Perfect on Paper (6 page)

After I’d snuck a second glass of wine and finished my drawing, I called toward the back of the store.

“Uh—see you later, I guess.”

“Probably.” She gave me a dismissive wave without turning around.

Moments later she was standing at my front door, brandishing the doodle in my face.

“Is this yours?”

Oops,
I thought. Stalling for time, I inspected the napkin. I’d drawn the customer, outfitted in full sixties regalia, and bracketed her with commentary in elaborate lettering:
Gamine
over one shoulder,
Naif
over the other. Below her feet, I’d written the word
Sucker
.

I’d only been riffing on Vivian’s spiel, but I guess I’d hit a nerve.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “Meant to toss that before I left.”

“Are you kidding? This is exactly the right tone for my clientele—without the ‘Sucker,’ obviously. I’ve been thinking I should take out ads in some of the local freebie papers for a while now.… How much would one of these run me?”

I made a few quick calculations, factoring in the twenty or so minutes I’d spent on the drawing, the prospect of dealing with such an abrasive personality on a regular basis, the exorbitant price she was charging for the dress.…

“Two fifty a pop,” I said, fully expecting her to cut the bid in half.

“Done. I’ll need a new one every week. To tell you the truth, I was prepared to pay twice that.”

She brushed past me into the apartment while I mentally kicked
myself for lowballing the job.
Even so,
I thought,
I’ve just made a deal that will cover roughly half my monthly expenses. Maybe I could go part-time at the gallery in Chelsea. And—

Vivian paused in front of a painting propped against the kitchen cabinets. “Is this yours, too?”

“It is.”

She was looking at a still life I’d just completed: an experiment in unlearning everything I’d been taught by my art professors. Rather than follow their textbook advice—“start everywhere”—I’d painted the items one by one, finishing the bowl of lemons before moving on to the vase behind it, and so on. Only after each object was completed did I start in on the background, an elaborate floral tablecloth. The end result would have likely resulted in a D-minus back in school, but I’d had fun, and it satisfied me. Its lack of depth and disembodied forms made it look like the work of an untrained hand. And seeing as how the output from my trained hand had failed to make an impression on even a single Manhattan art dealer, I considered it an encouraging development.

“Can you do something like this with, say, shoes?” Vivian said. “I’d love to hang one over my desk in the shop. And maybe you could give me a couple for the dressing rooms—jewelry would be good. Patterned scarves, too. Be sure to put some flowers in the background—chicks love flowers.” She paused. “You know, forget the ads for now. I’d rather be selling these paintings. I bet we could get seven fifty for one this size.”

“Sounds great,” I said, suddenly thrilled I’d stopped into the store for Vivian’s cheap chardonnay.
Goodbye, boring gallery job,
I thought, making a mental note to whip down to Pearl Paint first thing in the morning for fresh supplies.

A few days after our initial encounter, I entered Chase, Manhattan, toting the first canvas, an ensemble piece featuring items culled by my new patron: a pair of red patent leather platforms, an animal-print scarf by
Vera, several Bakelite bangles, along with the requested floral accompaniment, a spray of forsythia.

“Perfect,” Vivian said. “I’ll get my hammer.”

As it turned out, she didn’t need it. A blowsy, middle-aged woman draped head to toe in flowing white garments entered the shop and let out a squeal of delight at the sight of my painting. “Fabulous,” she declared.

“You’ve got excellent taste,” Vivian informed her. “That’s a Hannah.”

“Hannah?” the woman said, which was exactly what I’d been about to say.

“An outsider artist from northern Maine,” Vivian explained. “Terribly reclusive. She lives alone in the cabin she was born in, miles from the nearest town. It’s insanely primitive. The only source of water is a stream on the property—do you know she’s actually never had a hot bath in her entire life? And she’s eighty-two!”

“Unbelievable!” the woman said.

