“No. If Cameron means to sell he’s got to find someone who wants a cut-rate Jones and is willing to keep it permanently under wraps. And I don’t think he — or anyone, probably — could do that. For that kind of deal you have to have a really important work on offer — a Johns or a Rothko or something of the sort. But that’s where you might have an advantage.”
“Me?” Polly frowned; her headache felt worse.
“You, darling.” Jacky yawned. “I couldn’t approach Cameron, because I’m known to be a reputable dealer. But you could hint to him that you might be interested in buying a Lorin Jones, if he happened to have one lying around.”
“No thanks.” Polly spoke with force and ill-suppressed indignation. “I’m not interested in getting mixed up in that kind of deal. Anyhow, I haven’t got the money.”
“Of course not,” Jacky said smoothly; he leaned over and patted her arm. “But it would be a good way of finding out if Cameron does have anything, wouldn’t it?” He smiled fishily. “And maybe getting it back.”
“Well, yeah, but I don’t know —”
“You see, if you found one of Lorin’s paintings in Cameron’s possession, Lennie and I could go to my lawyer, and find out what could be done. Possibly just threatening him with a lawsuit would be enough.”
“Suppose it wasn’t?”
“Well, we could actually sue. And then there’s always the police. I imagine he wouldn’t want that.” Jacky giggled. “Anyhow, if you should run into anything, I’d be grateful if you’d let me know as soon as possible. You can phone the gallery collect any time. Leave a message on the machine if I’m not there. ... Oh, Doris, darling! Marvelous to see you. Looking so very very well!”
Jacky rose to his feet and kissed the smoky air beside the cheek of one of Polly’s former colleagues. She excused herself from their conversation as soon as possible and went into the telephone booth, now fortunately empty.
To give verisimilitude to her excuse, she lifted the receiver and called her own number. The blurred but unpleasant underwater buzz of the dial tone filled her ear, and then an empty ringing; Jeanne and Betsy, she knew, were out. As she listened she gazed through the greeny-brown tinted glass, picking out Jacky and her other acquaintances among the swarming, swimming crowd in the gallery. It looked even worse to her now; a tank of lies, deals, subterfuges, and deceits; of slippery aquatic creatures, of things drowned and rotting.
She stared at the strips and shapes of brilliant color floating above the crowd; works of talent, even perhaps of genius. What were they doing here, sunk halfway into this slimy aquarium? she thought. And what was she doing here?
But then, that’s what Lorin Jones must have asked herself. The New York art world Polly saw now was the one Lorin must have seen: a vision of an underwater hell that drove her first to Wellfleet and then even farther, to Key West. Leaving a trail that Polly must, whatever she felt about it, follow.
The apartment was empty when Polly got back. On the kitchen counter was a note from Jeanne suggesting that she join them at a dish-to-pass Affirmative Action benefit in the Village, and instructions on warming up the supper she’d left in case Polly didn’t feel up to another party.
Wearily, gratefully, she turned on the oven and began to open her mail, which consisted entirely of bills and circulars. There was also a large, badly wrapped parcel for Stevie, sent by her father from San Diego; HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM GRANDDAD was scrawled in red felt-tipped marker above the address, and HANDLE WITH GREAT CARE PLEASE, FRIENDS below it. In spite of this appeal, or maybe because of it, the package had come apart at one end, exposing part of an inner wrapping paper printed with pink and yellow teddy bears.
Polly scowled as she looked at it, then sighed. This parcel was in every way typical of Carl Alter. The soiled and refolded brown paper, the coarse hairy tightly knotted string, the incongruous inner wrapping, the appeal to the kindness of strangers, the public expression of private sentiments; and most of all the fact that it was five weeks late. When she was a child, her father’s gifts always arrived after the occasion or never, and it was the same now with his grandson.
And what the hell was she going to do with the thing? It was too late to mail it to Denver; it would have to wait till Stevie got home. And meanwhile she would have to write her father and explain what had happened. Or maybe it would be quicker to call; she hadn’t spoken to him in a couple of months anyhow. Not that they ever had much to say to each other. Polly didn’t care what articles he had published lately in California Living and the local newspaper or how his high blood pressure and his current wife’s orchids were doing; he didn’t care what was happening to her, he never had. But every few months they went through the motions.
So, after she had eaten Jeanne’s veal-and-mushroom casserole (first-rate, as usual) and homemade noodles and green beans, and washed up, and made herself a cup of coffee, Polly dialed San Diego.
“Yeah,” her father said after they had exchanged the usual superficial news. “I know when Stevie’s birthday is, sure I do.” (Uh-huh, Polly thought.) “I just wasn’t able to find the kind of binoculars I wanted to send him right away, see.”
“Binoculars,” she repeated, thinking that considering the way the package looked they were probably broken; and then that as usual her father’s present was not only late but inappropriate. There was no use for binoculars in New York except to spy into neighbors’ windows, and she certainly didn’t want Stevie to start that. Yes, but in Colorado they’d be welcome, she remembered miserably. “I tell you what,” she said. “I’ll put on a new card, and give them to him at Christmas.”
“Nah, nah,” Carl Alter objected. Polly could see him shaking his head once or twice fast, the way he did. “I don’t want Stevie to have to wait any longer. You give them to him now, okay?”
“I can’t do that,” Polly said with irritation. “He’s in Denver now.”
“In Denver? Oh, yeah. Right.”
“He’s been there since September,” Polly said, positive that her father hadn’t bothered to listen to her before, or more likely hadn’t bothered to remember. She would have thought he was losing his memory, except that he’d always been like that.
“Well. You must miss him.”
“Very much,” Polly said crossly.
“He’s coming home for Christmas, though, hum?”
“Yeah. But I don’t know, he may go back to Colorado again for the spring term.”
“Ah. Well, that’s too bad,” Carl Alter said without concern or emphasis. “But you can visit him, that’ll make it all right.”
What a stupid, callous thing to say, Polly thought, feeling the familiar angry buzz in her chest. She should fly to Denver, stay in a motel, and have a couple of restaurant meals with Stevie, and that would make it “all right.”
“That’s what you ought to do,” her father continued. “Go to Colorado and visit him. Yep. You do that.”
“Oh, is that so!” Polly cried, losing her temper. “Well, I’m surprised you should say that, considering you practically never visited me after I moved to Rochester.”
There was a moment of silence on the cross-country phone line. “That was different,” Carl Alter said finally. “You never wanted to see me.”
“I did, too,” Polly insisted; she was damned if she was going to let him get away with this.
“Aw, come on. Back in Mamaroneck, whenever I came to take you out for the day, you used to have a tantrum. Your mother told me so. She practically had to force you to come with me.”