ONE’S REPUTATION should be a sword and shield, mused Henry as his decrepit red Karmen Ghia sailed through the Charleston Underpass, out of the smell of freshly baked bread that hovered like an invisible cloud around the Holsum Bakery (whose giant neon clock read one minute to midnight) and into the soot of a truck lumbering in front of him. Henry swung out of the noxious fumes and onto Commerce, the invitation to Sacred Monsters in the seat next to him. A sword and shield, and Henry felt as if he had hung up his armor for good, trading it in for a vulnerability that made him feel slightly human, and was bearable because it was secret—the vulnerability of an exile. But he knew that upon entering the Elise Valkenburg Gallery that half of the Vegas art crowd would see only the miraculous glinting of that armor while the other half would see him as more naked than he really was.
Henry sighed. His relinquishing of his identity—the persona that he had willingly and assiduously created over many years—had generated untold amounts of stories and gossip, both in Vegas and in L.A., New York, etc. Not that he cared, since he was no longer required to interact with anyone in the art scene anymore. They could mock him for his “Duchamp Lite” act (as one fellow critic had put it) all they wanted. He wasn’t around for it anymore, professionally, aesthetically, emotionally. Living in Vegas (something that gave him, he knew, an idiosyncratic charm) he was isolated from the heavy hitters anyway. But now he was showing his face in his own backyard—in the continually despairing, constantly embattled Las Vegas art scene. Which had always treated him with awe for his connections to the larger world or disgust for his perceived half-hearted contributions to their quixotic dreams of a town that gave a damn about “art.” He was no less tired of the dichotomy now then he was when he threw in the towel.
High above the city a full moon pressed its face against the mountainous clouds. He hoped that Elise was correct, that he would be able to avoid most of those dreaded and familiar faces in the candlelit interior of the gallery. For he had discovered that the mysterious Maude S—‘s sculptures were to be seen only by candlelight, and only after midnight. How terribly Goth, Henry had said on the phone to Elise.
“I know,” said Elise bemusedly. “But that was her condition. I think it will be fun. Anything to break up the wine and cheese monotony of these things.” Elise, he knew, was nearly as disenchanted as he was with the life of art with a capital “A.” But Elise was married to a retired casino magnate, and without the gallery would have nothing to do but slowly succumb to vast couches of Italian leather in the airy boredom of a house in Summerlin.
“And of course it will be wonderful to see you again, Henry,” she had continued. “I thought perhaps this might prick your interest, but I wasn’t very optimistic.”
“Nor should you be,” Henry had replied. “I’m not coming out of retirement; I have ulterior motives for wanting to see the show.” Henry had tried to arrange a private showing—which was why he had broken down and called Elise in the first place—but Elise talked him into coming to the opening. “It’ll be your only chance to meet Maude S—,” she said, “and even then I can’t guarantee she’ll show up. But when she does, it’s only on the opening night. I don’t know, Henry, either she’s the most melodramatic artist I’ve ever dealt with, or she’s in the Witness Protection Plan.”
(Considering that most of the artists Elise had dealt with were either outsized academic egos or minor figures safely dead, it was a safe bet that Elise hadn’t come into contact with the more outrageous figures in conceptual art circles. But Henry kept that thought to himself.)
“Mystery is the highest value a work of art can have, Elise,” said Henry, and winced inside at how easily one of his own tropes had rolled off his tongue.
“You should know,” said Elise. “It’s only been two years, but everyone still buzzes about you…”
“You’re not selling this when you tell me that.”
“Oh, please,” said Elise. “Slip in the back through my office after midnight, and hardly anyone will notice you. Wear a hat,” she added with a laugh.
So finally, against all misgivings and instincts to avoid this admittedly intriguing but disturbing turn of events, here he was, wearing an old fedora and turning into the alley that led, between rows of anonymous warehouses, to Elise’s reclaimed industrial laundry plant, it’s ceilings now strung with chic track lighting where once rows of fluorescent had washed over everything in their equalizing, benumbed light. As nice as the gallery space was, Henry had often wondered if the laundry hadn’t been a better work of art.
The parking lot was packed, of course. The artist’s
enigmatic behavior had preceded her, and the midnight hour
made the whole thing too good to resist. Henry gave his
keys to the terminally bored valet and pulled his fedora
down over his eyes, ducking around the side of the building
to door to Elise’s office. He spoke a little mantra
under his breath: “Please no Stan Dayton, please no
Stan Dayton, please no Stan Dayton…”
Of course, Stan Dayton was standing just inside Elise’s
office, his third glass of wine already in his hand.
