Unplugged Yellow

8

Rachel said

He discovered I was pregnant, went out and didn't come back for hours. The longest hours, like time was a wire twisting around my neck. Then he came back with the little glycine envelopes full of brown powder. He started snorting. I couldn't believe that after everything that we'd been through...I felt so guilty, so horrible. He wanted to know who it was. I told him it was just some guy I picked up, a one-night stand. The look he gave me froze my heart. Then he just fell apart. He kept losing things, tearing the place apart looking for them. You know, the most ridiculous loss would just get completely blown out of proportion. A key disappeared, and he went crazy breaking things. I tried to keep track of everything, but it was like trying to stop a handful of sand from running through your fingers. It was like watching something fall from the sky onto your head. I was just waiting for each new disaster, hoping it would be the last, but there was always something else. Everything seemed so hopeless, so out of control. Then he just fucked me. Everything I'd wanted, and it was so wrong. He wanted me, but only to punish me. The world started to shrink, nothing existed outside of those walls. I felt trapped, like I had to pay for what we did. I had nowhere to go, no place that seemed even as real as that unreal world. I decided that if I couldn't save him then I would die with him. Heroin was the last thing between us, and I knew it was there for good. So I shot up with him. It was perverted paradise, a black dream, a white nightmare. He still never took off his glass mask, but his eyes would shine through it. I stopped going out. We started having more and more violent sex. He beat me. It's incredible how low I went. And the farther I ... You can't imagine how it feels, being a black woman whipped by a white man.

FleX was permanently a part of the Sahara as she talked to me in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Sarah had been born 2 weeks earlier, by caesarian, and Rachel was out of intensive care for the first time. I named our daughter. The spring sun drenched the gardens as we sat and talked in the little café by the turning merry-go-round. She was right: I had no idea how it felt to be whipped by anybody. Her entire life was so far beyond mine, no matter how you measure it. She had certainly taken care of my fantasies.

I became the one true witness of her life.

Almost a year before, on the day she returned to Paris, I woke up on 3rd Street in the late morning after a nightmare about my collection ending in uninsured conflagration and telephoned the fire department. I looked in FleX's kitchen for some coffee. The roaches drove me out.

I was putting my coat on to leave when I noticed the necklace hanging on the nail. I took it down and looked closely at the flattened coins strung on a piece of twine. It could have been a primitive piece. I suddenly realized where the strange floating shapes, amorphous fields and powerful lines in FleX's paintings came from: America's images, its icons, flattened and distorted by the steel monsters of its own progress. I felt like I'd stuck my finger in an electric socket. FleX was painting these squashed coins over and over. He was painting money! The destructive energy of progress, the energy that rolled over its children and flattened them too, FleX transformed into paint. Poor Phil with his worldly veneer and militant sneer, his polish and his perfume and his panties, trying so hard to control and direct that power to his own ends. He had no idea. It would have been strange if FleX had not hated Phil.

I took the necklace with me. On Orchard Street the elevator was out of order. The place reeked of smoke. The hallway and the elevator were blackened. The fire department had done some water damage to my front space, but most of it was superficial. I called ACME industrial cleaners. None of my paintings had been hurt. I had no insurance, of course, because until recently I couldn't afford it. I planned to change that pronto. The arson squad was already there. They were interested in the collection. I walked them through what I had in the loft. They had heard of FleX.

The guy who disappeared. What do you know. Say, was that a real tongue? Or was he just playing games with people?

Bits of FleX had stuck in their minds, mostly from the Post articles. By the end of the day they told me that the bungled fire had been set by an amateur spreading an "agent," probably gasoline, on my door and in the hallway. There were still lab tests to do, more questions to be asked. I shouldn't leave town. Nobody said anything about the damn chicken that had been nailed to the door.

I was suddenly convinced that Phil had done it. He's the only one who would truly appreciate the power of fire to derange a collector. Whoever it was had aimed for the heart. Fire means permanent paranoia, fear installing itself in your cells.

I called Bob, my old flea market gopher who was now in business for himself, and had him help me move everything back to storage. I rented 2 new bins for the FleXes.

Charm called.

