“Marcel did have one good suggestion,” Lucien says.
“What’s that?”
“He said I should paint you playing the mandolin.”
Too much. The intrusion is worse than his hands positioning my clothes and his endless orders and his demeaning compliments. The fact that I play the mandolin is the only real thing he knows about me, and I wish he didn’t. It should be just mine and Emilio’s. “I lent it to a friend.”
Lucien stops painting and gives me a long, cold look. When he continues, it’s without the chatter. My scattered thoughts are my own to rearrange. They go to Soupe au Chocolat, where everything is warm and I can suck on squares of chocolate and play the mandolin with nobody looking at me.
“Your expression isn’t working.” Lucien’s voice cuts my thoughts. “Lose the tragic look.”
“You want me grinning like a maniac?”
“No. But death isn’t supposed to look forlorn.”
I set my jaw and stare evenly across the horizon of tombstones. He’s right. When I saw death it had three faces, and none of them was forlorn. I rotate through them, again and again until they blend and spin in a horrific kaleidoscope.
On the man from the dock, death was fear—fear so huge and hopeless the panic was infectious, seeping out of him and into me like a disease through that skinny little crack in the closet door.
And on Papi, death was cruel, but he wasn’t the one dying. The cruelty was death’s inverse, the other man’s mirror. He looked so harsh. I should have closed my eyes so it didn’t burn itself into my brain, but I didn’t, and it did.
On Emilio, death was hidden—at first because he was facing the other way, but then, when he turned, he was composed. A perfect mask with dead eyes. His nothingness was worse than the other two faces combined.
I roll the scythe back and forth between my numb palms and try to replace the last memory with one from the yacht, one of Emilio’s warm hands and soft lips telling me I’m more beautiful than music. I can’t.
I do hate my father.
“For the love of all that is holy, will you please stop thinking about drowning puppies?”
I growl loudly enough for Lucien to hear. “But I’m the grim reaper! Isn’t that what I do? Kill things?”
“The grim reaper enjoys killing things.”
“Who says?”
“Me.”
So God says Death enjoys his job.
And like a bolt of electricity, the question strikes and a shiver rolls down my spine: During those horrible seconds when I couldn’t see Emilio’s face—was he enjoying his job?
“Think victorious scowl,” Lucien suggests.
“Victorious scowl,” I mumble. As if there is such a thing.
I can’t do this. I break the pose, turning my whole body to stare at Lucien. A pout is pulling his lips out and his eyebrows down. It’s the face of a child who’s always indulged, confused as to why he’s not currently being indulged. I take a step backward.
“Are you going somewhere?”
Yes. To Spain to start over, where I can be Valentina again—wiser than the old one, but not just a shell. A person again.
If only freedom weren’t so expensive.
I shake my head and turn my body back into the position he placed me in. I give him my best victorious scowl. He shuts up and paints.
Three hours and two thermoses of coffee later, we’re both shivering and blue-lipped. Even with car breaks, my body is aching from the cold and my ears are stinging with exquisite pain. Lucien packs his easel and supplies into the back while I climb into the front. I have to pee, but I’d rather hold it than go into the cathedral and delay the hot shower I’ve been fantasizing about for the last three hours.
“You were brilliant,” Lucien says as he joins me, flipping on the seat warmers and blasting the heat.
I close my eyes, bring my knees to my chest, and try to heal myself with warm thoughts: white-hot sand, roasting bare skin, burning rays. Lucien is full of it, as usual. I wasn’t brilliant. I was a scowling shadow of myself. All I did was stand there.
We peel out of the parking lot, tires squealing. Lucien is a terrible driver, all screech and lurch, like a boy who’s stolen his father’s Porsche.
Emilio was an excellent driver.
“This painting is going to be exactly what the collection needs,” he says. “The exhibition is going to be a shock to those hacks from art school. My teachers and my parents—they’re all finally going to see what I’ve been trying to do. And Hugo is going to feel like a complete idiot.”
