All Q, No A, page 14
"That still counts as a motorcycle accident," Viv said.
"Don't worry," Pia teased, "we still think you're punk rock. Now, Mimi, what's with sending us a formal lunch invite? Aren't we all family here?"
"I've just been missing you guys," I said, squeezing into the booth next to Jess. It felt nice to be sitting close enough to smell her shampoo. "And I figured this was the most surefire way to see you. And Viv, I'm so sorry about your arm."
"Whatever," Viv said. "Enough about me—let's hear about Bravura."
"Oh, that," I said. Although I'd only arrived home the previous afternoon, Bravura already seemed a hazy memory. All I wanted to do was luxuriate in my long-lost friends' company, not babble on about myself. But feeling as though I owed the girls a little entertainment, I hammed up my account of Bravura, giving extra attention to the Nikola-Orzo hookup.
"Now your turn," I said when I'd finished my recap, and planted my elbows on the table. They all looked around the table and nobody said a word. All this away time had made an insecure wreck out of me, and for a moment I was sure nobody thought I deserved to be caught up on the moments I'd failed to see firsthand. Finally, Jess gave me some love. In the process of applying for summer internships at investment banking houses, she'd met a "beautiful money management intern" at her J. P. Morgan interview. "Before you get freaked out, he's still in college, at NYU," Jess said. "He's from Lexington, Kentucky, and his dad actually owns horses—isn't that cute? He sent me a follow-up e-mail. Saying his boss wants to meet me for a second round of interviews. Do you think that's just an excuse to contact me?"
"I think that's just an excuse to do his job," Lily said.
"But what about your writing?" I asked Jess. "Don't you want to work at a magazine or something?"
Jess screwed up her face. "Hmm, let's see. My mom's deep in debt and can barely afford to buy me new sneakers. I could apply for an unpaid job sharpening pencils, or I could make a pile of money and be surrounded by ridiculously hot men in seersucker suits."
"So what else have I missed?" I moved aside so our waiter could put the stone bowl of guacamole on the table. "How'd the rest of you ring in the long weekend?"
"Well," Viv said, "if you must know, you missed a very fun dinner party at my place. My parents were in Hong Kong, so it was more party than dinner, but we did spend the day at the farmers' market. My first time there."
"That wasn't her only overdue experience!" With a forward lunge, Pia tugged down Viv's turtleneck to reveal a strawberry-shaped hickey.
Finally, the conversation was gaining momentum. Everyone could only pout for so long. "Careful of the arm!" Viv's cheeks turned the color of a Kabbalah string bracelet.
"Pia, you're really one to talk. Why don't you tell Mimi when Isaac left, huh?" Lily said, ramming a chip into the guacamole bowl. "The two of them stayed up working on equations till well past the dawn."
Pia glared hard at Lily. "Enough of this libel. Is your brain really that incapable of comprehending those two simple words, 'just' and 'friends'? Jesus, what is your problem today?"
"Why did nobody warn me we'd have to wear bulletproof vests to lunch?" Jess asked. "Where did my nice happy friends go?"
"Right, pardon me," Lily said. "Not that you can relate, Jess, but sometimes I get sick of talking about guys all the time. And, FYI, Pia, my problem, since you asked, is that Ms. Singer was just appointed faculty advisor to the Bugle this morning. You may not realize it, but the Bugle is my single favorite thing about Baldwin, and with that cow in charge, it's going to become total hell."
"What?" I nearly shouted. "The least creative teacher at Baldwin taking over the paper? But why?" The Bugle's previous advisor, Sylvester from the math department, encouraged student journalists to "find sources inside your heart" and dropped by the Bugle offices a maximum of two times a semester.
"It's serious," Lily said. "I stopped by the office before class this morning, just to check my mailbox, and there she was, rearranging everything, muttering about our 'organizational problems'—can you believe that? I swear, the woman still hasn't figured out that Baldwin and West Point are not the same schools!"
"Speaking of Ms. Singer, Mimi, your absence was fondly noted in class this morning," Viv said. "You're becoming a real favorite of hers. I'd definitely ask her to write your college recommendation."
"Thanks for the tip," I said, and glanced at Pia's watch. Our entrees hadn't arrived yet, but it was one o'clock. "Not already. I have to go. I'm supposed to be at Harriet's by two."
"But aren't you the one who arranged this whole outing?" Jess protested.
