Free Feint of Art: by Hailey Lind Page A

grumbled. “No Neck there looked like he meant business.”
    “Maybe he just wanted the package we promised him,” she said, laughing. “You should have seen your face! You looked scared to death!”
    “Yeah, well, here’s a news flash, Wonder Woman: I was scared to death.”
    By the time we pulled into the parking lot at the studio, we were both a little high on adrenaline and relief. My new landlord looked up from his desk and arched an eyebrow as Mary’s boots beat a tattoo on the old wooden boards outside his office. We both waved at him cheerily, then climbed the outside stairs, struggled with the upstairs door, and clomped down the hall to the studio. I paused to straighten the TRUE/FAUX STUDIOS sign.
    “You’re such a Libra,” Mary commented.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, inexplicably offended. Libras are rather nice people, I thought. Not as stubborn as, say, Aries. My grandfather is an Aries.
    “Because you can’t pass that sign without straightening it. But you never nail the damned thing down so it won’t happen again. Very Libran.”
    “Yeah, well . . . I painted it, didn’t I . . . ?” I trailed off, thinking I’d made my point.
    Mary, a meticulous Virgo, smiled.
    I checked the message machine, but there was no call from Georges. I was still hoping my grandfather could tell me something about Anton’s involvement—or lack thereof—in the Brock Museum murder, and perhaps his current whereabouts. Tomorrow I would check out the address for Anton that Albert Mason had given me, but I doubted the old forger had hung around any longer than Harlan Coombs. On the other hand, it was the only lead I had, and Brazil’s reward money would go a long way toward paying my looming rent increase.
    Then again, I did not enjoy running into—and away from—scary men with no necks. It made sense that Harlan would have a lot of people looking for him and the missing drawings. Thin Woman and No Neck didn’t look like art dealers, but what did I know? In any case, they couldn’t possibly have recognized us, so we were safe. I didn’t exactly have a high profile in the City. Comforted by our anonymity, I put some water on for coffee and turned my thoughts to business.
    First on the list was preparing sample boards. Sample boards were just what they sounded like, samples of a proposed faux finish, which I submitted to the client for approval. It was true that in case of error, misunderstanding, or changes of mind, faux finishes could be painted over. But faux-finishing techniques were complicated, painstaking, and very labor-intensive. I once faux-finished an entire living room four times, and by the time I had completed it to the client’s satisfaction, she and I were ready to have it out with paintbrushes and toxic solvents at twenty paces.
    Linda Fairbanks had asked for boards in shades of sage and ochre, which were among this year’s favorite color schemes. Mary began by priming and painting the boards with an undercoat of Navajo white for the ochre sample, and pale gray green for the sage. When these were dry, we mixed dabs of artists’ oil paint into a glaze medium, known as scumble, made of turpentine, linseed oil, and marble dust. I coated the boards liberally with this mixture, then created texture and pattern with rags, plastic wrap, and a badger-hair brush. The result was a “broken” paint surface that allowed the base color to shine through, creating a luminous, old European look.
    I also owed Irene and Walter Foster two samples, one of a distressed harlequin pattern in two color combinations and the other of a mahogany wood grain. The Fosters had a home in the Richmond District that, to my mind, was an example of how to go overboard with the faux finishing, something Mary and I privately referred to as a “faux pas.” But the Fosters loved it, and as long as they paid my bill, who was I to complain?
    The work went quickly. Mary completed the boards and got her first lesson in