I grabbed her arm. She slapped me across the face. It stung but I didn’t let go.
“Wake up, Nathan,” she seethed. “You think you can just ask her to sit for you and that’s it?” Her mouth quivered ever so faintly. “No. With her, everything is complicated, treacherous. I’m telling you right now she will destroy everything.”
Her eyes were bursting with a confluence of rage and grave warning, smoldering. Please don’t do this to me, Nathan. Please.
Her reaction seemed out of proportion to anything I could imagine her mother really doing, but it didn’t matter because Anaïs was convinced.
“Okay,” I said. “I get it . . .”
She ripped her arm out of my grip and cast her eyes to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Valerie will be fine.”
thirty-six
Anaï’s worked on her school project for the rest of the afternoon and evening, and I borrowed Bernard’s Citroën for a run to the art-supply store in Fontainebleau. After I paid, down to my last hundred euros, I wondered if I had enough time now to spend a day churning out a portrait for Jean Luc in order to put some money back in my pocket.
After dinner, Anaïs and Valerie put on a French movie, a comedy, and the humor was lost in translation. In the middle of the night, I woke up on the couch and when I went to our room, Valerie was in the bed, so I slept in my old room.
Bright and early, I woke up eager to work on the third piece. At breakfast, Anaïs announced that she and Valerie were going to take on Sophie and Jean Luc in doubles tennis. I gave her a look of consternation.
“Don’t worry,” she quipped, rubbing her palms together, “it will be a short match.”
That got the banter going between them and I knew I would just have to wait until after lunch.
I tried to work on the portrait for Jean Luc, pretty ballet poses, but was too distracted by the feeling that time was running out on me; and because he knew about art, I couldn’t do something half-assed. One drawing after another, I shredded them, until my pencil became a nub.
Near the end of lunch, I had to contain myself from moving around in my chair while waiting for Jean Luc to finally go take his nap. When he stood up, I immediately corralled Anaïs and Valerie across the river. It was just after two o’clock and already cooling and every minute spent trying to get the girls to explore various positions felt like years vanishing.
“Would you stand just to the side of Anaïs’s head?” I told Valerie, motioning with my hand.
Anaïs was lying in the grass, and Valerie put one foot beside Anaïs’s head.
“Can you sort of squat like this, like a spider?” I told Valerie, showing her by example.
She did her best to assume the spider, but she wasn’t supple enough, diminishing its power. Unprompted, Anaïs rolled onto her side and rested her cheek on top of Valerie’s foot, as if it were a pillow, wrapping her arms around Valerie’s ankle. Her knees tucked in, sort of spooning an imaginary partner, all the more pitiful for the solitary foot under her cheek.
“Stay there,” I told her.
I went after her lines from multiple perspectives. Sweat was dripping down my temple, tickling my ear, and I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when I noticed Anaïs looking up at me, grinning.
“It’s beautiful to see you find it,” she said.
“It’s beautiful to see you smile.” I kneeled beside her. “You just gave me the magic lines . . .”
I kissed her and it felt like eons since we’d last touched. She pulled me down on top of her and we rolled around, until Valerie cleared her throat.
thirty-seven
The girls and I stayed up late that evening, sharing a few extra bottles of wine. Privately I was celebrating my discovery and couldn’t get it out of my head. Of course I’d have to see the Anaïs-Valerie studies alongside the Sophie sketches, but I believed I’d grasped that dynamic confrontation first glimpsed in the upstairs room.
Around midnight, I plugged my phone into the stereo, playing Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti album. The women were skeptical when I started dancing and they both laughed at me. But I pulled Anaïs off the couch and moved her hips until she gradually succumbed. Valerie joined in. The wine had relaxed her and she lifted her arms in the air and rolled her hips. We all whirled and gyrated around each other. The women paired off and I sat back and watched. It was erotic fun, but after a few minutes I was thinking about Anaïs and the double portrait again, and Valerie was in my way, blocking my line of sight. It was a preview of how her continued presence would hold up the work, not advance it. I had what I needed and working with another figure was no longer useful. How many days would she stay? How many days would be lost? I barely had two weeks.
