A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,61
sighed, finally able to put a name to the knot of anxiety in his stomach. He was lonely and scared that he might disappear from this life and no one would remember him. An image came to him unbidden of Lise’s child burying his face in Gabriel’s neck. The fantasy was so strong he could even feel the moist heat, smell his baby odor. And then it was Lise in his arms, her body pressed close to his, her heartbeat sounding on his chest. She was telling him she was there, would always be there. His eyes suddenly welled with tears, and he lay back on his bed and stared at the juncture where the plasterboard wall met the old tin ceiling until the urge to sob had passed.
He drew in his studio with his headphones on. There was nothing suspicious about his actions. He just had to make sure that no one from the studio would later recognize the drawing as his. But artists deserved the stereotype of being notoriously self-centered; he doubted anyone would even see his drawing, so involved were they in their own work.
It was a disaster. His lines were hesitant, as if the value of the page weighed his hand down, made it sluggish, scared. And it didn’t feel like modern paper. It was unexpectedly rough and yet pillowy, like drawing on a piece of toilet paper. The ink was blotchy, alternately thick and reed-thin where he was unable to adequately control the nib. Gabriel wished he’d thought to bring alcohol to the studio. He wondered if Marie-Laure had any. He hadn’t heard her complain, so she was most likely not working tonight. He could just sneak into her space, grab a nip, replace it the following day. Or maybe he just needed to clear his head.
Outside, it was raining, but he didn’t go back in. How would he explain his failure to Klinman, who would be angry with him for ruining the paper? He was furious with himself, as usual. He’d fucked up again.
He snuck out of Édouard’s early the following day, complaining of a stomachache. He did have one; his innards were tied in knots with the knowledge that Klinman might murder him. He had to go back to his studio to retrieve the failed drawing. Then he had a five p.m. appointment with Lise for a tour of Ambrosine’s. His earlier fear that she was embarrassed to have him come to the gallery proved to be unwarranted. Gabriel found that was often the case; he imagined that people were embarrassed by him, disliked him, designed elaborate schemes to get rid of him. Only afterward did he realize that not only did people not think of him in that way, but most often, no one was thinking about him at all. He was glad he had been wrong about Lise’s intentions, if not about her bourgeois life. He was glad to have her as a friend.
Few were the artists who had their own studios that doubled as storefronts. Among these elite, even fewer had the staying power of Ambrosine. He had capitalized on his real estate and fame to serve as a high-end market for contemporary art. But not the avant-garde post-postmodern installations that interested Gabriel. Rather, he was a purveyor of big names, little talent, like Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Tracey Emins. Gabriel felt simultaneously envious and dismissive of these sellouts. He knew, even as he looked down on them, that he would trade places with them in a heartbeat. It had become his habit recently to check biographies for birth dates. More often than not, those written about in art magazines or shown in the windows of Marais galleries were younger than he.
At Ambrosine, the ubiquitous Cy Twombly was showing. In the window hung a colossal canvas. It was several shades of pale blue, from cyan to titanium to cadet, each seamlessly integrated with white swirls descending the canvas like streaming tears. Something looked strange to Gabriel—the light reflecting off the window?—but then he realized the painting was done in acrylics. He nearly laughed out loud. Acrylics were the fingerpaints of the art world, the medium of Sunday river painters and rich American art vacationers. Of course, when someone as great as Twombly used them, they were ironic, but to everyone else they were cheap, easily manipulated, and somehow too shiny and artificial. They looked ephemeral compared to the aristocratic authority of oils, with their distinct linseed smell and blunted peaks.