You had to really layer on acrylics to get them to have the texture of oils. Of course, Gabriel did not fail to notice the discreet red dot in the lower-right-hand corner of the description. Someone had bought this shit.
Inside the gallery an improbably androgynous assistant sat behind a long glass desk bereft of anything other than a keyboard. He/she was peering down into the table, and it took a minute for Gabriel to realize the monitor was embedded in the glass. He cleared his throat.
The androgyne made no sign of acknowledgment. Gabriel cleared his throat again, louder.
“May I help you, monsieur?” There was a long pause between you and monsieur, emphasizing that the asker was not sure if he deserved the honorific.
“I’m looking for Lise Girard.”
The man—Gabriel now saw an Adam’s apple—waved his hand in a gesture of incomprehension or dismissal.
“We are not a missing persons bureau,” the man said. He swept his hair out of his eyes with one hand.
“I’m not looking for her,” Gabriel said. He had chosen the wrong word. “I have … an appointment.” He wondered how much jail time he would do for slashing a Twombly canvas. Or slashing a supercilious Ambrosine intern.
Without altering his scowl, the intern picked up a thin silver phone from under the desk. He could hear it ring in the bowels of the gallery. Lise came out, clicking fast in her high heels. She wore a pencil skirt, and he could see, even though she was thin, the traces of her three pregnancies in her belly.
“Thanks, Claude,” she said, motioning Gabriel to follow her into a small, windowless office. It was crowded with catalogs, all up the walls and stacked on the floor.
“What’s in there?” She pointed to his makeshift portfolio.
“Nothing,” Gabriel said. “Something I’m delivering.”
“For Rosenzweig? Can I see? What is it?”
“I don’t want to unpack it.”
“Come on,” Lise said. She reached around him to grab the briefcase from his hand. “Show me. I’ll have one of the peons wrap it back up better than this Naugahyde folder.”
Before he could protest, she had the briefcase in her hands and, gloves on, was unzipping it. She placed the disastrous drawing on a flat table in her office, the only noncovered surface, and inhaled. She tilted a lamp to shine the light directly on the drawing and leaned so that her face was inches away from the page, examining the ink.
Gabriel sucked in his breath. He was sure she was debating how best to put the delicate question. It was obviously drawn in his own hand, inexpertly at that. He let himself smile a bit as he enjoyed her obvious discomfort, imagining her mind spinning through the possibilities: Édouard had been duped; Gabriel had been duped, had tried to fake a drawing.
When she straightened up, she was not smiling. “Amazing,” she said. “It’s fascinating to see the changes from sketch to painting, isn’t it? I mean, I recognize the theme, the composition, certain elements, from … what’s that one Connois called? With the market?”
Lise paused. Gabriel did not answer her. He was shocked. Did she really not see that the sketch was a fake? Was she so gullible or superficial that she didn’t see the hesitation in the lines, the disproportion in the figures? Or did people really expect so little of sketches that they were willing to assume any mistakes would be smoothed over in oil paint? Maybe she was teasing him, trying to see if he would correct her. “Víspera de Fiesta,” he said, finally.
“The other one,” she said. “With the old woman.”
“La Vieja? There’s no old woman in this one.”
“Yes, but”—Lise grabbed a pencil and pointed the nonsharpened end at the paper—“see the triangular composition, with the kiosk pole as the top. And then the inverted triangle just below it with the barrels and the hay bales? Classic Connois, isn’t it?”
Gabriel nodded. Now that she made the point he could see how other Connois paintings must have influenced him. And even a little Canaletto in the exaggerated pleats. Lise didn’t see his hodgepodge of styles?
“It’s so great to deal in older drawings. Sometimes I get so fed up with contemporary posing, you know?” She picked up the phone and pressed the intercom. “Hi, can you send someone to my office to wrap something?” To Gabriel she said, “Are you insured for this sort of thing?”
He shook his head, as much in wonder as in answer. She really believed this was a Connois sketch? He had always respected