A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall (14 page)

—It's all insured, Kurt, but I'm still pressing charges. Oh you bet. And like it or not, I still have pull in Basel. I can get your booth moved to Siberia with one phone call.

—Get the fucking checkbook from the desk drawer and write my fucking check.

Todd seemed to be processing the whole scene as if a skunk had traipsed into the gallery: he needed Kurt to leave, but didn't want to get sprayed. Two tourists had been standing against the wall this entire time, stunned.

—It's been six months since the fucking show, Todd. I need to be paid for my work. I need money before you spend it all on Asian boys and have your assets frozen.

Now to the assistant, who had been smiling at the entire scene until that last comment:

—Oh. You didn't know that Todd touches twelve-year-olds?

—Fuck you.

Todd pleaded to Owen:

—Can you do anything about him?

For the first time he could remember, Owen had become a spectator, a follower. Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe the lack of sleep. He took control of the rubber grips on the back of Kurt's chair. Kurt flailed wildly in his seat and turned around to grab Owen by the balls. Owen doubled over, pushing down firmly on the handles. The chair rocked back, nearly falling into Owen's knees, but Kurt sprang forward and landed on the casters.

Todd swiped at the chair but missed and stumbled into Owen.

Kurt was now pushing against a white lacquered panel. He opened the hidden cabinet, unplugged a USB connecting to the video feed, and removed an aluminum laptop. He wedged the laptop between his legs and then taunted Todd by wheeling straight at him, then swerving and skidding away. Todd shrieked:

—That's enough!

—Pay your fucking bills and stop living like a Turk.

—I'm not giving you a cent.

—We'll call it even. You're probably going to have trouble putting that net back together.

Owen left the gallery in a hurry. Kurt took time to make small talk with the tourists:

—Don't see that every day. Isn't Berlin sooo exciting? Everyone is so creative, don't you think?

He autographed the older woman's purse with a Sharpie and rolled after Owen. Todd and his assistant watched from the front door as Kurt wheeled off. Halfway down the block he shouted over his shoulder:

—Todd, you've been great. Can you get the tourists to sign releases? Thanks! Love you! See you in Basel!

The sidewalks were too narrow for Kurt to wheel at Owen's side. He nipped at his heels and then veered into the street and yelled over parked cars for Owen to wait up.

Owen hit a red light and couldn't jaywalk through the swift traffic. He glared at the red light as Kurt repeatedly nudged his calf. It was the carefree homburg-hatted traffic man telling them to stop, but Owen bit down so hard that he nearly cracked a molar. Kurt noticed a police car waiting at the light and gestured for the passenger to roll down his window. The officer in the passenger seat didn't know Kurt, but the driver did. He smiled and lifted his chin in greeting before accelerating off the line.

—See, artistic immunity.

—I'm leaving for St. Petersburg tomorrow. Thanks for everything.

—Bad choice. It will take you months to get a visa. Especially after Abu Ghraib. You really want to travel to sketchier places when your country is torturing people? Look. Don't worry about Todd. You don't have the full context. I'll patch things up tonight. And if I don't, Hal has the kind of pictures of him that can end an argument.

—It's not that.

—Just stay until our piece is finished.

—Holding up an art gallery wasn't what you meant by a collaboration?

—No. Speaking of which, we need to see my lawyer tomorrow.

—I don't think it matters what kind of pictures you have. You need to go to your lawyer's now.

—You're a twenty-one-year-old American. Can you trust me that maybe you don't know exactly how the Berlin art world works?

—No. I think I've got it. Be loud. Be good-looking. Break a bunch of shit.

—Art requires brutality because life is brutal. Thinking otherwise is fucking naive. You see paintings, I see bloodstains.

—You're right. I'm naive. So why collaborate with me?

