A Nearly Perfect Copy: A Novel Read online

  He stumbled a bit on the entry rug before he noticed Elm looking at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have rung. Were you worried?”

  Elm could hear the descending chords in the background, signaling a change of scene. Was the jury back in? Was there a development at the precinct? She fought the urge to turn her attention back to the television.

  “I’ve had the longest fecking day,” he said, throwing his jacket on the chair and kicking off his shoes. He came around to sit next to Elm, taking her feet in his lap. She hadn’t changed since coming home from work, and her feet were still stockinged. She wiggled her toes but he didn’t rub them.

  He smelled faintly of alcohol and sweat; tired, stale sweat, like being in an airless meeting all day, which was probably what he had been doing before he went to a bar, either alone or with people from work. She didn’t care that he drank, only that it was an activity he embarked on without her. It was another distancing factor.

  “What happened?” she asked. Guilty, the foreman said. The television defendant burst into tears, mouthing, Why? Why? at the startled jury. The credits began to scroll on the right of a split screen. The other half plugged the nightly news.

  “Can we talk about it in the morning?” he asked, turning to her. His face was so forlorn, so utterly exhausted, that it reminded her of the morning he had arrived in Bangkok, soulless and failed.

  “Okay,” she said. Then a pause. “No, you have to tell me now.”

  “It’s not bad,” he said. “Can we leave it, Elm? Need a kip. A little pissed, I am. I’ll look in on the beanbag?”

  “Just let her sleep,” Elm said. “Tell her you looked in on her and she slept through it.”

  In the early morning, Elm woke up to the sound of Colin peeing long into the toilet, and then the hinge of the medicine cabinet where he was probably taking something for a headache. Then she heard the whir of the electric toothbrush.

  The bed began to grow cold. Elm stretched, and suddenly, she wanted Colin. “Come back to bed,” she called.

  “In a minute,” he said. “I want to shower.”

  This was marriage, then, she thought. Sublimated desire, delayed gratification. She had thought marriage would fulfill some of these needs, emotional as well as sexual, that having a permanent partner would end her loneliness, her frustration, her anxiety. But no, she often had to wait as long for release as when she was single, when she waited for her girlfriends to get off work so they could meet for a drink, spend the evening identifying then flirting with a stranger, making out with him outside the bar before giving him a fake number and slipping away in a taxi.

  He came to her smelling of soap and shampoo, and a little like deodorant, a bouquet of artificial scents. She surprised herself by attacking him. Usually, their morning lovemaking was leisurely and half-asleep. He typically started it, and often she could catch a few more minutes of shut-eye afterward. Not so this morning. She bit his ears, held his arms down while she straddled him, then insisted on a position they didn’t normally use.

  Afterward, she pulled the sheet around her. It was still early. Moira wouldn’t stir for another thirty minutes. She felt better—less frustrated, but still anxious.

  “Now you’ll tell me,” she said.

  “What?” he asked. He was dozing again, his eyes half-closed.

  “What was bothering you yesterday.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Al resigned.”

  “What?” Elm was shocked. Al had been Colin’s boss for ten years. He had been at the company for nearly twenty.

  “He just quit?” she asked.

  “Pretty much,” Colin said, stretching. “He said he didn’t want to work under that admin.”

  “That’s insane,” Elm said. She twisted around to face Colin. “What’s he going to do?”

  Colin said, “Fuck if I know. His noncompete clause means he won’t be working in the pharmaceutical industry, at least.” Colin closed his eyes again, avoiding looking at her.

  “Colin,” Elm said. “What does that mean for you?”

  “I”—he paused—“no longer have an advocate. Which means that possibly I no longer have a job.”

  “What?”

  “Or, maybe they’ll promote me. I can’t really say at the moment.”

  “How can you be so …” Elm searched for the right word. “Nonchalant? This is your future. You have a noncompete agreement too.”

  “I’m not in a tizzy, Cabbage, because it’s not something I have any control over at the moment.”