The blinders came down. A Machiavellian calm washed over me. I saw where I needed to go and Valerie was in my way. I rose from the velvet chair and cut between the two girls. Facing Valerie, I moved in closer, furtively glancing to see if Anaïs’s eyes would congeal with spite. I rolled my shoulders and slinked within inches of Valerie, and she made the fatal error of running her finger across my mouth. Anaïs’s eyes twisted up and one hand knotted into a fist—her boiling point. On cue, I yawned and said good night.
thirty-eight
Anaï’s woke me up just before noon to let me know she was driving Valerie to the train. The smile I shot her, cool and precise, gave her pause, and I said, “I like having you all to myself.”
“Ah, you must be feeling really confident about the new portrait.”
“I am . . .”
I took her face in my hands and kissed her hungrily.
“Ooh la la,” she sang out. “He’s turning into a monster. But I like it . . .” And she sauntered out the door.
Per my routine, I jumped in the river and swam vigorously upstream. At the bridge, I rolled onto my back. The sky was blue, the air relatively warm, and I drifted, buoyed by the weather’s good omen. Until I heard the whir of a motorcycle.
I swung my feet down and looked up at the bridge. The railing eclipsed most of the bike, but it looked like the black-clad driver I’d seen come out of the cluster of trees a few days ago. As he crossed to the middle of the bridge, the bike veered closer to the railing, and I saw someone sitting behind him, her long, raven-black hair falling from her helmet down a yellow dress. The engine wound up and the bike shot away.
Was that Anaïs?
Ridiculous. She’s dropping Valerie at the train.
I’m not even sure it was the same guy.
Then something moved in the trees along the riverbank. I thought of that bird watcher with the pale face. Was he spying on me? His shadow darted past tree trunks, tagging limbs, and then he popped out.
It was a large deer, antlered. Black eyes blinking down at me. He turned and pranced back into the forest.
Afloat in the river, hemmed in by the woods, I was a sitting duck, exposed. As the current swept me around the sharp bend, the château came into view, its long rectangular windows like hollow eye sockets, watching, its myriad rooms suddenly feeling like a maze with no exit.
Relax. It’s all in your head. Just stay focused on your work. You’re almost there.
thirty-nine
When I reached the levee, Sophie was lying on the deck, sunbathing. I got to my feet and stepped around her in my wet boxers. She smiled at me, reached up, and opened her hand. Impulsively, I took it. Her hand tightened around mine and she rubbed her thumb over my knuckles.
“Great hands . . .” she said seductively, and I gave her an ambivalent smile. “You’re freezing. Come lay in the sun with me . . .”
Glancing back at the wooden gate, checking the road rising behind it, I eased down onto my stomach. The warm planks burned against my chilled skin, and I rested my cheek flat on my arm.
“We can hear you two at night.” She was on her side, facing me. “Did you know that?”
“I wondered . . .”
Her eyes pulsed. “I like to imagine it’s me.”
I felt blood rush into my cock. Thankfully I was on my stomach.
She reached out and combed the wet hair off my forehead to the nape of my neck, gathering it up and squeezing it. Water dripped between my shoulder blades.
“Stand up,” she said.
“I’m still getting warm.”
“Please. I won’t ask anything more.”
Her blunt, sultry gaze got the better of me, reaching down to the core of the animal, and I sat up on my knees. I felt myself straining against the wet boxers. With her eyes grazing along my shape, her free hand clasped her ear, pulled and massaged the lobe. Then she glanced upward. I followed her eyes to one of the second-story windows. It reflected a blue piece of sky and a silver-rimmed cloud.
“I have to prepare the lunch,” she said, and she stood up.
She collected her sarong from the railing of the footbridge, wrapped it around her waist, crossed the drive, and walked through the door.
