Paris Red: A Novel (26 page)

A
t the studio the next
day, after I take off my clothes, I go to the table where he stands, preparing paint. I do not wait for him to turn but slip my arms around him from behind and press my cheek to his back.

“What’s this, what’s this?” he says as he turns, as he takes my arms from his waist.

For a second I think he will stop me. But of course he does not. He just turns and starts to kiss me. That is how easy it is. When I see that, I wonder why I did not try it sooner.

At the divan I push him a little so he is the one to lie down first, so I can climb on top of him. I wear the black ribbon I always wear now, and that is what he reaches up and touches. The knot at my throat and then the ends that trail down between my breasts. I feel so much from him that I think I will be able to do it, I think I will be able to tell him what I feel for him. I lean over him, hide my face beside his so I can whisper. Because if he does not love the mother of his son, who does he love? And I think that if I say it, maybe he will, too.

But I do not tell him I love him.

Instead I say, “J’aime ça, j’aime ça.”

He takes me by my shoulders and lifts me a litte so he can see my face. So I can see his.

“I love it, too,” he says.

And we stay like that for a while, just watching each other. I feel as if he knows what I almost said, and I feel as if he said it, too.

I reach down then and take him in my hand. I wait a second, and then I’m guiding him. Right into me. Right up into me.

After that, he
paints.

The two of us naked except for my ribbon and bracelet. His cock in its sheath.

M
a chère Mademoiselle Meurent—that
is how he introduces me to his friend Stevens, who comes the next day when we are done working.

“So this is why you’ve been hiding,” Stevens says.

“Not hiding,” he says. “Just working.”

“What about you, mademoiselle?” Stevens says. “Do you like working with him?”

“It suits me,” I say. “He suits me.”

Stevens looks from me to him. He looks down for a second and then returns Stevens’s gaze. Smiles.

“She cuts to the chase,” he says.

“She’s original,” Stevens says, watching me. “I can see that.”

“I only paint what’s true,” he says. “You should know that, Stevens.”

“Is it too much to ask what you’re working on?”

“Nothing much.”

“Yes, I know,” Stevens says. “You monkey about with colors. Quelle connerie.” He turns to me then and says, “Does he let you see it?”

“When it’s done I get to look.”

“You must trust him,” Stevens says.

“It’s not about trust,” he tells Stevens. “There’s nothing to see before it’s done.”

“All right, all right,” Stevens says. “No one will look at your work. Now let’s go to dinner. And I’m buying, mademoiselle. Not him.”

Over dinner they
try to include me in the conversation for a while, but soon enough the talk turns to what they really have to say, which is all about painting and a salon and judges. That is what I pick up on. But it is a relief when they leave me out of the conversation because I can just sit there and listen. It is not like when he invited me to the Guerbois and no matter which way I turned, someone was watching me. There are only two of them and they are absorbed in what they say, so this time I am the watcher.

Stevens is older. Dark hair with just a few threads of white at the temples. Big nose. Not handsome but handsome enough. When he listens to a person, he always seems to wait a moment before replying, which is nice. It is calming somehow.

“I don’t regret what I said,” Stevens tells him now. “I didn’t at the time and I don’t now.”

“You shouldn’t. With one hand they give you a medal and with the other they insult you.”

“Only Fleury. Only he has the nerve,” Stevens says.

“The stupidity. He wants to see you paint classical themes. Empty myths and dusty costumes,” he says.

“The jury is not interested in ‘La vie moderne,’ ” Stevens says.

“No, they want what they already know. But I’d rather paint what I see. The here and now.”

“I stand behind you,” Stevens says. “But it will be a long road, you know.”

He only nods. Takes my hand, which he has been holding under the table, and moves it over his thigh, up close to his cock. I do not think he cares if Stevens can see or not—I think it somehow makes him feel better to do that in front of his friend. Or maybe he just wants to be sure of me, I cannot tell. We sit like that, all three of us together, until the food comes.

After dinner the
three of us walk along the boulevard together, he and Stevens and I. Of course I am on his arm, but he gestures to me to take Stevens’s arm as well.

So I do. I reach with my free hand into the crook of Stevens’s arm. I slip my hand between his arm and his side, and just like that I’m holding him, too. I can tell from Stevens’s face that it pleases him. It pleases him to have me touch him, and it pleases him to be walking like that, the three of us, to be joined.

It is curious to be the one in the middle. Of the two men, Stevens is taller, so it feels different walking next to him. I feel sheltered in a different way. But mostly I think that this is what it must have felt like when he went promenading with Nise and me. He had his arms full of us.

I do not hold Stevens as close as I hold him, but I still feel his warmth against my side.

It is like being engulfed. But also like swimming above.

When we get
close to Stevens’s place on Rue de Laval, he says goodnight to the two of us.

“Maybe one day Mademoiselle Meurent can pose for me,” Stevens says as he holds my hand, as he says goodnight.

“I don’t know,” I tell him.

“It’s a possibility,” he tells Stevens. “If you think you’re equal to it.”

“I might be.”

“It’s up to her, then,” he says.

So I say, “Maybe. Maybe that would be nice.”

He gives me a card. It only says his name, Alfred Stevens, but he has handwritten
18 Rue Taitbout
on the card, too.

“My studio address,” Stevens says. After I take the card from him, he kisses my hand.

“Surely you can do better than that, Stevens,” he says. “Surely her company is worth a kiss on the cheek.”

I look at Stevens then, but he does not look embarrassed. He just waits, the way he does when someone says something.

“I don’t mind,” I say, and step closer to him.

He kisses me very lightly on the cheek, but it is long enough for me to feel his soft mustache. To be close to him for a moment.

Then the three of us really are saying goodnight, there on the street corner. He calls out a final farewell to Stevens after we begin to part.

When we walk away, just he and I, my one arm feels a little lonely. So I say, “How did you ever stand it?”

“Stand what?”

“Losing Nise.”

“I gained you,” he says.

The words are sweet, I can hear that. But in that moment I realize he does not think of Nise the way I do. He cannot. Because no matter what fantasies he had about the three of us together, no matter how many times he kissed her or had her on his arm or touched her breasts through her dress—he never knew her the way I did. He never shared a bed with her or a basin. He never went hungry with her, was never poor with her, never dreamed beside her. I was the one who did those things. I was not a lover but I was like a lover.

So I was the one who gave her up. It was my loss, not his.

When I realize that, I hold his arm tighter. I hold his arm tighter against the cage of my chest. Which he thinks is romance and desire, which it is in a way, but it is something much plainer, too.

It is need.

I need him.

Not just as a lover but in the ways I used to need Nise. For closeness. So I do not feel lost.

And yet maybe those things are closer than I think. Desire and need. And not just for me. I know what his face looks like sometimes when he is above me, moving into me. If that is not need then I do not know what is.

I think all that with his arm hard against my side. With the bone of his arm against the bone of my arm.