The ART FORGER

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

Chapter One

I've been working on the window series for over two years, rummaging around the city with my sketchbook and Nikon. Church windows, reflective windows, Boston's ubiquitous bays. Large, small, old, broken, wood-and metal-framed. Windows from the outside in and the inside out. I especially like windows on late winter afternoons before anyone inside notices the darkening sky and snaps the blinds shut.

I hang Sidewalk next to Tower. Now there are a dozen, a nice round number. But is it right? Too many and he'll be overwhelmed. Too few and he'll miss my breadth, both in content and style. It's so difficult to choose. One of the many reasons studio visits make me so nervous.

And what's up with this visit anyway? I'm a pariah in the art world, dubbed "the Great Pretender." Have been for almost three years. And suddenly Aiden Markel, the owner of the world-renowned Markel G, is on his way to my loft. Aiden Markel, who just a few months ago barely acknowledged my presence when I stopped by the gallery to see a new installation. And now he's suddenly all friendly, complimentary, asking to see my latest work, leaving his tony Newbury Street gallery to slum it in SOWA in order to appreciate my paintings, as he said, "in situ."

I glance across the room at the two paintings sitting on easels. Woman Leaving Her Bath, a nude climbing out of a tub and attended to by a clothed maid, was painted by Edgar Degas in the late nineteenth century; this version was painted by Claire Roth in the early twenty-first. The other painting is only half-finished: Camille Pissarro's The Vegetable Garden with Trees in Blossom, Spring, Pontoise à la Roth. Reproductions.com pays me to paint them, then sells the paintings online as "perfect replicas" whose "provenance only an art historian could discern" for ten times my price. These are my latest work.

I turn back to my windows, pace, narrow my eyes, pace some more. They'll just have to do. I throw a worn Mexican blanket over the rumpled mattress in the corner then gather the dirty dishes scattered around the studio and dump them in the sink. I consider washing them, decide not to. If Aiden Markel wants in situ, I'll give him in situ. But I do fill a bowl with cashews and pull out a bottle of white wine—never red at a studio visit—and a couple of glasses.

I wander to the front of the studio and look out the row of windows onto Harrison Avenue. The same view as Loft. I spend a lot of time in this spot, pretending to work through my latest project, but mostly daydreaming, spying, procrastinating. It's four stories up, and each of the six windows in front of me stretches from two feet above the floor to two feet below the fifteen-foot ceiling.

This building was once a factory—handkerchiefs, some old-timer told me. But the old-timers aren't known for their veracity, so it could have been hats or suspenders or maybe not even a factory at all. Now it's a warren of artists' studios, some, as in my case, live-in studios. Illegal, of course, but cheap.

According to media hype, SOWA—South of Washington—is the new trendy district in the south end of Boston's South End; the north was the new trendy area about ten years ago. But to me, and to anyone who spends any time here, it's barely on the cusp. Warehouses, projects, a famous homeless shelter, and abandoned basketball courts form the base of a neighborhood erratically pockmarked with expensive restaurants, art galleries, and pristine residential buildings protected by security. The roar of I-93 is so constant it sounds like silence. I wouldn't want to live any where else.

Below, Aiden Markel turns the corner from East Berkeley with his lanky, graceful stride. Even from half a block away, I can see he's wearing perfectly tailored pants—most likely linen—and what's probably a $500 shirt. It's eighty-five degrees on a late summer after noon, and the guy looks as if he stepped out of his Back Bay condo on a cool September morning. He pulls out his cell, glances at my building, and touches the screen. My phone rings.

There's no elevator and no air-conditioning in the hallways and stairwells. As we hit the fourth floor, Markel's breathing is steady and his clothes are bandbox. Clearly, the man spends time in the gym. Not to mention that he hasn't stopped talking since I let him in the door. No one would guess we've barely spoken to each other in three years.

"I was around the corner from here just the other day," Markel says, continuing his running monologue of small talk. "Dedham and Harrison. Looked at Pat Hirsi's newest project. You know him, right?"

I shake my head no.

"He's working with cobblestones. Very ingenious."

I pull open the wide steel door with two hands.

Markel steps over the threshold, takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes. "Nothing like the smell of an artist at work." He keeps his eyes closed, which isn't exactly what I want him to do; he's supposed to be here to look at my paintings, fall in love with them, and set me up with a one-woman show at Markel G. Right. Like that's going to happen. Although, what is going to happen or why he's here is beyond me.

"How about a glass of wine?" I ask.

He finally opens his eyes and gives me a slow, warm smile. "Will you be joining me?"

I can't help but smile back. He's not classically handsome, his features are too large for that, but there's something in the way he carries himself, the wide deep-set eyes, the dimple in his chin, that tugs at me. Charisma, I guess. That and our shared history.

"Sure." I grab a pile of canvases I somehow forgot were on my beaten up couch and lean them against an even more beaten up coffee table. Sometimes I think I'm a living parody of myself: the starving artist sleeping on a mattress in her studio to save on rent. Yet, there it is.

Markel doesn't move. He stares at me for a long moment then shifts his gaze over my shoulder, a wistful look on his face. I know he's thinking about Isaac. I probably should just say something, but I don't know what to say. That I'm sorry? That I'm still upset? That I lost a friend, too?

I pour wine into two juice glasses as he settles into the couch. Not an easy feat as it's lumpy and too deep for comfort. I should get a new one, or at least a new secondhand one, but the landlord just raised my rent, and I'm pretty much broke.

I sit in the rocking chair across from him and lean forward. "I heard your Jocelyn Gamp show went fabulously well."

He takes a sip of his wine. "It was her molten pieces. She sold everything she had. Plus three commissions. Amazing lady. Amazing artist. The Met's requested a studio visit."

I like how he doesn't take any of the credit. "She sold" rather than "I sold" or even "we sold." Extremely rare among the run-amok egos of most dealers and gallery owners.

"Not often a Boston show gets covered in the New York Times," I suck up.

"Yes, it...