Fourteen-hour days, that’s how the next four went. I can’t exactly say I enjoyed this kind of concentrated work, but since my insomnia, induced by withdrawal, had come into full flower, it pleased me to find some use for all my surplus hours. And, actually, if anyone were suited to this endeavor, it was me. I was rediscovering this truth after many months of sporadic work, ever since my last exhibition at Sandy’s, really. The feeling upon me now recalled those weeks leading up to the show, where I’d quickly bring together things I’d left apart or merely notional. These days, of course, my exhibition space had vastly expanded, and my “show” would be rolled out over many weeks and months, a few images at a time colliding with all else happening in the city—a Nor-easter, a construction accident, a terrorist attack, a holiday parade—and in the lives of our principals, too.
I wondered how Sandy looked on all of this. He as much as anyone would have genuinely recognized the continuities between the old work and the new. He didn’t contact me much anymore, he had his pride, and more than that he knew prodding didn’t work on me. I would have to come back to him more naturally, when what he had to offer accorded with what I had to give. Still, once in a while, he would leave me voicemails—he never emailed or texted, he found it unseemly and impersonal; the voice was fundamental in all his affairs—and in his messages he would speak of other artists he was working with, even their shortcomings, or about how things were with his daughter and his wife, to which he knew I’d taken a liking. But not once, to his great credit—it’s what told me he was a man—did he ever ask me to call him back. He probably didn’t want a call, anyway. No, he was just reminding me he was still there, waiting, and that I could come back when I was ready, no questions asked.
The first thing I rendered from my Chicago trip was the guns, how they laid on the bed so showily, just beneath a window—uncovered, in my drawing—exposing the neighborhood’s dereliction. I did it with unrefined marks of my pencil, tiny little stabs, and a stark distribution of values, representing, at one pole, the glare of the floodlight out in the street, and the quiet glow within the gun closet, with disease spread evenly throughout. Illumination made no difference in this world.
The Redon fresco on Duke’s back was trickier. My sketches didn’t really suggest anything transcending the tattooist’s remarkable work. What’s more, Duke was displeased with the way I’d rendered his body: too graceful, he told me on the phone, more graceful than he was. In fact, my depictions were closer to the photographs I’d taken of his legs and torso than were any of the napkin sketches he would send me by text. He thought of himself as squat and barrel-chested, though he was actually somewhat rangier in his motions, moving like a bigger, longer man. Perhaps his brutish style of play encouraged this misimpression, that he was the barbarous black, the former bit of chattel that was just as effective as a freeman. That was the shape of Duke’s dreamlife, and for all I knew of Coach Cotter’s. You could speculate on the forces that generate a life like Duke’s, you could imagine other worlds with different forces. Perhaps you could even conceive of an ideal speech situation. But in none of those cases would you be reckoning with Duke’s dreams as they stood. As he stood. You would have to dispossess the actual man to do it, and create a man you thought you preferred, that you assumed Duke preferred, in his place. And who could assure you of the truth of these preferences, or the desirability of the results?
I decided to shelve the Redons, though Symbolism would continue to appear in the margins of my notes as I worked things out. Within days, a solution to the first of my problems—the plenitude of the original tattoo—took shape. Redon may have had his Noirs, but Goya had his Black paintings, fourteen of them. Primitive versions of these, almost pictograms, turned up in my journals over those days: pictures, in essence, of men devouring men, which could be woven into a wider phantasmagoria. Subbing out Redon’s iconography would not only distinguish my work from the tattooist’s; it would give me the chance to reconstruct Goya, the grand reconstructor of Spanish history, and to fresco on something besides my walls.
The problem of Duke’s form also could be resolved by going back in time. Can we have something more original? he’d asked me via FaceTime. And by this he meant early, archaic, cradle-of-man. In short, African. Originality, after all, could be taken in two ways, and I was no longer sure which I preferred. I passed along Duke’s wish for originality to Garrett. True to recent form, he embraced it. Maybe Duke’s on to something, he told me. What, though? Garrett would never say. So, once again, I turned myself loose on Duke’s flesh, and what emerged on the page spoke of another era. Duke had assumed I had it in me to depict him like this, so unflatteringly. Had it been just an assumption, or was there something in me he saw? That Claire perhaps had seen, too, over time? Maybe Garrett had known it as well, and that’s why he’d chosen me. Looking at the results, it was hard to dispute their intuitions.