"I know, I know..." I promised to explain later and guiltily threw a twenty onto the table. I could at least cover more than my portion of uneaten lunch, but Pia pressed the bill back into my hand. A few minutes later, as I waited on the subway platform, my stomach rumbled, so I bought the stale cheese popcorn from the newspaper vendor there. After getting off at Spring Street, I was still hungry, and dropped by Sullivan Street Bakery, home of Manhattan's finest thin-crust pizza. I was polishing off my second and last mushroom slice when I rang Harriet's doorbell a few minutes later.
"Get your Metro Card ready," Harriet said when she answered the door and kissed me hello. "We have quite a journey ahead of us."
At Canal Street, we boarded a downtown train, and Harriet told me only that we were visiting an old friend for tea, nothing more. Several subway transfers later, we disembarked in the wilds of East New York, in deepest Brooklyn. The landscape, a mess of boarded-up storefronts and broken beer bottles, was the bleakest I'd ever seen. Harriet and I walked a few blocks, each more sinister than the last, before stopping outside a graffiti-covered brick warehouse. A heap of old pizza boxes that appeared to have survived years of rainstorms lay in a crumpled stack by the door. Harriet yanked a red wire protruding from the wall and waited until static blared out. She pushed open the heavy, steel door and I followed close behind, certain I was about to be mugged. In the flickering light of the freight elevator, I saw Harriet smile. "Get that chicken-shit look off your face! You're in fine hands, I promise."
"Who are we seeing?" I timidly inquired.
"Ezekiel Allen. He's a painter. He used to live in my building, but he had to move a few years ago."
"Why'd he move from SoHo to this?"
"Certainly not for the scenery, if that's what you're implying. Common sense, girl." Harriet tapped her forehead. "Some fortunes run dry." As the elevator halted on the fifth floor, she offered one last assurance: "You'll like him. Trust me." The elevator opened directly onto Ezekiel's apartment, a large room with plenty of windows but not very much sunlight. Considering its size, it was a cramped room, with plants and bicycles and copper pots hanging from hooks on the ceiling. Some dangled so low, I had to duck as I followed Harriet across the floor, where Ezekiel waited in the shadows. He was white-haired and slim, wearing a blue denim shirt and circular black glasses that gave him an owlish look. He moved tentatively, as if trying not to disturb a sleeping child. After hugging her friend, Harriet introduced us.
"Welcome to my palace," he said. "I have a different name for every corner of my room. Here's my living room." He motioned toward the largest window. "There's the bedroom." He indicated the couch. "The kitchen..."—Ezekiel pointed to the sink and minifridge—"and last but not least, the collapsible laundry room!" He hurriedly folded up a wooden clothes rack and shoved it under the couch. "Have a seat here, in the den," Ezekiel said, leading us to a bunch of floor cushions and a little wooden table with a plate of chocolate-chip cookies on top of it. I occupied myself with these cookies—tasty, by the way—while Harriet and Ezekiel gossiped about people I'd never heard of.
After a few minutes, a whistle sounded and our host padded over to the "kitchen" and assembled a tea tray. While serving the tea, Ezekiel asked me questions about school. He wanted to know about the classes I was taking and what, if anything, I was learning in them. He guffawed when I told him about Russian Dissident Indigenous Crafts. "Sounds very cutting edge," he said. "You mind if I use the phrase for my own work? Could be the recipe for a comeback."
"Be my guest," I said. "Just don't steal my idea of comparing the pottery of the Pukara people to the dishware in the Baldwin cafeteria. Our teacher gobbled up my essay. He loves what he calls 'on-site archaeology.'"
"Whatever that means."
"Exactly," I said, then described my work on the Bugle. "Last semester it was more of a hobby, but it's starting to get more serious."
"Which brings us to the reason for this lovely impromptu gathering," Harriet said, and told him about my Serge Ziff profile. Ezekial nodded and said in a dark voice, "That man."
"So you know him?" I asked, rocking forward on my knees.
"Do I know him?" Ezekiel took off his glasses and proceeded to wipe them clean with a paper napkin. "Oh, sure, I know him. In fact, I can't remember not knowing him."
