JM03 - Red Cat by Peter Spiegelman

skin from my face. After a long shower and a bowl of oatmeal, I went out in it again and walked into the West Village. Orlando Krug’s gallery was on Perry Street, between an antique shop and a store that sold extremely expensive men’s pajamas, and behind a frosted-glass door with small black lettering on it. The inside was done in grays and whites and creams, and the interior designer had somehow made peace between the wainscoting and beadboard and William Morris rugs, and all the big flat-panel monitors mounted on the walls. There was footage of gray tenement rooftops playing on the screens, with pigeons that morphed occasionally into vivid tropical flowers. The air smelled of sandalwood.

    A small, thin man sat behind a partners desk in the back corner. He was maybe twenty and his vaguely ferretlike face was covered in a neat three-day scruff. His hair was five shades of blond and arranged in careful chaos. He wore his French cuffs dangling but his blue shirt was well tailored and so was his look of boredom. He glanced up at me when I came in and went back to fiddling with his iPod. He looked around when I spoke, as if I weren’t the only one in the place.

    “Orlando Krug?”

    “No.”

    “Is he in?”

    “And you would be who?” His voice was nasal and arch, and as bored as his look.

    “The guy looking for Orlando Krug. Is he in?”

    The man shrugged. “No need to be grumpy,” he said, and he pushed away from the desk and went through a doorway in the back. He knocked at a door at the end of a short hall and opened it and went in. He came out a moment later and so did another man.

    He was about sixty and tall, and his skin had the color and hard gloss of polished teak decking. He wore pressed jeans and a black sweater, and his white hair was cut very short. His brows were precise arches over wary blue eyes, and there was something in his gaunt face that reminded me of a monk. The abbot, perhaps, of a prosperous and deeply tanned order.

    He had a deep voice and an accent that almost wasn’t there and that I couldn’t quite place. “I am Krug. How can I help you, Mr….?”

    “March. I understand you represent Cassandra Z.”

    Behind the desk, the blond man perked up. Krug glanced at him. “Ricky, make me an espresso, would you?” Ricky rolled his eyes but stood. Krug looked at me. “And one for you, perhaps, Mr. March? Ricky does quite a good job.” I nodded and Ricky disappeared. Krug sat behind the desk and waved me to the chair opposite.

    “You’re familiar with Cassandra’s work?” he asked. His blue eyes were shining.

    “Not familiar, but intrigued. I was hoping to learn more.”

    Krug smiled. “Her work is indeed intriguing, Mr. March, though not widely known.” I nodded but said nothing. Krug kept smiling. “How did you become aware of it?”

    I shrugged. “Idle chatter from informed people. A comment here, a comment there…eventually it adds up.”

    Krug steepled his long tan fingers beneath his chin. “Indeed. What other artists do you follow, Mr. March?”

    Ricky came in with two coffees on a small silver tray. I smiled more widely. “Eisner, Ditko, Infantino, Adams, Miller.”

    Ricky set a demitasse cup in front of each of us, squinted at me, and left. Krug pursed his lips. “Comic-book artists.”

    “I’m ready to broaden my horizons.”

    “And you wish to start with video, and with Cassandra’s work?”

    “I hear such interesting things about it.”

    “From whom, Mr. March?”

    “People who know.”

    “I know all the people who know, Mr. March. If they know, it’s because I arranged for them to know. So if one of these people has referred you to me, please don’t be shy in saying.”

    “And if they haven’t?”

    Krug sighed. The lines on his face seemed to fold in on themselves and he looked like a dour walnut. “Then we can drink our coffee and discuss the work of any number of other artists.”

    “But not Cassandra’s?” Krug gathered