A Nearly Perfect Copy (33 page)

The images of Thailand, Ronan turning his nose up at a whole fish, refusing to wear his green swim trunks, putting Moira’s Dora shirt on for a joke, being dwarfed under Colin’s sun hat, excited to go fishing the next day.

And then it was morning.

The implantation didn’t feel like anything. Like a vaginal exam. There was no moment of eureka or a pop or ping. She’d always thought that was a fallacy anyway, and that women who claimed to have known instantly at the moment of conception were just feeling nostalgic, the hormones planting a false memory.

“Et voilà,”
the doctor had said, sounding so French that Elm giggled. Probably her nerves. Or the Valium they’d given her. She felt like she was dreaming this scene, like she was above her body looking down, and had the feeling that she could control the events if she could only focus on them. As they wheeled her back to her room with strict instructions to lie down for the rest of the day, it seemed so right that she couldn’t believe she had ever contemplated
not
doing it.

She waited for the Valium to wear off to see if she would change her mind, but if anything, the logic had cemented itself while she was floating in psychotropic-land. If she was pregnant, if this was indeed her chance to redeem herself, to prove that she could take care of her son, then she owed it to him to do this. She had no other option.

September was a busy time in Paris. France woke up from the slumber of August, the government offices reluctantly opening their doors, teachers shuffling to work, professionals stretching out the morning kinks. Gabriel watched everyone scuttle about on important business.

He was supposed to have spent the month of August painting, but instead had fiddled about with making antique drawings, doing research, and scouring antique and bric-a-brac stores for old pastels, paints, and palettes to make drawings for Klinman. He needed the money. He had joined Colette for a week at her mother’s house in Tenerife, an expensive plane ticket, and his first real vacation. It was such a relief to speak Spanish, to be in charge. He felt swollen with masculinity, ordering for Colette, translating for her, trading proprietary looks with other men at her little ass in her bikini. But when they returned home, he found all sorts of reasons to avoid his studio. He just didn’t feel like working in his own style. When he searched for ideas, his mind was blank. When he looked at colors he found no inspiration. And yet the Connoises kept flowing as though he were channeling the old man himself. He had to hurry to finish his own canvases for his show.

He had to hand it to Paulette and Patrice, the Galerie Piclut put on an excellent show. The paintings were hung with care. The postcards showed real design savvy, a reproduction of
Après-midi au Supermarché
in full color, with an appropriately vintage Figueiredo font. Gabriel had eked out fourteen canvases in the end, and after the third, he started to have fun. Connois’s tropes were, as it turned out, exactly the kinds of locations that Gabriel had occupied since he moved to France. Tweaking
them for a modern audience, with his own flourishes, created a visual pun that also commented on immigration and culture clash. Yes, all this was devised for the artist statement, written by Paulette, but somehow it seemed he’d been thinking about just this melding of styles and ideas all along.

“Dé/placement, Dé/plaisir”
opened on a Thursday, and Gabriel was sweating profusely in his black T-shirt an hour beforehand. The lights were very bright, and he was up on a ladder adjusting one so that it didn’t hit the slick surface of the oil and reflect back into viewers’ eyes. If there were viewers.

He had gotten lucky. An item in mylittleparis.com highlighting the neighborhood had come out that Monday. Galerie Piclut was mentioned as one of the up-and-coming cool spots to catch emerging artists. He did pause for a moment to sigh that he was still considered “emerging” at forty-two. But he hoped the article would spur some foot traffic.

Climbing down now and surveying his work, a momentary twinge that it was not exactly his own pained him. He would not have chosen this subject matter (two paintings set in a Grand Prix supermarket; another at the airport; a couple of send-ups of Parisian street scenes, colorful African-print caftans and head wraps worn by the Senegalese; a dead pigeon, an empty wine bottle, and a pair of discarded panties as a still life). But his own choices had never netted him a show.

People like a story. A locksmith who makes chairs out of keys. An amputee who paints footraces. A flamboyant gay man who pees on his canvases and calls it art. And Gabriel had a good story.

As the show’s opening had approached he felt alternately elated and full of dread. He was sure Patrice and Paulette would cancel his show. But they seemed as enthusiastic as ever. Probably everyone would see right through the blatant pandering that was now covering the gallery’s walls. But maybe a few would sell. Maybe a few would sell to important collectors and Gabriel’s career would finally be launched.

He turned to help Patrice and Paulette and their intern put out cheese and wine. The smell of the melting cheese made his stomach roil and he stepped outside for a moment. The streets were bustling with people coming home from work, young people, like him. Only he wasn’t so young anymore. Artists, jugglers, dancers, designers. Could the world hold this many creative types? Could it support them all?

The first several guests were friends of the Picluts, middle-aged,
gray-haired men and overly made-up women tottering on high heels. They shook his hand and commented asininely on the art. “Oh, the light!” “I love the use of red here. So deft.” And, Gabriel cringed to hear, “I see the Connois influence. Is that cultivated on your part or innate?”

More and more people arrived until there was a veritable crowd. He made his way to the bar and downed his second glass of red wine. He knew he should eat something. The room was getting warmer and he started to feel a bit tipsy. But the cheese plate was picked over and someone had eaten all the grapes.

