Not that she didn’t have other friends, she assured herself. Not best-best friends, of course, and maybe she didn’t make friends easily, but she had people she could go out with or hang out with.
She didn’t have to be alone; she was choosing to be alone.
After two hours alone in the apartment, she grabbed her purse and went out.
Three hours later, she came back with her hair cut on an angle along her jaw, a long sweep of bangs, in a shade the salon called Icy Indigo.
She took a selfie and texted it to Mi, who’d already arrived in Boston.
Then she looked around, sighed. She took one of the sketches she’d pinned to her board, sat down, and began to do more precise measurements of a nude caught in a crouch, long hair spilling, spiraling, the fingertips of one hand pressed to the ground, the other hand with its palm up, slightly extended.
What’s she doing? Simone wondered. What’s she looking at? Where is she?
As she worked her measurements, she played with stories, considering, rejecting. Hitting.
“She’s taken the leap,” Simone murmured. “Not of faith, of courage. She jumped with nothing but herself, that’s courage. I see you.”
With no classes, no tables to serve for the evening, she got her wire for the armature, laid it on her template.
Too quiet, she decided, and switched on music.
Not rock, she realized, not classical.
Tribal. Her woman would seek a tribe.
Then she would lead it.
With the image clear in her mind, the framework ready, Simone chose her clay, her tools, and began to free the woman who would lead a tribe.
The feet, long, narrow; the ankles strong, slender; calf muscles defined.
She built, carved away, brushed, sprayed the clay with water, smoothed the knees.
As the figure emerged, she worked her way up the body until she realized the light had changed.
Evening was sliding in.
She covered the figure, made herself get off the stool, walk, stretch. A little wine, she decided, then ordered in Chinese because if she went back to work, she’d forget to eat.
Forget to eat, hydrate, move, the work often showed the neglect.
She spent her first night alone drinking wine, rotating it with water, eating noodles and stir-fried pork, and bringing her vision to life.
*
For three weeks she followed the same routine. Work—the sort that brought a paycheck with it—class, work—the sort that fed her soul.
After a fifteen-hour day, much of it on her feet, she came home to the creeping silence of her apartment.
She missed Mi like a limb, she couldn’t deny it, but that wasn’t the core of the problem. She sat, studying the sculpture she’d begun that first night.
It was good—really good. One of the best pieces she’d done, but she couldn’t make herself take it to the gallery.
“Because I need it,” she said aloud. “She’s telling me something, and has been all along. I’m talking to myself.” She sighed, tipped her head back. “So what? So what? I have something to say, too. It’s time to take a leap. I’ve done what I came to New York to do. It’s time to move on.”
She closed her eyes. “No more waiting tables, no more modeling for a fee or for supplies or for class time. I’m an artist, goddamn it.”
She had another two months on the lease. She’d either tough it out, or eat the cost.
Eat it, she decided.
She pulled out her phone, saw the time, and calculated the odds CiCi was still up.
She waited, and when her grandmother’s voice came on clear and alert, smiled. “Having a party?”
“No, and I know it’s late.”
“Never too.”
“Exactly. So, I think it’s time I had a taste of Europe. Do you know anybody, say, in Florence, with a flat to rent?”
“Baby doll, I know everybody everywhere. How about we take a trip, and I introduce you?”
The smile turned into a laugh. “How about I pack?”
*
During the eighteen months Simone spent in Florence, she learned the language, grew tomatoes and geraniums on the tiny balcony of her flat overlooking Piazza San Marco, and took an Italian lover named Dante.
Dante, absurdly handsome, played the cello and liked making Simone pasta. As he traveled with the symphony, their relationship didn’t crowd her, and left her all the time she needed to devote to her work.
The fact that he had other women on his travels didn’t concern her. For her, Dante was part of a lovely interlude of sun, sex, and sculpting. She’d given herself this time and place, saturating herself with all it offered.
She studied, spent time with artists, with masters, with artisans and technicians. And sweated on the pouring floor of a foundry to learn more about casting in bronze.
As she learned, experimented, discovered, she built enough confidence to wheedle her way into a show at a trendy art gallery, then spent four months completing more pieces for what she called Gods and Goddesses.
Simone invited her family out of duty. They declined, but sent two dozen red roses to the gallery with a card wishing her luck.
Helping load in her art and debating with the gallery manager on placement ate up any time for nerves. She’d already told herself, countless times, if the show failed it meant she wasn’t good enough.
Yet.
It didn’t mean she’d go home a failure. Her parents might—correction, would, she thought as she debated, again, between a severe and serious black dress and a bold, sexy red one—think her a failure. But she would never meet their standards anyway. They had Natalie for that. She’d forever be their college dropout daughter who threw away all the advantages they’d offered her.
Her mother would vote for the black, Simone thought. Be sedate, be sophisticated.
She went for the red and worked it with killer-heel gold sandals that would make her feet weep. But they’d show off the toes painted the same pomegranate as her base hair color.
She’d added streaks and sweeps of turquoise, plum, flame to that base to set off her haircut of varying angles.
To add more bohemian, she added cascading gold disks to her ears and an army of bangles on her arm.
Trying too hard? Maybe the black after all.
Before she could snatch it out of the wardrobe, her buzzer sounded. Another delivery from Dante, she decided as she clipped from the bedroom through her parlor already fragrant with the white roses he’d sent the night before, the red lilies that morning, the orchids in the early afternoon, and the pink tulips after that.
She opened the door, squealed, and threw her arms around her grandmother.
“CiCi! CiCi! You’re here!”
“Where else would I be?”
“You came. You came all this way.”
“Wild horses, cara. Wild, wild horses.”
“Oh, come in, sit down. Did you just get here? Let me get your bag.”
“I came straight here, but don’t worry, I’m staying with Francesca and Isabel.”
“No, no, they can’t have you! You have to stay here. Please.”
CiCi shook back the hair that fell past her shoulder blades—now in burnished copper. “I’d love a threesome with that luscious Italian pastry of yours, but it’s too awkward when one of the three’s my grandbaby.”
“Dante’s in Vienna. The schedule just didn’t click. But he’s everywhere.” She opened her arms to the roomful of flowers.
“The man’s a romantic. Then if it’s just you and me, I’m happy to stay. I’ll let Francesca and Isabel know. They’re coming tonight, and I’m going to take us all out to celebrate after. God.” Beaming, CiCi let herself soak in her greatest treasure. “Just look at you! Your hair’s a work of art. And that dress!”
“I was just thinking I should change. I have a black dress that might—”
“Clichéd, expected. Don’t be.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“You look bold and confident and ready, but do yourself a favor and take the shoes off until we leave. How long do we have?”
“We’ve got over an hour.”
“Good. Time enough for you to get me a glass of wine before I make myself beautiful.”
“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world. I can’t tell you what it means to me that you’d come for this, for me.”