A Nearly Perfect Copy

by Allison Amend

  He turned to help Patrice and Paulette and their intern put out cheese and wine. The smell of the melting cheese made his stomach roil and he stepped outside for a moment. The streets were bustling with people coming home from work, young people, like him. Only he wasn’t so young anymore. Artists, jugglers, dancers, designers. Could the world hold this many creative types? Could it support them all?

  The first several guests were friends of the Picluts, middle-aged, gray-haired men and overly made-up women tottering on high heels. They shook his hand and commented asininely on the art. “Oh, the light!” “I love the use of red here. So deft.” And, Gabriel cringed to hear, “I see the Connois influence. Is that cultivated on your part or innate?”

  More and more people arrived until there was a veritable crowd. He made his way to the bar and downed his second glass of red wine. He knew he should eat something. The room was getting warmer and he started to feel a bit tipsy. But the cheese plate was picked over and someone had eaten all the grapes.

  Marie-Laure was kissing his cheeks. Then her boyfriend was kissing them. He was touched that she had come. She squeezed his arm and said how much she admired the work, how far his style had come and how happy she was for him. She looked genuine. “I was supposed to tell you that Hans couldn’t come. Something about his wife and a cough. But I think it’s really rude that Didier isn’t here. We went to his show.”

  Gabriel was formulating an answer when he saw Colette and Lise walk in together. They were a study in contrasts, Lise white-blond and Colette dark, elbows hooked conspiratorially so that Gabriel gave an involuntary smile to see them together.

  “Super!” Colette gave him a kiss. “But wait, I told them not to hang that there. Excuse me.” She marched off to see the Picluts, leaving Gabriel with Lise.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she said, squeezing his hand. He smiled again. “You did it.” Her approval, her praise, was like a jolt of caffeine. He wanted to talk to her, to take her in his arms and hug her with joy, but there were more people, tapping his shoulder to get his attention, and he was pulled away before he could thank her. The room was crowded now. Paulette grabbed his arm and pulled him over to Après-midi au Supermarché no. 1. “Look! I’m putting a dot!” The dot was yellow, which meant someone had put a hold on it (red would have meant a purchase). Someone had actually put down money as a deposit on his work.

  An old man came through the door, leaning heavily on the arm of his young friend. For a second, Gabriel thought it might be his old adviser LeFevre from the École, but that would have been impossible. The man was surely dead by now. He felt his cheeks flush. He would have been embarrassed to show him his work. How disappointed LeFevre would have been at this pandering.

  “So much talent,” someone said next to him; Gabriel heard it from LeFevre’s mouth—a sad lamentation that he’d done nothing with it. But it was a woman wearing a pearl and diamond necklace, obviously slumming in the new hip part of town. And she was saying it positively, and Patrice was behind him; Gabriel said obediently, “You’re too kind. Thank you so much.”

  “No, thank you,” the woman said, and Gabriel realized that a month ago this would have made him laugh.

  Marie-Laure was in front of him again. “It’s too crowded; we’re taking off.” The taciturn boyfriend kissed his cheeks again.

  At some point the evening tipped and the numbers began to get smaller until finally the only ones in attendance were the art students hovering near the wine and Colette.

  “Look!” Paulette said. “One red dot!”

  “That’s not bad,” Patrice said.

  “It’s the smaller one, isn’t it?” Gabriel asked.

  “Still,” Patrice said.

  “Congratulations.” Paulette refilled his wineglass.

  What was he supposed to do the next day? He went to the studio. His space seemed larger emptied of work. He sat down in the folding chair and stared at the splatter patterns on the floor. He didn’t really feel like working. It was like going jogging the day after running a marathon. His artist muscles were tired.

  He decided to straighten up his studio. Some of his brushes could use a good washing, not the quick rinse he usually gave them. He set them in turpentine to soak. And maybe he should paint the walls again. He could go out and buy white paint. With the advance from the “red dot.”

  Marie-Laure stuck her head in to congratulate him. “Great show. Fantastic. I think that art blog guy was there.”

