A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,19

you want from me.”

Colette smiled. “I am a small fish playing with the bigs,” she said. “No major auction has occurred in Paris since 1941, this is no secret.” During World War II, Paris ceased to be the center of the art world, and it never recovered its status. Now London, New York, and Tokyo were the only places major events were held. Tinsley’s Paris office, the “outpost,” they called it, was more for letterhead than for actual business. It was located on the second floor of a Champs-Élysées building, nondescript, but in the correct Eighth Arrondissement. When they held their auctions, meager affairs—the good stuff always came to New York or London—they rented space nearby. It was not an ideal arrangement, but it had worked decently well for fifty years, and so, in true old-school business style, they left things as they were. Someone went over there once a month or so to see what was happening in the office. Really, it was an excuse to travel to Paris, which no one in the Tinsley upper echelon ever passed up.

Colette continued, “Perhaps you will remember that I helped you when there is an opportunity for an associate specialist position in New York? Or even senior specialist?”

Before Elm could change her face muscles to laugh the ludicrous cackle she wanted to, Colette was down the hall, leaving a strawberry scent in her wake.

“What was that scurrying noise I heard?” Ian stuck his head around Elm’s door. “Was there an errant crumb to be gathered?”

“Colette wants me to recommend her for associate specialist in New York.”

“Ahhh,” Ian sighed. “That would be, unless I’m mistaken, a position I currently hold?”

“And that you will continue to hold. Don’t worry. She’s found some sort of treasure trove. She wants to plumb its depths.”

“Don’t mix metaphors, it’s unseemly.” He closed the door behind him and moved a pile of papers, then unbuttoned his jacket to sit on the low couch. “You know the photocopy room?” His knees were higher than his chest. Elm often forgot he was tall; he had a short man’s willingness to please. The look on his face was one of worry.

“Yes,” said Elm, impatient. “I am acquainted with the photocopy room. In fact, it doubles as the supply room, they tell me.”

“Listen, Elm, this is serious. You know how you can hear the ladies’ room from there?”

“You can?” Elm thought back to all the times she’d sat in a stall, bawling her eyes out.

“There’s a vent. Anyway, Colette was in there, on the phone.”

“Of course, your scrupulous honesty prevented you from listening.”

“She wants my job, Elm.”

“Since when do you speak French?”

“She was talking in English. To Joel. From transportation? You know she’s fucking him.”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t know anything around here.” Elm tried to put a face to Joel from transportation, and came up with a hazy picture of a man with novelty facial hair. He was basically in charge of shipping, which required expertise in its own right, knowing the medium and its preferred way to travel, designing packaging for fragile items, and occasionally transporting the invaluable item personally. Elm had once flown on Air France with a Fabergé egg on her lap. She’d brought it with her to the bathroom, balancing the package on the small metal sink while she urinated.

Elm covered his hands with her own. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m a Tinsley, for chrissake. And as long as I’m here, you’re here.”

“Yes, okay, Elm, so what if you get moved to some ceremonial post dealing with midcentury African masks or something? And then you can’t protect me. You have a family, another income. I can’t be looking for new employment. Not now.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Elm said. “You’re valued even beyond me. I mean, you’re a valuable employee. And don’t be so sure about the two-income thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Colin said they’re restructuring at Moore.”

“What does that mean for you two?”

“No telling.” Elm sighed. She knew Ian could see her worry. He knit his brow into a large V.

“We’ve got to get our acts together,” Ian said. “We have to quit moping about.” He stopped, realized what he said. Elm’s heart lurched. Was her moping that obvious? Then: a flash of anger. She was just supposed to get over the death of her son? Her face must have registered her reaction because Ian immediately backtracked. “I mean, not that you’re moping, or, I mean, you have something you can mope about. I didn’t mean you