Quarantine

This work is like laying bricks, Phil thought. He sighed. Saved the document. Flipped to the next file on his desk. The Complaint on behalf of the furniture rental company and the Demand Letter seeking unpaid rent on twenty cubicles and desk chairs. He opened the Complaint template in Word, and found that Carey, his paralegal and receptionist, had already filled out the cover page. Plaintiff, Defendant, Judge and Court, dates. He worked steadily, his mind elsewhere. The billing software recorded 0.9 hours. One more brick in the wall.

At five sharp he heard Carey deadbolt the front door and turn the sign from open to closed. She started humming. She came down the hall and stood in his office door, stretching and yawning. She kicked her heels off, put her hands on her broad hips and leaned back. Her clothes stretched against her. It’s that time, she said. She went back to the bathroom.

He turned off the computer and shut the door. He took off his slacks and pressed shirt, and hung them up. He put on shorts and a t-shirt and went out barefoot. She waited at the stairway door in her bathrobe and flipflops. He unlocked the door and they climbed to the attic. The round gable window let in the street sounds, the breathing of cars, the growing volume of laughing customers gathering in front of the bar across the street. He put on a coverall and disposable gloves and stepped into brightly-stained slippers.

Let’s continue same as yesterday, if you would, he said. She studied the canvas, then went to the bed. He looked away, as always. When she said ready, he turned toward her. She lay almost right. He compared her position to yesterday’s underpainting. He went to the bed. Bend your lower knee a little more. Good. I’m going to fix your hair. He moved a thick wing of her hair into the sun. It shifted from almost black to amber. He rearranged the folds of the sheet around her foot. He made several small adjustments to the scene to make it conform to the underpainting.

He started hesitantly. It was always like this. All day laying bricks, and then the freedom of the brush, its lubricated movements in the slick oil paint. He warmed to the work, and then he painted with great speed and fluidity. This was for him the best time. His mind did not stray.

The sounds of the street also warmed to the after-work freedom. Bar customers smoked on the sidewalk below, much louder and happier now that they’d had a drink. The color of the sunlight warmed, from white through yellow, now verging on orange. Her skin turned almost amber as the sun fell, and he found the color for her sunlit profile, a mix of burnt sienna, lead white, cadmium yellow, and, strangely, a very small amount of pthalo blue. The sunlit horizon line of her thigh and hip and the fold of her side were a non-color, neither brown nor pink, as prejudice insisted, but a warm and clayey gold that verged on green. He never tired of this moment, when he landed by intuition on precisely the color that moved the painting from flat and merely accurate, to spacious and vibrant. He worked at an almost frantic pace while the light was right. As it got too orange he worked on the bedding, trying to see the true colors of her shadow on the folds of the white sheet. He worked until seven, the allotted two hours.

He rolled his paint table away so she could get her robe on. He stretched plastic wrap over the palette and put his brushes away, and wiped the knife clean. He bagged the dirty paper towels and latex gloves and went downstairs. She came down behind him and locked the stairway door. They dressed, she in the bathroom, he in his office. They offed the lights, set the alarm, and went out together onto the hot sidewalk. Don’t do nothing I wouldn’t do, she said. She went her way, and he drove home.

His wife had supper ready. The kids were finishing their homework. He felt a moment of pleasure in this order, and then a moment of guilt. This order depended on his income as an attorney and on his wife’s willingness to submit to a role she could very easily transcend. He watched her in the kitchen for a moment. So competent, so organized. So overqualified for this repetitive domestic work. They had met in law school. He was the better student, disciplined and meticulous, but she had the gifts of a TV-drama litigator: articulate, capable of chess-game strategizing, and committed. He always felt unimaginative and stolid around her, and he liked it. And he felt that she had made the greater sacrifice, being a housewife. He thought of himself as a hardworking drone returning every night to this orderly hive and the queen bee. Her willingness to be the housewife flattered him and sometimes filled him with gratitude  ̶  he had never expected to live so well, or to be so adored  ̶  but he felt uneasy, too. How long would she tolerate the boredom? What hobbies would she take up to make her life interesting? What concessions would she demand of him in exchange for her dutiful forbearance?

He changed out of his office clothes and went down to supper. A protein, a starch, and a vegetable. He asked about her day. She made of it an adventure: the errands, the volunteer hour at the kids’ school library, getting the oil changed. She asked about his day, about specific cases, though she couldn’t be interested. His work was all procedural, the most mundane practice, none of the high-stakes courtroom drama that animated her. He asked the kids about their friends and their classes. They said pretty much what they always said, evasive and cagey. He didn’t really listen. After supper he did the dishes and tidied the kitchen. They watched the news, then went to bed, early as usual.

Next day was Friday. He spent half the morning on the phone planning a retreat for members of the Bar. He worked through a discrepancy in his billing with a client. He agreed to a partnership with a big firm on a high-profile pro bono case. Carey bustled in and out, as always fast, energetic, and competent. Her clothes tended toward a dramatic, artsy formality Monday through Thursday, but today she wore jeans over heels, and a loose blouse that showed the top of her elaborate tattoos. He didn’t mind her casual Fridays, but he wore his slacks and pressed shirt as always. Late in the morning he heard the landscaper start work next door. This reminded him that he needed to hire a new landscaper for his building. To the sounds of oiled hedge-shears, he completed his current document. He went outside to talk with the man.

At first, the man did not look up when Phil spoke, then, startled, he set down the tool and removed his hat and held it in both hands at his waist, a strangely formal and submissive gesture. The landscaper was tall and athletic, symmetrical, though stooped in the shoulders. His skin was almost black, a dark coffee brown, white with sweat salt around his neck. Phil had noticed him, but, now that the landscaper had removed his hat and they faced each other he could see that he was many years older than Phil had thought. Sorry to interrupt, but I’m looking to hire a landscaper for my building here, so maybe you could come knock when you’re off work and we’ll talk about it?

The man smiled and shook his head. I’m no speak English, he said. Spanish.

Phil took a moment to adjust. He had spoken Spanish fluently as a young man, when he was a missionary in Guatemala, and later on church charity trips he helped organize. His Spanish wasn’t what it used to be, but the man seemed delighted by his effort. He repeated his request and the man said, in an unfamiliar and almost opaque accent, that he would drop in as soon as he finished.