—I have a booth at Art Basel next month, and I haven't sent anything yet. I was thinking we could bang something out. It's going to play with representation, and you know a lot about that shit, right? Look. You're smarter than I am. You're taller than I am—at least when I'm sitting down. But you're trying to make it in the single most competitive field in the world. You need all the help you can get. And I'm willing to help. Tell me what you want to do, and we will make it so. Seriously. After this project you'll be able to get a
solo
show at any gallery in the world. You may be the first artist ever who doesn't have to stand on the backs of all the morons in all his shitty little group shows just to get a solo show. You are a very lucky man. Now you've got to tell Daddy about your dreams.

—Will Stevie be in Basel?

—Sure.

Owen let that hope hang in the sky for a second, then continued:

—I'm working more on subtlety right now, keeping things hidden and sacred. Do you know about memory palaces?

Kurt lit another cigarette. Owen continued:

—It's how people memorized huge texts like the
Iliad
or the Bible. You find images in the story, find nooks in places around you, and then pin down those images to make a tight link, and every time you pass that store or park bench or whatever, you're able to remember the images from the text. Because our brains are amazing at remembering spaces. Take the water tower: I've only been there a few times, but I can remember the panels on the door, the doorframe, the knob, the strike plate, the threshold, the puddle on the floor, three skateboards in the corner, wheel marks on the wall, grind marks on the handrail . . . every place you've ever lived has thousands of these little nodes. To memorize something huge, you need to create a route, a trail. My idea is to present mental maps of Berlin, so that people can
see
memory—or at least, they could if they broke the seal of the envelope.

—You sound like you need sleep.

—We can integrate anything into the map. We can use photos, performances, whatever you want, but the map would be the scaffolding, the armature of the sculpture.

—Let's not talk details until after you've signed all the paperwork. I'd love to go into all this memory palace shit, but experience has taught me that you've got to sign all the paperwork before you start making art. And don't forget the first rule: There's got to be something to sell. Rule two: Don't make anything too dense. The world doesn't need any more fruity esoteric bullshit.

—So what's the full context for that scene in Todd Zeale's gallery?

—Why do you think I stole his laptop? Even my detractors wouldn't call me a petty criminal. I'm going to use the security camera footage for a video piece. I've been mapping out that whole fiasco for two years now.

—Why?

—Todd fucked me by giving away a piece for two thousand euros to a “significant collector” who happened to be his lover's brother, rather than taking an offer for fifty-five thousand pounds sterling from an actual major collector. Fuck that guy. Dealers are much easier to deal with than gallerists. There are fewer feelings.

Owen was beginning to see that for Kurt, everything and everyone was potentially exploitable as an art piece.

—I'm going to get a friend to postprocess that video with thermal imaging—which is why I wanted us both smoking when we walked in. It's going to be like if you took a Bill Viola piece and added the tension of a Mozart opera. The piece is going to be a convection—is that a word?—of rage and humiliation. You know what I should get though is one of those TVs that has red surrounding light so that the viewer's whole face is bright red. I want the whole room to be red. I don't think that's been represented: the shame you feel when a friend shows you bad art—and this video is going to be bad art in its own way. Of course it would be much easier to just sell the DVDs. It's really an economics question. And that's why you need a dealer.

Kurt kept talking, but Owen was in his own thoughts.

This is Kurt's community. And Kurt is going to do whatever the fuck he wants. I should tell my dad that I'm in Berlin studying under Ezra Pound.

G
old glints lit their backs as they returned to the water tower. Another event was under way. Scores of models, the aftermath of some sort of casting call, leaned over the spiral ledge to watch a band set up synthesizers and tune guitars. Kurt had to roll back and forth to clear the garden-hose-thick extension cord linking their amps to a gas generator jackhammering outside. The women smoked, drank, and tapped their phones, but they were clearly eyeing the band. Owen passed the group of girls as each one shook Kurt's hand and then leaned in to kiss his cheek.

Jera took Owen by surprise. He was sitting on the floor of Owen's room, slumped against the doorframe with one leg out, breathing deeply from his nose and humming as he sketched the curve of the central spiral. Owen waited patiently for Jera to say something, but he didn't register Owen's presence.