All sorts of physiognomic and phrenological texts that had fallen into scientific disrepute long ago, not to mention Von Humboldt’s books, and Herder, of course, and most important, I suppose, the developmental drawings of Haeckel: they got me started, surveying the phases of humankind, socially, mentally, and anatomically, whether we called it evolution or something else—drive maybe. Archaic humans, the hominids immediately predating modern man, had a way of creeping into my drawings, whenever I needed to summon the primordial. The tiniest squaring of a jaw, or the elongation of a forehead, could put a charge into the portrait of even the most delicate aristocrat. In this case, although I didn’t exactly recapitulate the features of archaic man, I traded on the fact that among the several anatomically modern human forms, certain ones more strongly recall our ancient silhouettes than others, not simply in the brow and jaw and nose—none of which would have anyway been visible in this picture, as it depicted Duke from behind—but in postural markers and a characteristic compactness of structure we have shed or simply lost. Differences, too, in the shoulder and neck, and quite pronouncedly in the hindquarters. At one stage I’d obsessively rendered such forms, precisely for their contrast with classically human anatomy. This practice equipped me to render Duke in almost mythological, transhistorical terms now, pulling heavily from those extinct incarnations, yet updating the features with small twists of modernity, in the length of the neck, say, or the development of the hands.
By Friday morning, my labors had left me bedridden. It might have been merely a story I was telling myself, but I certainly felt more exhausted since I’d abandoned Theria. Work appeared to exact a much greater toll. I had a hard time saying in what way it differed—in what way I differed—but whatever it was, I wasn’t sure how long I could last, working like this.
I had the two pieces couriered to Cosquer. Karen ought to see these properly; photos might fail to convey the merits of what, in summary, could well seem obscene. Perhaps I’d messenger everything from now on.
I spent the next thirty hours convalescing, though real recovery from my exertions seemed out of reach. My insomnia simply wouldn’t relent.
The knock at my door came Sunday afternoon.
“You’re serious about these?”
Karen. I’d not been expecting her on the other side of the door. I hadn’t had her over in a long time now. Why would I, the way she’d shown herself to be in bed with Paul and Garrett in all of this? I donned a mask of indifference, turning back and walking us both to the sofa as though I were expecting her.
“Paul came around to the studios to see them himself,” she continued while repeatedly throwing me glances that alternately conveyed worry and anger.
“Paul is a corporatist, a researcher,” I declared. I chose mild epithets and as even a tone as my privation allowed me. I must have sounded as grim as she did.
“He’s a realist, and he has experience here where we don’t.”
“That’s true.”
“Ghettos and guns?”
“Garden and Gun?”
“What kind of picture is that?”
“What are you—”
“You look awful, you know that?” She shook her head. “I’m talking about what you sent me. Do you remember, even?”
“It’s just what I found in Chicago, really.”
“And the other drawing. What is that? An actual ape?”
“Don’t make something out of it, Karen. Duke likes it. He turned down the other version I sent him. Garrett liked the idea, too.” I paused and almost smiled. “Do you want something to drink?”
“I don’t really care what Duke wants at this point.”
“What about Garrett? You wouldn’t want to disappoint him, right?”
“Is Duke even going to be on the football team, after what he’s done? It’s horrible.”
“Don’t start listening to Rick now. You know he hated all of this from the beginning.”
“Anyone can see what’s off here. You don’t have to be Rick.”
“You’re right that the team might cut Duke. But Garrett won’t.”
“He told you that?”
“It’s just a feeling. Why don’t you ask, if you need to know?”
“I don’t know what you two are trying to do here.”
“There’s no collusion, Karen—or if there is, it isn’t between Garrett and me. You, though. Well...”
“Are you actually unhappy with anything that’s happened so far? Did I make a single fucking mistake with your work? Actually?”
“Just try and remember you’re an artist sometimes.”
“I’m also not a racist though, see.” She pushed away the drink I’d brought her, splashing it onto the table and some old drawings of mine.
“That’s just so easy.”
“And you aren’t one either.”
