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Authors: George Dawes Green

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BOOK: The Juror
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But a flutter of red troubles the edge of her vision. She stops.

Over by her pieces, her Grope Boxes on the wall, a smattering of red spots. Her heart takes a bound. She shuts her eyes.

No. Can’t be. Didn’t see what I thought I saw.

She opens her eyes again. Beside each of the boxes is a small red disk. Her eyes move from one to the other. Three disks in
all. Not equivocal half disks, not
this piece is perhaps spoken for.
But full flaming red suns.

Sold.

Follow the bouncing red ball and sing along:
“Sold! Sold! Sold!”

The song clanging sweetly in her head in time to the rushing of her blood till she hears Lainie laughing behind her, and then
Inez comes lumbering out of her office and says into her other ear, “So you made a fuckin sale. About time, too. Come.”

She leads Annie into her office.

“His name is Zach Lyde.” Inez lights a cigarette, wheezes into a hanky and wipes her chin. She leans back in her chair. She
was once a
Vogue
model. She was the
belle dame sans merci
of beat poets and abstract expressionists. Now she’s two hundred eighty pounds and tough-skinned and nasty when she needs
to be. In her shaggy quack of a voice, she tells Annie, “I’ve seen him around, I’ve heard stories. He’s respected. He’s a
bit, I don’t know, he’s very polite but he intimidates people, know what I mean? He
knows
his shit. He’s sweet on some of the minimalists. Marden. Some Neo-Geo. Alice Aycock. Lately he’s done some Christy Rupp.
He does
not
care for the big-dick marble cowboys. They say he’s got a fairly brilliant collection for himself, but mostly he buys for
friends. I mean for big collectors, honey. Big big big shits.”

“Like?”

“People you wouldn’t have heard of.”

“But if they’re such big collectors—”

Inez frowns. She looks down at the yellow notebook on her desk.

“Sat
Yus
ke? Heard of
him?

“No.”

“Yoshida Yasei?”

Annie shakes her head.

Says Inez, “Well, OK, how about the ever-popular Mor
Shoichi?”

“I’m getting the drift,” says Annie. “My stuff’s going to Japan?”

Inez shrugs. “I can’t say for sure. These are just names he mentioned.”

“You didn’t find out where my—”

“I asked him, he gave me
vague.
You know? Like, ’Well, I have to do some exploring. Find the right home.’ That sort of runaround—”

“And that was OK?” Annie asks. “That was good enough for you?”

“Well, that and a check for twenty-four thousand dollars—of which twelve is yours. Yes. That was plenty.”

Inez grins. Annie tries to grin back, but the worry is still on her brow.

Says Inez, “Look, kid, maybe you’re not getting this. You’ve just sold three of your boxes to a
power.
You ought to be squealing like a pig. You ought to be creaming your jeans.”

“I’m, I’m ecstatic,” says Annie. “It’s just, I want to know where my pieces are going. I don’t understand who this guy is.
Is he a collector? A dealer? Is he, what is he? What does he do for a living?”

Inez shrugs. “I understand he manages a commodities fund. He has an office on Maiden Lane—but I gather he’s not a slave to
it. I know he does
this.
Collecting. That’s all I know. Oh, and he takes trips sometimes. He saw my prayer wheel up on the wall there and he talked
to me about Nepal and I mean, Annie, when this man talks…”

“What?”

“Well, you forget your questions. You wind up just… watching him.” Inez laughs. “You’ll see. You’ll meet him. He told me he
wants to
work
with you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Beats me.
He
said it. Just do me a favor, OK? You’ll be dealing with him directly, that’s OK. But don’t screw me.”

Annie is astonished. “Inez, I love you.”

“Oh, that’s so touching I don’t know what the fuck to say. But maybe when you’re on your way to your opening at the Louvre,
maybe eternal devotion will slip your mind—”

“Inez.”


Everything
through me.”

“Yes. Inez.”

“Or I mean I will run you over. I will flatten you.”

She makes a face. She pushes her lips out, which pulls taut her slabby cheeks. She rises up in her seat and puts her fists
on the desk and leans forward, and Annie is put in mind of the prow of a John Deere tractor. Flattening is conceivable.

Then Inez laughs and hands her the check for twelve thousand dollars.

And Annie’s unmoored. Afloat. She talks with Inez for a few more minutes, but she hardly knows what she’s saying. She’s got
twelve thousand in her purse. She’s got more money coming. She’s got a career. She’s kissing Inez goodbye and then Lainie,
and she finds herself in the elevator and then the lobby, and amid swirls of fresh air she steps out onto the street. Sunlight
jumps up off the sidewalks. She’s got twelve thousand dollars in her purse and her head is stuffed with cotton, the utter
incomparable bliss of success—

“Annie Laird?”

She turns.

It’s the man with the gothic cheekbones.

He says, “I passed you a while ago—”

“I remember.”

“But by the time I decided it was you, I was all the way to Broome Street. And then I had to stop at Paula Cooper. But as
soon as I could, I ran back here.”

He also has brown irises flecked with yellow. He also has a charming lopsided smile.

He says, “I’m glad I caught you.”

She regards him quizzically. He tells her, “I’m Zach Lyde.”

