The Luzern Photograph Read online

  ‘My bread and butter,’ Josh explains. He’s wearing his black-wool knit watch cap and is dressed in the same pair of paint-spattered BAD ART SUCKS coveralls. ‘This’ll be the centerpiece for a new Mission District coffeehouse, Café Léger. Couple more days I’ll have it done.’

  ‘It’s strong,’ I tell him. ‘It’ll dominate the place.’

  It’s then for the first time that I see Josh smile, not just grin or smirk.

  ‘Is this what you do – make copies?’

  ‘I think of them as appropriations. I take bits and pieces from famous artists’ work, then put them together my own way. So there’s no mistaking them for originals, I alter the size and sign my name on the back. I’ve done a Matisse, a Braque, couple of Arps, and a series of Fragonards for a downtown hotel restaurant. Most are for bars and cafés. Word’s gotten around, and now I’m considered a specialist. Word’s also gotten out I won’t do Picasso.’

  ‘Is there some reason?’

  ‘I’ve nothing against the guy. But I think saying that makes me sound interesting. Like: “There’s this guy who’ll paint most anything you need, but he refuses to paint like Picasso.” “Oh, really? What’s with him anyway?” If someone asks me why, I smile enigmatically. Makes people think they’re dealing with a character.’

  I laugh. I enjoyed his riff. I’m starting to find him likeable.

  ‘But this isn’t your real work?’

  He shrugs. ‘I do it to get by. Reason I asked you down is to show you my portrait of Chantal. She didn’t commission it. It was something I did for myself.’

  He leads me to the far end of his studio, past the residential section to an area set aside for storage. On our way I notice an unmade bed, a galley kitchen with dishes piled in the sink, and a dining table and chairs that look like discards picked off the street.

  Josh gestures toward a rack filled with canvases. ‘Personal work,’ he explains. He pulls a canvas from the rack, then sets it against the wall facing his windows.

  Standing before it, I see a large full-length frontal portrait of a very beautiful young woman with pale skin and long dark hair cascading upon her bare shoulders. She’s standing in what appears to be a Roman-style chariot, the kind with two large wheels and a curved shielded front. The only covering on her upper body is an elegant black-leather bustier. She engages the viewer directly with her eyes and with a slight smile curling her lips. One hand rests on the top of the chariot while the other holds up a crusader’s sword as if poised to strike down an enemy.

  I study her face. There’s something familiar about it. It takes me several moments to realize I know her. We met at the gym a couple months ago when Kurt, my Muay Thai trainer, paired us up. After we sparred lightly (she was a far more advanced student), we had coffee together at the gym café. She told me she recognized me, had seen my Weimar piece and liked it. She was friendly, exhibiting the inner calm I associate with experienced martial artists. She answered all my questions about what to expect if I decided to get serious about developing combat skills. We talked for maybe half an hour. She called me Tess and I called her Marie, the name Kurt used when he introduced us. When we parted she smiled and said, ‘See you around.’ We ran into one another a couple more times, always greeting one another with a friendly ‘Hey!’ Thinking back, I realize I haven’t seen her in a while.

  Josh, I notice, is peering at me, trying to decipher my reaction to his painting. I tell him I find it compelling.

  ‘I painted her as an archetype,’ he explains.

  ‘A face card from the tarot deck?’

  ‘Hey, you get it! She’s my Queen of Swords.’

  It was a lucky guess. I wasn’t trying to impress him. Turning to him, seeing admiration in his eyes, I’m glad I have.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve met her,’ I tell him. ‘A woman who looks just like her works out at my gym.’

  ‘You do martial arts?’

  ‘Kickboxing. But the woman I met didn’t use the name Chantal.’

  He stares at me, amazed. ‘Chantal’s a kickboxer, a good one. What name did she use?’

  ‘The trainer called her Marie. Does Chantal have a sister?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Had to be her. Maybe Marie’s her real name.’ He stands back from the painting. ‘You wanted to know what she’s like. Now turns out you met her. How weird is that?’

  ‘Very weird,’ I concede. ‘That sword she’s holding – is it real?’

  ‘It’s a prop. So is the chariot. She bought them at a movie-studio prop auction. She used to keep the chariot in a corner of the loft.’

