The Last Nude (15 page)

In that moment, I forgave Tamara for not turning to me when d’Afflitto mentioned the pretty young things. “Well, it’s more fun than the last one was, with that hand business,” I stammered. What she’d said had made me so shyly happy, I couldn’t look at her. Maybe she was in love with me, too, a little.
Ours.

 

 

 

While working on the private
Belle
, Tamara finished
The Pink Tunic
and began a new painting,
The Dream
, using the same gray velvet chaise, the same green silk robe. She sketched a few lines in charcoal on a sheet of newsprint and then transferred the image to a new canvas using a pizza-cutter-like tool I recognized from dressmaking: in English it’s called a pouncing wheel. Even Seffa’s ears went up at the delicate paper-punch sound the newsprint made as Tamara traced her lines with the spiky tool. She carefully tapped powdered charcoal over her perforated lines, working from bottom to top. She peeled away the newsprint, and
voilà!
The image lay on the canvas now, a pinpricked outline. I transferred pattern markings to fabric the same way myself sometimes, using powdered chalk. “Do you sew?” I asked eagerly, pointing to the lines dotted on the canvas.

“This is a fresco technique,” Tamara sniffed. I still never knew when I might offend her, let alone why.

As with
The Pink Tunic
, Tamara planned
The Dream
using one of those first five-minute sketches she’d made in July, and, as with
The Pink Tunic
,
The Dream
called for a pose I could rest in, between sessions of
La Belle
: I sat propped on pillows, arms crossed over my chest, hand relaxed, looking directly at the viewer
.
The green silk robe hung behind me on the wall. “Do you want to see your eyes come alive?” she asked during a sitting for
The Dream
: I watched her add a cone-shaped dot of white to the iris of each eye. “It is an art-school trick, but it works. Cremnitz white. The purest of colors. There is no white more stable, and none more fateful.”

“Fateful?”

“I mean fatal. It is made of lead.” I had stopped hearing her way of speaking as Slavic or strange by then, but sometimes I noticed it afresh. “Relax your face,” she said. I stared at her all the harder, my face suddenly strange to me. “Imagine we make love. You fall asleep. You wake up. That is all.”

The Dream
suited me
.
I wasn’t trying to rush through autumn, the way Tamara was. I wanted to remain in her gaze, in her bed, forever; I wanted it to last, this floating, aqueous season, the trees queerly green into late September. The days were getting shorter, however, and Tamara shut the windows when the breeze began to nip.

8

I WASN’T SURPRISED TO LEARN that Gin’s moving date had been pushed forward to November first. I
was
surprised, however, one night in early October, when she came home alone at nine at night. All this time, I had been holed up in my room three or four nights a week while Gin and Daniel pretended I wasn’t there. I was startled to hear only one voice at the door, and that it was speaking to me. “Rafaela?” Gin called weakly.

I peered out, confused. “What is it?” Then I saw. One of Gin’s slim plucked brows was distended by a lump the size of a duck egg. “Ginny,” I breathed, and led her into my brightly lit room. The puffy bump was the blue of a new bruise. “What happened?”

“I went to Meaux. I had to speak to Daniel at his office. Well, first I had to
find
his office. And then the guard wouldn’t let me in. Finally I threw myself at the door and the pig
hit
me. And then Daniel opened the door, to find out what all the fuss was about, and I was so ashamed I ran away before he could see me.”

“Wait, wait. I don’t understand. Let me get you something to eat.”

I heated chocolate for Gin and spread her some jam on a baguette. “Thank you, Mummy,” she said.

“I have scotch for the chocolate, if you’d like.”

Gin nodded.

“So. Why did you go to Meaux?”

“I needed to talk to Daniel.”

“But he’s here all the time. Why not wait until he comes into the city?”

“Because I thought I could help. He keeps telling me there’s one more form he needs to pick up at the courthouse there, so he can finalize his divorce, but he’s always so busy. I thought I could go pick it up for him.”

“You don’t think he could send a messenger to get it, if it was so easy as that?”

“Well, he wouldn’t want the messenger boys at the office knowing his personal business—” Gin said, then broke off. “The point is, I went to go try to help with the form, but really I wanted to show him how serious I am about this. Rafaela, I need him to marry me.”

“I thought you said you didn’t mind. I mean, I thought you said,
It won’t be the first time a married man has a girlfriend
, or something.”

“Well, that was then.”

“What happened?”

Sitting on the edge of my bed, slim legs drawn up like a child’s, the big bowl of hot chocolate in her two small hands, Gin fixed me with a look. I saw a spasm cross her face when she tried to raise an eyebrow through the bruise. “What do
you
think happened?”

“Oh, Ginny, no.”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? I mean, when was the last time—”

“Six weeks ago. Middle of August.”

“But you’re so careful!”

“Maybe I stopped being quite so careful with Daniel, when I thought his divorce was coming through right away.”

“Gin! I mean, he’d already put off your moving date
twice
by then!”

She put down her bowl. “You think he’s a liar?”

I wavered. She looked so fragile; how could I disappoint her? But how could she be so stupid? “Well,” I said.

“Some friend
you
are.”

“Listen, Gin,” I began seriously. If Tamara were a man, I stopped to think, who’s to say I wouldn’t be pregnant myself by now? God, I was lucky. I faced my friend, mentally gathering up Anson’s facts and dates. “You probably don’t want to hear this.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” She stood.

“But—”

“I’m going to bed.”

“Gin, what are you going to
do
?” I said. But I was talking to her back.

