We could hear the buzz of conversation and a burst of laughter long before we came to the Steins’ front door, which was now wide open. Other people were going in so we followed them.
“Gertrude and Leo don’t stand on ceremony,” Mary said. “The only criteria for being admitted are passion for art, good conversation, and the ability to hold liquor. “Ah, there she is, now. Gertrude!” And she forced her way through the crowd.
Miss Stein turned from the group she was standing with. “Why, if it isn’t Mary Cassatt. It’s a long time since you graced us with your presence.” And she held out her hand to Mary. “What brings you here?”
“Not trying to sell you a painting, that’s for sure,” Mary said with a laugh. “I know your taste is for the avant-garde and I am hopelessly mired in tea parties and domesticity. Actually I have found myself a new model—Master Liam Sullivan, aged eight months. And I have brought his mother with me. Molly Sullivan. I believe you two have met.”
Miss Stein’s sharp eyes focused on me. “Ah. So you’ve come back at the proper time,” she said. “Welcome. Did you find your friends yet?”
I decided that I had to lie to her although she wasn’t the kind of person one should lie to. “I did, and you were quite right. They got held up out of the city with no way of communicating.”
“So all’s well that ends well? That’s good. Help yourself to a drink. I know it’s France but some of my guests prefer a good strong bourbon.” She indicated a table in the corner around which several young men were hovering. “Move aside, fellows, and let the ladies in!” she bellowed. “They are dying of thirst and you’re hogging it all.”
Mary grinned at me as they stood aside for us. I noticed that one of them was the young Spaniard, Pablo Picasso. “Ah, the lady with the red hair,” he said. He turned to the men beside him. “One day I will paint her.”
“If Fernande allows you,” his companion said.
“Miss Stein is going to buy one of my paintings,” Picasso said. “We may move to an apartment with running water then Fernande will love me and be happy.”
“And still not let you paint other women,” the man said and they laughed.
I took the glass of wine that Mary offered and we moved away. My gaze was drawn to a group in the middle of the room, clustered around a large, heavyset man. He had dark skin, large jowls, and a face that looked like a cross between a shrunken head and a gorilla. I nudged Mary. “Who is that exceptionally ugly man over there?”
“Oh, him? That’s Vollard—he’s the most important art dealer in Paris. If he likes your work, you are in. He and Reynold Bryce had a long-standing mutual loathing. Reynold said it was because he only liked beautiful objects around him and Vollard’s face distressed him, but it was really because Vollard had called his paintings trite and meaningless.”
Even as she was speaking Vollard looked up and saw Mary. “Ah, la belle Cassatt comes to grace us with her presence,” he said and held out his hand to her. “What are you doing here? Not trying to sell Gertrude a picture.”
“I came to be sociable, Monsieur Vollard,” Mary said, “And to introduce my young friend, Mrs. Sullivan, visiting from America.”
“If she wants to buy paintings she had better come to me,” Vollard said. “I only deal in the best.”
“She is not buying. She is reporting on the art scene for her newspaper back home,” Mary said, catching me off guard. We had never discussed this. “Everyone at home wants to know about Reynold Bryce.”
“He insulted the Jews once too often,” Vollard said.
“Is that what everyone thinks?” I asked.
Vollard looked around the group. “What else could it be? A robbery and nothing is taken? I don’t think so. He has not helped himself to someone else’s wife lately that I have heard—or even someone’s mistress, or volatile young people like our dear Picasso over there might have stabbed him.”
“Did he ever help himself to someone’s wife?” I asked.
Several heads were shaken. “Or mistress?” I continued. “He was still officially married, wasn’t he? Did he have mistresses?”
“Not since Pauline,” one of the group said. “And that was some time ago now.”
“Pauline?” I realized instantly how helpful Mary’s ploy had been. I was a reporter, therefore not personally involved. They were quite willing to share gossip with me.
“Pauline Hubert. She was a model, but she never modeled for him. He stuck to his landscapes.”
“Did she leave him or the other way around?” I asked.
“She got too old,” one of them said and there was a general chuckle.
“Someone told me he was painting again,” another of the men said to his companions, seemingly unaware now that I was part of the group.
“Really? That explains it then. He had quite a twinkle in his eye when I met him at the American Club last week. I said to him, ‘You sly old dog. I think you’re on the prowl again.’”
“And what did he say?”