Cheyney Fox (23 page)

So instead of flying home to Rome to wait for their meeting with Kurt, Roberto and Lala were obliged to fly to Athens to explain to Cheyney how much they needed her to work with them. There was no way they could acquire a Pace painting unless he released them. But getting one would give the three of them more money than they had probably ever earned in their lifetimes. She was their only hope, since Acton had made it quite clear he would talk to Cheyney; she was to call him, but, he had, for the moment, no intentions of selling any paintings.

Now both Cheyney and Roberto were angry with Lala. Cheyney chided her, “Don’t you see that you have placed me in an untenable position? I don’t speak to an old friend for years, and now you want me to call him and insist he do something he does not want to do. I will not ask him to sell his paintings. I find the idea of doing so, under these circumstances, abhorrent. How could you, Lala?”

“But what if he wants to?” Lala insisted, tears in her eyes.

“Well, that’s quite a different thing, isn’t it? Why didn’t you call and tell me about our prospects of forming such a collection before you went to New York?”

“It all happened so fast, and I had to do some last minute shopping, and then we had to catch the plane. And then we had planned to call you on our arrival there, but got swept into the art scene. And, well, you know what New York is like, and believe me, it’s more crazy exciting than ever. Anyway, what’s the difference?”

“I’ll tell you ‘what’s the difference.’ I would have stopped you from seeing Rowena and calling Acton. I would not have known he was stockpiling his paintings. I might have called him and been in with a chance to ask him if he were interested in selling me some of his works. Now I can’t even do that.”

While listening to Lala describe what her mystery client wanted to purchase, Cheyney became excited at the prospect of assembling such a collection. But her excitement quickly faded. It had been nearly eight years since Cheyney had had anything to do with the New York art world. Her desire to return, and especially with a project like this one, flickered, but only just. You needed a flame burning bright to pull this deal off. Acton, his wife, and his dealer were not easy, and it meant coping with a world she had bombed in. Was she ready for that? From what she had been hearing about it, the art world was a place she no longer knew, and her ignorance had been confirmed by Lala’s news of the goings-on there. Now what?

The one thing that Cheyney was convinced she had to do was talk to Acton, who from Lala’s account was anxious to talk to her. They spoke for three hours and through a dozen telephone disconnections. Their friendship had always been close, something very special.

Acton had picked Cheyney up in Greenwich Village at the Cedars Bar, watering hole to New York’s famous artists. She was seventeen, beautiful, wide-eyed with wonder for the new world that had opened up for her as an art student in New York City. He befriended her on sight. She had youth, a loving spirit. She was quick, intelligent, and she wore her sexuality like a second skin. He was not only enchanted by her, but besotted. And for Cheyney, what better way to start a life in the art world than to have a companion who was already a well-known painter. She was won over by his genius, his sensitive sweet soul, his brilliant but complex mind, and his constant attentions. His desire to teach her everything about life and what art was all about. She was a willing student and he taught her everything he could about the adult world. He was instrumental in turning her from a girl into a woman, and in particular, an erotic woman.

Thirty years older than Cheyney, he was flattered by her receptiveness, her youth, her virginity. That she should want to give them all to him, and without reservation. He rewarded her with being the perfect first sexual encounter, the perfect first man in her life. He taught her how delicious, how succulent, sex could be. He gave her her first orgasm and sexual oblivion. Until Acton Pace sex for Cheyney had all been over-sexed
boys: a great deal of heavy breathing, hard, crass, inexperienced penises and bruised breasts. He rewarded the world with a burst of creative energy in his middle age that shot him to the peak of his career and from which he never looked back.

Theirs had been a romantic interlude that metamorphosed into a special friendship. His last fling with youth, her first serious adult affair. Neither of them could ever forget what they had meant to each other. They did after all come alive together.

It was therefore difficult for Cheyney to explain to Acton how, even now, healed as she might be from her gallery ordeal, talking to him was not easy. She had only just got rid of her guilt for having failed so many people. Coming back into the big world was not easy for her. There was something in his voice, in the things he had told her about his life these last years since they had met, that frightened her. He had become a recluse, or nearly. That she could sympathize with.

