“Okay, hold that in your mind while I tell you the rest of the story.”
“I’ll try,” Colin said, his clipped tones betraying his confusion.
“Colette told me to call this Klinman guy in France.”
“The reason you went to Paris, I remember,” Colin said.
Elm felt a poke of guilt behind her ribs. The baby flipped inside her. “That, and … But initially, I didn’t call him, because of Colette, right?”
“Colette the cow.”
Elm smiled weakly at his attempt to cheer her with Irish slang. “You’re not going to like this.”
“I can tell.”
“But his drawings were good, or they looked good. Not good enough for the auction house. But, I mean, decorative, convincing. Do you remember we went to that party in TriBeCa, and I met that art adviser? So I took Klinman’s drawings and gave them to her and she sold them and we split the money.”
“Elm.” Colin’s disappointment was palpable from the bass of his voice.
“Their provenances were—they were all stolen from Jewish families during World War II, and just recently returned. The families didn’t want to come forward.”
“I don’t understand, Elm.” Colin always thought the best of Elm, refused to recognize her faults, even when they were so obvious they might have been tattooed across her forehead. “The drawings were fake?”
“Well, that’s hard to prove. But they weren’t … right.”
“Couldn’t you X-ray them?”
Elm said, “FTIR is expensive, plus it’s better for paintings.” Elm looked at Colin, really looked at him for the first time since she began speaking. So far, she could tell by the set of his jaw that he was angry, but not so much that he would not forgive her. She wished she could stop talking, stop time, or stop her involvement in this story right here, at the part where her actions were merely bad, not despicable. But it was too late. She had to let it all out.
“Sounds like straight shite.”
“Can you please not speak again until I’m done?” Elm said, impatience crowding her words. Stung, Colin stood, facing her.
“The whole thing blew up. Klinman was selling fakes and Indira Schmidt was one of his fences. And I was too dumb to suspect her because she’s this famous artist. I thought someone just copied the authentic pastel. Now I think maybe that was a test, by Klinman, to see how good, or how bad, my eye was, how blind I’d become since …” She held up both her hands to stop him from speaking. “An article came out a few days ago in the paper. Klinman was arrested in some sort of international sting operation. Indira is a person of interest. It’s only a matter of time until they come to talk to me.” Elm paused.
“Are you done?” Colin asked. He said it so nonchalantly, like he was asking her if she was done with the half-and-half so he could put some in his coffee.
“I wish,” Elm said.
“There’s something more? Something worse?”
Elm nodded. She began to breathe faster.
“Wait, what did you do with the money?” Colin spat.
“At that party, in TriBeCa, Relay told me that your friends, the whoosits, from Budokon class, were cloning their pet.”
“They’ve too much money and not enough sense.” Colin sighed. Then his face paled. His arms fell to his sides and his eyes opened wide.
“What? Elm? That’s impossible.”
Elm began to cry again. “It’s not impossible. I did it. This—” She pointed to her stomach. “This is Ronan.”
“Motherfucking hell!” Colin yelled. In response, Elm heard the television volume grow from the living room. Cartoon Dora was screaming now too, slightly louder than Colin. It wouldn’t be long before their grouchy downstairs neighbor came up to complain.
“Elm, you fecking eejit, what the hell have you done?” She had never seen Colin this angry; he spit a bit as he swore at her. His hands were curled now into fists. Elm was worried he might hit her, then hoped he would. She deserved to be hit, but he never would; he was not a violent man.
“Do you know how fucking illegal and experimental that is? How can you even be sure that it’s really his DNA? What if it comes out with five heads, or a tail or something?”
“It won’t,” Elm said. “You’ve been with me to the sonograms.”
“No one knows what happens to these clones.” Colin began to pace. “No one knows what happens when they grow up, if they grow up.”
“But—”
“No,” Colin roared. “Now you wait until I’m done. How could you think you could replace him? By getting another body that looked like him? How do you even know that it’s Ronan, that you didn’t get duped by some sawbones? Do you know what happens to all these animals people are cloning now? They die, Elm. How dare you set us up to lose him again? How dare you?”