Hal spoke from the hallway:

—He's sketching the whole tower. You can take a nap in my room if you want.

—Does Kurt know he's here?

—It's complicated. Is it cool if Jera shares your room while he finishes up the drawings?

Owen, heavy-faced from two days without sleep, nodded with exasperation. He trudged up the spiral ramp to Hal's room. His right foot twisted and he nearly rolled an ankle. To complete the short climb, he had to summon whatever enthusiasm remained at the prospect of artistic success. He collapsed on Hal's bare mattress. The bass player downstairs decided that he needed a little more volume. Owen wrapped his corduroy jacket over his head, but it didn't help. His legs spilled onto the parquet floor. He slid lower and lower until he was using the foot of the bed as a pillow. Just as he fell into his first deep sleep in forty-eight hours, Kurt wheeled into his foot.

—Hey! Stevie's here. Never thought I'd see that again.

Owen found his feet and picked tobacco flakes from the wells of his pants.

—Maybe you
should
take a nap. You look like shit.

Kurt threw Owen's duffel on the bed as an accusation.

—You went to Stanford?

—I think I still do, technically.

—What do you study? Psychology? No, wait . . . philosophy.

—History.

—As a European artist, if you want to do something, you just do it—you don't go to school.

—Jera said you went to Städelschule. That's an art college, right?

—I went for the connections. I probably could have gone to Yale, but I didn't want to waste four years of my life. Art's a young man's game. It doesn't make any sense to waste time.

—How late is tonight going to go?

—The concert is short, just a favor for some friends. They're touring for the new album and haven't played any of the songs live.

—I can't take a very long night.

—Clean up. We'll have a little fun. Then tomorrow it's all work.

Owen looked at the gnarled trees in twilight and tried to pull himself together. Stevie walked into his room.

Her voice had been echoing through his head, and at first he wasn't positive it was really her.

—Kurt looked you up. You played in the Olympics?

—I didn't get in the water until we were mathematically eliminated.

—You must have been, what, eighteen?

—They put a few young guys on the Sydney team to generate interest for Athens. This was supposed to be my year.

—You're talking about the Athens Olympics?

—I should have been training in Colorado Springs, but I decided to play out the season. Then this happened.

—You were that good?

—I was a body. I wouldn't have been on the national team if Wolf hadn't stumped for me.

—Wolf? Is that a person? Most of the time it seems like you're talking to yourself.

She started to leave.

—Wait.

—Too late. I'll see you downstairs.

Owen lunged and caught her arm just as she was spinning away. He curled her in close and she floated into his lips.

She clasped her hands around his neck as if she were swinging from a tree limb. She looked up. No one had ever looked at him like that.

Hal's camera flashed from the doorway, and everything fell. Stevie pulled Owen past Hal and down the spiral into the show.

A humid wall of guitar came from the Marshall stacks. Lazy hums condensed on the singer. And when his falsetto entered on the next song, Owen recognized this band's music from a computer commercial. These guys were not just famous, they were world-famous. This night would not end early, and if he let go of Stevie, it wouldn't end well.

—Do you want to go walk?

—I've got to wait for Jera.

—Why did Kurt invite him if they hate each other? And why did he come?

—It's more complex than that. First, it's not like Kurt sends out lace-fringed invitations to his parties. Second, there are many “artists” in Berlin, but the real artists are in a fairly tight circle. Jera comes here a few times a week for the series he's doing of contemporary spaces—he'd say “contemporary nightmares.” Kurt probably has some angle. Jera doesn't care.

—The sketch he showed me at the bar was amazing.

—He's maybe the only person in Berlin still painting figuratively.

—Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

—I'd say both, but Brigitte is the art expert. Forget I said that. Stay here. I'm going to get us drinks.

Owen waited. He could see people staring at him and knew that everyone on his blind side was also watching. He put his hands in his pockets. Then put his hands at his side. Then crossed his arms.