1. Your Master
Chapter one
Your Master
Kira
I stared into the pompous faces of self-proclaimed art lovers, plastered on my best pensive Marina Abramovic stare, and placed a thoughtful finger on my chin.
“Now this? This is a real masterpiece.” They clung to my every word. They gave appreciative nods of agreement and knowing harrumphs from those who knew this piece of art was a winner. “Look at those aggressive lines.” I pointed to a curved red streak. “The accent of black along the base captures that deep sense of loneliness.”
I wiped my hands on my black sheath dress: chic, intelligent, fashionable but not flamboyant. Professional, but not threatening. Trustworthy, but not that approachable. Every stitch and gesture was hand-picked to make these idiots open their wallets.
“See those jagged edges? They're a commentary on the acuteness of pain. As sharp as the tip of a bullet." I shook my head subtly but dramatically at the same time. "They say this artist, Jerry Vasali, was a veteran. He saw a lot of combat and fell into depression when the VA couldn’t get him the help he needed.” Someone let out a soft “oh”, as if I was reciting some tragedy. “Such a shame. He’s now a psychiatric inpatient somewhere. Can’t paint anymore. This might be his last masterpiece.”
Ka-Ching! I had planted the seeds that Jerry Vasali might commit suicide, which would make his art priceless. This piece of shit canvas would go for a million, easily.
Except it was a lie. There was no Jerry Vasali. I had painted this canvas a month ago while halfway down a bottle of Jack Daniels, with a cigarette dangling from my lips. When I was sober, I forged papers of authenticity with nothing but a printer and a paintbrush. I signed with my own familiar green fountain pen in the art dealer section, using my left hand.
I forged with my right hand. I was myself with my left.
Forgery is in the details. A graphologist would never be able to link one hand with the other. That was the real point.
“Miss Kekoa?” A woman’s voice from behind called me.
I didn’t turn right away, as if I was lost in thought. But I wasn’t lost. Everything I did was premeditated.
It had to be to lead this double life.
I started my turn at my forehead, then followed with my eyes. Then I twisted my shoulders until I faced the captivated eyes of my business casual audience. Skinny champagne flutes full of bubbly in their soft hands.
"Yes?" I acted like I was coming out of a trance.
"Why didn't you ever paint yourself?" the soft voice said, not realizing that they pierced me right in the gut. That fucking bitch.
But I had an answer for that. One that made me seem both relatable and competent at my job. It was a statement that my handler and I had worked on for days, until I got the delivery just right.
"Well…" I coughed, digging the toe of my red-soled Louboutin’s on the ground. "I did go to art school, as many of you know."
It was the first thing on my bio. It was the Curriculum Vitae that made everyone sit up and take me seriously. I wasn’t just some scrapbooking enthusiast or hobbyist with an interest in art. I had spent (or, depending on who you are, wasted) four years and enough money on tuition to have bought a mid-sized, suburban four-bedroom home!
I wasn’t an artist, but I had tried to be, once.
I turned back to the ‘Jerry Vasali’ painting and looked longingly at it. At what my potential had been reduced too. I was a better forger than I was a creator.
"But I didn't have the talent," I sighed, then turned back around.
I smiled kindly to my audience, briefly wondering what person would publicly ask such a rude question. But there were enough of those kinds of people that I had a ready answer.
"You see, I can tell when something is great. I was overwhelmed by the fact that I continuously fell short." I shrugged with one shoulder. "I'm sure you know the old adage: Those who can, do. Those who can't, curate."
Polite chuckles bubbled from the audience. Yes, yes, laugh. Believe that I am the mistress of great taste! I can make everyone think you have great taste too!
I clapped my hands and rubbed my palms together to regain their focus, and lead them on to the next painting. Another “Jerry Vasali”. This one I had created in a rage, beating the canvas as I lamented the sad, sad state of my life.
When I got accepted into The Pacific Arts School, PacArts, I was full of dreams and ideals. I thought that a well-placed satirical drawing could change the world! A cartoon in the New Yorker, a photograph like Dorothea Lang’s Migrant Mother , or Banksy’s Flower Thrower could uplift and challenge the human spirit! If we worked hard, had convictions and poured our souls into our art then we, too, could change the world.
That was all bullshit, of course.
There was so much nepotism and luck that went into this nonsense that it didn’t even make sense. If you weren’t built just right, then you were doomed to making logos for corporate pharma-bros to afford enough ramen to get you through the week.
Thankfully, I learned early that I had a talent for precision mimicry. That was what I was hired to do. To mimic. Or, more precisely, forge.
Did I want to be the poor imitation of an artist? No. But it was my job. My real job. And to do it, I had to do little more than gesticulate like a tanned Vanna White.