Elm said, “Human clones aren’t like animal clones.… Something about the brain’s ability to re-myelinate?”
He closed his mouth and looked at her. “Who the fuck are you?” He stood up abruptly and left their room. Elm followed him down the hall in time to see him grab his jacket off the rack in the entryway, and slam the front door.
“Where’d Daddy go?” Moira asked, unfazed, as always, by her mother’s tears.
“Business trip.”
Gabriel
On his way to Colette’s house, Gabriel walked through the Passy Cemetery, a setting befitting his mood. The weather, however, was not cooperating. There was pale, cool sunshine and a light breeze, clouds passing quickly overhead, grouping and regrouping, forming interesting shapes. Maybe he could convince Colette to go to the park instead of somewhere fancy for dinner with her friends who spoke so quickly Gabriel had trouble following the conversation.
He had sensed that she was annoyed at him being in her apartment. She had begun to nag him to straighten up after himself, to do the dishes every once in a while. They had gotten into an argument, and Gabriel stormed off back to his apartment, where his roommates reintroduced themselves as a joke. Colette didn’t return his calls for two days, even though he apologized profusely. Then a third day went by, and Gabriel began to worry, spinning fantasies of a crashed cab, a fatal illness, or, worse, that she’d met someone whose future might be brighter than his.
Finally he’d reached her on the fourth day and she sounded glad to hear from him. She accepted his apology and said yes to meeting up with him that afternoon. He felt oddly insecure about their relationship. He didn’t want to examine what made him feel worried that she would dump him. Or, rather, that he would feel horrible when she dumped him. He was already feeling twinges of the humiliation, sadness, and self-loathing he would experience when it ended. Because it had to end. She was way out of his league. Beautiful, successful, popular, and, most important, French. She had the unattainable command of the French language and customs that he would never, ever master. She floated in and out of rooms, stores, parties, gliding through barely cracked doorways with wit and popularity, while he stomped into barriers, fumbling and clumsy.
What if he broke it off before she could? Might that work? He was starting to scare himself. He rang her buzzer and waited. There was no response. He rang again. Nothing. Maybe she was late. He checked his phone. He texted her. After fifteen minutes he went to the corner and ordered a coffee, which he drank standing at the bar and looking at her front door.
She arrived an hour and a half after they’d planned to meet. Colette didn’t even look around as she let herself in. Gabriel waited exactly five minutes. He ran through various fantasies in which he confronted her about her tardiness, her complete disregard for him or his time. In that scenario she apologized and confessed that she did it because she wanted him to break up with her; she loved him too much. Or, rather, she admitted to being purposely late so that he’d get fed up and dump her, saving her the trouble. In yet another reverie, he imagined her opening the door full of remorse, apologizing for the métro construction. Gabriel decided to say nothing to her and see if she wou
ld bring it up.
“Hey you.” She gave him a passionless kiss; she had been eating cheese. Then she hugged him, grabbing her elbows around his back. “So, skinny. Don’t you eat? Oh, sorry I’m late.”
Colette didn’t offer any further explanation. Gabriel swallowed a lump.
“Let’s pretend we never fought. Want to go see a film tonight? There’s a Billy Wilder retrospective at Action Christine.”
“Again?” Gabriel never understood why the French liked seeing old movies in the theater when you could watch them on DVD just as easily in your house, for ten euros less.
“You’ll get to spend time with me in the dark,” she said suggestively.
“Fine,” he agreed. He excused himself to the bathroom.
Once inside the tiny water closet, looking at the white tile above the toilet, dick in hand, Gabriel had a moment of self-pity, which he excused as clarity. Everything in his life started out full of promise, and it all petered out before it could be properly enjoyed. And why? Because Gabriel was always the wrong person. The right things happened, but they should not have happened to him. All these opportunities: the École, his mediocre solo show, his relationship with Colette, were doomed to expire because he was the object of them. This thought was comforting; it wasn’t his fault. It wouldn’t be his fault.