  “What do you mean? Don’t call me Cabbage. I hate vegetable endearments. We need to plan or something. Did Al really resign? For good? Irreparably?”

  “Afraid so. Elm, we just have to wait. Don’t you think I’m bloody worried too?”

  Elm’s secret chafed like an itch, like an inflammation of the conscience. This would be the time to tell Colin. She could pretend she was joking, see what his reaction would be. And then he would stop her, because, of course, someone needed to talk her out of this insanity. Because she was thinking about it as something she’d already done. Or rather, something that the person who was inside her body had done. She felt so removed from herself that her hands were things of wonder, her knees foreign.

  She should tell him now. Now, she urged herself. But it would be so easy to pretend that she hadn’t purposely stopped taking the pill, that it had simply failed. And then they wouldn’t have to have that conversation, the one where he voiced all the nagging worries she was pushing down into her subconscious, the uncomfortable distance that arose whenever they talked about Ronan, like the topic was a furnace grate that blasted hot air when opened.

  Colin was already out of bed and in his boxers. “I’ll get Moira up for school,” he said.

  Relay Lacker operated her art-consulting business from a small office in Midtown, but suggested an upscale restaurant near Tinsley’s on the Upper East Side when Elm invited her to lunch.

  Elm ordered the least stomach-turning thing on the menu, but even as her Cobb salad arrived she knew she wouldn’t be able to eat it. She pushed it around with her fork while they made small talk.

  “So,” Elm said, hiding half of an egg under a large piece of lettuce where it wouldn’t stare at her. “I’ve asked you to lunch because I would like to discuss some business.”

  “I’m all ears,” Relay said. She smiled, and Elm caught just a glimpse of a gap between her teeth and gums. She’d had porcelain veneers put on. Elm didn’t know anyone who had done that, and she wanted to ask her about it, but it didn’t seem appropriate.

  “I have available these drawings for sale, really beautiful pieces. A Piranesi, two Canalettos, a couple of Connoises, Ganedis, or at least from their schools, new to the market.”

  “Ooh,” Relay said. She leaned forward on her elbows. “I don’t know the last artist.”

  “I was wondering if your private clients might like to take a look at them.”

  Relay sat up. “Mostly they’re interested in modern art, but … Why wouldn’t you put them up for auction at Tinsley’s?”

  Elm chose her words carefully. “Their provenances are sort of slim. Art owned by Jews, stolen by the Nazis and recently recovered. Their sale goes toward reparations for the families, you know, the ones who survived.”

  Relay furrowed her brow. “So you don’t want them for Tinsley’s, but you want to foist them off on me?”

  Elm laughed, though Relay was close to the truth. “It’s not like that. I just can’t verify the ownership to the extent that the house demands. But they’re really beautiful pieces, and the cause, so to speak, is good.”

  “What kind of a financial arrangement would you be looking for?”

  Elm had planned out what she was prepared to offer, but she pretended to consider. “How about we split the twenty percent commission?”

  Relay nodded.

  “And, my name stays out of it,” Elm said. “That’s really important. Obviously, I’m not supposed to deal privatel
y, but I really want to see these pieces end up in good hands.”

  “So I’ll deal directly with the sellers,” Relay said.

  “Well, actually, me, and I’ll deal with the Englishman who is selling them on behalf of the owners. They want to remain anonymous.”

  “Okay …” Relay dragged the word out, the thinking evident in her pause. She seemed about to ask a question, then thought better of it. “Yeah, that works. Send me the PDFs.” Relay held out her hand for Elm to shake, an odd formality that amused Elm.

  When the check came, Relay insisted on paying, even though Elm had invited her to lunch. “Because you’re bringing me business, that’s why,” she said.

  This had been so easy, Elm thought. Why had she thought it would be impossible to sell Klinman’s drawings? She didn’t even have to pay for lunch.

  Relay called her the following week and left Elm a voice mail saying she thought she had a buyer for a couple of the drawings. Elm called her back.