Right away, I starting tossing out all the questions Serge had ignored—What had he been like as a young man? How'd he get started as an art dealer? Ezekiel took his time answering. "When we first met," he said, "Sandy Zimmer was this spoiled rich kid from the New Jersey suburbs who, mostly on a whim, decided to sink Daddy's fortune into a little art gallery. The Times had just run a big article on me, and Sandy found my studio, dropped by, and seduced me."
I looked up from my note-taking. "He seduced you?" First Quinn, now Serge—or, sorry, Sandy Zimmer? Would I never hone my gaydar?
"No, not literally, Sherlock," Harriet said with a chuckle. "Ezekiel just means Serge sweet-talked him into dropping his dealer and switching over to his gallery. He vowed he'd make Ezekiel an international star."
"Of 'galactic proportions,'" Ezekiel added, making quotation marks in the air.
"Go on," I said.
"Anyway," Ezekiel said, "around the same time Sandy took me on, he reinvented his personality—changed his name to Serge Ziff and even adopted a lispy European accent." At first, Ezekiel said, he and Sandy/Serge were fast friends. They took the Zimmer's town car to coffee shops and nightclubs and Emilio's, a Cuban restaurant in the West Forties that was famous for its drag queen waitresses. Critics raved about Ezekiel's first show at'S. Z. Enterprises, which later became Ziff Projects, and his paintings sold out the first weekend. "Man, those were the days," Ezekiel said. "Running around town, rubbing elbows with movie stars—who all bought my paintings by the truckload, by the way. Sandy and I'd go to this wacky psychic down on Carmine Street to get our fortunes told and then party at Studio 54 till dawn. And no one could get enough of my work—I couldn't paint fast enough to keep up with the demand. For a while, I really believed that signing on with Serge, whom I still think of as 'Sandy/ was the best thing that ever happened to me.
"I know," Ezekiel said when he caught me looking around his grim apartment. "I've often asked myself the same question. Where'd it all go wrong?" About ten years ago, he explained, a leading Hollywood agent named Stewart Indigo came to town and invited Ezekiel to dinner at a swish downtown restaurant. They went out and had a great time, and everything was hunky-dory until the next day, when Serge found out about it. He lost it, Ezekiel said, accusing his "protégé" of being an "ungrateful schmuck" and trying to cheat Serge out of his commission by selling paintings behind his back. Though Ezekiel insisted it had been just a social dinner, Serge couldn't be placated, and he even threatened to drop Ezekiel for his disloyalty.
"So he's not your dealer anymore?" I asked.
"I wish things were that simple," Ezekiel said. "And when I look back on it now, I wish he had just dropped me. But no, instead he held me hostage. When I signed on with Serge, you see, I didn't read the contract he gave me, so I didn't know that I was agreeing to give Ziff Projects forty percent of all future sales—forever, for the remainder of my career."
"Are you serious?" I asked. "Surely that's not legal."
"That's what I thought, too. I talked to a few lawyers, though, and they all told me I could try suing him, but it'd be tricky, given the explicit provisions of the contract I'd signed. Plus, in the art world, reputation is everything, and then as now, Serge was an extremely powerful man. He told me if I tried to jump ship, I'd never get another commission again." Ezekiel shook his head. "And I bought it—back then, I couldn't afford not to. Serge still sells enough—barely, but enough—to keep me fed and sheltered, but at the time of the Stewart Indigo fiasco, well..." He broke off and took a long sip of tea. "My wife was in the hospital at the time, and I couldn't risk going broke, not even for a week."
"It was horrible," Harriet chimed in. "None of us thought Zeke would pull through."
"I'm so sorry," I said. "Is she—" I stopped as my eyes landed on a photograph of an ethereal young woman that was hanging on the wall. "Oh. I'm really sorry."
"Thank you," said Ezekiel, gentlemanly in the extreme. "Our friend Serge wasn't quite so compassionate. I was in no position to move to another dealer and keep only ten or twenty percent of my earnings. So what choice did I have? I stayed with the creep, and with our original arrangement of a forty-sixty split on the very occasional sale."
"Is this a normal scenario?" I asked.
"No, not at all. What can I say? When I signed on, I was young and stupid, and I trusted that crafty jerk. I could've paid him off, but he wanted more cash than I could cough up, and these days, I'm old and stupid, and I don't really care anymore. Serge won—I've dropped out of the game."
There was a silence, during which my pen stopped moving and we all just listened to each other breathing. And then I looked up and saw Ezekiel's tired eyes on my face.
