now thought of it—property of Dr. Norman Lewis; the extra money she needed in a clutch to keep up the payments on her student loan… providentially provided by Dr. Norman N. Lewis… The rebel streak in her was fading fast.
She shucked off her pride and trooped on toward the VIP lounge. A row of four-foot-high modular partitions had been assembled to compel all who would breathe the same air as very important people to pass through an opening at one end manned by a security guard. Another big redneck. Suppose he wouldn’t let her in? He was like a caricature of the breed. What if he gave her a hard time?
The man took a cursory glance at the laminated VIP ID around her neck and waved her in. This one had Couldn’t Care Less written all over him.
The only symbol of one’s exalted status in the FIZ (Fuggerzberuf Industriellbank of Zurich) VIP room was the mere fact that one had been allowed in at all. Otherwise, the place was nothing but a sea of what is known in commercial real estate as “Contract furniture,” simple modern chairs and small tables made of as much plastic as possible. The very important people therein could sit down, take a load off, go get a drink, and tell war stories of the Miami Basel battles for hot items, which is to say, exchange very important gossip.
Way out in the sea, Magdalena sat at a table with Fleischmann, A.A., and Norman, whom she was now pointedly ignoring. She figured she owed herself at least that much self-respect. Madame Carr was suddenly the life of the party. Magdalena wondered if Norman or even Fleischmann had any idea, out of 3.4 million possible answers why. At the moment, she was answering a question from Norman… Norman, who had once told Magdalena, “Be careful asking questions. Asking questions is the surest way of revealing your ignorance.” Be that as it may, Norman had asked a question, and Marilynn Carr was saying, “How did Doggs learn how to work in glass? He doesn’t work in glass or anything else. Don’t you know about No Hands art and De-skilled art?”
“Oh, I guess I’ve heard about it—but no, not really,” Norman said lamely, or lamely for Norman.
A.A. said, “No cutting-edge artist touches materials anymore, or instruments.”
“What do you mean, instruments, A.A.?” said Fleischmann.
“Oh, you know,” she said, “paintbrushes, clay, shaping knives, chisels… all that’s from the Manual Age. Remember painting? That seems so 1950s now. Remember Schnabel and Fischl and Salle and all that bunch? They all seem so 1950s now, even though their fifteen minutes came in the 1970s. The new artists, like Doggs, look at all those people like they’re from another century, which they were, when you get right down to it. They were still using their hands to do little visual tricks on canvas that were either pretty and pleasant and pleased people or ugly and baffling and ‘challenged’ people. Challenged… Ohmygod—” She broke into a smile and shook her head, as if to say, “Can you believe the way it used to be?!”
“Then how does Doggs do it?” said Fleischmann. “I guess I never really asked.”
“It’s actually fascinating,” said A.A. “He got hold of, Doggs did, this call girl, Daphne Deauville, the one who cost the governor of New Jersey his job?—and on the strength of that she gets a job as a columnist for the New York City Light? I couldn’t believe it! So anyway, Doggs gets a photographer to take some pictures of him… well, fucking her brains out”—lately it had become daringly chic for women to use fucking in conversation—“and doing this and that… and sent the photographs off to Dalique, and Dalique got their elves to reproduce the photographs in three dimensions in Dalique glass, but Doggs never touched the pieces—never. He had no hand at all in making them. And if he touched the photographs, it was just to put them in an envelope and FedEx them to Dalique, although I’m sure he has an assistant to do things like that. No Hands—that’s an important concept now. It’s not some artist using his so-called skills to deceive people. It’s not a sleight of hand. It’s no hands at all. That makes it conceptual, of course. That way he turns what a manual artist would use to create… an effect… into something that compels you to think about it in a deeper way. It’s almost as if he has invented a