Carol O’Connell - Killing Critics

He grinned at her, all but salivating as he looked her up and down. “Would you like to see the jeweled safety pin in my dick?”

Charles pulled her away while she was still in the fascination mode and had not yet thought to bloody the little man.

Koozeman was advancing on them, smiling and openly appraising Mallory’s black silk dress as he extended his hand to Charles. “Mr. Butler, how good to see you again.”

“Hello, Koozeman. I believe you’ve met Mallory.”

“Who could forget such a face? If I had known you were coming, my dear, I would have made up a guest list with a better class of collector.”

Charles nodded to the near corner. “I see J. L. Quinn is here.”

“Yes, he is,” said Koozeman, as though he could not figure out why Quinn had come.

Mallory looked around at the walls, stark and bare but for the small red bits of paper held in place with pins. “So where is the artwork?”

“The artwork?” For a moment, Koozeman seemed baffled by the idea of art in his gallery. “Oh, the tickets. See the tickets on the walls? They all have numbers. Dean Starr did it with numbers.”

“Pardon?” Charles knew he would regret asking for clarification.

“Numbers. See?” Koozeman waved a small red velvet bag in front of them, grinning like a master sorcerer. He opened the bag with a small flourish and offered Mallory a peek inside, wherein lay a pile of tickets like those on the walls.

“Every one of them matches up with an idea, just like the tickets on the walls. They all have numbers on them. Please pick one.”

She dropped a white hand into the bag and pulled out a red ticket. It was number twenty-two.

“All right, Dean’s idea for number twenty-two. Let’s see.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. “Oh, yes. His idea for number twenty-two is a broad steel beam that goes half a mile straight up in the air.”

Mallory seemed skeptical. “What for?”

“To make you uncomfortable. You can’t see the base support, it just stands there while you wait for it to fall down. It’s meant to be threatening. Not his most original theme, though. He’s building on the work of a sculptor who once wrecked the side of a government building when the plaza sculpture fell down.”

“A half-mile beam. That’s a rather ambitious project,” said Charles, playing the good sport. “How are you planning to fund it? With drawings-like Christo?”

“Oh, no. Dean never intended to create the pieces. He just thought of them.”

Mallory tilted her head to one side, and Charles wondered if she was listening for the audible snap of her mind, which could only be moments away.

“Well, of course. He just thought of them.”

Koozeman missed her sarcasm, as he took her hand and kissed it. “You do understand. I sell the artist’s thoughts, his intentions. Very pure, isn’t it?” He handed a price list to Charles.

Charles scanned the list of numbers accompanied by prices in four and five figures. “And how are the sales going?”

“I’ve sold four of them in the past half hour.”

“You sell the artist’s thoughts.” Mallory gave equal weight to each word.

“Yes. I sit over there.” Koozeman pointed to the side wall where an armchair sat on a platform. “When you see a number you like, you come and tell me the number on the ticket, and I tell you the idea Dean Starr had for that number. Simple?”

Charles watched J. L. Quinn’s approach. “Charisma” was a word he called up easily enough, but he was also searching for something to describe an animal so much at home in its body, too graceful to be human. Now this was art, he thought, as he soon fell victim to Quinn’s talent for putting people at ease when he felt so inclined.

And then suddenly, Charles realized he had been robbed. Mallory was walking away with the art critic.

A matron, wearing a pearl choker, gasped audibly at the specter standing by the gallery window.

On the sidewalk outside the gallery, face pressed up against the window, a ragged derelict was holding a tea tin to her head and staring after the retreating figures of Quinn and Mallory. The woman’s mouth was working in a furious agitation of red gums as she slowly withdrew into the darkness beyond the light of the window.

The matron with the pearl choker made a mental note to send a nice check to the Coalition for the Homeless and drained her full wineglass in one swig. What dark thing had lived and brooded on the wrong side of the glass, she did not want to know, but thought it might have come from hell and felt rather at home there.

Mallory stood very close to the wall, eyes level with ticket number thirty-four. “Tell me again about the metaphor, the poetry of shape and color-”

“That pertains to fine art,” said Quinn.

“What’s this?”

“The demystification of art.”

“Well, thanks for clearing that up for me.”

“It’s not a technical term. It’s a eulogy.” Quinn only glanced in the general direction of a passing gallery boy, and two glasses of wine appeared in the next instant. He handed one to Mallory. “Actually, if Dean Starr hadn’t been such a fool, I might have given him credit for ingenious parody. Go to any Whitney Biennial and you’ll see scores of three-minute ideas executed by the untalented and curated by the blind. Starr just carried the premise a little further by not bothering to construct the idea. In fact, the more I think of it, the more I’m convinced that the idea for the tickets wasn’t even his.”

“Gregor Gilette said Koozeman used to be an artist.”

“Yes, he was. You know, the tickets could be Koozeman’s concept.”

“What are you doing here, Quinn? You said you didn’t review hack artists. And I had the feeling Koozeman didn’t expect you to show up tonight.”

“I’ve been planning a lengthy piece on Koozeman, not Starr. He really is quite the magician. I could hardly ignore a thing like this.”

“How will you write it up?”

“I intend to promote Koozeman as a genius of the new order. A genius of hype, and hype, don’t you know, is the art form of the era. He’s truly a man of his times. But it hardly merits writing. I can phone this one in.”

“Will anyone know you’re kidding?”

“No.”

“What did you think of Koozeman when he was a working artist?”

“I thought he was very good.”

“According to your brother-in-law, Sabra thought he was a genius.”

“She was probably right. Some of his work was brilliant, and now he promotes hacks. Every third person you meet in this town is a creative artist. If you have an old can of spray paint knocking around in the garage, Koozeman can make you a star.”

“Must be tough for the people with the real talent.”

“New York City,” said Quinn, as though the complete explanation could be offered in those three words. New York, he explained, was tough on every artist. In the beginning, New York doesn’t seem to notice them at all, or so they think. They believe the city doesn’t even know they’re alive. Then, one day an artist trips on the sidewalk and his hand hits the pavement and New York steps on it and breaks all his fingers. New York has noticed him. Then New York steps on his face and breaks that, too, and that’s just to say hello. “So, who could really blame Koozeman for opting to roll in cash instead of always chasing after the rent money.”

Now Koozeman joined them with fresh wine and a gallery boy at his side to take away their empty glasses.

“Quinn, you mustn’t monopolize my prize celebrity this way.” He made a small courtly bow to Mallory. “It was lovely the way you demolished the FBI. So these killer profiles of theirs are worthless?”