The Blue Guide (12 page)

I'm looking at Carlotta with barely disguised
admiration; I could listen to her talk like this all afternoon. The late-afternoon sunlight is filtering in through the large windows, dappling her young, flawless skin. I'm no painter, but I can imagine the way those artists felt as she arrayed herself before them, how they must have had to struggle with themselves to look and not touch. Carlotta has a body that was just made for touching. But she also has a mind, I've discovered this afternoon, that's possibly even more stimulating. Perhaps these two weeks are going to be more interesting than I thought.

In the taxi home, we talk about going to some more galleries over the next few days, but as we near her hotel I sense Carlotta's mood suddenly slumping. I don't think I'm being presumptuous to consider that a friendship has begun to blossom between us, so I ask her if anything is wrong, and she tells me she's feeling a little lost at the thought of spending the evening alone. Paco, she tells me, has a business dinner.

She's staring out of the window, her finger tracing vague patterns on the glass, and again I sense the loneliness of being a kept woman in a strange city. It's greater, surely, than that of the single girl: I may not have much, but I do have my work, and my flat, and I have Jess. No Carlotta, I may covet your husband, but I don't covet your life.

‘I suppose you have plans . . .' she murmurs, without turning to me.

I hesitate. I have a host of calls to catch up on: with most of my clients American, I deal with a lot of the telephone conversations in the evenings. But I feel sorry for Carlotta, and I tell myself there's no harm in going in for a drink. Just the one.

We sit in the hotel's Russian-themed bar, at the bar itself, swinging our legs and smoking Carlotta's French
cigarettes and enjoying the looks the businessmen at the surrounding tables are giving us. It's a buzz, I think to myself, to know that we could just walk over there and spark up a conversation and in ten minutes be up in one of their rooms, being royally fucked. What would Paco think to that?

He thinks Carlotta belongs to him, and so does she. I wonder if she realises her power, the overwhelming aura of sexuality that encircles her like a radioactive glow. She could have anyone she pleases, and Paco would just have to live with that or lose her. What right does he have to forbid her from doing anything that she likes?

It must be the drink, or drinks – for one has inevitably turned into several. Or maybe it's Carlotta's own frankness of earlier today. Whichever, I find myself telling her about the image I've just had of us up there, in one of these men's rooms, kneeling side by side on a four-poster as we are each taken from behind.

She chases a piece of ice around her mouth with her tongue, looks at me without surprise. ‘
Interesting
,' she says. ‘But I never imagine myself with other man. Not now. Why dream when you have lover like Paco?'

She waves at the barman and signs her room tab, then stands up. ‘Come up,' she says, and when she sees me demur, adds, ‘
Go on
. Just for one more.'

I follow her. She's no good at being alone, that's clear, and if I insist on going home I won't get anything done, I'll feel so bad about leaving her here, pissed and aimless. Not that it's my responsibility – I've fulfilled my duties for the day. But I sense that she really does need a friend, tonight at least, and I'm willing to play the part.

It's the first time I've been in the suite since the night with Paco, and despite all the booze I feel a little
bit odd stepping in here again, and seeing, through the open door, the bedside chair on which I displayed myself to him. My imprint is here, invisible to Carlotta's eyes: the ghost of me haunts the place unbeknown to her. Some friend, huh?

The mood has shifted a little, become a little more mellow: Carlotta's put on an Ella Fitzgerald CD and kicked off her shoes, and is perusing a stack of books on the huge coffee table.

‘Here it is,' she says at last. She leans towards me over the sofa, and I breathe in her scent, glad that the sickly perfume has faded now and it's just her I can smell.

She opens a large glossy art tome and flips through a few pages. ‘Victorine Meurent', she says, stopping on a pictured labelled
La Gare Saint-Lazare
, Eduoard Manet, 1874. ‘The one who drank herself to death. He pick her up in street,' she says. ‘And one day, when she leave his studio, she just disappear. She turn up again six years later: she'd been to America. You can see her in many of his works – this the last one she pose for.'

She's looking at me intently; a sweet, hopeful expression has suddenly blossomed on her lovely face. ‘She remind me a little of you,' she says at last. ‘I was – I hoping you pose for me.'

