Cotton Transfers

When you've catered long enough, you learn that every room has a way in and a way out. The back room at Wendt Fine Art had one of each, and they were the same door.

I picked up a tray of crab puffs and walked through it.

The room was small and white, lit by a single bare bulb. Two open crates leaned against the far wall. Two paintings of pears sat in two gold frames, glowing in exactly the same winter light.

Laszlo Wendt stood in the middle of the room in his plum scarf. Imogen stood beside the crates with a tray of champagne, as calm as a lake.

"Crab puff?" I said.

Laszlo turned. He looked at my face for the first time in our acquaintance. I watched him work it out. It took longer than four seconds.

"The provincial caterer," he said.

"Still one bite," I said, and stepped in front of the door. The back room served three now. Nobody was leaving early.

---

"This is a private room," said Laszlo. He had gone a little pale under the tan, but his voice was steady.

"You're both trespassing," he went on. "I'll have the Bugle write about it. The Glove Lady, sneaking around galleries in an apron."

"I'm staff," said Imogen. "You told me where not to go. I went there."

She set her tray down on an empty crate. "That's not trespassing, Laszlo. That's bad service."

"Then let me save you some embarrassment." He gestured at the paintings with a sweep of his scarf.

"That one is the Varnum's Wainscott, back for its touch-up. And that one is a study copy I made years ago, for practice."

"Which is which?"

"The one with the hole is the copy, obviously. I'm a perfectionist. I'd never leave a hole in an original."

Imogen nodded slowly, as if he'd said something reasonable about the weather.

"That's interesting," she said. "Because I'd never fill one."

She took a small black flashlight from her apron pocket. It was the kind conservators use, which gives off a purple glow. She clicked it on and pointed it at the painting with the hole.

The whole surface lit up a soft, milky green, like sea glass.

"Old natural varnish fluoresces under ultraviolet," she said. "Green, like that. It takes decades to get there."

She swung the light to the other painting. "And this one."

It went flat and dark. Just pears, under purple light, looking embarrassed.

"Modern resin," said Imogen. "Applied this summer. Still soft. I've got the glove to prove it."

Laszlo opened his mouth. Then he closed it. Then he did the only thing left to a man who has run out of words in a very small room.

He reached for the painting with the hole.

---

What happened next took about two seconds. I've thought about it many times since.

Laszlo's bare hands were three inches from the gold frame when Imogen said, quietly and very clearly:

"Not without gloves."

He stopped.

I don't think he meant to. I think it was thirty years in the art business, a lifetime of every conservator and registrar and museum guard saying those words to him. His hands simply froze in midair, like a dog that's heard its name.

That was all the time Detective Greer Voight needed.

She came through the door behind me with two officers and a folded warrant.

She was still holding the coffee mug that said I BRAKE FOR STOLEN BIKES. She looked at Laszlo, frozen with his hands out. She looked at the two pears. She looked at Imogen.

"Which one's real?" she said.

"The green one," said Imogen, and shone the light again.

"Beautiful," said Detective Voight, with real feeling. "Mr. Wendt, step away from the fruit."

---

Nobody shouted. Nobody ran. Laszlo Wendt stepped away from the fruit.

Mr. Zane, the buyer, turned out to be very cooperative. He was a collector from out of state who had wanted a Wainscott for twenty years. When he heard where this one came from, he set down his briefcase and said, "I'd like to speak to my lawyer, and then I'd like to help."

The officers walked Laszlo out through the front room. The guests watched him go and murmured "interesting," and this time they meant it.

His scarf caught on a bronze horse on the way past. He had to stop and unhook it himself. It was the only time all evening I felt a little sorry for him.

At the door, he turned and looked back at Imogen.

"How did you know?" he said. "I copied every brushstroke. I matched the frame. I aged the canvas."

"You hurried," she said. "Varnish takes a year. You gave it nine weeks."

"Who has time to wait a year?"

"Paintings do," said Imogen. "That's the whole job."

---

Conrad Uxbridge arrived at nine-twenty, in a tuxedo, having come straight from a donor dinner. He found Imogen in the back room, sitting on a folding chair between the two pears, with Detective Voight taking notes beside her.

He stood in the doorway for a long time.

"Imogen," he said finally. "I owe you an apology. And I know what kind of sentence that is."

"Say it anyway," said Imogen.

"I was wrong," said Conrad. "You were right. I'm sorry."

Imogen considered it. She tilted her head, the way she'd tilted it at the fly on the admiral.

"That one's priceless," she said. "You should say it more often. It's very good for the roof budget."

---

Pears in Winter Light went back on the wall of the Varnum's Grand Hall three weeks later. The real one, this time. Imogen hung it herself.

She did not fill the tack hole. It sits in the upper left corner, tiny and perfect, where Abner Uttley put a thumbtack in 1971.

There's a small label beside the painting now, written by Imogen. It explains the hole. The last line says: Some damage is how you know it's real.

The copy lives in the basement lab. Imogen uses it to teach interns. It has a sticky note on the back that says HURRY, in block capitals.

Wexley's Table catered the rehanging. Forty guests, cocktails, one painting. The Grand Hall served two hundred and forty, so it felt like a private party in a cathedral.

My staff wore white gloves. That was Benji's idea. He said it was "our brand now."

We've since added it to the menu: white-glove service, plus twelve dollars a head. You'd be amazed how many people ask for it. We still say there's no wrong fork.

Philippa Uttley sat in the front row in her purple shawl. She ate eleven crab puffs, which I believe is a personal best. She told Detective Voight that she'd played cards with worse men than Laszlo and won. Detective Voight believed her completely.

Otis Yancey signed every guest in, in pencil. When I left, I glanced at his book. Under PURPOSE for that evening, he'd written one word: Something.

And the Westmere Bugle ran a new photo of Imogen in the Grand Hall, beside the painting. The headline was GLOVE LADY WAS RIGHT.

Somebody made the cat version within the hour. In this one, the cat wore a detective badge.

Imogen printed it out and pinned it to the corkboard in her lab, beside the good window.

---

Afterward, we stood outside under the museum's awning. The lions were lit from below. The pigeon was on its head, with the same attitude. It smelled like rain again.

This was the part, I knew by now, where nobody reached for anybody's hand.

Imogen looked at me. Then she held out her right hand, palm up, in its plain white cotton glove.

"Cotton transfers," she said.

I remembered our first night at Vellucci's. I asked the same question I'd asked then.

"What does it transfer?"

"Everything," she said. "I used to think that was the problem."

I took her hand. It was the most careful thing I have ever held, and I've carried wedding cakes up fire escapes. Neither of us said anything for a while. We stood there under the awning and watched the rain start.

"For the record," she said eventually, "this is a Saturday pair."

"And the backup?"

She patted her pocket. I heard the plastic bag crinkle. I didn't need to look at the label. I already knew what it said.

THURSDAY. In case of soup.