Allan Stein. Matthew Stadler

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СКАЧАТЬ a stick. His eyes are dark flowers, barely opened. Gertrude has her hands on his shoulders, like the claws of a bird, though it’s unclear if she means to protect or devour him. The Steins’ faces are hard and flat, like the cut ends of tree stumps; they’re all staring in different directions. Only Allan and Gertrude regard us directly, and this fact enchanted me—the directness of the boy’s regard. Hank took the photocopied bill of lading from Herbert.

      “Mmm, I see it right there. ‘Three preliminary drawings.’ ” A good empiricist, Hank.

      “I think Allan never sent them,” Herbert went on. “He was never very good with details in the first place, plus being sick and all. The drawings probably stayed in Paris and ended up in the hands of his family when he died.” The Grand management had scattered white narcissus willy-nilly throughout the dining room, so the air was pungent and cloying. Herbert performed a miracle with the encyclopedic wine list (thirty pages, possibly copied direct from the distributor’s warehouse inventory), finding an Oregon pinot to complement the ubiquitous floral perfume. This acrobatic wine also had the virtue of going well with the lamb we ordered. We dined in a sea of odors: garlic, sage, rosemary, more garlic, someone else’s cheese cut by my knife (an earlier dinner), lingering cleanser used to scrub grit from the tiles, plus the overpowering blooms.

      “Do you know them?”

      “Allan’s family? I certainly know of them—”

      I interrupted. “That’s a very nice tie, Hank, very fine.” Hank’s tie interlocked salmon with clams in a kind-of Escheresque puzzle, a regional knickknack, I supposed, that he probably only wore on his trips north. It looked like a local bouillabaisse.

      “Thanks very much.” He tipped his fork to me, chewing. Herbert grimaced and poked at the pink lamb on his plate.

      “It’s a Jeffries,” Herbert put in. “We bought it right off the artist’s rack at his studio this morning. Hank is very lucky to have gotten the last one.”

      “Mmm, I thought it looked like a Jeffries,” I improvised.

      “Jeffries didn’t make it, he simply owned it. Don’t you read anything I clip for you? He’s selling a bunch of his old clothes, you know, with all the grime left in, signing them and selling them. Each one is dated so you can tell when he owned it, kind of a record of his own evolving bad taste.” Herbert cackled at this joke and then blushed when neither of us joined him. “This one’s from very early, before he had any kind of name, you see, so it’s especially sought after. Apparently it’s got blood and cum stains, Jeffries says so, anyway.”

      Hank’s tie, with its generous swirl of fish and bivalves, slipped neatly into a collar that was immaculate. Despite the pleasure of good company, the tasty lamb, the odors, the talk (a pungent, literate conversation)—all the epicurean delights, that is to say, of good company in a well-serviced cosmopolitan setting—I couldn’t keep my mind from swimming into that beguiling collar, with its perfect single crease, which Hank kept lightly touching. The dry circumspection of this knife’s-edge crease, tie snug as if folded within a thin and expert crepe, transported me to the moment of its creation—the firm hand of the laundress pressing her flat, hot iron to the cloth, the burst of steam, twined cotton fibers minutely loosened (breathing like Turks in a cave of heated rocks), then turned and pushed flat against the board into their traditional, more orderly arrangement. Handed to shirtless master in a flash, touching the fold (simple curtsy, a dry dollar pressed into her palm), the crease became a warm tunnel of delight for Hank’s finger, which he slipped along the inner edge while flipping the collar up for the tie. And there was more in that fold, that neck-long fold of cotton—in the poorly lit, poorly designed, poor great dining room of the Grand—with its doing and undoing. My attentions slipped back and forth along the collar, following Hank’s absent caress, his paired fingers mimicking the skis that rushed out from beneath me down the steep snowy ridge of Hurricane Hill, high above “our meadow,” where my mother and I watched the trails of jets tracing their course across the bright ice-blue sky to Tokyo, LA, Bogotá, Miami, Corsica for goodness’ sake, because there is so much in this world to see (she said, laughing and pushing off to race me down the hill), so much; and with the guilelessness of a twelve-year-old I felt the great wobbling globe spin forward beneath us toward a future of fantastic communications and swift, glamorous transport across promising skies. It disturbs me to realize this is not an interruption; this blossoming, this rupture, is what is permanent, and the hollow wooden box of conversation, our simple evening meal at the Grand, the way Herbert glances at me when he drinks his wine, the timely, clever remark, are the disturbances, interruptions that distract us from the more permanent ether in which our lives swim. Herbert, who never knew my mother, tells me this is crazy. But how could anyone call such transports insanity when they dwell in something as plain and sober as the crease of a well-starched collar? Hank’s fold, at dinner, was a portal into life’s pleasing enormity.

      “You know, Herbert, I still can’t find the cum stains,” Hank pointed out. “I checked the whole tie front and back before dinner.” He lifted it toward the inadequate candle. We scrutinized the tie.

      “Up by the top.” I pointed, helpful. “You see, next to the clam’s neck, or whatever they call that thing. It kind of disappears into the knot.” Herbert and I leaned closer, but Hank couldn’t see because it was too high.

      “Did Jeffries say it was his cum, or just cum generally?”

      “Oh, definitely his cum,” Herbert assured Hank. “Commodification of the artist, the artist’s ‘body-of-work,’ and blah-blah-blah. I know the ideas are getting pretty stale, but he is limiting the number of items, and with his signature on it there’s no doubt of the value. We could ask him to stain it again if you like, I mean, if there really is no discernible mark. I’m sure he’d be happy to do that for you, Hank.”

      Hank paid no attention to Herbert’s offer. He smoothed the tie proudly against his chest. “I’m giving it to my son,” he pointed out. “For his bar mitzvah.”

      “Oh, hell yes,” I let out. “He’ll love it. Kids love goofy ties.”

      An arcade ran around the periphery of this broad high-ceilinged room, with tiny shops full of gewgaws and magazines, sewing kits, tooth care and soaps, all the miscellanea of travel. The shops opened up both toward us—articulating glass walls drawn back like the flaps of a surgical wound—and outward to the surrounding streets (mere doors there) to encourage “flow-through.” Dogan, my very erotic and beloved ex-student, flowed through, his two parents in tow. Then they flowed right back out again. A miracle of architecture!

      “Look, the important thing about the family, Allan’s family, is that they are very sharp, and if they catch wind of any reason why I should be pursuing these particular drawings, if they even suspect I want them at all, for God’s sake, the price is going to go right through the ceiling.”

      “They’re not priceless already?”

      “No, I don’t think so. Picasso drawings aren’t all that rare. He must have scribbled on every surface in Europe, like Napoleon sleeping. These are probably undated, maybe even unsigned. In any case, I’ve got to let the family believe there’s no special value in them, that just by selling me the drawings they’re taking advantage of me.”

      “Maybe they sold them already—I mean, decades ago.”

      “They might have. But the family is the only starting point, unless the Baltimore Museum turns up something.”

      Hank held the photograph of Allan next to the color plate of Boy Leading a Horse. There was no similarity, per se. The face in the painting СКАЧАТЬ