Read an Excerpt
Chinese Takeout
A Novel
By Arthur Nersesian Harper Collins Publishers
Copyright © 2003 Arthur Nersesian All right reserved. ISBN: 0060548827
Chapter One
Twenty years after the subway accident, at thirty-three, I had two pieces accepted to a group show on lower Broadway.
My financée, June, and I were late to the opening at Entrance Art Gallery. June dashed off to meet one friend just as the curator, Laura Vierst, grabbed me. She said someone had already shown interest in one of my pieces.
"Orloff," she whispered, "I want you to meet Barclay Hammel."
Laura pushed me toward the back of a small, younger man chatting with the gray-fox mogul Victor Oakridge. The short youth looked like a big yellow dahlia and smelled of roses.
"So few artists realize that patrons are their hidden partners," I overheard Victor pontificate to his partner in wealth. "People remember Michelangelo, but if Pope Julius II didn't toss him the Sistine Chapel commission or the Last Judgment, if the Medicis didn't throw him into their funeral tomb, he'd just be an obscure stonecutter."
"Listen, Or," said Laura, while we were waiting. "I got him to take your piece for half the price, and I think you should do it." In other words, instead of eight hundred, I'd get four, minus Laura's commission - still twice as much as I would get on the street. "Barclay's plugged into thiswhole dot-com survivor support group and I really think that if he takes this, we can move your other works in that crowd."
When Victor finally stepped away from the floral lad, Laura introduced us. Barclay talked about how much he liked one of my paintings entitled East River Swimmer. Done in acrylic paint, it was one of a series of four plywood square-foot panels. Each one was a different view of the swimmer. Although everyone complimented them, I had been unable to draw out all I wanted from them, and feared I had reached my artistic limits.
I wanted to work on the series longer and develop them into a solo show, but as usual, I desperately needed cash. I was hoping to rent a gloriously huge loft with June, so against my better judgment, I agreed to let Laura put the red dot next to it on the price list.
Delighted, Barclay shook my hand and went on about how great the work was: "I usually buy art as an investment, but your piece immediately grabbed me. You really feel the guy struggling. I intend to hang it in my bedroom so I'll never forget that life is a challenge." I had to sell my labors at half price to remind a millionaire that life was hard.
When his cell phone chimed, he excused himself and took the call. I was expected to wait politely. Art collectors were a despicable bunch who held artists by a short green leash made of nouveau cash. A year before, I had painted a series of collectors like pompous Victor Oakridge. I characterized them as purple and bloated Turks destroying Armenian artifacts, prissy and gray Nazis looting the Louvre, and sleek, pedigree dogs fighting over a bloody piece of meat. Ironically the cycle sold well.
Only the ongoing fear of starving to death drove me to put my work on gallery walls.
In a flash, the boy fascist was off the phone. Before he could cut the check and scram, I brought him to my beautiful girl, Junia, who I introduced as a brilliant young artist.
Described by one critic as "a photographic ultra-realist," June was apt both in landscape and people. She could immediately scale down a scene - no matter how grand - to the perfect ratio of a page, with nearly no revision. Her weaknesses were conception and composition. Her talent seemed to overwhelm her. She'd work quicker than she could actually think. To look at her work, you'd see it lacked thematic cohesion. Still, I was in awe.
I genuinely hoped Barclay would buy something from her, but truthfully my vanity was also at work; I wanted to show him the living beauty I possessed that money couldn't buy. After his eyes popped out and his jawbone dropped off, he asked if she had any pieces in the show. Of course she did. Colorful abstractions that looked like they had been composed by Rothko in a Spin-o-Rama, not her usual stuff. As he flattered her framed tie-dyed T-shirts, I saw another dark green jug of red wine having its black top unscrewed.
Klein Ritter got to it first. He was a shrunken, deviously mild-mannered man and the most venomous art critic on the scene. For the longest time he'd flatter me, come to all my shows, and perpetually promise to write an introductory essay in a major art journal. Eventually, though, I learned that he swore this to every good-looking straight male artist who crossed his crooked path.
When I started pouring the vino, he stood behind me and said, "So, Or, how does it feel knowing you have the best piece in the gallery." He gulped down the drink.
"I only believe reviews that I read in magazines." I refilled his cup.
"Come on," he replied. "Who do I look like, Robert Hughes? Good reviews are no fun. Besides, success is the worst thing for young talent." Like a bad odor, he seemed to dissipate away.
"Body and Soul," whatever that meant, was the title and theme of the show. Inspecting the various works, I realized that Klein's compliment had unfortunate merit. Among the many tiredly shocking pieces, a conceptual artist had submitted a series of Polaroids of his solid waste, which he referred to as "Brown Carps." Next to them, splattered configurations of his seed spilled on a black page were labeled, "O man, Onan!"
When I looked over to point out the vulgarographs to June, I saw that she was still with Barclay. She giggled as he yapped and I couldn't be happier. He was obviously smitten by her ...
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Chinese Takeout by Arthur Nersesian
Copyright © 2003 by Arthur Nersesian
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
