Mr. Bones Read Free

smiled at their shocked silence. People at the periphery could be possessive of someone else’s treasures, as if these things were aspects of the friendship. Did they think he was so rich that he would hand them over?
    These memories buoyed him through the rest of the divorce, the last of the paperwork, the depositions, all the signatures, the summing up, the attorneys’ fees. Whenever he became glum—wondering What next?—he summoned up the moment in his office when the vase slipped from his fingers, the finality of its breaking, the shoe crunch, and the look of loss on her face.
    Minor Watt had a collector’s caressing habit when alone, of padding around his apartment in slippers, picking up the smaller objects in his collection, holding them to the light, and turning them slowly, as you were forbidden to do in museums. He savored the details that made them unique, the subtle flourishes, not only the texture carved into an elephant tusk but the buttery hue of old ivory, the tiny human stick figure like a petroglyph incised into the shaft of a Tongan war club, the scarification represented on the cheeks of a Chokwe
pwo
mask, the lizard gouged into the dome of a Kenyah skull, the diamond in the forehead of a small seated silver-cast Buddha. Leonard Baskin sometimes wrote a note in pen strokes on a watercolor in his elegant hand. Minor Watt owned three such Baskins—three different notes. No two Francis Bacons were alike; many seemed provisional and splashed. Minor Watt’s
Study for Head of George Dyer
was overpainted in one corner, streaked in another, rubbed with the dust from Bacon’s studio. The painting was not large, but all Bacons were valuable, almost absurdly so. Some collectors kept them in vaults, with albums of Krugerrands and taped blocks of hundred-dollar bills.
    He’d been eating. He rose from the table and lifted the
Study for Head of George Dyer
from the wall and propped it against the silver Victorian wine cooler near his plate of meat. Imitating the George Dyer pout, he braced and gripped his steak knife and raked the canvas, two swipes, then held it on his lap. He marveled at the sight of his own knees through the slashes he’d made—the real world framed by the rags of the painting. He poked at the long slashes. Hearing him grunt, his servant, Manolo, opened the dining room door. “You okay, boss?”
    But Minor Watt’s feeling was muted. He’d wished someone had seen him, as Sonia had. Not Manolo, who had no idea, but a true witness—even better, a connoisseur.
    He called a friend, Doug Redman, who owned several Bacons, but prints, the limited-edition signed lithographs. Redman had often remarked on this painting.
    Redman came over that same night, because Minor Watt had said, “It’s about my Bacon. I want you to see it.”
    Minor Watt was sitting before his fireplace when Redman entered the room. At first he did not believe that the slashed painting in his lap was the
Head of George Dyer.
The profile was familiar, the frame unmistakable.
    Minor Watt said, “It’s the Bacon. You know it’s the Bacon.”
    â€œBut what fuckwit damaged it?”
    â€œI did!” Minor Watt cried out, giddy from hearing his own shrieky voice. The man leaned closer and looked pained, seeing that it was the Bacon. Minor Watt threw it into the fire and at once the canvas caught and flames rushed over it, making a black hole in the slower-burning frame.
    Redman groaned and made as if to snatch at it, but the canvas was just smut and soot.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you?” he said in a tentative voice, too fearful to be angry, as though dealing with a crazy man who might run at him.
    He’d expected this art collector’s shock, but Redman’s terror made Minor Watt even happier.
    â€œGone!” Minor Watt said, and Redman stepped back. “Totaled!”
    â€œHow can you do a thing like that, especially in this