  “Which art blog guy?”

  “He calls himself Sir Veille. Get it? Like surveillance?”

  Gabriel didn’t get it. That is, he got the surveillance part but didn’t understand what the double entendre was. “What does he write?”

  “A blog. An art blog.”

  “Oh,” Gabriel said. He wasn’t actually sure what that was.

  “On the Internet?” Marie-Laure raised her voice; his confusion must have registered on his face. “The thing on the computer?”

  “Oh, yeah, that. I just didn’t understand your accent.” Gabriel recalled that these online diaries were gaining in importance. In some circles they already outstripped professional art critics.

  “Anyway, that’s a good sign.”

  “Unless he hated it,” Gabriel said.

  “All press is good press,” Marie-Laure said.

  “Baudelaire?”

  “I don’t know who said it.” Marie-Laure missed his sarcasm. She went back into her studio.

  Just sketch, he told himself. Get lead on paper. He opened his sketchbook and hovered over the page. Don’t analyze, he thought, just sketch. Why did he even care what critics thought? They were all failed artists.

  A half hour later he looked at what he’d done. He’d drawn his shoe. But it was unmistakably a shoe in the style of Brueghel. The same hatching, the same stiff lines. He ripped the page up, disgusted. He couldn’t even sketch like himself anymore. He was simply a cipher, a sponge, sopping up others’ styles.

  Gabriel went outside to walk while the brushes soaked. Didier was smoking a cigarette. “Man, I am so sorry I didn’t make it to the opening,” he said. He looked sheepish, crinkling the corners of his mouth in concern. “I had the worst day, and I just couldn’t … I mean …”

  “Don’t worry,” Gabriel said. “It was too crowded anyway.”

  “I feel awful. I mean, you came to mine. I promise to go look at it this week.”

  “Hey, don’t worry,” Gabriel said. Then it struck him. Had Didier not come because he was jealous, the same way Gabriel had contemplated not attending Didier’s show last spring? Was it possible that Gabriel had achieved enough success to inspire envy? The thought made him smile.

  That afternoon, he went to the Internet café and paid his five euros to log on. He tried to type in various versions of what he had heard Marie-Laure say, but he didn’t find the art blog. Finally, he asked the teenager next to him how to find something when you don’t know the name.

  The kid looked at him with undisguised disdain. His hair framed his head like yarn on a doll, and he flicked his head back to get it out of his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  Gabriel explained himself as best he could, and the kid got up and began to type on his keyboard. Within seconds, Sir Veille’s page was up.

  “Thanks,” Gabriel said.

  “Where are you from?” the boy asked.

  “Spain.”

  “Don’t you want to go home?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “Why?”

  The boy shrugged back. Something in his gesture was mocking, but Gabriel turned to his screen.

  Nothing about the opening. Why had he listened to Marie-Laure? He was angry at himself for being disappointed. Sir Veille was a part of the same establishment that had shunted him aside for years. Why should this blogger be any different? He hated that he still craved acceptance.

  A couple of days later, Marie-Laure burst into his studio. “Here! I printed it out for you. It’s good. Well, mostly.”

  S
he handed Gabriel a piece of paper. “What is this?” he asked.

  “A review. Of your show. By Sir Veille.”

  “Oh. I’ll read it later.”

  “What?” Marie-Laure said. “That’s ridiculous. Read it now.”

  Gabriel had trouble making out the small print in the dim light. “Can you read it?” he said. “I have a headache.”

  “ ‘Swimming down Canal Saint-Martin the other night, I stopped in for free booze at Galerie Piclut. The cheese was decidedly low-quality, and there were stems that suggested that once there might have been grapes, now long gobbled by hungry students. It has always seemed uncouth to me (and for this you can thank my mother) to take grapes and leave the stems. Break off the stem and take it with you!

