Year 1
Jack, the gallery owner, had left early. He’d said something about banks, taxes and traffic, grumbled, then stepped out the back door into the windy October evening. It was about half an hour until closing time, and I told him to watch out for the crazy drivers.
It’d been a slow day, so I’d spent most of it behind the keyboard catching up on inventory and getting photos of the new artwork up on our website. You’d think there’d be an easier way to do such things, but so far, the technology gods hadn’t provided it. I kept clicking and watching the clock. At five of six, I got up and started closing down.
I had all the computers off and was locking the front door when my phone rang. I dug it out of my pocket, looked at the face. Jack.
I answered, “Hey, what’s up?”
“I just remembered something. Someone might be coming by right after six to see the … after-hours collection.”
He paused, letting what he said sink in. I inhaled, nodded to myself. It had to happen sooner or later, I supposed.
“Okay. I got it.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“If you want me to come back and deal with it, I can.”
“No, it’s fine. Who is it?”
“Doesn’t matter, but he mentioned wanting to see the Angel.”
I winced. “Really? Did you try to talk him out of it?”
“Yes.”
I nodded again to myself. “All right. I’ll take care of it.”
“If you have any trouble, call me. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning.”
It’s not that I hadn’t shown the afterhours collection, mind you. It’s that I hadn’t done it by myself. I walked back and unlocked the front door, then headed to the fridge in back and got a beer. I popped the cap, then headed out to the wooden ramp leading from the upper gallery to the gallery floor. I leaned on the worn, wooden handrail.
About then, the lightshow started. We have a program that controls our lighting, and at six every evening, it sets the lights dancing throughout the gallery, alternately illuminating different walls and works of art, drawing the attention of passersby. We know it works because we have to have the windows cleaned twice a month to get rid of the hand, forehead, and nose prints.
Outside, leaves tumbled across the parking lot and the trees swayed, casting dancing shadows on the ground. I imagined I could smell burning pinion wood. The sky was cloudy, and the clouds had that ambient glow from the city lights. I couldn’t remember if it was supposed to storm.
I’d almost finished the beer when the doorbell rang and the gentleman stepped into the gallery. He wasn’t very tall, and had unkempt dark hair atop his head. He wore a black pea coat buttoned tight, dark pants and black leather shoes in need of a good shine. He tweaked the end of his nose and sniffed, then looked around the gallery, eyes following the lights. I wondered if he could see them yet. Probably not. It was early still, or late, depending on how you looked at it.
He seemed hesitant to step further into the gallery. I wondered how long he’d sat in his car getting up the nerve.
“Good evening,” I said.
He stiffened, then looked around, trying to find the voice. I walked down the wood ramp, moving slowly and trying to look unthreatening. Don’t want to startle the deer, do we? I stopped a body length away and introduced myself.
“What’re you here to see, specifically?”
He looked at me and said, “the trompe l’oeils, obviously.” And just like that, I didn’t like him. Tone speaks louder than words.
“If you don’t mind my asking, where did you hear about us?”
“Places.”
“Our darknet site?”
“I read that, yes. But I’d heard of this place before.” He paused, swallowed. “It’s all … true?”
I nodded.
He looked around the gallery and started, his body jerking like he’d had a spasm.
“Is there anyone else here? I was told this would be a private showing.”
“It’s just you, me, and the art.” I waited a minute for him to calm down, then continued. “You’re comfortable with our terms and the fee?”
“Yes,” he said, again with that tone.
I nodded at him. “Follow me. We’ll take care of the paperwork, and then you can get on with your … viewing.” I walked away from him, back up the wooden ramp, and behind the counter. Their eyes, and his, followed me as I unlocked the black wooden box. I found what I needed, closed it, and presented it across the counter, five overly large sheets of parchment with scrawling text.
“If you’ll just read through those and sign on the last one.” I said.
“Is all this really necessary?”
“It is.”
He sighed, but began reading. It takes longer than you’d think to read through five pages of overly foreboding calligraphic text. Anyway, I wasn’t in a hurry to get on with the next portion of the evening. He finished, looked up at me, and stuck out his hand.
“Pen.”
I handed him the black wooden fountain pen from the box. He examined it, looked at me. “Where’s the ink?”
“If you agree to the terms, sign.”
He put the pen to parchment, then hissed as the barrel of the pen bit into his fingers, drawing its ink. He grimaced, signed his name. A few dark red drops fell off the nib as he finished then handed the pen back to me. I scooped up the parchment and deposited it back in the black box, taking my time and trying not to think.
“Do you have the cashier’s check?”
