The Last Nude (22 page)

As the Seine lights swung past us, Gin and I took little sips of brandy from her silver flask. “You do know a student ball is a costume party, don’t you?”

“Why didn’t you tell me at Le Casino? We could have borrowed something from the dressing room.”

Gin giggled. “I forgot. But all right. My costume is . . .” She mused gravely, “I’m a girl who lives on rue Laffitte.”

“Really?” I laughed with her. “Then that’s my costume, too.”

Half an hour later we were deep in a throng of bedsheet-clad Roman senators and bare-chested Swiss dairymaids. An Eve with an apple-printed bandeau wore a live snake on her shoulders. A Sacco and a Vanzetti carried an electric chair between them, while an Isadora Duncan, their comrade in poor taste, wore a noose made out of a filmy scarf. The drums and the horn section blasted us through the fast dance numbers, while the bass and piano lured us through the smoky slow tunes. Gin smiled at me, her arms on my shoulders, and drew in close to tease the boys who watched us.

I had to admit, her idea was a good one. I liked being out. I liked being able to afford my own taxicab, my own admission ticket, my own drinks. I could turn anybody down tonight, no matter how rich he might be, or I could smile at that boy across the room with ivy in his hair, even if he didn’t have a
sou.
For once, dancing felt like the first few seconds of posing for
La Belle
, or the way I’d felt posing for Tamara’s friends the night before. My body became mine. It wasn’t just something I carried around. Ever since my sixteenth birthday, my body had felt like a coin in an unfamiliar currency: small, shiny, and heavy, obviously of value to somebody, but not to me. I had never understood what Guillaume or Hervé saw when they looked at me. I’d watch them greedily respond and think, why this? Why me? My body felt coincidental to me—I could just as easily be a tree, a stone, a gust of wind. For so long, I still felt like the ten-year-old me, skinny as a last wafer of soap, needling through Washington Square on her way to Baxter Street. But my months with Tamara had worn away the lonely old questions and replaced them with a greed of my own: my body was just a fact, this night, a kind of euphoria. I coincided with it, and with the dancing crowd. Throbbing with the horns and drums, we formed a waterfall passing over a light, each of us a drop, a spark, bright, gone. The music danced us, and I knew it wouldn’t last, this body I’d learnt to love. I’d turn eighteen one day, and then twenty, thirty, as Sylvia promised, invisible. Gravity would have her pitiless way with me. My buoyant curves would sag into ordinary fat, and I’d have to dress as shrewdly as Adrienne. The weird fuckable radiance that clung to me would drift off to gild and baffle younger girls than I. So enjoy it now, I told myself, smiling back at Gin.
It gives a lovely light.

Gin peeled away to dance with Sacco and Vanzetti, and I found myself in the lap of the curly-headed boy with ivy in his hair, an engineering student. He said he was twenty years old, so I said I was, too. He was wearing a cape made from a torn-open pillowcase over his regular clothes; he was shouting in French over the music; he was calling me
tu
. “Are you a student, too?”

The old question. My stomach sank, but I looked into his doe eyes and tried to summon, not my anger at Ira and Tamara, but the pleasure I’d felt that afternoon in Shakespeare and Company. “I’m a fashion designer,” I shouted back, testing the word
couturière
in my mouth for the first time, trying to purr those two French
R
s out harsh and throaty.

“Ah, oui?”
He believed me, simple as that, or he didn’t care.

Exultant, I held up the
fine
he’d brought me. “If you can keep your hand still, then I’ll drink,” I bellowed in French, leaning in to reapply the lipstick I made him hold in his stubby-fingered hand. He grinned. I could feel him through his clothes and I knew, giddily, that he didn’t give a goddamn if my lipstick went on straight or not. “But if you move, then
you
drink,” I warned.
“D’accord?”
I wished Tamara could see us; I felt vengefully beautiful. But then I saw Gin across the room through the glaring music, the noisy lights, on her hands and knees. Was she sick?
“Ma copine,”
I said, pointing her out. The boy made a
moue
of distress on her behalf. I gave him a wistful kiss, quick but full, and tasted cognac and cigarettes, an eager, salty rasp. Then I reclaimed my lipstick and slid away to help my friend.

When I pulled Gin up she fell against me, sloppy, laughing. “Ring Daniel!” she shouted over the blaring horns. “Tell him I don’t feel too good!”

I stood her up like a rag doll and walked her toward a chair. “We’re going home, sweetie. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.” I was going to need money after all, I thought sadly, as she stumbled against me. A lot of it. Suddenly the dancers all looked so young. What was Gin going to do with a baby?

13

KISSING A STRANGER MAY HAVE EVENED up the score with Tamara a bit, but it didn’t make me any less angry with her. When I arrived at work the morning after the student ball, she was on the telephone: she tied her key in a handkerchief and tossed it out the window instead of coming down to let me in. Our
Rafaela
stood against the wall, facing out into the room. I did not change into my model’s robe. I waited for her in the salon, fully dressed, my mouth a hard line. The second
Chemise Rose
stood on an easel in front of me, so I stared at it. This morning it pained me to see my handiwork so faithfully copied: the unraveled stitching, the single strap. Tamara was as careless with me as she was with my gift. She was only careful with her painting, only faithful to the tilt of the head, to last month’s brunette hair. Suddenly, I gasped. Tamara had painted the face, and it was Ira’s.