"So now your story might take on a different tone, yes?" he asked.
"If this gets out, won't there be hell to pay?" I sputtered. "What if he stops selling your work altogether? I'd feel terrible if my article somehow made things worse."
Ezekiel got up and emptied the teacups down the drain. "By this point, I'd feel terrible if it didn't get out," he said. "It's time that man had a reality check—past time."
On the train back, I thanked Harriet for setting up that truly illuminating meeting. Any real texture my article would take was to her credit. "I didn't do anything," she said. "You asked the questions. I was impressed—you were a real pro."
When I got home late that afternoon, I ran downstairs to my computer and looked up Ezekiel on the Internet. I came upon images of several paintings—violent, swirling images of buildings and landscapes and lopsided women. Ezekiel had been pretty famous once; he'd even been invited to a presidential inauguration, but his production had tailed off dramatically a decade ago. One blogger listed Ezekiel on a "Where Are They Now?" page, speculating that the artist was hiding out in Thailand. Serge hadn't just stalled Ezekiel's career—he'd killed it. Harriet was justified in calling my article "not right" this morning. Serge was a bad man, and I had a responsibility—to Ezekiel, but mostly to myself—to expose him. The question was: Did I have it in me? Baldwin would applaud my courage, that I knew, but what about Serge? How would Nikola react, or She-Michael? I tried to convince myself that they didn't read The Bugle, but it didn't do the trick. For a long time, I sat at my desk, terrified by the possibilities.
Down by Law
BY MIDWEEK, the halls of Baldwin buzzed with excitement about Friday's winter dance. The theme of the dance, "Against the Law," had inspired contributions from every segment of the Baldwin community. Virginia Lyman spent French class sewing a prisoner number decal onto a vintage bustier, while Leonora Newfield sat in the back sketching a black-and-white striped one-piece suit. Dabney Johnson, head of the theater department, had her tech students hang black strips of construction paper off the lobby ceiling and handcuffs from the classroom doorknobs. They also plastered the bathrooms with mysterious signs like CONJUGAL VISITING PRIVILEGES SUSPENDED and THE RIGHT TO REMAIN VIOLENT. Elvis installed bright red flashing sirens and tested them right in the middle of Zora's morning assembly, and to enhance the maximum-security feel, Yuri Knutz donated a cracked toilet bowl that he'd chanced upon outside a housing project on Wyckoff Street.
The biggest contribution of all, however, would be coming from Max Roth. Zora had great faith in Max's "imaginative vision," and had authorized him to hole up in the art building for the entire week, even if it meant missing classes. I couldn't wait to see what Max would unveil.
But not before I cranked out my own masterpiece. Our garbage-art perestroika mobiles for Yuri's class were due the morning of the dance, so that Thursday after school, I took the 4 train to Viv's house. Viv lived on the Upper East Side, in a sprawling apartment clogged up with aggressive interior decorations. Viv's room was still my favorite part, with framed photographs of rock stars and foreign cities hanging on her walls, which were Indian pink. She and Sam greeted me at the door with an unwieldy contraption of toilet paper rolls and wire hangers. "We're calling it 'Iron Chandelier Understanding,'" Viv said.
"We don't know what it means, either," Sam said, "but Yuri's sure to eat it up. He loves anything toiletlike."
I showed them what I'd brought—a box of fishing worms and a brand-new basketball, both items rescued from the Judys' trash.
"Christmas gifts from my father," Judy #1 had said when approached about these treasures. "As if lesbians just lie around fantasizing about sporting goods and fly fishing all day! I tell him we have nothing against normal gifts, like napkin rings arid Ann Taylor shirts, but the man doesn't listen."
"I have an idea," Sam said, taking the basketball. He ran into the kitchen and came back with scissors. "Now stab it," he instructed me. I leveled the scissors at the ball, and the three of us watched the air hiss out. Flattened, the bright orange basketball supplied a perfect stand for the perestroika chandelier. Once we'd suspended our artwork from a shower rod in one of the Steinmanns' guest bathrooms, I got ready to go. I wanted to finish my World Civ homework that night, so I could devote the weekend to rewriting my Serge Ziff article.
At the door, I waited for Sam, assuming he'd be accompanying me on the crosstown bus to the West Side. Instead, he lingered at Viv's side and scrunched up his face. "Hey, Mimi?" he said. "About tomorrow night?"
