They spent the day together and had dinner, and set the date for the show. Seeing the gallery again reminded him of the portrait of Natasha, and he wondered how she was, and if she was happy with her new Russian that the concierge had mentioned. It seemed a sad life to him. She would forever be a bird in a gilded cage, but it was the only life she knew. It was light-years from his world, which centered only on his work these days. He realized that it had taken him a long time to get Natasha out of his system. She had haunted him so intensely. For a while, he had felt ill every time he saw her with Vladimir, and completely disoriented every time he ran into her. He felt foolish for it now. She had been a phantom in his life, a kind of mirage, his dream woman who appeared to him on canvas, but not in his real life. His mother had been right, she had nearly cost him his sanity and his heart. But he had salvaged both, and he felt strong now and focused on his work. And he hadn’t had a date or relationship with a woman since Inez nine months before. He had seen her at an art event in Cannes in September, and she said she was dating someone who had two children of his own, and she seemed happy.
Theo spent the next day in Paris, after his meeting with Jean Pasquier on Friday night, and on Saturday it was raining and he had nothing to do before his flight to Nice. His mother and Gabriel were in Venice for the trip they’d planned, and then were coming back to Paris for another month before going back to St. Paul de Vence. The restaurant was still closed, and she was planning to open briefly for Christmas, and then close forever when she turned it into a museum. The holidays would be their farewell to Da Lorenzo and all their devoted clients who had been faithful to them. It was going to be a bittersweet final chapter of an adventure that had served her well, but she was ready to move on, before it became more of a burden than a joy. She and Gabriel wanted their freedom now, to spend time together while they could still enjoy it, and do whatever they wanted. Theo had had a call from her in Venice, and she sounded like a young girl.
She had told him how much she and Gabriel enjoyed their forages at Drouot, and with nothing else to do, he decided to stop in there and have a look around that afternoon before he left. She made it sound like a treasure hunt.
He wandered through a room of somber Gothic paintings, and another one of pop art, and then one of truly awful paintings, and a room full of what looked like what they’d found in someone’s grandmother’s attic, complete with lace doilies and ancient fur coats and tiny old-fashioned shoes. There was a room of exquisite china, including a service for forty-eight with a royal crest on it, another of photographs, which he found more interesting, and then one of statues and taxidermy, and some paintings he liked. The estimates were low, and he was following the labyrinthine flow of traffic, came around a bend, and almost bumped into a young woman, and was about to apologize, and then he gasped when he saw who it was.
“Oh my God…Natasha…are you all right?” They were both talking at once, and she laughed.
“I wasn’t looking where I was going,” she confessed, stunned to see him there.
“Neither was I.” She looked young and fresh-faced and happy. Her new life must have been going well. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her hair was wet from the rain.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, curious.
“I’m killing time before my flight tonight. I came to see my art dealer. He’s doing another show for me in February. No portrait of you this time, though,” he teased her, and she laughed.
“It looks spectacular in my new apartment. It’s over the fireplace in my living room.” She didn’t tell him it was the size of her whole apartment, and he imagined her in some palatial hotel particulier that her new boyfriend had provided for her, like the last one on Avenue Montaigne.
“Where are you living?” He was curious about her too.
“In the seventh.”
And then he looked serious. “I tried to find you this summer, to thank you. But I was helping my mother at the restaurant, and I got here too late. You had already moved. Athena, the policewoman, told me what you did. That was incredibly brave of you. I’m glad nothing bad happened to you as a result.” She smiled as he said it, not entirely sure that that was true, but the bad things had turned out to be good ones. “Un mal pour un bien,” as the French said. “You’re not with Vladimir anymore?” It was more a statement than a question, since he knew that, and she shook her head.
“No, I’m not.” He didn’t want to tell her that the concierge in her old building had told him about her new Russian man. It made him sound as gossipy as she was, that they had talked about it. But she looked different and better and younger, and happy. Lighter somehow. He didn’t question her about her new man and didn’t really want to know. It was enough to see that she was all right and that no harm had come to her. And he had thanked her now, which was what he had wanted to do three months before and hadn’t managed, arriving too late on the scene.
“Do you travel a lot?” he asked her, not wanting to let her go. But he didn’t feel dizzy this time, or sick when he looked at her. He wasn’t aching with longing for what he couldn’t have. He accepted it now.
“Not anymore.”
“Do you still come to the South?”
“No,” she said simply, happy to see him too.
“No boat this time?” The way he said it sounded odd to her, and she looked at him quizzically.
“What do you mean ‘this time’?” She looked him in the eye when she asked.
“I mean…you know…well…if there’s someone new since Vladimir.”
“There isn’t,” she said quietly. “Why would there be?”
“I thought…” But he was in it up to his neck by then. “Your concierge on Avenue Montaigne said you left with a Russian man, when I tried to find you to thank you.” She laughed out loud at what he said.
“I think she meant my handyman, Dimitri. He helped me move out. I live alone, in an apartment the size of a postage stamp. Your portrait of me is the biggest thing in it.” She looked proud as she said it.
“No yacht?” He was stunned.
“No yacht,” she confirmed, and they both smiled.
“I’m sorry for my assumption. I just thought…”
“You thought I moved on to the next one, just like Vladimir. I had an offer like that,” she said honestly. “I decided I’m out of the business of selling my soul for a lifestyle. I didn’t do that with Vladimir. It was all kind of a coincidence, who he was and the life he gave me. I don’t want that anymore. Besides,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, “the other guy’s yacht was too small. Only two hundred feet. But it was a great offer. Thirty million in a Swiss bank account, and another thirty if I had his baby. I could have been right back where I was a month after Vladimir kicked me out and left me on the dock in Antibes. I’m not doing that anymore.”
“He kicked you out?” Theo looked horrified at what she’d said.
“Not literally. Escorted me off the boat, and walked away. I’m fine,” she said, smiling at Theo. “I really am. I’ve figured it all out. And no one makes the rules for me anymore, or tells me what to do, or dresses me, or tells me when to come and when to go away, who I can talk to, or when to leave the room.” The realization of the extent to which he had controlled her had been shocking to her once she admitted it to herself. She knew she could never let that happen to her again.