  ‘She looks so beautiful. Did you—?’

  ‘Idealize her? A little. She was too impatient to pose live, so I did most of the painting from photos, then had her sit while I finished work on her face. The posture is archetypal, but I wanted to make a recognizable portrait.’

  ‘Did she like it?’

  ‘Very much. Wanted to buy it from me. Maybe later, I told her. I’ve been working on a tarot series. When I finish the four queens I want to exhibit them together.’

  ‘It’s an excellent painting, Josh. It gives me a sense of how you feel about her too.’

  ‘Tell me?’

  ‘Admiration. Awe.’

  ‘True. But probably not the way you’re thinking. I wasn’t into her scene.’

  ‘She looks so dominant here. And defiant. I remember she looked that way when we sparred. She was like: “Hey, try and hit me, then see what happens when you do.” But later when we sat down and talked we were just like, you know, a couple girls eager to be friends.’

  ‘She’s low-key. I don’t mean in session. When she does a scene, I imagine she’s quite a terror. But in normal situations, like the two of us sitting around here sipping wine, she was always soft-spoken, secure about who she was and what she felt and thought. Like I told you the other night, she’s complex.’

  ‘It shows in the portrait. Is this your personal style?’

  ‘Does it represent who I am as a painter?’ He shrugs. ‘I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t even know what it means.’

  Turning back to the portrait, I see something tender in Chantal’s face that belies the aggression in her stance. This is a very interesting woman, I think.

  I thank Josh for inviting me into his studio and for showing me his amazing work.

  I can see he’s pleased. ‘I think we may end up becoming friends,’ he says.

  ‘I think I might like that. So tell me, what’s with the watch cap? Wear it all the time?’

  He grins. ‘Think of it as an affectation,’ he says.

  Back upstairs, I ponder the coincidence that the woman I sparred with at San Pablo Martial Arts was a professional dominatrix and that I now inhabit her ‘Eagle’s Nest’.

  I remember how Kurt put us together. He said: ‘Marie, show Tess how to block. Go easy on her. She’s just getting into combat.’ She did go easy. She looked fierce but when she hit me it felt more like being slapped than punched. She coached me a little, issued a few no-nonsense instructions. After we broke she said: ‘I hope I didn’t hurt you.’ When I assured her she hadn’t she smiled and asked if I had time for coffee.

  At the café she flattered me a little, telling me how much she loved my Weimar piece. ‘I adore that period,’ she said. ‘So off-beat and decadent.’ When I asked how she got into Muay Thai, she told me she took it up for self-defense. She said most women who take up kickboxing do it for exercise, then a few get interested in learning how to fight. But, she said, after they get hit a few times most give it up. ‘Sure, it stings,’ she told me, ‘and it can really hurt, but if you enjoy fighting you understand that’s the deal. The trick is not minding that it hurts.’ Then she paused. ‘Actually the trick,’ she advised, ‘is to concentrate on out-pointing your opponent even when that costs you some pain.’

  Two weeks after I move into the Buckley, I welcome my second guest, my friend, old acting coach, and mentor, Rex Baxter. He works as a freelance dire
ctor at theaters around the Bay Area, but the role he wants to discuss tonight will be for his private fantasy fulfillment service, Vertigo Illusions, a company he founded and named for the dreamy late 1950s Hitchcock film set in San Francisco.

  He’s smiling when I open the door. ‘Great lobby downstairs,’ he says, ‘and that elevator’s a trip. Weird the way the light brightens just as it jerks to a stop.’

  Curious to see his reaction to my new place, I watch him closely as he checks out the Salomé quote over the archway then peers around. He’s wearing his usual uniform, khaki safari jacket, black T-shirt, faded jeans. His trimmed reddish beard and mop hair glow as he passes beneath one of the skylights.

  ‘Wow! Some loft!’

  The cell-cage immediately catches his attention. As Rex steps into it, I explain that the previous tenant, a pro dominatrix, left it behind, a woman who, by sheer coincidence, I met and chatted with briefly at kickboxing class.

  ‘So this used to be a dungeon.’ Rex ogles me lasciviously through the bars. Then, noticing the St. Andrew’s Cross, he strides across the room, backs up against the X, and spread-eagles himself.

