Lessons from a Provocateur

Daedalia: Chapter 9

Daedalia is a serialized novel, with a new chapter released every Monday morning. The story is designed to unfold slowly, the days in between, a space for it to settle into your imagination. Each chapter is a 10–15 minute read/listen. Check out the Table of Contents if you want to jump to a specific chapter. Want something to binge while you wait? Three novels, complete with audio narration are ready for you to dive in.

Previously…

After a dead day at the Santa Barbara street fair, Lefty finally admitted he’d sold Kelly’s work by pretending to be her—and Kelly, unnervingly calm, said it was part of a “deal” she wouldn’t explain. On the drive home, they agreed to invent a mysterious woman artist no one could meet, and weeks later Lefty taped a name to the fridge: Daedalia.

It didn’t work.

This is not something surprising to me—and probably not to you, or really any other rational person—but Lefty was genuinely perplexed as to why he couldn’t get a single gallery in the greater Los Angeles area to entertain showing the work of an anonymous artist.

The Southern charm that had been his primary asset up to this point in life couldn’t have been more of a liability when he stepped into the austere, echoey inner sanctums of the L.A. gallery scene. For the first few attempts, armed only with what appeared to be a photo album, he never made it past the receptionists. At the third or fourth stop in his first campaign, a kind stranger who happened to witness his utter rejection tipped him to the fact that serious galleries would only review slides. This explained why his family photo album from K-Mart was appraised with the disdain afforded a turd in a punchbowl. And so he learned.

But the obstacles were so much greater than just needing slides of Daedalia’s work. The format of the pieces was too small. They weren’t abstract enough. They were too abstract. They lacked sophistication. They were too obtuse. They were not the work of a serious artist. They lacked depth, complexity, and emotion. What he was able to show of Kelly’s work was not communicating the undeniable power of it, but there was also the reality that no one had ever heard of Charles Moody, Artist Agent, as he had printed on his business cards. More importantly, they had never heard of his client with a name they couldn’t pronounce and were told they would never be able to meet.

Every day for six months, Lefty came home pissed off. Kelly tried not to be there during the couple of hours when he returned to eat something and change before going into work, but sometimes it was unavoidable. He never took it out on her exactly, but tended to give her a lot of unhelpful direction based on whatever he had just been told. The more she learned about the serious art world through him, the more she despised it and doubled down on the things he criticized about her work. This wasn’t something she did intentionally. It was a natural reflex that most artists have. If she could take direction, then she could have worked at Kinko’s or an advertising agency.

Lefty may have gotten more frustrated by her contrariness if he wasn’t so fully absorbed with the work she was doing. In just a few months, her style had evolved and become increasingly more ambitious and layered, incorporating splashes of vivid watercolor and expanding in size. What he understood about art, art history, and the great masters could fit on a trifold brochure, but he knew Kelly’s work with an intimacy that bordered on obsession. Why else would he have allowed her canvases and supplies to cover every available surface in their small living space? Why else would he persist where most men, when confronted with so much rejection, would have come to question their own taste and given up? But the rejection only made Lefty more dogged—his belief stronger.

There’s no logic for this commitment he felt, and Lefty himself has never been able to explain it when he’s been asked over the years. Her genius has more than proven itself and Daedalia is celebrated as one of the greatest artists of the twenty-first century, but at the time, she was just a kid making cool pictures that no serious gallery was interested in.

Lefty’s masochistic visits to the galleries did nothing to advance their cause directly, but they did give him an education—not just in fine art, but in the kinds of people who collect it. He would often make a point of coming back to openings at the galleries that wouldn’t give him the time of day just so he could study the people who turned up to sip Prosecco and peer into the canvases with such rapturous intent.

He could never convince Kelly to come with him on these reconnaissance missions. It wasn’t that she had no interest in other artists and their work. It was the fact that the events terrified her and pissed her off in equal measure. The pretense and spectacle of them, and the underlying tension she felt in those spaces, made it hard for her to breathe. While she was grateful for Lefty’s persistence in pursuing them, she didn’t miss an opportunity to bust his balls about the lengths he would go to. He never confessed to her that the chunky black-framed glasses and black turtleneck he donned for these outings were as much a disguise to hide from the haughty curators who had roundly rejected him the day before as a costume to blend in as one of the gallery patrons.

It was at one of these openings that he met a woman who, either out of curiosity or pity, took Lefty under her wing. Greta Krieger was an institution of the L.A. art scene and had worked in the business for twenty years. He had observed her from a distance at nearly every opening he attended but avoided trying to engage her. Maybe it was her austere appearance—the shock of white hair spiked to fine points, the thick eyeliner, leather pants, and heels that looked more like weapons than footwear—or maybe it was the way he overheard her carve people up with a tongue sharper than a straight razor.

“Why don’t I get one of those?”

She slipped up behind him while he had been chatting up a couple standing in front of a giant canvas depicting a vivid and cartoonish Jack-in-the-Box toy foisting a grenade.

“Excuse me?”

“It doesn’t work, you know—the business card thing. A 3 x 2 piece of card stock doesn’t make you someone unless you already are.”

“How do you know I’m not someone?”

“Because I know everyone in this town who’s worth knowing.”

Lefty pulled his hand from his pocket, where he had been thumbing the slim stack of cards he had left, and extended his hand to her. Her handshake wasn’t the removed, limp affair he had become accustomed to in these circles, but an honest Midwestern grip, which surprised him.

