Next thing I’m out by the pool, I feel the shadow. I open my eyes, and this girl is standing over me. Blocking my sun, or I’d have thought she was a ghost. Beautiful but not my type. Call me old-fashioned, but I like some meat on a girl.
“I’m Addison,” she says. “My art was in your show a few weeks ago. You should know the rest of your gallery was crap.”
That’s what she said to me. This skinny-ass human candlestick girl. To me, Max Berger. Un-fucking-believable. But she was right. Every other piece, you couldn’t sell it in the Dairy Queen today. But I could feel my neck get hot. We both knew she was right on the money.
Let me say this about Addison Stone. She didn’t just make art. She was art. Same as Picasso, Glenn Gould, Gertrude Stein. You couldn’t untangle her from it. I decided then and there to get her into my talent stable. A small-town girl like that, you want to dazzle her hard and sell it fast. I made a date, wooed her at Per Se with some of my people. I threw Zach some extra business so that he’d talk me up. I pitched that snot-nosed teenager as hard as I ever pitched. But the day she said she’d sign with me, I gave her my warning.
“No stunt art, Addison,” I told her. “No swinging from the lights, you got it? You are too rare a talent, and I care about you. From now on, stay focused, working, and strategized. I will be there for you, but you need to grow up and learn quick how to weed out the bullshit and the bad advice. I got no sympathy for kids who can’t handle the money or the fame. I got no time for drunks, users, and party people. And I got no sympathy for you flushing your own career down the toilet.”
She didn’t want to hear that. She wanted to be a free agent and do whatever the f**k she liked. They all do. Luckily, money talks. We struck an agreement, and we’d gone to contract by the end of the month.
CARINE FRATEPIETRO: In the late ’90s, Max had been imprisoned on a tax fraud scandal. But his nose had been clean for years. And people are flawed, yes? Was every person we introduced to Addison a sparkling moral character? No. This is a business. Like any business, there are good people and bad people and people in the gray middle. Max Berger is gray, no doubt. But he’s also very influential, and once he catches whiff of a talent, he makes a lot of noise. He was the megaphone that Addison Stone needed.
ZACH FRATEPIETRO: Crazy summer. For one thing, Addison and I got together exclusively. I was twenty-two at the time, three and a half years older, but Addison wasn’t any virgin. I know you didn’t ask me that, but I want to put it out there. This can’t be the story of the guy who rooked Addison Stone’s virginity. I’ve got enough shit talked about me. Anyhow, she’d lost it already to Jonah. She told me. So by the time she met me, she knew how to have fun.
Once she said, “Sex is the opposite of art. Sex is stupid and thoughtless and easy. Art is complicated and difficult and important.”
But she was wrong. Sex meant something to Addison. I could always feel her needing to learn more and more about me intimately, what we liked and what made us feel good versus what didn’t, what was just so-so. There wasn’t a thing she wouldn’t try. I never had a girl want to learn me as deeply as Addison. We’d hang out in bed, and the whole afternoon would be gone while we got lost in each other. We came together physically. Sure, we’d been raised in different universes. But in terms of sex, we were equals; we were twins. Whenever I had to leave her, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I’d stumble around, my body felt lost and radioactive till the next time I saw her. I dreamed about her and woke up crazy for her, hot for her; it felt like it would burn me up, that was how bad I wanted her all the time.
My first gift to Addison was the key to my apartment in Tribeca. The Pratt dorm was hell. I’d been given a top floor of my luxury building the day I turned twenty-one, and I’d made it into a real home. It had perks that were perfect for Addison. Like every morning, they served complimentary breakfast, and there was a gym on the ninth floor, and a maid service, pickup dry cleaners, all that.
“I love your space,” she told me, “but I’d love it more if Erickson could eat breakfast here, too. Teddy’s always away, and Erickson’s so lonely.”
“Sure,” I said. I thought she was joking. Turned out she wasn’t. Addison and Erickson dragged each other around everywhere. Wherever one went, here came the other. It got on my nerves. Why do girlfriends always come packaged with best friends? I was a better influence for Addison, anyway. Erickson was a functioning derelict, in my opinion. Meantime, I’d hooked her up with my dentist, my psychic, my trainer—anyone who I thought could assist Addison, I stepped forward and paid that bill, no question.
“I need so much, but you give me even more,” she told me.
I gave her a lot because I had a lot, and I wanted to help her. It made me feel like we were building something together. And for the first time, my apartment felt like home.
MARIE-CLAIRE BROYARD: Darling, say what they will about how much Zach Frat and Max Berger used Addison—and they did, absolutely, each in his own way—nobody but nobody had ever taken care of that girl the way Zach did. I realized it wasn’t healthy. In fact, it could make me squeamish; Zach was so obviously buying her love. But Addison seemed almost like a vagabond. Take her parents, for example—do you know I never even met them, not once? They never called or texted or popped in to check up. They seemed entirely off her grid, except for the fact that I knew she was always sending money to them. That’s the main thing I knew about Addison’s family—that they were on her gravy train. Her high school art teachers were super sweet and obviously adored Addison, but they couldn’t be there for her on a day-to-day basis. And she had this therapist, but therapy isn’t a community. Therapy’s just about keeping a logbook on your sanity.
So maybe Zach did persuade her into the Berger contract. So what? What if he did? What else was on the table? Who else was watching that girl? And Berger Gallery is a community. Everyone who worked there, from the assistants to the buyers, were wild for Addison. Max is slimy, but in the end, he’ll guard Addison’s legacy like a pit bull for the rest of his life. Ultimately, all Berger cares about is making sure that valuable art stays valuable.
ROY STONE: So you want to ask me about Max Berger’s contract? Fine. Yes. Maureen and I signed it. Should we have had an expensive lawyer of our own check it out first? Probably. But it came in official and FedExed, with yellow tabs marked for us to put our names, and an envelope to send it back, no expenses. I mean, that’s a professional operation! Mr. Berger is internationally known. Arlene and Bill told us to make sure Addison was repped. They told us without a gallery she might as well sell her art on a card table outside the Met. They told us it was only fair for the gallery to take 35 percent. Hell, some galleries even took 50 percent. They said it was boilerplate. We signed it. We just wanted Addison to be happy and protected. Was that so wrong?