Page 66 of Casanova LLC

What I knew about him, what everyone knew about him, I could admire. A rich kid whose father had died young (in what would turn out to be foreshadowing), he’d been shuttled off to boarding schools while his socialite mother train-wrecked herself through Page Six. But he was off-the-charts smart. Made his first personal million by fourteen, day-trading from his Swiss dorm room. He went to Yale for a couple years, but when his trust matured, he dropped out to build a company that turned that money into more money. Then he started doing it for other people. Now, the press loved him. He was a genius, but not nerdy; yeah, a billionaire, but one of the “good ones.” He liked his women, but what wealthy, heterosexual male didn’t, and he was the largest single collector of art in the world. And now he was staring at me.

Just as I was about to ask, again, why I was here, the most bizarre thing happened:

He burst out laughing. Knee-slapping, hyena-wheezing laughing.He kicked his feet up and down on his desk. Stood up and came around to the other club chair next to me and flopped down.

“Oh man, I got you good! Right by the nads!” He affected the low, serious voice he’d been using when I walked in: “Good day. Make yourself comfortable. Drink? Please, call me Richard.” He said, in what I now knew was his normal voice, “I like to fuck around a little in these first meetings. You know, meet the billionaire, power room after power room like a fucking cave system, some Pappy 20.” He pointed a finger at me. “I gotcha, didn’t I? Just a little? Tightened up the ol’ bunghole?”

He seemed to really be asking. “You got me,” I confirmed, while thinking what the hell is happening right now?

“Listen, I’d love to spend the whole day fucking around, I really would, but the Nikkei’s about to open, so here’s the deal: You know my reputation. I turn artists into legends. If I have it, the art world wants it. Doesn’t matter what it is, only matters that I have—this is a hobby. The money I make on this shit doesn’t matter to me. But it matters to the artists. It matters a metric fuckton to the artists.”

Something told me to take his magnanimity with a grain of salt.

I was right. “But, man, can you get these art assholes to burn money. Jesus Christ. Sometimes I wonder if I should become an artist. If I started pissing on blank canvases, I swear I could fucking retire.”

I understood him, then. He was a chaos agent. He got off on seeing if he could make the art world lose its mind. He was the market equivalent of an internet troll. The Joker to Batman.

I asked the question that had been burning inside me since his assistant—or one of his assistants—called last week. “How did you find me?”

He held up a finger. “Good question, but don’t interrupt my flow. I don’t mean that in a rude way, I’m just tight on time”—he tapped his Patek Philippe—“and I want to make sure we get through everything, okay? I ‘found you’ because my intended has fallen in love with one of your paintings.” He resituated himself, throwing one leg over an arm of the chair. “You know my eye is for contemporary abstract. Of course you do, everyone does. But my future wifey has an eye, too. And even though I don’t like it, I’ve learned to respect it, because she’s always right. Always. So here’s what we’re gonna do. Step one: I’m gonna buy the painting she loves for her wedding gift. I know: awwwww. And I’ll pay you double what you’ve got it listed for on your site, which—Sidebar: who built your fucking website?” He leaned in. “And, bro, who is pricing your shit?” His thumb made a quick succession of upward jabs. “Can’t expect anyone else to take you seriously if you don’t take yourself seriously, and you can’t expect me to ask people for a 20 X valuation if it looks like I picked you up for fifty bucks at a village art fair in the Poconos.”

He leaned back again and drew a breath. I was so confused. “But if you’re just buying the one painting, for your fiancée, then?—”

“Interruuuuupting,” he sang. “Which brings us to step two: When she showed me your painting, the one that drenched her panties, I decided to take a look at your body of work. Do I like it? No. Do I get it? Who gives a shit? Do I think I can sell it? Absofuckinglutely. You’ve got, what, a dozen others? What would you say to a partnership?”

There was silence.

“Can I talk now?”

“Yes, you can fucking talk, I asked you a question.”

“What kind of partnerships do you usually do?”

“Doesn’t matter what I usually do. You and I are gonna do something a little different. Like I said, I can sell you, but it could cost me. It’s risky. Our lanes are night and day. I gotta grab hold of a whole different brand of buyer. People are going to wonder why you. When did this guy start sucking my dick.”

I wanted to ask which side of his mouth I should be listening to. The one that said he could absofuckinglutely sell me, or the one that said I had to suck his dick.

“So, here’s the deal. I’m not gonna pay you for the other paintings. But you’ll send them to me and I’m gonna do some handselling. Some good old-fashioned retail politics. Invite a few people over to the house, casual, couple drinks, some Nobu, test the waters. If it works, I’ll only take ten percent.”

That was it? A gallery would take at least fifty percent. He could take seventy percent and it would still be the deal of the century.

“I just need you to do something for me.”

“Suck your dick?”

He laughed. “No. At least not now. Not here.” Then he pointed at me with his foot. “Gotcha, gotcha back, huh?”

I didn’t want to look as eager—as honestly, desperate—as I felt, but I also suspected he was the kind of guy who liked to have you acknowledge the power he held over you. “Richard? I’ll paint a portrait of your fiancée as the Venus de Milo on velvet. Shit, I’ll paint your house. I will do whatever you want.”

He smiled. Nodded. “Good. Good.” He brought his glass to his lips. “I want you to fuck my bride.” He drank.

Laughing, I raised my glass for a sip. “I’ll get right on that.”

He laughed, too. “Good. Because I’m serious.”

I couldn’t swallow. The Pappy burned my mouth as I stared at him.

He set his glass down and stood. Sighed a bit. “Okay, so listen. We’re men of the world. Aren’t we men of the world? Don’t answer, not a question.” He leaned against his desk in front of me, putting his crotch at eye-level. I sat up straighter. “Your paintings? They’re fantastic. To some people. My girl, for starters. Who’s pretty, by the way, I probably should have led with that. I mean, of course she is. Obviously. She’s a bit”—he tightened his entire body like he was about to be rolled up in a rug—“you know, but that’s your problem now.” His perpetual smile rested easily on his face. “Something tells me, though, that you can handle that. That you might be an expert, of sorts, in handling that. You know how I know that?” He started pacing. “Because when she showed me your painting, all gooey-eyed, all swept up in some romantic fantasy bullshit world you’d created, I said to myself, I said, ‘Self? Where’s it come from? What’s his inspiration?’ Because every painter I’ve ever known—the great ones and the shitty ones—all have something that makes them do what they do. You know, like a muse or whatever. Right?” He turned back, pointed a finger at me, a teasing tilt to his head. “You were going to interrupt me there, weren’t you?” He recommenced his pacing. “So! I did a little dig.” He scoffed. “A little. A little for me is a lot for someone else. I gave my people shovels. And the thing about my people is they dig until I say stop.” At which point he stopped, and just looked at me. “And guess what they found.” He smirked. “Feel free to interrupt now.”

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