Bright Fires Burn Fastest Read online

  Pine had signed.

  Tom had done it.

  The manager embraced Tom and begun to shout to the floor. A secret deal. Planning done as well as all necessary documentation. Final sale price of $21,000,000.

  Tom had done it all himself.

  Tow was now a partner.

  The next hour was a blur. Hundreds of handshakes and hugs not to mention a case of Lauren Perrier 1996 opened personally by the MD to toast the success of the bold.

  Tom sucked at it, drunk it all in. He had done it and him alone. Tonight, the whole of Manhattan, fuck that, New York better watch out.

  *

  April opened her eyes and blinked upwards at the ceiling. She stretched out and felt the bed next to her cold. Fearing the worst she sighed.

  Lucas had no doubt disappeared, today was too important for him not to fuck it up. He had that look in his eyes more and more now, fight or flight. There was no middle ground left.

  April sat up and saw Lucas standing side on to her bent over a pan on the stove. She watched his hands move quickly over the surfaces preparing lord knows what, he had never cooked. He was plugged into his headphones. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to escape, he must be terrified, or not. Did Lucas ever get scared that he was making a mistake? Did he ever wonder if he would fail?

  “Morning”, April said.

  Lucas spun around, his eyes glistening.

  For that moment it was there. The hummingbird caught in a camera snap, someone unstoppable halted for a second, that moment would last forever. That intensity, that burn of need, that spear of hate. All was there in those eyes and the look between them.

  Truly they had slipped briefly into an intimacy from which they would either rule the world or never recover.

  “Have a seat”, Lucas said.

  April got up and pulled on one of Lucas’ t-shirts scattered half way between his bag and the floor. As she sat he placed in front of her a feast. Buttered bagels, sliced tomato and poached eggs.

  April’s hand caught his before he went to get salt and pepper and they leaned forward and kissed deeply.

  Breakfast had been mainly a silent affair. April, desperate to mention the sale but said nothing of it. Lucas seemed happy in silence so she let him be.

  Before they left, the men from Christies came and removed the painting. They would see it again that afternoon. As they wrapped it, April looked at the colours and their two faces smashed into each other and put an arm around Lucas’s waist.

  “This is it,” she said.

  Lucas just laughed.

  From where they stood, Manhattan sprawled out beneath them for as far as the eye could see and beyond into the gloom and mist.

  Looking down over the city from the Rockefeller Centre, April sighed. To the south lay Tribeca, Downtown and the soon to be complete Twin Towers. To the North, Central Park, Harlem and beyond up into the Bronx and Queens.

  Since arriving April had been desperate to come up here, to gain some perspective. In such a place where everything was so large except humans it was the only place to achieve a sense of direction. It’s impossible to see the top of the well from the bottom of it.

  Lucas had given her no choice. After breakfast he had whisked her away, refusing to give her a destination. Frustrating but infatuating. This was what she loved, the unpredictability.

  In a matter of hours he faced the most important moment of his life, perhaps his most defining. ‘Yes’ he had insisted even when she had refused at the ticket counter. Perhaps this was the only way he could distract himself from what was to come, to do something for someone else.

  “Amazing no?” Lucas said beside April.

  April nodded.

  It was the best view in New York.

  “So how are you feeling?” April finally asked.

  Lucas thought for some moments and lit a cigarette despite the six-foot sign next to him forbidding it.

  “Excited, I guess.”

  “Good”, April said and left it at that. She checked her watch, it was 3.15.

  “Shouldn’t we be moving soon?” April prompted.

  “Yeah, yeah. We should. Can you give me a couple of minutes?”

  April nodded and headed for the stairs.

  She looked back at Lucas his head bowed into the rain that had just begun to fall over the city they now called home.

  *

  Lucas looked down at the miniscule figures beneath him and the occasional flash of a yellow cab between slits in buildings.

  The city sprawled out. Millions doing their best to fit in, doing their best to survive against the troubles that could be beaten in a day and those that took a lifetime to overcome.

  “This wouldn’t be a bad place to die,” he said loud enough for April to hear as she walked away. She turned with a grin. Lucas smiled and bowed his head, a good place to die, providing he could guarantee landing on someone he hated.

  As April disappeared the rain smashed into him making anything but the nearest few blocks visible, even from such height.

  He clutched at the metal bars feeling the cold etch into his skin.

  Today was the day.

  It wasn’t the fame it was the principle.

  It would always be about the principle.

  Chapter 6

  The room was ablaze.

  Voices chattered, cell’s bleeped but amongst all of the chaos only three people remained silent. They sat in a row. One would only look at the blank screen promenading itself at the very front of the room, one tapped her foot. He merely looked down, chin against his chest.

  The franticity was mounting. It was beginning to move into full throttle, they were ready.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Christies. We are here primarily for the American Art Sale, dating 1980 to 2010 with a few additional pieces for you to bid on”.

