Faking It

Chapter 18

UPSTAIRS, the last customer left with her wombats, and Nadine and Ethan walked around picking up cups. “We’ll clean up the office and then head upstairs,” Nadine told Gwen. “We have things to talk about.”

“You didn’t bug anybody else, did you?” Gwen said, alarmed.

“No,” Ethan said. “But the investigation is ongoing.”

“What things, then?” Gwen said, looking at Nadine with narrowed eyes.

“We’re going to discuss the future of Matilda Veronica furniture,” Nadine said. “We’re going to run out pretty soon, and we were thinking that if we went around to dumps and collected stuff on trash day, that Tilda could draw the lines and we could paint them.”

“I don’t know if Tilda wants to.” Gwen looked around the depleted gallery. Mason wouldn’t be happy about more furniture. He’d want to sell paintings. Her head throbbed harder. “I don’t even know when Tilda is leaving again on her next mural.”

“That’s why we need to talk about this first,” Nadine said. “It’s still fuzzy, but once Ethan and I work out the details, I don’t think she’ll say no. After all, we’ll be doing most of the work. Right?” She nudged Ethan and grinned up at him affectionately. “It’s not like Ethan has anything else to do.”

“And how do you feel about that, Ethan?” Gwen said, exasperated with them both.

Ethan shrugged. “It’s summer.”

No, it isn’t, Gwen thought, It’s Nadine.

“You look tired, Grandma,” Nadine said. “Go to bed. Ethan and I will take care of everything down here.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Gwen said and then someone banged on the street door to the gallery. “Who could that be? It’s after midnight.”

“Want me to get it?” Ethan said.

“No.” Gwen went toward the door. “You stay here and clean.”

When she lifted the shade on the street door, Mason was standing there. “Hey, we’re closed,” she said, opening the door for him.

“Thought you might be able to spare another drink,” Mason said, a little sheepishly, as he came in.

“Hello, Mr. Phipps,” Nadine said politely, when they came into the office. “Come on, Ethan, let’s do the gallery.” She picked up the sweeper and went into the gallery, Ethan following her with a trash bag and a pained expression.

“Cute kids,” Mason said, while Gwen got out the orange juice and vodka.

“Good kids,” Gwen said, failing to see how anybody could call either Nadine or Ethan cute. She glanced through the glass into the gallery. Nadine was attacking the floors with the sweeper while Ethan gathered up miscellaneous cups and plates, keeping one eye on Nadine’s rear end. Maybe it was time to send Ethan home.

“I thought maybe,” Mason began and hesitated. “I don’t want to go home to Clea tonight, Gwen,” he blurted finally. “Let me stay with you.”

“Oh,” Gwen said.

“I don’t want to rush you,” Mason said, moving closer. “I know you’re tired.”

Oh, good, I look tired. Gwen stood up. “You’re a very generous man, Mason.”

“I’m not generous,” Mason said. “I get a lot, too. It’s lonely back at the house.”

Gwen thought, I know. It’s lonely where I am, too. And sooner or later… “Would you like to see my apartment?” she said.

“Yes,” he said solemnly. “I would like to very much.”

“Great,” she said and stood up. “It’s this way.”

THE BASEMENT ROOM was big when Tilda turned on the light. Davy saw three walls lined with expensive-looking metal cabinets and the fourth with shelves full of tools and equipment, some of it standard artist’s supplies but a lot of it unfamiliar. The whole place was white, just like everything else in the basement.

Tilda pulled out a bentwood side chair that had seen better days, and said, “Sit,” and Davy sat, facing the longest wall of cabinets. She opened the first cabinet and pulled out a painting, cornfields under a heavily painted, swirling blue sky.

“Do you know what this is?” she said.

“A van Gogh?” Davy said, not caring. “You have great legs.”

“A Goodnight,” Tilda said. “My great-grandpa painted it. Of course, he signed it van Gogh.”

Davy squinted at it. “Why didn’t Great-grandpa sell it?”

“Because it was lousy,” Tilda said and began to open more cabinets, her body moving under the slippery fabric of her dress. Davy watched as she pulled out painting after painting, her body tensing with each canvas until she had dozens of them propped against the walls and lying at her feet, and he wanted her so much he was dizzy with it.