“Did you think Garrett was? Do you just assume that? I mean, he’s a businessman, if that’s a sin. Why’d you start a design company if you couldn’t stomach that?”
Karen paused and surveyed the mural on my walls. I’d been working on it today, having been, as usual, unable to sleep, and having had nothing else to do. I’d added in a bit of cloud, a bit of shade, as well as a shantytown bearing a strong resemblance to the one growing outside my door: this was simple mimesis. At first, the homeless had crept up from the subway, and then in greater numbers they settled along the sidewalks, colonizing the park just as the moss had the lake. Now the beggars were coming out toward the front gates like hardy weeds, the place was growing so full and vibrant. I moved to the window and looked down on the scene in front of the park, which was like one of those tent cities in Sacramento, without the tents. Some had dispersed, but three youngish ones, runaways maybe, were still lingering, or laying out in the sun, or in need of medical attention.
“What do these two drawings say to you, then?” she said. “There’s no sense of...”
“Satire?”
“Or doubt.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve stopped asking questions like that. Because what do the answers do for us?”
She sighed, or hissed, it was hard to tell. I was still looking at the boys in the street.
“What people will say about these pictures... don’t worry about it so much. Without reservations was Garrett’s phrase. Haven’t you picked that up by now?”
“And what do you think they’ll feel? Does that matter? What do you even feel?”
I didn’t turn, I just talked: “What I feel,” I said, “when I look at them, is a certain sense of... correspondence. They’re not attractive, or glamorous. They don’t give much pleasure that way. And they’re not the ugly truth either, I’m not saying that. They reveal absolutely nothing. And they don’t seem very instructive, I think we can agree.”
Karen sighed again—she seemed always to be sighing now. I couldn’t believe just how much air she could draw into her lungs, to be such an endless font of exasperation.
“But look, let’s show them to Garrett. If he can’t stomach them, we can think of something else. Or you can just kick me out of Cosquer. Would that help? Because then I could keep the drawings for myself, pin them up around here.”
“He always backs you.”
“He’s the client, right? Isn’t it up to him?”
“Well, then, who is it who’s forgotten he’s an artist?”
With that, she walked off.
By Monday, I seemed finally to be recovering from all symptoms of withdrawal. Sleep had been easier the night before. The debate with Cosquer and Antral, which I’d expected to carry on for some time, was effectively over, at least as it concerned those two images of Duke. I wasn’t sure what opinion of them I held, or that I ultimately even disagreed with Karen—that was the worst of it. But I wanted to keep the door open here and continue. I’d wanted, most of all, to solicit Garrett’s reaction. Not, as Karen had suggested, that I was simply seeking clearance from him. Strange as it was to say, I was actually growing to believe in, to feel, the soundness of his instincts. They’d become, without my noticing it, a sort of litmus test of the value of the work. And this was true even without his drink fueling me.
So, the verdict: Garrett rendered it, as usual, with a minimum of explanation, on a conference call. He’d considered the concerns of Karen and Paul very closely, but, in the end, he believed we were on the right path with these pictures, or at least headed in a direction he wanted to know more about. He’d like to see more pieces from me as soon as possible. Karen was dumbstruck: she might have hung up the phone for all we could tell. Judging by the violence of our argument following that call, I wasn’t altogether sure she wouldn’t drop Garrett as a client, regardless of the consequences to the studio or the magazine. Paul, too, was clearly roiled—though he became angrily vocal, not silent—as it was now apparent that it really was just Garrett and I, together on an island. Yet their protests came to nothing in the end; Garrett, against all odds, maintained his charm.
Still, it was enough of an issue for Karen—and even more so for her lieutenant, Rick—that she put the matter to the members of Cosquer. I had real fears over the verdict, now that we’d heard Garrett’s. Would I have to continue the project alone, without the collective’s support? How deep a rift would that create with her and the rest of them? I didn’t really want answers here, of course, and luckily it never came to that. In a terse note addressed to us all, Karen agreed to provide further services to Arête and its parent company, Antral. I never pressed her on what really transpired at that internal meeting at Cosquer’s headquarters, one to which I’d naturally not been invited. I only learned of its existence from John, who could never not divulge conflict and chaos. I have always wondered exactly what calculation she made, how she ranked the pros and cons—and how she managed to put down the insurrection Rick almost certainly had called for.
