BioShock: Rapture

“Did you not receive the invitation? I shall have to positively flay my personal assistant alive! Ha ha! I have a bit of a gallery show, at the Verlaine Club. My new obsession. An art form almost unknown in America.” Looking sleepy eyed again, he turned to explain to Bill. “It’s a tableau vivant show.”

“Ah yes,” Ryan said to Bill. “Tableau vivant. It’s a French artistic tradition—they pose people on a stage, in different ways, to represent scenes from history or drama. They stand there in costume… almost like sculptures.”

“Precisely!” Cohen crowed, clapping his hands together with delight. “Living sculptures, in a way—in this case they are representing scenes from the life of the Roman emperor Caligula.”

“Sounds fascinating,” Ryan said, frowning slightly. “Caligula. Well, well, well.”

“My protégés, such artistic courage—they stand there posed in a state of near undress in a cold room, minute after minute, as if frozen in place!” He tossed his head like a stallion and whispered, “They’re in fierce competition to please me! Oh how hard they work at it—but art calls for an agony of self-sacrifice, for submission, an inverted immolation upon its altar!”

“That’s what I admire about you, Sander,” Ryan said. “Your complete devotion to your art. No matter what anyone thinks! You are yourself completely. That’s essential to art, it seems to me. Expressing one’s true self…”

But it seemed to Bill that whatever Sander Cohen really was, it was all hidden away, even as he presented another side of himself to the world with great verve. It was like there was a scared little animal looking out of his sleepy eyes. And yet he spoke with flourishes, moved with striking dynamism. Queer sort of duck.

“I may be out of the country for your opening, I’m afraid,” Ryan was saying. “But I was just telling Jasmine—”

“Oh—Jasmine.” Cohen shrugged dismissively. “She does have her charms. Believe me, I understand. But Andrew—I’m told that this show may close rather sooner than we expected. Dandies was to be my re-emergence, my metamorphosis! And the cocoon, I find, is rather constricting and may squeeze me out too soon—” He hugged himself tight, seemed to writhe in his own hug as he said it. “I feel positively squeezed!”

“Artists chafe at constraint,” Ryan said, nodding sympathetically. “Don’t worry about the show—Broadway will soon be old hat. We’ll create our own venue for genius, Sander!”

“Really! And with what sort of… scope? A large audience?”

“You’ll see. As for scope—well, there will be plenty of people to appreciate you there. Almost a captive audience in a way.”

“Ooh, nothing I’d like better than a captive audience! But I must away! I see Jimmy signaling desperately to me from the dressing room. Do keep me informed as to this… this new project, Andrew!”

“You will be among the first to know when it’s ready, Sander. It will take some courage on your part”—Ryan smiled crookedly—“but if you take the leap, you’ll find yourself immersed in something beautiful.”

They watched Sander Cohen strutting off toward the dressing rooms. It seemed to Bill that Cohen was off his trolley, but Ryan was right—genius was eccentric. As if guessing his thoughts, Ryan said, “Yes, Bill, he can be… outrageous. Exasperating. But all the great ones hurt the eyes and burn the ears a bit. He calls himself the Napoleon of Mime sometimes—and so he is, when he’s miming. Come along, Bill. We’re off to the airport. If you’re quite ready to go. Or are you having second thoughts?”

Bill grinned. “Not me, sir. I’m in, A to Zed. I’m diving in at the deep end, Mr. Ryan…”

4

New York City 1946

“Look, Mr. Gorland—I don’t know that much about it.” Merton was sitting in the backroom of The Clanger, across from what used to be his own seat. Now Gorland was behind the desk, with Garcia standing to one side, eyeing Merton and tapping a blackjack in his palm, while on the other side was Reggie, a bruiser from the Bronx, wearing the doorman’s uniform that went with his day job.

Gorland knew Reggie from the old days—he was one of the only people alive who knew Frank’s real last name—and he sometimes hired him as extra muscle. Tonight, Gorland had to put the fear of God into Merton. Harv Merton needed to have more fear for Frank Gorland than for the powerful Andrew Ryan.

“I mean, if I knew anything else,” Merton went on, wringing his hands, “I’d tell ya.”

“Hey, you got any hot advice on the horses, Merton?” Garcia, asked, grinning.

Gorland signaled for Garcia to be quiet. The bookie shrugged, put away his sap, and took out a cigar instead. In the lull, the sound of the bar seeped through the closed door. A girl squealed with laughter; a man hooted, “Aw you don’t know nothin’ about Dempsey!”