“Scads of dealers have traveled up there to woo her into showing publicly over the last few years. Hannah wouldn’t have anything to do with them,” Vivian continued. “But one of my pickers heard about her and went to pay a visit, and for some reason she took to him—you’ll never believe this, but she served him a stew she’d made from root vegetables and squirrels she’d trapped in the woods.”

“Incredible!” the woman said.

“Oh, you can’t make this stuff up. Authenticity can’t be faked.”

As much as I was enjoying Vivian’s performance, I saw a potential pitfall down the road. “If Hannah’s so reclusive, then where did she find those?” I said, pointing to the patent leather platforms.

“Photographs,” Vivian replied. “I send up a new batch every month, along with some food items she’s grown partial to. She’s absolutely crazy about Cool Ranch Doritos.”

“Astonishing!” the woman said. “How much?”

“To be honest with you, I hadn’t really planned on selling this
one.… Oh, what the hell. I like your outfit. Comme des Garçons really suits you. How’s twelve hundred sound?”

“I’ll take it!”

I had to fake a coughing fit to keep from laughing out loud.

“That’s fraud!” Elinor Ann said when I called with news of my nascent career.

“That’s much too strong a word for it,” I parried. “It’s… creative license. Plenty of artists paint under assumed names.”

“Well, sure, but speaking of licenses, it doesn’t say ‘eighty-two’ under ‘age’ on the one in your wallet. And as far as I know, you’ve never set foot in the state of Maine, let alone dined on squirrel. And the last time you took a cold bath was about twenty-five years ago, when Cabin Five decided to go skinny-dipping in Lake Wallenpaupack on that overnight camping trip.”

“Details.”

“This Vivian sounds dangerous,” she said.

“Oh, stop. That’s what you used to say about Ray Devine.”

“
See?
She
is
dangerous!”

“So what was the fantastic news you couldn’t wait to tell me?” I asked Vivian after the pictures for the Web site had been taken and I was struggling to free myself from the Balenciaga.

“Hannah sold two paintings yesterday. The opera gloves with the beaded purse and the orchid, and the rhinestone necklace draped over the watermelon backed by the row of hyacinths.”

“Really?” Even I’d thought the watermelon might have rendered Hannah just a little
too
eccentric.

Vivian handed me a check. I reached for it, but she wouldn’t release her grasp. I tugged for a moment, then finally looked down to discover I couldn’t see her hand. Well, most of her hand. It was nearly obliterated by a massive diamond.

“Chad finally proposed!” she squealed. “Last night at La Grenouille!”

With anyone else I knew, such an announcement would constitute a momentous event, but in Vivian’s case, engagements occurred more frequently than one-day sales at Macy’s. Chad was a hedge fund manager Vivian had been dating for a grand total of five and a half weeks. In fact, he was her third hedge fund manager in as many years, and, improbably, her second Chad.

“That’s—wonderful,” I finally managed. “Congratulations.”

“We haven’t set a date, but—”

My stomach growled loudly enough to be audible in Midtown. “Listen, I’m really happy for you,” I said, “but if I’m not seated in a restaurant within the next five minutes, I’m going to pass out. How about a late celebratory lunch? On me, of course.”

“Are you out of your mind? Didn’t you hear me tell you I was at La Grenouille last night? I’m not eating a fucking thing until Tuesday.”

“Okay, well—thanks for the check. I’ll get started on some new Hannahs in the morning. And congratulations again.”

In response, she flashed her ring, fingers waggling. “Six carats!”

CHAPTER FIVE
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL

I
t was hard to muster much enthusiasm for Vivian’s news. Two to three weeks seemed to be the average shelf life of her engagements. Eventually her suitor would commit an act so blasphemous that he’d be banished permanently from her zip code. The last one had been sent packing for the unforgiveable sin of being lowborn.

“What are you, eleventh in line to the throne?” I’d asked at the time. “Didn’t you tell me you were from Ypsilanti, Michigan?”

