[December 7th] The Lost Gauguin
The Lost Gauguin
PG
Author : cobweb_diamond | Artist : platina
He’s not going to win Son Of The Year anytime soon, but at least he showed up. Last year his mom had been working a long con in Brazil and had missed Christmas entirely.
‘Sweetie, are you on the run again?’ she says, taking in his lack of luggage.
‘No,’ says Arthur. ‘I just had to leave somewhere in a hurry, OK?’
‘Well, I guess I should be angry at you for being so late, but the Gauguin makes up for it.’
Arthur pauses in the doorway. ‘The... Gauguin?’
‘I hung it in the living room. Is it a fake? No, don’t tell me, it’ll ruin the mystery.’ She hugs him. ‘But thank you, it’s lovely.’
Erring on the side of discretion, he hugs back and says nothing until more information presents itself.
Sure enough, there’s something that looks very like a Gauguin hanging above the fireplace.
Later on he hunts down the card that came with the painting. He knows it’s the right one because it’s in his own handwriting.
It reads: Thought you’d appretiate this. Apologies if I’m a bit late. A.
He’d had his suspicions, but this clinches it. Only one person can forge both Arthur’s handwriting and Post-Impressionist art, yet not spell “appreciate” correctly.
Eames.
* * *
While his mother is making her annual attempt at being a homebody by furiously googling how to roast potatoes, Arthur goes to skulk on the balcony with his cellphone, hopefully out of his mother’s hearing range.
‘You forged a painting for my mom?’ he hisses when Eames picks up.
‘What, no “thank you”? I just saved you from filial disgrace.’
‘Filial --? OK, fine, thank you,’ he allows. Thanks to that painting his mother had been in a remarkably good mood about Arthur showing up twelve hours late.
‘Actually, I didn’t have time to make a copy,’ says Eames. ‘That painting’s the real deal, darling.’
Arthur leans his forehead against the window, breath fogging up the cold glass. ‘You gave my mom stolen goods,’ he says. ‘In my name.’
‘Your mother’s probably stolen more dangerous things than that in the last year. I doubt she minds.’
‘She doesn’t seem to,’ he admits.
‘I can hear you smiling.’
‘I’m not smiling,’ says Arthur, trying to school his expression, a fuzzy reflection in the fogged-over window, back into a civilised frown.
‘And now I can hear you lying,’ Eames says cheerfully.
Inside, his mom is clashing dishes together in a way that indicates that soon, they are going to be ordering Chinese food for Christmas dinner. ‘I have to go.’
‘Of course,’ says Eames softly. ‘I’ll see you in three days, all right?’
For once, Arthur isn’t the first to hang up. The phone is warm in his pocket for the rest of the evening.
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