Twenty-four

I walk up the granite steps of Markel’s house with trepidation. I probably shouldn’t be here. Nonetheless, I am, standing before a nineteenth-century mansion facing the broad, tree-lined mall that sets Commonwealth Avenue apart from—and above—all the other tony streets of Back Bay. Plus, I’m on the Arlington/Berkeley block, which is set apart from and above all the other tony blocks of Comm Ave. There’s never been any gentrification in this part of Boston because it’s never fallen out of favor with the gentry.

Markel called early in the week and invited me to dinner. “Did you know I can cook?” he asked, when I answered the phone.

“You do?”

“Probably better than you.”

“That would mean you can make something other than mac and cheese.”

“Is that what you’d like for your surprise dinner?”

“Surprise?”

“Yup. Two actually.”

“Can you tell me more?”

“Nope.”

“Well then, if you’re going to all the trouble of cooking,” I told him, “I’ll take something a bit more gourmet than mac and cheese.”

“Done,” he said. “Does seven o’clock Saturday night work for you?”

I hesitate. “Sure. I guess.”

“See you Saturday.” Then he was gone.

I didn’t really have a chance to say no. Yet, I probably wouldn’t have said it anyway. I’m a fool for surprises. Has the painting been authenticated? Is it something about my show? Is he going to poison me with his soufflé because now he’s got the finished painting? A lesser woman would run. But not me. I want to see his artwork.

I press the doorbell next to his name, and when it buzzes, I step into a wainscoted, marble anteroom separating street and house. I push through a pair of etched-glass doors into a soaring, elegant space. In the late 1800s, well-dressed gentlemen and their ladies would have been received here. It’s quite likely Belle Gardner was, at some time or another, one of them.

A wide mahogany staircase dominates the foyer, turning two times before it meets the second-floor landing. I hesitate, not sure where to go, when Markel comes down the stairs.

“Welcome,” he calls. “We’re up here.” The lighting emphasizes his high cheekbones and square chin. He looks relaxed, boyish, comfortable in his own skin, pleased to see me. It’s a tough package to resist.

I walk up the stairs toward him, curtsy, and hold out my hand. “Charmed, sir.”

He takes it, turns it over, and kisses my palm. “Handsome lady.”

When we enter the apartment, I don’t know what to look at first: the exquisitely preserved architectural elements, the eclectic furnishings, or the artworks sprinkled liberally, but flawlessly, about. He shows me around. John Baldessari’s spider, Tony Feher’s sculpture of four jars with red tops, Sharon Core’s photograph of a coconut cake. There’s one from Zeng Fanzhi’s Mask Series and my favorite David Park, Four Nudes, a Koons, a Cottingham, a Warhol, a Lichtenstein, and, of course, a Cullion.

“Amazing,” I keep murmuring. “Wow. Great.” I don’t know what else to say. His collection rivals that of a small museum. Then he shows me his “Impressionist nook”: a Manet, a Cézanne and a tiny, perfect Matisse.

“No Degas?” I ask.

“An unfortunate hole in my collection.” He waves his hand to encompass all the works. “This is the advantage of owning a gallery. I get to buy what I love. At a much lower price than I would charge.”

His portion of the house is three stories. The living room, dining room, and kitchen form the first floor, with seventeen-foot ceilings, three fireplaces, original crown moldings and medallions. The second floor is a huge master suite with a separate office, clean and masculine, but not overly so. Everything is updated, yet it all fits perfectly within its nineteenth-century frame. We climb to the third floor, which has three bedrooms, one perfectly appointed guest room and two others for his children.

“Children?”

“Robin’s six and Scott’s four. They mostly live with their mother in Weston, but I get to see them a lot.”

“Oh” is all I can manage. I knew he’d married fairly young and had been divorced for a few years, but how could I not have known about the children? Why hadn’t Isaac ever mentioned it? Why hadn’t Markel?

We head back downstairs, and I catch artwork I missed on the way up: a Louise Bourgeois statue in a niche in the stairway, a William Kentridge drawing, a Calder mobile. He takes my hand and leads me back into the living room. We sit on the couch, in front of a low table on which a bottle of champagne chills.

“Seems like we’ve been drinking a lot of champagne.” I’m in such awe of his art collection I can barely get the words out.

He pours two glasses and hands me one. “We’ve had a lot to celebrate.” A dramatic pause. “And now we have even more.”

I hold my breath.

“Your Bath II has been authenticated. As far as anyone’s going to be concerned, she’s the real thing.”

A flood of relief washes over me. “Wow.” I knock back the glass of champagne, hold out the empty for a refill. “I can’t believe it.” But, of course, I know all too well that experts can be fooled.

“Were you that worried?”

“Of course I was that worried. I told you I was.”

“I’d have been shocked if it turned out any other way.”

“Then you’re made of sterner stuff than I am.”

He pulls an envelope from a drawer in the coffee table and hands it to me. “There’s a bonus included.”

“Thanks.” I quickly put the envelope in my purse. It feels thicker than the others.

