Juarez Square and Other Stories (16 page)

Javier ran his hand through his hair. “Jesus, how many times are we going to have this conversation? Whether I like it or not, whether
you
like it or not, I work in a profession where
image matters
. I’m working myself to death to get somewhere, to build some kind of career, and my own wife goes and gives them a year’s worth of office gossip material.” He shook his head. “You just can't come out and
say
stuff like that, Xime.”

His career. Ximena had grown to loathe his career with the National Action Party. When they’d met, Javier had had little interest in politics. Through a law school friend’s recommendation, he’d been offered a job at the party’s headquarters. Good salary and benefits, lots of room to move up.

In the years that followed, with his professional skills, good looks, and natural charm, he quickly climbed the ranks of the local party machine. And with each step up the career ladder, their marriage became more difficult, more tenuous.

Ximena clanged the silverware into the sink. “I can't stand those ridiculous fawning women. Giggling like schoolgirls at their husband’s bad jokes, obsessing over their social calendar, gossiping at the hair salons.” She grunted. “They’re pathetic, the whole fucking lot of them.”

Javier didn’t say anything.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. “I’m sorry,
amor
. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. You know that, right?”

Javier stood in front of the balcony window, his arms folded, staring out into the night.

“You know that, right?” she asked again.

He nodded. She noticed his eyes were sad, like he was recalling a painful memory.

“I know, Xime, I know.” He sighed. “You are who you are.”

* * *

Ximena hadn’t thought of that dinner party in years, but now she recognized how things had changed after that night, how Javier had never looked at her in quite the same way, how they began to fight more often and more bitterly. Why hadn't she been aware of this when it was happening? Why only now, when it was far too late, could she see the pattern of their slow and steady decay?

The bot brothel hadn’t been the cause, of course. It had been the last straw, the final breaking point that drove him away. How naive she’d been, believing that any day Javier would come to his senses and come back.

Ximena went to the office and found Javier still seated at the table. The flickering candles had melted halfway down. The papers were still where he’d laid them.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked softly. “Why didn't you tell me you were going to run for office?”

Javier looked surprised. “How did you—”

“It doesn't matter how I found out. It just surprised me. You’d never mentioned anything like that before. You could have told me, you know.” There was a time when he’d told her everything. Every grandiose dream, every secret desire.

Javier sighed. “Would it have mattered?” he asked, looking deep into her eyes. “Would you have done anything differently?”

Ximena shook her head. “You know me better than that.”

“I do,” he said. “You are who you are, Xime. I don't want to change you.”

He left the rest of it unspoken: a robot brothel owner for a wife, even in the most liberal of societies, was an impossibly heavy liability for a career-minded politician. Ximena understood this. She understood everything.

They said nothing for a long while. Ximena finally approached the table and picked up the papers.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, her eyes brightening. “Do me one favor and I'll sign.”

Javier looked skeptical. “Favor?”

Ximena opened the side door of the office to reveal her private suite. She looked at the plush, oversized bed and then back to Javier with the naughty, inviting smile that had won him over countless times. “One last go for old times’ sake?”

Javier looked stunned by the unexpected offer. Then his eyes narrowed as he…What? Considered her offer? Came up with a polite excuse to leave? Ximena steeled herself for an abrupt refusal.

Agonizing seconds passed, and then Javier finally returned her smile. A wave of joyous relief washed over her.

As they undressed one another, their time apart seemed to disappear. She felt her skin warm under his strong hands, caressing the curves of her legs, belly, and breasts. Her first orgasm came almost immediately, rippling through her body before he was even inside her.

Later, as they began their second round, Ximena discreetly reached over to the nightstand and pressed the signal. A few seconds later, Javier gasped as he noticed the blonde nymphbot, standing naked in the doorway, silently watching them. He started to pull out, but Ximena tightened her legs around him. “Javi, wait. Please try to relax.”

“You can't be serious.”

“
Amor
, just this once, please. Just this once and then I’ll sign, I promise.”

“I don't know, Xime.”

“Javi, please…for me?” She gazed into his eyes, hoping he understood the finality of her request. Never again would she ask him to jump off a mountain with her.

Javier’s face softened, and Ximena felt his body relax. He nodded and she motioned to the nymphbot. It climbed onto the bed and gently kissed him on the back of the neck.

Ximena smiled lovingly at him. Her Javi. It was one of those moments, the kind she lived for.

Cotner's Bot

“A robot didn’t do this.”

I said it with flat certainty, but I knew it was the last thing the boss wanted to hear. I flipped through the last couple pics of oil paintings on Nathan’s slate.

“But whoever did,” I continued, “has pretty decent technique and obviously understands the trends of the last couple of decades.” We sat in the gallery’s cramped office. It was actually
my
office, but whenever the owner stopped by it became his (as his feet on the desk made clear).

“Nathan,” I said, “you could have just sent me these. Hate for you to waste a trip over here.”

I looked up from the slate and realized he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. He was looking past me, through the glass door and into the gallery’s showcase area. I’d seen that lusty stare a hundred times, and I didn’t have to turn and look to know there was an attractive female wandering through the gallery. Some billionaires buy a stretch of beach in Thailand to get women. Some buy Hong Kong movie houses. Nathan Pendergast, hot shot Wall Street investor, bought a Soho gallery. He once told me he had a thing for artsy pussy.

“Nathan? Did you understand what I said?”

He turned his attention back to me. “So they’re good, right? I want to show them right away.”

“We can’t.”

