Angelica Lost and Found

Chapter 60. Paradise Lost

I wanted to know how (and if) things were with Volatore Three, the hairstylist and inventor of TurboScalp. I still had his card so I invited him round to the gallery for drinks. In view of the fact that the hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar painting had turned up in San Francisco Bay I thought he might be in a delicate state and would be glad to avoid the hurly-burly of a more public watering place. We were in the process of taking down Ossie Przewalski’s show but I doubted that the hairstylist would be disturbed by a roomful of nudes on Harley Davidsons.

Remembering Volatore Three’s grandiosity, I was surprised and saddened by his present appearance. He had always been a small man but this afternoon he seemed so diminished that I could have sworn he’d lost a couple of inches. His wig looked dispirited; his Armani hung loosely on him; his Rolex, I guessed, had no good times to offer and apparently his Mont Blanc and fat chequebook could buy him no joy.

We sat him down at a little table with a bottle of Sancerre and a plate of sandwiches. Olivia and I raised our glasses to him.

‘Here’s luck,’ I said.

He responded with a weary nod.

‘How are you?’ I said.

He shrugged and made the universal so-so gesture with the flat of his hand.

‘So-so,’ he said. ‘Cosi-cosi.’

‘Did you,’ I tried to say very gently, ‘drop the painting off the Golden Gate Bridge?’

He nodded.

‘It was either it or me. I was poised to make the jump myself but a large policeman convinced me that the wind conditions were not right and I might fatally injure one of the yachtsmen below us. He gave me his card and invited me to have coffee with him to talk the matter over. I began to think about how foolish I should look falling through the air with my toupee flying off, so I decided to go on living a while longer.’

‘You mean that isn’t your own hair?’ said Olivia.

He shook his head and smiled modestly.

‘Amazing,’ I said. ‘Tell me, was the policeman’s name Hennessy?’

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘I know him, and it’s the kind of thing he would do.’

‘Can you tell us what happened?’ said Olivia. ‘The last time we saw you, you liked that painting well enough to pay a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it.’

‘The tiny, tiny dancing giants in the dim red caverns of sleep,’ he murmured, and held out his empty glass which I quickly refilled. ‘There was with me when I bought the painting a feeling’ — he spread his arms as if to embrace the world — ‘of an immensity of comprehension, of containing in myself the whole dream of reality which is the world.’

Olivia and I had nothing to say; we were both eating the little sandwiches to fill the emptiness we suddenly felt.

Silence. I offered the plate of sandwiches to Volatore Three. He shook his head and took more wine.

‘Please go on,’ I said. ‘What happened then?’

He put down his glass and covered his face with his hands.

‘It left me, the immensity of comprehension suddenly was gone from me like a dream I couldn’t remember. The painting closed up and went flat.’ He took his hands away and I got another bottle of wine. ‘You can’t imagine my loss,’ he said, ‘unless you’ve contained that immensity and experienced the same loss.’

More silence.

‘TurboScalp?’ I said hesitantly. ‘Does that help at all?’

‘It works only if you think it will. And I don’t think it will.’

‘How’s your translation of Orlando Furioso going?’ said Olivia.

‘I seem to have lost my flair for rhyming. Thank you for your hospitality. I shall leave you now.’

‘Come see us again,’ I said.

Volatore Three bowed, kissed our hands, and headed for the door. We watched him get smaller and smaller and then he was gone.