Next morning, we depart Monaco, fly to Paris, and motion to its very heart: Ile St-Louis, a village in the middle of the
River Seine connected to land by a number of bridges.
Paris was born here, protected by a natural
moat. Now it is the French capital’s
quaintest (and most expensive) neighborhood.
We stroll the main drag, St Louis en L’ile, and poke
into a Venetian mask shop.
On a back
shelf a mask collects dust, its price tag far below the amount of craftsmanship
that went into burnishing it by hand.
But it remains forlorn and unwanted.
But it remains forlorn and unwanted.
Because it is a devil mask.
On the basis that Van Stein must
paint it, I take possession and, within minutes, we find a venue: Sorza—a small restaurant with a flaming red
backdrop.
Van Stein enters with JL, speaks with the proprietor, who agrees to let him paint inside.
Van Stein enters with JL, speaks with the proprietor, who agrees to let him paint inside.
“Does he know what you’re going to
paint?” I ask.
“He’ll know soon enough.” Van Stein holds out the mask. “Here, wear it.”
“Me?”
“Who else?”
“Why not JL? He’s the one who never stops farting.”
“C’mon, put it on.”
I slip the mask over my head.
“Whoa!” he gasps.
We expect the restaurant proprietor
to throw us out when he sees Van Stein’s subject, but he says nothing and merely watches
quietly from a corner table while assorted pedestrians stop dead in their
tracks and peer through the window, questioning their eyes, as it appears
Lucifer is basking inside.
Van Stein works quickly on this alla prima sketch, finishing in thirty minutes, thank God, because
it’s hot as hell beneath the mask.
I hand Van Stein the mask. “Can you keep this in your room tonight?”
Later, Van Stein, our decoy, heads out with his paints.
Whatever goons have mobilized are focused on the artist, while JL and I steal around dark shadows within the City of Light.
When they realize Van Stein is just an artist, our cell phones come
under merciless attack. The only way to
avoid revealing our position—and our telephone and live conversations–is
battery removal.
We regroup at dusk, a bottle of Margaux—in
a dark, candle lit corner of Le Sergent Recruteur—over which the artist
sketches JL and me Exchanging Secrets.
By now we’re operating on four
hours-a-night sleep—Van Stein, probably less.
For me, all the motion, madness and sleep deprivation is exacting a price. It starts with anxious dreams. In one, I’m having a brush with
official-dumb. I have jaywalked, and a
uniformed female Nazi wants to make a federal case of me. I point out that enforcers of laws or by-laws
are blessed, if they’re smart enough (unlikely), with something called discretion. That is, they’re capable (usually not) of
assessing ill intent on the spot and handling the situation accordingly. The Nazi suffers meltdown over my audacity
and summons brutes to subdue me with tazers and threat of strip-search.
But it is the second dream that
truly spooks me: I awaken, not in my
hotel room as expected, but in a hotel lobby I do not recognize. My bags are gone. When I anxiously enquire about my
possessions, about where I am, a
woman sitting behind a desk replies that I have been asleep for three days
and nights. This thought occurs to
me: I’ve
been out cold for three days and nights?
My things are gone andI don’t know where I am? HAVE I FINALLY LOST MY MIND?
Awakening next morning, JL farts
goodbye and propels himself home to Monaco.
Van Stein and I return to London,
same hotel, full- gloom. And next day out
again, to whence we came.
I put the brakes on, but it’s hard
to stop motioning, like when you get off a freeway after driving eighty-five
miles an hour all day and suddenly you’re supposed to do thirty through town.
That’s how Van Stein and I feel at
Starbucks, Montecito, 4:48 in the morning; lagged but still driving fast.
The artist shakes his head, dribbles
cappuccino foam. “How do I explain to
anyone what we’ve been through?” He
throws a backhand wave at the ceiling.
“How do I explain them!”
Van Gogh, Dymphna, Dali, James Dean,
and Big Mac are hovering overhead,
awaiting our next move.
“Don’t even try,” I whisper. “If word gets out, they’ll be coming to take
you away.” I pause. “And maybe me, too. We should probably change our focus.”
“A little late, no?” Van Stein eyes Dali.
“If we’ve got orbs, or they’ve got
us, there must be a God. It’s our job to
find him.”
“Why?”
“All this business about angels and
devils, it’s a signpost. Only God can
resolve our quest into creativity and madness.”
“So where are we supposed to find
him,” says Van Stein, “the Vatican?”
“The Vatican is just an organized
cult, like all ancient religions. We
found the devil in freezing cold Iceland, the opposite of what anyone would
expect, and that actually makes sense because the devil’s job is to
deceive. So my guess is, on the basis
that life, and humor, according to Jonathan Winters, is about irony, we’ll
find God in a hot zone, a red hot
zone.”
And that’s how we ended up in
Sedona…