“All Goodnights,” she said, looking at them. “They’ve been down here for decades, in the family for centuries. Our great secret. We should burn them, but we can’t. They’re history. They’re part of us.”

“Burn them?” Davy said, not caring. “Why didn’t you sell them?”

Tilda put her hands on her hips and looked at him sternly, which made him stop thinking about the paintings entirely. “They’re forgeries. That’s illegal.”

“Really, Scarlet?” Davy said. “Come here and tell me about it.”

“Okay, because most of them are really bad,” Tilda said, dropping her hands. “And because some of them were intended for future generations. We pass them down.”

“Why?” Davy said, trying to gauge how much longer he had to talk to her before he could get that dress off.

“I told you,” Tilda said, “the hardest forgeries to break are the contemporaries, the ones painted during the time the real artist worked. Science can’t touch them. So every generation of Goodnights paints for the next generation.”

“Because once the artist is dead, nobody can tell,” Davy said, gaining new respect for the Goodnights. “How many of these do you have?” A small part of him was interested from a purely financial point, but most of him was praying she wasn’t going to make him look at all of them. It would take hours and there was very little blood left in his brain.

“Over two hundred if you include the drawings and prints,” Tilda said. “We have some that go all the way back to Antonio Giordano, who is supposed to be the first of us. We switched to Goodnight when we came to America.”

“To fit in?”

“To cover up the fact that we were related to my great-uncle Paolo Giordano,” Tilda said. “He sold a Leonardo off the wall and got caught.”

“Off the wall,” Davy said, interested in spite of his lack of blood. “He just pointed to it and said-”

“No,” Tilda said. “He lined up a client and said, ‘I’ll steal the Leonardo for you.’ And he did. And he told the client he was painting a copy for the police to find so that they’d stop looking for it and they’d all be safe.”

“Who got the copy?” Davy said.

“The client,” Tilda said. “Well, clients. He told the same story to four different collectors. My great-uncle would never keep a national treasure. Borrow, yes, steal, no. And the clients deserved it because they were stealing a national treasure. Greed.”

“Classic con,” Davy said. “As long as the mark is crooked, he can’t go to the cops. Come over here and discuss this with me.”

“And if he’s crooked, he deserved to be taken,” Tilda said. “I know this part. My dad used to drill it into me.” She went over to the last of the cabinets and pulled out another painting.

“What if they buy it because they like it?” Davy said, wishing she’d come back to him.

“Then they’re getting what they paid for, aren’t they?” Tilda said, turning the painting so he could see it. It was of a woman with protruding eyes hovering over a well-fed mother and her disturbing-looking baby. “This is our prize, a Durer Saint Anne,” she said. “A Goodnight Durer, of course, but still.”

“Okay,” Davy said.

“Antonio painted it in 1553,” Tilda said. “But it wasn’t his usual good work, so the family kept it. For four hundred years. If it was good and we sold this as a Durer, analysis of the paint and canvas would show that it was real. It would go for millions at auction, and nobody would ever catch on.”

“But it’s bad?” Davy said, tilting his head to look at it. “It looks okay to me. Old.”

“It’s not bad,” Tilda said, “but it’s not good enough. There are half a dozen paintings down here, any one of which would solve all our problems if we could sell it. But we can’t.”

“Your morals do you justice,” Davy said. “Give them a vacation and come upstairs with me.”

“It’s not my morals,” Tilda said. “We can’t afford to get caught. Nobody has ever tied the Goodnights to fraud, if you don’t count Great-uncle Paolo. If a fake turns up, everybody starts looking at everything they’ve ever bought from us. And we can’t afford to give decades of dissatisfied customers their money back.” She put the Durer back. “And I’m not good enough to stonewall them on it. I’m just not the wheeler-dealer my dad was. The guilt…” She shook her head. “I get upset. So this stuff stays down here, and it drives me crazy. I’d burn it all if I could, I really would, but I can’t. My family made these.” She picked up another canvas to put it back. “And a lot of them are good. They’re not good forgeries, but they’re good paintings. They should be on people’s walls.”