“Who’s Hugo?”
He cracks his knuckles, and I fight the urge to grab the wheel. “A guy I knew in art school. He’s showing his collection this weekend, actually.”
A rival. I’m not sure why this strikes me as funny—maybe the cold is affecting my brain—but I have to clamp my jaw shut to keep from laughing. Lucien has a nemesis, a real artist, one who didn’t get his panties in a twist and quit art school, one who maybe isn’t filthy rich but honestly struggling. Maybe this Hugo’s bedhead is authentic and his glasses house prescription lenses.
“Are you going to see it?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
Unexpectedly, I feel that twinge of pity in my stomach again. If he weren’t so transparently needy, this wouldn’t be happening.
“Come with me,” he says.
“What?”
“Come to Hugo’s art show with me.”
“This weekend?”
“Yes.”
A string of questions I can’t ask rush up my throat. Go with him as what? His model? His friend? His date? Since that first day outside the Metro, I haven’t spent a single unpaid second with Lucien. But I can’t get paid for walking around a gallery and drinking champagne with his arm around my waist. I’m not an escort.
Anger builds as my skin starts to sting from the car’s heat. I turn my vents away from me. I can’t believe he’s putting me in this place—having to choose between being his paid date and his something else, something voluntary.
Lucien’s a freak. His muses are only good as long as they keep their halos intact.
I close my eyes and force Marcel out of my brain. If I refuse to go with Lucien, then what? He’s humiliated and he fires me.
“Jane?”
“When is it?”
“Saturday night at Les Fontaines. Black tie.” He sounds confident, sure I’ll say yes, sure that I’ve already said yes, which makes me think maybe I have. “It’ll be fun.”
I doubt it. It’s not like I have a choice, though. It seems like a long time since anything I did with Lucien was voluntary. “What’s Les Fontaines?”
“A gallery.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s one of those historical mansions up on the mountain. It used to be the home of a wealthy British diplomat around the turn of the twentieth century.”
An art show. An actual gallery. I might even see something beautiful, which makes the line being crossed a little less terrible.
“Jane?”
“I’ll go.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
EIGHT
Hugo LaFleur’s website is easy to find. The library computer groans, burdened with the searches of the un-interneted poor, but it gets me there while I try not to think about why the mouse is so sticky.
I click on the bio link, and Lucien’s rival stares at me from a black-and-white candid. Dark, wavy hair that reaches his shoulders and a scraggly goatee make him look suspiciously like a pirate. I can’t read his expression. It’s ennui. Or confusion. Or indigestion.
I skim the short blurb for vitals: twenty-two years old, originally from Lyons, France, the recipient of some awards and a scholarship to McGill’s art program. I move on to his work, navigating slowly from piece to piece. Jars with eyeballs painted onto the sides. Jars with
lips painted onto the sides. Jars with ears painted onto the sides. Jars with nipples painted onto the sides. Jars with toes painted onto the sides.
I don’t dislike modern art, but Hugo’s jars seem contrived. He’s trying too hard, saying too little. My father would smile—a sure sign he’s untouched by whatever piece he’s looking at—and move on. I have to assume that the ugliness of the jars is part of whatever point Hugo is trying to make, but that doesn’t mean I want to look at them.
Or maybe Lucien’s competitiveness has infected me, and I want to think Hugo LaFleur’s work is pedestrian out of loyalty. I really hope not.
The thought of feeling loyalty toward Lucien is mildly painful, so I make myself defend Hugo’s jars with everything I’ve got. Maybe they’re more powerful in real life. Art isn’t meant to be viewed on a computer screen—there’s something wrong about dissecting someone’s passion with a few clicks of a sticky mouse, isn’t there?—and this particular screen looks like it could be older than me.
I log out and push away from the desk. The dread hasn’t faded. There’ll be no taking refuge in LaFleur’s art.
Seven minutes.
