by Weeks, Abby
She sighed.
“You’re insane, Gabe,” she said. “How do you ever expect to get away with this?”
“You let me worry about that.”
“How can I let you worry about it? If you get caught, I get caught. I’m worried already just from being here.”
She looked at the blank canvas. It was massive. Sixty-four inches high and over fifty inches wide. This was from the almost four-hundred-year-old batch that Gabe had somehow managed to get a hold of. The canvas alone was worth tens of thousands of dollars. It was a forger’s wet dream.
“Will you do it?” Gabe said.
Ariel had to admit, the challenge was tempting. Even working on a canvas like that, it was a thrill just thinking about it. She was terrified at the thought of putting paint on that canvas though.
“I presume you have paint that will match tests too,” she said.
“I’ve got paint.”
She looked at him. She hadn’t painted anything like this in years. She’d been good, she knew she could match Rembrandt’s brush strokes if she wanted to, she just wasn’t sure she had the courage to go through with it.
“Gabe,” she said.
“Ariel.”
She wanted to bring up something that they hadn’t ever spoken of before. She usually wouldn’t have spoken of this to him, she was very private when it came to her art, but they’d just made love the night before and she was feeling close to him, connected in a way that she never really had when they were married. Now that they were divorced, now that he was cheating on another woman, and was cheating with her, she finally felt as if she was on an equal footing with him.
“I never told you the full reason I dropped out of art school.”
“You got pregnant. You married me. We opened the gallery. You did what you had to do. Life took over.”
She looked out the enormous windows at the waves of the ocean.
“But there was more to it than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“It wasn’t just because of Becky that I dropped out of college. It wasn’t just because of our marriage.”
“What was it then?”
“I dropped out because I felt like a fraud.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’ve never really spoken about this to anyone.”
“You were the real deal, Ariel. I remember the fuss they made over you at that school when they first saw your work.”
“I was talented.”
“Yes you were.”
“But I felt like I was just going through the motions. Like I was just echoing the art I’d seen from others. I didn’t feel like I had my own voice.”
Gabe was quiet. For once it seemed he didn’t know what to say.
“I felt like I was too young, like I didn’t know enough about the world, or about life, to offer anything new or unique. I felt that I hadn’t seen enough of life to start mirroring it with my art.”
“You were very young,” Gabe said, “but you were wise too. You knew as much about life as anyone else. You had as much right as anyone else to paint it.”
“I know,” Ariel said. “I know that now. And I’ve seen so much more of life now, too.”
“Enough to have a voice of your own.”
“I think so,” she said. “I think if I wanted, I could create something original now, offer a perspective that hasn’t been seen before.”
“So you’re saying you won’t do the forgery?” Gabe said.
Ariel didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what she was saying. She hadn’t painted in years, at least nothing more than sketches and concept pieces that kept her skills honed. She hadn’t even seriously considered painting either. She’d long thought that the only place open to her in the art world was as a curator, a gallery buyer, a judge of the work of others.
She looked at Gabe. He was staring at her intently, waiting for her response. She could see that he’d put so much effort into this already. He’d invested so much. He was possibly fifty or a hundred grand into this scheme and they hadn’t even started the forgery yet.
“What’s the plan?” she said.
“For collecting the reward?”
“For getting the money and not going to jail.”
Gabe looked around the room as if making doubly sure no one else was in there. She’d seen the amount of locked doors they’d had to pass through to get in there. She knew they were completely alone.
“I’ve purchased a building on the outskirts of Amsterdam. It was destroyed in a fire in 1991. It’s an apartment building.”
“It wasn’t rebuilt?”
“No. Too many structural issues. The area hasn’t been that hot of a real estate market. It’s just been sitting vacant.”
“How much did you pay for it?”
“Enough,” Gabe said.
“Gabe,” Ariel said. “How much money have you poured into this scheme so far?”
“That’s not important,” Gabe said. “When we collect the five million I’ll be well into the black.”
She raised her eyebrows questioningly. One thing about Gabe, he’d always been a gambler at heart.
“Tell me about the building.”
“It turns out that the previous owners were involved in organized crime, one of the biggest drug rings in Holland. The four men who died in the fire were wanted drug dealers at the time.”
“I see,” Ariel said.
“They imported massive quantities of cocaine. They also imported a variety of other things for the black market. And that’s not all.”
“What else?”
“The insurance reports from the fire detailed a massive safe that was discovered in the wreckage.”
“What happened to the safe?”
“Nothing. It’s still in the wreckage. The door melted to the body of the safe. They couldn’t open it.”
“They didn’t try?”
“It appears they didn’t. They just left it. The insurance company wouldn’t have been entitled to the contents even if they got it open. The owners never came to claim it. It’s all documented in the public reports.”