 

 

 

At Tamara’s the next day, I could barely stay awake. It didn’t bother her at first—she worked on my open hand in
The Dream
all morning, and didn’t care if I kept my eyes closed. At noon we heard the metal rasp and papery flutter of the postman’s visit, and on our next break, Tamara excused herself. Within moments she lit back up the stairs with a thin torn envelope in hand.
“Acceptée! Acceptée!”

“Really?”

“The jury of the Salon d’Automne has elected to exhibit both works submitted by Tamara de Lempicka,” she read aloud in French, her voice swelling. “And—and—and—a member of the jury—represented by an Agence Binard—wants to buy
La Belle Rafaela
before the Salon even opens!”

“Brava, Tamara!”

We drank champagne, even though it was midday. Tamara gummed a pinch of cocaine and began to incandesce as she continued working. “This has never happened to me before. This has never happened to anyone I know. Rafaela, you are good luck. I knew I was doing something new. No one has ever treated the nude with this much frankness and finish.
The Origin of the World
is just a stuffy old Victorian pastel next to
La Belle Rafaela
.”

Tamara’s high was a bit much to take, in my state. As soon as she began talking about other painters and paintings, I felt fatigue and gloom seal up my face again. “That’s right,” I said heavily.

“Are you even listening?”

“Of course.”

“You do not care about me as an artist.”

“Sorry, I’m just sleepy.”

“You just want to have fun and make money.”

“This wonderful thing just happened for you, and I’m happy for you. What else do you want?”

“If you are so happy for me, why are you acting like this?”

“Like what?”

“Bored to tears.”

“Things happen to me outside this room, all right? As it happens, I didn’t sleep last night.”

Tamara replied with a small, filthy, forgiving smile. How could she think that of me?

“Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s not what you think,” I said. I sat up from the pose entirely, pulled the green robe down from its hook on the wall, and wrapped myself in it. I started talking about Gin and Daniel, and by the time I wound up my story, Tamara’s pupils had gone back to their regular size
.
“But the thing is, he’s never going to marry her. His job is completely dependent on his father-in-law, so he’ll never leave his wife. And even if something happened to
her
, he keeps
another
house in Meaux for
another
woman.”

Tamara sat coiled at the foot of my chaise
,
arms crossed. “Your friend
told
you all this and she still thinks he plans to marry her?”

“No—” I began.

“Then how do you know?”

Would Anson want me to tell how I knew? “I just know.”

“You just
know.
Based on evidence? Or jealousy?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think you are jealous of this Daniel, and you make things up to paint him as a villain.” Tamara gestured, rings sparkling. “You are probably driving the poor girl crazy, filling her head up with all these lies.”

“They’re not lies!”

“How do you know? Do you work with this man at Crédit Lyonnais?
Pardon
, were you just taking a little walk in the Bois de Boulogne on your lunch hour?”

“I
had
a job with a lunch hour, and I gave it up for you!”

“Oh, boohoo, that job selling gloves? The truth is, you hate seeing your friend get a good man so much you will even lie to her to keep her stuck where you are.”

“I’m not lying!” I shouted, hurt. What was so bad about where I was? “I know these things because I researched him. Are you happy now? I have a friend who has access to all kinds of bank records, and I had him go find out what Daniel spends his money on.”

Tamara backed down at once, startled. “Is that legal?”

I smiled.

“Oh.”

What Tamara had said smarted, but I liked it that there was something about me she wanted to know. I milked it. “You might need to research someone yourself one day,” I pointed out.

“He did this for you, just because you asked?”

“Well, I think he was trying to impress me a little.”

“Could he research this Agence Binard? Could he find out who wants to buy my painting?”

“If you apologize for all the nasty things you just said, maybe he could.”

“Fine.” Tamara sighed. “I am sorry, Rafaela.”

“What for?” I pushed.

“All the nasty things I said,” she recited.

“Especially about the Bois de Boulogne.”

Tamara’s voice went tender. “I am sorry,” she repeated. “It was not kind, what I said.” She took my bare foot and held it.

“You thought I didn’t care that you were accepted into the Salon, but I did,” I insisted. “You said I don’t care about you as an artist, but I do.” You think I’m jealous of Daniel, but I think you’re jealous of Gin, I didn’t say. I didn’t want to scare her. If I was careful, and didn’t push too hard, one day she might just tell me that she loved me on her own.

“I am sorry I was bad-tempered,” she said, releasing my foot. Sitting across from me, Tamara spoke as primly as she did to her daughter, but I could imagine her bare-shouldered in the slip I was making. I would finish soon. Couldn’t she feel my attention, as extravagant and clinging as silk cut on the bias? Couldn’t she see how much she’d changed me? There was something I wished I’d told her the first day we made love. I was afraid if I said it she’d think I wanted too much from her, but I wanted to say it so much. I gathered myself. “I don’t want you to pay me for the time we spend in bed,” I said finally.

“Oh,” she said, surprise washing the starch out of her. She looked at me as if for the first time. I thought I saw something shy and gentle in the way she smiled, something that reached inside me. “Of course.”

 

 

 

I told you in the first place, some people don’t want to know the truth,” Anson said. “They’d rather suffer.” It was just barely warm enough to sit outside, as the two of us did, in the Arènes de Lutèce near the Jardin des Plantes zoo. I hadn’t seen Anson in a few weeks, not since that day I’d found him at the bookstore, a mess behind his newspaper. He was happy I had called, and asked if we could meet near his home. We had the stone bleachers—and the broad round gravel stage below—to ourselves in the thin evening light. “Did you know this was even here?” he asked, pleased with himself. “Roman ruins. Not even ruins, really.”