The following day she flew not to New York but to Boston, changed planes, and flew on to Provincetown. Reha and Acton Pace were waiting for her on the dock where the seaplane landed. Roberto was on his way to Cairo for a meeting with Kurt Walbrook, and Lala was reluctantly dog-sitting Zazou in Athens. Neither Roberto nor Cheyney was very happy. Lala was; she knew they were all going to be in the money. Cheyney, in spite of herself, would get the paintings. Art was just as much in her blood as it was in Acton Pace’s, and Kurt Walbrook’s.

Cheyney found everything to worry about during the flight to Boston. Would Zazou be all right with Lala? They only just tolerated each other at the best of times. Would she miss a call from Kurt Walbrook? Would Kurt Walbrook even call? Could she cope with seeing Provincetown and the Paces? listening to all the art talk she once loved so much? Did Acton believe her when she said she was coming for him, not his paintings? That was important to Cheyney. She found herself digging deeper and deeper to find things to worry about.

The letters of credit in her pocket Lala and Roberto forced her to take “just in case.” She hated that “just in case.” It meant they expected her to make some sort of a deal. And so did the telephone number and instructions they pinned to it of
Judd Whyatt, the lawyer their client wanted her to call, if a lawyer might be necessary. She was armed with more support than she could stand, for someone who was not going for the paintings. It looked so calculating. She resolved not to talk to Acton about buying any of his works. And she didn’t. It was he who insisted he wanted her to help him dispose of some of his paintings.

It was extremely odd. Stepping off the plane onto the dock, Cheyney was in a near-panic. She felt the way they say a drowning person feels. Her past art life flashed by her, so many images, there and gone in seconds. And then, even before she set eyes on the Paces, it was over. She suddenly felt wonderful. As if time had stood still. As if nothing bad had ever happened to her in her life. She was there, and the time was now, and there was Acton. She rushed into his arms. They hugged each other long and hard, and then she gave Reha a hug and kissed her on the cheek.

Acton looked wonderful to her. The house on the dunes was like a coming home for Cheyney, which was very strange, since Reha made no effort to hide her resentment over Cheyney’s visit. Reha of the barbed tongue, who had always resented the special relationship between Acton and Cheyney. She watched their every move, listened to their every word when Acton allowed her to be in their company. She retreated after the first twenty-four hours. Then Acton and Cheyney walked the dunes and the beach, and talked and talked, and spent endless hours in his studio, where he pulled out from the racks one beautiful canvas after another. They were high on art and beauty and friendship.

She was therefore very concerned when Reha got her on the side and told her that he had to be watched nearly all the time. That he suffered from severe depression. He had had no exhibitions for the last few years and refused to sell any paintings. He had definite ideas on the way he wanted his work handled, yet it seemed that he had no intention of telling anyone how. Reha was rarely let into the studio. He became more and more possessive about his work. The only compliment she gave to Cheyney, in between the most bitchy and spiteful things she could possibly say about Cheyney’s bankruptcy and subsequent
behavior, was that Reha had not seen Acton so happy and well in the last five years.

It had been a simple request. Well, that at least was how Acton saw it. Really it was far from simple. He wanted Cheyney to buy twenty-nine paintings for three million dollars, on condition that the collection should remain together, always. Three million dollars was a fraction of their value. Twenty million would have been a more correct evaluation. No, he didn’t want twenty million. Only three. He was insistent on that. If she could get her client to spend some of the other seventeen on a one-room museum to house them, and only them, well, that would be a different matter.

Cheyney’s condition for the purchase was that she call in a lawyer to witness the sale, and that Reha be present. Once they agreed, Cheyney began a round of phone calls. Cheyney to Lala in Athens, Lala to Roberto in Cairo, Roberto to Cheyney, Kurt Walbrook to Judd Whyatt and finally Judd Whyatt to Cheyney. The client agreed, but had a request, and a question. Would Acton Pace sell him another five for the client’s personal collection, since he intended to abide by the artist’s request? And was there a particular country in which Acton Pace would like the collection kept? Acton said yes to the first, and no to the second. Cheyney and Acton fixed on a price for the extra five.