“What? Why not? They look pretty damn good to me.” His face reddened. I called it stage one anger: flushed cheeks, tight lips, harsh eyes. At this point I knew I had to be careful. Stage two was explosive: screams, threats, fists pounding the desk.

“It’s not that they’re bad,” I said. “They’re actually pretty good. But there’s no way a robot did this, trust me.”

Nathan nodded, seeming to understand how confident I was with the appraisal. I sighed, relieved to avoid a stage two escalation.

“All right, Alex,” he said. “I suppose you’re the expert. But I still want you to check it out in person. You never know when a good play might present itself.”

His eyes again wandered past me. He gave me a wink, stood, and exited the office for what would surely be a more stimulating conversation.

* * *

Managing a third-rate gallery is the kind of gig you’re lucky to get when you have a black mark on your career as an art dealer. In this business, a black mark is a black mark, and it doesn’t matter what the circumstances were. It doesn’t matter that the phony Nieuwenhuys painting was one of the best forgeries of all time. And it doesn’t matter that you’d had a fifteen-year run in the business, that you’d built a solid reputation with a spotless record. All that mattered was that you were the one who’d brokered the sale, that your name was attached to one of the biggest art frauds ever. Then suddenly you’re toxic, and the people you’ve known and trusted for years—friends, lovers, colleagues—all act like they never even knew you. And when the money runs out (and Jesus it runs out
fast
), you end up taking whatever work you can get, like managing a joke of a gallery for a sex-crazed billionaire dilettante, so far removed from the real action you might as well be working at a print shop in a suburban mall.

The lawyers said I was lucky to avoid jail, but as my car drove me to Jersey to interview the robot’s owner, I didn’t feel very lucky. A robot painter, for Christ’s sake. Ninety-nine out of a hundred gallery owners would laugh it off, but mine sends me to check it out. Lucky fucking me.

* * *

“The problem isn’t replicating the
logical
functions of the human brain, like pattern recognition, basic problem-solving, and so on. We cracked that nut years ago. It’s the
creative
process that none of the
so-called experts
have ever been able to reproduce. Until now, that is.”

I sat on the sofa of Dr. Marcus Cotner’s modest Passaic home, trying not to yawn as the self-described genius explained his inspired breakthroughs. Cotner was in his late seventies, but still spry and fiery-eyed. And he seemed to have some major bone to pick with the
AI establishment
, whoever they were.

I’d read his bio on the drive out. Before he retired, Cotner was one of the top researchers in artificial intelligence, a celebrity scientist of sorts.

“Can I show you some of the other paintings, the earlier works? Perhaps you’d like to see the sketches? They’re quite good.” The doctor was too eager, too insistent. The old man had a lot to learn about the confidence game.

I decided to cut the meeting short. I hated coming to Jersey. “Dr. Cotner,” I said, cutting him off, “I’m going to be honest with you. Robot painters are a fairly common scam in the art world.”

Cotner’s eyes widened. He seemed genuinely surprised. “Oh, is that so? I had no idea.” He glanced over at the trashcan-sized bot sitting in the corner of the room, its articulated digits stained with paint. I coughed to cover up a laugh. He actually wanted me to believe this jerry-rigged domestic was the artist. Unbelievable.

I said, “Every couple of years some software engineer comes up with a program he thinks will fool the experts, but it’s not that hard to spot a fraud. There’s a simple test we can do.”

* * *

“Test? What test?” Nathan asked. I sat in my car outside Cotner’s house, talking with Nathan, his head superimposed on the bottom corner of my windshield.

“Works like this,” I said. “You take a photograph and have the robot make it into a sketch, painting, sculpture, whatever. The result always betrays the coder’s programming. The smarter nerds try to cover their tracks by combining styles. Picasso perspective blended with Lichtenstein textures and Pollock brush strokes, that kind of thing. Understand?”

“Not really.”

“Bottom line, a trained eye can spot it in about five seconds.”

“And you think this one’s a scam?”

“I think this Cotner wants to send a big fuck you to his old colleagues. Show them he’s smarter than they are, that he was right all along, that kind of thing. Don’t get your hopes up, Nathan.”

After a few moments Nathan said, “All right, whatever. Let me know how it turns out.”

As he disconnected, I jumped in my seat from a knock on the driver’s side window. It was Cotner. I lowered the glass and he handed me a painting, still shiny and wet. I looked at it, confused.
What the hell?
The work appeared to be an original piece, but only five minutes had passed since I’d given Cotner the photo.

No way. It was impossible.

I handed the painting back to Cotner, insisting that I watch as the robot painted a second piece. I gave him another photo and he led me back into the house, a smug smile stretching across his face. He handed the photo to the paint-stained domestic. I folded my arms and watched as the little machine gently dabbed a brush onto a palette.

Cotner’s bot finished the painting in just under four minutes. No tricks, no sleight of hand. The painting looked like an authentic, original work of art.

I stared at it for some time before I realized my mouth was hanging open.

* * *

“Where is it, Alex? I want to see it!” Nathan boomed as he burst into the gallery office. I pointed to where I’d placed the painting on the desk. He hovered over it and grinned like a proud father. “And you didn’t even want to go out there, did you?” He punched my shoulder, then pulled out two cigars from his jacket and handed one to me.

I’d been looking over the painting for the last couple hours, searching every square inch of canvas for anything that would betray a faker’s trick. I’d given Cotner a photo of my ex, and on such a familiar subject I would have recognized a programmed emulation of any major painter, living or dead. I may have been running a third-rate gallery, but I was still a first-rate appraiser. And the more I examined the painting, the less doubt I had about its authenticity. Amazingly, it looked like the real deal.