*
“Merde,” shouted a man into the ear of the woman beside him, trying to raise his voice above the din of conversation. “This stuff is shit. Can you believe Clara Morrow got a solo show?”
The woman beside him shook her head and grimaced. She wore a flowing skirt and a tight T-shirt with scarves wrapped around her neck and shoulders. Her earrings were hoops and each of her fingers held rings.
In another place and time she’d have been considered a gypsy. Here she was recognized for what she was. A mildly successful artist.
Beside her her husband, also an artist and dressed in cords and a worn jacket with a rakish scarf at the neck, turned back to the painting.
“Dreadful.”
“Poor Clara,” agreed his wife. “The critics’ll savage her.”
Jean Guy Beauvoir, who was standing beside the two artists, his back to the painting, turned to glance at it.
On the wall among a cluster of portraits was the largest piece. Three women, all very old, stood together in a group, laughing.
They looked at each other, and touched each other, holding each other’s hands, or gripping an arm, tipping their heads together. Whatever had made them laugh, it was to each other they turned. As they equally would if something terrible had happened. As they naturally would whatever happened.
More than friendship, more than joy, more than even love this painting ached of intimacy.
Jean Guy quickly turned his back on it. Unable to look. He scanned the room until he found her again.
“Look at them,” the man was saying, dissecting the portrait. “Not very attractive.”
Annie Gamache was across the crowded gallery, standing next to her husband, David. They were listening to an older man. David looked distracted, disinterested. But Annie’s eyes were bright. Taking it in. Fascinated.
Beauvoir felt a flash of jealousy, wanting her to look at him that way.
Here, Beauvoir’s mind commanded. Look over here.
“And they’re laughing,” said the man behind Beauvoir, looking disapprovingly at Clara’s portrait of the three old women. “Not much nuance in that. Might as well paint clowns.”
The woman beside him snickered.
Across the room, Annie Gamache laid a hand on her husband’s arm, but he seemed oblivious.
Beauvoir put his hand on his own arm, gently. That’s what it would feel like.
*
“There you are, Clara,” said the chief curator of the Musée, taking her by the arm and leading her away from Myrna. “Congratulations. It’s a triumph!”
Clara had been around enough artistic people to know what they call “a triumph” others might call simply an event. Still, it was better than a kick in the shins.
“Is it?”
“Absolument. People are loving it.” The woman gave Clara an enthusiastic hug. Her glasses were small rectangles over her eyes. Clara wondered if there was a permanent slash of frame across her world, like an astigmatism. Her hair was short and angular, as were her clothes. Her face was impossibly pale. She was a walking installation.
But she was kind, and Clara liked her.
“Very nice,” said the curator, stepping back to take in Clara’s new look. “I like it. Very retro, very chic. You look like…” She moved her hands around in a contained circle, trying to find the right name.
“Audrey Hepburn?”
“C’est ?a,” clapped the curator and laughed. “You’re sure to start a trend.”
Clara laughed too, and fell in love just a little. Across the room she saw Olivier standing, as always, beside Gabri. But while Gabri was gabbing away to a complete stranger, Olivier was staring through the crowd.
Clara followed his sharp gaze. It ended at Armand Gamache.
“So,” said the curator, putting her arm around Clara’s waist. “Who do you know?”
Before Clara could answer, the woman was pointing out various people in the crowded room.
“You probably know them.” She nodded to the middle-aged couple behind Beauvoir. They seemed riveted by Clara’s painting of the Three Graces. “Husband and wife team. Normand and Paulette. He draws the works and she does the fine detailing.”
“Like the Renaissance masters, working as a team.”
“Sort of,” said the curator. “More like Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Very rare to find a couple of artists so in sync. They’re actually very good. And I see they adore your painting.”
Clara did know them, and suspected “adore” wasn’t the word they themselves would use.
“Who’s that?” Clara asked, pointing to the distinguished man beside Gamache.
“Fran?ois Marois.”
Clara’s eyes widened and she looked around the crowded room. Why was there no stampede to speak to the prominent art dealer? Why was Armand Gamache, who wasn’t even an artist, the only one speaking to Monsieur Marois? If these vernissages were for one thing it wasn’t to celebrate the artist. It was to network. And there was no greater catch than Fran?ois Marois. Then she realized few in the room probably even knew who he was.
“As you know, he almost never comes to shows, but I gave him one of the catalogs and he thought your works were fabulous.”
“Really?”
Even allowing for the translation from “art” fabulous to “normal people” fabulous, it was a compliment.
“Fran?ois knows everyone with money and taste,” said the curator. “This really is a coup. If he likes your works, you’re made.” The curator peered more closely. “I don’t know the man he’s talking to. Probably some professor of art history.”
Before Clara could say the man wasn’t a professor she saw Marois turn from the portrait to Armand Gamache. A look of shock on his face.
Clara wondered what he’d just seen. And what it meant.
“Now,” said the curator, pointing Clara in the opposite direction. “André Castonguay over there’s another catch.” Across the room Clara saw a familiar figure on the Québec art scene. Where Fran?ois Marois was private and retiring, André Castonguay was ever-present, the éminence grise of Québec art. Slightly younger than Marois, slightly taller, slightly heavier, Monsieur Castonguay was surrounded by rings of people. The inner circle was made up of critics from various powerful newspapers. Radiating out from there were rings of lesser gallery owners and critics. And finally, in the outer circle, were the artists.
They were the satellites and André Castonguay the sun.
“Let me introduce you.”
“Fabulous,” said Clara. In her head she translated that “fabulous” into what she really meant. Oh merde.