The Art of Confidence

by Wendy Lee

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Came to see the Ad Reinhardt retrospective. Never knew there could be so many different shades of black.” Kimi cocked her head to see the painting I had been perusing. “Are you interested in Andrew Cantrell?”

  I shook my head, not wanting to explain. So many questions hung between us in the awkward silence that followed. What happened after you left school? What are you doing now? Are you okay? But instead, I said, “I was just leaving.”

  “Me too,” Kimi said. “Let’s get lunch and we can catch up.”

  In the second-floor museum café, sandwiched between a Euro-hipster couple wearing the exact same jeans and two elderly ladies in elaborately patterned scarves, we briefly updated each other on our lives. I told Kimi about my job at the gallery and living with Sam in Queens, and she told me how she was staying at her parents’ in Brooklyn Heights and how she’d started volunteering at a summer school program for disadvantaged children.

  “Have you been working on your art?” I asked.

  Kimi fluttered her hand. “I haven’t thought about art since the day I left Amberlin. I felt like I was performing all the time—it was just too exhausting.”

  “So, was the stunt you pulled with your thesis a ‘performance’?”

  Kimi looked down at the table. “About that . . . I’m sorry I dragged you into it. I guess I didn’t believe enough in myself that I could write that silly paper. And everything seemed to come so easily to you—Sam, your thesis, your job. You seemed so sure of yourself.”

  “Me? You’re the one with that reputation on campus.”

  “Yeah, because I was afraid that if I wasn’t doing something outrageous, no one would pay attention to me. My mom says it’s because I’m an only child.” Kimi rolled her eyes. “Anything rather than put the blame on herself, I guess.”

  “So are you thinking of going back?” I asked. “To Amberlin?”

  “I meant what I said, I’m done with that place. I like the volunteer work I’m doing now. Maybe in the fall I’ll look into getting my teaching certification.”

  The idea of Kimi teaching young children was a little unnerving to me.

  “What about you?” she queried. “Are you working on anything?”

  I told her that I had a project, although not what it was.

  “You should use your connections at the gallery,” she said. “Get your first show.”

  I thought of Sandro Hess and how he’d gotten his show at the Lowry Gallery. It wasn’t as simple as someone liking your work; you had to be able to offer them something in return.

  “I don’t know if I should start where I work,” I said. “Besides, I don’t know how long the place is going to stay open.”

  “Why? What’s going on there?”

  Little by little, my doubts concerning Elegy and Caroline came tumbling out. It was as if I was compelled to share my thoughts about them to someone, and Kimi was the most likely person. Who else was there? Sam would probably say I was imagining things and should stay out of trouble. When I mentioned the possibility of a forgery, Kimi’s eyes gleamed.

  “So, you need to find proof that the painting is a fake,” she clarified.

  “Yes. But maybe it’s none of my business.”

  “Don’t you want to know the truth?”

  I had to admit I did. “How would I start trying to prove it?”

  Kimi leaned the palms of her hands against the edge of the table. “Okay, pretend that you’re writing a thesis on this painting by Andrew Cantrell. What would you do?”

  This felt like a trick question. “Um, research?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I already looked up these articles about Andrew Cantrell on the Internet—”

  “Lazy!” Kimi shouted and the Euro-hipster couple stared at us through their thick-rimmed glasses. “You need to go to the library.”

  So now you want to do research, I thought.

  Kimi pulled out her phone. “The New York Public Library is open until six. Come on!”

  So Kimi and I retraced my steps from that morning, back the ten blocks down Fifth Avenue to the main branch of the New York Public Library, past the stone lions that flanked its entrance, and to the Microforms Reading Room on the first floor. Kimi was right. Although some of the articles about Andrew Cantrell that turned up had been ones I had seen before in my cursory Internet search about him and Hazel Lowry, there were others from obscure publications I had never heard of.