“That’s not the real surprise,” he says.

“It’s not?” If Bath II’s been authenticated, could it be about my show?

“Well, I guess it’s actually a presurprise, or the first part of one because we have to wait for the second part.”

This doesn’t sound like it’s about my show. “You made macaroni and cheese for dinner?”

He bursts out laughing. “How’d you know?”

“You did?”

“With three kinds of mushrooms and tomatoes and herbs from my garden. Is that gourmet enough for you?”

I try to hide my disappointment. Although I like food as much as the next person, it would never fall into the surprise category for me. “Thank you. It sounds delicious.”

He offers me a tray of black olives. The tray is long and narrow and looks as if it was made specifically for olives. I’ve never seen such a thing. I pop one into my mouth. It’s perfect: sharp and dark, salty and oily. “Did you grow these, too?”

“There’s something else,” he says.

I eat another olive and wait.

“I sold it.”

I almost swallow the olive pit. “Bath II?”

“I’ve worked with this collector before. I set up a number of levels between us, put out a feeler. He grabbed.”

“He thinks it’s the original? The one stolen from the museum?”

Markel touches his champagne flute to mine. “What else would he think?”

I struggle to keep my breathing normal. I’ve no idea why I’m reacting like this. What did I think was going to happen? Selling the painting as the original was always the plan.

“Hits you kind of weird when it finally happens, doesn’t it?” he says.

Again, he’s reading my thoughts. There’s no denying the power of this experiential intimacy, especially when it’s ours alone. A chill runs up my backbone. “You’re sure he won’t know it came from you? That he can’t trace it back?”

“Too many people between us. And each one only knows the one who contacted him and the one he contacted,” Markel says with certainty, but I note that he didn’t directly answer my questions.

“What’s he going to do with it?”

“He’s a collector, Claire, a nutty bunch. But this guy’s nuttier than most, a complete fanatic. Totally blinded to anything but what art he can own, what he can possess. That’s why I went to him first with the Degas.”

“But if he can’t sell it or show it to anyone, if it’s not a status symbol, and if he’s not going to use it on the black market, what’s in it for him?”

Markel leans back into the couch and sips his champagne. “It’s the rush of knowing you have it, that it’s yours and no one else but you can ever see it.” His eyes roam to his Warhol, the Lichtenstein. “It’s like an addiction. No, it is an addiction, one serious collectors can’t and probably don’t want to control. We’re not talking regular people here.”

I remember Sandra Stoneham saying something similar and how I felt when I looked at the empty frame in the Short Gallery. How thrilled I was to be the only one who knew where the missing painting was, how proud I was that Degas’ After the Bath was in my studio, for me to touch and look at whenever the urge struck. No one but me. Suddenly, none of us are regular people.

“But what about his authentication?” I ask. “What if it goes to someone who figures out it’s not real?”

“He’s from India, but he’s doing it here.”

“But you said that’s why foreign buyers, Third World, are better. That they don’t have access to high-level experts or all the new equipment.”

He puts his arm around me and pulls me toward him. I let him, too overwhelmed to resist. “That’s normally so,” he says, playing with a piece of hair that’s dropped to my forehead. “But in this case, because of the painting’s notoriety, his choice of authenticators is limited.”

“So he’s going to have to use the same guy you did?”

“Nowhere else to go.”

“And then what’ll happen?”

“After he’s got the all clear from the authenticator, we agreed that he’d take the canvas off the stretchers and get it out of the country by either flying or sailing with it on his person.”

“But what about security? They check everything now.”

“Paintings don’t set off metal detectors.”

“If he did get caught, could it get back—”

Markel leans down and kisses me. A sweet, wet, warm kiss that goes on and on and works its way down between my legs and then back up and out to every nerve ending in my body. I’ve never had an orgasm from just a kiss before, but this feels as if that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

Markel pulls away and asks, “You said maybe when the project was over?”

“Where did you ever learn to kiss like that?”

“Is that a yes?”

Now that the kiss is over, some semblance of intelligence returns and my questions reemerge. I run my fingers through my hair and sit up. “How come you never told me about your kids?”

“Does it matter?”

“No. Not at all. Not in and of itself. It’s just that it seems like something you might have mentioned.”

“Do you know how many brothers and sisters I have? If my parents are alive? Where I grew up?” He shrugs. “I don’t know any of those things about you either. We just never got that personal before.”

“Can’t argue with that,” I say, but even after three years, Isaac’s betrayal is still raw. I separate myself from him and stand. “Now where’s that gourmet mac and cheese you were bragging about? I’m famished.”

He stands, too, kisses the end of my nose. “We’ve got some business to discuss over dinner, and I need your opinion on something.”

The dinner is delicious, adding another check in his plus column. And he’s a wonderful host, attentive without being overly solicitous, charming and self-deprecating. We laugh a lot, drink a bottle of wine, talk about my show.

“I’m planning on thirteen new paintings,” I tell him.

“Sounds good,” he says. “What’s your estimate?”

