A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,24
a business suit that Gabriel thought made her look like a sexily stern airline attendant from the 1950s.
“Oh!” she said when she answered the door.
“I don’t like the telephone,” Gabriel said. “Is it okay?”
“Come in,” Colette said. “Sorry it’s such a mess in here.”
Gabriel thought the words must have been a reflex because they’d both left together that morning. He realized he was still wearing the same clothes. He also realized he should have let a couple of days go by before he contacted Colette again. She made him unnaturally and uncharacteristically nervous. She was so obviously out of his league, intellectually, socially, aesthetically, that he wanted to make sure she had no time to think it over.
“You probably think I’m a strange person to appear on your doorstep.” He leaned in to kiss her and she accepted the kiss on the lips. “I promise I’m not a …” He wasn’t sure of the word and let the sentence trail off.
“I’m not worried,” Colette said. “Let’s go out to dinner.”
Gabriel had to stop at an ATM in order to pay for the evening. In two nights, he spent as much on restaurants as he usually did the entire month for food. Dating was an expensive habit.
A week later, Gabriel, hoping to stem the hemorrhage of money that Colette’s young professional lifestyle was costing him, packed a picnic and took her to the studio. She held his hand on the métro.
In his dark space she examined the paintings by peering at them closely, commenting on shading and color. Though she professed not to know much about contemporary art, she knew what she was talking about. She seemed most interested in his imitative sketches.
“This really looks like Canaletto! How did you do this?”
Gabriel shrugged.
“Do you have any Connois sketches?”
Gabriel dragged out the large sketchbook reluctantly. It was embarrassing, creating sketches in someone else’s style. But she squealed with delight as she turned the pages.
Gabriel unpacked the food, and Colette looked with disgust at the dirty floor, even though she was only wearing jeans. Gabriel was sorry he didn’t think to bring a sheet or a blanket. He borrowed a tarp from Marie-Laure’s studio and they sat on that, the lamp on the table casting long shadows. Colette took small bites at the cheese and sausage he put out, though she drank much of the wine and smoked.
In the morning, the first thing she said when they woke in her apartment was: “I’d like you to meet my uncle.” Gabriel was getting dressed, putting on last night’s clothing, which, he realized, was the previous day’s clothing as well. He had to go home and do some laundry.
“Well, I mean, it’s a figure of speech,” Colette said, lighting a cigarette. “He’s not really my uncle. His and my mother’s families were all refugees from Germany. They lived in the same village, I think. Our family came to France and his went to England, but they reconnected after the war.”
“Refugees?”
Colette said, “If you’re asking if I’m Jewish, not really, though technically, yes, I guess. Poor Maman. She married a destitute Christian and my grandparents disowned her. But they each gave her money secretly every month until they died and left her enough that she could leave my father. She lives in the Canary Islands now.” Colette laughed. “We’ll have dinner with my uncle tonight.”
Gabriel met Colette at a restaurant in the Marais that he was unhappy to see was extremely expensive. There was almost no money left in his bank account, and the end of the month’s payday was still a week away. He would have to deposit the check and deliver the rent to the landlord in cash as it was. And now he was going to be obligated to pay for three more meals. Colette had the habit of ordering fish, always one of the more expensive dishes on the menu, and he could not resist her excitement when she came across some appetizer they had to try. Once the entrées arrived, she merely picked at her food, so Gabriel had learned to order sparsely, counting on being able to eat the rest of her meal.
Inside, the maître d’ led them to a private room in back where Gabriel saw there was a small dinner party.
Colette introduced him to her uncle, Augustus Klinman, an overweight Englishman with thinning hair. He extended his hand for Gabriel to shake, and despite its fleshiness, the grip was solid.