Nightwork

Fabian had been in East Hampton for three weeks, helping me get ready for the opening. Early in the year, he had gone to Rome and had gotten in touch with Angelo Quinn and made a contract with him for all his output. He had done the same thing with the man whose lithographs he had bought in Zurich. Then he had come out to Sag Harbor and outlined a scheme that I had thought was insane at first, but which, surprisingly, Evelyn had approved of. The plan was to open a gallery in nearby East Hampton and have me run it. 'You're not doing anything, anyway,' he said, which was true at the time, 'and I'll always be available to help you when you need it. You have a lot to learn, but you certainly picked a winner with Quinn.'

I bought two paintings for my girl,' I said. 'I didn't intend to start a career.'

'Have I steered you wrong up to now?' he demanded. 'No,' I admitted. Among the other things on which he had not steered me wrong, like gold and sugar and wine and Canadian zinc and lead and the land in Gstaad (the chalet would be built by Christmas and every apartment had been rented), there was also Nadine Bonheur's dirty movie, which had been playing to full houses for seven months, in New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles amid cries of shame in church publications. Our names, happily, were not on anything connected with the picture except the checks we received each month. And they went directly to Zurich. My bank balances, both open and secret, were impressive, to say the least. 'No,' I said, 'I can't say that you've steered me wrong up to now.'

'This area is rich in three things,' Fabian went on, 'money, potatoes, and painters. You could have five shows a year just with local artists and you still wouldn't begin to tap the total product. People are interested in art here and they have the dough to invest in it. And it's like Palm Beach - people are on vacation and are free with their money here. You can get double the price for a picture that you'd have to sweat to get off the wall in New York. That's not to say that we'd just stick with this one place. We'll start modestly and see how it goes, of course. After that, we could look into the possibilities of Palm Beach, say, Houston, Beverly Hills, even New York. You wouldn't be against spending a month or so in Palm Beach in the winter, would you?' he asked Evelyn.

'Not completely.' Evelyn said. 'No.'

'What's more, Douglas,' he said, 'it would launder a reasonable portion of your money for the tax hounds. You were the one who wanted to live in the States and they're bound to come after you. You could throw open your books and sleep at night. And you'd have a legitimate reason to travel in Europe, on the search for talent. And while you were in Europe you could make the occasional necessary visit to your money there. And, finally, for once you could do something for me.'

'For once,' I said.

'I don't expect gratitude,' Fabian said aggrievedly, 'but I do expect normal civility.'

'Listen to the man,' Evelyn said. 'He's making sense.'

Thank you, my dear,' Fabian said. Then, to me, 'You don't object if something that is in both our interests happens to be a project that is dear to my heart, do you?'

'Not necessarily,' I said.

'You can be ungracious, can't you?' he said. 'Nevertheless - permit me to go on. You know me. You've tagged along with me through enough museums and galleries to have some notion of what I think about art. And artists. And not just what they mean in terms of money. I like artists. I would have liked to be one myself. But I couldn't. And the next best thing is to be mixed up with them, help them, gamble on my taste, maybe one day discover a great one.' Part of this may have been true, part pure rhetoric, for the purpose of persuading me. I doubted if Fabian could have distinguished which was which himself. 'Angelo Quinn is good enough,' he went on, 'but maybe one day some kid will walk in with a portfolio and I'll say, "Now I can give up everything else. This is it, this is what I've been waiting for".'

'Okay,' I said. I had known from the beginning I couldn't hold out against him. 'You've convinced me. As usual. I'll devote my life to the building of the Miles Fabian museum. Where do you want it—? How about down the hill from the Maeght Museum in St-Paul-de-Vence?'

'Wilder things have happened,' Fabian said soberly.

We had rented a bam on the outskirts of East Hampton, painted it, cleaned up the interior, and put up our sign - The South Fork Gallery. I had refused to put my name on it. I wasn't quite sure whether my refusal was influenced by modesty or fear of ridicule.