Part One

Chapter One

The Gallery

 

It was an obscure impulse that sent the man hurrying along Broome Street searching for the gallery where he had purchased a painting three years ago. He knew little then about art, but having just purchased a luxury condominium on the Upper East Side, thought he might find some suitable means of furnishing it in the galleries of Soho. After devoting an afternoon to the quest he found only one item he liked, by an artist then obscure but now famous, and the painting that now hung in his living room was worth many times more than what he had paid for it. He had no interest in selling it but he was pleased nevertheless. It was one more proof of his judgment, of his instinct for value, qualities that had made him, at the ripe age of thirty-five, a wealthy man.

He had been enjoying his walk on this cool, sunny April day in 1975, a walk that had begun late morning at his residence, and now found him, in the late afternoon, after various detours and diversions, once again in the area south of Houston Street. He was a purposeful man and his activities were not usually this haphazard. But of late he had been working at high pressure, on a project that required long days and nights and weekends of toil, and the fruits of his labors had only just this past week been crowned with success. It was, he believed, the high point of his career, that is to say the high point so far, for he recognized no future boundaries for his ambitions. But now that it was done he found himself bereft. He had few hobbies or friends, and his main interest apart from work was mainly a nighttime pursuit. So having arisen uncharacteristically late, he had decided to devote the day to walking, to the enjoyment of solitude, and the indulgence of random impulses.

What caused him now to hurry was his sudden recollection of the proximity of the gallery, and the fact that it was now nearly five o'clock. He had this odd hunch, this superstitious feeling lightning would strike twice, that he would find there something valuable, if only he arrived before it closed, for he did not recall the hours of the gallery or even if it was open on Sunday. He had learned to trust his hunches.

Arriving at last at the gallery, he discovered it was indeed open, and would remain so for some little time, sufficient either to verify or to disprove his hunch. Through the front door he entered into a large open room which was empty of customers, save for one young woman examining a painting in the far left corner. In the center of the room stood a sculpture, mounted on a pedestal, an elongated figure of a woman in bronze. In high school he had to take a course in art, and while he couldn't draw at all, he found he enjoyed sculpting. It was fun taking a lump of clay in his hands and molding it, giving it shape. In a way it was what he did for a living, only it was people and enterprises that he worked with.

He turned towards the right to examine the paintings. What he saw were typical examples of the New York abstract expressionist school. None of them interested him. Moving counterclockwise, he turned left towards the next wall. While examining the paintings there he noticed out of the corner of his left eye the young woman he had seen on entering, still apparently rooted to the same spot and examining the same painting. Perhaps there was something there worth looking at, if not the painting, then maybe the girl. He turned left and walked towards her. As she came within his field of vision he scrutinized her appearance with an experienced eye. She appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties, about five feet four inches in height with dark brown hair extending half way down her back, covering an oversized red flannel shirt whose flaps extended over her blue denim miniskirt. Her slim, shapely legs were encased in solid black stockings, her feet shod in brown leather platform shoes, and she carried a leather bag slung over her right shoulder. As he drew closer, he turned to read the legend next to the painting. The picture was entitled "Broken Mirror" and was selling for eight hundred dollars. It also listed the artist's name, which was unknown to him.

He walked behind the girl, and as the top of her head only barely came up to his chin he was able to get a good view of the painting, which could also be described as expressionist, but more in the early twentieth century manner. Against a blue background it depicted a stylized picture of a nude woman brushing her hair in front of a dressing table. The mirror atop the dressing table had a large diagonal crack across its length. On the table itself sat a large open pair of scissors. The figure of the woman was fragmented, like a cardboard figure that had been cut in pieces, leaving gaps, with the pieces somehow suspended in space. There were gaps at the waist, at her right shoulder (the one holding the brush), below the neck, and separating the left breast from her body.

He didn't like the painting, thinking it morbid, and the symbolism rather obvious. Did the girl possess some artistic insight that was able to discern a merit that eluded him, or was she merely exhibiting some individual perversity of taste? Either possibility intrigued him. He decided to address her. Meanwhile she had become aware of his presence and turned around to look at him. Viewed full face, the girl was quite pretty, with fine light brown eyes.

"You seem fascinated with that picture," he remarked.

"Why do you say that?" she asked contentiously.

"I saw you here when I came in five minutes ago and you're still here."

She eyed him quizzically for a few seconds then shrugged. "It's okay."

"Why don't you buy it if you like it so much?"

"Yeah, like I can afford it."

"If you like it I'll buy it for you."

She frowned. "No thanks," she said and started to walk rapidly towards the door.

"Wait," he called out in a peremptory tone. She stopped short and turned around. He smiled. "If you won't take the painting perhaps you'll let me buy you dinner. I've been walking all afternoon and I'm hungry, and I hate to eat alone."

He said this in his most charming and ingratiating manner. She looked at him indecisively for a few seconds, then shrugged her shoulders and said "Okay. Why not."

"I passed a little Italian place a couple of blocks away that looked nice."

"Yeah, I know the place, that's fine."

He followed her out the door. She walked very fast with her head down as if lost in thought, a posture that did not invite conversation. Five silent minutes later they arrived at the restaurant. In short order they were seated and a waiter came to take their order.

In the course of the dinner he learned a few things about her. Her name was Eve Sloan, she came from a small town in upstate New York and had spent one year at an upstate university before leaving to follow her boyfriend to the city. Sometime later they split up but she decided to stay. She had an apartment on the Lower East Side and worked in a bookstore. Also she was left-handed. These facts, all but the last, were elicited in response to his questions. Her answers were laconic, like a reluctant witness in a police examination. She asked him nothing about himself, not even his name; indeed she hardly looked at him, her eyes remaining fixed on her plate while she ate her food, which she attacked with a healthy appetite. Sometimes she seemed lost in thought. He wondered if she were on drugs, like one of those spaced out hippie chicks. Or maybe she was just shy or else simply uninterested in him, being content to cadge a free meal, the importance of which to her he perhaps had underestimated. On his way to the gallery he had passed a quite similar looking young woman panhandling.

