Louise Nyles waited in an empty Conde Nast office. Strange, no receptionist outside, just Louise’s name on a sign taped to a door. Inside, a meeting table with six leather swivel chairs, and framed magazine covers displayed across the walls. Though the Art Attack interview was slated to focus on her painting career, inevitably she would be asked about Philip. Alive or dead, her husband remained a looming storm cloud.
The bastard picked the right moment to die—that was for sure. December of 1989. At the tail end of the New York art speculation boom which made his fame and fortune. Their fortune. Now, in mid-February of 1990, the world felt different in downtown Manhattan. The art obituaries had been written. The failure of Warhol’s final paintings to sell, a panicked retreat by Japanese buyers who had broken all records in purchase prices for Van Gogh and Picasso, an auctioneer at Sotheby’s reduced to tears in January after no offers came, even at the opening bid.
It became personal two weeks ago when Louise’s SoHo gallery, Dorn-Saxby, informed her in writing they would cease representation as of April 1st. She being the April Fool. The incestuous art world didn’t know yet, so no reason to broach the subject today. Louise would kill for good press right now.
Being married to a legendary eighties artist had initially been a boon, but soon became an albatross. Louise could actually draw, paint, and even sculpt, while Philip stuck household objects to his canvases’ thick impasto of random paint splashes. Pieces from Philip’s Fork series and Ashtray series sold for $50,000 to $70,000 each, while her work peaked at under ten grand. Louise had grown used to being treated like an add-on, a plus one in the fizz of gallery opening, wine parties that she trundled through on a weekly basis. She suspected niceties directed toward her, were in fact attempts to get closer to Philip’s iridescent glow of success and art scene notoriety.
Most in-the-know knew they’d been separated for two years. He lived in their renovated West Village brownstone, while she shuttled between a tiny apartment paid by his monthly allowance and the Harlem painting studio she rented herself.
Louise felt a sense of guilty relief upon hearing of his fatal heart seizures. Philip had been warned repeatedly after previous heart attacks and bypass surgery. She hoped to benefit as the surviving Nyles. A towering redwood tree felled to reveal vibrant life at the carpet of the forest. No, the damn art market collapsed . A fickle market at best, fueled on hype, hokum, cultist belief, and unfounded speculation.
The door clicked open. “Hello?” A woman in her mid-thirties tapped in on heels, wearing a jacket and skirt. She shook a boyish bob of dark brown hair away from her eyes. “I’m Emily Duran, and it’s an honor, Ms. Nyles.” They shook hands.
“Louise is fine.” She knew the type. The downtown gallery scene was replete with young ladies between twenty-two and thirty-five dressed in black. Graduates from liberal arts colleges like Bard, Vassar, and Bennington. They swam about on the blurry periphery as assistants or event photographers, determined to be part of that world. At some point, they discovered they weren’t and would never become professional artists. The talent or opportunities they hoped for never materializing. By then, they’d witnessed the darker side, had endured relationships with married gallery owners or temperamental painters. They usually went skulking back home to Philadelphia, Chicago, or Cleveland, never to be seen again.
“Have some water.” Emily filled two glasses from an Evian bottle. She sat across the table from Louise and set her microcassette recorder between them. “Before we start,” Emily said, “my condolences over your husband. Philip Nyles was an artist, a legend.” Her mouth trembled. “Though I never interviewed him, I knew him casually, from various events.”
“Thank you.” Louise scrutinized Emily. Hangers-on frothed and trailed in Philip’s wake at gallery openings. Those “may I get you a drink, I love your new work, let me refill your wine glass, want to smoke a joint, where’s the after-party?” people.
Emily looked fragile for a moment, but smoothed her wrinkling jacket and sat up straight to switch on the recorder. “You’ve been showing at Dorn-Saxby Gallery for ten years. Will this relationship continue into the nineties?”
Louise danced around the truth. “I am currently represented by Dorn-Saxby, and it is 1990.” She smiled. “However, with the art world upheavals, I think it’s important to also branch out to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Santa Fe—which is the fourth largest art market in America now.”
Emily cocked her head. “Upheavals? You mean the Wall Street Journal article on the speculation boom ending and the art market crashing?” She gazed up, in-between taking notes.
“That’s right,” Louise said. “I also sense the death of Warhol in 1987, Basquiat in ’88, as well as Keith Haring’s recent passing have wielded a cumulative effect. Art buyers get skittish. Who are the new champions? Do they gamble on untested artists or just wait and see?”
