin cream to sooth the effects of eczema. Faces of sufferers appear down the left side in five square snapshots. The patients look forward into the camera, a mix of young and old, male and female, Mexican-American, Caucasian, Black, their expressions blank or neutrally resigned to being medical subjects. In the next to last photo, an elderly woman holds her hands up beside her face, displaying red scabs across her knuckles as well as her lips. She has youthful eyes and healthy skin tone, but for the blotchy redness. Yet here’s her true claim to beauty: her mouth has been caught by the camera in some movement, the corners just in blurred freeze, perhaps having been told not to smile, not to appear happy, This is a serious medical condition that demands sober intelligence. But she’s fooled them, in her way; she’s made herself look better than the condition mig
ht otherwise reveal, all from a trip-wire smile.

  I hear my name called and slide the handbill back into place.

  Over a second snack of salmon and cream cheese on trimmed white bread, I start to tell the FaceCards a story. “Do any of you remember Karen Kosek?”

  “The critic from the sixties?”

  “A simple gadfly, some said.”

  “You only say that because she’s female, and you’re a chauvinist.”

  “Gadfly! Who uses such terms anymore?”

  “I am not chauvinistic.” The viscount brushes lint from his sleeve. “I’m a continental.”

  “You’re a gadfly, too, whether you’ll admit it tonight or not. And what’s more, you like it.”

  “I’m a respected member of an aristocratic society — a very small, exclusive club, I might add — one who resides outside its borders on political grounds. Therefore I cannot, by definition, be a chauvinistic. My exile-asylum status won’t allow such unseemliness.”

  “Are we to have a speech now?” Baron Raspe vibrates with mirth.

  “Oh, dear, I should have Harold bring in a soap box that you can stand on.”

  “You’re all a pack of meanies. I’ve a mind to collect my loose change and leave right now.” Viscount Bruce takes another sandwich from the pyramid. “There. I must gather energy for the long walk.”

  They laugh because it’s all been a joke. Everyone has played his and her parts, like a playhouse skit. They carouse like children, wonderfully free of care. I think I must carry the look of a psychotic who’s suddenly glimpsed reality through the light outside the nut-house window. And then I’m pulled back inside.

  “Has she died, Minus? The writer woman? Poor soul.” Baron Raspe picks up the story for the others. “She disappeared years ago, after so much fame and notoriety. I remember her because it was just after my own departure from court and state — God knows I was young once — and I met her at a party here in the city. I think it was in the Frick. Or does one say ‘at’ the Frick?”

  Grammar becomes the topic while I munch on a pretzel. When they weary themselves of English, German is tossed back and forth, with a handful of French used for classical trim, and finally the maharani teaches us a sentence of Hindi: “The air is filled with the aroma of war.” She smiles at her pupils’ pronunciation after the fifth chorus.

  “I saw Karen K last week in Central Park,” I say. “She was dressed in rags.”

  “How interesting. And scary.” Freifrau Frisse is shocked. “Something like a medieval witch. I can see it now.” She puts on her glasses and checks her watch; for what reason, I haven’t a clue. “I know you Americans say ‘easy come, easy go’ but that is a bit much.”

  “The mighty fall hard,” Baron Raspe says.

  “I’m not so sure,” I say, and tell them about my chance discovery in the park, her clothing, the Duane Reade bags, the matted gray hair and the polished nails, her shoes, and Henry opening The Parkview’s regal doors to what appeared to be a fetid bum.

  Baron Raspe will not be dissuaded. “Kept the family silver and the home, but going Scotch on the clothes. Bloody dreadful.”

  “It all sounds theatrical.” Freifrau Frisse is certain of this. “Perhaps she’s playing a part for real, or for send up. Or she’s just lost her marbles.”

  “Both are my guess as well,” I admit.

  “Are you sure it was her, Minus?” the viscount asks. “You said you saw her for only a moment. A glimpse only, and years after seeing a book jacket photo? Sorry to press you, lad, but the likelihood sounds too good — or awful — to make it suss out.”

  I begin to speak, but stop. Telling the FaceCards about Karen K in the park has been a benign leak of a secret thus far held close to my chest — my way of flirting with these exiles and their constant tittle-tattle. It’s shameful, but I can’t help it. Nevertheless, other than our poker games, we don’t move in the same circles, so I hope the secret will be safe. Which comes to why I’ve stopped myself from telling the FaceCards how I know my park bag lady is Karen. I cannot tell them about my attempted bribery of Henry, and staking out The Parkview is pure stalker talk. The mind of a weirdo, not an artist. All the same, I have my reasons to keep quiet, and these are my secrets.

