The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone

“She’s troubled. Rise above it, Addy.”

But Addison didn’t like to compromise her interests. For many reasons, Sophie Kiminski was such a forbidden fruit. Addison couldn’t resist.

After the Whitney, I think Addy could have sneezed into a tissue and sold it. But I knew she was following Sophie’s big mouth in the press, and we all read in the tabloids how Sophie had checked into rehab for her coke habit, and Addy had on good account—Gil Cheba was friends with some friends of Sophie’s—that Sophie had big plans to get Lincoln back once she’d cleaned up. This only fueled Addy’s interest in capturing and owning Sophie through her art. I don’t think Addy had expected how annoyed Lincoln would be.

“What do you accomplish by obsessively painting my ex-girlfriend?” he’d ask. “It’s not the art you should be doing. It’s creepy and sensationalist.”

She’d call me and tell me about these arguments they’d have, and of course I was always sensitive to Addison’s point of view, but I have to admit, I sided with Lincoln. A million portraits to paint, and she’s painting vapid, wasted Sophie? Why go and stir that pot?

LINCOLN REED: Finally, it got to the point where Ads swore she wasn’t working on a finished piece, but I knew that she secretly was. It depressed me that I had to hear about it through the gossip mill. And later, I found out that Berger Galleries sold the painting quick and dirty, in a private sale to an undisclosed buyer for an undisclosed amount. Obviously, Addison tried to keep the work, and the final-price sale, from me. She thought it would hurt me. She was right.

When I reassessed the relationship, the short story was that in a span of a few short months, Addison’d moved into my place, trashed it while creating Project #53, made sure that everyone remembered #53 as a Zach Frat moment, snuck off to her Chelsea studio to paint disturbing portraits of my ex-girlfriend—who at that time was apparently dating Zach—and then sold one of these portraits to a private collector through her dealer and got everyone to lie about it to me.

Soon after #53, the last weekend in March, I was doing a Face the Nation program in Washington. It was part of a panel on war tactics. Some of my pieces about chemical warfare were getting well-reviewed. Also, one of my half brothers was serving in Iraq. I guess the wonks thought I’d have something to say about chemical warfare, and its place in our history and our now.

Going on journalism television was a serious performance for me. Just like the Whitney had been for Ads. But where I’d been there for her, to help her, Addison was only a source of stress for me. Once I started thinking about her as harmful, almost a poison, my own personal relationship toxin, well, I couldn’t unthink it.

No matter how much I loved Addison, I didn’t want to keep breathing her in. Not when I could feel all the negative effects on me every day. I felt that she was crushing me, negating my space in the world. I had to let her go.

Addison leaving her apartment on 68 Front Street, Brooklyn, NY, by Sam Jeffrey for New York Daily News.

X.

THE JOY DIZZIES

MAXWELL BERGER: Addison came to me that spring. Must have been late April. She’d never done that before, never visited my office. But after she’d sold Exit Roy, she dropped by personally to pick up the check—the fattest check our accounting division had ever cut for her. She’d moved out of Lincoln’s place and was renting-to-own an apartment on Front Street where all the kids were living, in DUMBO—Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. So she was back in Brooklyn, which seemed better for her. I was glad to give her the money. ’Course I had to take a chunk. But there were all the expected legal issues with the Whitney stunt, and so all of the lawyers and consulting fees would have to come out of the profit. That’s the way the game is played.

Addison had been depressed. It wasn’t a trade secret that the split with Lincoln Reed was the reason, but I don’t get my nose in people’s personal lives. These young artists, they’re always sexed up, screwing this one and screwing over that one. I can’t keep track, and I don’t want to. But when Addison came strutting into my office with that puss on her face, I knew she’d bite my head off if I asked her what was the story.

I gave her a bottle of champagne to celebrate the sale. Just pretending along like everything was hunky-dory. Her chin was up, and her armor was on.

What do I recall most of that meeting? The last time I saw Addison? I remember she had on more airs than the Queen of England. I remember that she was sitting across from my desk, asking me about future sales and commissions. I could feel that she had her same bad taste in her mouth for me. She was interrogating me. But I didn’t mind. I’ve been in this business a lot of years. Addison was a one-of-a-kind talent. Hey, I was glad she wanted to know. Sometimes it’s good to peek inside the factory and see how the sausage gets made.

I did say something to her, toward the end of our powwow. “Addison, kid,” I said, “you’ve got everything on God’s green earth to look forward to. You shouldn’t let these little shits, Zach or Lincoln or any of ’em, ruin all the things you’re working for. Get greedy. Get greedy for yourself. That’s who’s gonna pull you through the hard times. Rescue yourself, and the rest will follow.”

And she stared at me, it must have been a full fifteen seconds, before she said the last words I ever heard out of her mouth, “Berger, you know what? You talk a good game, but you’re just like every other scumbag I ever met in New York. I don’t need you to tell me how to get greedy when you’re part of my whole f**king problem.”

And she stood up, and she snapped up the check, stuck the bottle of champagne in her backpack, and she left. Of course, when I sold Bloody Sophie, the money was triple what she got for Exit Roy. To this day, Bloody Sophie is probably her most valuable piece.

LUCY LIM: When Lincoln had asked Addy to move out of the Elizabeth Street loft, devastated didn’t even begin to describe her. She was shipwrecked. I was angry with him, sure, but could I blame him? Not in my heart. She’d become impossible to live with. But losing Lincoln took all the wind out of her.

Right afterward, Addy heard a rumor—false, it turned out—that Lincoln was seeing Sophie again. She also believed that after #53, Zach was using all his power and pulling every string he could to get her blacklisted from the scene. She assumed that he was asking for her to be banned at power parties and dropped off high-end invitations to openings and events. I have no idea if any of that was true, but in different ways, both of her exes were pulling her apart.