Do I sound normal to you? I thought I was going to lose it this morning. He's just acting like he doesn't know, but he can't help it, it's obvious he knows everything. I think he shot Nick. What should I do? He hung around the house for hours this morning, waiting for the phone to ring. He grabs it now--he never answered the phone before. Watching me. My nerves are completely shot. I think I'm going to tell the cops. I don't see what else to do. But I'm getting out of here first and I'm taking the kids with me. I've got rooms for us at the Pierre. I'm telling the kids the house is being painted. Geraldine has been key, she's doing everything. I'm in a thousand pieces. I'm losing it, I really am. You're next. It's clear as day. I have to tell the police that too.

I told her about the fire.

I don't think Wally did it. It's not his style. He's more of a bullet in the back in a dark alley type. A bullet in the back, you aim, you shoot; a fire, you start it and then what? I agree: it was Phil. He was drunker than usual, and he did something crazy. He's a control freak, and when they flip they do something completely out of control. Unlike Wally. The cops are going to think it was Wally. It makes sense if you don't know him. Let's leave it that way. Meet me in an hour at the Pierre. I want you to be there when I call. And be careful, he could be anywhere.

The Chinese were loading the repaired elevator so I took the stairs. Wally Russler on the next landing with a .38 was absurd, but the fire left me feeling like a steak at the dog pound. I took a cab up to the Pierre and waited in the bar. I was into my second double Glenlivet on the rocks when I caught a glimpse through the door of Charm and company arriving. Geraldine, her tireless maid, tried to keep the kids corralled. Charm herself was someone who required absolute control, or as much of it as possible.

Every collector does, because collections are always close to chaos, the chaos of memories.

Not to mention the chaos of fire.

Charm’s kids, the 4-year-old Reggie and the 6-year-old Kate, were her greatest challenge. Charm abdicated to their outrageousness. Geraldine walked around behind them picking up, apologizing and gluing things back together. Charm looked like Jocasta resigned to finding herself playing in Eloise at the Pierre. I watched them through the veil of scotch and went into the lobby. Up close Charm's eyes shimmered with tears that would never fall.

Once ensconced in quarters Jeraldine took the children down to eat. Charm and I got into her scotch bottle right away.

I talked to Nick. He's going to be all right. I've decided not to call the police. It would be giving up too much. Once they're involved it's the end of the world. They'll be into everything. Wally will never get what he deserves. I know him, the bastard. He can talk or buy his way out of it. And in the meantime the black boots will have walked all over us. No, I have a better idea. You take care of him.

I choked on my drink.

Take it easy, darling, I'm only kidding. For the first time in days I feel clear. Everything is falling into place. I'll hold this over his head like a sword. He'll have to give me everything I want. I'll get the collection out intact. We will need some real proof, but we'll get it. I've grown to hate him over the years, but I always felt like I had to carry on for the children. I'm such a sentimental fool. Because we're going on, nothing can stop us. We're two of a kind, and I believe in the collection we're going to put together one day. I don't think I told you: I had a dream about it. The ultimate collection. Come on now, let's call Phil. I'll get the children tucked into bed, and we'll invite him out to Mr. Chow's. I want to study the vile rodent at close range.

I called Phil while she pulled a lot of things out of her suitcases and piled them on the bed. He agreed to meet us at Chow's. My anger about the fire was doused in enough scotch for me to calculate. I started to look forward to our little dinner.

Charm dressed and made up while the news flickered on the television screen, endlessly repetitive, a shining electronic world out there that had been reduced to a backdrop for our little hill of beans. Mother Teresa had just won the Nobel peace prize. A House committee investigating Kennedy’s assassination thought a 4th shot had been fired, implicating another gunman. Studio 54 was closed down by the cops for the second time. Charm’s kids returned in their pajamas, happy to be dependent on this woman about whom they could know neither the best nor the worst, only this rich and middling mother.

Phil arrived at Mr. Chow's at the same time we did. He was wearing shades despite the fact that night had fallen. Once ensconced and provided with Chinese beer, Phil took off his sunglasses. He had a royal shiner. His right eye looked like a miniature thunderhead, still shifting colors from black to purple and blue.

I walked into a door.

Charm answered

Really, Phil darling, you ought to be able to do better, with your imagination.

