UNDERGROUND IN THE ART BARN it was impossible to know the weather. Or care, frankly. Tarek mentioned something about rain, though Becky hadn’t really listened; Tarek tended to talk while he installed.
Becky sat in the only chair, reviewing the paperwork for her new acquisitions. Tarek went about his business with the usual not-unpleasant accompanying soundtrack: squeaking drill bore, scrape and brush for paint touch-ups. Every so often Becky would look up over her drugstore readers to check his progress. Today he was removing and crating two larger oils to make room for three plexiglass-framed photo collages by Lolly Macnamara, to go with the two she’d bought months ago. All five together comprised the artist’s entire body of work in the photo collage medium.
Lolly Macnamara was in her eighties. Always about to be rediscovered. She’d recently come to photo collage, a kind of work she hadn’t made since the 1960s, apparently as a farewell tour of her previous modes. How nice it was, Becky thought, to see an older artist digging back into what she did well, instead of flinging herself into a last hurrah of some new and overblown technique, often tipping into melodrama and grandiosity, trying too hard. These pieces were tightly focused, subtle but rich.
She’d gone through half a dozen installers before finding Tarek and locking him down with a monthly retainer, enough that he’d be all too happy to bail on a job for his dad’s cabinetry business when she called, as she did about twice a month. Tarek lived in Rockford with a sometimes girlfriend and her kids, had superior rough and finish carpentry skills, and couldn’t have been less interested in art if he tried. He’d answered her (online!) ad for custom side work, shown up on time and aced her test job, matter-of-factly took the large sum of cash with which she’d paid, and gave her his cell number. She liked the way he fiddled with his work, adhesives and fasteners and mounts, breathing in exasperated huffs, until it was clockmaker-perfect to him. And how he shut up and let her look at the pieces he’d put up, sometimes for a long time, and didn’t complain if she then changed her mind and asked for a rearrangement.
But today she wouldn’t need a rearrangement. The Macnamara pieces looked good. More than good. The knowledge that she had them all, that there were no other Macnamara photo collages out there, in any other galleries or on any other walls, gave Becky the kind of thrill-shiver she hadn’t felt in some time. Tarek stretched out on a paint tarp, eyes closed, while she walked back and forth, limping a bit because of the needly pain in her left buttock, now shooting down her leg.
All of something. This idea, born out of QT Pets, tested with these Macnamaras, now took hold of Becky so entirely that she began to shake. All of an artist’s works in one medium, whether pencil or gouache or brass. All of an artist’s work in one time period. All of the artists from one time period. Every piece that included an image of a diner mug, a dead person, an animal baring its teeth. You could slice the pie a thousand ways and still only be beginning. The collector determined the size of the field, the rules of the game, and what it meant to win.
“Okay,” she said, loud enough that Tarek startled. “You can take down the other pieces in this room.”
“All of them?”
“Yep. Also some next door, I’ll show you.”
“Big plans?”
But Becky was already into the next gallery, too busy with her thoughts to reply. It felt like starting over.
“Bankrupt,” Ingrid said, her sleepy voice perking up with attention. “For real?”
Becky rolled over and shifted the phone to her other ear. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this.”
“I didn’t even know that was possible. Towns, like, a whole town . . . can declare bankruptcy?”
“Not sure,” Becky said truthfully. “The consultant said he’d heard of a couple municipalities downstate.”
“So that would mean, what, all of Pierson’s debts cancelled? Then what? We’re under control of some bank? Or do the feds own us? What if they rename Pierson? What if they take over Town Hall and make you share your office?”
“Let’s not get crazy. It’s not going to happen.”
“Mayor Ken must be wigging out.”
“He is indeed.” In fact, he’d gotten so disgusted with the consultant’s digression about Illinois’s murky laws on the matter, that it wasn’t clear if Pierson would be eligible for Chapter 9, that he’d stood up right in the middle of the man’s sentence and thanked him for his time.
Despite that awkward moment, Becky had been hugely relieved. The one or two times before this when Ken had brought up the possibility of bankruptcy as a solution for the town, Becky had successfully ignored it or distracted him. Then to hear from the consultant Ken brought in that there really was no clear path for this option should have been the end of it. Except she had a nagging feeling that Ken wasn’t done with this idea, because she knew Ken. She would tread softly here—any vociferous pushback on his half-baked plan would likely cause him to ramp up in response . . . or worse, to get suspicious.