“Wasn’t anyone curious to see inside the safe?”
“I guess not. They probably didn’t think there was anything valuable in it.”
“So you’re going to open it?”
“I’m going to get plans drawn up to develop the building, turn it into condos. I’m going to get a team to remove the safe and bring it to a welding facility to dismantle it. And I’m going to say I found the canvas inside, completely by chance.”
“They’re going to be all over it,” she said.
“Yes they are.”
“They’re going to have every art expert in the world examine it.”
“And what they’re going to find is a four-hundred year old Dutch canvas, with four-hundred year old Dutch paint, perfectly matching Rembrandt’s painting right down to the marks on the back of the canvas and behind the frame.”
Ariel shook her head. It was a crazy plan. She had no idea if it would succeed or not.
“You’re just going to call up the museum and tell them you have their painting?”
“I’m going to call a reporter. Pretend I have no idea what I just found.”
“You’re insane, Gabe.”
“So what do you say?” he said. “Are you going to be crazy with me?”
Ariel couldn’t believe she was allowing herself to get sucked into this scheme. She knew it was crazy to even hope they would get away with it. But she found herself nodding her head. “Let’s do it,” she said.
X
BECKY WAS CERTAIN SOMETHING WAS going on between Kyle and Trudy. On her way home from a movie with her dad she noticed him on the street. She’d thought he was on the way to her house but before the car caught up to him he turned the corner to go down Trudy’s driveway. It was after ten at night. What the hell was he doing at Trudy Luxton’s after ten at night? There was only one thing s
he could think of.
Trudy Luxton was trying to steal her boyfriend. How was that even possible? Trudy was her mother’s age. She could imagine having to fend off girls from her high school, especially seniors, but having to fight to keep her boyfriend away from a middle-aged woman who was old enough to be his mother? That was too much!
As soon as she got home she ran up the stairs to her bedroom and tried to call him. There was no answer. Of course there was no answer. Why the hell would there be an answer? She was only his girlfriend. He was only her first real love, the first boy she’d ever been intimate with in her life, and now he was cheating on her! She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid. She’d spent her entire childhood vowing never to become her mother, now here she was, just sixteen years old, and the boy she’d chosen to go out with was already trying to get one over on her. How did women ever tolerate men?
One thing was for certain, he wasn’t going to get away with this. Not on her watch!
XI
WHEN BECKY WOKE UP THE next morning she was determined to do something. She wasn’t going to be like her mother who had spent years letting the man she loved get away with infidelity. She took a quick shower, got dressed, grabbed an apple from the kitchen counter and went straight over to Kyle’s house. It was still an hour before they needed to leave for school and she knew she’d catch him getting ready. She wasn’t taking any risks that he’d try to avoid her.
“Oh, Becky!” Veronica said when she answered the door.
“Good morning Mrs. Roycroft. Is Kyle here?”
Veronica looked a little confused that she was there so early but she let her in and told her Kyle was still in his room. Becky didn’t even knock when she got upstairs. She just walked straight into Kyle’s room and announced her presence.
“Becky!” Kyle said, a little startled. He was still in his boxers and was standing at the door to his bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth. He finished brushing and rinsed his mouth and then came back out.
“You’re here early,” he said. He came over to kiss her but she stopped him.
“What’s going on?” she said. She wasn’t going to get sidetracked.
“What do you mean?”
“Something’s going on between you and Trudy Luxton. I know it. I saw you going over to her place last night. You’ve been going over there every chance you get.”
“No I haven’t.”
“Don’t lie to me Kyle. I’m not your wife. I’m your friend. We shouldn’t be keeping things from each other. Not yet. Not at this stage of our relationship.”
Kyle sighed. He sat down on the bed. Becky looked at him. He looked troubled, like he had something difficult to tell her. She knew then that she was right. The pain of it was outweighed by the satisfaction she got from having discovered the truth. Even more important than having a boyfriend was her ability to maintain her self-respect, and for Becky that meant not letting any man, no matter how perfect, cheat on her. She went over and sat down next to him.
“Just tell me everything,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world. We’re just kids.”
He looked up at her, into her eyes. “You’re so smart,” he said.
She nodded. She was still waiting for him to spill the beans.
“I’ve been a complete jerk,” Kyle said. “I cheated on you with Trudy. You’re right.”
Becky said nothing. Even if she’d wanted to hear the truth, it still hurt.
“I didn’t want to cheat on you,” Kyle said. “I didn’t have any intention of doing anything with any other girl in the world. I really didn’t.”
“But it happened anyway.”
“Becky. When you and I got intimate, when we did the things we did together, I was so happy I felt like I could have floated away into the clouds.”
“Then why did you cheat?”