He pulled the chain and watched the liquid travel around in circles before it disappeared.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as he came out.
There were no words. He blew a breath out of his lips.
Colette laughed. “What is it?”
“I feel like … We’re fighting. My show, it only got attention because of Connois.”
“Oh, don’t start that again.” Colette lit a cigarette. She changed out of her business suit, an act that was completely devoid of eroticism. “You exploit him too. Hell, you’ve made tons of money forging his work.” Colette caught herself, and shut her mouth with an O. Seeing the awareness flood his face, she said, “You really thought I didn’t know? Is it possible you’re really that gullible?”
“That what?” Gabriel didn’t know the word.
“That you believe the good in everybody?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“How do you think Augustus got rid of his drawings? Your drawings?” Colette put down her cigarette to pull a dress over her head.
“He sold them.”
“Right.” Colette nodded. She hung her suit in the small closet. “To whom? Without a provenance. How did he sell them?”
“Oh. Through you. To Tinsley’s.” Realization unfogged Gabriel’s head. He looked inside himself, ready to be angry, but found only hurt.
“Et bah voilà.” Colette waved her hand like it held a magic wand.
“That’s … that’s …”
“That’s …?” Colette encouraged him.
Gabriel shut his mouth. What was he going to say? Illegal? Immoral? He was hardly blameless, but it surprised him that Colette was this capable of deceit. It made him see her in a new light, respect her a bit more, and fear her too.
“Well, that explains why you’re with me,” Gabriel said.
“You have the self-esteem of a newt,” Colette said to the window, blowing out a ring of smoke. “Why would that explain that? What would that make me? Thank you for the compliment,” she said sarcastically. “No, I’m with you because you fuck like you’re scared shitless of me, and I like that in a man.”
“Oh.” Gabriel could think of nothing else to say. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to feel flattered or insulted.
Colette stubbed her cigarette out. “So forget about my uncle, and forget about art world political bullshit, and come here.”
“I’m too scared,” Gabriel joked. And Colette grabbed his shoulders, pulling him onto his back. When she kissed him he could taste the acidic, dusty remnants of the cigarette.
Every year Gabriel’s studiomates held a joint Christmas party, but with typical artistic languor, by the time they got around to organizing, it was February. Usually, there was a lot of one sort of food. One year everyone brought sausages and no one brought baguettes. Another there were eighteen bottles of wine and no food. This year, it appeared to be almost all side dishes: tabbouleh, céleri rémoulade, and shredded carrot salad.
Hans’s wife had the baby in a sort of sling across her abdomen, and Hans inched as far away from her as possible. He looked tired, his skin hanging off his face. Didier started the grill, set up in the middle of the warehouse. He was wearing an apron that said “Kiss the cook” in English.
Gabriel brought Didier another beer.
“Hey,” Didier said. “Where’s Colette?”
Gabriel lifted the corner of his mouth and shrugged. He had been trying to get ahold of her for two days, but she wasn’t even returning his texts.
“Are you no longer dating?”
“Why, do you want my secondhand kisses?”
“Ha,” Didier said. He snorted and turned the lonely brochette 180 degrees. “I just wondered.”
“I don’t know,” Gabriel answered the earlier question. “Yeah, I mean, I guess.” He wanted Didier to ask him further, to probe a little bit so that Gabriel could admit he had asked her to the barbecue but she had blown him off. I don’t think it’s my crowd, she’d said.
Didier took the sole brochette off the grill and put it on a waiting plate. “Really? No one else brought meat?”
“I have some veggie burgers,” Marie-Laure said.
“I’d rather eat Hans’s shorts,” Didier said.
“I like them,” Marie-Laure said.
“Hans’s shorts?”
“Don’t be such a fucking adolescent.”
