I leaned back and turned away, staring at the tinsels of light on the river. It didn’t even give her pause.
“Would you be interested? You’re so gifted you could paint them in your sleep.”
Was this something she’d had in mind from the day we met in Paris? Was this the long con, the reason for our affair in the first place? My jaw clenched because, either way, it was proof that she didn’t really believe in my own work.
“It wouldn’t be in lieu of your work,” she said, reading my mind. “Just a way to make some money so we can live how we want to live. Free. And it would take your mind off the portraits so ideas can flow again.”
“I thought you wanted to be an engineer.”
“I do. Having my own business will allow me to choose which firm I want to work for when I graduate, and I won’t be beholden to some asshole.”
Her resourcefulness, drumming up a practical solution to the potential roadblocks ahead, put my petty brooding into perspective. I’d been wallowing in frustration without any alternatives, without looking at it from different angles, and I kept coming up against the same unsatisfying results. Maybe I really did inspire her, this business venture—she certainly inspired me. Isn’t that what truly mattered?
“Okay,” I said, “Let me think about it.”
She kissed me and then handed me her cell phone.
“Look . . .”
On the screen was an email from Janet.
Hi Nathan. The portraits look wonderful. You’ve found something that is yours, that has real emotional pull, and Gary—her famous sculptor boyfriend—says you’re onto something big. Keep up the good work and have fun with your gorgeous friend. I can’t wait to see where this leads.
Xo Janet
A gasp leapt out and I checked the date of the email. It was from three days ago. Now my eyes shifted to Anaïs. Without the slightest wrinkle of apprehension, she said, “I was worried that once you had what you wanted, you might leave.”
Before I could respond, a horn beeped outside.
“That’s Bernard . . .” Anaïs said, taking my hand and pulling me off the cushion. “My parents must be here . . .” She guided me inside, past the hearth, through the dining area, and into the kitchen. As I trailed her down the uneven stairs, I grabbed the railing, off-balance from too much wine and the rush of anger about her obvious manipulation to get me to make reproductions for her. But it was an inappropriate time to get into an argument and then she was pulling me outside.
Bernard was standing with his cigar while who I assumed was her mother and father lifted their bags from the Citroën’s trunk.
“I honked to warn you, in case,” Bernard said, lifting his bushy eyebrows and laughing.
Anaïs kissed him on the cheeks and I nodded, still irked, and he tipped his head at me as Anaïs towed me to her parents.
The father wore a navy blazer over a white collared shirt and Italian leather shoes, and I immediately regretted not wearing a nicer shirt. He was conspicuously dressed like Henri and had nearly the same length hair, similarly parted on one side. It was much darker and he wasn’t as lean as Henri, more barrel-chested like Bernard, but their likeness suggested something crudely oedipal at work.
The mother was fair-haired with pale blue eyes and stood an inch or two taller than Anaïs, with perfect posture and feet splayed like a dancer. She must have been at least forty but she looked younger and was in good shape.
“You’re a day early, no?” Anaïs said to her mother as she kissed her on both cheeks.
“Must we change our reservations, madame?” was the mother’s response.
With a dismissive head toss, Anaïs turned, kissed her father on both cheeks, and introduced me. Jean Luc cocked an eyebrow at me before smiling warmly and shaking my hand. His fingers were thick, his palm meaty.
“And Maman,” Anaïs said, gesturing to her mother.
She remained fixed on her mother, who craned her neck toward me and waited for me to kiss both cheeks. Touching my unshaven face to one cheek, I made the kissing sound and moved past her mouth, the same as her daughter’s, to the other cheek.
“I have a name too,” the mother said, and Anaïs sighed. “It’s Sophie.”
“Enchanté, Sophie.”
“You were doing housework?” she asked, scowling at my shabby T-shirt.
“No,” I said, demurely.
“Ah,” Sophie intoned—the same way Anaïs often did. “We should be thankful that you wore a shirt at all.”
Bernard and Jean Luc laughed, a bit nervously.
Anaïs interjected. “He was cooking over the hot stove.”
“He can’t stand up for himself?” Sophie quipped.
The two women seemed to square off, eyes measuring each other’s expressions—Anaïs unexpectedly flustered, Sophie overtly insouciant—as if they were getting ready to duel it out.
“Let’s go inside,” Jean Luc said, marching the bags toward the entrance.
Anaïs turned away first, a kind of concession, and followed her father, and I quickly fell in behind her.
“So you found an American boy that can cook,” Sophie called from behind us. “Bravo. It’s some kind of rare species, no?”
Everyone laughed and I was laughing too, but I wondered about their banter, its echo of hostility—difficult to sustain without someone finally reaching a breaking point.
twenty-four
I offered to whip up some more spaghetti Bolognese, as there was plenty of food left. Sophie said no but Jean Luc overruled her. Anaïs helped them carry their bags upstairs and Bernard stayed with me in the kitchen, where I got to work.
“She likes to take the piss out of you at first,” Bernard said, “but then she’s off your back. A little test.”
“Lots of tests,” I said.
“Oui, you have to stand up to her but without being rude.”
“I suppose it’s a good way to get a read on someone.”
