by James Ponti
She looked some more and replied, “Her shoes. She’s wearing a nice dress, but with sneakers. They don’t go together.”
“That’s very good,” I told her. “You’ve got two small things that don’t seem to fit. When you add them together, what do they tell you?”
She thought about it for a moment. “She takes the Metro and walks to work. She wants to be comfortable and she doesn’t want to scuff up her nice shoes, so she keeps those in her office and wears the sneakers whenever she leaves. I bet they’re on their lunch break.”
“Look at that. You’re a natural.”
Margaret smiled. “Want to know more?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Judging by their age, they’re probably interns. She wanted to come and look at the pretty pictures. He wanted to come and look at the pretty girl.”
I laughed. “What makes you say that?”
“Notice how she’s looking at the paintings. She’s wrapped up in them. But he’s turned toward her.”
She was absolutely right.
“Like I said, you’re a natural.”
We did this for another hour, going from room to room, picking up on little details and clues about people, before ending up where we started, by the self-portraits of Van Gogh and Gauguin. There we came across a man who’d nodded off to sleep while sitting on a couch, which made him an ideal subject. He wasn’t moving, which made him easy to study. And his eyes were closed, so he couldn’t see us looking at him.
“Ready to take a test?” I asked.
She smiled confidently. “Ready to take it. Ready to crush it.”
“Find out everything you can about Sleeping Beauty and meet me over there by Gauguin.”
“It’s in the bag,” she replied.
I walked by him first and pretended to look at a Degas painting of ballerinas. While I did, I made some mental notes about him. Margaret was more direct. She actually sat at the other end of the couch and got a close-up look.
She stayed there for a minute and then came over to me. I was smiling because of her bold move, but she seemed unhappy.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I was doing great up until now, but I didn’t notice anything interesting or out of place about him,” she explained. “The only thing close is that he’s got a scar on his chin. Does that mean anything?”
“Just that he cut himself once,” I said.
“That’s what I figured.”
“You want me to ask you some questions like before?”
“I don’t want you to,” she replied. “But I guess I need you to.”
“Sometimes it’s not so obvious,” I said. “You’ve got to start small and build up. Can you tell me anything about where he lives?”
She started to give me an “are you crazy?” look, but then she realized something.
“Not in DC,” she said. “He’s wearing a T-shirt from the Spy Museum and he has a big, bulky camera on a strap around his neck. He’s a tourist. That means he doesn’t live in Washington.”
“Good,” I said. “So that’s where he doesn’t live. Do you have any idea where he does?”
“No,” she said, stumped. “Do you?”
“He’s from Europe. Of course, it’s easier for me because two weeks ago so was I.”
She turned to look back at him, and this time she saw it. “His shoes! His running shoes look funny!”
“You got it,” I said, signaling her to lower her voice. “Those are called Europa trainers. They’re a brand from Eastern Europe. They don’t sell them in the States.”
“That’s cool,” said Margaret. “I’ll do better with the next one. Give me another test.”
“We’re not done with him.”
“We’re not?” she asked. “What else can you tell?”
“He’s wearing contact lenses, he’s left-handed, and he’s here with his wife and baby.”
“You can’t possibly know that.” Then she gave me a look. “Can you?”
“There are indentation marks on the bridge of his nose and on both temples that could only be made by wearing glasses on a regular basis. But there is no sign of them today, so he’s wearing his contacts. There are spit-up stains on his shoulder, the kind you get from holding a baby. And since we determined that the shirt is a souvenir from the trip, it’s most likely the first time he’s ever worn it. That means the stains are fresh and the baby is with him today. The wedding ring tells us that he’s married. The fact that he’s wearing his wedding ring on the right hand is another sign that he’s European, probably Eastern European. It’s more of a custom there. My guess is that they’re a couple making their first trip with their baby, which would explain why he’s so tired.”
“And how do you know he’s left-handed?”
“The spit stains from the baby are on the right shoulder,” I explained. “That’s the side that a left-handed person would use. You’re left-handed; how would you hold a baby?”
Margaret thought about this for a second and imagined she was holding a baby. Her instinct was to hold it on her right shoulder.
“It’s clever, I’ll give you that,” she said. “But you can’t be sure. It’s all still guessing.”
“Yes, but it’s informed guessing. The whole point of TOAST is that one little thing can be misleading, but the more little things there are, the more likely the guesses are to being right. Like the shoes and the wedding ring both being Eastern European.”
Just then a woman carrying a baby approached the man and started talking to him in a language neither of us recognized. He smiled as he placed the baby against his right shoulder and started to pat its back with his left hand. Margaret continued to watch them as the couple shared a quick kiss and started to walk together through the museum.
“One day I’ll be able to do that,” she said.
“What?” I asked. “Burp a baby?”
“Very funny,” she replied, slugging me in the arm. “No, one day I’ll be able to read people like that. Like you do.”