Marie-Laure was kissing his cheeks. Then her boyfriend was kissing them. He was touched that she had come. She squeezed his arm and said how much she admired the work, how far his style had come and how happy she was for him. She looked genuine. “I was supposed to tell you that Hans couldn’t come. Something about his wife and a cough. But I think it’s really rude that Didier isn’t here. We went to
his
show.”

Gabriel was formulating an answer when he saw Colette and Lise walk in together. They were a study in contrasts, Lise white-blond and Colette dark, elbows hooked conspiratorially so that Gabriel gave an involuntary smile to see them together.

“Super!” Colette gave him a kiss. “But wait, I told them not to hang that there. Excuse me.” She marched off to see the Picluts, leaving Gabriel with Lise.

“I’m so proud of you,” she said, squeezing his hand. He smiled again. “You did it.” Her approval, her praise, was like a jolt of caffeine. He wanted to talk to her, to take her in his arms and hug her with joy, but there were more people, tapping his shoulder to get his attention, and he was pulled away before he could thank her. The room was crowded now. Paulette grabbed his arm and pulled him over to
Après-midi au Supermarché no. 1
. “Look! I’m putting a dot!” The dot was yellow, which meant someone had put a hold on it (red would have meant a purchase). Someone had actually put down money as a deposit on his work.

An old man came through the door, leaning heavily on the arm of his young friend. For a second, Gabriel thought it might be his old adviser LeFevre from the École, but that would have been impossible. The man was surely dead by now. He felt his cheeks flush. He would have been embarrassed to show him his work. How disappointed LeFevre would have been at this pandering.

“So much talent,” someone said next to him; Gabriel heard it from
LeFevre’s mouth—a sad lamentation that he’d done nothing with it. But it was a woman wearing a pearl and diamond necklace, obviously slumming in the new hip part of town. And she was saying it positively, and Patrice was behind him; Gabriel said obediently, “You’re too kind. Thank you so much.”

“No, thank
you
,” the woman said, and Gabriel realized that a month ago this would have made him laugh.

Marie-Laure was in front of him again. “It’s too crowded; we’re taking off.” The taciturn boyfriend kissed his cheeks again.

At some point the evening tipped and the numbers began to get smaller until finally the only ones in attendance were the art students hovering near the wine and Colette.

“Look!” Paulette said. “One red dot!”

“That’s not bad,” Patrice said.

“It’s the smaller one, isn’t it?” Gabriel asked.

“Still,” Patrice said.

“Congratulations.” Paulette refilled his wineglass.

What was he supposed to do the next day? He went to the studio. His space seemed larger emptied of work. He sat down in the folding chair and stared at the splatter patterns on the floor. He didn’t really feel like working. It was like going jogging the day after running a marathon. His artist muscles were tired.

He decided to straighten up his studio. Some of his brushes could use a good washing, not the quick rinse he usually gave them. He set them in turpentine to soak. And maybe he should paint the walls again. He could go out and buy white paint. With the advance from the “red dot.”

Marie-Laure stuck her head in to congratulate him. “Great show. Fantastic. I think that art blog guy was there.”

“Which art blog guy?”

“He calls himself Sir Veille. Get it? Like surveillance?”

Gabriel didn’t get it. That is, he got the surveillance part but didn’t understand what the double entendre was. “What does he write?”

“A blog. An art blog.”

“Oh,” Gabriel said. He wasn’t actually sure what that was.

“On the Internet?” Marie-Laure raised her voice; his confusion must have registered on his face. “The thing on the computer?”

“Oh, yeah, that. I just didn’t understand your accent.” Gabriel recalled that these online diaries were gaining in importance. In some circles they already outstripped professional art critics.

“Anyway, that’s a good sign.”

“Unless he hated it,” Gabriel said.

“All press is good press,” Marie-Laure said.

“Baudelaire?”

“I don’t know who said it.” Marie-Laure missed his sarcasm. She went back into her studio.

Just sketch, he told himself. Get lead on paper. He opened his sketchbook and hovered over the page. Don’t analyze, he thought, just sketch. Why did he even care what critics thought? They were all failed artists.

A half hour later he looked at what he’d done. He’d drawn his shoe. But it was unmistakably a shoe in the style of Brueghel. The same hatching, the same stiff lines. He ripped the page up, disgusted. He couldn’t even sketch like himself anymore. He was simply a cipher, a sponge, sopping up others’ styles.

Gabriel went outside to walk while the brushes soaked. Didier was smoking a cigarette. “Man, I am so sorry I didn’t make it to the opening,” he said. He looked sheepish, crinkling the corners of his mouth in concern. “I had the worst day, and I just couldn’t … I mean …”

“Don’t worry,” Gabriel said. “It was too crowded anyway.”

“I feel awful. I mean, you came to mine. I promise to go look at it this week.”

“Hey, don’t worry,” Gabriel said. Then it struck him. Had Didier not come because he was jealous, the same way Gabriel had contemplated not attending Didier’s show last spring? Was it possible that Gabriel had achieved enough success to inspire envy? The thought made him smile.

That afternoon, he went to the Internet café and paid his five euros to log on. He tried to type in various versions of what he had heard Marie-Laure say, but he didn’t find the art blog. Finally, he asked the teenager next to him how to find something when you don’t know the name.

The kid looked at him with undisguised disdain. His hair framed his
head like yarn on a doll, and he flicked his head back to get it out of his eyes. “What do you mean?”