We made our way through the rooms. Older works from the collection had been paired with the contemporary—Monet’s lilies and Long’s stones, a Sickert interior with a Kienholz tableau—and upcoming artists had rooms to themselves. Antonio pressed on to the farthest display, in which houses sewn from colored fabric had been torn, stretched out of shape, and glued to slabs of handmade paper. He moved rapidly along the frames, reading the labels out loud. “Home One . . . Home Two . . .”

“The past exists in the present,” I said, “but it can’t be lived in. I think that’s the idea.” Desolation was always there, biding its time. No reprieve could last. No escape was far enough. I could reason out a curatorial concept, but that’s not what I saw in this art of the flattened and torn. Would I ever be able to look at the world and not perceive bodily damage or the possibility of damage?

“Let me guess . . . Home Three?”—leaning in—“No! Travels in Inner Space. Oh, E-vie, help!”—chortling—“Is this art? This can’t be art.”

I did not reply. My alliance with Antonio did not go so far as to make me want to join him in cheap shots at contemporary art. Plenty of men like him came to my gallery talks, dragged in by wives eager to talk about meaning. Of course art could be pretentious and fake, ridiculous, even. But the impulse to art was not ridiculous. It was not ridiculous to try to make something out of nothing, to think with materials. Art allowed you to look at what you were afraid of. There was humility in it, and courage.

People had emptied from the galleries back to the reception. The speeches were about to start. It dawned on me then that Antonio had maneuvered me away from the others so we could be alone. I started to laugh. I slipped my arm out of his.

“Want to see something?”

35

We took the stairwell instead of the elevator to ground level. The gift shop was dark and so was the cloakroom. Too late I remembered our coats on the racks upstairs. Side lights marked out the sloping floor of the Turbine Hall under five stories of empty space.

“Did you ever sneak around your house at night when everyone was asleep?”

“I don’t remember,” said Antonio.

“I was scared, but I liked having the place to myself.”

We reached the arch in the foyer to the Tanks. A single security guard sat at the outer desk, punching the keys of his phone.

“Where are we?” Antonio’s voice was slightly blurred from three glasses of wine. I had stopped at one.

I sent the light of my phone running across the naked ceiling pipes and down the walls where the mouths of torn-out ducts gaped in the stained cement. Antonio aimed his own light above the arch. A row of sunken squares with bolts for eyes.