Phil put his dark glasses back on and said

The worst part of it is that no one believes me. Probably I should lie. Then people would believe me. Drink up, friends, and let's toast to life, black eyes and all. We almost lost Nick, and right after I'd brought him into the FleXus inner circle. The certified stamp of approval. Tough part of town, that alley he lives in. Now he's in the hospital, and we're having dinner at Chow's. Rotten business we're in, and in some ways rougher than the alley. Times, I swear, I want to drop it. Cold. Just let the gears grind to a halt. It's the Goddamn fatigue, and then a low blow, you know, just knocks you off your perch. What am I doing, struggling to create critical unity out of all that artistic diversity? The ignorant just plunge deeper into divisiveness. The beauty of FleXus turns out to be, lo and behold, its rigorous flexibility. Even you two, who are, needless to say, among my most enlightened disciples, are still enmeshed in the error of your fetishistic ways. You are in the bondage business.

I almost snorted Tsing Tao out my nose. Phil continued

I’ll explain. There are three kinds of collections: systematic, fetishistic, and souvenir. Systematic collections are put together to serve an ideology, like a late Victorian or Edwardian collection of natural history that proves evolution. A souvenir is prized because it can resurrect the past, ensure its survival in some form. And you, my dears, are among the fetishists because you and your collections are one. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about high heels or paintings, whatever turns you on.

He paused to upend his Tsing Tao.

What’s with the long faces? Well, we're not going to be morbid, now, are we? Come on, campers, let's drink to life! Garçon! Another round! And never forget, mes amis, a dead man can't paint.

If I had been aware that Haitian Voodoo hit squads sent by Phil’s friends were after FleX at that moment, how would I have reacted?
Charm blinked her Holly Woodlawn eyes and said

Phil, you are completely full of shit. Don't lecture us. A man who compares my paintings to a pair of high heels doesn't know his asshole from his eyeball. If you are remembered, it will be as a footnote to our immortality machines.

More beer cascaded down Phil’s throat and he said

Charm, darling, you live up to your lovely name. I am heretofore a humble mechanic in the service of your immortality machine. Depend on me, if not from me.

I brought up the fire on Orchard Street. He didn't flinch.

Oh my God, first smoke and now a fire!? With your collection at risk? That's the best collection south of the U.N. This is the kind of thing nightmares are made of. What the hell is going on around this town? I hope they catch the son-of-a-bitch and hang him or her or them from the nearest street sign. A fire could have ruined you. That collection took you years to build up. I have plans for your collection. Not to mention your FleXes. You've got to move everything out. Listen, I'll rent you a storage space in Jersey, one of those fireproof places. You can put everything there.

I told him I had a place already.

Good, because we can't afford to lose you. Which brings me around to Nick again, or rather his paintings. Morrison and I had a little powwow. He's in deep; he was committed to Nick from the first. He doesn't know, by the way, about the canvasses that Nick was preparing for him. I suggest that we quietly but effectively rid ourselves of them. A needless complication at this point, wouldn't you say? Of course, Morrison lost Nick fair and square to Reality. Don't think he didn't note Charm's relations with Ernst and Engle. That doesn't matter either. Ernst and Engle are letting everything go without a tussle. Morrison's got buyers who are watching very closely what happens next, studying my VALUE EQUATIONS like the proverbial art hawks.

Phil paused for effect and went on

It's time to take advantage of his little notoriety. Our problem is overproduction, a veritable flood that's ready to break on a suddenly very soft market. There's a lot of nervousness, most of it frankly caused by FleX, who not only took a lot of potentials away from Nick but who also really casts a very long shadow. The light is very bright in this world, and FleX stands awfully close to the source.

What he really meant was that his endless source of funds to manipulate the contemporary art market had run dry, and Agnés was about to follow up her right hook with a left jab from her divorce lawyer. Phil needed money, lots of it, right away.

So what's the point? We're going to make a move. How many Nicks do you have? Zach has 3, and Charm, you have 2. At, according to the last VALUE EQUATIONS, 10 grand each. Not bad folks. But what if I told you that there is a guaranteed way to have a little fun and bump that figure up to 50 grand. Worth a try? I'd certainly say so. The operation is simple but effective, and it works on the truism that the market adjusts upward to a high price. On May 15th there's an auction at Montgomery’s, where we've got one of the auctioneers in our pocket, of moderns and contemporaries. We're going to get a Nick in there, which will happen because Morrison's going to guarantee them 10 for it, and then between yours truly, Morrison, and hopefully you two, we going to bid it up to fifty. We need three bidders, at least, to diffuse suspicion, but four is better. This will all be choreographed to the penny, and of course the hammer won't come down on either of you. Vous comprenez?