My patron?

This babe is my patron?

He says, “I bought a few of your things.”

“Yeah,” she mumbles. “I have a, um, a check in my purse.”

She feels like the youngest, simplest sister in a fairy tale. At the happy windup, with her pockets full of gold.

He says, “I know I didn’t pay what they’re worth, not nearly, I know that. But then
I
didn’t set the price. I might like to buy others, though, and I’m prepared to offer much more—”

Annie asks him, “How do you know me? We haven’t met, have we?”

“Inez showed me your picture. In the catalog.”

“Oh.”

“It does not do you justice.”

She forgets to say thank you. She simply nods and lowers her eyes. Awkward silence. On the sidewalk, next to his soft Italian
loafers, there’s one of those senseless “running beans” that some street-artist keeps stenciling all over SoHo. Annie squints
at it. How can
any
of this make sense? Twelve
thousand
dollars. A patron who’s a work of art himself. Her boxes flying all over the world—

Which reminds her.

“Japan?” she asks him. She lifts her eyes again and asks, “Are you really sending my pieces—”

“Likely.”

“So will I ever see them again?”

“Oh, of course.” That skewed, reassuring smile. “Would you like to talk about it? Would you have time for lunch?”

“Now?”

He keeps looking at her. She checks her watch. “It’s eleven-thirty,” she says. “I have to be upstate by two. I have jury duty.”

He groans sympathetically. Then grins. “I wouldn’t want to make you late for
that.

“But just a bite of something? Why not? Sure.”

So he takes her for some simple Pacific fare at a hidden vine-trellised courtyard off Sullivan Street. They sit under an ornamental
maple with crimson leaves. The waiter seems to know Zach Lyde well. Is there anything that can be done, he asks, about his
poor ailing phalaenopsis at home?

Zach looks concerned. “What’s the matter with it?”

“The leaves getting kind of yellow?” says the waiter. “At the edges?”

“Sounds like you’re drowning it,” says Zach Lyde. “I suggest you relax. Neglect it a little, let it alone, leave it to its
own devices, watch what happens.”

The waiter nods solemnly and slips away.

Then it’s just the two of them in that courtyard. The breeze doesn’t get down here but the sunlight does. It blazes on the
bricks behind him.

She tastes the
ahi poki
on
crostini
with chili pepper
aioli.
It’s probably magnificent but how can she give it her full attention? Zach Lyde is telling her:

“OK. You want to know where your art’s going. Inez must have told you about my Japanese friends. They’re businessmen—of a
sort. I often buy for them. Nine times out of ten, they like what I buy.”

Annie asks, “They buy—what, for their homes? Their offices, what?”

“Sometimes they buy for their warehouses. Or sometimes, sometimes I simply send them pictures and they leave the art here.”

This baffles her. “They don’t even see it?”

“I want you to understand. You should clearly understand the nature of this sport. These men are not what you’d call art lovers.
They have good eyes, they’re canny, they’re shrewd. But they’re businessmen. Do you know Japan at all?”

“No.”

“Contemporary art is a form of specie there now. Because its value is not fixed, because its value is so inconstant, so attractively
pliant, it’s become a form of currency.”

“I don’t, I’m, I’m lost.”

“Then let me make a sketch for you.”

He brings his face a little closer to hers.

He says, “Suppose a Mr. Kawamoto becomes indebted to a Mr. Okita. Kawamoto is a wealthy industrialist, Okita is a businessman
of another kind. A
yakuza.
What we might call a gangster. But by no means a thug. Not a violent churl. No. He’s a graceful man, he’s cultivated, he’s
esteemed in his community. Now how can Kawamoto discharge his debt to this man? Not with cash of course—that would draw the
attention of the authorities in Tokyo. So instead he gives Okita a work of art. Perhaps a small simple sculpture by a young
New York artist. Not valued too dearly. Maybe half a million yen. Five thousand dollars. But who cares about price tags? It’s
the
thoughtfulness
of the gift that touches Okita so deeply. And as luck would have it, the value of the piece
blossoms
over the next year.

“One day a vice president from Kawamoto’s company calls on Okita, and offers him twenty million yen for the sculpture. This
is a lot of scratch, Lord knows, but the company can write it off as a business expense. Okita, of course, is loath to part
with his sentimental treasure, but he reluctantly accepts the offer. The debt is paid—with the help of the Japanese taxpayer.
Everyone’s happy. Not least the artist, who now has a record of a six-figure international sale. You like the curried
lumpia?

“And what about the sculpture?” says Annie. “What do they do with the sculpture? Throw it out?”

“Why should they do that? It’s worth two hundred thousand dollars.”

“But not really.”

“But it
is
. Really. It’s important that you understand this. What I send over there is the best art in the world. The most daring, the
most moving, the most original. By artists who have everything going for them except an inkling of how to create a career.
That’s the part I handle. The right review in
Artforum
, in
Flash Art
, the right humble little cottage in the Hamptons, the right niche in the Basel Artfair and Dokumenta. And as for the churning
in Japan? That merely solidifies natural values. But anyway this is, well, this is
my
job. Leave this to me. Your job is to stay in your studio and make your boxes.”

BOOK: The Juror
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