That Left Turn at Albuquerque by Scott Phillips

Author:Scott Phillips [Phillips, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781641291095
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2019-12-11T19:47:23+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It had been odd getting into the rhythms of aping Kushik again, something he’d worked hard to get out of while he was studying with the man himself. The maestro had started mocking him at one point back in the day for his slavish imitation of his own style, and now Will understood that part of the problem was his very facility; it couldn’t have been easy to watch even an eager acolyte matching your style stroke by stroke, getting close to the point of bettering it. So he’d veered away, but not too far, and developed a style that was in the vein of Kushik without being mistakable for the genuine article. And then, after the disaster with Judy, he’d rejected the entire school and done an about-face, shitcanning all that palette-knife heavy impasto and brushy, sketchy pseudo-impressionist bullshit. It was a pleasure to realize, after a few days of sketching and daubing at canvases and wiping them clean and starting over, that he still had Kushik’s style in his muscle memory. He was surprised to discover that he liked doing it again, that there was still a visceral pleasure in being able to paint in the old man’s style.

He had Keith drive him up to the art museum in Santa Barbara. It held at least three Kushiks, according to the Internet, and he remembered watching two of them come into being in the Ojai studio. Seeing them on the Internet wasn’t enough, though, he needed to look at them close-up and in person.

To his credit, the boy didn’t complain about taking the day off to serve as his chauffeur. He had never shown much interest in art, apart from feigning a polite appreciation of his grandfather’s work.

“So is that the same lady?” he said. They were heading northward on State Street, not far from the museum.

“What lady?” The boy had a way of assuming that you were privy to the conversation going on silently in his head.

“The lady you’re drawing. Is she the lady in the painting you wiped clean?”

“She is. Keep it quiet, all right?”

“Okay. Why?”

“Because I asked you to, all right?” Jesus. The kid hadn’t changed since he was five years old and every other word out of his mouth was “why.” But at least he was good enough to drive his grandfather around when asked.

He walked into the museum with trepidation. He was overreaching, surely, imagining that he could convincingly fake as well-documented an artist as Kushik. But he took solace from the sure knowledge that by the time his fraud was discovered, he’d be dead and unpunishable.

He’d been to the museum on a number of occasions but had scrupulously avoided the Kushiks. They hung side by side on their own wall in a large gallery space. The first was a still life of drying chili peppers, the second an unfamiliar seascape with characteristically overdramatic cliffs and sky. The third was a portrait of a little girl Will had sketched during the same sitting. He remembered her well, though his sketches were long gone.

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