The Italian Teacher(84)
P.S. How do you do smiling faces?
Priscilla Barrows <[email protected]> wrote:
They’re “smiley” faces not “smiling” . I’d refer you to the essay on email etiquette in my last book, BUT SERIOUSLY, which you bought and wisely failed to read. And, no, I’m not telling you how to do smiley faces. You’d only abuse the privilege.
Love, Barrows
In less than three weeks, their email correspondence has surpassed the ease of communication they achieved during nearly a year of dating. It’s so much easier to connect when you cannot touch.
Finally he deals with his clogged answering machine, a full ninety-minute audiotape. To his alarm, he missed a number of calls months ago from Marsden, who was worried about the protracted silence. But most messages are from irked relatives or attorneys. Early in the tape, they are only menacing. As the messages progress, the same voices issue dated cautions. They’re questioning the will, impugning his behavior, demanding to view what he possesses. This mess is closing in.
In the months ahead, Pinch consults with lawyers at length—before conceding that he might have to abandon these paintings or face bankruptcy from legal fees. Another fear is that the French authorities might discover that he inherited paintings in their territory, which could land him in tax hell. It’d perhaps also trigger tax claims in America and Britain. Nope, there’s no way to retain the art. Yet he can’t accept handing it over.
When emailing with Barrows in recent months, he often lampooned his small life as a language teacher. He did so with genuine amusement because he’s demonstrably something more—in charge of serious artworks, of a foreign property, of the Bear Bavinsky legacy. All that makes him almost important. And they say he must surrender that.
2002
66
During the next school holiday, Pinch drives too fast through France, the highway lane stripes whipping underneath, as he whooshes past gas station turnoffs and countryside. Once in the studio, he contemplates his father’s paintings; the twenty-six Life-Stills that Bear hid here and that Pinch inherited. He passes two weeks alone, occasionally dashing out to buy food and supplies. On his last day, he hikes down to the village pay phone to call New York. “I don’t suppose you could fly out here in a few months?” he says into a crackly line.
On the agreed date, Pinch returns once more to the cottage, finally hearing a Hyundai Getz struggling up the driveway, engine coughing, the tires spitting pebbles. The parking brake cranks and out steps Connor Thomas, in a pink polo shirt with collar popped, cargo shorts, Teva sandals. “Oh wow—I’m actually here,” he says, looking around.
Pinch leads his guest to the kitchen, where a Life-Still rests against a table leg. Another even larger Life-Still is flat on the tabletop; a third rests against a wall. “Nobody else has seen these, Connor. Nobody ever, except Dad, me—and now you. What do you think?”
Eyes bugging, hands clasped behind him, Connor gapes, neck straining like a chained dog. “I had so hoped it’d be this.” He leaps from one Life-Still to another. “Dare I ask, Charles? Are there more?”
Pinch hesitates—then nods, prompting a squeak from Connor, whose attention returns to the art. He crab-walks the length of the table, leans toward a canvas for close inspection, clutching his thighs. “Awe. Like, real awe. And Bear’s studio was here, right? Can I peek?”
“Let’s hold off on that.”
“Right, totally. I’m getting ahead of myself. Wow. I could seriously faint.” For show, he gulps a few breaths of air and fans himself with his hand, then fixes on Pinch. “Perhaps I’m speaking out of turn here, but aren’t you crazy to keep these here? It must get damp and cold, no? There could be a fire or a theft or anything.”
“This is where Dad always kept them. The safest place in the world. Nobody even knows where this place is.”
“Except me now. Something goes missing, and you can send the gendarmes to hunt me down!”
For a chilling instant Pinch hears his father barking at Marsden to get the cops up here. Then Pinch is back, smiling at his guest, waiting for Connor to detect the obvious flaws in these three paintings, all of them copies that he produced during his last visit. When the man figures it out, Pinch will confess to the prank and bring out the authentic Bavinskys, which they can compare for amusement (and for the presumed flattery Connor will offer his host). But amusingly, the supposed Bavinsky expert finds nothing untoward, bubbling with worshipful remarks, each of which is like a firework of elation inside Pinch. He smooths over a few long strands of hair, readying his confession. “Connor?”
“Charles, I need to thank you for selecting me.” He bows with a hand-twirling flourish. “These paintings are unbelievable.”
“I was going to say something.”
Connor is not listening, beguiled by replicas.
“I was going to tell you.” Pinch stops. It’d make Connor look foolish to expose him suddenly like this. Do it delicately later. For now, Pinch can’t help basking. “You know, I just realized the time. Pretty late for this part of the world. If we’re going to eat tonight, we should find a restaurant.”
“Who needs food when my eyes are feasting on these?”
Pinch smiles, feeling like a twit for his jubilation from a charade. He drives Connor to Vernet-les-Bains, promising “the best restaurant anywhere around,” though Pinch has never eaten out when visiting the cottage. The place turns out to be empty, with an unctuous manager who presses on them every piece of fish and game in urgent need of dispatch from the kitchen.