A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,21

would pretend like he always dined alone. He’d drain the bottle of wine, order a few pintxos, and nonchalantly drop the cash on the table before leaving, trying to convince himself that adults did this—they dined alone. It was not pathetic. It was independent.

And then his pupils finally dilated and there she was, at a table near the entrance, head down and hair falling into her lap, bent over her phone.

“Hey,” he said. She looked up and he felt his chest constrict. Her eyes sparkled. She had put on smoky eye makeup, à la Edie Sedgwick, and painted her lashes impossibly long. Had she done this for him?

“Hey,” she said, sounding surprised, as if they’d just bumped into each other instead of arranging to meet here. She put her phone into her large leather bag, slumped at her feet like a cat.

Gabriel leaned forward to kiss her cheek and she politely presented each side to him. He sat and removed his leather jacket, then put it back on when he noticed that the other diners were dressed in button-down shirts.

There was a silence while Colette rearranged her silverware. “Is this place okay?” she asked. “I just thought of it while we were on the phone. My friend brings clients here sometimes and then we hung up and I thought, That’s so stupid, bringing a Spaniard to a Spanish restaurant. It’s bound not to be any good.”

“It’s fine.” Gabriel smiled. “It’s like home!” His voice lilted.

She frowned, not sure if he was being sarcastic. The waiter came by and handed Gabriel an enormous, leather-bound wine list. He chose a bottle at random, a Rioja that was neither the most expensive nor the least expensive.

“Very good, sir.”

“How come you didn’t talk to him in Spanish?” Colette asked.

“I think he’s Albanian.”

She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to continue the conversation.

The bottle of wine arrived, interrupting their silence. The waiter showed Gabriel the bottle, and Gabriel bent close to it in the darkened restaurant, pretending the words meant something to him. They both watched the aproned man, neat mustache, biceps divulging a past life as a laborer or an athlete, insert the corkscrew and pull the cork out. It gave way with a satisfying pop. Gabriel saw with satisfaction that Colette jumped, just a little bit. Or flinched.

“To art.” She raised her glass.

He took a sip. She swirled her wine inside the glass, her wrist moving barely perceptibly, but forcing the liquid into undulations against the sides, churning red waves.

He knew that if he tried to copy her effort, he would spill drops onto the white tablecloth that would haunt him for the rest of the meal, like spots behind his eyes after he’d unadvisedly looked at the sun.

Colette was talking now, and Gabriel was nodding, listening but not really hearing. She talked quickly and had a small endearing lisp that made it hard for him to understand the specifics of what she was talking about. Now, for example, he knew she was relating a story that was supposed to be unbelievable, he could tell by the way she paused dramatically to inhale, eyes wide and head bobbing as if to encourage belief. No, really, her eyes said, blinking rapidly.

She blew smoke away with the hand that was holding a cigarette, not clearing the air much at all. The lit butt followed her at all times, a firefly punctuating her sentences. Would she lose her charm when the smoking ban went into effect? Gabriel wondered. Or would it simply transfer to another expressive tic, like buttoning and unbuttoning a sweater, or worrying her clamshell telephone?

Tonight she wore more elaborate makeup—her eyelids had a sheen to them and her mouth was painted a bright red. The story finished in a burst of giggles, which Gabriel mimicked. He had gotten used to only half understanding his surroundings. He liked the remove his foreignness gave him. Sometimes, being outside of a culture was like having a one-way window into other people.

He was free to contemplate her in a way that was completely visual. What did her cheeks do when she inhaled? How did her shoulders react to a touch or a perceived slight? Examining a person became part of a narrative he continually constructed, that he always wanted to put in his paintings but emerged only in his drawings, his derivative drawings, his Connois and Canaletto homages. Someday, he would work that sense of completion into his real work, when the pendulum swung away from