Investigation in Gray and Gaudy

“What can or ought the public care about the identity of the portrait?” said James McNeill. Did he look down from neutral heaven on the dealer wearing flannel plaid, adjusting to my denim chair, to make the arrangement, pocket my check in black and smudge and white? The agents said they could easily find it if I had no carbon. FBI with their silk knots and sober suiting just like the famous oil though on different body parts. I could be Mrs. Whistler, but I was the dupe, eyes lowered, the menswear pair noble shadows, tracking down the evil and clever eBay forger (not the original cormorant-tousled Martinez I thought I was purchasing with his true (M) mark from his 19th-century hand). Inspectors with their pointed interrogations — they were way beyond clues — who when they left would form, and be, long shadows at each end of day. Make shapes you might assume would fall from mountain goats in frightening terrain. They reported answers they knew all along. Thigh-high in paintings, I thought to wade out with my honest eyes so little notorious, from mistaken tonalists, expressionists, Society of Six ... The crook posed in tartan, I fine-tuned to the agents; he talked ordinary — that was my best judgment. So what? He warmed, and got richer in, my denim wingback. I thought of Anna’s stern profile; and were they profilers? And as they shook my hand good-bye, I said, Do your wives collect anything? What do you think? they implied.