  “I think you know them? You were at their party? The people with, you know, the dog?” Relay had the unfortunate habit on the phone of raising her voice at the end of each sentence so that each statement sounded uncertain.

  Elm looked at her fingernails, feigning nonchalance, even over the telephone. “Super,” she said.

  “They want the old woman? And the beach scene?”

  “Great.”

  “They offered $175,000 for both.”

  Elm sat up straighter. She did some quick math: 80 percent to Klinman and his clients, the remaining 20 percent split between Relay and Elm. That would come to $17,500. “That’s a little low,” she said.

  “I know.” Relay sighed as though they were discussing a common evil, like traffic or losing sports teams. “But they were concerned about the certificates, the provenance not being so great, you know? Resale and all that. They’re investors, not collectors.” Relay lowered her voice, confiding in Elm.

  “I’ll have to consult the seller,” Elm said, swiveling her chair back to face her desk. She didn’t know if Klinman would take it. They had hoped to sell them for $100,000 each. But if the sums she was receiving were smaller she would attract less attention.

  As she hung up she considered too that she wasn’t sure where Relay’s loyalties belonged. Of course, she’d want to negotiate the best deal to earn her commission, but maybe she had a side deal going with the collectors, or “investors,” as she called them. Maybe she wanted to get them a deal so they’d use her more. Maybe … maybe … it was impossible to tell.

  Elm knew she did not have a criminal mind. The entire business made her queasy. Plus she knew these people. She’d been in their home. She had assumed the buyers would be unknown, at least to her. This made it more personal. Real criminal masterminds (at least in the movies) were free from anxiety. They slept dreamlessly at night. Meanwhile, Elm was lucky if she got two straight hours.

  The worst-case scenario, she decided. I’ll think of the worst-case scenario and then I’ll feel better. She imagined herself pregnant, behind bars. Fired, bankrupt from an extended lawsuit. And still she didn’t regret her decision to clone Ronan. That must mean something, surely.

  She wondered where Klinman got them. How far back did the forgery go? To the Holocaust survivors? Did they even exist? Had Klinman commissioned the art or was he being manipulated?

  She sent Klinman a brief message asking him to call her. Then she was sorry she had done so from the office. That would increase her liability. She made a mental note to buy one of those calling cards next time. She was getting better at this. Pretty soon she’d sleep through the night.

  Part Three

  Fall 2007

  Elm

  Elm tripped over a cable that hadn’t yet been taped to the carpet. She caught the edge of a chair, banging her elbow in the process.

  “Watch out, Mrs. Howells,” one of the facilities guys said. “You okay? We don’t want you to sue.” He laughed; she wouldn’t sue her own family. Still, she heard a little derision in his voice.

  “I’m fine. Can’t get rid of me that easy.” She looked at the empty room, numbered chairs at the ready, red carpets vacuumed neatly. In this room her fate would be decided.

  She walked to the front to check on the catalogs. “They’re almost all gone,” the receptionist said. “Don’t worry.” She pressed on her earpiece to receive a call.

  Elm took a catalog, though she had plenty at her desk. She paced back across the floor and went up to the mezzanine gallery. There they were on display, in a row like solitaire cards: Indira’s Mercat and her other treasures, alongside the rest of the items to be sold. Elm felt the old thrill of seeing her pieces come to auction. When she had made her first acquisitions, she felt almost like the artist. The power she had over the drawings was enormous. She decided their reserve, how they’d be listed in the catalog, where they would hang, what part of the mailing list might be interested. Then she waited anxiously in the back of the auction room for the lots to be called, as nervous as a pianist at her first recital.

  The day waned, the hour of the auction approaching, Elm’s anxiety mounting. Her first few auctions had been heady, then Elm settled into the routine and began almost to dread them. They seemed to be the worst part of her job. Procuring and curating works was worthwhile, noble, even. But selling them, and to the highest bidder, no less, seemed lacking in respect. So she had stopped thinking of the auctions as mercenary affairs and instead began to view that part of her job as a necessary evil. She put her head down and did what she was supposed to do. And then Ronan died and it all seemed even more like a shadow puppet show, like something someone else was doing.