He unbuttoned the pea coat and dug out an envelope. He slid it across the counter. I left it.
“What would you like to see first?”
“All of it. I’m paying you enough.”
That was true. I gestured to the paintings behind him. “Shall we start up here?” I walked him over to the wall, stopping in from of K. Henderson’s Licorice Allsorts. It seemed an innocuous place to start. He looked at me.
“So I just reach in?”
I could tell he was unconvinced, and perhaps thinking he was PT Barnum’s proverbial sucker, so I reached into the painting, plucked out an orange candy and popped it into my mouth. To the right of the candy jar painting was Girl with a Curtain, a small oil painting of a nude woman drawn in pencil, framed by white diaphanous curtains. The curtains moved gently in a breeze I could neither see nor hear.
He moved closer, reached slowly toward the girl. She shied away. He pulled his hand back and glanced wide-eyed around the gallery. I could hear the city sounds – bustling traffic, the scuffs of footballs on the sidewalks – emanating from Erica Norelius’ Walking from Chinatown. The sensation made me giddy, like the first time I read a Harry Potter book.
He walked away toward the wooden ramp. As we passed Joseph Crone’s While the Cold Night Waiting, the woman met my eyes, then turned away.
“Perhaps you’d like me to show you around?”
I walked him through the pools of rotating darkness around the gallery’s outer wall. The lights fell off us as we passed Terry Isaac’s Wolf in Snow, and the wolf’s eyes glinted in the dimness. We turned the corner and Jeff Ham’s Raven cawed at us and shook out its feathers, the red and orange sky behind it drifted by like colored clouds.
I almost ran into him as he stopped in front of Scott French’s The Voices of Silence. I’d read Scott’s narrative on the piece dozens of times, but I was always struck by the woman’s sadness, from her somber expression right down to her loose-laced combat boots. She seemed vulnerable, and like it had the first time I’d helped Jack after hours, it made me uncomfortable to see a man leer at her and her strange rack of horns.
She looked up at us, out at us, past us, then down and away, shifting her legs to preserve what little modesty she had left.
“How much for this?”
I quoted him the price. “She won’t be like this in your home.”
“And why is that?”
“This reality is localized to the Gallery itself. We don’t know why.”
“Whatever. I want the painting. It’ll do for a start. What else?”
“I’ll get it ready for you after we’ve concluded the evening’s activities.” My voice sounded too formal to my ears, and I realized I was a little angry. It was hard not to feel protective.
“Would you like to see the Angel then?”
“Yes.”
The Gallery effect was different for each painting, but nothing as dramatic as that of Juan Medina’s The Blind Angel. I walked him to the painting.
We stopped in front of it, and I heard his breath catch. He made a production of examining the work.
“It’s quite a remarkable painting on its own,” he said, and leaned closer. As he moved, so did the angel. She stepped down, first to the end of the frame, and then to the floor. Her alabaster skin glinted in the moving light of the gallery, and I tried to look everywhere but at her. Her wings flexed with her breaths, feathers shivering. The figures created first by Botticelli, Bouguereau, Canova and Rembrandt, recreated by Medina, watched the angel as she moved.
She didn’t speak, but moved her head, looking the man over. I clasped my hands in front of me and studiously looked everywhere but at him. Or her. Then she spoke:
“Would you see?” Her voice was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.
“Yes,” he said, low and quiet.
She turned to the poster she’d emerged from, and peeled it back out of the painting, revealing a dark corridor, the light within flickering like flame. Stairs descended into the dark. She turned back to the man and held out her hand. He took it, and she stepped back onto the picture frame, and then through the doorway, pulling him along. I watched as they moved down the stairs and out of sight.
I waited, counting in my head. Like the last time, I tried to not imagine what was happening at the bottom of the staircase. I thought about my wife and child. I thought about tomorrow. I thought about the flickering light on the staircase.
Then the screaming started, and it continued for some time. I wanted to go do anything else, but Jack had told me to wait for the angel to return. And then she appeared from the darkness, and I couldn’t help but think about how beautiful she was. I felt her glance at me, despite the blindfold. I looked at the ground.
I heard her voice, and knew she would say just what she had the last time. “Would you see?”
“I would not.”
“Very well.”
She turned and closed the poster behind her, smoothing it out into the painted surface, and then she lifted her arms and again became part of the painting. My ears popped as reality reasserted itself on the gallery. The lights continued their dance.
I locked the front door, set the alarm and let myself out the back. I took a deep breath of the autumn night air. I could smell burning pinion wood from somewhere nearby. I needed another beer.
skepticlysm 