  ‘Feels good,’ he says. ‘Fits with the line over the archway. I could put on an interesting little one-act in here. Maybe even a three-act. To paraphrase Chekhov: If your set includes a cell in Act I, somebody’s gotta be locked up in it in Act III.’

  Amused, I gesture him to the couch, then pour him a glass of Sauvignon blanc.

  He continues to study the cage. ‘Very theatrical,’ he says. ‘Actors and dominatrices – basically we’re in the same racket. We deal in illusion, use costumes, props, sets. But of course when we hit we fake it. When they hit they really hit.’

  While he continues to peer around, taking in my huge framed inkblots, I consider what he said about dominatrices being performers. Or perhaps, I think, they are a special subset of performance artist. When people find out my mother was a jazz singer, they assume it was her example that got me interested in performing. I nod as if to say, ‘Yeah, she was my inspiration,’ even though I’m sure the impulse came from my father, a con-man who, convicted of fraud, went to prison when I was ten. I remember as a child being entertained by him, the numerous roles he could play at will by just sticking a different hat on his head, then moving in a different way and speaking with a different accent. To my brother and me, Dad with his mutable voice and plastic face was the proverbial Man of a Thousand Faces, a performance artist par excellence.

  Rex is commenting on my furnishings. ‘I like your décor. Everything black and white. Beautiful and also a little scary. Do you see the world that way?’

  ‘You know better. It’s a design choice.’

  ‘Well, I like it – very “Tess Berenson”.’ He takes a sip of wine. ‘I envy you having a grand space like this. I’m still living in my Mission District hovel.’

  ‘You have a perfectly decent apartment, Rex. Best of all it’s in San Francisco.’

  ‘Big deal! The city’s getting like Manhattan, affordable only to the rich and the high-tech crowd. Meantime Oakland’s turning into Brooklyn West, the must-live city for writers, artists, and actors. Poor me, living on the wrong side of the bay.’ He pauses. ‘I’m putting together a new Vertigo. Now that you have the grant I know you don’t need to take on little jobs, but I’m hoping you’ll be up for this one. I could really use you.’

  ‘Let me guess – femme fatale?’

  He laughs. ‘How’d you know?’

  I knew because that’s the kind of role he always wants me to play in the private little dramas he sets up for his Vertigo Illusions clients. Vertigo is an expensive private service for people seeking a dramatic San Francisco adventure. The client provides Rex with assorted story components (‘nasty dwarf,’ ‘purse-snatching incident,’ ‘woman dressed as a priest,’ etc.), which Rex then pulls together into a coherent drama, casts with his actor friends, then plays out with the client in iconic San Francisco locales.

  The client doesn’t get to see the script in advance, so he/she doesn’t know exactly what’ll happen, only that the components will be woven into an adventure fantasy the playing-out of which will be safe even when it seems most dangerous. The client is subtly guided through the drama by Rex’s actors, who also surreptitiously record the adventure using tiny video cameras attached to their clothing. Minimum cost for a Vertigo is ten thousand dollars. Several have cost clients twice as much. In exchange the client gets to undergo an intense experience, which he can later relive by screening the video.

  It’s a specialty business catering to the desires of wealthy people who seek dramatic out-of-the-ordinary adventures as breaks from the routine of high-powered corporate lives. Rex gives good value. His Vertigos are expertly produced works of performance art. Nearly all his clients have been from out of town, several from Europe, people for whom the San Francisco setting, due to movies like Vertigo, Zodiac, and The Conversation, holds a special fascination.

  ‘This time the client’s a nerdy multi-millionaire computer whiz,’ Rex tells me. ‘His colleagues are giving him a Vertigo for his birthday. He knows he’s going to have an adventure, but has no idea what it’ll be about. His friends told me he loves film noir so we’re going to work with that.’

  ‘And I’m to be an elusive noirish female?’

  Rex smiles. ‘At the start the client’ll be told to meet a gorgeous thirty-something woman in the Redwood Lounge at the Clift. You’ll be wearing a sexy red dress. Got one?’

  ‘Funny enough I do, the one I wear when I perform my Weimar piece. But it might be a little slutty for the Clift.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’

  Rex is clever at pulling me into his schemes. He knows that if I model the dress for him I’ll be that much closer to accepting the role.