“So you think we’re in wait-and-see mode?”
“As an optimist, I’ll say yes.” Louise didn’t believe herself at all. Whatever was or had been in Manhattan was now over—dead and buried.
Emily paused the recorder. “I didn’t want this assignment.” She fiddled with her silk scarf. “I’ve followed your career, thought you deserved more…” Her words trailed off. “Also, since I knew your husband professionally, I told my editor I wasn’t detached enough to be a good interviewer. But he insisted I could get to the bottom of the mysteries.”
“Mysteries?”
Louise had dated Philip in her mid-thirties, then married him at thirty-nine. But by age forty-five he no longer wanted to sleep with her.
“We have a deeper, more important love,” he’d said in their 11th Street brownstone. “We’re creative partners, bonded through our work.”
“So less-important physical love is reserved for assistants and groupies?”
“I am not in love with anyone else,” he’d insisted, almost pouting. Deflecting.
“Except yourself.” She frowned and soon made the small second floor den her bedroom.
After that, when they ventured out together to parties or openings, Louise developed a radar for Philip’s affairs. She couldn’t read it in him. Philip acted flirtatious toward man and woman alike, telling boisterous jokes and relaying stories about famous artists that always ended by shining a flattering light upon himself. No, Louise gauged it in the women. Charmed, blushing, touching his arm or hand, laughing a bit too hard at well-worn anecdotes. Some undoubtedly loved him, while others saw that numinous glow, wanted to be rescued from their squalid East Village studio apartment, minimum wage, bottom dweller on the art pyramid lives. To be recognized, gossiped about, and desired, instead of treated like the anonymous, bow-tied wine servers in starched white shirts consigned to the outskirts of every event. “May I fill your glass? Would you like the red or the white?” Smile.
Louise came back into focus. “Please, continue.”
“Art in America praised your genius, saying that after thirty years of painting, you retained your initial primitive style and infantile technique.” Emily paused. “Were you flattered?”
“Not really.” Louise connected the dots. Emily had shadowed Philip at parties, running errands, proffering drinks. Maybe three years ago, then Emily later disappeared from his orbit. Philip’s affairs lasted a year at most. Consistent in his attraction to women between thirty and forty, even as he aged toward seventy just before his death.
Louise was forty-nine now, and every morning she stared in horror at fifty rushing relentlessly at her in the bathroom mirror. Maybe this Emily still retained bitterness after being dumped. Louise never forgave the young boy who rejected her to play with another little girl in a Long Island sandbox decades ago.
“As artists, was there competition between you and your husband?” Emily asked.
Louise laughed, drank Evian, coughed and continued laughing until Emily appeared uncomfortable. “Philip was world famous. His galleries had waiting lists of buyers wanting a future creation, sight unseen.” Louise paused. “While I have a small coterie of buyers who are from New York or nearby. My art is valued lower. I’d rather compete with myself. It’s less frustrating and humbling.”
“There was talk, perhaps unfounded, that his Tea Cup attachment series was created by a warehouse of minimum wage workers, and—”
“—those prints he signed, now attributed to other artists,” Louise finished. “Yes, it seems every dentist in Florida bought one.” She stared directly at Emily. “My husband became entangled with various younger women. Even after heart problems and warnings from his cardiologist, he drank nightly, chain-smoked Camels, and snorted drugs. He got distracted from creating new art. From what I know, he spent valuable time buying off girlfriends, paying for their…operations, and fighting fraud charges with lawyers. That forced him to raise cash. Sometimes using dubious methods.”
Emily’s face reddened as she stared downward. “You believe no one else shared your husband’s vices?”
“Ha!” Louise thumped her hand down on the table. “I’ve been in rehab and at detox centers. I wish half the gallery world would check-in too. My point was, while many of us lived lives fueled by alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity, we weren’t doing so after a quadruple bypass operation.”
“I…I wouldn’t know those details,” Emily stuttered.
“A girl in every port. In Berlin art circles, Germans nick-named Philip—”
“Enough.” Emily stopped the tape again. “I apologize.” She wiped her brow with a handkerchief. “I got off-topic. This interview is about you. What do you see for your future art?”
“Different light and more space in my work, less clutter. The Southwest is calling.”
Emily rubbed her forehead while wincing.
“Are you alright?”
