Edge Play X (13 page)

“We need to go to the second floor,”
he said.

“You have an elevator in your house,”
X said, disbelievingly.
 
She pushed the
button and when the door opened Compton crawled into it with X following.
 
Even the elevator was lavish.
 
A richly upholstered bench ran along its
side, and a gilded mirror hung over a sleek metal handrail set against the dark
wood walls.

“How many rooms does this disgusting
place have?” X asked, yanking on his leash and jarring his head as she did so.

“Fourteen bedrooms, sixteen bathrooms,
two offices, three living areas, my private art gallery, an exercise room,
kitchen and formal dining area, and an astrological observatory on the roof.”

“Is that it?” X yanked the leash
again, jerking Compton’s head again.

“Well, there are the tennis courts,
the swimming pool, and a servant house on the property. And a garage for my
vehicles, of course.”

As the elevator door opened, X whacked
him with the crop and he scurried forward.

Compton led her down another long
hallway. As they passed an open bedroom, X noticed an older Latino woman who
was inside and in the middle of making a bed. The woman paused to look up from
her work and then quickly looked away. Perhaps she had seen something similar
before, and X bet to herself that the maid had to bite her lip to keep from
laughing. Or perhaps she was simply disgusted to see her boss going down the
hallway on his hands and knees, wearing only wrist and ankle cuffs and a collar
on his neck, a little metal ring on his tiny penis, followed by a boot-wearing
dominatrix smacking him on the ass with a crop. If the maid could see the size
of
Compton
’s penis, X thought, she surely would have
laughed, might not be able to contain
herself
. Maybe
the woman would tell the other maids how tiny he was, tell them how the rich
man had a small dick. X took pleasure in Compton’s humiliation.

They turned a corner and Steinberg was
there waiting in front of a sleek metal door.
 

“Sir,” he said to
Compton
, “please
forgive
me, but
the security system is not accepting my code.
 
You will need to do an optical imprint for it to unlock.”

Compton started to stand and X hit him
with her crop on his shoulder. Along with the drying blood on his ass, now the
cross-hatching of red lines had appeared on his back and shoulders.

“Did I tell you to stand?” X snipped, fully
aware that Steinberg was watching the whole thing, wanting to embarrass Compton
in front of his staff member. To her disappointment, whatever reaction
Steinberg was having to seeing his boss being treated in such a way was
unapparent.
 

“May I stand?” Compton asked. “I must
stand to use the optical scanner.”

“Beg me,” X said, wanting to fully
humiliate him.
 

“Please, X, allow me to stand and use
the optical scanner. I ask it with all humility.” Compton bowed his head down
like a bad dog. Steinberg diverted his eyes.

As X looked at Compton on his hands
and knees, it occurred to her that the man had become like one of her art
works. He bore the markings from her hand. Her medium had been human flesh, and
her technique, pain. It had its own grotesque beauty.

X turned to Steinberg and told him to
remove his tie and give it to her.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“You heard what I said. Give me your
tie.”

Steinberg, uncertain how to proceed,
paused as if frozen, as if time had stopped, unsure of how to respond. Finally,
Compton spoke after X whacked him with the crop.

“Take it off, David.”

And then David Steinberg reached up to
the half-Windsor knot of his necktie and began to undo the smooth blue strip of
cloth, the silk produced in China and the tie assembled in Italy before being
sold at an upscale men’s store that he had long ago shopped in while on a
business trip with Mr. Compton. Once the tie was free from his neck, Steinberg
held it in front of him meekly, the length of it draping over his thumb and
hanging toward the floor.

X took this tie from him and then let
it drop next to Compton’s head.

“Polish his shoes,” she commanded
Compton. “Spit
shine
them.”

Steinberg, taken aback by the demand
that had just been made to his boss, stood speechlessly, his mouth agape, his
skin reddening from embarrassment as Compton picked up the expensive tie. A
small wad of spit flew from Compton’s mouth, landing neatly on the tie, and he
began to polish Steinberg’s right loafer.

“Make sure you get by the heel,” X
said, and Compton buffed that area before moving on to the other shoe.

Finally, when Compton had finished
rubbing the entirety of Steinberg’s dress shoes, X told him to stand up.
 

Then she asked Steinberg scathingly,
“Why are you still here?”

“Mr. Compton has not used the optical
scanner before and may need help.”

Steinberg directed Compton to stand
directly in front of the optical scanner with his forehead against a pad made
for this purpose.

“Mr. Compton,” Steinberg said, “
say
‘Begin,’ and the software will recognize your voice and
start the scan.”

“May I speak, X?”

“Just say the God-damn word and get us
in there.”

“Begin.”

A little light came out from the
scanner and there was the sound of the mechanisms of the door unlocking. And
with that, Steinberg was gone.

The lights turned on automatically
when they entered the gallery. Small orbs above the paintings illuminated each
work and lights on the floor directed beams which accentuated the contours and
lines of the sculptures. Leather tufted benches that had been placed around the
room allowed a person to sit in front of a work if one so wished. A lovely
patterned carpet covered the entire floor. There were no windows in the gallery
which X guessed was for security but also to protect the work from light
damage.