What was she after? Was it part of her competition with her daughter? I glanced up at the second-story window again. What does she have against me? Well, you’re not French and you’re not rich, with an unstable future. A mother’s worst nightmare. Maybe that’s it. No matter, her little dalliance might have led to something more, become the final straw, destroying my relationship with Anaïs and therefore any chance of finishing the third piece for the show.
When I entered the kitchen, it was empty. No food out. Nothing in the oven. She’s probably getting dressed before she starts the lunch. On my way up the stairs to the third floor, I mulled over how perilous my relationship with her was becoming, and I flashed on the second-story window—the reflection of sky, cloud, and was that a tree limb? Too high for a tree limb—and that stopped me in my tracks. It was her bedroom window. Someone had been standing inside, watching us.
Tiptoeing to the second-story landing, I heard hushed voices echoing in the hallway. I crept toward the sound. The voices were seeping through the middle door. I stopped outside and put my ear to the wood.
“You want him, don’t you?” Jean Luc said with lurid anticipation.
“Oui.”
“How would he fuck you?”
“From behind.”
An instant later, I heard Sophie sigh. “There we are, chéri. Like a young bull.”
A mattress spring squeaked and the bed frame thumped against the wall.
forty
It was some kind of arrangement; it had to be. The threat of other men, perhaps younger men, had become a kind of aphrodisiac for him, I surmised, and maybe for her as well. They’d been married twenty years and I wondered how long it took them to get to this point. The various perversions to excite them, to allow them to stay together.
Lying on the bed that I shared with Anaïs, I thought over the riddle. She didn’t seem aware of her parents’ erotic game, at least not the details, but its mere existence would be felt and probably contributed to her conflicted feelings about her mother.
Abruptly, my love affair with Anaïs turned unfamiliar, as if I were just meeting her now. No longer sure of what we had, I questioned how real or imagined our relationship had been all along. How much she truly believed in my work, if she had simply planned to use me for her reproduction business with her uncle, all of it, and it brought back those eyes in the forest, the bird watcher and his binoculars, the voyeur in the bedroom window, being swept along in the river’s current, susceptible, trapped in a maze. Although she feared her mother’s seductive prowess, she’d invited me to the château. Why? Was it part of some larger scheme? Or was it only about showing off the portraits in order to remind her mother of everything she’d given up? And did Sophie really need the attention from younger men? Or was the game only for Jean Luc’s benefit?
It was like a gale-force wind whipping the world into a frenzy in my head, a blizzard of questions. Despite the chaos, one thing stood out, clear as a bell: I was a pawn in the service of the Blanchon family.
But if I walked away, I’d be sacrificing the double portrait and all that it promised. I’m the only one that loses in that scenario. They go traipsing on and I have to start over, hoping not to fade into obscurity. No. I couldn’t bear that.
Much like losing myself in a drawing, the intricacies of the Blanchon puzzle consumed me, and instead of taking a step back, I wanted to know more, see more of the ape beneath the clothing. The deeper I comprehended them, the stronger the double portrait would turn out. It was all fuel for the fire. A fire I would need to complete my work.
forty-one
When Anaïs returned, I was in bed under the covers, sapped of energy. No longer propped up with curiosity, I’d given in to some sort of flu.
“Are you feeling sick?” she asked, and I realized that Anaïs was wearing a white blouse and linen shorts, not a yellow dress like the girl on the motorcycle.
“I feel like I’m coming down with something.”
“Oh, baby. Let me make you some tea.”
“Wait . . .”
I patted the bed. She sat beside me and I watched her, trying to read her face for signs of deception.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Why did you invite me out here?”
“Because you were cute and your work showed promise.”
“And I could do some reproductions for you?”
“It crossed my mind, but anyway you rebuffed me. Honestly I was more interested in having a little fling and forgetting about Henri.”
“And your mother? Didn’t you realize, on some level, that my portraits of you would stir things up between you two?”
