A Nearly Perfect Copy (9 page)

Gabriel counted out the bills slowly, attempting to hide them under the table. It was easily the most expensive meal he’d ever eaten. Colette didn’t offer to split it.

“We’ll have coffee at my place,” she said. “I don’t live far.”

They walked back along the Avenue de New York. When Colette slipped on a stone, tottering on her heels, Gabriel grabbed her arm and felt the give of her flesh. When you touched someone you were attracted to, why was it different from touching a stranger on the street? Was the difference in the touch itself, the pheromones that the other person gave off? Or was the excitement all in the mind—did the brain send signals to the arm hairs to tingle, the webs of the fingers to itch, the toes to curl?

They turned down a street he didn’t know. She unlocked the front door, and without a word, without turning on the stairway light, she walked in front of him up the stairs.

Her apartment was an efficiency, tidy and compact. On her walls she had framed vintage Tinsley’s catalog covers. There was a red velvet love seat and a bed. He sat on the love seat.

Colette turned on the electric kettle. Then she sat down next to him and turned her face to his. When her lips met his, Gabriel let her take the lead, keeping his hands on her hips.

The kettle clicked off and Colette pulled away. She spoke for the first time in minutes. “How do you take it?”

“With sugar.”

As she was making the coffee, her phone rang. She answered it and
began to chat, using so much slang and speaking so quickly that Gabriel had trouble understanding what she was saying. She was talking to a good friend, that much he knew, because she called the person
pote
, an old-fashioned word that meant “mate” or “buddy.”

Still talking, she set a tray with coffee and biscotti down on the love seat and then went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Gabriel sipped at the coffee. Her voice went quiet. What was she talking about in there? Hadn’t they come back to her place to screw? Gabriel felt suddenly confused by the evening. Had he completely misinterpreted her signals? He decided to wait until she came back, and then say a quick good-bye.

He’d finished his coffee by the time she emerged from the bathroom, wearing a black boned corset and high-cut lace panties. Gabriel was surprised at her aggression. Pleasantly surprised, and immediately aroused. He stood up and she steered them toward the bed, undressing him quickly, biting his nipples. Her silence was exciting. Once he was inside her he looked down and smoothed her hair back from her head. The intensity of his feeling surprised him. She didn’t even blink, not for hours, it seemed like, and then he closed his eyes. Because he was embarrassed. Because that’s what you were supposed to do when fucking. Because he was afraid.

The next day, after Gabriel had gone to work and put in a couple of hours at the studio, he stopped by Colette’s. She was home, and dressed in a business suit that Gabriel thought made her look like a sexily stern airline attendant from the 1950s.

“Oh!” she said when she answered the door.

“I don’t like the telephone,” Gabriel said. “Is it okay?”

“Come in,” Colette said. “Sorry it’s such a mess in here.”

Gabriel thought the words must have been a reflex because they’d both left together that morning. He realized he was still wearing the same clothes. He also realized he should have let a couple of days go by before he contacted Colette again. She made him unnaturally and uncharacteristically nervous. She was so obviously out of his league, intellectually, socially, aesthetically, that he wanted to make sure she had no time to think it over.

“You probably think I’m a strange person to appear on your doorstep.” He leaned in to kiss her and she accepted the kiss on the lips. “I
promise I’m not a …” He wasn’t sure of the word and let the sentence trail off.

“I’m not worried,” Colette said. “Let’s go out to dinner.”

Gabriel had to stop at an ATM in order to pay for the evening. In two nights, he spent as much on restaurants as he usually did the entire month for food. Dating was an expensive habit.

A week later, Gabriel, hoping to stem the hemorrhage of money that Colette’s young professional lifestyle was costing him, packed a picnic and took her to the studio. She held his hand on the
métro
.

In his dark space she examined the paintings by peering at them closely, commenting on shading and color. Though she professed not to know much about contemporary art, she knew what she was talking about. She seemed most interested in his imitative sketches.

“This really looks like Canaletto! How did you do this?”

Gabriel shrugged.

“Do you have any Connois sketches?”

Gabriel dragged out the large sketchbook reluctantly. It was embarrassing, creating sketches in someone else’s style. But she squealed with delight as she turned the pages.

Gabriel unpacked the food, and Colette looked with disgust at the dirty floor, even though she was only wearing jeans. Gabriel was sorry he didn’t think to bring a sheet or a blanket. He borrowed a tarp from Marie-Laure’s studio and they sat on that, the lamp on the table casting long shadows. Colette took small bites at the cheese and sausage he put out, though she drank much of the wine and smoked.

In the morning, the first thing she said when they woke in her apartment was: “I’d like you to meet my uncle.” Gabriel was getting dressed, putting on last night’s clothing, which, he realized, was the previous day’s clothing as well. He had to go home and do some laundry.

“Well, I mean, it’s a figure of speech,” Colette said, lighting a cigarette. “He’s not really my uncle. His and my mother’s families were all refugees from Germany. They lived in the same village, I think. Our family came to France and his went to England, but they reconnected after the war.”

“Refugees?”

Colette said, “If you’re asking if I’m Jewish, not really, though technically, yes, I guess. Poor Maman. She married a destitute Christian and
my grandparents disowned her. But they each gave her money secretly every month until they died and left her enough that she could leave my father. She lives in the Canary Islands now.” Colette laughed. “We’ll have dinner with my uncle tonight.”

