The Last Nude (26 page)

“Gladly.”

“And Friday night we will run away together,” she declared. “Come here.” She kissed me. “I have been thinking about your idea, Rafaela,” she said. “It is a good one. I felt afraid at the frame store yesterday. Monsieur Vavin gave me a look, like
this
,” she said, squinting. “And my heart went
ton ton ton.
Doctor Boucard knows everything I say to Monsieur Vavin. He has eyes everywhere. And Kuffner?
Pouah!
”

“I’m sorry.”

“So you are right. I do not want to leave the
Belle
behind. What we can do Friday night is this:
I
can go straight from the party to the station, and
you
can stop home and bring the painting. That way if Boucard comes to the party to keep an eye on me, he will follow me, not you.”

“Why all the sneaking? You’re not breaking your contract to move the painting, just to sell it.”

“If Boucard thinks I might want to sell it in Italy, he could be within his rights to keep it from leaving France,” she said.

“If you say so,” I said. Fear both sharpened and complicated her thinking, I mused, but that did not make it her ally. “If it’ll make you happy, I’ll bring the painting to the station, sure.”

“Thank you,
ma belle.
”

“Thank
you
for taking this trip with me,” I said, my sudden happiness making me queerly formal.

“You did not want to go to Italy at first.”

“But it’s with
you
,” I said.

17

APART FROM TAMARA FOR TWO WHOLE DAYS before our trip, I finished my zipper dress over too much coffee, shaky with desire, shaky at the thought of so many days and nights together. Sometimes, alone, I’d cross my arms around my chest and squeeze myself hard: the happiness crashing around inside me was almost too much. Going to her two mornings later, my new dress packed in my valise, I all but floated up the stairs. “Tonight,” I breathed, as we made our double
bisous
. A canvas wrapped in paper and twine dominated the salon, and beside it sat a small traveling bag.

“We are alone,” Tamara whispered in my ear, touching me. “Jeanne is
au marché.
”

I chuckled. “Don’t you have a rule?”

“Today is special.”

After we made love and napped, I woke to Tamara sitting very close, watching me. “How about a bath, and then some work?”

“What were you doing?”

Tamara showed me a little sheet of pasteboard covered in gold leaf. On it, she had painted a quick sketch of my face, eyes closed, lips parted.

“Is that what I look like when I’m sleeping?” I asked.

“That is what you looked like an hour ago,” she said, smiling.

“It looks like
Belle Rafaela.
” It resembled the face in the paintings
,
but much softer: blurry and rushed, the mouth a little smeared.

“It looks like
you
,” she said. I rolled my eyes at her, too happy to reply.

At the end of our painting day, Tamara slipped into a pleated column of gold-white Fortuny silk, and then helped me put on the peacock gown. “We will go straight from the photographer’s to get a bite to eat, and then to the de la Salles’,” she said. “I cannot wait to show you off.” She hooked a last hook. “Again, remember,
you
made it, not me.”

“I still don’t understand why. It’s so beautiful.” It was. Tamara’s three mirrors reflected a woman in a sheath of feathers, a slinky, shimmering, unearthly creature.

“It is hard enough to be a woman painter,” she said tightly. “But a woman painter who
sews
?”

“Oh.” My mouth went faintly sour:
I
sewed. “You said you sent Jeanne to get the peacock feathers, but you got them yourself, didn’t you?” I said. “And the blue silk for Ira’s dress?”

“That
would
be telling, no?” Tamara said, raising a hand to my mouth, and one to hers. “Now let me take care of the back.”

Tamara had designed the train of the dress both to attach at my waist and to suspend from my shoulders by a pair of braided silk straps. When I wore the straps, the train—dozens more feathers, each three or four feet long—pressed tight to my back like a quiver; when I let the straps hang down around my waist, the train fell behind me like a peacock’s tail. “And you will need this,” she said, handing me a matching mesh bag on a long silver chain. “Taxi money. Your lipstick. Keys for when you stop back to get the painting tonight.” I grinned, and hung the silver chain across my chest like a pageant sash. “Perfect. You can pick up our suitcases then, too. Make the driver carry them downstairs for you,
comprends? Et voilà.
” Tamara sighed, taking a step back to admire me. “I should paint you like
this
.”

 

 

 

At Studio Lorelle an hour later, as the photographer scrabbled around an inner room with electric lamps and cords, Kizette trotted up the stairs to bid her mother good-bye for the holidays. The girl took me in with a hard look and then stood together with Tamara, talking softly: Kizette sulky, Tamara half bullying, half coaxing. I had been so stubborn, demanding a Christmas vacation like a child. Of course Kizette would be angry. Next time, I thought, we should all go together.

The photographer crossed over to them, charmed at the sight of Kizette in her school uniform and Tamara in her evening gown. “How about a picture?” he interrupted. “Mother and daughter?”

Both looked up, startled: they had the same set mouth, the same flat gray eyes. They replied to him at the same time—“No!”
—
as the camera snapped. Kizette broke away in a run.
“Bonnes vacances, chérie,”
she called brusquely up the stairs behind her.

“Is anything wrong?” I asked, out of earshot from the photographer.

“Kizette is just being Kizette,” she said.
“Why can’t I come to Italy too?”

“I feel bad,” I said.

Tamara waved an admonishing finger.
“This is a grown-ups’ trip,”
she said, solemn and wide-eyed. I laughed with pleasure. “Think of that while Philippe is shooting,” she said, swatting me.