X thought that when they entered that
she would be able to go directly to her paintings and retrieve them, but
instead, X was pulled in immediately and distracted by the works around her.
They mesmerized her, emitted a resonance which hypnotized and seduced. X walked
over to the closest wall and Compton scurried behind her, dragging his leash
behind him on the floor. In front of X was an original Van Gogh, one that X had
only ever seen listed in a book as privately-
owned.
She walked through the room, completely enrapt and entranced.

Compton’s collection included many of
the most well-known artists who had ever lived:
 
Picasso, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cezanne, and
Duchamp
shared a wall. These sat close to more recent artists such as John
DeAndrea
,
Blansky
, Mapplethorpe,
Warhol, Richard Estes, Don Eddy, Keith Haring, Francis Bacon, George Condo and
Lisa
Yuskavage
. There were sculptures by
Lipshitz
, Pineda, and
Marisol
.
 

X recognized the names of many of the artists,
but not all, and interestingly, these were the works that garnered the majority
of her attention. Because she was unfamiliar with those artists, X was unsure
how to interpret their paintings, the knowledge of the artist’s life or other
works being unavailable for her to use as a lens through which to view them.

So hypnotized she was by all the works
that X barely remembered that Compton was following behind her on his hands and
knees. X continued through the room as if in a trance until finally, in front
of her, X saw her paintings clustered together.
 
They looked so out of place among those other works and masterpieces
that she almost broke down crying from the inferiority she felt. Instead, she
backhanded Compton across his face. She wouldn’t be feeling this way if it
weren’t for him.

“Why do you have them here?” X said,
staring at them there on the wall.

“I don’t understand what you mean,
this is my art gallery.”

“But they don’t belong here,” X said
as tears started to roll down her cheeks. She didn’t want Compton to see her
cry but he looked up at her as she spoke.

“They do belong here,” he said,
starting to kiss her boots.
 
He kissed
them at first gently and then completely; what had begun as little pecks to the
tops of her feet turned to pure adulation—he licked them, he clung to them, he
rubbed his face onto them, leaving smears where once there was shine.

She asked him, challenging Compton,
“Why do you have all these works, why do you own them? How can you say that
they are yours?”

Compton sat down on his ass and
scanned them all, contemplating her question.

“It makes me feel peaceful to come
here,” he answered.

“But these works, they belong to
humanity. They should be in a museum.”

“After my death, they will all be
distributed to museums I have specified.”

X looked him in the eye. “But why must
you have them all now?” The fact that one man had all these works, including
her own, seemed incredibly selfish and petty. X sat down on a bench and Compton
sat on the floor next to her like a dog, both of them looking at the artworks
around them.

“X,” Compton began, his voice gentle
and thoughtful, “when I come here and look at these pieces, it gives me
something that I am unable to get anywhere else. Artists see things in a way
that other people are unable to experience except through artwork. All I can
answer is that it makes other parts of my life richer to be able to see through
their eyes.”

“But why did you buy
my
paintings?” X asked. “To own me? To
make me want to hurt you?”

“No,” he began. “I bought them because
I wanted to be able to see through your eyes.”

What Compton did not elucidate on was
that he had mostly purchased her paintings because he thought that it would
make her happy. There are two ways in which people are motivated in the world—internally
or externally. Compton, who was motivated by external factors, mistakenly
thought that X, who was motivated by internal measurements, would be pleased
with the newfound fame and praise that had come her way due to his purchase of
her paintings. And if his purchase was destined to make her angry, to make her
want to hurt him more, even that would be an acceptable outcome. He won either
way.

Compton believed in artistic talent—he
did—but he, like X, knew that there were many incredibly talented artists in
the world who would never get a glimpse of fame or recognition. An artist
needed vetted, needed a stamp of approval from those in power before he or she
was accepted as such in the general population. That stamp typically
came
hand-in-hand with the amount of money that could be
garnered from a particular piece—money was the de facto measurement of the
particular value of an artist. Collectors who knew very little about art would
buy works because this or that artist had a buzz about them and there was a
likelihood that the piece would increase in value.

What X wanted was not fame, but
talent. She wanted to find satisfaction in her own works. The critics could go
to hell—what did they ever create anyway? A bunch of blabber. Give me a
paintbrush, and that is enough, she had always thought. No, X painted for this
reason—she painted because she couldn’t not paint.

There was a deep, suffocating silence.

“I want them back,” X repeated.

“X, I cannot.
 
If it is more money you need, name your
price.”

She slapped him and then slapped him
again.

“It’s not about the money. They’re my
paintings.”
 

“They will always be your paintings,
X, regardless of who owns them.”

X decided to threaten him. “I won’t
see you again,” X said, fully aware that she could not just leave him but
wanting to see his reaction and ascertain if her threat would be effective.

He called her bluff. “If that is how
it must be then I suppose I will have to accept it. But let me make you another
offer, X. In return for your paintings remaining at my gallery, you may choose
another work, whichever one you wish, and it will be yours. Donate it to a
museum if you want. Send it to them in the mail.”

X could barely believe his offer. No
wonder the man was known as being able to negotiate almost any deal.

She walked around the room again until
stopping in a dark corner where she found a small Van Gogh painting, a portrait
of a woman which she knew that Van Gogh had painted at least four different
ways. He hadn’t simply painted over his original—he had painted several
different versions—in one, the woman wore a green shirt; in another, black; in
one, the flowers of the wallpaper behind her are blue, and in another white.
What had he seen that caused him to paint what was essentially the same image
several times with just a subtle variation? X walked over to it and started to
take it off the wall.