A Nearly Perfect Copy (29 page)

“I have a proposition,” she said.

Colin spent more than a minute unlocking the door. It was after ten p.m. Elm sat on the couch watching a
Law and Order
episode she’d already seen. She’d been back from Paris for two weeks, but had somehow never found the proper time, or adequate words, to tell him the details of her trip.

He stumbled a bit on the entry rug before he noticed Elm looking at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have rung. Were you worried?”

Elm could hear the descending chords in the background, signaling a change of scene. Was the jury back in? Was there a development at the precinct? She fought the urge to turn her attention back to the television.

“I’ve had the longest fecking day,” he said, throwing his jacket on the chair and kicking off his shoes. He came around to sit next to Elm, taking her feet in his lap. She hadn’t changed since coming home from work, and her feet were still stockinged. She wiggled her toes but he didn’t rub them.

He smelled faintly of alcohol and sweat; tired, stale sweat, like being in an airless meeting all day, which was probably what he had been doing before he went to a bar, either alone or with people from work. She didn’t care that he drank, only that it was an activity he embarked on without her. It was another distancing factor.

“What happened?” she asked.
Guilty
, the foreman said. The television defendant burst into tears, mouthing,
Why? Why?
at the startled jury. The credits began to scroll on the right of a split screen. The other half plugged the nightly news.

“Can we talk about it in the morning?” he asked, turning to her. His face was so forlorn, so utterly exhausted, that it reminded her of the morning he had arrived in Bangkok, soulless and failed.

“Okay,” she said. Then a pause. “No, you have to tell me now.”

“It’s not bad,” he said. “Can we leave it, Elm? Need a kip. A little pissed, I am. I’ll look in on the beanbag?”

“Just let her sleep,” Elm said. “Tell her you looked in on her and she slept through it.”

In the early morning, Elm woke up to the sound of Colin peeing long into the toilet, and then the hinge of the medicine cabinet where he was probably taking something for a headache. Then she heard the whir of the electric toothbrush.

The bed began to grow cold. Elm stretched, and suddenly, she wanted Colin. “Come back to bed,” she called.

“In a minute,” he said. “I want to shower.”

This was marriage, then, she thought. Sublimated desire, delayed gratification. She had thought marriage would fulfill some of these needs, emotional as well as sexual, that having a permanent partner would end her loneliness, her frustration, her anxiety. But no, she often had to wait as long for release as when she was single, when she waited for her girlfriends to get off work so they could meet for a drink, spend the evening identifying then flirting with a stranger, making out with him outside the bar before giving him a fake number and slipping away in a taxi.

He came to her smelling of soap and shampoo, and a little like deodorant, a bouquet of artificial scents. She surprised herself by attacking him. Usually, their morning lovemaking was leisurely and half-asleep. He typically started it, and often she could catch a few more minutes of shut-eye afterward. Not so this morning. She bit his ears, held his arms down while she straddled him, then insisted on a position they didn’t normally use.

Afterward, she pulled the sheet around her. It was still early. Moira wouldn’t stir for another thirty minutes. She felt better—less frustrated, but still anxious.

“Now you’ll tell me,” she said.

“What?” he asked. He was dozing again, his eyes half-closed.

“What was bothering you yesterday.”

“Oh,” he said. “Al resigned.”

“What?” Elm was shocked. Al had been Colin’s boss for ten years. He had been at the company for nearly twenty.

“He just quit?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” Colin said, stretching. “He said he didn’t want to work under that admin.”

“That’s insane,” Elm said. She twisted around to face Colin. “What’s he going to do?”

Colin said, “Fuck if I know. His noncompete clause means he won’t
be working in the pharmaceutical industry, at least.” Colin closed his eyes again, avoiding looking at her.

“Colin,” Elm said. “What does that mean for you?”

“I”—he paused—“no longer have an advocate. Which means that possibly I no longer have a job.”

“What?”

“Or, maybe they’ll promote me. I can’t really say at the moment.”

“How can you be so …” Elm searched for the right word. “Nonchalant? This is your future. You have a noncompete agreement too.”

“I’m not in a tizzy, Cabbage, because it’s not something I have any control over at the moment.”

“What do you mean? Don’t call me Cabbage. I hate vegetable endearments. We need to plan or something. Did Al really resign? For good? Irreparably?”

“Afraid so. Elm, we just have to wait. Don’t you think I’m bloody worried too?”

Elm’s secret chafed like an itch, like an inflammation of the conscience. This would be the time to tell Colin. She could pretend she was joking, see what his reaction would be. And then he would stop her, because, of course, someone needed to talk her out of this insanity. Because she was thinking about it as something she’d already done. Or rather, something that the person who was inside her body had done. She felt so removed from herself that her hands were things of wonder, her knees foreign.

She should tell him now. Now, she urged herself. But it would be so easy to pretend that she hadn’t purposely stopped taking the pill, that it had simply failed. And then they wouldn’t have to have that conversation, the one where he voiced all the nagging worries she was pushing down into her subconscious, the uncomfortable distance that arose whenever they talked about Ronan, like the topic was a furnace grate that blasted hot air when opened.