“I was figuring a painting a week, thirteen weeks, which puts us in early January.”

“It’s either December or March,” he says. “January and February are booked but I just got a cancellation for December. Think you could do it by then? Would be a great slot.”

“Early or late?”

“Middle of the month.”

“When would you have to know?”

“I need at least two months up front for promotion.”

Could I pull off December? Two months ahead would be the middle of October. Which means I’d have to commit a month from now. Tight. Very tight.

“You could do fewer,” he offers.

Fewer won’t work. That would leave him room to have a second, albeit much smaller, show at the same time as mine. I want the whole gallery.

“Give me a month,” I say. “I’ll bust my butt and see how many I can finish. That’ll give me a better measure. If I can do it for December, let’s go with that. If not, we’ll have to hold off till March.”

“That works fine for me as far as Markel G goes. I’ve got a number of artists who’d take the slot in a nanosecond.”

“But?” I ask, my stomach sliding to my feet.

“I can’t say I like it personally.”

At first I’m confused, lost in my ambition, then I understand. He’s talking about us, about wanting more of my time for himself. “Ah, yeah. Yeah. There’s always that.”

“Is there a that?” he asks.

But I don’t know how to answer. I need more time to think, yet I don’t want to blow this. I can see there’s some real potential here. I like him. “Yes,” I finally say. “Just maybe not tonight.”

He grins, and his whole body relaxes. “How about you cook me dinner tomorrow night?”

“If I do, there won’t be a ‘that.’ We’ll probably end up dead from food poisoning.” I change the subject before he has a chance to respond. “Didn’t you say you wanted my advice on something?”

He sobers. “It’s about the original. About getting it back to the Gardner.”

“Where is it now?” I ask cautiously.

“Locked up where no one but I can get to it. In a highly secured vault.”

I know he’s trying to protect me, or so he’s said, but his evasiveness makes me uneasy. So many secrets.

“It doesn’t matter where,” he continues. “I just want to think through all the options.”

I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Obviously, you can’t just go there and hand it over to them, so it has to be left somewhere.”

“Somewhere where it’s safe, protected,” he says. “Not outside. Somewhere that can’t be connected to me.”

“Not in Boston.”

“But not too far away. The less transporting the better.”

“When do you plan on doing it?”

“After your forgery’s out of the country.”

“And the sellers have their money. And you’ve gotten your fee.” So much for the benefit of the doubt.

“Yes. When I’ve gotten my fee.” He gets up and clears the dessert plates from the table. His movements are brisk as he puts the dirty dishes on the pass-through counter.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve no right to judge you. I’m far from blameless in all this.” I watch his earnest face, his purposeful movements, and I want to believe that he’s doing all of this to get the painting back to its rightful owner. “For me it was pretty straightforward. But for you?” I look at the art on the wall beside him: a Calder and a Koons.

“Even I have to work for a living, Claire. Things aren’t always the way they look.”

“But your art? A Warhol, a Calder, a Matisse?”

He sits in the chair beside me. “Remember what I was saying about art collectors? How they can be fanatical? Irrational at times? Well, I’m one.”

“You’re going to keep Bath for yourself?”

“No, no,” he says. “Of course not. What I’m trying to explain is how I feel about my art. For those of us with no artistic talent, collecting is our means of self-expression. A way of discovering beauty, of making it, in a way. A collection that’s something greater than ourselves.” He shakes his head. “Not for sale. None of them.”

“You haven’t ever sold anything?”

“I keep adding, almost never subtract. It’s like I said, an addiction. ‘I’m Aiden Markel, and I’m an art collector.’ ” His smile is sheepish. “Maybe not as crazy as the guy who bought Bath II, but crazy enough.”

“But what about this house?” I ask, unwilling to let him charm his way out of answering my questions. “The gallery?”

“Both mortgaged. Don’t assume just because a person has lots of expensive things that he’s not in debt.” He takes my hands. “Yes, I’ll get my fee, which will be substantial. But that’s secondary. The whole point is to get After the Bath back on the wall of the Short Gallery. Is it illegal? Yes, I’ll admit that. Will it be worth it? Obviously, I think the answer’s yes.”

I stare at my hands in his. It all makes sense, but I can’t bear the thought of, once again, being played the fool.

He pulls me to my feet, and we walk silently to the front door, his arm loose around my shoulders. “I’m still open for tomorrow,” he says. “We can always order out for pizza.” Then he leans down and kisses me.

Again, I’m lost in the velvety sweetness of him. Of his lips, his chest, his body pressed against mine. I pulse toward him, and he pulses toward me. I tear myself away. I need to think, think, work it through. I give him a hug and rush down the stairs into the crisp autumn night.

On the sidewalk, I pause to catch my breath and look up at his front windows. He’s standing in the bay, watching me, a wistful smile on his face. He places his palm to the window with a gesture so full of longing that something inside me breaks.

I press the doorbell again, and when I get the answering beep, I rush up the stairs even faster than I came down.