A Nearly Perfect Copy: A Novel by Allison Amend

Author:Allison Amend
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Literary, Psychological, Family Life, Fiction
ISBN: 9780385536707
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Published: 2013-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

There are decisions, Gabriel mused, that can change your life. And often those decisions are both spontaneous and ill considered. He had made a joke at a dinner party. And he had done a favor for his girlfriend’s uncle. Several favors, actually. And, from the nadir to which his life had descended—artistic slavery, intense professional jealousy, wasted potential—he rose suddenly to exultant heights.

Klinman had given him a dozen more sheets of period paper, and Gabriel had filled them with Piranesis, Canalettos, and Connoises in exchange for several thousand euros. He had gotten good at being almost nonchalant with the paper, not worrying he would smudge a line, or betray too much Connois the younger and not enough Connois the elder. He drew market scenes, Italian squares, his childhood kitchen, the buildings on the Île St.-Louis. His bedroom had turned into a veritable sizing factory—rare was the evening when there was not a piece of paper drying.

When Colette made one of her frequent trips to New York, he missed her with an intensity that worried him, one that he was not sure was reciprocal. He examined his ardency like a lump found suddenly under his armpit, with concern. He usually found women irritating, but that might have been because he tended to date the young École students and graduates, who found his experience alluring. Ultimately, the relationships ended in tears when the women realized Gabriel had no interest in deepening the commitment. These young bohemians, who professed to enjoy having someone to go see openings with, to walk in the Tuileries on Sunday afternoons, to fuck every few days to mutual satisfaction, were really just biding their time until marriage. He simply wasn’t built for relationships. He met people, spent time with them, gradually there was a mutual loss of interest and he moved on. Some took longer to try his patience. Some he couldn’t get away from fast enough. But to live with someone, on purpose, to start sharing toothpaste and finances and friends, seemed boring at best.

Gabriel knew his avoidance of deep relationships probably revealed something dysfunctional about him. But what if it wasn’t pathological? What if this was just the way he was wired? He didn’t feel unhappy. He didn’t feel lonely—not often—even when he celebrated his fortieth birthday by himself at the studio. He was poor, but that was a choice he’d made a long time ago. Shouldn’t there be people in the world who shunned convention, congenitally, to balance out those who wanted monogamy and offspring? What if he was a loner by DNA? The irony, he did not fail to recognize, was that he voiced these thoughts to no one, and so there was no one to provide the counterargument, if such a thing existed.

He went reluctantly back to his shared apartment, which was where he was when Patrice Piclut phoned him. It took him a minute to place the name, and then he remembered: the gallery owner at Klinman’s dinner party. Patrice wanted to pay a studio visit.

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