“Sell them as fakes.”

“Right,” Tilda said. “Nobody will notice that.” She bent over to slide another painting away.

“You have a great butt,” Davy said.

She straightened, and he waited for her to snap at him.

“Thank you,” she said, and picked up another painting. “But I also have this problem here.”

“Sell them,” Davy said again, waiting for her to bend over again. “Publicize the sale as all the paintings that Goodnights bought thinking they were real and then couldn’t sell when they found out they were fakes. That’s why there are so many of them, because the Goodnights are such honest dealers.” He looked around at the riot of color.

“Yeah,” Tilda said. “I could bring that off. Because honesty is so easy to fake.”

She looked down at the forgeries, so much pain on her face that Davy forgot he wanted her. “Okay, there’s something else going on here. This is the thing that got you last night, isn’t it? I’m not getting why this is so awful, or how the Scarlets fit into it.”

“What?” Tilda looked up from the Durer. “Oh. They don’t. I wasn’t trained to paint the Scarlets, I was trained for this.”

Davy shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“My dad trained me as a classical painter,” Tilda said. “The same way his dad trained him and his dad before that. But then one day Dad showed up with a Homer Hodge and said, ‘Paint like this,’ and they were so simple that-” She broke off. “I painted six of them and left.” She shrugged. “No big deal.”

“Why did you leave?” Davy said.

Tilda bit her lip. “It was a bad time,” she said offhand, but her voice shook a little. “I was a kid. It doesn’t matter. Long time ago, all over now.” She started to put the paintings away.

“How old a kid?”

“Seventeen.”

Davy straightened. “What the hell happened?”

“You know, it really isn’t-”

“Tilda, stop lying and tell me.”

Tilda pressed her lips together in a caricature of a smile. “I wasn’t lying. It doesn’t matter. Eve and Andrew found out they were pregnant, that’s all. He was my best friend, we were the way Nadine and Ethan are now, but he was Eve’s friend, too, and she was so beautiful, and he took her to the prom, and…” She waved her hand. “No big deal.”

“That’s why you left?” Davy said back. “No. It’s something else. What happened with your dad?”

Tilda turned her back on him and put another painting in the cabinet.

“We’re not going upstairs until you tell me,” Davy said. “Spill it.”

“It wasn’t anything,” Tilda said. “We found out Nadine was on the way, and I came down here to work on the last Scarlet.” She forged a smile for him. “The one you scammed from Colby. The dancers.”

“The lovers,” Davy said.

Her smile disappeared and she nodded. “I was working on it, down here, crying, and Dad came in and said…” She swallowed. “He said, ‘When will you learn you were born to paint and not to love?’”

“I hate your father,” Davy said, rage slicing through him.

“No,” Tilda said. “He was trying to… make me see my destiny. And, really, he was pretty much right. I mean, I’ve been loved. Scott loved me.”

Davy felt that spurt of jealousy again.

“But Dad was right,” Tilda went on, trying to smile. “I was happier painting than I was with people. I loved painting the furniture and the Scarlets, even the forgeries I was doing were more interesting than people. I just…” She sighed. “I just really loved Andrew. And I loved Eve. There weren’t any bad guys. It just didn’t work out for me, I’m just not… But I didn’t want to hear it then.”

She gave Davy a wobbly smile. “My dad had really bad timing.”

“He was an exploitive son of a bitch,” Davy said.

Tilda took a deep breath. “So I scrubbed the paintbrush through the faces in the painting and threw it at him and walked out. I took the bus to Cincinnati, and found a job waitressing there and let Eve know, and she told Gwennie, and Gwennie sent money, every week, and never told Dad where I was, and it turned out okay. I’d graduated from high school the year before because he’d had me test out of a bunch of stuff so I could paint, and that meant I could work if I lied about my age. Eventually he found out and called and yelled and disowned me, but by then, the scary part of being on my own was over.” Tilda’s face eased a little. “And one day, the guy who owned the restaurant was talking about fixing up the place, and I said, ‘I can paint a mural for you,’ and I did, and one of the people who came into the restaurant saw it and wanted one, and the mural business just sort of evolved. And there I was, painting forgeries for a living just like all the other Goodnights.” She looked down at the paintings at her feet “Just like my dad said I would. He was right.”

