Caveat Emptor by Ken Perenyi Read Free Book Online Page A

confidence. The reality hit me that I was going to show an experienced expert a painting I had created myself. As I approached the shop, I almost lost my nerve, but still I forced myself to open the door. The old man was there just like the last time. I slipped the painting out from the envelope and told him that I was selling it.
    With a miserable scowl on his horribly ugly face, he paused, stared at the painting, and gave me the once-over; but this time, instead of showing me the door, to my surprise he offered me a seat at a seventeenth-century Bolognese table. He sat across from me and didn’t utter a word; instead he held the painting, studying it closely. I sat there, nonchalantly gazing around the room. The walls were covered with Gobelin tapestries. Early Italian paintings in architectural frames were displayed on antique easels. Cabinets were filled with sixteenth-century lusterware, bronzes, and antiquities.
    Still Ephron hadn’t said a word. I noticed several marble busts of Roman emperors resting on pedestals. Their hollow eyes seemed eerily fixed on me and my palms were beginning to sweat. Slowly Ephron started thawing and in a friendly manner began asking me all sorts of questions—who I was and how I’d come by the painting. I didn’t even have a story planned, and the only thing I could think of was that I had “inherited a few paintings from my uncle.” By now, I could see he was genuinely interested in the picture, and my confidence returned.
    â€œAnd what are these other pictures like that you have?” he asked. I described a couple of imaginary Dutch landscapes to him and let the matter drop.
    Ephron’s gallery was a labyrinth of hallways and rooms going farther back behind us, and he suggested we go back into one of them. In a room we passed that looked like a repair or restoration studio, I noticed a woman in her seventies, wearing an artist’s apron. When we reached the back rooms where he kept a horde of Renaissance treasures, he seated me in another antique chair in front of an Italian refectory table. This time he told me to wait and left with the picture, closing the door behind him.
    I heard him through the door, talking with the woman in the apron. Obviously they were having a discussion about the picture. I became terrified when I heard the voices get lower and heard the sounds of bottles being jostled about. I suspected they might be performing some kind of tests on the painting. I did my best to suppress my fear. They must have kept me waiting twenty minutes. It seemed like eternity. In my naïveté, I thought perhaps they’d uncovered my scheme and were stalling until the cops came.
    At last Ephron returned and sat down. “Well,” he said, “it’s a nice little picture, but nothing very important. I don’t know if we’d be interested. How much were you thinking of getting?” In a flash, my fears disappeared.
    â€œTwelve hundred dollars,” I said confidently.
    â€œOut of the question!” he protested.
    I shrugged my shoulders and began to get up, suggesting that I was sick of waiting around and getting ready to leave. He made me wait and went out into the hall once again for further consultations. While he was gone, I noticed that on the wall were a couple of Flemish portraits similar to the one I was selling and of the same period. One was clearly a wreck, most of the paint was gone, and more wood panel showing than painting. However, it was in an antique Gothic frame. In spite of the stress I was under, I thought that if I could get that piece included in the deal, not only would I have the panel for my next painting, but an antique frame to boot!
    Ephron returned and said, “Twelve hundred dollars is impossible. It’s not worth more than five hundred.” I knew he was playing games, so I proposed a compromise. “Look,” I said, “give me that picture up there”—I pointed to