Umbrellaed from door to curb by the client himself, Laurel settles into the backseat of a conventional Cadillac sedan driven by a beefy-looking individual introduced simply as “Bemus.”
Bemus mumbles a hello without taking his eyes off the road until they’re stopped at a light on Madison. There he uses the opportunity to turn around and offer a face-to-face greeting. Only what he says doesn’t match the occasion. And he’s not talking to her. He’s berating Colin Elliot for some kind of omission she’s unable to grasp.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” the client says. “He’s still a bit riled after the sorting out that made us late this morning.” The client finds this funny; the driver, once he’s through gaping at her, seems similarly inclined.
Whatever. She agitates inwardly. Whatever it takes to get through the assignment.
In the museum parking garage, upon the advice of this Bemus character, she leaves her coat in the car and retains only a pen and the loose-leaf notebook from her oversized handbag that he then locks in the trunk.
In the museum proper, she immediately rates the earth tones of her loose cowl-necked sweater, even looser calf-length skirt, and flat-heeled suede boots as drearier than the damned coat. Even the client’s gray suit and black polo shirt have more visual appeal than what she’s wearing.
The driver-bodyguard brings up the rear as they move at a brisk pace through a gallery of Greek and Roman artifacts. Once bitten, she’s twice shy about giving the client more than a flickering glance to determine if he has any interest in the carved sarcophagi they’re passing. Apparently he does; he stops alongside the one that most resembles an ornate soaking tub resting on four bowling balls, but he asks if she’s ever seen the Elgin Marbles.
His awareness of the treasures famously stolen from the Parthenon does not surprise her; he is, after all, British, and he is referring to perhaps the best-known exhibit at the British Museum. Because he does not sound proprietary or even proud that the purloined sculptures now reside there, she does not hesitate to speak her mind.
“No, I haven’t,” she replies as they resume walking, this time at a standard museum shuffle, “and I don’t ever intend viewing view them unless they’re returned to Greece where they belong.”
“Ah, then you’re in agreement with Lord Byron.”
To her utter astonishment he begins reciting from the pertinent canto of Byron’s
Childe Harald’s Pilgrimage
.
“. . .
Thy walls defaced . . . thy mouldering shrines removed by British hands, which it had best behooved to guard those relics ne’er to be restored
,” he declaims with gusto. “. . .
And snatched thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred
!” he finishes with a flourish. “Shall I guess from the look on your face you know the work?” he asks.
She nods.
“Then you’ll know that’s the poem responsible for creating the popular concept of the Byronic hero—the paradoxical loner always on the lookout for a new vibe.”
She nods.
“You also have to know the hero soon tires of the party scene and playing the tireless voluptuary, goes glum and cynical, and can only find distraction in his travels. But I wonder if you know how unwittingly prescient Lord Byron was. If Childe Harold had been carrying a Fender Stratocaster on this pilgrimage gig of his, he would’ve presented as the stereotypical rock star, wouldn’t he then?”
Laurel looks to a lineup of mutilated busts and statues for an answer, then pretends preoccupation by scribbling a reminder in her notebook to dig up her mother’s old copy of Byron, and to find out what in hell a Fender Stratocaster is.
In the Lehman Collection, he delivers a mini-lecture on pointillism and where he first encountered prime examples as executed by the acknowledged masters, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Should she be braced for a poem appropriate to the subject? Does such a poem exist?
When one is not forthcoming, she hears herself asking if he’s ever seen the massive Monet
Water Lilies
installation at the l’Orangerie in Paris. He has not, which gives her opportunity to contrast the two forms of impressionism that both require something extra from the viewer.
“I absolutely know what you meant when you said you didn’t get Seurat at first. I had the same experience with the
Water Lilies
—took me a while to decide if I was standing up too close or back too far,” she says.
The Paris reference inspires him to speak wistfully of the first time his band performed there, and that memory spawns similar as they progress from gallery to gallery. A somber van Gogh drawing provokes memory of an experience in Amsterdam at a dank club where his band played simply for the exposure; an imperious El Greco grandee recalls his first sold-out stadium concert in Barcelona; a reclining Modigliani nude reminds of a good time had by all in Rome; a photo-sharp Ingres, a muted Renoir, and a rustic-themed Matisse returns his reminiscences to Paris and to France as a whole.