Gabriel met Colette at a restaurant in the Marais that he was unhappy to see was extremely expensive. There was almost no money left in his bank account, and the end of the month’s payday was still a week away. He would have to deposit the check and deliver the rent to the landlord in cash as it was. And now he was going to be obligated to pay for three more meals. Colette had the habit of ordering fish, always one of the more expensive dishes on the menu, and he could not resist her excitement when she came across some appetizer they had to try. Once the entrées arrived, she merely picked at her food, so Gabriel had learned to order sparsely, counting on being able to eat the rest of her meal.

Inside, the maître d’ led them to a private room in back where Gabriel saw there was a small dinner party.

Colette introduced him to her uncle, Augustus Klinman, an overweight Englishman with thinning hair. He extended his hand for Gabriel to shake, and despite its fleshiness, the grip was solid.

“Sorry we’re late,” Colette said.

“I’m afraid you’ve missed the first course, but I’ll introduce you around,” Klinman said. “Everyone, this is my niece Colette’s boyfriend, Gabriel Connois, relation of Marcel Connois, of the École des Hiverains.”

Everyone nodded, either in recognition of the name or in pretend recognition of it. It was interesting, but not surprising, that Colette had told her uncle about his ancestor. He wished, not for the first time, that he could be introduced on his own merit. But she called me her boyfriend, Gabriel thought.

Klinman continued, “This is an associate, Avram ben Hakim.” A Middle Eastern–looking man in a dark suit nodded at Gabriel. “And the Bairds, and next to them the Schoenbergs. Do you know Patrice and Paulette Piclut? No? I’m surprised. They run a gallery in Canal St. Martin.
Very cool
,” he added in English.

Colette kissed Patrice and Paulette and sat down. The waiter brought
over an amuse bouche, some sort of dumpling in a spoon. Gabriel lifted it to his mouth and a spurt of hot liquid shot down his throat. He reached for his water glass, determined not to cough.

Colette said, “In fact, PP, you might be interested in Gabriel’s work.” She popped the dumpling in her mouth and chewed it naturally, swallowing without incident.

Patrice crossed his legs. He was wearing pale pink pants, exposing a skinny, sockless ankle. “It’s not street art, is it? Because we are so over street art.”

“Painting,” Gabriel said. “I’m a painter.”

Paulette nodded. “Painting is so retro it’s new again.”

Klinman addressed them, “When was painting out? Painting has always been in style.”

“No,” the person to Klinman’s right said. “Have you been to the Biennale? It’s been all conceptual for years.”

“And Miami Basel is even worse. It was like being in Las Vegas. You’ve been to Vegas?” a woman with a strong American accent asked.

“I love Vegas,” said Paulette. “I’ve never been there, but I know I’d love it.”

“It’s like a psychedelic experience,” said ben Hakim. “Like what taking LSD was like.”

“An artist, how nice. We only ever meet dealers, like art grows out of the ground,” said a German woman.

“Better the ground than the ass,” Gabriel said. There was a pause while everyone considered whether to be offended or amused. Gabriel’s face turned bright red. He was so used to the accepted vulgarity of artists; he forgot that civilians had more refined sensibilities. But Colette saved him by giggling and then everyone laughed. He was proud of himself for making a joke. Maybe he fit in better than he thought he did.

Gabriel sat back to let the waiter replace his plate with one that held a piece of meat with a brown-red sauce on top of it. When everyone was served, the waiter announced,
“Filet mignon avec foie de volaille.”

Gabriel took a polite bite. The meat melted inside his mouth, and the sauce had a pleasing peaty flavor. “I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything like this,” he whispered to Colette.

She stopped eating to take a sip of her wine. “So many things to try.”

From the head of the table Klinman asked him, “So Connois was your relative?”

“He was a grandfather,” Gabriel said in French, unsure of the exact word for a distant, yet direct, relative. “Of my mother.”

“Ahhhh,” the man sighed. “And your real name?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Does it matter?” Gabriel asked.

Klinman caught his eye and winked, which so disconcerted Gabriel that his fork slipped and he dropped poultry innards on his lap. He was not at all disappointed to hear Colette’s delighted laugh, and see her napkin winging its way toward his crotch.

Édouard and his boyfriend took advantage of the “bridge” long weekend to fly to Corsica, leaving Gabriel to deal with the unlikely foot traffic or emergency in the gallery. Gabriel spent the day doodling, drawing geometric shapes on graph paper and shading them by shining a light from the left margin.

He heard the whoosh of air created by the opening of the door. There stood Klinman, dressed elegantly in a bespoke suit, carrying a hat and an umbrella, popping by from a previous century.

Gabriel stammered hello, and a thank-you for the dinner the night before. Gabriel had grown increasingly nervous as the meal wore on, partly from Colette’s hand on his thigh and also because he was unsure of how the payment for the meal would take place. As it turned out, the waiter brought no bill, and no one took out a card or cash.

“Who paid?” he’d asked Colette on the way to her apartment.

“Oh, Augustus has an account there,” she’d said.

Mr. Klinman smiled and strolled around the gallery, looking at the art on the walls. He grunted, a noise that betrayed no opinion.

Gabriel reverted to his canned speech. “Our stock is in prints and engravings. Monsieur Rosenzweig has a special fondness for the simple line. Can I show you anything in particular?”

Mr. Klinman looked baldly at Gabriel, while Gabriel tried to look indifferent. “You have a very good eye,” Klinman said.