“He was wrong,” Davy said grimly.

“The bad thing,” Tilda swallowed. “The bad thing was that the Scarlets… were… the way…” She swallowed again. “The way I really paint. So when he sold them, I couldn’t paint that way anymore unless I was Scarlet for him, so I couldn’t paint.”

“How could he do that?” Davy said. “He was an artist. He knew what that meant. How could he do that to his own kid?”

Tilda took a deep breath. “He wasn’t an artist.”

“What?”

“He was a terrible painter.” She leaned against the cabinets and slid down until she was sitting on the carpet, collapsing there like a rag doll in her pretty, silky dress, looking so tired Davy ached for her. “You can learn all the craft you want,” she said. “But if you’re not born with a sense of light and color and line and mass, you cannot paint. And he couldn’t paint. He was a great teacher, but he couldn’t… It was like being born tone-deaf in a family of musicians.” Her face crumpled. “Eve couldn’t paint, either, he tried to teach her but she couldn’t. But I could.”

I can’t stand this, Davy thought and went over to sit beside her.

“I could paint before I could write my name,” Tilda said as he put his arm around her. “I loved everything he taught me.” She sniffed, trying to hold back tears, and he tightened his hold on her. “I think he resented me for it. He loved Eve so much, but he couldn’t… I couldn’t… I didn’t get it. I thought if I just painted better, he’d love me more. I didn’t get it that he… So I tried harder and harder and got better and better and he-”

“Oh, God, Tilda.” Davy held her close. “I’m so sorry. And I really hate your father.”

“No,” Tilda said into his shirt. “He did his best. And I got out. I walked away. I just didn’t get to take Scarlet with me.” She lifted her head. “Do you know that he wanted me to sign them as James? James Hodge, Homer’s boy. I was the one who named me Scarlet. I signed them Scarlet.”

“Good for you,” Davy said, holding her tighter.

“No,” Tilda said, her pale eyes swimming as she looked at him. “Good for you. He sold them, but you got every damn one of them back for me. Every damn one.”

“Oh, honey,” he said and kissed her, feeling her tears on his face, and then he held her tight as she wiped her face on his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I look like hell when I’m soggy.”

“Yeah, that’s an issue now,” Davy said, still holding her. “Christ, Tilda.” He looked around at the Goodnight forgeries and suddenly they looked like bodies to him. “We have to get rid of this stuff.”

“I can’t,” she said tiredly. “I want to, so much, but I can’t even talk to you about them without sobbing all over you. Imagine me trying to-”

“I can,” Davy said grimly. “And you’re getting out of this damn basement, too.”

“It’s a good studio,” Tilda said.

“It’s the pit of hell,” Davy said. “I don’t care how white you paint this place, there’s blood on the walls. We’re moving your stuff up to the attic. Tonight. There’s plenty of room up there. You can paint in the sunlight tomorrow.”

“He wasn’t a bad man,” Tilda said. “He-”

“Right. He just couldn’t paint. Fuck him.” Davy let go of her and pushed himself off the floor. Then he held out his hand to her and hauled her to her feet. “What stuff do you need from down here?”

“Davy, I don’t-”

“Upstairs, Matilda,” he said. “All of it. I can’t beat up your father because the son of a bitch died on me, but I can get you out of this basement. Pack.”

He started shoving Goodnight forgeries back into their crypts, and Tilda said, “Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?” he said, giving a van Gogh a shove.

“That you could sell them.”

“I can sell anything,” he said. “But I don’t want to touch this stuff. I’m thinking we consign it to an auction house.”

“I had thought of that,” Tilda said. “People collect forgeries. We could do it anonymously. But somebody will find out and ask about them. Somebody always finds out, and then I’d-”

“I’ll take care of it.” Davy slammed another painting into a cupboard. “Pack.” When he didn’t hear her move, he turned around.