  “ ‘Oh, right, the art. The artist, skinny and sweaty, is a descendant of Marcel Connois of the École des Hiverains. Yes, that Connois. But this grandchild is an École des Beaux Arts graduate. Swarthy, sexy, all the usual stereotypes. He’s riffed on his relative’s style, painting marketplaces and still lifes and playing with light, but with an ironic twist. Street scenes become African markets, sun shining refracted off dark black skin. Boats on water are barges carrying fruit. There’s a decent use of color and an obvious flair for satire (if not for a sense of humor. The paintings seem sometimes to not get their own joke). Mostly it appears to be an attempt by a foreigner to claim Paris, which is the subject of the art itself. Whether this goal is worthy of artistic inquiry is up for debate, but the artist does succeed in carving out his own space in the city. Overall, worthwhile if you’re in the neighborhood, to get a glimpse of contemporary Connois.’ ”

  Marie-Laure let her hands fall to her sides.

  “That’s good?” Gabriel asked.

  “It sounded better the first time I read it,” she admitted. “But he called it worthwhile.”

  “If you’re in the neighborhood.”

  “Lots of people go to that arrondissement,” Marie-Laure said brightly. She handed him the page and left.

  Gabriel held it far from his eyes and squinted, reading it again. He hadn’t caught it the first time, but one line stood out. “The artist does succeed in carving out his own space in the city.” He couldn’t help but feel proud. Finally, Gabriel owned Paris.

  Gabriel sat in Colette’s apartment. He was mostly living there, though Colette was in New York nearly half the month. Gabriel felt like he was living on a movie set, the views fake and the props hollow. It was still hot, and Gabriel sat on the love seat, watching Colette’s small television. He picked up the top catalog from the large pile Colette used to form a side table. He fanned himself, then saw that it was a Tinsley’s catalog from last spring. He began to flip through it.

  He thumbed through glossy pages of antique bric-a-brac. Most of what they auctioned wasn’t even art. It was artisanry, not at all the same thing. So he flipped to the index in the back. Automatically, he looked for Connois’s name and there it was. For sale was Mercat, a pastel.

  Gabriel’s heart pounded loudly in his ears. He felt caught suddenly, like in a dream of being chased and then arrested by the police for an unspecified crime that he knew he’d committed. He turned quickly to the page. The pastel was not reproduced. Instead there was a square that said “Image not available.” He read the description next to the entry: “Marcel Connois, 1825–1889. Mercat (Market). Signed by the artist. Pastel on paper. Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the family of the present owner. Literature: Connois’s Flights of Fancy, 1901, described.” The dimensions were listed in the ridiculous American measuring system; he wasn’t able to tell if the painting was his or not. The reserve was 750,000 euros. For something Gabriel did. For something Klinman paid him 10,000 euros to do.

  Gabriel threw the catalog down and slumped in his chair. He permitted himself a brief fantasy in which he went back in time to New York and burst in on the auction, announcing the hoax. There would be cinematic gasps, followed by newspaper articles, then international recognition.

  “Fuck!” he swore out loud. The art world was stupid, insipid, without taste, and he still wanted its approval. No, he corrected himself, not its approval, its money. It wasn’t fucking fair that some artists got plucked to fame. He wasn’t asking for much. A nice studio, with light. The occasional vacation. He’d been living in France for nearly twenty years now. Well, existing, anyway. He wanted to be successful. He wanted to make enough money off his art that he could paint/create full-time. His art, not his personality, or his ancestry. Bullshit, he told himself. He had changed his style to suit a gallery. He had forged his ancestor’s work, passed it off as original. God only knows what happened to it then. So what artistic standards was he supposed to be upholding?

  His whole life was based on a principle he abhorred. He wanted to win a game he didn’t believe in playing. No wonder he had spent the past fifteen years angry and depressed. Who wouldn’t be when faced with the gaping abyss of existence? His happiness at his success of the last few months was the result of a grand coincidence that acted like some kind of numbing drug, so that he was in a fog of complacency.

  He went to the studio, but felt his fury grow, speeding through his veins. He spent a few hours banging around cans of solvent.