And then they spent all night and most of the morning selecting the paintings with Reha banned from the studio, which was nothing out of the ordinary. Cheyney spent the most exhilarating night of her life in those hours with Acton. They sat on the floor and ate bacon and eggs, and huge wads of Jewish rye bread, smeared thick with butter, and drank Mouton Rothschild, his favorite wine, amid a blaze of color and forms, abstract impressions of a man’s life painted on canvas.

At one point he broke down and cried from relief, he claimed, that she had come and this was happening. He had intended to burn his paintings before he died. When she looked alarmed, he told her that it was not such a crazy idea. He hated the wheeling and dealing with them, and they were, after all, his to do with as he pleased. Now, he and she, together, will have saved them all. Three million, well, now five million smackers, as he had put it, in one lump will shut Reha up — for the rest
of my life, anyway. And I’ll not burn the rest, she can play the grande-dame artist’s wife while I’m alive. And count her canvases after I’m dead.

The first Reha got an idea something out of the ordinary was happening was when a helicopter landed on a sand dune near the house. That was when she met Judd Whyatt for the first time. She was finally let into the studio with Judd, and Acton took command of the situation. Chairs were found for everyone, and large crystal wine glasses filled with more Mouton Rothschild. Then he sat down next to Reha and, with great love and affection, explained how deeply unhappy he had been for years with the state of the art world, and that it was he who had persuaded Cheyney to help him. She had done so. Then he told Reha what was about to happen.

Of course, he had been terribly clever. There was no way Reha was going to say a word against what he was doing. She never even thought of it. She was too overwhelmed at having become a millionaire literally overnight. When the moving van arrived from Boston with a team of ten packers, she happily made coffee and sandwiches for everyone. Part of the agreement was that the sale of the paintings should not be made public until the purchaser desired it. It was done. It was over. And Cheyney was back in Athens forty-eight hours later.

Those days with Acton had been such a personal experience for Cheyney that only after Zazou had leapt into her arms, and Lala had crushed them both to her bosom in a near paroxysm of happiness, repeating, over and over, “Cheyney, you’ve done it. We’re in the money, the real money. Oh Cheyney,” did she realize she really was in the money. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the money.

Cheyney had been on the poverty line for so many years, and then living well but from hand to mouth for the last few years, that the idea of having no security had become a part of her life. With the realization of the money came a feeling of overwhelming relief, and then one of utter exaltation. What wealth confers is the freedom to do what you want when you want. Cheyney could now do just that. She placed her arm around Lala.

“And all thanks to your big mouth, old girl.”

“Yes,” she answered, beaming, “I take full credit for my part in this.”

Lala took a room for herself and Roberto at the Grande Bretagne and waited for him to return from Cairo. Cheyney slept for a day and a half. When she woke she called Acton to say thank you, needing reassurance that he was happy with the deal. She felt some pride when he said, “Cheyney, you gave me the only thing I ever wanted for my work, understanding, a passion for it, and now a house all of its own to live in. Even enough money to retreat into my studio and lock the world out. What’s not to be happy. For the second time in my life you have come into it when I needed you.”

While she was dressing to go and celebrate with Lala and Roberto, she was reminded of something Acton had said. “How many times have I climbed
my
Everest to reach the valley of my dreams? How many more ascents do you think there are left in me? I sometimes think I’m too battered, deafened, and wearied by the elements to enjoy my victories. Not so you, my beautiful Cheyney, mistress of my erotic fantasies, my dear friend and soul mate. You’ve only made a brave attempt once, there are a great many more climbs left in you. You’ll make the top of your Everest and, when you reach the valley of your dreams, you’ll enjoy every last one of your victories. I do, with every canvas that works for me.”

Cheyney looked at herself in the mirror. She saw what everyone else might now see. A beautiful, successful, independent woman, not a woman covered with scar tissue from her wounds. She placed a hand on her cheek to feel her own skin and she marveled at how elated she was.