Colin was already out of bed and in his boxers. “I’ll get Moira up for school,” he said.

Relay Lacker operated her art-consulting business from a small office in Midtown, but suggested an upscale restaurant near Tinsley’s on the Upper East Side when Elm invited her to lunch.

Elm ordered the least stomach-turning thing on the menu, but even as her Cobb salad arrived she knew she wouldn’t be able to eat it. She pushed it around with her fork while they made small talk.

“So,” Elm said, hiding half of an egg under a large piece of lettuce where it wouldn’t stare at her. “I’ve asked you to lunch because I would like to discuss some business.”

“I’m all ears,” Relay said. She smiled, and Elm caught just a glimpse of a gap between her teeth and gums. She’d had porcelain veneers put on. Elm didn’t know anyone who had done that, and she wanted to ask her about it, but it didn’t seem appropriate.

“I have available these drawings for sale, really beautiful pieces. A Piranesi, two Canalettos, a couple of Connoises, Ganedis, or at least from their schools, new to the market.”

“Ooh,” Relay said. She leaned forward on her elbows. “I don’t know the last artist.”

“I was wondering if your private clients might like to take a look at them.”

Relay sat up. “Mostly they’re interested in modern art, but … Why wouldn’t you put them up for auction at Tinsley’s?”

Elm chose her words carefully. “Their provenances are sort of slim. Art owned by Jews, stolen by the Nazis and recently recovered. Their sale goes toward reparations for the families, you know, the ones who survived.”

Relay furrowed her brow. “So you don’t want them for Tinsley’s, but you want to foist them off on me?”

Elm laughed, though Relay was close to the truth. “It’s not like that. I just can’t verify the ownership to the extent that the house demands. But they’re really beautiful pieces, and the cause, so to speak, is good.”

“What kind of a financial arrangement would you be looking for?”

Elm had planned out what she was prepared to offer, but she pretended to consider. “How about we split the twenty percent commission?”

Relay nodded.

“And, my name stays out of it,” Elm said. “That’s really important. Obviously, I’m not supposed to deal privately, but I really want to see these pieces end up in good hands.”

“So I’ll deal directly with the sellers,” Relay said.

“Well, actually, me, and I’ll deal with the Englishman who is selling them on behalf of the owners. They want to remain anonymous.”

“Okay …” Relay dragged the word out, the thinking evident in her pause. She seemed about to ask a question, then thought better of it. “Yeah, that works. Send me the PDFs.” Relay held out her hand for Elm to shake, an odd formality that amused Elm.

When the check came, Relay insisted on paying, even though Elm had invited her to lunch. “Because you’re bringing me business, that’s why,” she said.

This had been so easy, Elm thought. Why had she thought it would be impossible to sell Klinman’s drawings? She didn’t even have to pay for lunch.

Relay called her the following week and left Elm a voice mail saying she thought she had a buyer for a couple of the drawings. Elm called her back.

“I think you know them? You were at their party? The people with, you know, the dog?” Relay had the unfortunate habit on the phone of raising her voice at the end of each sentence so that each statement sounded uncertain.

Elm looked at her fingernails, feigning nonchalance, even over the telephone. “Super,” she said.

“They want the old woman? And the beach scene?”

“Great.”

“They offered $175,000 for both.”

Elm sat up straighter. She did some quick math: 80 percent to Klinman and his clients, the remaining 20 percent split between Relay and Elm. That would come to $17,500. “That’s a little low,” she said.

“I know.” Relay sighed as though they were discussing a common evil, like traffic or losing sports teams. “But they were concerned about the certificates, the provenance not being so great, you know? Resale and all that. They’re investors, not collectors.” Relay lowered her voice, confiding in Elm.

“I’ll have to consult the seller,” Elm said, swiveling her chair back to face her desk. She didn’t know if Klinman would take it. They had hoped to sell them for $100,000 each. But if the sums she was receiving were smaller she would attract less attention.

As she hung up she considered too that she wasn’t sure where Relay’s loyalties belonged. Of course, she’d want to negotiate the best
deal to earn her commission, but maybe she had a side deal going with the collectors, or “investors,” as she called them. Maybe she wanted to get them a deal so they’d use her more. Maybe … maybe … it was impossible to tell.

Elm knew she did not have a criminal mind. The entire business made her queasy. Plus she knew these people. She’d been in their home. She had assumed the buyers would be unknown, at least to her. This made it more personal. Real criminal masterminds (at least in the movies) were free from anxiety. They slept dreamlessly at night. Meanwhile, Elm was lucky if she got two straight hours.

The worst-case scenario, she decided. I’ll think of the worst-case scenario and then I’ll feel better. She imagined herself pregnant, behind bars. Fired, bankrupt from an extended lawsuit. And still she didn’t regret her decision to clone Ronan. That must mean something, surely.