  “It’s her,” I say, using the same objective case determination that the FaceCards seem to live by.

  “Okay, okay,” says Maharani Smrtee. “So what does it mean?”

  They’re all looking at me, sandwiches growing stale on their plates. I’m not sure what they want. The freifrau helps me out. “Why do you care?”

  “Good point,” I say, from which my fallen face reveals a “tell” like no card player should ever expose. With a simple gesture, I find myself unable to lie. “I want to meet her.”

  “So tap the bloody woman on the shoulder,” says Baron Raspe.

  “She’s liable to attack him,” shouts Freifrau Frisse. “I mean, if she’s become some crazy lunatic who lives in luxury but walks around as a bag lady. They carry hypodermic needles to spread AIDS on the population. I read it in the Post. The thought is shaking.”

  I imagine that the freifrau is wondering how each of them could become what she thinks Karen K has become. Oddly, I have that very question in mind. I’ve tried to answer it twice, but neither has stuck with me for long.

  “Well, I’ll make a few calls, is all,” Maharani Smrtee says. I flinch. She’s turned my white thoughts into a thunderstorm.

  “Your Highness, please don’t do that,” I say, over-excited by the calamity this could cause. “I-I’m honored that you should take such interest in my whim, but a move like that is exactly what I cannot do. It’s a great imposition on her privacy. That’ll surely scare her off. She’s … not what she seems in her writing.”

  Once again the FaceCards glance at each other. The club the viscount has spoken of comes with its own language — subtle changes in eye movements, the corner of a mouth lifted or compressed, a whorl crease in the chin, an eyebrow flutter, the twitching nose — and I realize that courtiers do indeed have a sixth sense for intrigue.

  On my way back to the loft, I stand on a green-line train, near a redheaded woman in a center seat, her long legs crossed at the knees. As she fixes her hair, she sets a bundle of strands, pinched between three fingers, firmly behind her left ear. Her face opens in such a way that reminds me of a half-moon subtlety peaking from behind a cloud. I want to squint for its loveliness. The subway car rocks its passengers with gentle, baby-carriage ease. It’s ten forty-five and I hear tourists reminisce over the day’s events. A space by the door becomes free at 56th Street, and I sidle over. She’s chosen to wear summer linen – beige, sheer – a thong tucked between cheeks, I’m thinking. Her breasts ride high and tight to her chest, helped with that delectable invention, the demitasse bra, whose lace has embossed the taupe blouse she wears, opened to the third button for fashion, allure, and ventilation. She makes eye contact. Our smiles exchange through the rumble of metal wheels. I lean near her, but not too close. “You’re pretty,” I say across the tunnel noise. “Do you sit for artists?” Now she ignores me. A simple “No” would have sufficed. I lean in again. “I’ve seen prettier.” She disregards this by using the language of the confidently beautiful: “No you haven’t.”

  At home, Belinda asks about the card game. I’m slurping on a grape-flavored Sugar Pop sucker, the round kind that you spin in your mouth with a twist on the stick until it becomes enticingly robotic.

  I tell her, “They made racist jabs in front of the butler.”

  “Poor Harold.” Belinda peels herself from jeans, T-shirt, and bra, and changes into sleek black pajamas. Her back is to me so that only her bare bottom smiles its firm happiness. “They’re so alien. How can you be their friend?” she asks.

  “I’m not their friend. We’re friendly. And they like my art. Remember, too, what else they do for me. Us.” I nod at the envelope Viscount Bruce pressed into my hand at the end of the evening, now sitting on the side
table. “I’m also entertainment for them.”

  “I think you’ve just insulted yourself.”

  “Hardly.” I slap the pillow to make a pouch for my head. “For the same reason a PR hack or corner office attorney shills the virtues of corporate America, I play cards with a few of the world’s discarded aristocracy. They know who they are. They know what I am.” The sugary lollipop is making my mouth water, and a thick syrup puddles around my gums until I swallow. “The subscription deal is on. No one refused.”

  Belinda steps up on the bed and walks to her pillow. She stands over me, a lot of bare leg asking for a caress. I think she’s trying to seduce me, but this could be my male mind, or the Sugar Pop. She plops down to her knees and sinks her butt onto her heels.

  “I’m glad I won’t need to do any of that as your manager.”

  I pull the sucker out with a slurp around the bulb. “Won’t you?”