This art-association exercise continues through several more galleries and another entire wing. Laurel struggles to keep up with the flow of anecdotes and keep track of their corresponding visual prompts, even though these notes won’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Who, after all, wants to read a travelogue of Western Europe as narrated by a rock star with an eye for great art? Not even Jackie O’s imprimatur could sell a book like that.
They continue in similar fashion—with nothing really accomplished from her standpoint. The client runs out of reminiscences when they reach the American Wing where a John Singer Sargent portrait inspires a different kind of interest. But it’s not for the alluring Madame X, controversial subject of a painting once the basis for scandal, it’s for the artist himself.
“Do you know what I love most about Sargent?” he says. “That he knew what he was right out of the box. He knew he was destined to be the greatest portraitist since Van Dyck, and he got on with it straightaway. He even went at a canvas that way. No sketching, no underpainting, just load up the brush and go for it—alla prima, I think they call the technique. He didn’t stick with what was popular, he was himself even if being himself brought on scorn by sour elements of the art establishment. He didn’t waste time like so many blokes I’ve known who weren’t true to themselves till the truth came round, bit ’em in the arse and showed ’em their angle of repose.”
“Angle of repose . . . is that an art term I haven’t heard before?” she muses while dashing off the highpoints of the tribute.
“No, it’s an engineering term, actually and I’m forever borrowing it to describe how high and at what pitch you can pile your shit before it heels over and buries you.”
“I see.” She spells out this definition word for word and doesn’t catch his following remark.
“Sorry?”
She looks up to hear him say they should stop for lunch.
At one-fifteen by her watch, she can’t disagree. “Will you be all right with the cafeteria here? It can be quite busy and it’s always noisy,” Laurel says, annoyed with herself for not thinking of those drawbacks until now.
“I can handle that.” He signals tagalong Bemus to close ranks with them. “How many?” he asks the bodyguard as they walk three abreast toward the restaurant.
“Not bad. Twenty, maybe twenty-five,” Bemus replies, “and I only got a coupla arguments when I said you couldn’t be disturbed. Conclusions may’ve been drawn, though, so don’t be surprised if this buncha gawkers and autograph hounds have Ms. Chandler down as your latest squeeze.”
“She’s not gonna like that,” the client says as though she’s not listening to everything said. “Just yesterday whilst we were out together, she chased off some fans by defying them to believe she was the sort to be seen in public with a rock star.”
“
Good
one,” Bemus says.
“That’s what I thought. Brilliant, she was.”
They continue to ignore her presence as Bemus leads them to an out-of-the-way table among the few available this time of day. “I saw a few heads swivelin’ as we passed, but from what you say she oughta be able to hold ’em off till I get back with the food. Soup, salad, and fruit gonna be okay?” Bemus says, indicating which wall-facing chairs she and the client should occupy.
“I am perfectly capable of going through a cafeteria line on my own and I’m sure Mr. Elliot can fend for himself during my absence,” Laurel sputters.
“Not while I’m runnin’ the show,” Bemus says, leaving no room for argument.
Laurel sinks into the designated chair, seething with resolve. She vows not to reengage with the client unless the subject is him. No more kidding around and no more convenient detours from purpose.
“Why here?” The client infiltrates her nettled silence.
“I’m sorry?”
“Why did you choose this museum? Does it house favorites of yours or might the Modern have done as well? Or the Guggenheim?”
“I chose this because it’s the largest. You said you wanted to cover as much ground as possible—or words to that effect—so—”
“So you have nothing against modern art.”
She could point out that this museum is home to a wondrous collection of modern art, but that would lend importance to a non-issue. She shrugs, hoping to discourage a fresh discourse on yet another aspect of creativity.
