The news should hardly have shocked the widow. This was how it happened: A painter died, and after a brief interval came a show, a look back, a reconsideration of the work, now that the work was finished. But usually when a painter died it was clearer he was dead. There was a body. There was a chance to look down at the dead face and confirm that it was lifeless, an opportunity to lay one's cheek against the still chest and convince oneself that it was void of breath. There was the final sound of tossed dirt crunching down on a lowered coffin. Nina Silver felt a moment of bewilderment and mistrust. It seemed to her that people were conspiring in some sadistic hoax to persuade her that her husband wasn't coming back—when in her heart, against all evidence and all rules of the natural world, she yet believed he was. She saw him, after all, nearly every night, his ruddy face flush with life, his meandering step as full of curiosity as ever. . . . The widow groped for something to say, something that would reconnect her with the ordinary waking world in which plans were made, things decided.
"But Claire," she managed. "Nothing's settled. The estate—"
"Nothing will be for sale," said Augie Silver's agent. "Nina, the show is meant as an homage, a tribute."
Again the widow was stopped short. Claire Steiger was a merchant, not a curator; she showed paintings to sell paintings, and it had not occurred to Nina that the precious square footage of Ars Longa might be given over simply to the admiration of canvases. The widow felt remorse. Was she already slipping into bitterness, beginning to assume that everything was a sham, a cheat, just because her own life had been cheated? "Claire," she said, "I suppose I should be grateful. It's just that—"
"Just what, darling?"
"I don't know. It seems so soon." Even as Nina was saying the words, she knew they were beside the point. Twenty years from now it would still seem soon.
"Nina, listen, I understand that everything feels very new right now, very raw. But this show will be a celebration—the kind of big overview that Augie would have wanted."
"I don't think Augie wanted that," said Nina, and a flash of suspicion again arced through her brain. Living artists had a lot to say about when, where, and how they were shown; dead artists were not consulted. Someone had to step in and tell the world what the painter would have wanted. That someone was usually a dealer, and mysteriously, what the painter would have wanted fit in very neatly with a marketing plan. "Claire," the widow said, "I don't think I like this."
The proprietor of the Ars Longa Gallery looked out her office window at the springtime bustle of 57th Street, the veering taxis and recession-proof limos. Over the years, she'd developed a very versatile and effective stratagem for avoiding arguments. When a disagreement loomed, she simply ignored it and went on to announce her intentions. "The gallery has seventeen major works on hand," she told Nina Silver. "Collectors have so far agreed to lend another dozen. If you'd consent to lend the canvases you have, we'd of course pay shipping and insur—"
"Claire, this is all just business, isn't it? This is no homage, no tribute."
"Nina, your husband's reputation—"
"My husband doesn't—didn't—particularly give a damn about his reputation. I think we agree that was part of his charm."
"We can't all afford to be quite so cavalier about it, Nina. Let's be professional here, shall we? As Augie's agent, I'm asking you to lend the paintings. Will you?"
"No."
"I'll ask another time, when you're less upset."
"Don't bother, Claire."
"And one more thing, Nina. Did Augie in fact make no pictures at all the last three years? Was he perhaps working quietly—"
Nina Silver hung up the phone. She didn't slam it down, didn't even drop it with particular suddenness. She placed it gently in its cradle, crossed her arms against her midriff, and blew out a long slow breath.
On 57th Street, Claire Steiger stared blankly at the dead receiver in her hand and wondered for just a moment if her unaccustomed desperation had led her to a rare strategic blunder. But she allowed herself little time to linger on the question. She had other calls to make.
Nina Silver, like most Key Westers, went most places by bicycle.
Her bike was an old fat-tire one-speed, powder blue, with a corroded wire basket and a rusted bell whose clapper stuck after three weak and un-resounding taps against its casing. She'd had the bike eight years and found it a perennial source of mind-easing delight. It wasn't that the bike reminded her of childhood; rather, it leavened her notion of what it was to be a grownup. It was impossible to take oneself too seriously while astride an old fat-tire bike. The world, and the sense of one's place in it, came back to scale and flooded in as one pedaled by at eight miles an hour, with a vantage point some four feet off the ground.