"How many paintings in his chapel?"

"I don't know. Fourteen, fifteen."

"If they sell me the chapel, I'll keep it intact. Tell them."

"Keep it intact where?"

"In my apartment. There's sufficient space. I can make more space.

"But people need to see it."

"Let them buy it. Let them outbid me."

"Forgive the pissy way I say this. But the Rothko Chapel belongs to the world."

"It's mine if I buy it."

She reached back and slapped his hand off her ass.

He said, "How much do they want for it?"

"They don't want to sell the chapel. And I don't want to give you lessons in self-denial and social responsibility. Because I don't believe for a minute you're as crude as you sound."

"You'd believe it. You'd accept the way I think and act if I came from another culture. If I were a pygmy dictator," he said, "or a cocaine warlord. Someone from the fanatical tropics. You'd love it, wouldn't you? You'd cherish the excess, the monomania. Such people cause a delicious stir in other people. People such as you. But there has to be a separation. If they look and smell like you, it gets confusing."

He pushed his armpit toward her face.

"Here lies Didi. Trapped in all the old puritanisms." He rolled belly down and they lay close, hips and shoulders touching. He licked along the rim of her ear and put his face in her hair, rooting softly. He said, "How much?"

"What does it mean to spend money? A dollar. A million."

"For a painting?"

"For anything."

"I have two private elevators now One is programmed to play Satie's piano pieces and to move at one-quarter normal speed. This is right for Satie and this is the elevator I take when I'm in a certain, let's say, unsettled mood. Calms me, makes me whole."

"Who's the other elevator?"

"Brutha Fez."

"Who's that?"

"The Sufi rap star. You don't know this?"