I hate that clock. Some of the bars don’t light up properly, so I’m always having to get my phone out to check. And it’s just a clock, no radio, so I get to wake up to a long, high-pitched beep followed by three shorter, but just as high-pitched, beeps. Beeeeep bee-bee-bee beeeeep bee-bee-bee beeeeep. From a deep sleep, it isn’t so much a sound as an assault.
I pull out my phone. The clock is right. It’s 6:53, which means my hellish evening is about to officially begin.
I really hate that clock.
I hate a lot of things right now.
I hate Lucien.
I hate this dress. No, I don’t. I only resent the dress, because the dress itself is beautiful, and the dress never did anything to me besides being the only thing Nanette had to lend. I resent it because it’s lovely. I want it for a different place and time and set of eyes.
The fabric is petal soft and just barely pink. It’s short but flowing, draped over one shoulder, then cinched below the bust. The asymmetrical hem looks like someone’s taken scissors to a Grecian gown, making it fall to angles and points. I feel like a nymph, or a hand slipping into a suede glove.
Six minutes.
Nanette saved me. Not just with the dress, but with patent leather nude heels and a white wool coat and pearl earrings. She almost smiled too. I wouldn’t have guessed she had it in her, since I’ve only ever seen her with a solemn I’ll-intubate-you-if-I-need-to look, but maybe I don’t know that much about her.
Asking was humiliating. She didn’t get giddy and prying like I was worried she might, but her round brown eyes took in my lies with a sympathy I didn’t deserve and left me with a guilt-knotted stomach. She thinks I’m going on a date, which technically . . . well . . . who knows. But she thinks I work at a café and that a customer asked me to the symphony. I’m not sure what I was thinking—could I have chosen a more movie-plot lie? Maybe an Italian prince, thrilled with his hypothetical latte, wanting to whisk me away for the weekend.
Luckily, Nanette has a believing heart. She’s the type to assume others are truthful, and good, and who they say they are. I’m envious. I used to be that way too, before I learned that words are just aluminum foil—shiny and worthless, easily torn, crumpled, and chucked.
Five minutes.
Nanette was right when she told Jacques I have no friends. I don’t, not anymore. And she isn’t my friend, even though she lent me this outfit and found me a place to practice Emilio’s mandolin. She did those things out of pity and guilt—pity for the girl with not a single dress and guilt for voting against me practicing in the apartment.
The mandolin isn’t even loud. Jerks.
It’s fine. Friends are an extravagance, just people who agree to lie to each other to make each other feel better.
I wish Emilio could see me in this dress.
Four minutes.
The wind is howling. My hair will be a mess by the time I get to the Metro, but I’m not all that worried about it. I was pretending to care about looking pretty, so I let Nanette put it up for me. Lucien offered to pick me up, but I gave him a firm no. Definitely not. After I said it, the look on his face dripped with pity—how sad that you’re ashamed of your poverty—and I let the misunderstanding lie. I don’t want him to know where he can find me. I go to him.
The wind’s howl becomes a screech, conjuring memories of tropical storms. I’ve always hated storms. I used to hide in Lola’s bed while the rasping torrents clawed at our house and eventually fall asleep beside her, exhausted from clenching and embarrassed for being afraid. But isn’t it rational to fear something so vindictive? They scrape out whole cities and houses and lives, no regard for the helpless. No mercy.
My fear of storms—that was why Emilio and I were in his room that night and not on the deck where we should have been. The wind was making me nervous, and I couldn’t relax with the whooshing of the ocean being blown skyward all around me.
Three minutes.
His room smelled like shaving cream. His skin tasted like water. His hands were warm. The wind’s nagging was muted—I could hear the waves slapping against the side of the yacht, feel the boat rolling from side to side, but I didn’t feel like we were going to be shaken off anymore. Swallowed, maybe.
But then the knock came, and his grip tightened like jaws sinking into my arms.
How many times do I have to relive this moment before it makes sense?