Phil worked for a while, then the front door chimed open. He heard Carey shift to Spanish. She and the man talked and laughed for a minute, then Phil went to the reception area and asked the man to sit. He refused, indicating his dirty pants. It seemed an important matter of deference that he remain standing, hat in hands, so Phil remained standing, too. The man’s name was Gonzalo, he was from Veracruz. He admitted with some reluctance that he was in the United States illegally. Phil asked him if he would take care of the planting in front of the office once a week, and Gonzalo said yes, of course. Phil had a hard time with his accent, nothing like Carey’s Spanglish or the slow and gentle accents he’d learned in Guatemala, but they communicated well. All three went out to the sidewalk. Phil showed Gonzalo the neat row of squared boxwood and the pine-bark mulch that accumulated trash and needed raking. He showed him the locker where he kept the hose and fertilizer. Carey showed him the big clay urns of flowers she had planted, and the tree-wells full of herbs that barely survived the foot-traffic and the dogs. Gonzalo quoted a price, they shook on it, and he put his hat back on and left on a bicycle heavy with tools.

Carey left at five. She did not model Fridays. From the hall, he watched her step to the curb, look both ways, then jog across the street to the bar, where a crowd waited to get in. She joined a group her age, hugging and laughing. The shape of her across the street reminded him that she was not his, that she was an employee. The way she stood so straight in her sleek heels and the shape of her body in her clothes seemed too much to share, but he brought himself out of reverie and changed into his coverall and went upstairs to paint.

Under the rafters, the studio was hot in the afternoon sun, and the air was thick with Turpenol and damar, linseed oil and Liquin. He opened the window and the door to the fire escape and turned on the fan. The painting of her, nearly finished, stood on the easel in the middle of the room. He took it down and leaned it against a stack of fifty others. Paintings leaned all along one long wall, maybe two hundred of them, a few years’ work. Most were about two by three feet, many were smaller than a sheet of legal paper, and a few were very large, four by eight feet. He had three series of paintings: the ones of Carey that he did Monday through Thursday after office hours; a series of still-lifes he did when she wasn’t working, Friday and some weekends, all of them set up right here, in this attic studio by the circular gable window; and a few landscapes he did when he traveled, mostly alone. His wife had seen only the landscapes. She supported his hobby. She encouraged him to paint, to unwind, and to develop his talent. One of his small landscapes hung above her desk at home, and several decorated the guest rooms in their cabin, but, as far as she knew, his painting was to him what literary fiction was to her: an enriching, edifying hobby. She said that his landscapes were quite good, and he admired her love of books that he found dreary and difficult.

He placed the most recent still-life on the easel, took the plastic off the paints, prepared the brushes, and looked hard at the set-up by the window. He didn’t really care what was in the still-lifes, as long as there was color and light. He had draped a cloth over a stool and placed a Mason jar half-full of water on top, by an orange. In almost all these paintings the sun angled down from the left, because he usually painted in the late afternoon. In a few minutes he was up to speed. He painted the reflection of the sky in the surface of the water. He looked closely and saw the stippled light through the street trees as a pattern around the rim of the glass. The orange reflected its color onto the white cloth and in the glass. As he worked, the sun lowered, and the lights of the bar came on, bold text in blinking bulbs against an orange wall. The light of the scene changed abruptly, and he moved quickly to adjust. He painted the points of light and their warped, displaced inversions in the glass and water. At six-thirty he called home and lied to his wife, I’m running behind at work, I’ll be a little late. On a Friday? Yes, sorry, I won’t be long. Can I drive your dinner down? No, love, but thank you. I just need another hour. I’m sorry.

He worked til eight, pushing hard. He would have to leave it unfinished. He felt exhilarated and purposeful. He wanted to stay. The painting would be a good one.

He latched the window and the fire-escape door and draped his coverall across a chair. He threw his used gloves in the trashcan, shut off the lights and went down, locking the door behind him.

At home he found his supper under foil. The kitchen shone spotless under the halogen lights of the stove hood. He heard the TV upstairs, manic laughter in the otherwise silent house. As he walked by the stove he felt heat and found that she had left a burner on low. He shut it off and went upstairs. He leaned into the kids’ rooms and said hi. They glanced up from their cell phones and acknowledged him. He went in to his wife and kissed her. She shut off the TV and they talked for a while about plans for the weekend. He thought of the good painting he had left, and longed to get back to it, but he feigned enthusiasm, and they decided to go to the cabin, to get the kids out of cell-range and into the fresh air of summer.

The still-life turned out very well. He wanted to do another, similarly backlit by the blinking lights of the bar, but sunset was getting later, and his wife had been silently resentful of his late Friday night at the office. He focused on the sessions with Carey. He proposed starting earlier so he could get three hours of painting time every day. She resisted, saying that two hours was already a long time to hold still for him. He offered her a raise, and she agreed. He worried that someone would notice the sign turned to closed at four, but he couldn’t have someone walking in while he was in the attic in his coverall. So, for three hours four times a week he painted Carey. He worked out a palette of colors for her skin and the bedding in the slanting solstice light. The paintings became more fluent, and he finished two, sometimes three per week. He posed her with her back to him, and several paintings that June showed her in subtly different poses, though the props changed from day to day: in one, her amber hair is piled on a red silk pillow, and the sunlight makes a faint halo of diffuse red on the bare rafters above her head. In another he piled an armload of books next to her on the bed, and she lies with one arm flung up over her head and her hair drapes across the pillow, as though she had succumbed to too much reading.

As she came to trust him more, he turned her every which way. On her back the sun lit the tattoos across her belly and between her breasts and he struggled to render the fine, intricate lines of the tattoos with the same attention he brought to the almost featureless expanse of her skin. He rarely touched her. He maintained the professional detachment he had promised, though sometimes he was sick with desire.

The days in the office required all of his discipline and endurance. His mind recoiled from his work. He had to force himself to pay attention to the demanding documents. He made an embarrassing mistake on a court filing, and had to issue a correction at the indignant demands of opposing counsel. He did what he could to bill six hours a day, but some days he was so distracted he couldn’t, in good conscience, bill more than half that. His income dropped. He dreaded the empty evenings between the time Carey left on Thursday and their next session the following Monday.

One Saturday, he cancelled plans with his family to go in to work. He forced himself to bill ten hours that day. It relieved his guilt and anxiety. It brought his billables for the month just high enough that his wife was unlikely to question him.

Quietly, citing conflicting demands on his time, he quit his position with the Bar, and he delegated more of his church responsibilities to others. He painted as much as he could.

Gonzalo showed up every Monday. He did a good job. He cleaned up from weekend traffic, the beercans and cigarette butts thrown in the boxwoods. He watered and pruned and raked. Phil liked to go out and practice his Spanish with Gonzalo. He liked the handsome, charismatic man, and Gonzalo relaxed a little around him. Gonzalo was a raconteur and had a way of speaking that drew Phil to him. A tendency to use pungent and suggestive words. A straight-faced delivery and an abrupt smile. Phil loved to hear his endless breezy anecdotes, his swerving commentary, his ribald punchlines, his worldliness that made light of weariness and hardship.

