“I am leaving in five seconds, Vince, and you are coming with me. Four. Three. Two. You’re on your own, dude.” I book it out of there. I don’t want to stay to watch this train wreck happen.
I feel Ambrose’s presence nearby, keeping up with me. “Just a warning,” I tell him. “I’ll get you back for this next time you ask me to come with you volant to the racetrack. It’ll be the biggest losing streak of your life, man.”
Vincent could use a little distraction, Ambrose says. He hasn’t gone out with a girl for years.
“I think you will agree that there’s a difference between a girl and that girl. As in Vincent’s so obsessed with her already that he’s going to fall. Hard. And then we have Charles Mach Two on our hands. Resentful for what he is, and making all the rest of us suffer for it with his raging attitude.”
But Geneviève . . . Ambrose begins.
“Geneviève was already married to a human when she died and animated. That’s a totally different case. Speaking of, are you still pining away for her, waiting for Philippe to die?”
Hey, I like Philippe, Ambrose rebuts. He’s good to Geneviève.
“But you still want him to die.”
It’s not that I want him to die this very instant. It’s just that he’s got to pass away sometime soon. The guy is ancient. I just need to be ready when it happens.
“That’s twisted,” I say. A security guard watches me cautiously as I “talk to myself” while exiting the museum. Probably thinks I’m some kind of nutcase, come to splash paint all over Pablo’s canvases. Not that it wouldn’t be an improvement for some of them.
FIVE
I SCRAPE THE OILS ONTO MY PALETTE: A MIX OF Zinc Buff and Montserrat Orange for her slightly tanned skin, Vandyke Brown for her long, thick hair, Venetian Red for her succulent lips, and Perylene Black for eyes like oceans.
Valérie lies on my antique green couch, wearing nothing but what she was born in. I stand ten feet away, near the window of my studio, letting the natural light illuminate my canvas.
I’m painting Valérie as a reclining nude, Modigliani-style. I miss the guy, even though he was obnoxious. Always drunk or high and picking fights. Doing outrageous things so that no one would notice the fact that he was dying of tuberculosis and avoid him like . . . well, like the plague.
There was that time we were at a bar near the Bateau-Lavoire, and he did a striptease in front of a table of “ladies of a certain age.” Ripped off every last stitch of his clothing. Almost gave the biddies a heart attack. “Serves them right for hanging out in Montmartre,” he told the policeman who showed up. Those were wild days, and he was the wildest of us all. But give him a brush and he painted like no one has or ever will. Touched by angels. Breathed on by God. And inspired by the devil.
I use one sweeping stroke to define the upper curve of Valérie’s body, from shoulder to foot. She’s reading a paperback, clearly bored. I only need her to look up at the end of the composition, when I paint in her face, so I allow her this off-time. “Okay, let’s take a break,” I say, and she stands, her soft, curvy body as exquisite as the Venus de Milo, as fresh as a ripe peach.
I will never tire of looking at women. Appreciating their beauty. Reveling in each girl’s individual charm. There’s nothing more beautiful on earth. And even more tantalizing are the ones you can’t touch, like Valérie: I never mix business with pleasure. And not just because of security. (Lovers aren’t allowed into our permanent residences.) No, it was a hard-earned lesson after a few catastrophic encounters. All you need is for one model to see another painted in a suggestive pose, and voilà—you’ve got a catfight in the middle of your painting exhibition.
Valérie scoops up a robe and drapes it lazily around her before picking her book back up and lying on her stomach to read. I walk back to the bathroom to wash out my brushes, and hear the front door open and close and Valérie talking to someone. It’s Vincent. Good—I’ve been trying to reach him all afternoon.
I step out of the dark bathroom into the sun-drenched studio to see Sad Girl—Kate—standing in front of the window, backlit by the warm sun of the summer afternoon. She looks like a saint from a medieval painting: pure, beautiful, glorious, crowned with rays of golden light.
But she is not a saint. She’s a hundred percent human, and totally falls into the “lover” category. She shouldn’t be here with Vincent. I manage to tear my eyes from her to see Vincent standing by her side, looking like his head’s about to explode.