the chain and watched the liquid travel around in circles before it disappeared.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as he came out.
There were no words. He blew a breath out of his lips.
Colette laughed. “What is it?”
“I feel like … We’re fighting. My show, it only got attention because of Connois.”
“Oh, don’t start that again.” Colette lit a cigarette. She changed out of her business suit, an act that was completely devoid of eroticism. “You exploit him too. Hell, you’ve made tons of money forging his work.” Colette caught herself, and shut her mouth with an O. Seeing the awareness flood his face, she said, “You really thought I didn’t know? Is it possible you’re really that gullible?”
“That what?” Gabriel didn’t know the word.
“That you believe the good in everybody?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“How do you think Augustus got rid of his drawings? Your drawings?” Colette put down her cigarette to pull a dress over her head.
“He sold them.”
“Right.” Colette nodded. She hung her suit in the small closet. “To whom? Without a provenance. How did he sell them?”
“Oh. Through you. To Tinsley’s.” Realization unfogged Gabriel’s head. He looked inside himself, ready to be angry, but found only hurt.
“Et bah voilà.” Colette waved her hand like it held a magic wand.
“That’s … that’s …”
“That’s …?” Colette encouraged him.
Gabriel shut his mouth. What was he going to say? Illegal? Immoral? He was hardly blameless, but it surprised him that Colette was this capable of deceit. It made him see her in a new light, respect her a bit more, and fear her too.
“Well, that explains why you’re with me,” Gabriel said.
“You have the self-esteem of a newt,” Colette said to the window, blowing out a ring of smoke. “Why would that explain that? What would that make me? Thank you for the compliment,” she said sarcastically. “No, I’m with you because you fuck like you’re scared shitless of me, and I like that in a man.”
“Oh.” Gabriel could think of nothing else to say. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to feel flattered or insulted.
Colette stubbed her cigarette out. “So forget about my uncle, and forget about art world political bullshit, and come here.”
“I’m too scared,” Gabriel joked. And Colette grabbed his shoulders, pulling him onto his back. When she kissed him he could taste the acidic, dusty remnants of the cigarette.
Every year Gabriel’s studiomates held a joint Christmas party, but with typical artistic languor, by the time they got around to organizing, it was February. Usually, there was a lot of one sort of food. One year everyone brought sausages and no one brought baguettes. Another there were eighteen bottles of wine and no food. This year, it appeared to be almost all side dishes: tabbouleh, céleri rémoulade, and shredded carrot salad.
Hans’s wife had the baby in a sort of sling across her abdomen, and Hans inched as far away from her as possible. He looked tired, his skin hanging off his face. Didier started the grill, set up in the middle of the warehouse. He was wearing an apron that said “Kiss the cook” in English.
Gabriel brought Didier another beer.
“Hey,” Didier said. “Where’s Colette?”
Gabriel lifted the corner of his mouth and shrugged. He had been trying to get ahold of her for two days, but she wasn’t even returning his texts.
“Are you no longer dating?”
“Why, do you want my secondhand kisses?”
“Ha,” Didier said. He snorted and turned the lonely brochette 180 degrees. “I just wondered.”
“I don’t know,” Gabriel answered the earlier question. “Yeah, I mean, I guess.” He wanted Didier to ask him further, to probe a little bit so that Gabriel could admit he had asked her to the barbecue but she had blown him off. I don’t think it’s my crowd, she’d said.
Didier took the sole brochette off the grill and put it on a waiting plate. “Really? No one else brought meat?”
“I have some veggie burgers,” Marie-Laure said.
“I’d rather eat Hans’s shorts,” Didier said.
“I like them,” Marie-Laure said.
“Hans’s shorts?”
“Don’t be such a fucking adolescent.”
Sitting down on the crates and broken folding chairs that made up the “courtyard” of the studio, Gabriel took his minuscule bite of beef and pushed the salads around on his plate. Everyone shivered in the cold.
Marie-Laure sat on her new boyfriend’s lap, feeding him playfully. She was wearing a short skirt that revealed her underwear when she sat, white with red stripes. Didier was staring right at it. Hans took his turn with the baby, holding her in one arm and drinking giant gulps