“I am. But
he
claimed to be from Philadelphia’s Main Line. Turns out his parents own a pizza joint in Paoli. Which is hardly a pedigree that’s going to get my unborn twin daughters into Brearley, is it?”

It won’t be long before Chad meets the same fate,
I thought, making my way down First Avenue en route to lunch. But before his engagement ring was back in Cartier’s display case, she’d find someone new who would not only meet her rigid standards of genealogical and physical perfection, but also have enough purchasing power to corner the market on the world’s platinum reserves. Plus he’d enjoy gourmet cooking and bestowing expert, lengthy foot massages in his spare time.

The cliché was true: All the good ones were indeed taken. By Vivian.

Then again, I reminded myself as I made a left onto Seventh Street,
she was interested in only the high-net-worth good ones. Therefore, it was still open season on the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.…

Or whoever drove that Dodge.

Parked in front of a boarded-up brownstone just east of the avenue sat a vintage panel truck that stopped me in my tracks. It had been restored to perfection, with rechromed bumpers and a two-tone paint job of cream and sea-foam green.

Hmm,
I thought.
I would happily forgo foot massages and
ragoût de lapin braisé aux chanterelles
for a few spins around town in this baby.

On the windowless rear sides of the truck,
J. H. Wheeler and Son
was painted in brush script, with three lines of smaller block capitals underneath reading
RESTORERS OF FINE HOMES, WOODWORKING AND PLASTER
, and
MASTER ELECTRICIANS
.

Hmm,
I thought.
The light switch in my bathroom could really stand to be rewired.
Come to think of it, it was probably a major fire hazard in dire need of immediate professional attention.

This wouldn’t be the first time I’d experienced love at first sight—of a vehicle. In college, I’d spent the better part of senior year attempting to determine the identity of the owner of a classic Falcon, parking my own classic, a Chevy inherited from Dad, as near to it as space would allow. Finally, with weeks to go before semester’s end, fate intervened in the lot reserved for students.

“So
you’re
’sixty-four Sprint.”

“So
you’re
’sixty-seven Camaro.”

We spent the remainder of our academic careers with our pants down around our ankles, our cars and futures all but forgotten. We’d relocated to opposite coasts after graduation, but I’d held fast to the belief that automotive compatibility was as valid a basis as any for selecting a mate.

Further investigation was called for. I stepped off the curb to read the year printed on the truck’s registration tag: 1948. I looked up at the brownstone, which had been a source of much recent speculation around
the neighborhood. After years of sitting empty, allegedly due to a disputed estate, signs of renovation had begun to appear. Roofers had been spotted replacing gutters and missing shingles. Mini-Dumpsters filled up with chunks of rubble and were carted away. The old, cracked windowpanes were now covered with plywood, as was the door, which was secured by a heavy chain and a massive padlock.

But on this day the padlock was clamped firmly shut, and I doubted that any electrician, master or otherwise, had worked on a Sunday afternoon since the invention of the lightbulb. Therefore, J. H. Wheeler (or Son) would not be found inside the building. It was time to get some lunch.

As I came around the rear of the Dodge on my way back to the sidewalk, a loud grunt emerged from the cargo area, followed by snoring that could have drowned out the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Swell,
I thought.
J. H. Wheeler (or Son) lives in his truck. And he’s got some pretty serious sinus issues.

“Well, you did mention that it was an awfully nice truck,” Elinor Ann said. “I’m sure there are worse places to live in New York City. Besides, that doesn’t necessarily mean the guy is homeless. He could just be taking a nap, right?”

“It’s possible,” I conceded. “But listen to this.” I rose from the stoop where I’d sat to make the call and went to hold the phone up by the truck’s rear doors.

“Oh, that’s nothing. You should hear the way Cal shakes the rafters after a big dinner.”

“I’ve spent the last dozen Thanksgivings at your house, remember? Not once has your husband’s snoring been audible in the guest room. Tell you what—hang up the phone, go in there right now, and open a window.
This
guy’s snoring will be audible in your guest room.”