“I’m sorry,” she said, standing there in misery. “I didn’t mean to unload all of this angst on you. I didn’t mean to be so…” She waved her hand. “Melodramatic. Drama queen.” She tried to laugh. “You must hate weepy women.”

“Yeah, I do.” Davy walked over to her and put his arms around her and held her tight. “But not you, Scarlet.” He kissed the top of her head. “You can do anything you want, and I’ll still love you.” She went still in his arms, and he said, “I know. I can’t believe I said it, either.”

“You can take it back,” she said into his shirt. “It’s just because I cried all over you, and you’re feeling sorry for me.”

“No,” he said. “It’s because you kissed me in a closet and adopted Steve and support your family and painted armadillo footstools and really hot mermaids. It’s because you’re Matilda Scarlet, and I was born to love you as sure as I was born to con people, damn it.” She lifted her head to look at him and he added, “And I love you with everything I’ve got, which means your rat bastard father was wrong.”

She came up on her toes to meet him, slippery in his arms as her dress slid between them, and when she kissed him, her lips were soft and open on his, no more secrets, and if Davy hadn’t already been in love, that would have done it. “Pack your stuff,” he whispered against her mouth, holding her as close as he could. “We’re getting out of here.”

Tilda looked around. “You’re right.” She sighed and relaxed against him, pliant in his arms. “It’s a shame, though. It’s a good space.”

“I know,” Davy said. “I’m thinking we paint a mermaid mural in here and put in a pool table. And a jukebox with music from this century.” He felt Tilda laugh into his shirt. “I love you, Matilda,” he said into her curls, breathing in cinnamon.

“I love you, too,” she said, and he felt his own tension go because she’d finally said it. “But I don’t play pool.”

“You will,” he said. “It’s your kind of game. Now pack.”

HALF AN HOUR LATER, upstairs, Gwen was trying to figure out what to do with Mason. He was a nice man and a competent lover and she wanted him out of her apartment, out of her building, and possibly out of her life, although that was probably an overreaction. Why couldn’t he be like other men and leap out of bed, citing morning meetings or something?

“That was wonderful, Gwennie,” he said, kissing her again.

Get off my leg. “It was,” she said, “but I think you should go. Nadine is downstairs, and I don’t want her to think-”

“Of course,” Mason said, pulling her close. “You’re absolutely right.” He kissed her again, and then got out of bed, which gave her a chance to grab her robe, wondering why she was so cranky. Mason had been very sweet, and first times were always a problem, or at least they had been in her teens which was the last time she’d had a first time-

“You don’t need to see me out,” Mason said when he’d dressed, coming around the bed to kiss her again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He looked at the clock that said twelve-thirty, and added, “Or I guess I’ll see you today.” He smiled at her, almost shy. “It’s a brand-new day, Gwennie.”

“Yep,” she said, smiling back and thinking, Leave.

She walked him to the door, and patted his arm, and he had started down the hall, when Ford came up the stairs, passing him on the way. He stopped when he saw her.

What? Gwen thought, sticking out her chin. You’re a hit man. Cut me a break.

He shook his head at her and went inside his apartment, slamming the door behind him, and she felt like hell, which was ridiculous.

She went back into her apartment and into the bedroom and looked at the rumpled bed, all white in the lamplight, like the site of a virgin sacrifice. Which was damn funny when you considered how long it had been since she’d been a virgin and the kind of track record she’d had before she’d married Tony.

Maybe another vodka was in order. She was turning into a real lush, but at least she had good reason. She had problems. She tied her robe tighter, and went back into the hall, and Ford opened his door.

“Listen,” she said, before he could say anything. “Don’t give me any crap. I’m having a hard life.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Hey, I get to make my own choices.”

“Not when they’re that bad,” Ford said. “You couldn’t wait another week, could you?”

“Why another week?” she said, and thought, Davy. “Listen, you have to stop killing people.”

“Killing people?”

“Someone overheard a phone call,” Gwen said, looking at the ceiling.

She heard him move, and when she brought her eyes down he was there, and then he kissed her, his body blocking out all light and his mouth blotting out all thought, and she should have slapped him silly.