Sitting down on the crates and broken folding chairs that made up the “courtyard” of the studio, Gabriel took his minuscule bite of beef and pushed the salads around on his plate. Everyone shivered in the cold.
Marie-Laure sat on her new boyfriend’s lap, feeding him playfully. She was wearing a short skirt that revealed her underwear when she sat, white with red stripes. Didier was staring right at it. Hans took his turn with the baby, holding her in one arm and drinking giant gulps of beer with the other.
Gabriel felt clouds of gloom descend over him. He sometimes got this way, especially on Sundays. Everything in Paris was closed, the harsh metal grates like prison bars. Now, surrounded by friends, he was supposed to be enjoying himself, but instead he saw Hans trying to escape from his family; Didier acting like a fourteen-year-old, his fancy show having done nothing for his career; Marie-Laure giving too much to yet another loser; and Gabriel himself, his dreams of a solo show turning out to be not the success he’d hoped for after all. The lump in his throat got bigger, and he worried he might cry. He put down his plate to go inside, but his studio, dark, musty, full of his failures writ large on canvas, depressed him further. He went back outside to join Hans in drinking himself into oblivion.
He was finishing his third beer when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out, assuming it was Colette, finally.
Instead, it was a text from Lise. “Must meet. Biche Blanche. 1 hr.”
Gabriel stared at his phone. What could be so urgent? He felt preemptively guilty, like he’d done something terribly wrong and would have to beg forgiveness. But he couldn’t think of what he’d done to Lise. Maybe she’d left her husband and wanted to declare her love for Gabriel. Maybe she’d gotten fired from Ambrosine’s. Maybe Ambrosine offered her a show. Maybe Ambrosine wanted to offer Gabriel a show.
When he got to the café she was smoking and drinking a Cognac. He gave her two kisses and discovered that she smelled like cigarettes instead of her usual lemongrass perfume.
“You’ve read this, I assume.” She plopped Le Monde down in front of him. Her tone was accusatory.
“I don’t really read news. In French.”
Lise was wearing a low-cut top. He could see the scaffolding of her ribs above the shirt. Too thin, he thought.
“Read.
” She nudged the paper at him again.
Gabriel held the paper out farther so he could read the small type. It took him awhile to read the article. When he was done, he read it again. Lise stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. His coffee came.
His mind spun. Klinman had been arrested? Think, he forced himself. He drank a sip of coffee, trying to hide behind the cup. Klinman arrested. Where was Colette? What would happen to Gabriel? Klinman could tell the authorities it was Gabriel who forged the drawings. But it hadn’t happened yet, so it was possible Klinman wasn’t going to implicate Gabriel. Except that Gabriel would be such an easy patsy, and he was totally expendable. The feeling of guilt, of needing absolution, returned to his stomach, and his legs began to bounce under the table. Lise was looking at him expectantly.
“The hotel drawings we did? Were those for this guy?”
“How did you know?” Gabriel said, not answering the question.
“What happened to them?” Lise asked.
“What do you mean? I don’t know.” This was not a lie. He truly didn’t know. He hadn’t thought about the hotel drawings in a while. Possibly they really were for a hotel. He resolved to ask Klinman about it. In fact, he had a lot to talk to the man about.
“Is there a chance they were used as fakes?” Lise blew smoke down toward her feet. “It’s just, why would he be commissioning drawings for a hotel? Especially drawings in the specific style of certain artists.”
Gabriel said nothing.
“That’s my daughter,” Lise said quietly.
“Sorry?”
“The drawing they talk about in the article. In the style of Ganedis. I sketched Hélène with our shih tzu.”
Gabriel looked at Lise blankly. He had no idea what she was talking about.
“Here—” She ran her finger down the column. The nail had broken close to the quick. “There, they mention a gouache of a girl with a dog.”
“That could be anyone,” Gabriel said.
“My mother gave Hélène that yellow dress.” She held Gabriel’s gaze.
“I don’t know what to say,” Gabriel said.
A Nearly Perfect Copy: A Novel Page 29