An Object of Beauty: A Novel by Steve Martin Read Free Book Online

from the Nathansons to devote to holiday sightseeing in D.C.
    The Avery, stowed overhead in the steel-pipe luggage rack, was projecting out just enough to thwack a man on the forehead. Lacey’s rifleresponse, said before she even turned her head—“You can sue me, but I’ve got nothing”—charmed the man enough that he said, “Is this seat taken?”
    “Sit down, father figure.”
    He was older, professorial. Wearing a suit and tie and crowned with a muss of gray hair. He muttered his name, but Lacey didn’t catch it.
    “Who’s the artist who clobbered me?”
    “Milton Avery,” she said.
    “Milton Avery? That’s a big name for such a slow train. Shouldn’t he be on the express?”
    “I would have preferred it. I don’t think the painting cares,” Lacey said.
    I should tell you now about Lacey and strangers. She loved codgers and coots, truck drivers and working folk, any sort of type that she wasn’t familiar with. She would engage them in bars and parks, focusing on their accents and slang, probing them for stories, and the slightest accomplishments, including whittling, elevated them to heroes. The man next to her didn’t qualify as a folk hero, he was too well dressed for that, but Lacey liked the opportunity for repartee and felt she could keep pace with anybody.
    “How do you know about Milton Avery?”
    “I try to be a gentleman of taste, even when it comes to getting clocked in the head.” He glanced up and down, taking her in. “What do you do?” he said.
    “What do
you
do?” she said.
    “What do
you
do?” he said.
    “Okay. You outmaneuvered me. I work at Sotheby’s and I’m delivering a painting to Washington.”
    “Oh, Sotheby’s. Then perhaps you can answer a question I’ve been mulling over. Or maybe you’re too young.”
    “Just give me the question.”
    “How is it that rich people know about good paintings?” he said.
    Lacey said nothing but implied that he should continue.
    “Well, think about it. How do they have the eye for it? Why is a five-million-dollar picture always a Velásquez or some other fancy name, and not a Bernard Buffet?”
    “Maybe you just explained it to yourself,” said Lacey.
    “How?”
    “You said ‘fancy name.’ Maybe they’re just buying fancy names.”
    “But then a lousy Velásquez would bring as much as a good one. They actually seem to know which one is better. How does a steel magnate or a car dealer or oil baron learn what scholars take years to learn?”
    “I’m going to need some train wine,” she said.
    “I’ll get it,” he volunteered, loosening his tie. Minutes later, he reappeared holding two plastic cups that didn’t bother to imitate wineglasses. Lacey took a sip, “Acheson, Topeka, 1994.”
    After he had settled in, now using his briefcase as a table, he relaxed deep into his seat’s leatherette cushion.
    “I see it this way. Paintings,” he said, “are Darwinian. They drift toward money for the same reason that toads drifted toward stereoscopic vision. Survival. If the masterpieces weren’t coveted, they would rot in basements and garbage heaps. So they make themselves necessary.”
    She laughed and stared at him with a pixie face. “I must be drunk, because I think I understood you,” she said, and cranked her body sideways to better see his pleased response.
    The noontime wine wore off just as the train pulled into the station. The gentleman stood, saying, “Lacey, have a great day. You shortened the trip for me.”
    Lacey, responding with warmth, said, “You too; you have a great trip, too.”
    Lacey never knew the man’s name until a month later when she saw his photo on the inside of the book’s dust jacket. It was John Updike.

14.
    LACEY ANGLED THE PICTURE into the backseat of a taxi, its corner sticking into her knees because of the drivetrain hump on the floor. She braced it with her palm for self-protection as well as for its own good as the taxi bounced and rattled from one stoplight to the