Phil wanted to pull us into a little insider art trading, and we were willing to go along. Why not? Everyone came out a winner, Nick first. Three waiters descended with white-coated efficiency and laid out plates of steamed sea bass, Buddha's delight, and more bottles of Chinese beer.

I’ll make sure it gets all the ink it needs. We'll meet with Morrison and our man Wigglesworth at Montgomery’s to nail it down when we get back from Europe. Which brings us to the FleX in FleXus. I'm going to be at the Paris show while Spenser covers our base in Brussels. A double whammy. Agnés has really pulled out the heavy artillery for this one. Wall to wall minks, big cigars and shaved pussies. Pardon my French. You betcha. The Magnus Foundation is hosting a party afterwards. I'll lay any odds you want we sell out both shows at top dollar, which coming after the London show is going to mean that we can go anywhere we want with this movement. And where's our man? I admire his tactic. He's inversed the usual. He realized that the art world was ready for romance, the outcast genius, the tortured soul; people were fed up with good looks, charm, charisma. And I admit, he left me a lot of room to maneuver. Still, it's a balance, and I think he's over the edge. If we're not careful, we'll lose the big public. I'm done trying to get any information out of you, Willis, but we're going to need some more new work soon. Six months ago we were selling a new artist out of your loft for 2 and change; today we have a movement and vintage FleX's are holding steady at 20 and on the way to who knows how high. Cheers, mates.

Charm and I left Phil at midnight and I walked her over to the Pierre. Black clouds raced over a spectacular full moon.

She said

There's only one way that Phil could have gotten that black eye, and that's Agnés. She slugged him. French girls are worse than prize fighters. Maybe she caught him in bed with one of his boys. It seems to be going around. Wally must be stewing in his juices wondering where we are by this time. I'll call you in the morning, after I've talked to him.

She kissed me good night for the first time in over a month, a long slow kiss with a lot of tongue, and then entered the Pierre. I watched the moon being tossed around in the sky for a minute and decided to walk downtown. The moon lightened and then the passing clouds darkened 5th Avenue. A few cars cruised. Cocooned in my ignorance. If you had told me that under that same moon Rachel was preparing herself to be whipped bloody by FleX I would have...what would I have done? I bet on FleX and FleX came up golden. In a mere 5 years the flea market rat had become a rich (well rich enough for a 30-year-old) collector of art. A simple transposition of 2 letters after all: rat/art. FleX had hit all of us like a couple of years on crack. And Phil, Phil needed to go beyond FleX, and FleXus was the key to that tune.

I segued slowly onto an almost empty Broadway at 23rd street and the lightning and thunder started exploding over the city. By the time I got to Houston Street the rain was hammering down. Once home I took a hot shower and slept 12 hours.

The collection absorbed me in the weeks that followed when I wasn't morosely drinking and wondering about Rachel. Phil and Agnés were in France, Spenser was Belgium, Rachel and FleX were gone. Nick got out of the hospital. I spent a couple of quiet afternoons cheering him up and staving off his boredom. It was the lull before the storm. Charm threatened her husband, and in the process apparently managed to neutralize our affair, until he proved that he had nothing to do with Nick's murder. The police had actually come up with a witness, some drug dealer who was sidestepping jail time by fingering his amigo. It has always bothered me that he was Haitian, but I never followed it up. Charm moved back to the Heights with her kids. Wally forgave her; she promised him she wouldn't see me again. My checks stopped coming. She was pissed off again, and once more our happy complicity turned nasty and competitive. But it didn’t last long, as everyone familiar with the front-page divorce knows.

FleX called.

Have you seen the latest issue of Today's Art? Phil's in it. He's got a long article on FleXus. The guy is absolutely out of control. He's gone wacky. I want you to punch him the next time you see him. Don't even say hello. Just slug the son-of-a-bitch right in the jaw. I don't want my name associated with his in any way. I wrote them a letter saying that. I can see perfectly what that motherfucker is doing. He's pulling in all kinds of bullshit, making anything into FleXus that he can. Chris Bird for example, a performance artist. Maybe he’s all right, but he’s not me. I'm going to send you a copy of my letter, it should get there by the beginning of next week. You can spread it around in all the right places. Starting with Spenser. I've been trying to get him. He's never there. I thought he wanted to get in touch with me so badly. I think we should print the letter and do a mailing. Everybody. The galleries, the magazines, the collectors, the museums. Let's crush Phil. Put him out of the art business. Be careful though, he'll be dangerous once we back him into a corner. Agnés dumped him, you know. I'm sure that's what's going on. Now that she's pulled the plug on him, he's desperate for dough. So tell Spenser he'll get all the paintings he wants once Phil's out of the picture. Do you have any money for me?