Carey always had a joke ready for Gonzalo. Back in his office, Phil would hear her go out the front door and start talking in rapidfire Spanish, punctuated by Gonzalo’s baritone acknowledgements, sí, pues sí, sí, sí. Then Gonzalo’s loud, wheezing, whooping laugh would burst out as she got to the punchline. Phil couldn’t quite follow what she was saying. He tried to not feel hurt that she had no jokes for him, but, he reminded himself, She is only my employee, nothing more. She answers the phone and e-mails, she does paralegal, she sits by the door, and she lies in the bed with her clayey-golden skin. That is what I pay her to do. I cannot expect her to like me.

He finished several smaller paintings, of her face and shoulders as she looked, sidelit, out the attic window. The light passed through her eyes and it took him several tries before he found a way to suggest that translucence with a few loose brushstrokes. These painting seemed alive, heightened, vibrant in a way that made the rest of his life feel flat and bland. He thought about the paintings all the time. He hadn’t felt so intoxicated since he was a child.

Then he worked on some very large paintings, whole sheets of gessoed plywood he’d barely been able to get up the fire-escape, of Carey stretched on her back, her arms reaching above her head. The shadows of her ribs and hips intensified her exposure and the paintings were almost upsetting, at least discomfiting, as though they showed something forbidden. She did not look vulnerable, but fearless, or impassive, like a resting lion.

One Friday at five she came to his office door and yawned and stretched and asked him, in Spanish, if he had plans for the weekend. He said yardwork, maybe go to the cabin with the kids, an obligation at church. She told him she was going to take a cooking class and go to a movie and hopefully get drunk. He felt so grateful that she spoke to him in Spanish and that she stood there in his doorway laughing when she had already clocked out. She said, Do you have a few minutes I can say something to you? With trepidation, he indicated the chair, and she sat and crossed her legs and let a yellow heeled pump hang off her foot.

She said, now in English, Maybe this is something you want me to shut up and not say it? But, you know, these paintings are very good. Especially the ones with me in them! She laughed, without self-deprecation.

Thank you, he said.

You need to show them.

No, you know I can’t do that. It’s just a hobby.

No way, Mister Phil, these are not hobby paintings. These painting are really fucking good, excuse my rude mouth.

Thank you, Carey.

Look, you got, what, like a hundred paintings up there just leaning on the wall getting dusty and…

Probably almost three hundred by now.

You see? Three hundred! What are you doing all these paintings for if nobody sees them but me? At first, I figured you just wanted to see me naked and I didn’t mind too much and you pay me really good, so I said yes. I thought maybe, you know, you would get some idea and try something, but no, you are so nice and considerate sometimes I think you’re gay. She laughed. I’m sorry. Was that bad to say?

No, Carey. I’m not gay. I just want a model. You’re a great model. I don’t want to ruin that by, uh, inappropriate behavior. By disrespecting you.

I appreciate that. You always seem like a safe man, like I can trust you. It’s okay. I like having the work, and I’m more comfortable with it now than I was. It’s much easier than legal work. She laughed again.

He smiled. Carey, thank you for being so great about this.

Yeah, of course. But so, let’s talk about these paintings. You have to show them. Seriously. When I used to model and in art school I’ve seen lots of paintings, and yours are so good. You have a gift, bro. I’m serious.

That weekend at the cabin he thought about what she’d said. He wondered how the paintings would look in a gallery. The thought kept coming to him, though he kept dismissing it. There’s no way, he thought. These paintings belong to another life. A secret, quarantined life that I love even more than my home life, much more than my career. I can’t jeopardize that. He sat on the porch looking across the meadow to where his kids played in the stream. It’s not exactly that I love my secret life more than my home life, he thought. What I mean is that my secret life makes my home life make sense. Or makes it worth it. I love this life, but it is not everything all the time. It’s nearly perfect, but it’s also very boring, no matter how much I love my kids and my wife. He got up and went into the cabin. His wife lay on the couch reading a thick book. Even in her old hiking pants and flannel shirt she looked put-together and pretty. Her hair on the pillow kept its shape. She wore light lipstick and her pedicure looked fresh as always.

He took a shower and thought of Carey. He heard her encouragement over and over. With patience and discipline he stated his case to himself, as though his most prudent self were offering objective legal counsel to his most reckless self. It said: the paintings must never come to light. They belong to your id. They show appetites that must remain caged. They show a side of you that is incompatible with your professional reputation, and that could destroy your marriage and family, and jeopardize your position in the church and the community. He said to himself, If you had any sense you would destroy the paintings, start over, put this childish phase behind you. You would send Carey away with a generous bonus and hire a kid out of law school. He made a contract with himself. In his journal, which he knew his wife sometimes read, he wrote Choose the right, let the consequence follow! And, on another page, he drew a line from memory of the horizon of Carey’s thigh, hip, and side as she had lain in the sun. The line was abstract, uninterpretable to anyone else, a secret in plain sight, a challenge to the order he relied on, but, he knew, timid and without commitment or real danger.

Lying awake that night he chided himself for his timidity. That abstract line, along with a few anodyne landscapes in his cabin, was all his family knew of the passion that moved him most. The regularity of his wife’s breathing and the endless white-noise of the stream pressed down on him.

On Monday he was working on end-of-month accounting when he heard Carey go out the front door and greet Gonzalo in Spanish. He let them talk for a minute. Gonzalo laughed and laughed about something Carey said. Then Phil got up and went out and greeted Gonzalo, asked him to come in to his office when his work was done.

Gonzalo came in, hat in hands, and stood facing the desk. Phil closed the door and asked Gonzalo to sit. He hesitated, but sat on the edge of the chair with his hat on his lap, looking worried.

I have a proposal for you, said Phil, in Spanish.

I hope you are happy with my work?

Yes, very happy. Please, there’s nothing to worry about. I have an idea, but first I need you to promise that what we say in this room is absolutely private, just between you and me.

Yes, of course. I promise. Not one word.

Gonzalo, this will sound perhaps a little crazy. I am an attorney. I have important and conservative clients. I have a place in this community, and I have leadership responsibilities in the legal profession and in my church. Furthermore, I have a family I adore.

Yes, sir. I understand. But what is the crazy part? Gonzalo smiled broadly. His handsome face changed from stern and humble, to jovial and charismatic and knowing. Phil thought he saw a secret life in Gonzalo, too. Maybe he is one of those people who come to America to do menial work because it pays better than professional work in Mexico, he thought. Maybe this man, who appears to be just a simple laborer, is sophisticated. Who knows what lies behind a poor, black, foreign face?

He told Gonzalo about his painting. He explained that the paintings contained images, of Carey, that would shock and offend his family, his colleagues, his clients, and the members of his church. 

Gonzalo nodded soberly and said, I understand, sir. A gentleman’s private matters must remain private, and must be handled with the utmost consideration.

Yes. Exactly.

You can count on my discretion, sir.

Thank you, Gonzalo. Please call me Phil.