  Charles Kidd took a breath, he had not seen the auction room this busy since before mobile phones and the internet. And what a crowd. From the jumped up East Siders wearing leather jackets and skinny jeans to the dollar brandishing power and might of the Upper West Siders in three piece suits and Gautier black rim glasses. They were here for one reason and one only, the young man sitting three back from the front to the right.

  Where had he come from? Polly had spoken of his genius but Charles Kidd, well used to hyperbole and bullshit, hadn’t believed. Then he had seen the painting.

  He, the great Charles Kidd, left speechless by a work of art from a debutant. Fittingly it would be him running the floor, he would have it no other way. Not now, not with the propulsion of stardom reached in such short time.

  Charles checked the room. To his right and left and along the wall long banks of his staff waited, phones already in hand. They took the calls from telephone bidders, for those who operated with wealth beyond means.

  In front stood the masses, at least three hundred strong, most with bidding paddles already in their hands, itching to spend some dollars. They were eager to see what all the fuss was about, so was Charles.

  Cleverly, all the hype so far had been generated by word of mouth and type alone. Polly, the sprightly devil had insisted on no pictures of the actual work of Lucas being printed. Hence the audience, it was like an old auction, the forgotten times when everything wasn’t available within three clicks.

  The internet buyers were lined up, 182 of them and the screen at the front and back hailed their arrival. This made a total of almost 500 bidders, a Christies record for a debutant.

  Charles Kidd would enjoy this.

  *

  Polly frantically searched for a fingernail not bitten to the quick.

  She watched the lots roll by. Prices were shown in Euros, Pounds, Dollars, Swiss Francs, Japanese Yen, Hong Kong Dollar and Russian Rubles. If that wasn’t a summary of where the world stood today, nothing was, except perhaps the Chinese hadn’t fully appreciated art yet.

  So far the maximum price paid for a piece was a bronze statue of a tiger by Huntington, $80,000.
It was valued at $10 – 20,000, it seems Lucas’ piece had become infectious. The rich wanted to buy something, anything, to say they had been at the show when this had happened.

  It was four lots until Lucas’ piece.

  *

  The hammer cracked down, three to go.

  “Fair warning”, Charles Kidd boomed aloud, his plummy British accent cutting across the gathering gabble.

  April looked across at the banks of phones, no one had been off them since the beginning of the auction. The internet bidders only drove the prices higher in the room. It was a frenzy. The man running it, Charles Kidd, merely batted such pressure off with quips or an anecdote, he was good.

  Slowly April understood the process. Anything up to $10,000 was raised in $500 blocks. Above $10,000 and it went up per $1,000. Above $100,000 she assumed $5,000. No one had gotten there yet.

  “All done?” Kidd boomed out as the next lot rolled by.

  Silence.

  “One last time, to you at the back sir. All done?”

  He was one of those collectors who only turned up for the one piece. He had smouldered in with an agenda.

  “Always worth asking again sir”, Kidd whip cracked across the floor.

  April fleetingly wondered just who these people were on the other end of phones paying $50,000 for a piece of art and not even in the room.

  The gavel rose in the air as if to judge.

  “Sir my apologies”, said to no one but definitely the chap at the back who thought he had it. “It was there, on the screen.”

  The internet. It had won this time.

  “Can’t see him sir I know but believe me he is there,” Kidd added to soften the blow. It did the trick.

  The paddle shot up.

  “$200,000 to you sir at the back and my thanks. Any raise?”

  The room fell quiet as they all thought in their own minds just what $200,000 could get them. A hell of a car, a moderate house or just an education for a child at Harvard.

  “Any more?”

  Silence.

  “Pleas sir”, Kidd shouted, “This is it.”

  The paddle was raised.

  “$250,000 dollars. We have $250,000 at the back. My thanks. Wonderful.”

  April looked around and saw him on the phone.

  There was an intake of breath, maybe a few.

  The seconds counted down.

  The gavel was raised.

  “Sold”, Charles Kidd said so everyone, even those on the door guarding could hear.

  “Congratulations”, he added rather sparingly.

  April felt sick. She looked across at Lucas and there he sat, head against chest. He was next.

  *

  Charles Kidd took a long breath. He took a look at the room. Every eye was trained on him, he was the master orator

  “And now, a different lot”.

  A rumble began somewhere near the back that ended with rabid chatter near the front.

  “Please, ladies and gentlemen”, Kidd continued.

  This was it.

  “Lot 665. Entitled ‘April’. Masters, please bring the piece forward.”

  *

  Lucas looked at his boots, browned dark with the New York rain. Had it been worth it? Did he honestly deserve this?

  He looked at April and then at his own hands.

  This was it.

  *

  Charles Kidd waited until the piece was brought forward. For days now he had been considering where to begin the bidding. Never undersell but who wanted a miss-cocked pistol? Not at Christies.

  Forward it came and everyone in the audience, which they now were in this spectacle, stood.

  The huge canvas, 8ft by 9ft wheeled forward. The sheet hiding what only he and three others in this room knew was beneath.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen. I give you…’April’”.