“I can’t spend my life worrying about her reactions.”
“It seems like you were trying to provoke her.”
Her eyes shifted, pondering. “I suppose I was. Your age is half-way between Maman and me. I guess I wanted to see if I could keep your attention, your devotion.” She smiled down at me.
“Is that what all of this is about for you?”
“No. But now you make me see that it was a part of it.”
There was no hesitation or halting manner to her answers, nothing defensive in her tone, which made it difficult to discern if she was shading the truth. A lot to digest. I closed my eyes, weary in mind and body, forming my next question carefully.
“Once you’ve proved that you’re more desirable than your mother, what happens to me?”
She rested her head on my chest. “We’ve gone way past just sort of using each other. Way past that . . .” she said.
I wanted to believe her. There were so many reasons to. A feeling of tenderness overcame me, declaring itself in opposition to the cold, manipulative Anaïs I was suspicious of. She was ambitious and independent, and I’d always admired her for it, found it refreshing, so penalizing her for that now would be hypocritical. Maybe she does have an agenda, but so do I.
I brushed a few strands of black hair over her ear. Ran my palm along her back. I couldn’t imagine not being with her. The only certain deception between us was my drawing her mother in secret, and now the double portrait I was attempting to craft under its cover, a second secret. How do you reconcile that? I asked myself. You have no right to question her motives.
She lifted her head off my chest. My face softened and I smiled weakly.
“I’m going to rinse off before we work, okay?” she said.
“Of course . . .”
She walked into the bathroom. When she closed the shower curtain, vanishing, I wondered how we’d maintain our romantic relationship and continue to work together without Sophie and Jean Luc’s dramatics interfering. A strange buzz in my head, as if being part of her parents’ machinations, holding their secret, was a competing radio frequency crowding into the music I was trying to lose myself in.
“You have to tell me why you’re so distraught,” her voice jarred me.
I’d been embroiled in my thoughts for who knows how long and now she was standing over me, drying herself.
Tell her everything.
That’s the only way to go. It will set you both free.
I opened my mouth and heard a voice—Don’t mention the erotic game. Too explosive. Could scuttle getting the double portrait. Your big chance.
“I’m worried I won’t be able to pull off the third portrait and I’ll miss the show,” I said, omitting what had precipitated this. “And that my failure will fuck up our relationship.”
She wrapped her hair in the towel like a Sikh and studied me as though from a distance.
“I have to be honest, Nathan,” she said. “If you become too weak, I’ll get restless and try to test you. I told you in the beginning that I needed you to be the steadfast one in the storm.”
It threw me, this glimpse of the man-killer, and a twinge went down my arms. I nodded.
“I’m going to rest for a little while,” I said.
She forced a smile, turned, and put on her clothes.
forty-two
I awoke before dinner and wandered into the kitchen. Anaïs was cooking with Jean Luc and she hardly acknowledged me.
“Maman is sick too,” she said. “She won’t be joining us for dinner.”
“Maybe something’s going around,” I said without thinking.
Jean Luc and Anaïs both looked at me. Feigning ignorance, I touched the glands at my throat. “Does she have a sore throat?”
“No. Body aches.”
“That’s different,” I said. “What’s for dinner?”
“Chicken with a salad.”
“Can I do anything?”
“No, no. You better just rest,” Jean Luc said with an edge.
I sat down on the chair by the table with the phone. Anaïs didn’t look at me, giving her father all the attention, discussing tomorrow’s plans, which I was clearly not a part of. It was dark outside the kitchen window and cool drafts wafted across the room. Why did she show him so much devotion? Was it compensation for his habitual absences, a way to pretend she didn’t really resent him?
Jean Luc rubbed spices over the chicken—the first time I’d seem him take part in the preparation of a meal—and I wondered if he knew I was privy to his secrets. He was certainly privy to at least one of mine, and when push came to shove, if Anaïs found out, I would be the one who got discarded.
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