Twenty-two

The two guards lead me from the dayroom, each with a hand clenched around an elbow. I look back at Kimberly, and she mouths the words, “Stay calm.”

Which isn’t easy, as I’m being physically escorted by two armed guards through a maze of corridors and locked doors to who-knows-where. I keep asking them what’s going to happen, where they’re taking me, do I need a lawyer. But I get no answers.

“You can’t put me in a cell,” I declare with authority. “I’m innocent, innocent until proven guilty. And I’m not guilty. Not close to guilty. Those kids are just trying to save their own asses.”

Silence except for the sound of our shoes on the tile floor.

“I have an appointment,” I say, as if this is going to make them let me go. Markel’s coming over to check my progress on Bath II. “A business meeting I can’t miss. Very important. And I can’t go in a cell. I’m kind of claustrophobic. I could get sick or, or . . .”

The younger of the two finally takes pity on me. “We’re not putting you in a cell.”

Instead, I’m led into a dimly lit, narrow room with a desk and two chairs. It must be for lawyer visits. Or interrogations. I look for a two-way mirror, but there isn’t one. The only window is in the door, and it’s crisscrossed with wire mesh. The empty walls are the usual rotting-vegetable green. I look at the guards, hoping they aren’t going to leave me in here by myself.

“Someone will be in to talk to you soon,” the younger guard says. They quickly exit, closing the door with a snap behind them.

I immediately try the handle; it’s locked. I look through the meshed window; all I can see is the cinder-block wall across the corridor. Was it only minutes ago that I was overseeing the mural with the boys?

The room smells like cheap cologne mingled with stale sweat, and the odor is making me nauseous. Underpaid lawyers. Scared, stupid boys. And now me. Locked in. The air is overheated, and the walls are tight. I begin to sweat.

I pace. There’s no reason to freak out. Reggie and Xavier are clearly lying, and the authorities will pick up on that in a second. Eight steps across. Four down. This is just standard operating procedure. It’s a drug bust, after all. This has nothing to do with me or any presumption about my guilt. Just procedure, that’s all. SOP.

Eight steps across. Four down. They had to separate me from the boys. Take precautions. Search my purse to make sure there really aren’t any drugs. A chill runs through me. Are they going to search me? The phrase “body cavity” flashes through my brain in neon letters.

No. I can’t go there. Can’t let this get the better of me. I glance up at the weak bulb above my head, and the ceiling appears to shrink, to press down on me. Think of something else.

Markel will be at the studio by five. He’s curious about the whole baking process, and I promised him a demonstration. That means I have to do some painting in order to have something to bake. I have to get out of here. What will he think if I’m not there? That I’ve double-crossed him?

Can’t go there either. Eight steps across. Four down. Pace and count. Someone will be here any minute.

But it’s almost an hour before there’s a knock at the door. By that time, I’m really sweaty, actually on the verge of throwing up. And despite the overly warm room, I’m very cold. I hug myself as I watch the door open, hold my breath.

When I see that it’s Kimberly and that she’s holding my purse and smiling, I surprise myself and burst into tears.

AS I RIDE the bus home, I’m mortified by my overreaction to the situation. Kimberly explained that it was immediately obvious to everyone that Reggie and Xavier were lying, that I was never a real suspect. Obvious to everyone but me. There will be an inquiry, and I probably won’t be able to come back to Beverly Arms until it’s over, but it’s just the system, the way it has to be done. She said to think of it as the process necessary to clear my name. I wondered why it was necessary to officially clear the name of an innocent person, but I didn’t ask.

And she was perfect, offering me tissues and telling me how sorry she was, that she would have responded in exactly the same way under similar circumstances. But still. I’m thirty-one years old, and there I was, blubbering like a baby over what turned out to be nothing. Something I should have recognized as nothing right from the beginning.

When I get home, I stumble into the shower. I have less than two hours before Markel shows up. The shower cleans the sweat and the odor of fear from my skin, but it does nothing to wash away the residual emotions smoldering inside my body. Once I start painting though, the feelings disappear. I’m well beyond the middle-range colors, and it’s easy to slip into the zone as I work with the breadth of oranges that dominate the bottom right-hand side of the painting and then weave their understated way throughout the entire image, pulling it together from bottom-right to top-left as green pulls from top-right to bottom-left.

The more I work on Bath II, the more sure I am that the forgery Markel brought to me was copied directly from an original Degas. Except for Françoise and the space around her, the scope of the colors, the subtlety of the shadows, the juxtapositions of tone and light have to be based on the work of the master. I don’t believe any forger could have created this without a model from which to work. At its most essential heart, this is an Edgar Degas creation. Which, if I’m right, means there might be an original somewhere. Degas was famous at the time it was painted, and it’s unlikely an object of such value would have been destroyed. But you never know.