In response those next weeks, Becky funneled as much money as she could back into the town. Patching one leak after another, Band-Aids on a perpetual gusher. The way the corners of Ken’s mouth had gone white during the consultant’s presentation . . . the memory of that could make Becky transfer cash from RF Capital Development to a playground repair, a radio equipment upgrade for the fire department. The problem was, of course, that her new collecting plan demanded just as much skimming, if not (she hoped not, she told herself not) a bit more.
“Chicago-based collector Reba Farwell, in McQueen, consults with gallerist Paul Merkanen, at T+Go’s Art+Design Fair in New York.” Town & Country. “Museum director Chan Traylor and noted collectors Frank and Betty Linson dine with Reba Farwell after the show.” Vanity Fair. “Reba Farwell, seen chatting with Liz Frederick, neé Rockefeller, at a private event held at Gramercy Tavern.” New York Times Style Section.
Each time Becky saw herself in a society page photo layout she winced first, and scrutinized second. How did her hair look, her shoes—they rarely shot full body, which was a pity for her shoes—and why did her mouth make that strange shape when she was talking? Why did designers never think about women shorter than five foot three? Shorter than six foot three, for that matter? She’d get so caught up in evaluating her own image, one of many in dozens of thumbnail party shots, that she’d forget the real problem wasn’t the way her jaw stuck out when she was caught faking a laugh at Dave Zwirner’s boring story, but the fact that she was in the photo, in the magazine. In many photos, many magazines, more and more often.
It had a name, her new collecting plan, though she didn’t hear the term completist applied to herself until much further into this, her next and biggest and most audacious phase. And it took a while for Becky to accept the label and then delight in the term itself, the way the word elevated collecting to a new level, the way it echoed artist.
Being a completist had the unintended and mostly unwelcome consequence of boosting Becky’s visibility. Maybe some of it had to do with the way the art world, so insular and clubby in the past, now extended and crossed over into fashion, movies, design. Magazines and newspapers and new online forums seemed to care more about art events, keeping a closer eye on who was in attendance and naming them, increasingly, in their monthly society roundups. Jessa had been a fixture of these for years, of course, in photos with and without her odious husband, but Becky’s appearance was relatively new. She realized that her own recent deals had propelled her up the chain: Farwell held all the pencil sketches from Calder’s year before Paris. Farwell had bought all nine watercolors by some new artist before he was featured in British Vogue. Farwell had gotten there first, and cornered the market.
She took fewer calls, named higher prices, and sold by the lot. Or didn’t, as she chose. This caused consternation and a fair amount of bitterness from some of her connections, but her own calls got put through right away. Invitations began to arrive with scribbled “Hope to see you there. xxxxxxx,” signed with initials anyone would recognize. Even more than her infamous sale at Christie’s, this new approach turned Becky (Reba) into an art-world player at a level she hadn’t been before.
Once a month Becky drove to the Barnes & Noble mall superstore on Big Hollow Road in Peoria, eighty-five miles south of Pierson, an hour and a half drive. Yes, it was stupid, and, yes, she did it anyway. She loaded up her arms with thick glossy issues and took them to a table, keeping her sunglasses on like a proper girl on the lam. Afraid to subscribe to any of these magazines, afraid that even having them in her home—in her town—would make her vulnerable. In its periodical room the Pierson library held Vanity Fair but not Town & Country, and obviously not i-D, Artforum, or Interview. No one she knew in Pierson took any paper other than the Tribune, the Sun-Times, or maybe USA Today. If—against all odds—someone from home saw one of the photos, she’d pass it off as a one-time thrilling adventure, this random invitation to big-city fanciness. If she was asked about the name Reba? Oh, well, you know those busy magazine editors were bound to get someone’s name wrong. Just my luck it had to be me.
She ran mental drills for dozens of possible encounters, under her breath, there in the Barnes & Noble. Fine-tuned her voice for tones of pleasant surprise, patient explanation, abashed Midwestern humility. But still she hunched over her café table, covered the layout with her hand while she covertly studied the photos.
On the long drive home she amused herself with the photo layout those photographers could get of Becky, not Reba. Becky presiding over last week’s contentious open hearing about cutbacks in the residential garbage pickup schedule. Becky passing out new copies of “Zoning Code Regs” after the first batch of copies (for “Future Unreg Codes”) had an unfortunate acronym. Becky at Rachel’s hip-hop dance performance. Becky, drinking Schlitz with old-timers at the VFW. Who was she with? Who was she wearing?