A week later Margaret was over at my house and Mom was making her special Sunday spaghetti sauce. It’s a legendary family recipe that simmers all day and fills the house with the most amazing aroma.
“That smells incredible, Mrs. B.,” Margaret said as we passed through the kitchen.
“Thank you,” she said. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”
“To eat that?” replied Margaret. “I would love to stay for dinner.”
“Check with your parents,” said Mom. “Florian’s dad is on his way home from the airport, so we should be eating in about an hour.”
Dad had been on a business trip for most of the week. When we sat down to eat, he hadn’t even had a chance to tell us anything about it before Margaret asked him, “Did you have fun playing golf while you were in California?”
“I had a great time,” he said, “but I played awful.”
She nodded and replied, “Well, it’s hard to play well when you’re using somebody else’s clubs. At least that’s what my dad says.”
She tried to play it cool, but when she turned and saw my expression, she couldn’t help but break into a huge grin.
“How did you know my father had been to California?” I asked. “And how did you know he played golf when he was there? I didn’t even know that, so I couldn’t have told you.”
“And how could you have possibly known that I used someone else’s clubs?” asked Dad.
She was still beaming as she looked at our stunned faces and said, “I just used TOAST.”
4.
The Copyist
WE SAT IN SILENT AMAZEMENT until my mother began to laugh.
“At last,” she said gleefully. “Someone has done to Florian what he does to us.”
I laughed too. I couldn’t believe it. Margaret had used TOAST to figure out that my father borrowed someone else’s golf clubs during his trip to California. And I had absolutely no idea how. I kept looking back and forth between Dad and her, trying to figure ou
t what clues she saw.
“You better tell him how you did it,” Dad said. “Before his brain explodes.”
“Please do,” I said. “I’m completely stumped.”
Margaret basked in a moment of glory before she explained. “First of all, the trip to California. I knew that before we even sat down. Mr. Bates put his briefcase on the hall table and there’s a copy of the Los Angeles Times sticking out of the pocket.” She turned to my father. “I’m guessing you read it on the flight home.”
“I sure did,” he told her. “That’s good.”
“Okay, but that’s not enough,” I said, holding up a hand to call time-out. “Just because he has a newspaper doesn’t mean he was there. We get the New York Times every Sunday without going to New York. The LA Times is for sale in airports all over the country.”
“True, but TOAST is about multiple small things,” she replied. “And you didn’t let me finish. There’s also a claim tag on the briefcase’s handle. It says LACMA.”
“Lacma? What’s that?”
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure the LA stands for Los Angeles,” she said. “Maybe the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art.”
“Los Angeles County Museum of Art,” said Dad. “They’re my new clients. I spent the last three days studying their security protocols.”
“So that gets you to California,” said my mother. “How did you know he played golf?”
“His hands gave it away.”
Dad held them up, and I saw it instantly.
“His right hand is tan and his left hand is pale,” I said, shaking my head. “How could I miss that?”
“Yeah, Florian, how could you miss that?” asked Mom. Then she turned to Margaret and whispered, “What did he miss?”
“You only wear one glove when you golf,” she explained. “If you play enough in a short period of time, the sun only tans the one exposed hand.”
Mom gave Dad a suspicious look and asked, “Exactly how much did you play while you were studying their security protocols?”
He grinned. “Is it my fault the museum director loves to play golf and discuss work at the same time?”
“It still doesn’t explain how you knew he borrowed clubs,” I said.
Margaret smiled. “That was the easiest part of all. We were all here when he came home. He had a suitcase and a briefcase . . .”
“. . . but he wasn’t carrying golf clubs,” I said.
“Nope. That means he had to borrow some while he was out there.”
It was brilliant. Actually, it was better than brilliant. It was perfect. Margaret had taken my special thing and turned it into our special thing. Up until that moment the real value of TOAST was that it helped me figure out new things whenever my family moved. But that was the day it became something different. From that point on it became something the two of us could do together.
For example, when we rode the Metro we’d play a game where we’d try to predict who was getting off at which stop based only on what they were carrying. And one time we sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and tried to figure out what state different tourists were from by the clothes they were wearing. The more we played, the better we got. But we weren’t trying to develop our skills so that we could become detectives or spies or anything like that. We were just having fun.
Until we saw him.
It was July 29. I remember it because it was Margaret’s birthday. As a present, my mom had arranged for us to go behind the scenes at the museum. She took us into the studio where she works, showed us all the high-tech equipment, and even let us see a newly acquired Picasso that hadn’t gone on display yet. It was very cool and when we left we walked through the Impressionism galleries.
That’s where we came across an artist painting a replica of Monet’s Woman with a Parasol.
“Is he a conservator like your mom?” asked Margaret.
“No,” I replied. “He’s a copyist.”
“You mean like a forger?”
“It’s only forgery if you say it’s the original,” I explained. “Copyists are artists who practice by painting copies of other works. It’s a great way to learn from the masters. It’s how most great artists got started.”