By the time Markel arrives, the canvas has been in the oven for almost an hour, and I’m experimenting with greens for the next layer. He wipes paint from my cheek with his thumb and gives me a hug. “A little too orangey for your coloring,” he says. “Might want to add a touch more red.”

I’m not displeased at his familiarity. We’ve never hugged before, and he feels bigger than I expected, more solid. And he smells good, like summer. I hug him back, lengthening the embrace a moment or so longer than might be considered proper between colleagues.

I pull away. “Don’t come by tomorrow.” I gesture to the palette I’ve been experimenting on. “I look even worse in green.”

He turns to the oven. “Is it cooking?”

“Got about another fifteen minutes before the first test.”

He sits down in my chair and stares into the oven. “It’s such a weird image. A baking canvas.”

“Almost seems normal to me now.”

The light is on inside the oven, and he leans in closer. “You’re already into the rich tones?” he asks. “How did you get so far so fast?”

“Thanks to your trusty oven.”

“Can we take it out?”

I cluck my tongue. “No, little Aiden, I’m sorry, Santa isn’t coming until morning.”

“Patience isn’t my strong suit.” He wanders over to the table where my paints, brushes, and mediums are scattered in a messy jumble only I can understand. He sniffs. “You got a dead animal in here?”

“Shit. I sure as hell hope not.” I go to the kitchen area, squat to check the base of the cabinets. I open the door under the sink and warily stick my head in. “But it’s not unheard of.”

“No. I mean it smells like formaldehyde. Like a science lab or something.”

Relieved, I stand. “Phenol formaldehyde. Another van Meegeren invention. Like I told you, a kind of a medium, but not directly mixed in. It hardens the paint and helps it dry.”

Markel frowns. “But if Degas didn’t use it, won’t they be able to tell?”

“The baking breaks it down and completely disperses it. The paint’s hard, but the chemicals are gone.”

“And you wondered why I chose you?”

“Anyone with time to do the research and the ability to copy can do this.” The juvy boys aren’t the only ones uncomfortable with compliments.

When the timer chimes, I grab two potholders, squat, and open the door. I carefully inch the canvas toward me, giving it small pushes through the rack on the underside of the painting. Then I lift it and place it on the top of the stove.

Markel says nothing as I dampen a piece of cotton wool with alcohol and wave it an inch or so above the area on which the newly applied orange is the thickest. The paint remains unchanged. No softening, no desaponification. I press the alcohol swab to a dab of paint I purposely leaked over the edge of the canvas, holding the contact while I count slowly to ten. When I remove the cotton wool, it’s completely white. I lightly press a finger to the paint. Hard as a rock.

“Done,” I say, lifting the canvas to the easel.

Markel’s eyes swing from my forgery to his original, then back again. “It’s phenomenal, Claire,” he says in a low whisper. “Absolutely phenomenal.”

“Now for the varnish.” I twist the top off a can of varnish and pour a bit into a small bowl. When the smell hits my nose, I’m back in juvy, sweaty and scared. I quickly pick up my brush and start talking about van Meegeren. “So he figured out that if you applied a coat of varnish while the paint was still warm from baking, the cracks from the original sizing would come out as each layer cooled.”

“Clever man.”

“I had a rudimentary understanding of the whole craquelure thing, but I never knew any of the details before I took those Repro certification classes and started doing research for this project. Never even heard of van Meegeren. We didn’t learn about him in art school. Hardly anybody seems to be aware of his contribution.”

“I’m guessing academics aren’t all that keen on beefing up the reputation of a forger,” Markel says dryly.

“And even though you can’t see it right now because the paint’s still hot,” I continue, “in another couple of hours, a tiny tracery of miniature hills and valleys will rise magically until they’re written on the surface.”

“Both artist and poet.” He’s beaming at me like a proud papa. But the softness of his eyes has nothing to do with fatherhood and everything to do with sexual attraction. He takes a step toward me. “Claire?” he says, and I know exactly what he’s asking.

I want him, I have for a while. It’s been a tough day, and I’d like nothing better than to crawl into his arms, have him obliterate all my fears and replace them with pleasure. But I’ve made too many bad choices before him, and now there are too many secrets between us. I shake my head.

He blinks, steps back. “Okay. That’s cool. Has nothing to do with the rest of the project. Or anything else.”

The longing on his face mirrors what I feel. “Maybe later,” I say, wishing for sooner. “Maybe after this is all over . . .”

“Probably smart,” he says, in a flat voice that reveals that he doesn’t think it’s smart at all.