  “What are you doing?” Marie-Laure asked.

  “Trying not to kill someone,” Gabriel answered. This admission fueled his rage, and Marie-Laure scurried away. He heard footsteps and then Hans stood in the doorway.

  “What’s up, man?” he asked. “Did you threaten to kill Marie-Laure?”

  “Those fucking sons of whores,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “No one. I’m just …”

  “Hey, man, chill out. What happened?”

  “Nothing.” Gabriel couldn’t hide the irritation in his voice. “Everyone gets something from me. Everyone but me.”

  “Is this about me not coming to the show? My old lady had bronchitis.”

  “Never mind.” Gabriel headed for the door. Hans blocked him and the two men played a game of chicken. At the last second, Hans stepped back. Gabriel’s shoulder brushed him as he stormed out.

  He tried to fuel his rage all the way to Klinman’s. It took more than an hour, and there was a point at which the métro had a transfer with his line. He considered just going home. But then he saw a pair of shoes, expensive, handmade. They were on the feet of a woman sitting near him. The heels were tremendously high, the leather shiny. At the end of the shoe, a pedicured foot poked its toes out. Her ankles were slim in the French way—he wondered often how they held women up, calves so thin he could wrap his hand around one.

  Finally he looked up at her face. She drew her arms in and after a couple of seconds stood up to go across the car and sit with her back to him.

  This snub reignited his anger. He willed the train to travel faster and leaped out the doors at Klinman’s stop before they had fully opened.

  It occurred to him that Klinman might not be there, and he wondered what he would do if that were the case. He took the stairs two at a time instead of waiting for the elevator, arriving at Klinman’s door breathing hard.

  The door was open, the lock turned so that it wouldn’t close all the way. He heard noise coming from inside the apartment, soft music, voices. He pushed the door.

  The apartment had a large table in its center that Gabriel hadn’t noticed before. Seated at it were about a dozen people, who stopped in the middle of their conversations to stare at his entrance.

  “Ahh, Gabriel,” Klinman said, standing up. “So glad you could make it.” As though he had been invited and was merely tardy.

  Gabriel had a speech planned. He opened his mouth to begin the recitation when the focus of all those pairs of eyes made him turn red.

  “I need to speak to you,” Gabriel said.

  “Would you like a drink?” Klinman nodded at a uniformed waiter who approached Gabriel until his angry look made the waiter shrink away. “All right, then, we can go in here. I won�
��t be a minute,” he said to his guests.

  He led Gabriel to a room off the salon. It was a bedroom, smaller than Gabriel would have guessed. In contrast to the dark, clubby main room, it was bright and minimalist. A platform bed with no headboard and a midcentury modern dresser. Blackout shades and an upholstered chair. There was no nightstand, but two sconces perched above the pillows, protruding from the wall on spider arms.

  Klinman made no move to sit down. He set his drink on a small doily on the dresser and folded his arms. “What do you—”

  “No, you listen.” Gabriel pointed a finger at Klinman. It was dirty from his messing about in the studio and seemed to diminish his authority. He also hadn’t noticed how tall Klinman was. His courage and anger began to ebb. Still, he had come for a reason.

  “That’s it,” he said. “I’m done forging your pictures. You’re making money, everyone is making money off of me. And I’m not making shit.”

  “Please don’t raise your voice, I have guests. You are making money, I’ll remind you. But all right, if you don’t want to work anymore, that’s fine. I can find someone else.”

  A siren called out, getting louder as it passed the building, then quieting again. “Just try,” Gabriel said. “I’d like to see you find someone who can do Connois like I can.”

  “I’m sure there is no one,” Klinman said, “but there are others who can do others.”

  Klinman’s nonchalance surprised Gabriel. He had expected the man to apologize, offer more money. Then he would have the opportunity to refuse him. Gabriel had even entertained a scenario in which he got to punch Klinman. But here was a reaction that he hadn’t planned for. He saw now he should have.

  “Ha,” he scoffed. “Try to find others when the police are after you!”