  “Listen to this,” I said, stopping on an article in a magazine called Artsbeat. I began to read out loud. “ ‘Andrew Cantrell’s latest painting, Elegy, comes from a very tender place. In an exclusive interview with yours truly, the artist revealed the painting was inspired by his childhood and was dedicated to a special someone. And where can you find this dedication? No one looking at the painting will be able to tell, but the artist himself showed me the initials on the back in the lower right-hand corner. I can confirm that they do belong to a certain red-haired gallery owner . . .’”

  “Ugh,” Kimi said. “Who wrote this?”

  I checked the byline. “Someone named Marigold Guthrie.”

  Kimi rolled her eyes. “Total artist groupie. Well, now we know something about Elegy that isn’t visible in a photo. Can you check to see if there’s a dedication on the painting in the gallery?”

  I told her I would do it the next day at work, and after promising her I’d let her know what I found out, we parted just as the library was starting to close.

  When I got home, I flopped down sweatily on the sofa beside Sam and said, “You won’t believe who I ran into today. Kimi Kitano!” When his reaction was not as surprised as I expected, I stated the obvious. “You already know she’s been living in the city.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “We’ve kept in touch.”

  “And you never told me?” I felt like throwing a sofa cushion at him.

  “I didn’t think you wanted anything to do with her ever again.”

  And I hadn’t, until this afternoon. “Next time, please tell me if you are still in touch with my old roommate, who you used to sleep with.”

  “Okay,” he wisely said, knowing that I wasn’t in the mood for excuses. After a beat, he asked cautiously, “How did she seem?”

  “Good. Really good.”

  And she had. In fact, I would have considered it a toss-up as to who had recovered better from our suspension from school. Sure, I was living with my boyfriend rather than my parents, but my parents were still contributing to my rent, so I couldn’t exactly consider myself independent. My job at the Lowry Gallery paid so little that I was essentially a volunteer there, the same as Kimi at her summer school program. At least she seemed to be taking inspiration from that experience for the future, whereas every interaction or event I’d been a part of at the gallery had plunged me further into confusion. Now I was left to wonder whether I wanted to be an artist, when fraud—of the personal as well as literal kind—seemed to be the expected path.

  * * *

  I got to the Lowry Gallery early Monday morning, but when I opened the door, the alarm system had already been disabled. Caroline must have come down before me. Elegy had been removed from the wall where it had hung on Friday and taken to Caroline’s office, or upstairs to her apartment, or wherever she stored it. A ding came from my phone and I saw that Kimi had sent me a text: ????

  Painting is gone, I texted back.

  !!!! she replied.

  Caroline’s line was lit on her phone; she was talking to someone in her office. When she came out, a smile on her face, she saw me and looked perplexed. “Molly, you’re here early.”

  “There was nothing wrong with the train,” I replied easily. “Did you get some good news just now?”

  “Some very good news. Mr. Yu is stopping by to pick up the painting at noon before his flight home to Taiwan.”

  “Do you want me to pack it?” I asked, even though I had no idea how.

  Ca
roline looked me up and down as if it were an absurd question. “I’ve hired a packing service.”

  Of course she wouldn’t entrust the packing of a painting worth two million dollars to her assistant. But I didn’t know how I would be able check the back of the painting otherwise.

  When the two packers arrived, they followed Caroline to her office, where apparently the painting was being kept. She stayed behind to keep an eye on them while I manned the front desk.

  I texted Kimi. Help! Need a diversion. I was being melodramatic, but I knew that would get her attention.

  Be there soon, she replied.

  Kimi arrived at eleven o’clock wearing another cute sundress and oversize sunglasses perched on her head. I informed her that Mr. Yu was picking up the painting in an hour but that I hadn’t been able to check the back of it because Caroline was always around.

  Kimi raised her voice. “I really need to speak to your boss.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I told you, I need to speak to the gallery owner.”

  I raised my voice to meet hers. “Sure, I’ll go get her right away.”

  Kimi gave me an exaggerated thumbs-up.