“Efficient,” he said, taking a long draw on his cigar.
He watched me stir the roasted tomatoes and garlic into the meat.
“Has Anaïs mentioned her business idea?” he said.
“Yes,” I said testily.
“You’re offended?”
“Seems like you two kind of buttered me up, you know, so I’d go along with it.”
“Ah, you don’t think I really respect your work, is that it?”
“How can I really know now?”
He took another long drag on his cigar. Looking at me or through me, hard to tell. Then he watched the smoke as it trailed out his mouth and spun upward.
“Often the difference between a successful artist and another talented but lesser-known one is how they handle the doubters,” he said while watching the smoke dissipate. “What I or anyone else thinks really doesn’t matter. You either make art or you don’t. That’s all there is. That’s all you ever really know for sure.”
Although it felt like another manipulation, it also rang true.
“If I were to do it, I wouldn’t be giving up my own work. We’d have to be clear about that.”
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll get some more wine.”
Stepping toward the landing, he stopped. “Hey, I meant to ask you the last time I saw you, what were you doing spying on me from the river? Why didn’t you come say hello?”
That was a few weeks ago. The man with the binoculars had vanished into the forest so he would’ve only seen me. Should I deny it?
“I didn’t have anything on and you were with someone. I think it was a woman,” I lied. “Hard to tell from way out in the river.”
“Ah, I thought you were some kind of voyeur.” He guffawed and lumbered down the stairs.
Anaïs returned to the kitchen with her father. She handed me one of my nicer shirts. I put it on while her father inspected the sauce, sniffing it up, and glanced into the boiling pot of pasta. Anaïs set three places at the massive table, using the fine silver and china for the first time. Five
minutes later we were all sitting at one end of the table, while Bernard, Jean Luc, and Sophie ate Bolognese and we shared the wine.
The men complimented the food and Sophie raised her glass, first at Anaïs and then at me.
“Merci,” she said.
“De rien,” I said.
Jean Luc and Bernard immediately plunged into a heated conversation, which I gathered was about French politics, names and concepts that were impossible for me to follow. Sophie waved her hand in their direction and addressed me.
“Anaïs says you are a painter.”
“Yes.”
“And she is your model?”
Although I was still irked about her manipulation, it didn’t change what she’d given me, and what Janet had reacted to so positively.
“More than that,” I said. “She’s changed everything for me.”
“Everything? Are you in love?”
Anaïs jumped in. “Maman, don’t try to scare him.”
Sophie slid her eyes over to me, demanding a final verdict.
We’d never used the word love before. We had spent only a few weeks together, and yet the intensity Anaïs generated in me, the way it fixed my mind on her and fomented such raw emotions and, in turn, fueled my work, was more than just attraction—it ran deeper, and I was just beginning to discover how deep.
“We’re definitely falling,” I said more adamantly than I may have felt in that moment because intuitively I knew not to let her mother sense any waffling.
Anaïs’s eyebrows flitted upward and her mouth curved. She got out of the chair and sat in my lap, clamping her arm around my neck as if to claim me.
“When do we get to see these portraits?” Sophie asked.
I deferred to Anaïs.
“In the morning,” she said, without looking at her mother, kissing my neck and giggling. “It’s time for my dessert.”
Sophie sighed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jean Luc watching his wife and then his eyes moved to me. His face was difficult to read—either lost in thought or maybe something venal flickering behind his eyes—before he glanced once more at Sophie and then resumed his conversation with Bernard.
“Bonne nuit,” Anaïs called, getting out of my lap.
I stood and they all turned and looked at us.
“Don’t you want the cheese?” Bernard said.
“No, merci,” Anaïs said. “À demain.”
“À demain,” they responded.
Anaïs pulled her hair back, elbows out, gathering it into a ponytail as she walked toward the stairs. The men were already talking again, but Sophie was watching me and for some reason I dared not meet her eye.
twenty-five
“I think I’m going to have to pass on your offer,” I said as we entered the bedroom. It was a little stress test, just to see how she’d react.
“Really? Why?”
“Copying other artists’ work stirs up too many bad associations for me. I’d be moving backward. Pas bon.”
“Ah, oui.” She kissed my cheek. “We’ll have to find someone else.”
She took off her clothes. I watched her, unable to detect anything unnatural or forced in her behavior, and although I’d pored over every part of her body dozens of times, as an artist and as a lover, her curves and polished skin quickly consumed me, commanding all my attention.
She glanced over, just for a half second, enough time for her to see my hunger, and all she had to do was lie back on the bed and open her legs.
Throughout our love affair, Anaïs would call out only at the moment of climax. Tonight she moaned loudly when I ate her, yelling graphically for all to hear, and that was before we made love. The last thing I remember was coiling around her and feeling her hand cup my balls—a custom she followed almost every night afterward.
The next morning, the door burst open and Sophie was standing in a leotard and Anaïs’s hand was still clutching me, the room awash in sunlight. I turned away from Sophie while she admonished Anaïs, who was still attempting to open her eyes all the way. I eased onto my stomach and stayed motionless.
“Why have you invaded my room?” Sophie was yelling at Anaïs.
