Chapter 2
Back in my apartment in Hollywood, I enjoy the slow velcro tug of war between tacky glue and skin as I remove my lashes one eye at a time, revealing myself to myself in the gold baroque mirror. A cotton ball full of olive oil erases the deep brown pigment from my lips and I’m me again.
Whoever that is today.
Like so many buildings in this city, this one is unobtrusive. Like so many buildings in this city, the exterior lies. Maybe that’s not just buildings around here, come to think about it. And maybe that’s not just around here, either.
My loft is on the top floor.
It’s an art deco masterpiece, ala American Horror Story—minus the horror piece, of course. I leave the horror behind me, when the men whose beds I’ve slid out of awaken to find my side as empty as the rectangle I’ve left on their wall. I’m no Countess, though, I don’t want them to worship me. I want to worship them, strange as it sounds.
The men who own the art I steal love it. They appreciate it. Perhaps not at the beginning. When they first buy it, it may be simply a coup to outbid a rival, or the thrill of owning a Name.
But when you live with a canvas, an expensive canvas, you find yourself drawn to it, more and more. Why is it worth so much? What does it have that other people want? And when you ask yourself those questions, you inevitably find the answers. And by the time you find them, it’s too late—you’re enraptured.
Something about giving a man who has everything even more just fascinates me. I don’t even mind that they almost never return the favor.
I pad from my bathroom along a Persian-carpeted path to my rosewood desk. It’s both masculine and feminine, with its stark lines, brass fittings, and decreasingly-sized rectangles of wood on the sides. On top, a Macbook.
Because I may enjoy being surrounded by the past, but it would be rather inconvenient to live there.
I don’t even bother googling Jonathan Drazen, initially. Most of LA knows his story. Instead, I search everything there is to know about his ex-wife, Jessica Carnes.
I know very little about living artists, since I don’t deal in their work. It isn’t worth the publicity, if they and their agents can hop on the news and bat their big eyes about a theft. Her name is more than familiar, though, since I make a habit of the MOMA. Nature vs. human— her work is actually rather brilliant, if not to my taste.
I wonder, briefly, as I gaze at her ice-blonde hair and sky blue eyes, if perhaps it’s her I should target.
A flash of soft, warm bodies coming together crosses my imagination for the barest of seconds before I dismiss it. If Jess Carnes were the one in possession of the painting, she’d be the one whose name I chewed up and swallowed last night. Although I do wonder if her ex-husband quite understands the value of the work she no doubt encouraged him to buy.
The piece that concerns me is in how he cares for his art. Since she left, does it lie in the back of his into his closet, like the rumor about Elton John and his Warhol Marilyn print ? Or did she impress upon him the danger of girls like me, wiring each piece into a tiny recess with its own lighting and security?
There’s no way to know, so I move on to a search of the man in possession of it.
Jonathan Drazen.
His name rolls around in my mouth like a lemon drop, sweet and sour and a physical presence.
He’s a redhead, which normally doesn’t interest me much, but there’s a Fassbender-esque appeal to him that I like. Also of note—he doesn’t seem to have been photographed with any woman twice, unless she’s related to him. And he does seem to have an unholy amount of sisters.
This is good news.
I look a little harder at the un-related women he has on his arm at various events, and he doesn’t seem to have a particular type. I can pick any sort of look, then, and have an equal shot. But is that good news after all? Or does that mean I’m competing with literally every girl in the room for whoever he wants to take home that night?
I close my laptop, and pace for a moment. I’m still in my beaded dress, but it’s easy enough to unzip and let fall. Pacing is easier in my underwear.
Something occurs to me, and I open my laptop again, sliding my lace-covered ass back into the leather seat.
Rhapsody Drazen I type into the search bar on my anonymous browser. I never do anything on the regular web, of course. I like everything deep, including my internet search providers.
I only get a few hits, no surprise. This isn’t a painting that gets a lot of press. Most don’t, unless they’re for sale. But the second headline down takes me to a newsletter from a private collectors group, something called, “City of Night”. That’s maybe more accurate than the City of Light thing the Chamber of Commerce is working with, but they never ask me my opinion.
When I click through, there’s only short paragraph, but it tells me all I need to know.
Hopper’s Rhapsody On Loan From Private Collection
Some guy named Jaydee is putting a show together. Oh… Hank Jaydee. I know that name the same way I know Jessica Carnes. As in, practically nothing about him comes to mind, because we aren’t in the same genre. He deals in the living artists I avoid.
He’s a man. He’s a straight man. That’s basically all I need to know, but I keep on in case there are any details that escape me. Bald. I like that. Older, but straight. Older men understand the aesthetic I do. The language on his website is plain to the point of dumb.
I know his type. Handsome, in a Jason Statham type of way. If I were to guess, he was probably successful enough in a first job—maybe as an architect, or CFO of Dad’s corporation—to have landed on the board of a museum. Easy enough to parlay a life of offices and charity fundraisers into a life where you throw the fundraisers for former colleagues and collect the checks rather than write them.
And contemporary art isn’t about knowledge. It’s just about marketing.
Another quick search tells me that Hank will be attending a gala at the Griffith Observatory in two days’ time. Thanks, Facebook Events, for making my job that much easier. Tickets are exorbitant, but I can afford it. My job has made me rich.
I have two days to create a marketing plan for the ultimate art piece—myself.