“Henry! Good god, I thought this might bring you out!” Stan practically bellowed it. His walleyes behind thick glasses and mass of white beard made him resemble a demented Santa Claus.
“Hello, Stan,” said Henry with a tone so weary he hoped Stan would catch it.
“What the hell have you been up to? Did you see the piece on me in the paper?” Dayton was the chair of the art department, and somehow had managed to avoid the studied disdain of his colleagues. He always came off as enthusiastic and insincerely ebullient as a PR flak, even when he was demoting someone or breaking the bad news about some budget cut (doubtless the reason he had been made chair in the first place).
“No, Stan, I missed that. I was in Sumatra, you know.”
“Sumatra?” Dayton blinked as if he couldn’t quite process that.
“Oh, yes,” said Henry. “Became very ill”—he coughed into his hand—“you’ll excuse me”—and coughing slipped around Dayton to where Elise stood in the doorway. She looked as she always did; a middle-aged woman who was never beautiful but always oddly attractive, and who now always appeared as if she had just stepped out of an overpriced salon. Tonight she was in a black pants suit, and her hoop earrings were big enough to lob a grenade through. She beamed at Henry and gave his arm a squeeze, then whispered:
“Follow me.”
He smiled, and they moved like bosom conspirators down the short hallway and into the cavernous dark of the gallery, lit now with hundreds of candles. The soft glow spread away from them in wavering pools, congealing around a parade of figures as stately and grave as saints in a medieval cathedral. The candles, Henry was grateful to see, were only placed around the base of the statutes themselves, like votive offerings; it would indeed be easy to go unrecognized in the gloom, even though the gallery was quite full, the murmur of voices weaving in and out as the viewers walked slowly from work to work, each of which was ten feet tall on four foot pedestals. The installation had indeed created a medieval hush of sorts, and it seemed that most people were actually looking up at the statues, rather than engaging in the typical, butterflying banter that usually had everything to do with who was who and who was here and nothing to do with the art. (Henry often thought how amusing it would be to give exiting gallery types a little quiz on what they had actually seen; he was sure most of the form would be vague to the point of blankness).
Now, still close to Elise and moving along the wall, Henry approached the works themselves. They were indeed figures from the Tarot, but rendered as if they were Egyptian idols on ceremonial thrones, and each one was a figure associated with the history of Las Vegas. Some were obvious: Elvis as the Magician, Bugsy Siegel as the Hanged Man. But here was the Empress: Helen Stewart, whose husband had been killed in the late 19th Century leaving her with a vast ranch that was now the heart of the city, an obscure figure made even obscurer by a town that threw away its own past every three years. Henry moved from each to each with glowing admiration: the technique was stunning, with each figure looking stately and divinely unreachable yet somehow alive, like all the best religious sculpture.
“Masterful, don’t you think?” whispered Elise. The churchly hush had even blunted her usually high-pitched voice.
Henry murmured. They were impressive, but odd. A Las Vegas Tarot is a fun and logical conceit, especially for a city ripe with myth and symbol, with psychics and folks longing for second chances… but why in marble? Why not the deck itself? The figures felt so monumental for a city without monuments.
Henry stopped beneath the Devil, the cool stone figure floating, it seemed, above him in a warm cradle of light. His face was a blank: completely featureless, but for what appeared to be a head of coifed and blow-dried hair. Shadows flickered across his suit; his right hand grasping what appeared to be money trickling through his fingers. In his left, a fistful of earth and roots. Something caught Henry’s eyes and he squinted closer to see tiny figures in the roots, writhing in agony like sinners in Dante, carved in astonishing detail…
“Odd spelling, eh?” said Elise again.
Henry felt a slight chill. His eyes caught those of one of his former graduate students across the way, and nodded in embarrassed recognition. He quickly turned down to read the title at the base again:
THE DEVEL
“The Devel,” repeated Henry aloud.
“Give the Devel his due.”
For a moment, Henry thought Elise had spoke, so close was the phrase to his ear. But when he looked up again, he noticed a hush creeping over the gallery as the talk died away. Elise was looking up into the darkness to the old catwalks high above, and she nudged Henry with her elbow.
Standing with a huge candelabra in hand, looking for all the world like someone who had stepped out of a Roger Corman Sixties Poe flick, a hooded figure was standing above them. Instantly, Henry realized that it was her voice he had heard, even though it had been no more than a low rustling whisper.
“That’s her,” said Elise, and her breath came out with an excited little gasp. “That’s Maude S—.”