‘Now?' I'm shocked, and flattered, and confused at once. This is the last thing I was expecting. ‘What would I have to do?' I say.

She laughs, a little bitterly it seems to me. ‘Oh, just lie like lump of meat,' she says. She turns a few pages, taps a glossy reproduction with one manicured, cerise fingernail.

‘
Olympia
,' she says. ‘The one I tell you about. I take Paco to see it in the Louvre only few weeks ago. It's hard to imagine it can cause such a scandal.'

I inspect the painting; it's vaguely familiar, but I don't know anything about it. The young model is reclining on her bed. She's naked but for a black ribbon at her slender throat, a chunky gold bracelet, a single slipper and a big pink flower behind one ear. One hand covers her sex. Her black maid is tending a large bouquet of flowers towards her, and by her feet is a rather spiky-looking black cat. It find it far from shocking, and I say so.

‘She a prostitute,' says Carlotta, ‘in the painting. And in those days you not paint portraits of prostitutes, even high-class ones like this. If you do, you certainly not paint them looking at viewer the way Victorine is, so direct. It was insult to bourgeoisie.'

I nod. ‘I can see that it must have been,' I say. Indeed, the model's gaze is one of astounding frankness, combined with boredom. You want me? it seems to say. Then hand over your money and stop all this flowers nonsense. Let's not pretend this is something other than a transaction.

‘This the one,' says Carlotta, ‘that I like to do.'

I look at her, startled. I wasn't expecting to have to strip off, had no idea that she had a nude in mind. I should have guessed, given her interest in them, but my brain cells are a little pickled from all the vodka and I'm a bit slow on the uptake tonight.

‘I go find my sketchbook,' she says, patting the sofa. ‘You make youself comfortable. Here is just right.'

I sit in the silence, horribly self-conscious. This is something so new for me, I don't know what's expected of me. Can it really be as easy as just lying here while Carlotta traces my contours, reproduces my features, brings me to life on a piece of paper? Will I be able to bear her sustained scrutiny, the lingering of her eyes on parts of me that relatively few people get to see?

But already she's coming back in, and not wanting to seem a killjoy I stand up and begin to undress. Naked, I lower myself to the sofa and lie back, glancing down at the book on the coffee table to make sure I've got the right position. I adjust myself slightly, look at Carlotta for approval.

‘Here,' she says, bending down towards me, sliding a black scarf around my neck and tying it loosely. ‘It the best I have.' Then she puts her hands on my shoulders, twists them slightly towards her.

‘I think,' she says, turning back and reaching for her notebook and pencil, ‘it all in the face. Try to think what she thinking – the prostitute, not Victorine. You looking at someone you despise, but you got to have sex with them and pretend you like it. You know you better than them even though they look down on you, but you need their money.' She pauses. ‘I don't know, maybe Victorine thinking same thing. Manet must be bastard if she have to run away to America to get away from him.'

While she's musing, I try to relax, to zone out, to melt into the pose. To think of nothing but the role, although I keep getting mixed up: am I Victorine, or am I the whore? Where did one begin and the other end?

Carlotta grows quiet now, reflective, becoming absorbed fully by her task. Every so often she reaches over and adjusts me just a touch, but it's almost as if she's not seeing me anymore. At least that's how it seems for a while. I feel warm and weightless, and decide that this modelling business is really not so bad after all. But then I'm in a five-star hotel and not some freezing artist's garret.

After a time, Carlotta goes and places her sketchbook down on one of the armchairs where I cannot see what she has drawn and comes back to park herself on the
coffee table in front of me. She's holding the bowl of olives she had the butler bring up with our drinks, and she's offering one to me with her fingers. She brings it to my mouth and I suck it in and bite down into it. Then she takes one herself, dabs at it with her tongue.

‘It's funny,' she says. ‘I not think how much you look like Victorine until I talk about her in café, then I cannot get it out of my mind.'

She passes me a vodka martini from the tray the butler placed on the coffee table, and we clink glasses and sip at them. Behind her glass, her eyes are drinking me in, and I'm surprised to find myself holding her stare. Perhaps I've been infected by the whore in the picture. All my shyness and self-consciousness are gone.