“Bonjour to you too,” Anaïs retorted.
“The paint smell is toxic,” Sophie continued. “It will take hours to air out.”
Anaïs propped herself up on her elbows, stark naked in the room full of sun, and glared at her mother in the doorway. Sophie’s legs were long and exceptionally taut, her stomach muscles visible through the white leotard, shoulders and arms rippled with sinew.
“You’re jealous of the portraits?” Anaïs asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Now please move his materials out of my studio. Merci.”
Sophie’s head then shoulders then feet pivoted 180 degrees and she moved out of the doorway and disappeared down the hall. I heard footsteps climbing the stairs to the top floor.
Anaïs turned and looked out one of the windows. “She wishes she were the muse.”
“You think so?” I asked with astonishment.
“Of course. And the gouache doesn’t smell compared to other paints; it’s bullshit.”
She was right about the gouache paints. “Well,” I said, “if it would smooth things over I could do a quick—”
“Don’t you dare,” she seethed.
“No, no. Doesn’t matter to me,” I said. “Is she a dancer or something?”
“Was . . .”
Anaïs got off the bed and went out of the room without putting any clothes on. “Viens avec moi,” she said from the hallway.
I put on jeans and a shirt, wavering between leaving her alone with her mother or going to watch them duke it out, with the chance I might get caught up in the mother’s wrath. I took my time climbing to the fourth floor, listening for loud voices, and finally walked into the room on the end.
Anaïs was standing beside her mother in front of the two portraits that hung from the wire. Both women turned and looked at me. Anaïs was agitated, mouth tight, eyes flared open, and Sophie was calm and collected, hip cocked to one side. The moment—mother and daughter, one nude, the other thinly veiled, tussling for some kind of prominence—imprinted itself at the forefront of my mind.
“She thinks it’s vulgar,” Anaïs said.
I blinked, storing away the indelible image, as Anaïs approached, rolling her eyes.
“He’s made you an animal,” Sophie said. “Is that how you see her?”
“No more than anyone else,” I said.
“It’s quite crude, in my opinion, but perhaps that’s à la mode.”
“I’m sorry you think so,” I said, wondering why Anaïs needed her mother’s approval when she’d already gotten her uncle’s far-more qualified one.
“At least they’re not ugly like those Lucian Freuds,” added Sophie.
“Let’s see what Papa thinks,” Anaïs said, brushing past me and out of the room.
I knew I should follow her, out of loyalty, but hesitated and glanced back at Sophie.
“Are you well-known in the states?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Well, you’re still young,” she said, and walked past me, down the hall.
From the end of the hall, Anaïs called, “Wait until Papa sees them before you move them.”
I waited in the room, alone with the portraits, and kept revisiting that burning image: mother and daughter, their friction like waves of heat rising off a desert floor. The idea gurgled and mutated, looking for direction. Oedipal. Primitive. Who would win out? Dominate the light? There was a natural order that Anaïs wanted to accelerate and that Sophie seemed to want to defy. Then Jean Luc appeared in a white tennis outfit. Anaïs wasn’t with him. He looked refreshed, younger. His legs were thick like his torso. He walked up to the portraits and began nodding right away.
“You’re a real artist,” he said.
“Merci.”
“I thought it was just to attract the woman.”
“That??
?s how everything begins, right?”
“Mais oui.”
“Is it strange for you?” I gestured to the portraits.
“No. My mother was an artist and so is Bernard. I’m used to it. The body on full display.”
He looked me up and down, clearly appraising my physique. It made me uncomfortable and I turned and unclipped the portraits.
“Sophie wants me to work in a different space,” I explained, and I started out of the room.
When I passed by him, he put his hand on my upper arm. It was like bumping into a wall, stopping my forward motion.
“Anaïs is a man-killer,” he said with a flash of the eyes. “You have to really”—he made a fist—“stand up to her. You understand?”
I nodded.
“Good.” He patted me on the shoulder.
I nodded again and hustled the drawings out of the room and down the hall.
It may be true, but why would he say that about his own daughter? I reflected, descending the stairs. Was he trying to scare me away or was it friendly man-to-man advice?
I carried one last load of materials into our bedroom and Anaïs was slipping into a black-and-white tennis skirt. I set it all down next to the portraits in the corner.
“What did Papa think of them?”
“He was impressed.”
Her cheeks went flush. “You don’t mind if I play tennis with him, do you?”
“When will you be back?”
She grinned, pleased by my longing. “In a couple hours. We’ll have lunch together. I don’t get to see him very often.”
I squeezed her hand. “Enjoy your time.”
I walked her to the kitchen and she kissed me at the landing before trotting down the stairs.
Peeking out the kitchen window, I watched her slide into Bernard’s Citroën, her father behind the wheel. Their family dynamic seems pretty volatile, I told myself. Best to proceed cautiously, keeping an eye out for landmines.
The car went through the open gate and climbed the small hill before slanting with the road out of sight. Just as I was turning from the window, a black-clad figure on a black motorcycle appeared from a cluster of trees at the top of the hill. He was wearing a helmet with a visor. The bike darted into the center of the road and disappeared in the direction of the Citroën.