Phil made his proposal. I want you to consider an offer. I have reason to believe that my paintings are actually good. I’m surprised. It started as something I enjoyed, way back in high school. I took a couple of classes in college, and my paintings were good, but I felt obligated to pursue a profession. Painting seemed irresponsible. My wife and I got married when we were in law school. We had two children, and I have felt obligated to work hard as an attorney, and to be a pillar in the community. But I started painting again, to unwind, because I enjoy it. Like a hobby. But it’s taken over. Now I paint whenever I get a chance. I work as few office hours as I can, and I paint almost every day. And  ̶  I hope this isn’t arrogant  ̶  I think my paintings are very good. I never expected this.

And, please, how can I help in this private matter or your secret paintings?

Gonzalo, I want you to be the painter.

The man’s face slackened. He looked Phil over for a long moment. I’m sorry, sir, Mister Phil, I don’t understand.

I want these paintings to go public. I want to see if they’re really good, or if I’m just delusional. My idea, my proposal, is that you pose as the artist. We take the paintings to galleries, and you tell them that you painted them, and then, hopefully, we sell some, and I give you half the money.

Gonzalo finally sat back. He set his hat aside and looked at Phil directly. He sat quiet while Phil waited for a reply.

Why are you asking me this? I am just the gardener. You don’t know anything about me. I am not even in this country legally. What do I know about art? I have never even been in a gallery. How can you trust me with your scandal?

I’m asking you because you’re a gardener. Because I have everything to lose and you have everything to gain.

Gonzalo’s face hardened. What am I going to gain? Attention that gets me sent back to Mexico still owing the coyote?

Money. Easy money. To them, you will be the landscape laborer who went home every night to paint. The unlikely genius, let’s say. Not someone they expect. A great story. You can pocket some money, maybe find some allies.

These painting, then, are works of genius?

Well. They are very good.

I imagine there are several very good painters in this city, but they go unnoticed because the artists are not poor Mexican negros?

Please, Gonzalo. That’s not what I meant. I mean, I can’t let it be known that I am the artist. It would destroy my life.

One thing is true about what you’re saying, said Gonzalo. I have not much to lose. Maybe they take my bike and tools. Maybe my filthy old hat. Maybe this roll of cash. But I have no family here, no profession, no church, no real community. So, yes, if I become the artist, if I lend my face and name to your paintings, and the people are offended or even appalled, and I sell some of the paintings to the kind of people who delight in the outrageous, who love to show their liberality and worldliness by owning obscene paintings made by a poor Mexican negro, then the worst that will happen is that I will be deported and that I will return to unemployment in Mexico with a bank account.

Gonzalo, please. I understand that this proposal is not without risk for you. But I promise you that I will protect you, vouch for you, be your sponsor. I am very well connected. I speak Spanish. If the worst happens, I will bring you back to the United States. I will pay your expenses and advocate for you. You have my word.

Gonzalo sat for a while. He sucked on his lips and stared into the corner of the room. He ran the brim of his hat through his huge and calloused hands. Then he stood up. His deference fell off him like a cloak. He stood tall and straight and looked down at Phil as he sat behind his desk. Okay, then, Mister Phil. Show me my paintings. He held his hand out toward the closed office door, palm up, as though to say, After you.

Phil stood. He went out the door, down the hall, and to the stairway door. He unlocked it and they went up.

The attic was close and hot. At the top of the stairs Gonzalo turned toward the room. The latest painting stood on the easel, eight feet long. On it, in the loose, hurried, dripping brushstrokes of Phil’s first sketch, Carey lay sprawled on her back, her head off the end of the bed, her throat exposed, her hand between her legs, her tattoos like text on her glowing skin, in an ellipse of white sunlight. Gonzalo turned away for a moment, then turned back. He studied the painting. He stepped to the paintings that leaned against the wall, most of them finished. He held up one of the smaller paintings, of Carey’s face by the window. He turned and faced Phil.

So what I am going to do is take some of these to a gallery  ̶  I hope wearing a better shirt, but I mustn’t look too good  ̶  and tell them that I want to sell some paintings. Correct?

Yes, basically. I will help with the details and contacts. There’s a lot we need to figure out. But, yes, these paintings will be, publicly, your work.

He looked back at the big underpainting. How much does a painting like this sell for? When it’s finished.

That’s a very big one, obviously. Hard to sell. Most people do not have wall space for one that big.

Most people, Mister Phil, do not have any space at all for a painting of a very voluptuous naked girl doing such a private thing as this.

You might be surprised. That one will be maybe $12,000. Half that goes to the gallery and we split the other half. So $3,000 for you. If the paintings sell well, or if we get picked up by a gallery in a larger city, the prices will increase. Double or triple, I think. But I don’t expect the big ones to sell often. They hang in the galleries and people, certain people, educated liberals who went to graduate school in the big city, young couples with lots of money and an image to cultivate, will see the big ones, like them, and then buy a small one to take home.

Maybe these paintings of the mountains and countryside sell quickly. And these ones that do not have beautiful Carey in them.

Yes. I expect so. People want the art without the danger.

They stood for a long minute. The roof ticked in the heat. Gonzalo stood over the bed, looking at the rumpled sheets. He turned back to Phil. Yes, he said. I am the artist.

*

Phil called galleries, told them that he was doing a favor for an acquaintance who could not speak English, made appointments. He selected a landscape and a still-life and three paintings of Carey, all small and portable. Phil took pictures of several of the larger paintings where they leaned in the attic, with Gonzalo standing to the side in Phil’s paint-flecked coverall.

Phil coached Gonzalo. Rely on your smile, he said. Tell them stories. Get them laughing. Just do what you do. You’re a very likable person and people want to believe. You don’t need to know the gallery business. In fact, not knowing how it works will help you. They will know that you’re an outsider  ̶  here he had to search for a word in Spanish, trying extranjero, then marginero, then fuereño  ̶  a person who is not the scrubbed product of a university art program. Gonzalo looked amused, but he was game.

For the first gallery pitch, Phil wore a nice shirt and khakis. He posed as a do-gooder, eager to help his Spanish-speaking friend get his nice paintings into the galleries. Gonzalo showed up in old but carefully-pressed slacks and shirt, and a new, cream-colored fedora, looking rather too prosperous, Phil thought. The woman who met them at the door wore almost exactly what Phil had expected: a simple black dress and a vaguely ethnic scarf. Tall, thin, and severe. She was courteous but cool, and glanced at her phone as she ushered them into the big white room. Gonzalo spoke right away.

Phil translated: He says he thinks the light in here is perhaps overly dependent on the sun. He worries that when you cover the windows the light will be too dim for his work.

Cover the windows?

He says that his work must not be visible from the sidewalk, from public view.

Maybe I should see the work before we discuss lighting? Phil thought he heard contempt in her voice, but she offered Gonzalo a bright smile, then guided him further into the gallery with a light touch on his arm.