Although the food was good the meal wasn't otherwise shaping up to be a success. He had been working so hard recently he had neglected his other great interest, women. Perhaps later he would head for one of those nice little bars on the Upper East Side, not far from his apartment, where he might have better luck.

So when having completed their meal they stood on the street outside the restaurant, it came as a surprise when she turned to him and asked, "Do you want to go to my apartment?" She spoke casually as if they were two very old friends who had just accidentally run into each other.

"Sure," he said. "Where is it exactly?"

"On Fifth Street, between Avenue A and B. It's about a fifteen minute walk. If you don't mind walking," she added somewhat pointedly.

"I don't mind."

She turned and again began walking quite fast although with his longer stride he found the pace comfortable enough. It was cool and breezy though not unusually so for an April day in New York. The girl seemed underdressed for the weather; her arms were crossed tightly in front of her. He asked her if she was cold but she shook her head no. He was wearing a tweed sports jacket and had been prepared to offer it to her, but he wasn't going to press the point. He was more and more intrigued by the girl and her strange behavior, with her distracted air and almost rude indifference at dinner, then this sudden forwardness, inviting him to her apartment, and now her present silence. She was certainly an odd duck. Moody, stubborn, a bit willful, not overly concerned with the social niceties, and with a bizarre taste in painting-that was the way he summed her up in his mind. It was a combination of qualities he found rather titillating.

In due course they arrived at Fifth Street and Avenue A. The neighborhood in which the girl lived was still more or less of a slum, the tentacles of gentrification which had already extended east of Greenwich Village not yet having reached this far. But the older ethnic mix was already sprinkled with a hippie/bohemian element. The street was lined with tenement buildings, four stories tall, mostly dating from the early twentieth century, or possibly even the end of the nineteenth. Eve stopped at one of them and opened the front door and he followed her into the entranceway. He glanced at the mailboxes on his left as she fished for her keys out of her bag before unlocking the inner door. Next he followed her up four flights of stairs and to a red painted door in which she inserted a key.

The door opened only part way before encountering an obstacle; once inside he saw that the lock was connected to a bolt anchored in the floor, as a security device. The girl said she had to go to the bathroom and disappeared to the right while he looked around at the apartment. It looked small and dilapidated. To his right was a small kitchen which she had passed through on the way to the bathroom. The room he was in seemed to function as a combined living and dining room. In front of him a tatty green sofa stood against a bare brick wall; opposite was an old wooden dining table with two chairs, on the back of one of which he draped his jacket. There was a wall on his left with an entranceway shielded by a Chinese bead curtain. He walked through the curtain into the next room where he stood facing two windows with half-open Venetian blinds that looked out onto the street and in the middle of which stood a worn red leather easy chair. To his left was a bed with a small end table on which stood a clock, a night lamp and a small pipe, which he recognized as the kind used for smoking marijuana. Lying on the floor by the table was a box phonograph of the old-fashioned kind with a raised top that closed into a carrying case, and next to it the phone. He made a mental note of the number; he had an excellent memory for numbers. Against the opposite wall, which like that of the living room was of uncovered brick, stood a chest of drawers and next to it a bookcase that looked like it had been put together by some amateur carpenter. It contained three shelves of books. He glanced at the top shelf and saw various works of philosophy or religion of the New Age type-Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, A Separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda, the I Ching, Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass. She's true to type, he thought derisively. Closer examination though showed her main interests to be literary. There were classic novels like Wuthering Heights, Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, short story collections, a complete Shakespeare, and many volumes of poetry including, surprisingly, some in French; there were bilingual editions of Baudelaire and Rimbaud along with a French dictionary.

He heard the sound of a toilet flushing which would cut short the examination of her library. Quickly he crouched down to examine the bottom level where a collection of long-playing records rested on the floor. Leafing through them quickly he found an eclectic collection of rock, jazz, fusion and classical. Behind he heard the rustling of the beaded curtain; he stood up and turned around. She had taken off her shoes and was standing in front of the bed in her stocking feet looking up at him expectantly. He walked towards her and grabbed her arms just below the shoulders in a hard grip, pulled her towards him and planted on her lips a long, lingering kiss. She closed her eyes; her lips were soft and yielding. He squeezed her arms until he felt them soften, go limp. Satisfied, he let go her arms and began undoing the buttons of her shirt while kissing her a second time. Their tongues found each other while he pulled apart the flaps of her shirt and slid them off her shoulders and down her arms letting it fall to the floor. Completing his kiss he stepped back, eager to see what had been hidden underneath the oversized shirt. He saw a small boned woman with frail shoulders, slim arms and small ripe young breasts shaped just the way he liked them. He took her breasts in his hands and squeezed them gently, kneading them; then he kissed her once more.

When next their lips parted he put his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her down onto the bed. Compliantly she swung her legs around and lay down in the middle of the bed and looked up at him, waiting. He kicked off his shoes while undoing the buttons of his shirt which he then tossed onto the red leather chair, and climbed on top of her. Once again he began fondling her breasts; the nipples had become erect and he rubbed them with his thumbs while kissing her. When he tired of playing with her breasts he moved his hands underneath her skirt. He felt for her panties, put his hands inside the elastic and pulled them down and off. He lifted up the front of her skirt and she responded by spreading her legs while lying there with her eyes closed. The black stockings highlighted in a most appealing manner her soft white thighs and pink vulva. He quickly undid his belt, pulled down his pants and entered her.