I wish I had one of those photographs: slender brows, cupid mouth, Tamara’s ridiculous, campy, magnificent gown. The face of a girl who knows she’ll sleep and wake with her lover for days on end. At one point, waiting between shots in my sweep of feathers, I suddenly thought of Kuffner’s ten thousand francs.
That man has more money than sense,
I thought. If he wanted to throw around his fool’s francs and run his fool’s errand, let him. I only wished I could be there to laugh at him when he tried getting into Tamara’s flat.

 

 

 

Before heading off to the party, Tamara and I paused for a bistro dinner. At our table by the window, I tried not to smirk into my
moules
. I had never gone out with her to a restaurant before. I had never tried salty little cheese
gougères
with champagne. “To
La Belle Rafaela,
” she toasted, kissing me.

“To
you
, Tamara,” I insisted.

Tamara took out our train tickets and tucked one into my mesh bag, one into her Bakelite purse. “So tonight at the party, you will leave at ten and I will leave at eleven. That way Boucard will follow
me,
not you.”

“What if he follows you all the way to the station?”

“Then I will wait until the last possible moment to get on the train, so he will not know which one to buy a ticket for. And then we will leave him behind,” she said, smiling.

“You thought of everything,” I said.

“Oh, I did.” She leaned in and whispered, “Remember when we made love this morning?”

At her words, I liquefied like hot wax. I remembered when I sat up after I came, the way she’d pressed the heel of her hand into my sternum, lowering me to the bed for more. I exhaled a soft, involuntary sound, and pulled myself together. “It’s only a few more hours,” I whispered back.

Tamara looked up to meet the eyes of a woman outside who had stopped to wave. “Ira!” she called. “Monsieur Perrot!” As Ira and her husband ducked into the bistro
,
my stomach went cold, sinking down to that night outside Tamara’s open window. I could hear them again, a woman’s climbing sobs. And I could see a pair of arms, Tamara’s, reach around the blowing curtain from either side.

“Are you going to the de la Salles’ later? Have you dined?” Tamara asked.

I refused to look up as Tamara commandeered a pair of extra chairs for Ira and her husband—a beaming, thickset, older man. “Rafaela, you’re a vision,” Ira cooed.

“Stand up,” said Tamara. “Let them see!”

Uncomfortably, I accepted their tributes—Ira’s effusive, M. Perrot’s hearty—before sitting again quickly.

“Did she—” Ira began eagerly.

Tamara nodded, beaming. “She made this one, too.”

“Guess what, Rafaela?” said Ira, reaching to unbutton her coat. “I’m wearing your dress!”

“Tiens!”
said Tamara as Ira emerged, a cool slender vision in blue
crêpe de Chine.

“I haven’t seen you since the fitting, darling. I wear it almost every day, don’t I, Gilles? Tamara?”

“She does.”

“She does.”

“So I have to thank thank thank thank
thank
you. Isn’t it divine? Listen, after dinner, I have a friend who asked for your card.”

As I nodded, smiling numbly, Tamara leaned in to tell Ira about Kizette’s sulk that afternoon, and M. Perrot tried to interest me in a conversation about his Rolls-Royce. As I learned how hard it was to trust young mechanics these days, especially veterans, Tamara and Ira talked quietly together, Tamara’s hands fluttering around Ira’s shoulders and face. When Tamara came to the high point of her story, Ira’s gasp—so scissor-like, so uniquely memorable—made me bury my forehead, briefly, in my hand.

“Headache?” M. Perrot asked. “Do you need some fresh air?”

“I want to ask you something,” said Tamara, summoning me to her side of the table.

“Isn’t Rafaela a genius?” Ira murmured, fingering my dress, letting the feather-fringe at my hem trace her palm.

“What is it?”

“We have a little problem. I cannot believe it. I had my charcoals and sketchpad all ready for the de la Salles’ party, and I set them carefully by the door in their own little bag. And then I forgot them. I am so sorry, but could you go back to the flat for them? And then meet us at the party? You can take a taxi both ways,” she said, pressing a banknote into my hand. “Please?”

 

 

 

Snug in a taxi bound for rue de Varenne, I exhaled deeply, allowed myself a little cry. Ira had no idea I’d heard her and Tamara. That, or maybe she didn’t care. Maybe she went through life being friendly to her lovers’ lovers, the way her husband kissed Tamara on both cheeks and told her, heartily, how beautiful she looked. Didn’t he mind when his wife went to Italy alone with her lovely neighbor, a woman who caressed her in front of him? Earnest, bland M. Perrot seemed only beneficent toward the two women. Tamara was having a grand time. The Perrots were having a grand time. Only
I
had a problem, only
I
had ground glass in my throat when I saw Tamara touch Ira. If I had tried to confront Ira, she would have asked me to wait until she could find her friend’s card, her friend—here I had to laugh, bitterly—who wanted to pay me to do what I loved best.
I’ll be so glad when this night is over,
I whispered to myself.

It wasn’t until I let myself into Tamara’s building that I felt angry. How
dare
Tamara? She
knew
Ira upset me. She knew enough to put away Ira’s portraits when I came to pose. Ira might be blind to my feelings, but Tamara wasn’t. Halfway up Tamara’s stairs, I went black and spiny inside; I was an ocean, a windy night. How could she so unapologetically, so matter-of-factly, choose to hurt me? It was so easy for her. As easy as—I suddenly realized what I had in my purse: Tamara’s keys. As easy as a man walking into a room and walking out with a painting. As easy as a woman closing a door, and neglecting to lock it.

18