Phil set the paper-wrapped bundle of paintings on the reception counter and untied the string. They had agreed on the order of the paintings. A gentle introduction. The top painting was a landscape, mountains with snow in the background, a fat orange cloud above, and tiered billboards marching down a length of freeway in the foreground. Nature and junky development together, the manmade stuff bright and plasticky against nature, aloof and menacing.

The gallerist stood back from it, then moved close and put on reading glasses. Very proficient, she said. This is oil?

Yes, they’re all oil, Phil said.

Next he presented the still-life. He rested it on its bottom edge on the counter and tilted it back to catch the overhead halogen light. One of the Mason jar paintings, this one with several lemons. The glass and water caught the light coming through the window, and the lemons burned with primary yellow. The gallerist looked and looked. Moved back and forward. Looked across the face of the paint.

Very, very well done, she said. The colors are lovely, the sense of space, the quality of light. I think this one is very compatible with our mission as a gallery.

Phil translated to Gonzalo. Gonzalo laughed abruptly, and said: wait til she sees these next ones.

Phil turned to her and said: he thinks this painting appeals to you because it is decorative and the work you show looks painted for living rooms.

The gallerist reddened. I believe we carry the finest local work in the city, she said. This is all fine art. This is not a decorative arts gallery.

He means no offense, I’m sure, said Phil. It’s just that, you see, he paints very few landscapes and still-lifes. They are the paintings he does when he doesn’t have a model. He works mainly in figure painting. We have a few of his smaller figure paintings here. Gonzalo stood back and asked Phil to hold up the first of the paintings of Carey. Gonzalo put his hat down. He looked at the gallerist. He stepped to her and took her elbows and moved her back several feet. Aquí te paras, flaca, he said.

He wants you to stand back there.

He made that clear enough, she said, then laughed abruptly, a single barking, awkward laugh. She stood with her arms folded, rubbing her elbows.

Gonzalo tilted the top painting rather roughly, imperiously, then took it from Phil and held it up in front of his chest. His dark face scowled above the luminous sunlit profile of Carey. The skin of her face was brown and done in a fast impasto, but the skin of her breasts was pale, painted in a few circular strokes of very dilute paint, almost white. The street outside the window was painted in more detail than anything inside the window, and the sun shone through the white of her eye.

The gallerist hugged her arms tightly to herself and her shoulders rose. She glanced at Gonzalo, then looked at Phil, as though about to speak, then back at the painting. Phil had never seen one of the Carey paintings in such white light. It looked frank, almost aggressive, as though a stripped person stood before them. Phil noticed for the first time that he had painted a faint shadow along Carey’s jaw that made her look determined, or angry. The picture showed something unfulfilled in Carey. Her gaze out the window did not look at all wistful, as Phil had imagined while he painted, but defiant, as though the world outside the window owed something to this naked girl, and that she would take it.

The gallerist stammered. It’s, well, stunning. Very, very good. Yes. Where did you go to school, mister, uh, Gonzalo?

He is self-taught.

Really? In Mexico?

Recently. Just over the last couple of years.

Extraordinary. I should say right up front that we can’t show nudity toward the street, just a few pieces facing the back wall, I’m afraid. We’re in the provinces, for sure. She laughed again.

This is why Gonzalo expressed his concern about the windows.

Well, I understand, believe me, but I can’t paper over the windows. I represent several other artists.

Phil spoke with Gonzalo for a minute. Gonzalo looked irritated and walked off to a corner to look at a landscape featuring fall foliage and beef cattle.

Perhaps this is not the right gallery for this work. His work. He is looking for lots of wall space, the best lighting, a one-man opening.

I would consider a one-man opening if I were dealing with an established favorite artist, she said. But I see just a few paintings here. I would be happy to show his landscapes. Those will sell, I’m sure. This one is really very good. I have space for three of four of them. I would like to keep some still-lifes in the stable for the right buyer. I have a few clients who will venture out into still-lifes now and then. I’d be happy to send them custom invitations.

Gonzalo’s heart is in the figures. He is a figure painter who makes do with more, shall we say agreeable? work when his model isn’t available.

That work will be very challenging to show and sell…

I believe it deserves special effort. The work will sell itself if you can bring in the right buyers. Its quality is evident.

Yes, of course, it’s very good work. I mean no offense. If it were entirely up to me I would feature such work exclusively. But you understand that this isn’t New York. People take offense. They expect something less… forthright.

Well, if you reconsider, you know how to reach me.

Like I said, I’d love to show the landscapes.

There will be very, very few landscapes to show. Thank you. We need to get to our next appointment.

The next gallery received them in much the same way. The curator was courtly and effusive, but, with elaborate apologies, he offered to show only the landscapes and the still-lifes. He blushingly admitted that he couldn’t carry the figure paintings. They were just too daring, he said. Risqué. Inflammatory. Potentially, in this small city, offensive to his best clients. He offered to buy the still-life for his own house, but would not agree to Gonzalo’s demands.

*

Over a few weeks, as they made their way through the galleries, Gonzalo adopted a domineering severity, which he would every so often discard in favor of rambling, demonstrative, loud, hilarious storytelling. Most of the gallerists just stood grinning and listening, while Phil translated, editing as he went.

Word got around. All the gallerists knew of the tall, gaunt, formidable but gregarious black man, the enigma, and his humorless white handler. And all of them expressed admiration for the work and an unwillingness to show the figure paintings. Until they met Judith Wallach.

She called Phil. He heard New York in her elderly voice. She said a few pleasant things about the local galleries, about how far the city’s art culture had come in recent years. She said that, of course, the galleries could not be expected to take on the risk of true art, but that if a private individual, a supporter of the arts, were to be impressed enough by the work, she might consider a large private show in her home. Phil told her that there were many paintings, some very large. How very refreshing, she said, that an artist should be dedicated enough to his work to do lots of it. So many artists today are so exhausted after getting home from selling paint and brushes to dilettantes and students that they barely have enough energy left to play video games all night. But productivity shows commitment and seriousness. She said she found that very, very sexy indeed. Phil set a date.

Phil packed his pickup truck with many paintings, including some of the largest. He drove Gonzalo out of the city and up a valley into the mountains. The road wound up through oaks, then spruces. They turned onto a private road. They were buzzed in at the gate. The road switchbacked up the mountain until it opened into a clearing overlooking the city far below. The long, glassy, prismatic house sat back in the trees. They parked, and Judith came out. Tiny, wiry, aged, without makeup or jewelry. An alert but silent German shepherd kept to her hip and sat when she stopped to greet them. Her greeting was quick, without flourish.