  The room was filling up, some of the regular characters—George de Marie Bosque, the drawing collector; the man whose name she could never remember who wrote that blog artsnob.com; and a curator from a nascent Impressionist art museum. He’d come in before the auction, explaining that he wanted to add to the already impressive collection donated by its founders, the Lees, wealthy Asian Americans. There were some dealers and art advisers, and a celebrity she recognized as being from one of those forensic television shows. Relay was there too.

  Elm stood off in the wings. From there she had a clear view of the mounting platform as well as the audience. She waited until 7:00, then 7:05, when the auctioneer called for attention. The room was about two-thirds filled. Three auction agents were on phones at the side of the room, taking requests from anonymous bidders or those who could not be present at the auction. Usually these were Russians, eager to spend their new wealth. Though they especially liked contemporary pieces, they occasionally spent vast amounts of cash on important older items.

  The platform spun slowly, and the first drawing was displayed. A Woodridge that Indira had consigned garnered an appreciative murmur from the crowd. Elm’s bladder clenched. The auctioneer announced the minimum of $120,000, and the bidding began. The curator from the Lee museum raised his paddle. The auctioneer acknowledged him by name. Then a severe-suited woman Elm didn’t recognize pushed the bid to $130,000. An older man, shirt slightly wrinkled and jacket shiny, raised again. Elm saw he had missed a spot shaving, a small patch of dark near his chin. She’d noticed that about older men; they had a neglected air, like the damp pages of an old book. No one to oversee their ablutions.

  Elm wasn’t sure how she felt about the auctioneer, Petr Hoosman, a Dutchman who wore patriotic orange ties every day. He had come to the auction house as an accountant, but was quickly encouraged to enroll in the auctioneer education department. Unlike a typical lackadaisical Tinsley auctioneer, he had his own gregarious, untraditional patter. He recognized important auction attendees, studying pictures of bidders and price lists before the auction, but never let on that he prepared obsessively. His shoes bordered on boat wear, and his sunglasses were eternally in his breast pocket. He had studiously floppy hair in the early Beatles style and was attractive, with high cheekbones and a lopsided dimple. Ian had had an enormous crush on him for
a year, though no one was ever able to figure out his sexual preferences. He flirted indiscriminately with young and old, men and women (dogs, even), and after Elm had declared him asexual, Ian had corrected her: “Omnisexual.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Kind of like pansexual, you know, but instead of having desire for all types of sexual experiences, omnis just use sex, or the threat of it, to get what they want.”

  They were having a martini lunch, an occasional ritual on slow Fridays. She leaned over and sipped her full drink. “I guess,” Elm said. She had had a bit of a crush on Petr too, the harmless fluttering she associated with the second decade of marriage. Just enough to make coming to work interesting, but nothing she would ever act on. She called these crushes “ab rollers,” mostly futile exercise to keep the flirt muscle tight.

  “Plus, I saw him in the bathroom”—Ian leaned closer, a sign that he was about to make a vulgar statement—“and, shall we say, it’s all bluster.”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to look at each other in there.”

  “I snuck a peek.”

  “Are we talking gherkin, Fruit Roll-Up, or Second Avenue Deli pickle?”

  “What’s a Fruit Roll-Up?”

  Elm sighed. Sometimes Ian’s youth was tiresome. “A snack.… It doesn’t matter.”

  “Normal, I guess, small size.” Ian cast his eyes about the room, looking for a comparable object. “Um, like if you rolled up that cell phone.”

  Elm nodded, though she had no idea what this would look like. After that discussion, though, her ardor for Petr had waned to a trickle then dried up completely.

  Now, though, she could see Petr’s appeal, and the way both sexes responded to him. The attendees were beginning to relax: shoulders slumped, legs slack. There were genuine smiles appearing on the faces of bidders, not just grimaces of concentration. Petr had been a good hire, had shaken up the image of staid Tinsley’s and injected it with a bit of youth and iconoclasm.