The Life of Armand Morris

His name was Armand Morris. He lived on Park Avenue and 64th Street. Like many gentlemen of his age, he had never married. Yet he, as he would tell you, still lived a vibrant life. He would dine at Sushi Gari at 6pm every evening, ordering a single tuna hand roll. He did not need much to eat. The years spent smoking in quiet repose had limited his appetite. In truth, all he ever needed was a small bite of meat, something light, and then perhaps a cookie. He had a great affection for cookies. Indeed, most of his meals, coffees, and detachments were spent with a cookie. Never a great big one. That would be gauche. Rather, he preferred a crumpet, something that could be held comfortably between two fingers. A splash of perfection in the life of a man who believed that such symbols of transcendence had long since faded from view. This was, of course, not to say that Mr. Morris was an unhappy man. Quite the contrary. One might argue that among the men of his age, among the men of his disposition, he was quite pleased, amused even, by his existence. There were times, as one can imagine, when the creep of something more terrible might seep in, but those times were few and far between.

He began each morning with a single cup of coffee. He would rise, place the beans he had specially purchased in Mexico in his grinder, and make his coffee with grace. While he had never truly enjoyed the beans or the coffee that they produced, he refused to migrate to some other form of caffeine. There was a woman once, a Baroness. Her name was Sofia. She began every morning with a cup of the very same coffee. She had told him that her family had been using these beans since the Spanish first landed in Teotihuacan. In the moments between sips, he would be in that great hall again. Great, perhaps, might not be the best word. It was a hall that had surely been great at one point in time. Clearly, the hall had been passed from generation to generation with lesser and lesser degrees of care. Now he had arrived like the specter of death, as Sofia called him, to finish the job. He had come to collect an original draft of the composer, Constantin Zurvan’s sheet music. As she handed him the locked briefcase, she laughed to herself. This was the last of her father’s belongings to be sold. Her father had been a respected collector of signatures, she said, and within his collection, there were few works he prized more than the scraps of creation. The first words that Goethe ever wrote, a trace of the first chapter of Swann— it was the articulation of greatness that fascinated him. Mr. Morris took the case from her, providing her with the price his superiors had offered. She offered him another coffee. She thought him charming. Elegant. Not like the other vultures who had stalked the great hall. The crumbling grandness became a museum soon after.

Mr. Morris would then place the grinder, the beans, and his cup back in the cabinet. He would shed the night shirt that he favored and begin to dress. Mother had always started with her socks. She said it was the mark of a traveler. And so he did the same. First, argyle socks. Then the drawers. The pants. The blue striped shirt that Vincent had bought him in Paris. The cufflinks. The tie – somatic knot, as expected. Finally, the jacket. Florian had told him that they no longer needed to wear such things to the office. Of course, said Mr. Morris. However, if it was all the same to Florian, perhaps he would continue. The clients appreciated the old world. After all, they were its last denizens.

Mr. Morris would examine his apartment. No spots. The statues were in their places. The Herodotus remained at his bedside. The phone numbers that he would never call stood beside the fridge, reminders for a more foolish man. He would leave the apartment at approximately 7:30 am.

Walking to Park Avenue, he would locate a cab. It was not a far drive, however, Mr. Morris took great pleasure riding in cabs. He had thought for so long that he would be relegated to watching others get inside such conveyances, so any sort of jaunt in a taxi was a lark. Mr. Morris would never speak to the driver. The driver was, Mr. Morris thought, someone who respected himself and his work enough to treat the cab as the sacred place it was. He would exit the vehicle at 7:55 am. Paying in small bills, he would thank the cab driver for his kindness and send the gentleman on his way. He would then have his first cigarette of the day. Five minutes. That’s all it took, but in his own way, he could not help but feel that he was with Vincent again. He was not an unsentimental man. All true gentlemen have a drop of sentiment to them. But he did not weep, for Mr. Morris did not believe in dramatics. Instead, a slight look, a small twinge, was the most one could get out of Mr. Morris. After his brief indulgence, Mr. Morris would walk into the auction house.

He had made it a personal habit to always be a minute and a half late. His predecessor told Mr. Morris that it was not the business of the man with the eye to be on time; one always had to make one’s value clear. He was the talent. Others might come and go, but the eye— the eye cannot be replaced. Mr. Morris liked such a sentiment, took pride in it. He would remind himself of it. Only when necessary, of course… even if he had needed such a reminder more and more often lately.

He had tried to explain the value of the eye to Florian, but Florian had very little respect for the lessons of Mr. Morris’ predecessor. Mr. Morris had never understood why someone with such a beautiful knowledge of the Greeks, of their histories, would ever be so willfully ignorant. In his more generous moods, he chalked it up to the follies of youth— whatever that might mean.

