A Nearly Perfect Copy (24 page)

“Who said anything about lashing out? It’s like a war. No one has any moral high ground.” The conversation was getting increasingly heated.

Gabriel stood up, brushing his pants down his thighs. “I’m going in. Congratulations again.”

“Thanks.” Hans waved absently. He turned back to Didier. Then Gabriel realized they weren’t angry with each other. This was a debate, friendly and substance-fueled. Nothing was at stake. As he entered his studio and the voices receded behind him, he was struck again by his ability to feel shut out, even from a conversation he himself instigated.

There are decisions, Gabriel mused, that can change your life. And often those decisions are both spontaneous and ill considered. He had made a joke at a dinner party. And he had done a favor for his girlfriend’s uncle. Several favors, actually. And, from the nadir to which his life had descended—artistic slavery, intense professional jealousy, wasted potential—he rose suddenly to exultant heights.

Klinman had given him a dozen more sheets of period paper, and Gabriel had filled them with Piranesis, Canalettos, and Connoises in exchange for several thousand euros. He had gotten good at being almost nonchalant with the paper, not worrying he would smudge a
line, or betray too much Connois the younger and not enough Connois the elder. He drew market scenes, Italian squares, his childhood kitchen, the buildings on the Île St.-Louis. His bedroom had turned into a veritable sizing factory—rare was the evening when there was not a piece of paper drying.

When Colette made one of her frequent trips to New York, he missed her with an intensity that worried him, one that he was not sure was reciprocal. He examined his ardency like a lump found suddenly under his armpit, with concern. He usually found women irritating, but that might have been because he tended to date the young École students and graduates, who found his experience alluring. Ultimately, the relationships ended in tears when the women realized Gabriel had no interest in deepening the commitment. These young bohemians, who professed to enjoy having someone to go see openings with, to walk in the Tuileries on Sunday afternoons, to fuck every few days to mutual satisfaction, were really just biding their time until marriage. He simply wasn’t built for relationships. He met people, spent time with them, gradually there was a mutual loss of interest and he moved on. Some took longer to try his patience. Some he couldn’t get away from fast enough. But to live with someone, on purpose, to start sharing toothpaste and finances and friends, seemed boring at best.

Gabriel knew his avoidance of deep relationships probably revealed something dysfunctional about him. But what if it wasn’t pathological? What if this was just the way he was wired? He didn’t feel unhappy. He didn’t feel lonely—not often—even when he celebrated his fortieth birthday by himself at the studio. He was poor, but that was a choice he’d made a long time ago. Shouldn’t there be people in the world who shunned convention, congenitally, to balance out those who wanted monogamy and offspring? What if he was a loner by DNA? The irony, he did not fail to recognize, was that he voiced these thoughts to no one, and so there was no one to provide the counterargument, if such a thing existed.

He went reluctantly back to his shared apartment, which was where he was when Patrice Piclut phoned him. It took him a minute to place the name, and then he remembered: the gallery owner at Klinman’s dinner party. Patrice wanted to pay a studio visit. Would Gabriel be around tomorrow?

Gabriel got to the studio earlier than he ever had, rearranging canvases
to look like he’d been hard at work, like he’d always been hard at work, on his own paintings. He used his elbow to sweep the pencil shavings off the work table onto the floor, then shooed them to the corner with his foot. He took all the crusted cans of dried-out paint, some with preserved bugs, some with science-worthy dust and mold specimens, to the communal sink, where he let them clatter and left them.

Sure enough, like clockwork, Marie-Laure stuck her head into his studio minutes later. “Um, about the sink?”

Gabriel fought the urge to tell her to go fuck herself. It sounded so great in French:
Aller se faire foutre
. Instead he said, “I can’t talk to you right now. I’m waiting for a studio visit from the Picluts.”

Marie-Laure stuck her chin out in disbelief. “
The
Picluts?”

“Yes,” he said nonchalantly. “I met them at dinner a couple of months ago. They want to come see my work.”

“Would they want to come next door?” Marie-Laure pointed with her brush to her studio space.

Gabriel shrugged, and Marie-Laure scurried back into her studio, where he heard her similarly straightening.

He adjusted his lights. He leaned on his table. He stood by the large wall. He paced. He went to the front door to look. He went back inside. Finally he realized he couldn’t just stand there, and busied himself with a modern miniature, which kept him sharpening his pencil every thirty to forty seconds. He decided to draw the Louvre, in imitation of the thousands of small frontispieces of the
palais
. But his drawing depicted the shimmering glass of the new, horrific entrance that obscured the original square. Mitterrand had already committed architectural murder by the time Gabriel moved to Paris.

There was a polite knock on the door. Patrice stepped into the studio, followed by Paulette, who was carrying an enormous purse. She was on the phone and she smiled before turning her back to Gabriel.