They walked through a lush artificial riparian landscape, past a massive fountain consisting of one thick, canted plate of Corten steel. Claire Townes, she said. The name meant nothing to Phil, but Gonzalo nodded gravely. Shoes here by the door, please, she said. They kicked off their shoes. The house swept toward the view, one vast floor of dark polished wood. The glass walls were invisibly clean. They looked down on the grid of the city.

Dios mio, said Gonzalo.

You can say that again, said Judith. What a privilege to live like this, no? Something to be grateful for.

The living room contained several loose clusters of chairs. Black leather and chrome, spotted cowhide and teak. Designs Phil had seen before but couldn’t name. The dog eyed them from a cushion by a look-through fireplace of travertine. Pristine white partitions separated the spaces. A dining room table with 24 chairs, a kitchen of shining orange enamel, a long broad hallway leading to several open doors. A space much larger than any of the galleries they’d visited. And on the white partitions a few sparsely-spaced pieces of art: some old landscapes, a wall of small cubist charcoal drawings, a very large painting with a pixelated grid, a long strip of pinned-up paper covered with hundreds of tiny cartoon figures engaged in every permutation of copulation and murder, an ancient golden icon, and, in the hall and stairways, many more paintings, small and large. Judith went to a switchplate and flicked on maybe twenty sets of lights, and, one by one, the paintings leapt into clear view. No one style predominated.

Gonzalo stood close to the icon. Byzantine, said Judith. Phil looked up at the pixelated grid. Chuck Close, she said. One of my favorites. There’s another of his downstairs. A shame to keep it hidden, but I had to free up space for a Diebenkorn that’s coming from California. A loaner. But let’s see the art.

Phil and Gonzalo brought in the smaller work first. Judith sat with her back to the view. They held up the landscape they’d been taking around. Nice, she said. They held up a few still-lifes. Excellent, she said. So clear and deep. Beautiful colors. Yes.

They went back to the truck and pulled out the large painting Phil had been working on when he first took Gonzalo up to the attic studio. He had added several increasingly-thick layers of paint since then. He felt that it was one of his best. The projected ellipse of sunlight verged on harsh, and the light reflected off her exposed skin to illuminate the rafters above. The window itself appeared to float in the wall, and contained a sharp rendering of the buildings across the street. The white bedding lay tangled and twisted like an arctic icescape, and her tattoos looked incised, almost branded into her skin. She shone there, sprawled in a way that suggested ecstasy and exhaustion and also despair or agony. She looks dead and alive, said Gonzalo. And soft as a mango. He laughed, all white teeth and craggy black skin.

They carried it into the house, edge forward, then turned it toward her with some ceremony.

She sat still. Holy mother of Christ, she said. She stood up and stared, with her shaking hands clasped in front of her. I’m a Jew, of course, but holy mother of Christ. Now that is a painting. She went back and forth in front of it. She retreated to the window. She went up close and put a hand on it. She ran her fingers down Carey’s arm, to the gold and ruby ring that gleamed there on the edge of the shadow of her inner thigh. So much paint, she said. She put her glasses on and tilted her head back. She got up close. It is so genuinely beautiful, she said. And extremely hot. I feel as though I’m right up next to an oversized lover. I can smell her! She studied the whole length of the painting. Touched it here and there. The sheets are gorgeous. So very well painted. Gonzalo, this is a tremendous painting. She looked up at the man. He looked down at her. Phil translated. Gonzalo nodded to her and muttered his thanks. When she turned back to the painting Gonzalo looked at Phil and smirked.

That afternoon they showed her every painting they’d brought. She did not return to the landscape. She set the still-lifes aside. They moved some furniture and leaned the big paintings around the room. She showed delight, sometimes rapturous, at all of them.

They planned a show. Judith would have the house prepared for ten or twelve of the biggest paintings and as many as twenty of the smaller ones. She handed them a dimensioned floorplan of the public rooms of the house and a lighting diagram. They set a date for the fall. She had a long contact list. She would send out invitations. She left the pricing to them, but suggested that they use what she called big, fat numbers. These people do not want to feel that they’re getting a good deal, she said.

Phil pushed hard for the rest of the summer. He completed several paintings of Carey seated, facing him, close, wearing her office clothes. Her light brown eyes glowed and penetrated. She looked startled, accusative, wary, indicting, challenging, frightened, bemused.

As the day approached, they trucked the paintings up to Judith’s house. Movers wearing white cotton gloves put her paintings in storage and hung Gonzalo’s. Phil was moved by a deep and unsettling excitement as he saw his work go up. Careys reclined, lit from the left, all around the living room. In the stairways she sat by the attic window. Downstairs in the large, almost unfurnished display space, they hung the frankest, most startling work: her body hesitatingly bared. It twisted, as though stopped in movement. It writhed. It was not settled. It seemed to oscillate on the boundary between ecstasy and suffering.

Gonzalo was relaxed the day of the show, though Judith, for the first time they had seen, looked anxious and irritable. Cleaners polished everything. Judith directed the placement of the furniture and the caterers’ set-up in the kitchen. Gardeners made minute corrections to what Phil thought looked perfect. Gonzalo wore an elegant new shirt and his cream fedora and stood out front talking with the gardeners. They laughed at almost everything he said. Phil couldn’t understand much of it. It was too fast and colloquial. Filthy jokes, mostly, and self-lacerating stories of drinking mishaps and miscommunication with rich gringos.

The crews of workers left, and the caterers stood out on the driveway smoking and passing a flask. The late afternoon was quiet and still. Judith went off to rest and change. Phil and Gonzalo sat out by the pool. Gonzalo wanted a drink, but Phil forbade it. You have to be charming, he said. You have to be a smooth-talking player. You have to be the person these rich people feel guilty about.

This will be easy, Gonzalo said. To make them feel guilty I just have to stand by my paintings and smile and be very poor and Mexican and black.

And charming.

Yes. This part of my job I cannot help but do very, very well. I am a professional charmer. He smiled. He kept smiling and looking at Phil until Phil asked him to stop.

Cars started arriving near sunset. Many expensive cars, some with drivers. Many of the people did not look like locals. They looked polished, with their artificial tans and recent facials. Some dressed elegantly, but many looked quite sloppy, in worn jeans and untucked shirts and sandals. They smelled antiseptic and floral and chemically musky. They greeted each other on the driveway. Several stood around the yard talking on their phones, one arm folded across the chest, their heads down, looking at their feet.

They trickled into the house. Phil stood back from Gonzalo. The black man looked out of place in the room. The only man with dark skin. One of the tallest. The only one with a weathered face, with the wrinkles, creases, callouses and scars he’d earned. His cracked yellow nails betrayed his new shirt. His patchy gray hair fought the oil he’d applied. His eyes were rheumy and glaucous, and his gaze, even when he laughed, was hard and appraising. He looked directly at the women. He looked them up and down heedless of their husbands’ presence. He fingered the hand-stitched lapel of an elderly man’s blazer and said, in a caricature of English, Twenty dollar I give you my friend, and slapped the man on the shoulder. He grinned and rocked on his feet. The guests began to crowd around him. Phil translated their questions. Some of the guests spoke Spanish and spoke to Gonzalo directly. One woman looked shocked at something Gonzalo said, and he bowed deeply to her, with evident mockery. But the people laughed, too. A big man with a cultivated South American accent translated one of Gonzalo’s rambling drinking stories, and they responded with abrupt hilarity.