“Just a migraine.” Emily swallowed Advil with water. “Last question. I apologize if it’s sensitive. There are allegations your husband might not have died from an overdose of heart medications, but in fact committed suicide, or that someone else may have been involved.”
“Pure speculation,” Louise said. “Philip took twelve pills a day for his heart issues. We’ve lived separately for the past two years, but I know his short-term memory has been weak since he turned sixty. He could have easily forgotten a morning dosage and doubled it. I begged him to hire a live-in nurse after bypass surgery. He never listened to me…” She rolled her chair backward. “We’re done, right? I need some air.” Louise had revealed too much. She clawed at the recorder, extricating the cassette.
“Hey, wait!”
“Use your notes, or memory. You’re a pro.”
Outside, the sky hung gray, wind gusting litter into the air. Louise shielded her eyes with sunglasses from the soot and whatever Manhattan’s harsh elements might throw against her. She tied her graying hair back and wrapped a Cat in the Hat scarf about herself, then merged into the hurried street pace of pedestrians. After walking ten blocks down Broadway, Louise could see the purple banner with gold lettering flapping in the breeze outside Dorn-Saxby Gallery. A grumbling tour bus idled by the curb. “See the famous SoHo art scene before it goes extinct,” she imagined a guide announcing.
Frederick Dorn sat on the edge of a desk just inside, flirting with the latest young blonde receptionist, Britta or Gitte.
“Freddie, I was in the area. Came to pick up a few pieces.”
“Hey, Louise.” Dorn stood and hugged her. “Glad you dropped by. We’re holding a demonstration today.” They moved into the main exhibition room, where her work had hung many times in the past. No longer. The entire floor lay covered by tarps and a giant piece of canvas was affixed to the center of them.
A Slavic-looking man with hair in a tight bun wore strange plastic clothing, gloves and booties. He immersed himself to the neck in a bathtub of paint.
“What is this?” Louise turned toward the gallery owner.
“The future.” Dorn smiled. “That’s Abzorba,” he whispered. “Performance artist and human paintbrush.”
New York pedestrians and a Japanese tour group from the waiting bus formed a circle around the man, gasping and taking photographs. Abzorba rose out of the tub, his face grim and determined, before laying down on the eight by ten strip of canvas. He began to roll about, straight across then diagonally, paint splashing and spreading everywhere.
The audience broke into applause. The artist raised his paint-spattered chin, basking in their approval.
“And that will sell?” Louise asked quietly.
They moved toward Dorn’s rear office. “In time it will,” he said. “Installation art, performance art. That’s the future.” He studied her critically. “I wish you could adapt.” Dorn opened the back room which once served as her spare painting studio. Now, several television monitors sat on carpeted pedestals playing videos of a woman’s stomach operation from different angles. “Bianca Mendoza’s gallbladder series is astonishing,” he said. “Incredibly cutting edge art. A surgeon visiting from Brazil yesterday offered us $50,000.”
Louise sensed herself shrinking away, a speck of dust, soon to be a sub-atomic particle.
Dorn pointed to a medium-sized canvas with thick variations of the color brown rising above its surface. “You know Miklos from Budapest, right?”
Louise nodded to mask her ignorance.
“Instead of paint, he uses a variety of animal dung. Stunning.” Dorn sighed. “Miklos is considered the foremost excremental artist in all of Eastern Europe.”
Louise felt dizzy. “I don’t know…”
“Weezie, I love your work, but two-dimensional abstracts aren’t selling right now. Buyers in 1990 want your heart, your soul, your bodily fluids!”
Dorn and Louise bundled four smaller paintings together. “Uh, someone called for you.”
“A buyer?”
“No.” Dorn paused. “He wanted your mobile number. I didn’t give it.”
“Thanks, Frederick.”
#
With the canvases propped under her arm, Louise hiked toward the uptown subway stop north of Houston Street. Dark clouds hung low around downtown towers and parapets, while passersby looked gray and gaunt. Pigeons showing discolored plumage clucked and flapped about trash bins. Metal gates creaked in alleyways between buildings where gargoyles leered from cornice moldings above. Positively Medieval.
Louise read movie ads pasted to the plywood walls surrounding construction sites: Jacob’s Ladder, Pretty Woman, The Godfather Part III, a giant airbrushed image of Madonna plastered on the side of a building. She heard rap and rock and reggae and Puerto Rican music she couldn’t summon a name for. En route, her mobile phone rang inside her purse. She removed the walkie talkie-sized object and answered.