Patrice stood for a long time in front of each of Gabriel’s eight pieces. His face betrayed no emotion, but he seemed utterly enthralled, scratching at the small goatee under his lip as if in parody of thinking. Finally Paulette got off the phone and stood beside him in silence. They moved together from piece to piece, shifting as if by wordless signal.

Patrice turned to him. “I love most of all the incongruity of your images.”

“Absolutely,” Paulette echoed. “The juxtaposition of unlikely elements
is echoed by your choice of color. Were you consciously commenting on the state of French immigration?”

“Um,” Gabriel said. Had he been? Had he been painting his own
carte de séjour
visa status?

“It’s really fantastic,” Patrice said. “How many of you work out here?”

“About ten,” Gabriel said. “It’s really cheap.”

“And hard to find. Like a geode,” Paulette said.

“I’d offer you a coffee, but …” Gabriel let the thought trail off.

Patrice began to speak but Paulette cut him off. “No, we’re on a really tight schedule. Thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure.”

“A pleasure,” Patrice echoed.

And they were gone. Almost immediately, Marie-Laure appeared in the doorway. “They seemed to really like it.”

“It was all art-language bullshit,” Gabriel said. He couldn’t look at her face.

“Yes, but it was convincing art-language bullshit,” Marie-Laure said.

The phone call came a few days later, while Gabriel was walking home from the
métro
. Patrice, on speakerphone with Paulette, offering him a solo show. Would September work? They were going to have a series of shows on immigrant artists. Gabriel was so excited he forgot to be angry that yet again he was exoticized for his nationality.

Patrice said, “We especially liked the market scenes.”

“What market scenes?”

“The ones that are reminiscent of Connois’s scenes, but with a contemporary irony that modern life cannot escape.”

Gabriel wondered if his French was failing him.

“We didn’t see many of them,” Paulette continued. “Maybe one, or two. But we think that’s your strongest work. They need a little finishing.”

“Finish them while thinking of your relative, freezing up there in the Low Countries, missing his homeland the way you surely miss yours,” Patrice said.

Realization came over Gabriel slowly, like the delay of warm air as it blows out a subway grate. “You want Connois.”

“We want your originals, yes, but ones which echo your ancestor. I’m so glad you understand me. I don’t speak the language of artists, only the language of art appreciators. It is a tremendous failing, I know.” Patrice sounded actually pained. Paulette tittered in the background.

“Why don’t you come by the space next week?” Paulette asked. “You can see the current show and we can talk over the plans.”

“Sure,” Gabriel said. “Thanks. Of course. Thanks so much.”

Gabriel sat on a bench built in a circle around a plane tree. On the other side, an old woman was feeding the pigeons that swarmed her feet out of a Monoprix bag. Whenever they got too close, she kicked them away.

A show. At a real gallery. Not famous like Ambrosine or de Treu, but maybe even better because it was a gallery that was cooler, that showcased up-and-comers. Could you be an up-and-comer at forty-two? He hoped so, because he was certainly not an already-there, and the only other option was a has-been.

But they didn’t want him. They wanted Connois. Fuck Connois, Gabriel thought. It was possible that his ancestor had ruined his life. Had made him want to be a painter, had made him forge
Febrer
, had set him on the path that led him to Klinman.

He should tell the Picluts to
aller se faire foutre
. If they didn’t want him, his art, then they could find someone else. Let someone else take their direction, be their little bitch.

The woman behind him kicked her legs and pigeons fluttered over to Gabriel. He stamped his foot to make them scatter.

On the other hand, a show was a show. This could really launch him. Maybe what Patrice and Paulette were doing was curating, shaping his work, editing it. Maybe it didn’t matter that it wasn’t his original vision.

The woman shooed the pigeons over toward Gabriel. He shooed them back.

Gabriel went directly to Colette’s, stopping only to buy the cheapest champagne he could find.

“Well, hello!” Colette said, glimpsing the bottle.

“I got a call from the Picluts today. They want to give me a show there.”

“I know!” said Colette. “Isn’t that fantastic?”

“You know? How do you know?”

“My uncle said they were going to call you. Apparently, he really likes you, to set you up with them that way.”

“To set me up?”

“I mean, to put you in contact.”

Gabriel hid inside his champagne flute. Had Klinman put them up to this? Why?

His thoughts must have shown on his face, because Colette put an arm on his. “They love your work. They’d have to. Every show figures in a gallery’s reputation. They wouldn’t risk that. Not for anyone.”

“Do you know how long the gallery has been open?”

“Three years, I think.”

“And how long have they been married?” Gabriel asked.

“Who?”

“The Picluts.”

“They’re siblings.”

“They are?” Gabriel was sure they were married. “I thought they were together.”

“That’s gross. No, they’re siblings.” Gabriel thought about how they shared telepathic communication, how Patrice put his hand lovingly on Paulette’s back. How had he confused that with romantic love? “Silly,” Colette said. She yawned. “I’m jet-lagged.”