Still Me

I checked the address. ‘That’s what it says.’

‘I will stay in car, Louisa. I am going to call Leonard again.’

The upper corridor was lined with doors, a couple of which were open, music blaring. I walked along slowly, checking the numbers. Some had tins of white emulsion paint outside, and I walked past an open door revealing a woman in baggy jeans stretching a canvas over a huge wood frame.

‘Hi! Do you know where Steven is?’

She fired a battery of staples from a huge metal gun into the frame. ‘Fourteen. But I think he just went out for food.’

Fourteen was at the far end. I knocked, then pushed the door tentatively and walked in. The studio was lined with canvases, two huge tables covered with sloppy trays of oil paints and battered pastel crayons. The walls were hung with beautiful oversized pictures of women in various states of undress, some unfinished. The air smelt of paint, turpentine and stale cigarette smoke.

‘Hello.’

I turned to see a man holding a white plastic bag. He was around thirty, his features regular but his gaze intense, his chin unshaven, his clothes crumpled and utilitarian, as if he had barely noticed what he’d put on. He looked like a male model in a particularly esoteric fashion magazine.

‘Hi. Louisa Clark. We spoke on the phone earlier? Well, we didn’t – your friend Josh told me to come.’

‘Oh, yeah. You want to buy a drawing.’

‘Not as such. We need you to do a drawing. Just a small one.’

He sat down on a small stool, opened his carton of noodles and started to eat, hoicking them into his mouth with rapid strokes of his chopsticks.

‘It’s for a charity thing. People do these doo– small drawings,’ I corrected myself. ‘And apparently a lot of the top artists in New York are doing them for other people so –’

‘ “Top artists”,’ he repeated.

‘Well. Yes. Apparently it’s not the done thing to do your own and Agnes – my employer – really needs someone brilliant to do one for her.’ My voice sounded high and anxious. ‘I mean, it shouldn’t take you long. We – we don’t want anything fancy …’

He was staring at me and I heard my voice trail off, thin and uncertain.

‘We – we can pay. Quite well,’ I added. ‘And it’s for charity.’

He took another mouthful, peering intently into his carton. I stood by the window and waited.

‘Yeah,’ he said, when he had finished chewing. ‘I’m not your man.’

‘But Josh said –’

‘You want me to create something to satisfy the ego of some woman who can’t draw and doesn’t want to be shown up in front of her ladies who lunch …’ He shook his head. ‘You want me to draw you a greetings card.’

‘Mr Lipkott. Please. I probably haven’t explained it very well. I –’

‘You explained it just fine.’

‘But Josh said –’

‘Josh said nothing about greetings cards. I hate that charity dinner shit.’

‘Me also.’ Agnes stood in the doorway. She took a step into the room, glancing down to make sure she was not treading onto one of the tubes of paint or bits of paper that littered the floor. She held out a long, pale hand. ‘Agnes Gopnik. I hate this charity shit too.’

Steven Lipkott stood slowly and then, almost as if it were an impulse from a more courtly age that he had little control over, raised his hand to shake hers. He couldn’t take his eyes from her face. I had forgotten that Agnes got you like that at first meeting.

‘Mr Lipkott – is that right? Lipkott? I know this is not a normal thing for you. But I have to go to this thing with room of witches. You know? Actual witches. And I draw like three-year-old in mittens. If I have to go and show them my drawing they bitch about me more than they do already.’ She sat down and pulled a cigarette from her handbag. She reached across and picked up a lighter that sat on one of his painting tables and lit her cigarette. Steven Lipkott was still watching her, his chopsticks loose in his hand.

‘I am not from this place. I am Polish masseuse. There is no shame in this. But I do not want to give these witches chance to look down on me again. Do you know how it is to have people look down on you?’ She exhaled, gazing at him, her head tilted, so that smoke trickled horizontally towards him. I thought he might actually have inhaled.

‘I – uh – yeah.’

‘So it is one small thing I am asking you. To help me. I know this is not your thing and that you are serious artist, but I really need help. And I will pay you very good money.’

The room fell silent. A phone vibrated in my back pocket. I tried to ignore it. For that moment I knew I should not move. We three stood there for an eternity.

‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘But on one condition.’

‘Name it.’

‘I draw you.’

For a minute nobody spoke. Agnes raised an eyebrow, then took a slow drag of her cigarette, her eyes not leaving his. ‘Me.’

‘Can’t be the first time someone’s asked.’

‘Why me?’

‘Don’t play the ingénue.’

He smiled then, and she kept her face straight, as if deciding whether to be insulted. Her eyes dropped to her feet, and, when she lifted them, there it was, her smile, small, speculative, a prize he believed he had won.

She stubbed out her cigarette on the floor. ‘How long will it take?’

He shoved the carton of noodles to one side and reached for a white pad of thick paper. It might have been only me who noticed the way his voice lowered in volume. ‘Depends how good you are at keeping still.’

Minutes later I was back in the car. I closed the door. Garry was listening to his tapes.

‘Por favor, habla más despacio.’

‘Pohr fah-VOR, AH-blah mahs dehs-PAHS-ee-oh.’ He slapped the dashboard with a fat palm. ‘Ah, crap. Lemme try that again. AHblamahsdehsPAHSeeoh.’ He practised three more lines, then turned to me. ‘She gonna be long?’

I stared out of the window at the blank windows of the second floor. ‘I really hope not,’ I said.

Agnes finally emerged at a quarter to four, an hour and three-quarters after Garry and I had run out of our already limited conversation. After watching a cable comedy show downloaded on his iPad (he didn’t offer to share it with me) he had nodded off, his chins resting on the bulk of his chest as he snored lightly. I sat in the back of the car growing increasingly tense as the minutes ticked by, sending periodic messages to Sam that were variations on: She’s not back yet. Still not back. Omigod, what on earth is she doing in there? He had had lunch in a tiny deli across town and said he was so hungry he could eat fifteen horses. He sounded cheerful, relaxed, and every word we exchanged told me I was in the wrong place, that I should be beside him, leaning against him, feeling his voice rumble in my ear. I had started to hate Agnes.

And suddenly there she was, striding out of the building with a broad smile and a flat package under her arm.

‘Oh, thank God,’ I said.

Garry woke with a start and hurried around the car to open the door for her. She slid in calmly, as if she had been gone two minutes instead of two hours. She brought with her the faint scents of cigarettes and turpentine.

‘We need to stop at McNally Jackson on the way back. To get some pretty paper to wrap it in.’