At 8:05 am, he would arrive at his desk and inspect his mail. He enjoyed the cluttered nature of his desk. A cluttered desk was the sign of a man who was in demand. He would look over the latest acquisitions. He perused the catalogs. He poured over the provenance of his acquisitions with the eye of a great master. The way only a great master can. There had been a time when he was invited to a museum only days away from the debut of the auction house’s newest statue: The Koros of Hecate. A friend of his had sponsored the room, her name engraved into the wall. It was to be quite the event. But he had seen the Koros for what it was immediately. The eye had served him well on that day. She even took him out to dinner to thank him. It was the least she could do, as without Mr. Morris her new room would have been the laughingstock of Newport. She asked him how he could spot the fake so quickly. Fake is such an inelegant word, he said. There was not a singular tipoff. Indeed, it was a feeling, a sensation that the symmetry of the koros had been too perfect. He smiled as he remembered this. It was a story to dine out on. Not that he ever had. He didn’t believe he had ever told anyone. Florian, maybe. In those days, Florian would hear each and every detail. He wanted to.

Mr. Morris then would make his final comments on the latest acquisitions. He placed his memos in a clean manila envelope. He would always remark that he needed to replenish his stories, but they never seemed to run out. He would hurry to Florian’s office to deliver the memos. He had much to do.

He would knock on the door. Florian would not be there. He’s flying in from London. Mr. Morris would never allow himself to look out Florian’s window. He knew full well that having such a view did not make the work any better. In fact, he often remarked that the higher one was promoted, the worse one’s job performance became. Mostly, as he so often said, because the higher-ups spent far too much time at their windows. Mr. Morris preferred the archives. They contained all of the antiquities that they were to sell. The air in such a place was still. Pleasantly still, he thought. There, he would walk through the corridors, inspecting his bounty, examining each prize and purchase. For him, they were all in the Morris collection. Of course, his collection was rather unorthodox, it was spread from home to home, and he owned no such antiquities himself, but, for Mr. Morris, to have given them a home made them his.

At 11:00am precisely, he would return to his desk, gather his things and move to the auction room. They were selling a piece of his: A lioness from Greece. The bidding would soon reach outrageous numbers with only a German and a French bidder remaining. A smaller Alsace-Lorraine, he thought. One of the many little jokes he would tell himself throughout the day. It was rather romantic, he thought, that such a tiny artifact inspired so much heartache in men. There was no telling how high the price would rise. However, it never really mattered to Mr. Morris. High enough was all he desired.

After the completion of the auction, he would go to lunch. As he always did, he would travel to Marino’s. The restaurant was a small one. An intimate place. The staff had known Vincent but had never dared to learn Mr. Morris’ name. Still, no reservations were needed. The table by the corner would remain empty until Mr. Morris arrived. He would have a chicken milanese, a glass of red wine, and a cookie. A biscotti. Almonds kept to a minimum. He did not think of anything when taking his lunch. He preferred the silence.

Returning to his office, he would organize his next trip. For years, he had had his pick of destinations. This was no longer the case. Florian did not understand the purpose of an in-person meeting. A wire transfer spoke for itself. Unfortunate, Mr. Morris thought.

He would go through his files, perusing all of his potential clients. He would find the client closest to Athens. He had spent a few summers there, doing little digs and expeditions in between his adventures on the beach. He had even gotten the chance to join the late master Julius Norwich on one of his famous excavations. Indeed, Mr. Morris was Norwich’s star pupil. Norwich had never told him as much, but Mr. Morris was the only one of the great man’s students to have ever received one of his Christmas compositions.

The trip excited him. He was delighted by the possibility of seeing the Acropolis again. He favored the Greek Orthodox cathedrals of Athens, but there was a certain magic to the temple on the hill. He valued travel. It was how a man expanded his view of the world. The great writers had all traveled. Some might say that their books captured everything. For a time, Mr. Morris thought the same. Yet, seeing these places with his own two eyes had convinced him that there was something that no writer could capture, something hidden— a presence, a concreteness that no simulacrum could ever match. He would be honored to go on such a trip, even if it was to see a German billionaire who was only attempting to resell a painting.

At 5:00pm, Mr. Morris would pack his things. Every pen, every paper, every picture, they would all return from whence they came. He would open his desk drawer, take a cookie from the tin that his sister had sent him many months ago, and prepare to leave.

As he left his building, he would encounter Florian’s secretary. She had a message. Urgent. Mr. Morris had dealt with many of these messages in the days before the Florians of the world. He inquired. The secretary responded. The Zurvan Sheet Music, it was soon to be placed in a museum, and, as every museum does, it had its acquisitions appraised. A new appraiser had been brought in to do his due diligence, and after weeks of grueling examination, uncovered that the Zurvan manuscript was not, in fact, the original. A copy. A fine copy, but a copy nonetheless. Mr. Morris paused. He considered. How did they know? She said that she had heard from Florian that there was an edit made, an edit scrawled in a form of graphite that had not been in wide circulation until 1925. Hmm. A single detail. Charming. Mr. Morris thanked Florian’s secretary. He shook her hand and tipped his hat. He then walked across York Avenue, towards 64th Street.

This would be the last time anyone would see Armand Morris. No body was discovered. No grisly murder was unearthed. The police said that he was simply… gone. For most, only the little things about Armand Morris would remain fixed in the memory. The fastidiousness of his style, his blue shirt, the smoke that curled over his shoulder, and the way he would begin every sentence with “perhaps.” For myself, I remember the way he stood in every doorway, endlessly amused that he could travel from room to room.