Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [88]
“André will know when you hang it in your apartment—and Lindsay will too.”
Lionel raises his eyebrows lasciviously.
“Babe—I’ll tell André you gave it to me in a fit of passion. How can he claim fifty percent of the come? Huh? You’re allowed to give away your own work as a love gift, aren’t you? And as for Lindsay, fuck ’er, or rather, don’t fuck ’er. All she cares about is whether she gets invited to parties with those skeletons she worries about—Mrs. Remson, Mrs. Basehoar, that fucking fake Princess Tavola-Calda . . . Which reminds me: we have two extra tickets for that Viva Venezia Ball in Venice next month; want to come? I bought a whole table for ten grand—had to—Lindsay’s one of the chairladies. You might as well have the tix. Meet me in a gondola and all that jazz. Whaddya say?”
“I hate Venice,” I say. “It makes me think of Oscar Wilde’s line about traveling through sewers in a coffin. . . .”
Lionel laughs.
“Oh, yeah,” he goes on, “the painting. Two fifty in a brown paper bag, and André’ll never be the wiser. If you prefer, I’ll get you a diamond worth two fifty. C’mon, Leila, babe, what’s the harm in it?”
“No harm, but . . .”
I can’t say I’m not tempted. And I can’t say I don’t need the bread. The IRS is breathing down my neck on account of some phony shelters my old accountant waltzed me into, and I’m experiencing the cash-flow problems all artists experience now and then. Also, I’m creatively blocked. As usual. I don’t know where my next canvas is coming from. Or my next show. Lionel is offering me twice my fee for a painting—and with no commission and a nice little chance to beat the IRS. I’m tempted. But somehow I can’t. I wish I could tell you it was morality or patriotism, but it’s really something else—cussedness, the stubborn Zandberg genes. I know that Lionel’s using me to beat André, that once again I’m caught in a male power play, and the truth is I don’t want to give Lionel the satisfaction. I’m sick of the way men use women as pawns in their battles with each other—and I don’t want to be manipulated even if it puts money in my own pocket.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I hear myself saying. “But the tickets to Viva Venezia I’ll take.”
“Boy, are you meshuga,” says Lionel, “but talented. These are some paintings.”
“You’ve barely even looked at them.”
“Paintings that good you don’t have to look at,” says Lionel.
And Lily announces lunch.
Lunch is served on the greensward, on a rustic log table Dart built at the start of our idyll. (It has rusty nails sticking up through the dining surface—a typical Dart creation—and legs made of birch logs still clad in bark. As an object, it’s aesthetically confused—just like Dart—and at this moment, when I’m sitting here with a short little billionaire who doesn’t stir my blood, it makes me sad.)
This rustic feast Lily has set out is lovely: roast chicken with its skin all crackly, puréed carrots (to make the twins eat veggies), new potatoes in their skins, fresh tomatoes and basil from our garden. The meal is placed on handwoven rainbow-colored mats, with periwinkle-blue linen napkins, and served on French country earthenware decorated with a hot-air-balloon motif and topped with the motto “Je Suis Libre” in fine brush strokes. (I bought these plates in France once, when I was high on my courage in divorcing Elmore and they seemed to embody all my bravado—which now has fled, my hot-air balloon punctured by Dart and drugs and alcohol.) The table centerpiece is blazing blue cornflowers. I am aware, as Lily puts out the feast and calls the twins and Natasha, of how idyllic all this must look—especially to a traveler from the galaxy of Mammon. The artist in her native habitat: Georgia O’Keeffe on her mesa, Romaine Brooks with Natalie Barney at Villa Gaia in Florence, Louise Nevelson in Little Italy. There is also in me the desire to make my life into a work of art—and that’s a trap for every woman artist. I’d rather serve the feast than