Nightwork

Now, Fabian would be waiting for me there at nine o'clock that morning, surrounded by thirty paintings by Angelo Quinn that we had spent four days hanging on the barn walls. The invitations to the opening of the show had gone out two weeks in advance and Fabian had promised free champagne to about a thousand of his best friends who were in the Hamptons for the summer and we had arranged for two policemen to handle the parking problem.

I was finishing a second cup of coffee when the telephone rang. I went into the hall and picked it up. 'Hello,' I said.

'Doug,' a man's voice said, 'this is Henry.'

Who?'

'Henry. Hank. Your brother, for God's sake.'

'Oh,' I said. I had called him when I got married but hadn't seen or spoken to him since. He had written to me twice to say that the business still looked promising, which I took to mean that it was about to go under. 'How are you?'

'Fine, fine,' he said hurriedly. 'Listen, Doug, I've got to see you. Today.'

'I've got an awfully busy day. Hank. Can't it...?'

'It can't wait. Look, I'm in New York. You can get here in two hours... .'-

I sighed. I hoped inaudibly. 'Not possible. Hank,' I said.

'Okay. I'll come out there.'

'I'm really jammed...'

'You're going to eat lunch, aren't you?' he said accusingly. 'Christ, you can spare an hour every two years for your brother, can't you?'

'Of course. Hank,' I said.

'I can be there by noon. Where do I meet you?'

I gave him the name of a restaurant in East Hampton and told him how to find it.

'Great,' he said.

I hung up. This time I sighed aloud.

I went upstairs and dressed.

Evelyn was just getting out of bed and I kissed her good morning. For once she wasn't cranky at that hour. 'You smell salty,' she whispered as I held her. 'Deliciously salty.' I slapped her fondly on her bottom and told her I was busy for lunch, but that I'd call her later and tell her how things were going.

As I drove toward East Hampton I decided that I could give Hank ten thousand dollars. At the most, ten thousand. I wished he had chosen another day to call.

* * *

Fabian was prowling around the gallery, giving little touches to the paintings to straighten them, although they all looked absolutely straight to me. The girl from Sarah Lawrence we had hired for the summer was taking champagne glasses out of cases and arranging them on the trestle table we had set up at one end of the barn. The champagne would be delivered in the afternoon by the caterer Fabian had hired. The two paintings from our living room were on the walls. Fabian had put little red sold tabs on them. 'To break the ice,' he had explained. 'Nobody likes to be the first one to buy. Tricks in every trade, my boy.'

'I don't know what I'd do without you,' I said. 'Neither do I,' he said. 'Listen, I've been thinking.' I recognized the tone. He was coming up with a new scheme.

'What is it now?' I asked.

'We're underpricing,' he said.

'I thought we'd been through all that.' We had spent days discussing prices. We had settled on fifteen hundred dollars for the larger oils and between eight hundred and a thousand for the smaller ones.

'I know we talked about it. But we set our sights too low. We were too modest. People will think we don't have any real confidence in the man.'

'What do you suggest?'

Two thousand for the big ones. Between twelve and fifteen hundred for the smaller ones. It'll show we're serious.'

'We'll wind up the proud owners of thirty Angelo Quinns,' I said.

'Trust my instinct, my boy,' Fabian said grandly. 'We're really going to put our friend on the map tonight.'

'It's a good thing he won't be here,' I said. 'He'd swoon.' 'It's a pity the young man wouldn't come. Give him a haircut and a shave and he'd be most personable. Useful for lady -art lovers.' Fabian had offered to pay Quinn's way across from Rome for the show, but Quinn had said he wasn't finished painting America yet. 'So,' Fabian said, 'two thousand it is, right?' 'If you say so,' I said. 'I'll hide in the John when anybody asks what anything costs.'

'Boldness is all, dear boy,' Fabian said. The breaks are coming our way. I was at a party last night and the art critic from The Times was there. He's down for the weekend. He promised to look in tonight.'

I felt my nerves grow taut. Quinn had only gotten two lines in an Italian paper for his show in Rome. They had been appreciative, but they had only been two lines. 'I hope you know what you're doing,' I said. 'Because I don't.'

'The man will be stunned,' Fabian said confidently. 'Just look around you. This old barn is positively glowing.'

I had looked so hard and so long at the paintings that I no longer had any reaction to them. If it had been possible, I would have driven out to the far edge of the island at Montauk Point and stayed there looking at the Atlantic Ocean until the whole thing was over.