‘You have lovely body,' says Carlotta, breaking the silence that has insinuated itself between us, running her eyes up and down me, lingering for a moment on my pruned bush. ‘You take care of yourself. I like that.'

I want to repay the compliment, but before I can speak she's walking back to the armchair, taking up her notebook again.

‘Back to work,' she says, at my side again.

I resume the pose, but after a few minutes of Carlotta sketching and clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, it's clear there's something wrong, and soon she is on her knees in front of me, remoulding me with her hands.

‘No like this – like
this
,' she says, frowning, teasing my arm back a little, straightening a leg, tweaking my foot. ‘Hmmm, it a bit more . . . here like so . . . that right, twist it just a little.'

I'm putty beneath her hands, all floppy now from the heat of the room and the last cocktail. I'm worried I'm not going to be able to hold the pose at all anymore, that I'm just turning to liquid beneath Carlotta's hands.
I look at her, helplessly, afraid I'm going to ruin it for her.

But she's stopped now, perhaps drawing the same conclusion, and she's just looking at me, right at me – not at my body anymore, but at my face, into my eyes, searchingly, and her hand has stopped on my hip, and I feel its weight there, feel her fingertips pressing into my flesh, and I realise I
am
turning to liquid, that my pussy is suddenly all wet, and I think, oh my God, what is happening here?

Carlotta jumps up, electrified, and looks towards the door in panic.

‘Paco,' she whispers, and I'm up like a cat too, fumbling around for my clothes where I draped them over the arm of the sofa, heart thudding like a jackhammer. Carlotta, meanwhile, is sprinting into the master bedroom with her sketchpad. I follow her and through the doorway I see her yank open the middle drawer of the silver chest and push it inside.

Somehow, before Paco's made it through the vestibule, we're both back on the sofa, fully dressed, breathing calmly, the empty glasses on the table in front of us by the bowl of olives.

‘Angel!' exclaims Carlotta as he comes in. ‘I not expecting you so soon. I just having last drink with Alicia. We have
such
a lovely day.'

I can't bring myself to look at Paco: the situation is really so absurd, I'm afraid I'm going to burst out laughing and then won't be able to stop until it becomes a kind of very painful hysteria.

‘Evening, lovely ladies,' I hear him say. ‘What a nice surprise to see you, Alicia,' he says, and I wonder how he can be so blasé. Perhaps, like us, he's had more than his fair share of booze tonight.

‘Come sit and tell us all about your evening,' says
Carlotta, patting the space between us on the sofa. ‘You go somewhere wonderful?'

‘Nobu,' says Paco, stifling a yawn. Before he's reached us, I'm up from the sofa and looking around for my bag, trying hard to hide how drunk I am. I can barely look at either of them as I plead exhaustion and say goodnight, especially as they're already entwined on the sofa, hands all over each other. Within seconds of me leaving, I'd stake a year's pay on it, they'll be screwing each other's brains out on the sofa on which I lay naked just a few minutes ago, juicing up as Carlotta's hand lingered at my hip.

I walk home: it's not so far, and I'm hoping the cool night air will sober me up, put things in perspective. I've never had a lesbian experience, and wouldn't know one if it hit me in the face. Carlotta was just trying to ease me into the right position, and in my vodka haze I mistook it for something else. Having said that, I remind myself, there was that comment by the Tanning sculpture, about only a woman being able to know a woman's body. Was that Carlotta's way of telling me that she's dabbled, that she dabbles?

But what about me? I've never wanted a woman in my life, not even my lovely Jess, and there I was frothing up when she happened to rest her hand on my hip. Was that the alcohol speaking too?

I reach my apartment building, trudge up the three flights of stairs, wanting nothing more than to curl up in a ball but certain that sleep will elude me. Besides, I note from looking at my watch, it's not even nine o'clock yet. I unlock my door, go in, and while the kettle's boiling, log on and read through my emails. There's a number of work-related ones that need attending to immediately, and I make myself a cafetière of coffee and before long have managed to put the
whole Paco and Carlotta thing out of mind, for a while at least.