“I don’t know, Becky. I honestly don’t. I have such strong feelings for you. I’m so attracted to you. There isn’t a girl in our school I’d rather date than you. I really wanted a future with you. I swear it.”
“But how can you say that now?”
“The thing with Trudy, I don’t want to make excuses, but it really did just happen before I even knew it. You remember that day I went over there to take her photo?”
“Of course I do. I hated that you were going over there.”
“Well, I got there, and she was dressed all sexy.”
“I knew it,” Becky said.
“And she just knew exactly what to do to me, Becky. It was almost like she hypnotized me. All I had in mind was taking photos, and the next thing I knew I’d had sex with her. It was unreal.”
“I bet it was,” Becky said. She wasn’t impressed with Kyle’s explanation but she knew it was probably the truth. She saw Trudy coming at him a mile away and she knew enough about boys to know that they didn’t have much resistance when a woman came on to them like that.
“I know this sounds like a cliché,” Kyle said, “but it basically was over before I even knew it had begun.”
“And then you went back for more last night,” Becky said.
Kyle looked at her and she knew he didn’t have any explanation for that. “Yes, I did. And I admit it, I pretty much knew what was going to happen last night and I went over anyway. I wanted it.”
Becky nodded and listened. She was quiet. She wasn’t sure what to say.
“The thing is,” Kyle said, “you want to know what I was thinking as I did those things with Trudy?”
“What?”
“I was thinking that I could use everything I learned with Trudy on you.”
“That’s weird.”
“No, listen,” Kyle continued. “She’s experienced. She knows about sex. I don’t know anything. I was thinking, whatever she told me to do, whatever she really liked, I could then do it to you, and you’d love it.”
Becky listened. It was actually a pretty smart idea. “Well,” she said, “it did feel really good when you went down on me.”
“Right,” Kyle said, “it was amazing.”
“It was amazing,” Becky said.
“So I was thinking,” Kyle continued, “that we could take everything I learn from Trudy, and we could use that to pleasure each other.”
Becky looked at him. She knew it was a crazy idea, she knew that wasn’t how monogamous relationships worked, but something about the idea thrilled her. It was the fact that she and Kyle together would be using Trudy. They’d be the ones getting all the benefit, taking all her knowledge and then using it to make their own sex life better. It would be something that she and Kyle could have, that they could share, that would be all theirs.
And it would be kinky as hell!
“Show me what she taught you last night,” Becky said.
Kyle looked at her. “Right now? My mom’s downstairs!”
“Okay,” Becky said, “but tonight, you’re going to take me up to our spot in your truck, and you’re going to show me everything.”
XII
ARIEL STOOD IN FRONT OF the enormous, four-hundred-year-old canvas and took a deep breath. She was really doing it, she was going ahead with Gabe’s plan and getting herself involved in what could possibly be the most dangerous and foolhardy project of her life. And the thing was, despite all the risk, all of the danger of their project, she was thrilled. She couldn’t wait to test herself, test her skill against this canvas.
She picked up the brush and examined it. Gabe had thought of everything. Even the brushes were ancient, made of the same hog-bristles that Rembrandt had used. The handles had been sharpened with a paring knife. It was another unusual technique that Rembrandt had pioneered, using the sharpened end of the brush to scratch into the primer or make markings in the paint. Gabe had thought of everything, right down to the tiniest detail.
She opened the pot of glue-chalk gesso and began putting down the first layer of primer. It was essential to prepare the canvas properly. When she’d layered on the primer
she went over to the window and waited for it to dry. She watched the waves of the Pacific rolling in onto the beach. It was an overcast day and there weren’t many people outside.
As she was sanding and smoothing the first primer layer Gabe came in.
“Hard at it?” he said.
“You’ve really gone all out,” Ariel said. “You’ve thought of everything.”
“This is going to work,” he said.
“You’ve even sharpened the brush handles.”
“Hey, I can do my homework as well as the best of them.”
It was true. He’d really impressed her with the quality of the preparations. This was what it took to defraud an art museum out of five million dollars.
“So what have you done so far?” Gabe said.
Ariel smiled. She knew he was eager. He was expecting to see an outline of the boat or something. To recreate this painting it was going to take a lot of time. There wouldn’t be much to see for a while.
“Well,” she said, “I put on the first layer of primer.”
“Oh yeah, the primer,” he said. He must have known about all that as he’d sourced the correct compounds for priming the canvas himself.
“It’s going to take a while to do this right,” she said.
“I know,” Gabe said. “I know how long it will take.”
“And then to let it all cure, it’s not going to be fast.”
Gabe nodded. “It’s going to be worth it though,” he said. “When it’s done.”
Ariel walked over to him. “If you don’t mind my asking,” she said, “what possessed you to go to all this trouble, to take this massive risk? You’re making a small fortune at the gallery right now, aren’t you?”