From that point on, production went ahead full-bore, so that my images could go up more or less concurrently with the precipitating events in Duke’s and Daphne’s lives. Whatever his misgivings, Paul took a certain pride in deftly carrying out instructions, even when he didn’t agree with them. And, old hand that he was, he quite efficiently co-ordinated everything, so that the gap between creation and distribution of the images throughout the city and even the country could be shrunk nearly to zero. Logistics were being sorted out well in advance of my having the works in a finished state. So, in the case of these two drawings of Duke, all that was left to do was print them and put them up. The costs of all this were never disclosed to Cosquer, or to me, but to have things assembled so swiftly meant keeping printing facilities essentially on standby, an impressively expensive feat. Garrett’s chemical and materials operations must really have been as profitable as he maintained. A lot of crowds were being controlled, apparently, and a lot of waste buried.
The original drawings ultimately ended up with Garrett. I’d decided to sell them to him after all. The real original, of course, was the city itself, dressed in facsimiles of them. He’d agreed to buy the entire series, for significant sums. Obviously that would come as a disappointment to Sandy, who might have thought that when I finally did come back to him—I’m sure he saw this as an inevitability, it’s why he was still kind to me—I’d have these originals for him to place with collectors.
Garrett’s notion of taking the whole series from me had come from his friend Whent, whom I’d met with briefly one afternoon in midtown, to thank him for the referral. Whent was thrilled I’d found so much prosperity through his friend, as well as by Garrett’s following his lead and living among a multiplicity of renderings, distributed over time, realtime, of both subjects. In fact, Garrett was doing Whent one better, since his patronage was also shaping the lives of those subjects, so that the series would end up tracing Garrett’s own efficaciousness in the world. The joy the man took in collecting each piece from my apartment, or from Cosquer’s offices, if I brought it in, was more palpable than any other pleasure I saw him take. And this was because, little by little, he’d become genuinely transfixed by Duke and Daphne and their parallel worlds.
His interest in actually advertising his wares, however, as well as in Paul’s growing consternation, evidently ran second to his concern with origins and directions, with fate and the principles ordering life itself. Living among the original works could only facilitate this obsession. He might have been addicted to these two people, even to the image of them, as I might have been to his sports drink, which was a shame, in my case, because I couldn’t seem to get hold of any more now. Garrett promised that it was on the way, but his promises sounded a lot like the ones he routinely made and broke to Paul about the campaign. All I knew for certain was that ever since I’d stopped drinking Theria, I’d felt more agitated, and more easily fatigued. My imagination still seemed to function, though the ideas coming from it grew darker by the day. What exactly had it done to me?
Garrett had one other thing over Whent when it came to my pictures. He would tell me so whenever I walked him back down to the subway from my apartment—often right by reproductions in the street of the very works he was carrying off with him. His greatest satisfaction, he told me, came from the growing harmony between the gallery he was making of his home and the one taking form in the world at large: his ultimate cabinet of curiosities was just outside his doors, so much more fecund for being susceptible to every force operating in the city, to chance, to unexpected growth or decay. Nothing could match the exhilaration of the strolls he took around town, he said, or his recent forays as a straphanger. When he drove to the north end of Roosevelt Island, or held meetings in midtown, or went to the cinema downtown, it was as if the streets became the halls of his home. And how much better was it to make a home of the world itself, rather than something insular, hermetic, alienated? There was nothing I could find to disagree with in what he said.
The arrangement of this greater home, the timing and placement of images, changed continuously, in accordance with the designs of Paul and his analytics team at Siglin. Garrett said he didn’t truly understand the plan, nor did he want to. He was comfortable letting that domain be his old friend’s. Sometimes Garrett and I would both try to puzzle out why a particular picture, at a particular scale, using some particular support, had been chosen by Paul to go in a particular place—why, say, it had been put on this bridge and not that one, or used for this sort of signage and not another. What, in Paul’s theories of the construction of consumer consciousness, validated these decisions? I doubt we ever succeeded in laying bare his ways. Whenever we asked the man himself, Paul would only return a superior gaze, as if to say: just enjoy it.