“So he doesn’t work here?” asked Margaret.
“No, but he had to get a permit from the museum,” I said. “I doubt it was hard because he’s really good. His painting looks just like the original.”
“European too,” said Margaret.
“French, to be precise,” I said. “It’s a Monet, Woman with a Parasol.”
“Not the painting,” she replied. “I mean the artist is European. Check out his shoes.”
He was wearing Europa trainers like the man we saw the first day I taught her about TOAST.
“Just like Sleeping Beauty,” she continued.
I started to laugh, but then something caught my attention. The man we saw the first day was a young father on vacation. This man was an artist hard at work. If you stood them side by side, they’d look almost nothing alike, but the Theory of All Small Things led me to an unexpected conclusion.
“I think it’s the same guy,” I said.
“No way,” said Margaret. “He was blond and this guy has black hair.”
“I know.”
“And he was a total tourist,” she added. “Not a hipster art student.”
“I know that, too. But I still think it’s him.”
“Why?”
“For one, look how he’s painting: He’s left-handed, just like the other guy.”
“A lot of people are left-handed,” she replied as she held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers. “Like me, for example.”
“Only ten percent of people are left-handed,” I said. “If you multiply that ten percent by the small number of people in Washington who have those shoes, and narrow that group down by men that age with that body type, the number gets ridiculously small. Then consider that they were both in this museum during the last few weeks, and it says that he’s the same person we saw before.”
“You’re telling me that you trust TOAST more than you trust your own eyes?” she said. “The small things tell you one thing and you go with that?”
I thought about it for a moment before I answered.
“I do,” I said. “I absolutely do.”
She sighed. “So do I. I can’t put my finger on the exact reason why, but he seems like the same guy to me, too. I wish there was a way we could tell for sure.”
“Yeah,” I replied, lost in thought.
We stood there for a moment, and then we both turned and looked at each other at the exact same time and said, “The scar.”
“It’s on his chin,” she said. “And you remember who spotted that scar, don’t you?”
“I believe it was you.”
“Oh, you don’t believe it was me,” she teased. “You know it was me. You thought it was worthless, but I thought it was important. Turns out . . . I was right.”
“So what’s the plan?” I asked. “You want to stand here and keep congratulating yourself? Or do you want to go look for the scar?”
“I’m all for doing both,” she answered. “But I guess I could take it easy on you and we could just go find out.”
I figured we’d casually look at some nearby paintings and glance at his chin, but Margaret’s approach was more direct. She walked right up to him and leaned over his shoulder.
“Your painting is beautiful,” she said.
“Thanks,” he replied with a trace of an accent. “It helps to have something beautiful like a Monet to copy.”
As he talked he turned to look at her and smiled. The scar was right there across the left side of his chin.
Neither of us had any doubt. It was the same man.
5.
Foggy Bottom
“WHAT SHOULD WE DO?” MARGARET asked urgently.
“What do you mean?” I replied.
“Should we call the police? Alert securi
ty?”
“And tell them what?”
We’d moved into the massive hallway that runs through the middle of the National Gallery, so we could keep an eye on the copyist without him hearing us.
“We’ll tell them that the man in there is not who he is pretending to be,” she said in an excited whisper.
“He’s not pretending to be anyone,” I said. “He says he’s a copyist, and judging by his painting, that’s exactly what he is.”
“Then he’s a forger,” she said. “He’s making a forgery of Woman with a Parasol to sell on the black market. Where do you think the black market is for paintings like that? Paris? Cairo? Marrakech?”
“Definitely Marrakech,” I answered with a laugh. “Except it doesn’t make sense to forge a painting that’s on public display. No one would be fooled because all they have to do is go online to see that the original is hanging in the museum.”
“I got it. I got it. I got it,” she said excitedly but still trying to keep her voice down. “He’s a spy. No, even better, he’s an international hit man. That makes total sense.”
“How in the world does international hit man make total sense?”
“He completely changed his appearance,” she said. “That means he’s hiding something. Hit men hide stuff. It’s like the main thing they do. You know . . . other than kill people.”
“I’ve created a monster,” I said, shaking my head. “Maybe I should have warned you sooner, but there’s a trap that comes with TOAST. And I think you’ve fallen into it.”
“What trap?” she asked.
“Crazy conspiracy theories,” I said. “Just because something is unexpected doesn’t mean it’s suspicious. Most things are completely innocent and can be easily explained. If you think about it, all he’s done is change his hair. Have you ever changed yours?”
“Yes, but . . .” She let out a sigh and slumped a bit. “Why are you trying to take all the fun out of this?”
I laughed. “You think it would be fun if he actually was an international hit man?”
“Maybe ‘fun’ isn’t the right word,” she replied. “But you know what I mean. You’re the one who taught me TOAST and all I’m doing is using it.”
