We were sitting in a Starbucks in Old Town.  Linda said she recognized the elderly gentleman walking down Wells smoking a pipe.  I asked her who it was.  She looked at me strangely for a moment, and said, didn’t you read the article in the Tribune about him the other day?  That’s Geoffrey MacLand, one of the foremost experts on antique art in Chicago.  Oh, you mean the one who could tell that 18^th-century Italian wall fresco was a forgery?  The very same, Linda said, staring after him.  She went on to tell me that she almost consulted with him.  Really?  Mm hmm, she nodded, sipping at her cappuccino.  Apparently, Linda had purchased a stone sculpture from a dealer along Michigan Avenue that she suspected wasn’t original and therefore had no place in her Astor Street duplex.  So then what happened?  She didn’t go through with it.  Why not?  Her boyfriend Todd convinced her that it wasn’t worth it.   Respect the creator, not the creation, he told her, or something really nerdy like that.  What do you think, Linda asked me.  What do I think about Todd?  No, what he said.  To myself, I thought, well, he’s probably right.  Out loud, I said, that’s ridiculous.  Obviously you should have gone ahead and found out about the thing without his knowledge.