The fog of drunkenness gathered in the room, a kind of convexity held up by Gonzalo at the center. The volume rose. Phil, sober, stood silent, thinking of the evenings painting Carey by the open window with the after-work crowd hooting and laughing in front of the bar across the street. He listened for peoples’ comments on the painting. Their words were lavish, unstinting. Fabulous. Gorgeous. Stunning. Such exquisite control. Such depth and magic. The superlatives rose off the polished people with their perfume and cologne. Women posed with Gonzalo in front of Carey’s splayed body. They canted their hips. They leaned their featureless, symmetrical heads against Gonzalo’s chest. He put his arm around them. He set his massive, gnarled hand right below their breasts, and they stood with their polished cleavage forward as the cell phones flashed and the babble of the crowd grew and grew, amplified by the floor-to-ceiling glass and the polished travertine.

Phil couldn’t hear Gonzalo to translate. Gonzalo did not acknowledge Phil. After some time Judith entered in a vintage lace dress, made up and coiffed, looking energetic and pleased. The people clapped as much as their flutes of champagne allowed. She kissed many people, standing up in the toes of her heels to kiss the men, who held her hands in theirs and expressed their rapturous pleasure. Many women touched her cheek and beamed their flawless smiles and looked honored beyond measure to be included.

Following Judith there was a woman Phil recognized. She wore a tapered masculine tuxedo and a severe short haircut. She smiled tight-lipped when Phil met her eye. He couldn’t place her. She went with Judith around the room. Judith approached the big South American, who stood directly in front of the largest painting, studying it over an overfilled glass of red wine. Judith leaned against him, and he looked down and they spoke with great energy. The man set down his wine and gesticulated wildly. He pointed out details in the painting to Judith, who nodded enthusiastically. Phil was shocked to see that the man’s cheeks shone with tears. Judith beckoned Gonzalo to join them. He did. The two men spoke in booming Spanish. The man gripped Gonzalo’s upper arm and neck and shook him, smiling and crying. The woman in the tux stepped forward and leaned down and Judith spoke into her ear. The woman nodded and stepped to the painting and placed a red dot on the placard. The people in the room cheered, and several congratulated the South American.

Over the next few hours most of the paintings sold. Phil stood alone by the fireplace wishing he were a drinker. Gonzalo continued heedless: leering and lustful, loud and boisterous, almost dismissive of most of the men, demonstrative and natural. Utterly comfortable in his role. He shone in their praise. He throve at the focus of their attention. He charmed and offended. They forgave him.

Late, in the ear-ringing aftermath, they sat and talked. Phil was serious. Gonzalo was still high on the attention. They loved me, he said, then laughed. They loved your paintings. I am now a successful artist, and you are a successful painter. He laughed and laughed.

He wanted to talk money. He knew the exact total. Almost a quarter million. He spoke his cut slowly and distinctly, enunciating each syllable in English, beating them out with his great twisted hand on the armrest of the chair. One. Hundred. And. Twenty. One. Thousand. Dollar. He beamed. More than a peon like me makes in five years of labor. Thanks to God, of course, and he blew a kiss at the ceiling and collapsed back in the chair in raucous laughter.

They reimbursed Judith for the expenses of the party. Phil spent a long day contriving billing to explain his income. He set up a trust account for Gonzalo, as the man couldn’t open his own. He faced the dilemma of how to send the money to Mexico if Gonzalo were deported.

He kept to his schedule. He painted Carey Monday through Thursday. He painted no more landscapes, and only a few still-lifes. Local galleries approached him to negotiate shows for Gonzalo, but he turned them down. Galleries from L.A. and New York called. Then London and Mumbai. He told them that sales had been so strong that Gonzalo was working to put together a new collection. Critics called, requesting interviews. The L.A. Times wrote a short piece on the show and speculated about Gonzalo’s background and his sudden arrival. Many smaller art publications picked up the story. They recited, with barely-concealed fascination, Gonzalo’s identity as an illegal immigrant, black, from Mexico, unschooled, a gardener. They wanted a last name. A birthplace. Confirmation of the gossip. Photographs of the work.

Carey stood in Phil’s doorway. Looks like I deserve a little something, right? He wrote her a bonus check.

He reined in her poses. They had become too sexualized. Blogs described the work as demeaning and objectifying. Internet trolls decried the paintings for being exploitative; for being the work of a black man objectifying a white woman; for not being explicit enough; for Carey’s weight. One said she was a fat slut. One said Gonzalo should be lynched. Send him back to Mexico, they said. Or Africa.

He tried to shut out this noise. He worked hard. The paintings languished for a while. They didn’t have the verve that Phil wanted. He despaired sometimes, late at night and when he was doing legal work.

Gonzalo quit his landscaping work. But he showed up one Monday a month after the show, wearing a fresh summer suit and ornate cowboy boots. He had a new iPhone in a gold case. He walked into the office, shut the door, and sat back in the chair. Mister Phil, how are my paintings coming?

Slowly. It’s been challenging to get back in the swing of it after the show and all the attention.

We need to get the next show scheduled.

I’m working on that.

We can hang the other work, all those pictures in the attic.

Yes, some of them will be suitable.

The ones of Carey.

Yes, maybe a few others.

They are bored of the others. They want beautiful Carey.

I am bored of the others, too. Always have been.

Okay, then, Mister Phil. So let’s get some paintings of beautiful Carey. Good, big, expensive ones. They love to see her naked in their big houses. They love how sexy she is.

Maybe I flatter myself, but I believe they’re drawn by the quality of the art. It is very easy to get pictures of naked girls. People do not spend tens of thousands of dollars for a picture of a naked girl. 

They spend that money for art.

Yes, yes. It is art they love. Art in their houses. Expensive art.

Gonzalo, I am working on the next show.

But not fast. You work what? Three hours a day, four days a week. You paint fewer hours in a week than I used to work in a day making peoples’ yards pretty.

I have a professional office to run. I have a family.

Yes, and a church. Car payments. Yes, yes. But the art is so much better than all that. So much more fun to go to the parties, meet the beautiful women, take their money, wear fine clothes.

I have a life that I can’t just discard.

You don’t have to! Just make your beautiful paintings of beautiful Carey. Your wife will forgive you. Women want a nice big house, lots of clothes and spending money. She doesn’t care if you’re an attorney. She wants a strong man.

