The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [81]
Annie checked in periodically with the police to see if any of their parents’ credit cards had been used. They had not. Not a single withdrawal had registered on their bank accounts. The two of them also searched through date books and random numbers on scraps of paper but found nothing that would bring them closer to their parents’ current location. The gallery owner who had once represented their parents was now dead. They had no other family. All they had was Hobart.
Their parents did not think much of the history of artistic accomplishment thus far, had constantly rebuffed their children’s suggestions of worthwhile art. Dada? Too silly. Mapplethorpe? Too serious. Sally Mann? Too exploitative. Hobart Waxman, however, he was the real deal. Even though Hobart had never visited the family in Tennessee, had never even met Buster, if there was another person with whom the Fangs would share the details of their grand disappearance, it would be him. It was not much to go on, but what else did they have? What else had their parents given them to work with?
Annie remembered the way her parents would breathlessly describe one of Hobart’s most famous pieces, the one that had first brought him to prominence. It was called The Uninvited Guest, and in this piece Hobart would break into the mansions that littered the West Coast, giant structures with an army of servants. Once inside, he would live in these vast houses, dozens upon dozens of uninhabited rooms, without being detected for days, weeks, even months. He would sleep in closets, steal food from the kitchen, and watch television, taking pictures of himself to document the visit. In a few instances, he was discovered, arrested, and jailed for some period of time, but in most cases, he simply exhausted the possibilities, slipped out during the night, no sign that he had ever been there in the first place except for a card thanking the owners for their hospitality.
“It was so perfect,” Caleb had explained to Annie when she was still a child. “He forced the art onto unsuspecting people; he made them a part of the piece, and they didn’t even know it.”
“But if they didn’t know what was going on,” Annie asked, confused, “how would they appreciate it?”
“They’re not supposed to appreciate it,” Caleb said, slightly disappointed with her. “They’re supposed to experience it.”
“I guess I don’t understand,” Annie said.
“The simplest things are the hardest to understand,” Caleb agreed, pleased with Annie for reasons that she could not begin to know.
Hobart’s house was at the end of a long, curving driveway, nothing but fields for miles in any direction. When they pulled up to the house, a small cottage with a barn-like studio in the backyard, they saw no car, no sign of anyone being home. “This is even better,” Buster said as they idled in the car. “We’ll do a little sleuthing while he’s away.” They stepped out of the car and Buster walked around the house to the studio, while Annie looked through one of the front windows. She knocked on the door and, when no one appeared, she tried the knob, which unlocked. Should she enter? Did this feel like a movie? Annie was not sure, though she did think that life was best when it felt like a movie, when, even if you hadn’t read it, you knew there was a script that would tell you how things would end.
Inside, the house was spotless. There were a few pieces of expensive-looking modern furniture, a chair that Annie believed she had seen on a postcard in a museum. She walked over to a