  The sheet was pulled back.

  What words to describe what Charles Kidd heard and felt. Shock, scorn, admiration, pride that they were there. Awe.

  One woman close enough to be heard simply uttered, ‘Oh my god’.

  He would go for the higher starting bid.

  “Madam, to you at $200,000”

  The room edged forward as if their very chairs were moving closer.

  Charles Kidd dared to look at the majesty that was displayed to his right.

  *

  April looked at the two faces staring out at the crowd from the canvas. They were his and hers. Lucas and April. How dare they feed off it? How dare Lucas name it April? He hadn’t even asked her.

  The noise was unbearable. Shouting aloud and clapping.

  “$300,000”, Charles Kidd smacked out.

  $300,000, April thought. What the hell was going on? What the hell would this do to Lucas?

  Nothing good. Ever. It would kill him.

  *

  Polly yelped as it reached $320,000.

  The previous record was held at $280,000 for a debutant. This was going beyond the pale.

  She looked to her right and saw Lucas taking a long hit from a hip flask.

  That wasn’t good.

  *

  Kidd looked down on his fawn.

  “$400,000 is the bid. Do we have an advance?”

  The faces on the painting looked back at those that judged it, viewed it and bought it.

  There was a pause on the bidding for the first time.

  It was reaching its peak.

  And then something happened.

  Charles Kidd, expert auctioneer only saw it because of his quickness of eye. The artist was standing. Lucas was getting up and he was holding a hip flask.

  He paused.

  He waited.

  Then it happened.

  “It’s the fucking principle,” Lucas yelled at the top of his voice.

  The room went silent, then not. They yelled, they screamed and they cheered.

  Cameras flashed, phones rang and the internet bidding went wild.

  “$425,000 no wait….$450,000…excuse me….$500,000 dollars”.

  Screams went aloud.

  He himself. Kidd, the master of ceremony, let his mouth emit a squeak. $500,000 to a debutant. He was the best and he knew it. It was all down to him.

  *

  Lucas felt his mind wander, all he wanted to do was drink more.

  He stood again to some kind of applause though he wasn’t sure how deserved it was, the woman it was all about, and his raison d’etre, was gone.

  When the sale ended he scanned the room through whisky eyes for April and saw nothing but flashes of cameras and a gaggle of people wanting to tag along. Fuck it, if you cant make fame for yourself, why not? Why not live on the coattails of others?

  He thought back since the end of the auction to the post press conference and wondered how it had gone wrong? This was his pinnacle.

  $550,000.

  A buyer from London of all places had pipped them all at the post.

  Over the phone. The news had struck like a rabbit punch.

  It was theirs. Well his, but theirs by right, no? His painting was slipping from his grasp and for the first time he felt the hollow vacuum somewhere deep inside him.

  She wasn’t here though, the one tonic for this great loss.

  Then clarity came.

  The press conference went on. The journalists stood in lines and shouted aloud like they always did all clutching dictaphones and microphones. Lucas had stood and been asked to answer questions about his work, his influences, his inspirations. He had answered badly.

  “Who are your influences?”

  “Myself”

  “Right….and why?”

  “Because I would tell you, better she told you.”

  Then it went quiet, dead quiet. She wasn’t there. Lucas and the rest of the room sought the muse.

  The muse was gone.

  The self-aggrandisement of the artist had gotten too much.

  *

  April felt the lips of a stranger brush hers. A forewarning
.

  However, if Lucas could act as he wanted then so could she. She was lost, drunk and alone. The worst state of woman.

  “You wanna come to mine?”

  April nodded, more out of duty than want.

  “Yes”, was all he said.

  Despite the shiver she persisted, fuck him, up there on his pedestal, loving the glory.

  April had called Tom not long after the sale went through. Crediting her for being a muse was one thing, inviting Polly upstage to celebrate and bask in his undeserved glory was quite another. It was her piece as much as his, surely.

  Polly, the little slut, sat there, took the praise and only looked at Lucas with fuck me now eyes.

  So she called Tom, the guy who had lent her money at the airport, the closest stranger to any she knew in a town so full of cliques.

  She didn’t summarise the conversation in her mind. He wanted to fuck her, obviously. She kinda wanted to fuck him too.

  Was it spite?

  Regression?

  We are all humans right?

  *

  It was a tree through the seasons on fast forwards. Lucas had gone from heady summer highs; frolicking, fucking and feasting on the company and body of April to black, bleak and endless winter.

  The hole left by her not being in the room was gaping and raw. His eyes scanned the faces, all edging closer to him bit by bit, he needed air. She was not there to take in what they had achieved together. Without her there was no painting. There was no point in fact to any of it.

  A reporter was shouting, “$550,000, my god man you must feel great!”

  “How did you do it man?”

  “Will there be another?”

  Lucas felt dizzy. They clambered for his words. First his brush strokes and now his gizzards. Not content with looking at his work and feeding off it they needed to know how he liked his cereal, did he jerk off standing up. Fucking raptors.