“My manager fancies modern art,” he says. “Actually he fancies anathing that’s a good investment, so his gallery’s changing all the time. Last I looked he had Rothko, David Hockney, Rauschenberg, Basquiat, and a pair of semi erotic portraits by that Austrian bloke . . . What’s his name? The one with the warm colorations and dabs of gold over top.”
“That would have to be Gustave Klimt,” she says without considering the consequences.
“Brilliant! I knew you’d know, and if you know Klimt at all, you’ll be wanting to see these. Maybe when you get round to interviewing Nate for the project, something can be arranged.”
“Wait a minute. I’m not interviewing anybody else until I’ve interviewed you and that’s not exactly going according—”
“I’m glad you brought that up. I’ve been meaning to say how much I admire your interviewing technique. Quite pleasurable it is.”
“How can that be? I’ve yet to ask you a direct question.”
“Precisely, and I greatly appreciate that you’re letting me gradually unspool rather than goin’ at me like an inquisitor.”
“I see.”
She sees a farcical endeavor and an endless folly of off-subject unspooling unless she takes steps to stop it now. And now she’s in sensory overload and further stressed by the widespread clatter of crockery, cutlery, and fragmented talk in this harsh environment with the acoustics of an abandoned warehouse.
She’s at full scowl when Bemus returns with two trays of food. Although hungry, she only picks at hers to avoid appearing compliant. When the client suggests that they next take on the Sackler Wing and its Egyptian Temple of Dendur, she debates how far she’d get if she excused herself to use the ladies’ room and just kept going. Not far. Not without her coat and handbag and they’re presently held hostage in the parking garage. And who would she call to come get her, saying she made it to a pay phone? David, who would rebuke her? Amanda, who would disown her? Someone from the DA’s office, who would be incredulous if told she was fleeing a rock star?
Thought of a pay phone causes her to point at her watch, which now reads a little before two, and tap the face the way David does when he’s run out of both time and patience.
“Yeh,” the client says, “you don’t have to remind me not to exceed the four-hour—”
“I’m reminding you to call home, that’s all. Yesterday I noticed it was around this time when you called, and I just thought. . . .”
“You thought exactly right, except I rang them earlier so I wouldn’t forget.”
For someone supposedly disabled by the bludgeoning effects of having seen and heard too much in too short a time, why is she feeling deprived for not having been privy to another adventure of Jeremiah Barely-There? What was she planning to do, accompany him to a pay phone and listen in?
The vast space housing the reassembled Nubian Temple of Dendur is austere, uncrowded, and hushed—the ideal environment in which to decompress. The client says he’s never been to Egypt, so that eliminates a lot of extraneous discourse. Instead, he’s inspired by the surroundings to hold forth on his musical influences.
They are varied and many, and many of the names surprise her almost as much as did his acquaintance with Byron. She did not expect to hear him credit George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin, along with a dozen or so others whose names are not as familiar. She struggles to keep up now that she finally has something pertinent to write down. She garbles several of the unfamiliar names, but that’s what Amanda’s for—Amanda the resident expert on contemporary music and, presumably, musicians.
By now, they’ve covered the length and breadth of the Sackler Wing several times. After a last pass by the temple and reflecting pool, the client is attracted to the wall of slanted windows designed to produce diffused light reminiscent of the high desert. No telling what this might bring forth, but he seems only to be letting the effect wash over him.
Bemus must be doing the same because he’s slow to spot the group of teenage schoolgirls converging on the celebrity client in an excited mass. “Okay lady, you or me?” the smartass bodyguard mutters as though either one of them would have any luck heading off this determined bunch. There will be no denying he’s a rock star and no pretending he’s not the Colin Elliot of recent notoriety—not with the captive in complete cooperation with his captors.
The client accepts the offer of her pen and a supply of blank pages pulled from her notebook for the petitioners who don’t have their own. He personalizes each autograph, assures a pair of late-arriving chaperones no real harm’s been done when they apologize for letting things get out of hand and sheepishly request autographs for themselves. He’s gracious and tolerant of everything but the cacophony of questions tossed at him. These, no matter how innocuous, he ignores as though never posed. Something else for her to take away from this scene.