  Caroline was sitting in her office amidst a pile of enough acid-free paper, foam corners, cardboard, and Bubble Wrap to outfit a post office.

  “There’s a client out front who wants to talk to you,” I said. “I’ll keep an eye on things here.”

  Caroline nodded and finally left her office. The packers had already wrapped the bottom of the painting but, putting as much authority in my voice as I could, I told them to redo it. Pretending to check their work, I examined the lower right-hand corner of the canvas.

  Nothing was there.

  “Something else wrong?” one of the packers asked me, impatient.

  “No,” I answered in a daze. “You can continue with your work.”

  Forgetting I had told Caroline I was keeping an eye on things, I wandered back out into the gallery. Although I had been convinced in my head that the painting was more likely a fake than not, to be faced with the actual proof was something else. Now I had to decide what to do with this information before Mr. Yu arrived.

  In the gallery, I heard Kimi saying, “. . . I really want to get something unique for my parents’ anniversary, and they love Disneyland. . . .”

  Just then, Mr. Yu showed up early.

  Over Caroline’s head, Kimi raised her eyebrows as if to ask, Is that him? I nodded, and she sprang into action.

  “Excellent,” she said. “I need an outsider’s opinion.” She approached Mr. Yu with her most flirtatious smile. “Pardon me, you look like someone who knows a lot about art. I’m thinking of buying this painting.” She gestured toward Sandro Hess’s painting in the gallery’s front window. “Do you think it’s worth ten thousand dollars?”

  Mr. Yu appeared startled but addressed her question seriously. “Twenty thousand, I think. At ten thousand, you are getting a bargain.”

  “Mr. Yu,” Caroline began, but Kimi steamrollered right over her.

  “Where are you from? Taiwan? My father is Japanese, but he does a lot of business in Taiwan. I know, the Taiwanese don’t have a good opinion of the Japanese because of World War II. . . .”

  I wondered if Caroline was as flummoxed by this cross-cultural history lesson as I was. She touched Mr. Yu’s hand to get his attention and said to Kimi, “Excuse us, my assistant can help you now.”

  But Kimi wasn’t done. “It was so nice talking to you,” she said to Mr. Yu.

  “Very nice talking to you, too,” he said, and reached inside his jacket pocket. I noticed he no longer wore the fancy silver watch he’d had the first time he visited. He presented Kimi with his card, the same as he’d done with me when we’d met. I guessed he did it with all the young ladies.

  Kimi took the card with both hands. “I’ve always wanted to visit Taiwan!” she exclaimed.

  “You’ve always wanted to visit Taiwan,” I said sardonically after Caroline led Mr. Yu back to her office.

  Kimi ignored my comment. “So, was there a dedication on the painting?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s a fake, then.”

  “Maybe there’s an explanation,” I said. “Maybe Andrew Cantrell lied in the interview for Artsbeat. Maybe the dedication was removed from the back of the painting at some point, or it faded away. There isn’t absolute proof.”

  Kimi gave me a strange look. “You don’t need absolute proof. All you need is reasonable doubt that the painting is authentic. You have to tell Mr. Yu about this, right now.”

  “I can’t. Not in front of my boss.”

  “Then later. Or you could alert someone in the media.” Kimi had a gleeful glint in her eyes. “You could do an exposé! When else would you get such an opportunity to reveal how crazy the art world is? How insane the prices are?”

  “I’m afraid there isn’t anything here for you,” I said loudly.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing within your budget. Sorry!” I escorted Kimi to the door, and she pulled me outside with her.

  “Where’s your sense of right and wrong?” she demanded.

  “Like you’re one to talk.”

  “Okay, I deserved that. But at the very least, you can’t let that man get on the plane with a forgery.”

  “Kimi,” I said, “thanks for your help, but I really need you to leave now.”

