The Second Forgery

Ten years out of the game, and the knock still comes the way she always knew it would: polite, expensive, in daylight. Esma restores icons now, legally, in a workshop that smells of linseed and absolution. The man who enters carries a case worth more than her building and a photograph of 'Woman at the Window, 1654' — the jewel of the Verlaine collection, authenticated twice, insured for forty million. "I want a copy," he says. "Perfect. Undetectable. Money is irrelevant." It takes everything Esma has not to laugh, because she painted that picture eleven years ago, in a basement in Antwerp, in nine weeks of the best work of her life. The original burned in the warehouse fire that ended her old career — that was the whole point of the fire. What hangs in the Verlaine gallery, what the experts authenticated, what this man is asking her to forge, is hers. He is asking her to forge her own forgery. Which means he knows. Or he doesn't, and something far stranger is happening. "Why a copy?" she asks, professionally. The man smiles like a closing door. "Because the original is about to be stolen," he says. "And I'd like to choose which one they take."