Jonathan Dee - Palladio

That was that. I meant it when I told her that I knew we’d see each other again, and get the chance to fill in the blanks, solve the mysteries, hash it all out at a sane distance from our own youth. Fate is a word I don’t like; it’s more like logic, an aesthetic sort of logic, the logic of beauty. The logic of the story of us.

* * *

NOT MUCH NEW this week. Elaine found her director, chartered a plane, got about a half-hour permission window from the Port Authority to take off and land at Newark Airport — every time I see her she’s shouting into a cell phone. Mal was supposed to be back from Spain by now, but he called Colette to say he was staying over in New York for a couple of days: someone put him on to the fact that there’s an auction of Thomas Jefferson memorabilia at Christie’s on Tuesday. He says maybe he can pick something up and donate it to Monticello. He’s donated a bunch of money already; they love him over there.

Then this afternoon there’s a knock on my office door, and it’s Jean-Claude Milo. I hadn’t seen him in two or three weeks, even though we’re living in the same house. He doesn’t look well: he’s pale, and exhausted, a little more spectral than usual, though all of us around here are used to seeing him like this during periods when he’s working hard.

I have a favor to ask, John, he says. It’s a money thing.

Have a seat. Listen, you want anything to drink or anything? I can have Tasha go downstairs –

He waved me off. Thanks anyway, he said. No, so there’s this thing I need.

Silence.

How much does this thing cost? I said, trying to prompt him.

He held up his hands. No idea.

Well, so what is it?

He shifted in his chair, staring at the Jim Dine that hangs behind me. It’s a deep-red-and-white abstract (I’ve always thought it looks a bit like a bloody heart), and for a moment there Jean-Claude seemed so engaged by it that I thought maybe he hadn’t heard what I’d asked him. Then he gave his head a little shake and returned his attention to me. The thing is, I need a refrigerator, he said; not like one of those huge ones but a small one. To go in my room.

I put my hand over my mouth so he wouldn’t see me smiling at the solemnity of this request. Jean-Claude truly seems to have no grasp of money and how it works — the kind of item he described could have cost five thousand dollars for all he knew. As it was, he could easily have gone to P.C. Richard right in town, brought one home, plugged it in, and expensed it. I wouldn’t have cared. This way, though, at least I got to have my curiosity satisfied.

What do you need it for? I said.

What do you mean?

I mean, just for eating in your room? I know the kitchen staff goes home at nine, I’m sorry if that doesn’t fit with your own hours –

No, it’s not that. It’s for work.

Work?

For this thing I’m working on. I need a place to store some of my, uh, my bodily fluids I guess is the expression. Oh, and it needs to have a freezer, I forgot to mention that. Is that okay?

Sometimes I wish I had someone around to help me make sense of stuff like this. But in the end, all it came back to was the question of justifying an expense of maybe a hundred and fifty dollars for artists’ supplies; and I didn’t even have to think about that one. I told him I’d have it delivered to him tomorrow.

* * *

ELAINE WAS OUT for a late-night run; I was lying on my bed, still fully dressed, trying to read a collection of new and selected poems by a reasonably well-known poet (if I’ve heard of her, she can’t be too unknown) who’s applying for a spot here, when I heard footsteps in the hall, footsteps that came closer and then halted. No knock; instead, the whisper of a folded piece of paper being slipped under the door. It was a note from Colette. Mal was back from New York; he wanted to let me know that he was in his office right now, in case I had anything urgent for him.

I didn’t, but I went anyway. The rooms on the ground floor were so dark I guided myself across to the east wing by the red lights of the burglar alarms. There were voices floating up from the basement, fading to silence as I took the stairs up to the third floor. Mal’s office door was open; the light spilled into the hall.

You’re back.

Mal smiled. Master of the obvious, he said.

He was looking through the drawers of his desk for something. On his desk was a small packing crate, from which he had removed the lid.

How was Spain?

Dull. But on the plane back to New York someone tipped me off about this Jefferson auction, at Christie’s. I couldn’t resist. I had to stick around for it.

You bought something?

Mal straightened up for a moment from his search through his desk and slyly folded his arms. He pointed at the crate. Have a look, he said.

I took a step forward and looked inside. Nestled in the straw-like packing material was a small pot, with a very narrow opening, set in a rectangular marble base. I wasn’t sure what it was.

Can you believe it? Mal said. That’s Jefferson’s actual inkstand, originally from Monticello. Been in private hands for more than a century. He wrote part of the Notes on Virginia with that inkstand. Lift it.

What?

Pick it up.

I did; though easily grasped in one hand, it was extraordinarily heavy.

Amazing, I said, replacing it in the crate. And I wasn’t just indulging him; it actually was amazing, to be in the presence of an original object like that, to think for a moment about the past from which it had emerged, the other hands that had been where mine now had been.

But in the meantime Mal had found what he was searching his desk drawers for: a roll of scotch tape. He picked up a stack of paper from his desk and set about taping individual sheets to the walls of his office, at eye level, a foot or so above the molding. They were color xeroxes. I only had to look at a few of them before I realized they were all works by or about that group out on the West Coast, CultureTrust.

I got them off the Internet, Mal said, following my gaze. I had some spare time in Bilbao.

I saw The Trend Is Near, of course, along with their appropriation of our famous mirror ad: a similar Mylar sheet, only with the word SUCKER and an arrow pointing downward, written in a kind of faux-lipstick, across the top. Apparently the Mylar technology had improved since we popularized it. I couldn’t help but smile.

It’s not bad stuff, is it? Mal said. I’ve been reading up on these guys. They actually have a lot of good things to say.

I sat down in the chair opposite his desk; he finished his circuit of the room, his back to me, rounding out the miniature gallery satirizing us, among others.

I mean look at this one, Mal said excitedly, taping it to the wall and standing back from it. It was a CultureTrust parody of one of Apple’s Think Different ads: the image was a photograph of Karl Marx.

The only problem here, Mal said, is how different is this from one of the real ads?

Not too different, I admitted.

So I was looking at it and I thought, you know, if they really want to parody this campaign they should use the same words over a picture of Steve Jobs with a knife sticking out of his head. And that’s when it hit me: I could help these guys! In the end we’re really all after the same thing!

And that rather startling idea hung in the air between us for a minute, until Mal stood and lifted the inkstand out of its crate again. Seeing him glance around for a spot to put it down, knowing how heavy it was, I jumped up and moved the crate on to the floor. He set the inkstand down and settled back into his chair again, with a happy sigh; and we sat there and contemplated the solidity of the thing, its disinterest, its promise to outlast us.