Despite his swearing not to, Spenser had wired some money to a Socièté General account that Rachel had set up in Paris. I didn't know how FleX knew Phil and Agnés were heading for the rocks until Rachel explained it to me after his death. That and a lot else.

She said

FleX knew about the opening Phil had set up at Descarte, the gallery on rue de Bac. We went and surprised the shit out of everybody. No one expected us. I was 6 months pregnant but it hardly showed when I was dressed. The first person we saw was Phil, wearing dark glasses, preening himself, smoking a big cigar, acting like he owned the world. When he saw us his jaw dropped and the cigar fell. We were high, of course, and people were all over us, but we just plowed through them. FleX told everyone that none of the paintings there were his, they were fakes. He started a riot. Everyone was yelling. A couple had already been sold and the buyers were demanding their money back. And then FleX whipped out a can of black spray paint and sprayed Xs on them all. Phil and the gallery assistants tried to stop him, but it wasn’t any use. All hell broke loose. It was pure pandemonium. But what FleX didn’t know was that my uncle Etienne’s goons were there. Suddenly Phil ran across the room and jumped on FleX. The goons jumped on them. Then Agnés started in, only she was helping the goons dump on Phil. That gave me the chance to grab FleX and run, just before the gendarmes showed up. We went into the café across the street where we could watch. Finally Agnés came out of the gallery followed by Phil. She was trying to get away from him. He brought her to the café. They didn’t see us. She was crying. He forced her over to a table. We could hear everything, they were talking in French. She kept saying she hated him, she wanted out, she couldn't take it any more. She accused him of stealing from her. He said something and she slapped him. She left. Phil sat there for a minute. He looked so pitiful, really, a sad jerk who had just been humiliated in pubic. Then he went back to the gallery.

And I knew nothing about Phi's deteriorating relationship with Agnés except for the black eye, but it accounts for the hollow ring that had set in behind his brashness. I waited for FleX's letter to arrive.

It came with Senegalese stamps and a Dakar postmark. He had written

No artist but a fool would associate himself with the critical calamity known as Phil Grey. He is one of those rare monsters who would destroy an artist's work to prove a critical point or make a buck. How this businessman in critic's clothing has managed to pull the wool over so many eyes is a question the art world might ask itself. But let's be clear about one thing: FleXus, the art movement Phil Grey has claimed for himself, began as a single painter, me, trying to paint whatever felt most true at the moment. No cloudy critical nonsense, but a direct contact with the real thing. There is nothing I hate more than obfuscation and sentimentality.

I have never believed artists should speak for themselves. Hence the obvious symbolism of the tongue. I'm not anti-critic. I’m not anti anything. But Phil Grey's arrogant and inaccurate account of me requires some response. If a critic wants to find universal validity in my work - FleXus - that's all right with me. But a critic who tries to validate other artists' work from my mythology doesn't understand anything. ONE SIZE KILLS ALL. FleX is not a registered trademark. It's my name, and has been since I began painting. I changed names because for me painting is intimately involved in a search for my self. I have always felt as if I were two selves: one dying and one being born, and my paintings are an attempt to fix this living and dying in terms the senses, not the intellect, can grasp. Perception is chaos ordered. The senses are concrete. Painting is sensual. Hence all true painting is concrete and abstract. And if one's life is painting, then life itself is abstract. One's life: true abstraction is the highest expression of individuality. This is the meaning of FleXus, to be one among many: one man, one life, one art, one death.

Let the Phil Greys of this world publish their superlatives in the hallowed magazine pages of the art business, or let them perish. Let them satisfy America's hollow ambition to be the best without stopping to ask: the best what? Anyone who wants to be an artist should get out now, before the verbal pollution kills us all. Free FleXus from critical contamination, or kill it yourself.

In eXile,

FleX

Rachel helped him write this, she later told me. It didn’t sound like FleX. Him, but not his. It was too articulate, too polished.

I decided to go to 375 East 66th Street, where Detective Dixon had told us we could find Mr. and Mrs. Dodds.

End of Chapter 8

A new chapter will be published each week.

Copyright (c) Richard Dailey 2008. All rights reserved.