  I go to my closet, change into the dress, then do a back-and-forth across the loft.

  ‘Looks great!’ Rex says. ‘You’re right, it is a tad slutty, but we can trick it out with some expensive-looking jewelry and really good shoes. What’s the kind with red soles?’

  ‘Louboutins. But never mind, I’ve got plenty of heels.’

  He explains the Vertigo. ‘It’s a three-acter. Act One: you flirt with the client in the lounge, then two strong-arm guys show up and haul you away. Act Two: after further strange encounters he’s taken to a house where there’s a weird party in progress with an orgy going on in the back room.’

  ‘In which I’m an eager participant?’

  Rex shakes his head. ‘Actually, not so eager. He’ll spot you there, see someone give you an injection, then the door’ll close and he’ll lose track of you. Act Three: a stranger will escort him to a seedy strip joint in North Beach where the client will see you a final time. You’ll be wearing cheap makeup, pole-dancing, face blank like you’ve been drugged.’

  I pretend to be appalled. ‘Pole dancing like in my Black Mirrors piece? Will I have to strip?’

  ‘You’ll be topless, but you can wear a thong.’

  ‘Oh, you’re so merciful!’

  ‘So … will you do it?’ he asks, pretending to be on tenterhooks. ‘Five hundred bucks, a chance to exercise your formidable talent, and a couple of drinks when we meet afterwards to cool off at the Buena Vista.’

  ‘I will do it,’ I tell him, ‘but not for five hundred. I prefer a barter deal. I’ll be your femme fatale, I’ll shoot up and pole dance. Anything you want. In return I want you to direct me in my new piece, Recital.’

  He clicks his glass against mine. ‘Done!’

  I go into San Francisco to see Grace Wei. We meet for lunch at a quiet restaurant on upper Sacramento, one Grace believes is just the sort of upscale place a society lady would lunch with friends to discuss an upcoming charity event. Indeed, it does have the feel of an older woman’s place, with damask tablecloths and diet-conscious luncheon specialties, watercress sandwiches and egg-white-only omelets.

  I didn’t know Grace well at college, but always liked her. Now, meeting her agai
n after a dozen years, I’m surprised at the vehemence of her dislike for what she calls ‘the ruling class in this town’ – the wealthy women who control the cultural organizations that make San Francisco a world-class city.

  ‘I so identify with what you’re doing,’ she tells me. ‘I want to help you any way I can.’

  After lunch we walk over to her house. It has the kind of facade I imagined, one that proclaims its owners’ importance.

  ‘Sometimes I look at it and feel ashamed,’ Grace tells me as we stand outside the mansion. It has a semi-circular drive-up, a grand entrance, and symmetrical wings. There’s even a generic escutcheon mounted above the front door.

  ‘Silas loves it. Makes him feel like he fits with the group of rich young guys who live around here. They all collect art and hang out and tell each other how brilliant and successful they are, and how living so close together in their little cluster of mansions makes this neighborhood the center of the universe.’ Grace shakes her head. ‘I tried to talk him out of it but he said, “When you make a killing in venture capital and move up here from the Valley, you need to show San Francisco who you are. Live on the best block. Buddy up with the movers and shakers.”’ She shrugs. ‘I see his point, but still …’

  When she shows me the ballroom, I feel like falling to my knees. The ceiling’s a good fourteen feet high, the flooring’s composed of herringbone parquet, there’re elaborate moldings and off-white walls sectioned off by soft gray-painted frames.

  ‘Oh my God, this is perfect!’ I tell her. ‘And you have chairs!’

  There’re over a hundred cushioned wooden chairs, painted crackle-white with gold trim, arranged against the walls, just the kind I’d expect to be seated on at a private musicale.

  ‘They came with the house,’ Grace explains. ‘Since we’re not going to throw any grand balls, we’re thinking about converting this room into a gym. I’d like you to put it to use while it’s still in this lovely state.’

  ‘You said something about scrounging an audience?’

  ‘I think I can get a hundred people once word gets out. I thought we’d send out engraved invitations, something like: “Mrs Z cordially invites you to attend a musical evening followed by remarks.”’ She glances at me. ‘What do you usually charge for a ticket?’