The sense is in his hands, I think, or in the way they changed. If I can just figure out which hands were the real Emilio’s, I’ll be able to hate him and mourn him. Or love him and mourn him. They went from plucking the mandolin strings to caressing my skin, then suddenly squeezing my arms tight enough to leave fingerprint bruises.
And finally, his hand was gripping something sleek and glinting that I understood, even while refusing to understand. A gun. Emilio’s arm floated up in front of him, as if he had no control over his own body, as if his hand was being lifted by my father’s eyes.
The whirlpool of why and stop and no accelerated, and I know I gasped, but the noise was swallowed by the reeling storm. I clamped my mouth shut. I dug my nails into my palms.
Two minutes.
Why am I reliving this again?
But he turned the weapon like it was the most natural thing to do, like he’d done it before. And with no hesitation or tremor, he exploded the world.
Too loud. Then no sound at all.
There was so much more color than I would have guessed. A brain. A whole lifetime of thoughts and memories and emotions blooming like a flower on the wall beyond him. One bullet, one head, one massive scarlet blossom.
Understanding came flash-like, illuminating everything. This. This juxtaposition of life and death, of vibrancy and shadow, of beauty in tragedy—this was the art my father dealt.
One minute.
And now. More art awaits.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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NINE
“You clean up nicely.”
I spin around to see a lanky figure slouched in the shadows. His features are mottled in the half dark, but a cigarette glows in his mouth and his cheeks pull concave as he sucks on it. Panic and hope squeeze my heart at the sight of his long, lean limbs. How did he find me?
“Did I scare you?”
Bitter relief. It’s Marcel. The fist around my heart unclenches. “No.” I steady myself against the icy railing, but it’s too cold to grip with bare fingers.
“Stay and have a smoke with me.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Then watch me smoke. You’ve got the whole night to hang on Lucien’s arm.”
I’m about to say something rude, when I realize the potential of this situation. This isn’t a date if Marcel clings
to us all night. If I can get him to stick around and annoy Lucien, I may even survive with both my job and my dignity intact.
I take a few steps toward him. Once I’m in the shadow I can see him better, well enough to be reminded that he looks nothing like Emilio.
“You’re not even going to comment on how well I clean up?” Marcel gestures to his tux. Armani, if I haven’t lost my eye. His hair is slicked back and the eyeliner is gone, but I can see the glint of his lip ring. The malnourished pallor is the same.
“You look . . . cleaned up.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not.”
“Aren’t you freezing out here?”
“No,” he says. “And I’d need a smoke break even if I didn’t need a smoke break.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s pretty stuffy in there. A lot of hot air. A lot of annoying people.”
“And where’s Lucien?” I ask again, losing his name in a shiver. With nothing but cheap stockings between my legs and winter, the six-minute walk from the Metro to Les Fontaines felt like an hour. I’m ready to be inside.
“Forget about Lucien,” he says lazily. I wonder if he’s drunk. “He’s a liar. And as his brother, I feel like it’s my duty to tell you he has the smallest—”
“Stop,” I interrupt him with an outstretched hand.
“But you already knew that, didn’t you.” He grins. “See, if it was me, I wouldn’t mind if you kissed and told.”
“Shut up.” I start up the stone steps, forcing myself to climb slowly. I’d love to run. But I don’t. The stairs stretch on and on, and I can feel his eyes watching me take each one. I stop at the top, glance over my shoulder, and see him take one last, long pull on his cigarette. He’s still staring. Head down, I make my way toward the ornate door.
I don’t need to turn around again. I can hear the hollow tap of dress shoes on stone, twenty steps below and closing in.
The interior of Les Fontaines is distractingly artful, more castle than gallery. As I deliver Nanette’s coat to the coat check, I take it all in: arches, candlelight, and vaulted ceilings. I’ve been swallowed by a fairy tale. If I wasn’t so preoccupied with losing Marcel, I’d to stop to run my fingers along the stone walls and feel the plush velvet curtain separating the lobby from whatever lies beyond.
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