“Darling, it’s Sergio,” the man said. “I’ve solved all your problems.”
“What?”
“I’ve found a buyer for your pieces,” he said. “Twenty-thousand to add to the existing twenty you tucked away. Now you’ve got enough for a deposit on that delightful condo in Santa Fe.”
“Really?” She dodged around two surly males reeking of booze. Louise felt confident her phone could serve as a brick to ward off any human wreckage. “Somebody wants two of my paintings?”
A long interstice of silence followed where Louise thought they may have become disconnected.
“Love,” Sergio finally said. “After the market crash? I can’t ask or get ten grand for one of your pieces anymore…”
“Okay, so it’s $20,000 for three?” Silence. “Not four?” Her voice cracked.
“Four pieces,” he said in a solemn tone. “But before you scream, you won’t have to split the money with Dorn-Saxby. So you haven’t devaluated that much. Just subtract my 20% and the rest is yours.”
“20%? You were getting 15% through December.”
“Sweetheart, take a Valium. God knows I’ve swallowed them daily since the crash. I sent the statement regarding managerial fee adjustments—to your Harlem studio address.”
“Oh, I forgot.” Louise never checked her mailbox in that lobby. Too dangerous to linger. Drug addicts often lay sprawled in the vestibule. She raced upstairs to her third-floor studio to avoid making contact with a single living soul. “Please send future mailings to my apartment.”
“Yes, definitely, Louise. But what about the offer?”
“For which? The green paintings, my stomach bile series?”
“No, the blue ones.”
“Oh, the bacteria series.” Louise shook her fist to repel a cab edging toward her on the crosswalk. “It’s terrible, awful. Such an insulting offer.”
“So you’re not interested?”
“Damn it, you know I am,” she said. “Have them sign a bank check to me by Monday. I leave for New Mexico end of next week.”
As Louise rode the subway uptown, she thought of Nestor Garcia. A real estate agent, and professional flirt. As Nestor showed her houses and condos around Santa Fe, their flirtation became serious. Her one week reconnaissance mission stretched longer as they began an affair. Idiotic. He was thirty-nine, not a painter, musician, or a creative soul, but he certainly became an art enthusiast upon hearing of her husband’s death. Even in the Southwest, Philip Nyles’ name commanded recognition, and the whispery respect that a large bank account earns one.
Louise hadn’t explained about Philip’s previous wives and four children, all vying for the inheritance. At present, his will was being contested in court, with only the competing lawyers earning money. Not enough to go around. Philip had wasted countless thousands on medical bills, lawyer fees, his absurd collection of objet d’art from across the globe. Eventually Nestor would realize. Then Louise would know if this foolish fling was just that or perhaps her last chance for a serious relationship. Her mother had warned, “Never be single after fifty, especially in a crowded, manic city like New York.”
At the 125th Street stop, Louise carried the paintings toward her nearby studio. Creeping gentrification had not yet reached this neighborhood. Vacant lots sprouted weeds and garbage, condemned brick buildings showed boarded-up windows, rusted signs hung outside long-closed stores, and watchful people lingered on stoops. The blat-blat-blat of youths dribbling basketballs sounded from a nearby playground.
Louise hustled up the stairs to be startled by Laroy on her landing.
“Yo, Ms. Nyles,” he said. “I knocked. Thought you might be in the zone.”
“Laroy, I’ve known you for two years. It’s Louise,” she said, gasping for breath. They had met when she moved in.
He was fascinated by a middle-aged, white woman renting a painting studio in Harlem. Laroy loved to study her canvases when she had finished, though admitted, “The colors are sweet but I don’t understand this abstract shit at all.”
“Nobody understands abstract art,” she’d said. “You just feel it or enjoy it on a non-logical level.” Louise hired him for odd jobs: painting, fixing windows, even bringing occasional bottles from the liquor store he worked part-time at. A wise decision. No one in the building hassled her with Laroy as a protective spirit.
“How are things at Uptown Liquor?” She asked, since he lingered on the landing without clear direction.
“Place gets robbed every week. It’s crazy.”
“Wow. Aren’t you scared of getting shot?”
“No. Most of the homeboys remember me.” He pointed vaguely in the direction of the basketball courts. “I just give them the cash. They leave me alone.” His face sank into a frown as he scratched his head. “Listen, two men been by asking for you, yesterday and this morning. White dudes in suits. Like cops.”