“I’m Lefty. Are you someone?” He squinted his eyes, appraising her before adding, “Because if you’re not, you’re trying really hard.”

Her eyes narrowed and she laughed. “I like you. And here I thought you were an ingratiating sycophant trying to sell life insurance.”

They left the gallery well before the event was over—her suggestion—and ended up at a bar on Sunset Boulevard called the Cat and Fiddle—also her suggestion. The place was like a Hollywood movie set for a British pub and not at all the kind of place he imagined to be her scene, so he assumed she picked it for his benefit. Lefty had a preternatural gift for knowing the role he was supposed to play in any dynamic, but he was struggling to find his footing. He allowed her to buy the first round of drinks, but he insisted on picking up the tab at the end of the night, even though it would probably amount to more than he made in two shifts at the stereo store.

“So this mysterious artist you represent—why are you bothering? Is it love?” She tilted her head and pouched her lips. “No, I don’t think so. If it’s money, then I can think of about a thousand ways that would be easier than this game.” His silence set the hook and she continued to tug. “Don’t tell me you think she’s brilliant, that she’s the next Rothko. Surely you’re smarter than that.”

“She is nobody, but her work will make Rothko look like a house painter one day.”

“And tell me, Lefty Moody—so much better than Charles, by the way—what makes you qualified to make such a prediction?”

“I don’t know, but I’m right. You’ll see.”

“Will I?” She leaned forward and squeezed his thigh.

Up close, he could see the crow’s feet beneath the theatrical eyeliner she had applied with the precision of a surgeon. It wasn’t her severe, almost androgynous style, or her aggressiveness, that restrained him. He would have happily slept with her, but he knew if he did, he wouldn’t get what he really needed. So he allowed her to handle him.

After her third gin and tonic, she said they should go somewhere more private. He agreed, but didn’t move to get up. Instead, he asked about her life, her childhood, her loves, gradually working his way closer to what he really wanted to know. How did she spot talent? How had she successfully represented so many artists?

“The old-fashioned way, darling,” she answered.

When he looked confused, she clarified. “I have money to spend. Lots of it.”

“But that’s not enough, is it? People have to recognize that the work is great, right? I mean, it can’t be that simple.”

“Oh, you’re so adorable,” she cooed, leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. In his ear she whispered, “People believe what they’re told by people who have more power. Money is power, so people believe money.”

“And you’re saying there’s no other way.”

She pulled back and looked him directly in the eye. “You believe there is, I think. So maybe there is.”

“If you didn’t have money to promote an artist, to buy them an audience out of the gate, what would you have done?”

“I would’ve created a spectacle.”

“What do you mean?”

“Art is disruption. It’s a slap in the face of a sleeping world, comfortable in their nine-to-five, sitcom lifestyle. The battle is to be noticed, to cut through the complacency. You have to make a spectacle.”

It was late when he closed out the tab, and Greta was very drunk. He didn’t know if this was just another Tuesday night for her or if she had made it an occasion because of him. Either way, he couldn’t, in good conscience, allow her to drive. He had stopped much earlier and was fine, except for being completely preoccupied by everything he had learned in talking with her.

She leaned into him as he walked her down the street to her car. It was a candy-apple red Mercedes convertible with a vanity license plate, and he wondered if she knew she was out of central casting.

As if she heard his thoughts, she murmured into his chest, “I’m not what you think I am.”

He didn’t know how to reply, so he said nothing. As they approached the car, he did the calculus in his head. He needed this relationship. She was the only tenuous thread of a connection he had managed to grasp in over six months working this scene. The easy thing would be to give her what she was asking for, but he knew, as fun as that might be, there could only be one of two possible outcomes: she would want him to keep doing it, or she would never talk to him again—at least that was his small-town framing. It would not be the first or the last time this binary system failed him.

“How about I drive you home?” he asked when they reached the driver-side door and she began digging for the keys in her purse.

The car chirped and the taillights blinked. She turned to face him. “How about we fuck in the car until I’m sober instead?”

When he didn’t respond right away, she bit her bottom lip, tilted her head back, and nodded deliberately. “I see, you’re playing the long game. You’re imagining you take the tipsy Duchess home and tuck her chastely into bed and, as a reward, she will give you the keys to the kingdom in the morning.”

In response, all he could manage was a smile. He was smart enough to know when he had been outmaneuvered.

She leaned forward. In heels, she was his height. She gave him a lingering, sloppy kiss, and before his body could even respond, she pushed him firmly away before popping open the door to the car and getting in. She closed the door and started the engine but didn’t pull away. She had her back to him and was doing something.

After a minute, she rolled down the window and extended two slender fingers, clasping a small white card as though he were a valet and this was his tip.

“Call me tomorrow and we’ll arrange to meet and talk spectacles.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in business cards,” he said, taking it from her.

“Did I say that?”

Before he could answer, she peeled out of the parking lot with the precision and facility of a Formula One driver, the opening chords of an old Pat Benatar song blaring through the open window.

He looked down at the 3 x 2 card and turned toward the streetlight so he could read it. In a typeface so small he had to squint, it read:

greta krieger
agent, collector, provocateur

There were no contact details printed anywhere on the card. On the back, in red ink, she had scrawled a seven-digit phone number in a hand so large and expressive the card barely contained it.

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