“Do you think it’s genuine?” Blair asked quietly.
“I think it could be,” I said, albeit reluctantly. I really wanted more time.
“It may still be available,” Trevor said, looking right at Baldwin. “I’m talking to Blair right now.”
“I’ll take it!” Blair said.
Trevor nodded and smiled in our general direction. “Call you back, Dez,” he said. “Sorry.”
“I’m off,” I said. I didn’t want to know what Blair was going to pay for this passion of his, and I sure didn’t want to find myself in the middle of a dustup between Baldwin and Crane. After all, both were customers.
“I’ll be at the Stane later,” Trevor called as I dodged past the Doberman again. “If you’ll join me, hen, I’ll stand you to a single malt or three.”
I didn’t take up Trevor’s offer of a scotch at the Stane, or rather The Dwarfie Stane, his favorite bar, there being only so much gloating I can stand in one day. I did see him a few days later, however. Baldwin, never one to quietly enjoy a victory over a competitor, held a rather grand cocktail party in his Rosedale mansion to show off his purchase. Trevor came with his latest girlfriend, Willow somebody or other. There was no point trying to remember her last name. If the relationship followed the normal course, she wouldn’t be around long enough for it to matter. She had the standard Trevor girlfriend look, long dark hair and even longer legs, a certain innocence of expression. Like most of them, she had an unusual name. McClintoch Swain was represented by both me and my business partner—and ex-husband—Clive Swain. I brought my life partner, Rob Luczka, as my date, and Clive brought his, my best friend Moira Meller.
Blair’s home was a shrine to Art Nouveau. It was a little over the top, but far be it for me to criticize, given I’d helped him to acquire a lot of it. Even the powder room walls had been covered in genuine Art Nouveau fabric. Not a copy, the real thing. Every room was a little museum, decorated to the point of excess and beyond. He had pieces from many of the masters of Art Nouveau, including some lovely furnishings by Josef Hoffmann, Carlos Bugatti, Henry van de Velde, and Victor Horta among others, and now of course he had a Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In the smaller items, he had much from Steuben and Tiffany, Sevres and Meissen and many lesser known but still important pieces dating to the period, and of course, determined as Blair was to erase his first mistake, a few genuine pieces of Galle glass. All were carefully placed, and artfully lit, none more so than the Mackintosh writing cabinet which was on a raised platform in an alcove off the living room all by itself. It was, to continue the shrine analogy, the holy of holies in Blair’s residence, the spot where he placed his prized possession of the moment.
I idly wondered what had happened to the objects previously displayed there. At one time the alcove had held a Josef Hoffman walnut-veneered sideboard, another time a rather unusual carved wood chair by Antoni Gaudi no less. I hadn’t seen either of those pieces in awhile. I wondered if he sold stuff he got tired of, or simply stored it in the basement, which would be unfortunate. Blair had paid just over a hundred thousand for that one chair, which was a deal considering how unique it was. He’d got it for a few tens of thousands less than the going rate because it had a very small cigarette burn on the seat. A shame really, which is perhaps why the chair was nowhere to be seen anymore. The Mackintosh writing cabinet was, if not his proudest acquisition, then perhaps his most extravagant. Blair was a Collector, with a capital C.
“Do you like this stuff?” Rob asked as we wandered from room to room. “All these swirls on everything?”
“I do, but not all in one place. I prefer a home to be a little more relaxed,” I replied. “Consistency can be a virtue of course, but rigid adherence to one particular design aesthetic may not be an entirely good idea if you have to live with it. There comes a point where it’s just too much, and with Art Nouveau, that point may come sooner rather than later. I haven’t told Blair that, of course. I’m not that stupid. Actually maybe I am. I did tell him once early on that he might consider mixing stuff up a little. I believe all he said was ‘babe’ in a pained tone.”
“Personally, I believe a home decorated entirely in one style is the product of a diseased mind,” Clive said. He does, too. A house like this makes Clive, who is the designer of our team, nauseous. Given his surroundings, on this particular occasion, he was holding up rather well.
“I think I’d have to agree with you there, Clive,” Rob said. This was something. Rob and Clive agreed about once every year or so. “The desk thing is nice, though. It seems cleaner in design.”
“Yes, Mackintosh’s furniture is more pleasingly geometric than most of the pieces from that period.”
“It’s the bugs on everything I wonder about,” Moira said.
“But that’s the point, you see,” I interjected. “Art Nouveau appeared in the late nineteenth century as a reaction to industrialization, the mass production of everything. The people who espoused it believed objects should be made by hand, by artists and real craftspeople, and the motifs went back to nature, tendrils, leaves, insects and crustaceans, organic designs really.”
“Okay, but who wants to eat off platters with bugs on them?” Rob said.
“Just about everybody, apparently,” Clive said. “Have you seen the way people are attacking the mounds of shrimps and oysters and lobster, to say nothing of the gallons of real champagne being swilled? You can fault Blair’s design sense, but you can’t complain about the food.”
He was right. The party was an extravagant event. Blair didn’t seem to know how to do anything in a quiet way. I confess I do not enjoy parties like this, but both Blair and Trevor were so excited about the Mackintosh it would have been churlish to refuse to attend, and furthermore, as Clive is always pointing out, it is good for business for us to be seen in such company. Everybody, but everybody was there: media types, film stars, the usual hangers-on, titans of industry, various civic leaders, including the mayor, and even the chief of police, which was a bit of a surprise, considering how a fair number of Blair’s legal successes must have galled him and how many of Blair’s clients, some of whom looked to be auditioning for a part in The Sopranos, were also in attendance.
“Didn’t I arrest that guy for something?” Rob said. He’s a Mountie, an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, so he can ask questions like that.
“Arrest whom?”
“The guy on the far side of the buffet table scarfing down all the shrimp. What is he doing here? I’m sure I arrested him for something.”
“If you didn’t, you should have. Anyone who wears a green suit like that deserves to languish in a dungeon forever,” Clive said.
“You are such a design snob, Clive,” Moira said.
“Yes, I am. Someone has to try to set some aesthetic standards for this great city of ours. Tough job, I’ll grant you. Ah, Trevor, there you are. Nice sale. We at McClintoch and Swain are consumed with envy.”
“What? Oh, thank you, Clive,” Trevor said, before he hastily moved on to the next room.
“What’s eating him, I wonder?” Clive asked. “It’s not every day I hand out a compliment. I expected him to be revoltingly cheerful, if not downright triumphant about the whole thing, and he just looks kind of nervous. Maybe he’s having a fight with his girlfriend. Attractive one, that. What’s her name? Balsam or something?”
“Willow, you twit,” Moira said, giving him a dig in the ribs.
“Well, I knew it was a tree.”
“Is that Desmond Crane?” Rob said. “The lawyer who competes with Baldwin to get the most slime off on technicalities? It is Crane, isn’t it?”