Gonzalo, I will produce the work at my pace, and I will keep my life as it is, without disruption, without hurting the people I love.

The next day Carey came in. Did her usual stretch in the doorway. I been thinking, Mister Phil. This art involves three talents. Yours, Gonzalo’s, and mine. The painter; the salesman or actor or whatever he is; and me, the muse. The body in the paintings. I think it’s fair that you pay me a cut of the sales.

Carey, we have an agreement.

That was then. Everything’s different now. Now I can Google Gonzalo and find hundreds of pictures of me, naked. With my face, my tattoos. I used to be a model getting paid to lie still for paintings that sat in the attic. Now I am the subject of your work, and your work has become an overnight sensation, right? Gonzalo is the hottest thing in American painting today. Everyone says so. I provide my body for twenty bucks an hour, but he makes One. Hundred. And. Twenty. One. Thousand. Dollar. in one night of standing around acting like Gonzalo.

But Carey. We agreed. You even said that modeling is easier than legal work, but it pays the same. This is a win-win arrangement for us.

No, no, no, Mister Phil. It is a colossal win for Gonzalo, a nice windfall for you, and modest status quo for me. I get paid to lie around naked. You don’t even put your hands on me or take pictures or whatever I expected you to do. It’s easy. But don’t I provide something you can’t get elsewhere? Don’t I have something that shows in these pictures besides a nice fat ass? Isn’t it true that I inspire you?

Yes, Carey, it is.

Well, then, I want a cut. It’s ridiculous that Gonzalo gets half. He would have been overjoyed to get a tenth. But that’s the agreement you made with him. I want more. I want you to cut me in as a partner. Give me another raise, if you need to hide it from your wife that way. Or write me a much bigger check after a show.

*

He negotiated an agreement to show the paintings in the winter, at a big trendsetting gallery in L.A. They sorted the paintings in the attic. They set aside all the landscapes, and selected only a few of the still-lifes. They separated the Carey paintings into two groups, large and small. They ranked them. They pared the collection down to twenty of the best pieces. The gallery wanted high-quality photographs, but Phil would not consider allowing a photographer in the attic.

He fended off interviews, except for a few. He insisted on translating for Gonzalo, but the more reputable publications wanted their own translators. Phil did what he could to control access to Gonzalo, but articles appeared every few days. To Phil’s relief, Gonzalo said almost nothing about the paintings, he just repeated the same flat assertion that he loved to paint, and that he just wanted to show the truth as he saw it. In the articles, Phil could sense the critics’ frustration with Gonzalo’s windy, aimless storytelling, but their admiration for the paintings overrode their inability to learn about Gonzalo, the man. They always asked him about his influences, but he waved away these questions, preferring to tell off-color stories of womanizing and drinking. But one prominent blogger kept pursuing the question until Gonzalo answered. He said I admire the art of Claire Townes. Phil recognized this as the name of the sculptor of Judith’s entry fountain, and Googled her. She had a solid reputation as a minimalist who preferred massive, simple forms and the heaviest materials. Her work stood in front of many corporate offices and in the gardens of the wealthy. Within days of that interview, several art writers concocted elaborate theories about the connection between Townes’ work and Gonzalo’s. They pursued her for comment, but she said she didn’t know Gonzalo. In the absence of an illuminating story, speculation thrived, like mushrooms in a basement.

Then they found Carey. She said nothing, but Phil found a picture of her on an amateurish local art blog. In an article that was largely art-theoretical gibberish, the blogger identified Carey as the model in the paintings. Phil called her into his office. She was evasive, then came clean with startling intensity.

I told you I want a cut. These paintings are mine, too.

We have an agreement, Carey.

It’s a shit agreement, Phil. You win, I get almost nothing.

They argued. Phil tried to avoided conflict, but Carey was very emotional. He felt himself waver. Ended the meeting.

He called in Gonzalo. The three sat in the conference room. Gonzalo lounged back in his chair in a pale yellow suit, emanating cologne and impatience. Carey sat rigid in a black dress, her hands clenched on her lap. Phil tried to direct the discussion. He proposed that Gonzalo and Carey split half of sales, and that he would keep the other half. Gonzalo looked disgusted, even contemptuous. Carey looked offended.

Phil persevered, explained the gallery-sales model, defended his share on principle. Carey said that she had read a hundred articles, and that everyone agreed, the landscapes were good but not remarkable, the still-lifes were very good but marred by a certain decorative easiness, and that the large paintings of Carey were great. Truly great. Among the finest paintings made in America today. She asserted, over and over, like a mantra, that without her, there would be no great paintings.

Gonzalo also stated his case in the flattest possible terms. The paintings were very good, true, but they were attached to his identity. They sold at such high prices because the buyers believed they were the work of a poor, black Mexican. The buyers considered themselves enlightened for having discovered him. His poverty and uncultured crudeness and blackness made the paintings remarkable. The buyers were less interested in art than they were in presenting themselves to the world as sophisticated and tolerant.

And Phil insisted that the paintings were his. That he had so far in his life been only a hardworking and capable attorney, but that in these paintings he had discovered something excellent in himself, and, though he found Carey and Gonzalo important in doing his work and selling it, he wouldn’t need them at all if he didn’t have a life to maintain. He regretted the words as he spoke them, but he told them that they abetted his secrecy, and that they should be grateful for the easy money.

Gonzalo leaned forward and spoke very softly in clear Spanish, without colloquial distortions, looking directly at Phil. Mister Phil. I get fifty percent or I expose you.

Rage rose in Phil. You expose me and then what? You lose your easy income? Get deported? No more alligator boots and linen suits.

No, no, no, Mister Phil. You misunderstand me. I don’t expose you as the artist. I indignantly maintain that I am the artist. I expose you as an attorney who hires a wetback. I expose you as a member of a conservative congregation who sets up illegal trust funds for non-taxpaying Mexicans. I expose you as profiting from my art.

Phil’s breath became shallow.

Carey stood up. Phil, I can’t say nothing about Gonzalo’s portion. He’s gonna do what he’s wants. I think we can see that. He’ll get what he wants because you made a stupid deal with him and he outplayed you. But I got one demand. You pay me at least as much as you pay him or I’m out. As far as the art people know, I am Gonzalo’s model. Pretty soon they’ll figure out where I work and they’ll look up and see that circle attic window, and they’ll know that Gonzalo’s studio is in your attic. But Gonzalo’s just the salesman. I’m the muse. I deserve at least as much as he gets. You got your law income. I know how much you make. Even if you billed one hour a day you’d make way more than we do. So I don’t think you’ll suffer any. But I get at least as much as Gonzalo. Looks like that means you give him half, and you give me half.

*

That afternoon at four she stood in his doorway and yawned. The fabric of her dress stretched against her. It’s that time, she said.