The Light of Paris(75)

Except, climbing the wide staircase that curved upstairs, the treads covered with plush, soft carpet that reminded her of the stairs in her parents’ house, the banisters carved and gleaming with wood oil, she knew he was not relying on his paintings alone. Sebastien was rich. She didn’t know how, or why he kept it a secret, but he was.

They alit at the second landing, Margie’s dress heavy and wet, leaving a trail on the carpet, and Sebastien led her down the hall and opened a door at the end, turning on the light inside. “Come in, come in,” Sebastien said when Margie hesitated, dripping water where she stood. Then she stepped inside, and her eyes widened.

“You are rich,” she said as he closed the door behind her. She covered her mouth and laughed at the comparison, thinking of her tiny garret back at the Club, of struggling over the five hundred francs the Libe paid her, and he lived here.

Two easels stood by the window, where she imagined the light would be best, each holding a partially finished canvas, one of a Paris street, looking down, so it managed to contain both the famous Parisian rooftops and a street scene below, a market bursting with the rich colors of fresh fruits and vegetables, the awning of a café, a waiter standing to take an order from a man looking down at a menu, a couple crossing the street, a motorcar going one direction, a horse and cart heading the other way. Looking at the city from that perspective made it feel new and somehow secret, as though she were bearing witness to things she wouldn’t see from the ground, an unfair glimpse into people’s lives. As she had with his painting of the ball, she felt her fingers itching, a desire to dive into these people’s stories: the weary set of the waiter’s stance on his tired feet, the distance between the couple as they walked, a woman holding her hands close to her as she eyed a bin of bright strawberries, as though she might not be able to afford them but was only looking, avoiding temptation as she imagined the way the fruit would burst on her tongue and stain her fingers.

He had only just started the other canvas, the figure of a man standing by a window, sketched out, only the barest beginnings of color in the background, an unfamiliar blue sky. Between the easels stood a table full of metal tubes of paint and brushes, the wood carelessly spotted with a dozen different colors, a palette drying nearby, a stool.

The rest of the apartment was luxurious. Framing the window were heavy velvet curtains, the nap smooth and clean and obviously new. The rug beneath her feet was even more plush than the one in the stairwell, an Oriental carpet strewn with vines and richly woven patterns, so deep she wobbled slightly as she stood on it.

The ceilings were high, with wide molding along the edges, and the furniture was fine as well. And beyond the living room in which they stood, the apartment stretched back to other rooms, the luxury of space in a city where Margie had grown so used to folding in on herself to keep from intruding on other people, on the tram, at cafés, even in the aisles of the bookshops on rue de l’Odéon, where one errant shoulder could bring a stack of books tumbling down.

“I am not rich.” He dropped his keys in a bowl on a table by the front door and stepped out of his shoes. “My family is rich. I am a poor artist.”

“Hmph,” Margie said. She had never stopped to think of the line between being rich and having one’s family be rich. While her parents weren’t technically supporting her now, she would never have been able to make it over to Europe without their largesse, and she knew when she went back—if she went back—they would support her again, and when they died, she would inherit what they had. Her father wouldn’t leave her the business, but he would leave her more than enough to live on, and if she married, she would have her husband’s money too. Yet none of it would really be hers. Which was why the five hundred francs she got from the Libe, paltry as it was, felt like a fortune—because it was hers and hers alone.

“Do your friends know?” she asked.

“Vite, vite,” he said, changing the subject. Quick, quick. “We must get into something warm or we will die of consumption.”

“I don’t think that’s how you get consumption,” Margie said, but her dress was clinging unpleasantly to her and leaving a large wet spot on Sebastien’s carpet, so she followed him down the hall. He went into a room at the end and she almost followed him and then realized it was his bedroom and stopped, embarrassed, until her natural curiosity got the better of her and she peered around the door to see a table, a few sketchbooks and charcoal scattered on its surface, and a chair set up by a pair of wide French doors she guessed led to a balcony. At the other end of the room was an unmade bed, the sheets thrown back, the form of his body still clear upon them, so she could imagine him sleeping there, his hair tousled on the pillow, his eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks. She caught her breath and stepped back into the hallway, both excited and ashamed of her own imagination.

He rummaged around the chest of drawers and then emerged with a pile of clothes in his hands. “Here. Wear these.” He opened the door behind her to reveal another bedroom, a guest room, undisturbed and empty of personality. Taking the pile of clothes, she stepped inside and he closed the door behind her.

She changed into what he had given her, a shirt of soft cotton, a pair of loose pants. Sebastien was slender and Margie was broad, so they nearly fit her, and she felt somewhat charming and boyish, like a real flapper. The fabric was so fine and soft it made every inch of her skin feel alive, and she blushed to be naked against Sebastien’s clothes.