“I told you about my husband’s death.” She set the paintings down. “Probably lawyers, or their assistants.” She rubbed her face. “Maybe the landlord. I’m behind on rent.”
“Uh, the landlord looks like me.”
“That’s Myron, our apartment manager. He collects our rents for the company downtown.”
“If you say so. But those men seemed eager to find you.” Laroy wandered toward the stairwell. “Give me a shout if you’ve got any new projects.”
“Will do.” She locked and bolted the studio’s door behind her.
When shadows grew long outside her window—the ancient fear of night and being lonely and widowed amid the thrumming pulse of Manhattan rising vampiric until dawn creeping into her consciousness—someone pounded on the door.
Louise pulled the boombox’s plug from the wall socket and sat huddled in the corner, silent. Laroy always drummed three taps up high, his code. This was a conventional knock-knock.
“Mrs. Nyles?” Solid pounding again, then footsteps descending on the hard iron staircase.
Never answer your door to the unknown in New York.
#
On Wednesday, Louise called Nestor in Santa Fe. “Hey, I’m flying out Friday. Hope to put down a deposit on that place I loved, and…I want to see you too.”
“Louise,” Nestor said. “I’m busy now, a client is closing on a house. Let me write down your flight and arrival time. I’ll pick you up.”
“I’m landing in Albuquerque not Santa Fe.”
“No problem. Less than an hour drive.”
She told him the details.
“See you soon, Louise. Got to run.” He disconnected.
Louise took her Pan Am flight from La Guardia to Albuquerque Sunport. During landing, she stared out at the low buildings, the spread of desert and snow-capped Sandia Mountains rising up. Maybe people were right, the light really was different in New Mexico. Softer, more artistic.
Beyond the gates, eager family members waited on arriving passengers, but no Nestor. Perhaps she’d landed early. Louise walked just outside the terminal basking in the sunshine. Fifty degrees felt warm and comfortable for February. She called Nestor on her mobile phone. No answer. She winced but wouldn’t let it spoil the start of her new life; she’d escaped.
Louise tried Nestor again, at his office number. A receptionist at Plaza Real Estate answered.
“He’s out of the office today,” she said. “I can take a message.”
“Well, I’d hoped to speak to him…”
“I understand,” the receptionist replied. “Nestor’s up in Taos skiing with his wife. Could I get your name?”
“No, I have to, uh, go.” Louise clicked her phone off. In the distance she saw a handsome Latino man approaching her and smiling.
“Mrs. Louise Nyles?” he asked when close.
“Yes…”
“Detective Sanchez, Albuquerque Police. May we speak?” The beaming man led her into a room behind the baggage carousels, where lost luggage got stored. And indeed, several molested-looking suitcases lingered on a large wheeled cart.
“What’s this about?”
“I’m afraid I need to request you return to New York City.”
“Seriously? Why?”
“Full autopsy results came in for your deceased husband. Philip Nyles’ death was no accident. Someone deliberately gave him too much heart medication.”
“What? How does this involve me?”
“You are one of two people sought for questioning.”
“So it’s all speculation?”
Sanchez didn’t reply.
“And if I refuse?”
The detective’s smile flatlined. “You are not under arrest, but are required to return for questioning. The dinner’s quite good on the flight. Southwestern chicken, I believe.”
“You said two people.” She thought for a moment. “Not the writer Emily Duran who works for Art Attack Magazine?” Her ears felt clogged with wax, the detective’s words a blur.
“That name came up.” Agent Sanchez frowned. “But she’s unemployed.”
Louise watched daylight swooping through the automatic doors leading out to cabs and shuttles, studied the oversized Georgia O’Keeffe prints hanging along the walls. “It’s all speculation,” she repeated, but Sanchez wasn’t listening.
He crooked an arm into Louise’s elbow and led her reluctantly toward the gates and flights, while she recalled her mother’s recent words.
“There are two types of people, Louise. Those who leave Manhattan to never ever return, and those who try and try to get away but keep getting dragged back. You probably don’t want to hear which type I think you are.”
“You’re right, I don’t, Mom.”
Max Talley was born in New York City and lives in Southern California. He likes to write fiction and essays, paint surreal images, and play guitar, and believes road trips are so essential for inspiration. Talley is associate editor for Santa Barbara Literary Journal.