Instead she almost crawled inside his shirt in her enthusiasm for his mouth, and when he finally broke the kiss, he had to push her away to look her straight in the eye. “Okay, it’s only a mistake if you do it again,” he said.

“Hey,” she said, holding up her left hand. “I’m engaged.”

He took the ring off her finger as she pulled her hand away. “And now you’re not,” he said, pocketing it.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” she said, trying not to be the kind of woman who was turned on by domineering men, which was a laugh, considering Tony. “I’ll kiss anybody I want. I’ll get engaged to anybody I want. I’ll sleep with anybody I want. Give me back that ring.”

“No,” he said.

“I’m still engaged,” she said and went back into her apartment, slamming the door in his face, suddenly feeling pretty damned good. The world had swung around and two men had jumped her in one night, not bad for a middle-aged former singer and grandmother of one. It was almost like the old days, guys lining up, and all she had to do was choose. And it was happening because she wanted it to, because she needed the change, because she was done sleeping through life.

And Tilda was fine with her leaving. She could go.

For the first time in years, Gwen felt no interest in a Double-Crostic.

But just because she wanted it to happen, that didn’t mean she was with the right guys. Okay, definitely not Mason, she thought. What was I thinking? Well, she’d been thinking about the mortgage, but maybe they could work something out. And definitely not the hit man across the hall, either. She’d done the charming-crook thing with Tony. Forget it.

But definitely somebody. There will definitely be somebody. Definitely, I am back in the game.

She went to change the sheets, and found herself humming one of those obnoxious songs with forgettable lyrics and an unforgettable tune, cha-cha-ing around the mattress with a spring in her step as she reclaimed her bed. When the bed was smooth and new again, she picked up the phone and called down to the office. “Ethan?” she said, when he answered. “What is this?”

She hummed a few bars and Ethan said, “Wait. Let me get Nadine.”

“What?” Nadine said when she picked up the phone and Gwen hummed again. “It’s that Beach Boys thing,” she said. “Something, Jamaica, oooh, I’m gonna take ya.”

“ Aruba, Jamaica,” Gwen said, the song dying on her lips.

“Where is Aruba anyway?” Nadine said.

“The Caribbean,” Gwen said. “Bring me up the vodka, would you, honey?”

“ABOUT MUSSOLINI and Grandma,” Tilda said, later that night in bed, as Davy was dozing off, his arms around her.

“You have to ask before we do it,” he said sleepily into her neck.

“Right,” Tilda said, trying to free her arm from under him. “When do you think we’ll be playing that one?”

“Whenever you want,” he mumbled.

“No,” Tilda said, “I meant when …” Her voice trailed off as he began to snore.

Steve took that for a signal and jumped up on the bed.

“What I want to know,” Tilda said to Davy’s unconscious body, “is when are you leaving me, you bastard, and are you coming back?” She swallowed. “Because I’m believing in you and that can’t be good.” He snored again and she had a moment’s suspicion that he was faking it. Then she remembered that he hadn’t had any sleep the night before, that he’d sold furniture for hours straight, that he’d moved the entire contents of her studio up five flights of stairs, and that he’d just made athletically passionate love to her. “He’s really out, Steve,” she said to the dog. “But tomorrow we ask him. We are not going to be those people who dillydally and then regret it. He said he loves me. He said he’s going to get rid of the forgeries. He’s staying. Right?”

Steve sighed and stuck his nose under the quilt. Tilda lifted the edge for him and he tunneled under.

“You’ll never leave me, will you, Steve?” she said to him. Then she looked over at Davy and said, “You never will, either.”

She looked around the attic, now stacked full of easels and foam core board and paint and canvas, even her drawing board in one corner, and she thought, This is so much better. This is so right.

She looked at Davy again, asleep beside her, and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. Then she slid down under the covers between the two men in her life and fell asleep.

THE NEXT MORNING when Tilda went down for muffins, Eve was sitting in the office, looking like death.

“What?” Tilda said, still on a high from the night before. “What happened?”

“Can we go someplace else?” Eve said. “I want to get out of here.”

“Sure,” Tilda said, “What’s wrong?”

“I told Simon I was me,” Eve said.

“Oh, boy,” Tilda said. “Let’s go.”