  To my surprise, she did. I watched to make sure she had walked all the way down the street before I returned to the gallery. Having finalized the deal, I supposed, Caroline and Mr. Yu emerged from her office. A car arrived and the packers carried out the boxed painting and put it in the trunk. Then Caroline and I watched as the car with Mr. Yu and a two-million-dollar fake painting proceeded down the street and turned the corner.

  A text was waiting for me on my phone when I returned to my desk. Well?

  From Kimi.

  Am sending an e-mail, I replied.

  But all afternoon, I couldn’t do it. I felt uncomfortable composing an e-mail implicating my boss in her own gallery, so I decided to do it when I got home.

  “Molly.” Caroline approached me before I could leave that day. “You were a great help today. All summer, actually. I hope you’ll consider staying on through the fall. And to show my appreciation, I’d like to give you this.”

  She handed me a white envelope. At home, when I opened it, a check for a thousand dollars fluttered out. It felt like blood money.

  Where was my sense of right and wrong? The trouble was that I couldn’t tell what was the right thing to do. Caroline had taken me in as her assistant. Not because she especially needed or could afford one, but as a favor to my mother. She had been my mother’s best friend in college; they were friends still. Exposing the truth about the painting would not only hurt Caroline, but my mother.

  On the other hand, there was an innocent stranger, Mr. Yu. I imagined him arriving in the airport in Taiwan sometime the next day. Jet-lagged and exhausted, he’d collect his finely made luggage and the padded box with the painting. Everything would go in a car, and he’d bring Elegy to his home and hang it on his wall. I knew he was married; I imagined him showing the painting off to his wife. Maybe they had children. Someday those children would inherit a fake painting, and the lie would go on and on.

  That decided it for me. I got out Mr. Yu’s card, opened my laptop, and started to compose an e-mail.

  Chapter 8

  When Harold opened the front door to his apartment early in the morning, he heard the patter of small feet. Adrian peered around the corner.

  “What did you bring me this time, Daddy?” he asked.

  Harold shook his head. So young and already so acquisitive. “I brought something back for all of us,” he said. “You’ll have to wait until your mother gets up, though.”

  He assumed at this hour that Vicki was still in bed. Adrian’s nanny, a local young woman, appeared and they exchanged good-mornings before she
carried Adrian away to get him ready for preschool. Harold wrestled the painting into the living room. The gallery owner’s assistant had done a good job protecting it against the long-haul flight, but he might have dinged the corner bringing it into his own home.

  Once inside, he rested it against the wall opposite the sofa and carefully began to remove the wrapping. He hadn’t decided yet where to put it, or even if he wanted to display it at all. So much could go wrong: Adrian could accidentally damage it while playing; the humid weather, despite the climate-controlled settings in the apartment, could warp the frame. Putting the painting in storage was the safest option, but Harold felt compelled to see it every day.

  “We’re going now,” the nanny announced, Adrian’s hand in her own.

  The boy broke away from her and ran up to the painting. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Don’t touch, Adrian,” Harold cautioned. “It’s very expensive.”

  Adrian continued to reach out toward the painting, and the nanny pulled him aside. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, picking the boy up. Adrian began to whine and kick as she hustled him out of the house.

  “So what is it?” Vicki asked from the hallway, wrapped in her dressing gown. Harold suspected she had been standing there for a while, observing the nanny deal with their son.

  “A painting.”

  “I can see that.” She moved closer, first squinting against the morning light, then, as if remembering that it might cause wrinkles, shading her eyes instead.

  “What do you think?” Harold hadn’t realized his wife’s opinion meant so much to him until that moment.

  “How much did you pay for it?

  “One point three million dollars.” He didn’t know why he had shaved off about a third of the price, but it wasn’t as if Vicki would be able to find out the actual number, either, if she cared to.

  Vicki tilted her head. “It must be quite special then. Who’s the artist?”

  Harold told her what he knew of Andrew Cantrell, including the gallery owner’s comparison of him to Pollock, the fact that another one of his paintings hung in the Museum of Modern Art, but Vicki didn’t seem impressed.