Tamara’s own face, in the first version, had been highly stylized, a seductive mask. This second face was far more human: lovely but somber, perhaps convalescing, a face that had been hurt, but wanted to trust. Not only had the hard-edged detail of the drapery behind her vanished, the very texture of the second painting was more porous than the first: it seemed more like
paint
, less like shining metal. I suddenly felt small on that couch, like a shell left behind by the tide. In a room full of monumental paintings of myself, confronted with this small, tender portrait, I felt cheap. The rage I’d honed all the hours of my second near-sleepless night began to dissolve into a poisonous sadness. When Tamara walked into the room, she blinked. “Why are you still dressed?”

I pointed at Ira’s face: the large green eyes, the long nose, the warily hopeful mouth. “You slept with her, too,” I said, choking.

“Rafaela. I am an artist. Do you think I cannot look at a beautiful woman and just paint?”

I closed my eyes in reply, hurt.

“Do you think I sleep with all my models? Or just the ones who sit on my couch and waste my time with silly accusations?”

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“Guess what? I have Ira’s money for you here, and she loves the dress you made. She said she wants to wear it every day.”

I smiled thinly, undeterred. “That’s wonderful.”

“She is going to tell all her friends about you.”

I set my forehead in my hand. “It’s just—I came back last night to see if she had come by.” I looked up and swallowed hard. “I
heard
you two.”

“Rafaela, what I do is my own affair. You know that.”

“I thought—”

“Ira is an old, old friend. Do you understand?”

“Evidently.”

“You are sulking,” Tamara said, disgusted.

Who did she think she was? I stood. “Well, don’t even think of painting another
Belle Rafaela
for those guys, because I’m not going to pose for it. And I’m not going to pose for
Nude with Dove
either,” I said, pointing. “It’s stupid. Doves are just pigeons, and pigeons are dirty. And you don’t even want to go to Italy with me. You just said that to make me take my clothes off for your friends. Well, I’m not doing
that
again, so don’t get any more ideas.” I was panting, my hands on my hips like a fishwife. I felt ridiculous, but I enjoyed yelling at her, too.

Tamara stared at me. “Are you quite finished?”

I stood there, flushed, wishing I could think of more things to say, and then I saw her face had changed. “You darling,” she said. “You beautiful, beautiful girl.” She was crying.

I looked away from her, disarmed.

She sat down on the couch and reached for my hand. I sat down tentatively beside her. “Rafaela,” she said. “I would never,
ever
paint
Belle Rafaela
again unless I had good reasons, my own reasons, from the heart, not because some people wanted to buy it. I made one to sell and one to treasure, and no more. I am not a factory. Painting one for every collector who came along would cheapen the painting. It would cheapen me as a painter. And would cheapen the way I feel for you.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“I think you are being childish about
Nude with Dove,
but if that is the way you feel, you do not have to sit for it anymore.”

“Thank you.” Even if I
was
being childish, I refused to take back what I’d said. I continued to look at her, expectant.

“I promise I will never ask you to pose nude again like that for other people.”

“And?”

“And I cannot wait to go to Italy with you, my darling.” I looked at her, still hurt, my arms crossed over my chest. Tamara looked from Ira’s face around to the three canvases of me. Her eyes went flat and she reached for her topaz ring. When she looked up at me again her voice was sad and careful. “Rafaela, Ira and I are close, but I do not love her.”

I held my breath. I wanted her to say more. I wanted to fight how much I wanted it. “You slept with her when you went to London, didn’t you?” I pushed.

“But I did not love her,” she repeated. “I love you.”

I was seventeen. I had been waiting to hear those words since the day Tamara left for England. Tears filled my eyes. “Really?”

She reached for me, the back of her hand just barely touching the invisible down on my face. Despite the radiator, I was shaking. My teeth began to chatter. Tamara said, “Why not pose for me, and then let me show you?”

“I will if you put that painting in the other room.”

 

 

 

When Tamara gave herself over to me at the end of the day, she told me that she loved me again. “This is all I want,” she whispered, when I woke in her arms. “Nothing but this.”

Before Kizette could come back, I roused myself to leave. When I glanced back at her, stockings in hand, I saw Tamara wasn’t looking at me like a lover, or even like a painter. She was
gazing
at me. “I want to dress you up in peacock feathers from head to toe,” she said dreamily.

“For real?”

An excited, planning look came over her. “I think I could,” she mused. “I
bet
I could.” She reached for the sketchpad by the table. “Rafaela, you know I promise, promise, promise I will never ask you to pose nude for anyone else, but if I
could
do it—there is this party at the end of the month—would you let me show you off again?”

“Dressed in peacock feathers from head to toe?” How crazy! She nodded. I laughed, feeling as indulged and indulgent as I’d felt hurt and cold before. “Show me our Italy tickets tomorrow, and I’ll say yes.”

 

 

 

Tamara
did
show me two train tickets to Italy the next day—for late Friday night, December 23rd—along with a bale of peacock-feather trim she said she’d sent the housekeeper to buy, which at first she set aside. After finishing
Full Summer
over the next few days, she began a new painting, a double nude of the two of us. First she had me photograph her lying behind me spoon-fashion, eyes closed, one arm draped over me as I squeezed the rubber bulb to take the shot. Then she roughed the two of us in with quick charcoal on newsprint, transferred the image to canvas, and began slowly painting me alone. She did not display Ira’s portrait while I modeled.
Nude with Dove
disappeared before she finished painting in the face. I saw it in her bedroom once, when I went to borrow her hairbrush. I recognized Ira right away: the whites of her eyes took up more of her face than most people’s did; her long nose turned up slightly in certain lights; her mouth looked as ready to cry as to kiss. When I saw Ira’s face on my body, I seized Tamara’s hairbrush and walked away fast.