I took them through more paintings.
Because they weren't my forgeries, I was less than impressed with them. Though that took no acting, because they weren't impressive. Neither were mine, to be fair. But like the stock market, the value of these works of art didn't hinge on anything real. The perception of their worth was what made them valuable.
Like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Clause, it was all made up.
My trailing entourage of rich assholes begged me to tell them what to think. And they took my word as gospel. The same keywords were sprinkled in to get the right reactions.
"This evokes... " I would say, then rattle off some artists these people might have heard of. Something that sounded sophisticated but obscure enough that you only knew it if you were marginally educated.
"The artist seems inspired by..." I'd wax on about what the artist might have been thinking in big, abstract words that signified jack shit.
I was bored. I had done this so much over the past seven years that I could perform on autopilot.
At least, until I came upon a canvas that I did not expect.
It was black, which doesn't mean anything. Plenty of pseudo-goths tried to go with black as their medium. But paradoxically, this painting was made of light. The bracken space of the large canvas looked like a hyper-real dream; every corner painted with the precision of a horse hair. Like every pixel was hand-done.
In the bleakness of it was a shadowed face, like a Mona Lisa. There was a smile that didn't touch the eyes. There was a brow full of sorrow and loneliness, but with no outright sign of those same emotions. The portrait beckoned you to come to that conclusion with the clues of darkness, stark shadows, and lonely specs of dust made of light.
"I-I don't know this artist." I looked around, as if the artist would be in the crowd of charlatans. "I haven't seen this before."
I stepped close to the canvas, my nose within inches of its dried paint. The faint, familiar scent of oils invaded my senses. There was something else in it. Something I couldn't quite detect.
I eyed what I could make of the brush strokes, but they were so perfect that it was reminiscent of the Renaissance Masters. It was fascinating, because with the advent of Photoshop, people rarely cultivated these skills. Why bother when you can just paint something on a computer and waste fewer materials? A canvas doesn’t have an “undo” button the way a computer does.
This was a skill. This was dedication.
This was love.
I couldn't pretend indifference to something as gorgeous as this.
"This is extraordinary," I whispered knowing that I was hurting my own cause by giving this artwork credit. "It takes ten thousand hours to become an expert. But this technique, the cleanness of the brush strokes, the subtlety of texture and light suggests something closer to a hundred thousand hours of dedicated practice."
The crowd faded away into nothingness as I basked in the glory of, for once, seeing a piece of art that wasn't pretentious. It wasn't the workings of an over-educated trust fund kid with the wealth to go to art school. It didn’t smack of the workings of some soft-hearted, pseudo-pretentious old money whiner without the grit to make real comments about life and death.
No, this was something so completely special that I wasn't even sure how it ended up in a gallery among the detritus of upper-class vanity.
“This,” I waved a finger as I looked at my followers, then turned back to the painting. “This is special. It’s…” I let out a wistful sigh. “It's incredible.”
I tilted my head and pushed out one hip, saddling my weight on my right leg.
A small hum of approval sounded behind me. People mimicked my movements like lemmings. They were empty vessels. Nothing more than robots, play-acting humanity.
They could have dropped dead at that moment and I wouldn’t have cared.
I was reveling in what I saw. If they got a smidge of what I was feeling, then maybe art school hadn’t been a complete waste after all.
“This is a master,” I said, commenting on the artist.
A slow clap punctuated the air like a gunshot: slow, rhythmic and condescending. How that was possible, I wasn’t sure.
I turned, wondering what on earth was happening when my gaze landed on a walking Ken doll. He was tall, over six feet, in a navy-blue pinstriped suit and gray silk shirt. On his wrist was a gold George Daniels Co-Axial watch with a brown leather band. The man’s face was square, clean-shaven, and so conventionally handsome that it was hard to believe he wasn’t made of plastic. Only one imperfection existed - if you could even call it an imperfection - his eyes were a frightening shade of black.
He smirked; his devilish eyes boring into me. Behind him were barrel-chested men in black Hugo Boss suits. Three of them. They looked like bodyguards. Or minions. Whatever they were, they were blank-faced, and probably packing heat under those boxy blazers.
“Can I help you?” I bristled, feeling his judgment crawl over my skin.
“Nah, you’re grand.” He surprised me with a strong, deep Irish accent. “You’re not a complete dilettante after all.”
The women in the audience tittered. One of them even licked her lips as she eyed him up and down. At least a few preened in his presence, hoping to catch his eye. But they all failed, because those black eyes were focused right on me. Who was this man?
He gave me a dashing smile, his black eyes full of mirth. “I’m Eoghan Green. Your master .”