Mister Impossible (Dreamer Trilogy #2)(60)
“I didn’t ask for a break,” Hennessy said.
Her secret was this: She was tired of trying.
Madame X. Madame X. Madame X.
When Declan slept, he dreamt of her, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, the red-haired beauty who powdered her face and pinked her ears to make herself unforgettable, a painting before she ever showed up on a canvas as John Singer Sargent’s Madame X. Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, her face turned in striking profile, shoulders proud, fingers poised on the table. Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, with her suitable but troubled young marriage, her many affairs, the dress strap slid from her shoulder to subtly imply she lived two lives: a proper, daylight existence and a stolen, shadow existence that was a reaction to the unsuitability of the first. Madame X.
When he woke up, he thought about the circumstances under which she had been painted. When Declan went to sleep, he thought about how she might be similar to El Jaleo. All the hours in between, he thought about how that process might be re-created to make a new sweetmetal. Madame X. Madame X. Madame X.
And by Madame X, he meant Jordan Hennessy.
He couldn’t get enough of her.
Boston suited him. Schedule suited him. Appointments, phone calls, goals—they all suited him. Building an elaborate spiderweb (a proper one, structurally sound on the outermost corners and sticky only in the very middle so that it trapped only the insects he liked to eat and not himself in it) suited him. He was making a plan. It was high stakes and it was dangerous and Jordan was right: He liked it. He liked all of it.
Declan liked the alarm at 6:00 a.m. He liked the cafés that woke up even before he did. He liked the ding of the email that meant his newspaper had arrived in his inbox. He liked the swick of his CharlieCard in the turnstile, he liked the jostle and noise of the T as he read the headlines and swiped to the business section. He liked hearing from a new business contact he’d gotten from one of his father’s old contacts. He liked the assembly of jobs and tasks that got ever more complex as trust built.
Declan liked being buried to his neck in art history. He had begun as Pozzi, and Pozzi was a good start. Pozzi was how Madame X had begun, after all, with Sargent asking his friend Dr. Pozzi to introduce him to Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau as a portrait subject. Madame Gautreau! Sargent found her an impossibly beautiful and hopelessly lazy model. He sketched her over and over, painted her over and over, trying to capture on canvas whatever it was that made her famous in social circles. And when he did—when he’d painted that haughty beauty with her strap impudently fallen on her marble shoulder—the scandal nearly ruined him. Some things weren’t meant to be painted out loud. Sargent’s friend, the novelist Henry James, persuaded him to move to Britain to get away from the disgrace, so Sargent started his life from scratch there, not knowing that eventually Madame X was to be the painting he was best known for. Was that what Declan was doing? Here in Boston? Declan didn’t know, but he liked it.
Declan liked the parties. And there were ever so many parties. He had never allowed himself to be so public in DC, so himself, so out and about, but Jordan argued that extroversion was actually safer. It took no effort, she noted, to disappear someone who didn’t really exist, so they should live, they should live loudly. It was impeccable logic and, in any case, what Declan wanted to hear. He liked making his burner phone his real phone, making sure that, yes, it was a good number for him, a permanent number for him, a place to get the man for the job. The first get-together was small: an exhibit opening at a tiny Fenway gallery. Drinks and music, a funky vibe, young collectors, an after-party that spilled into a bar. After that, Declan bumped into his senator’s sister’s daughter on the street in Somerville and got invited to dinner, which turned into drinks, which turned into dancing. All of it turned into more texts and calls and invitations. Jordan was an exceptional and practiced partygoer. He liked how he looked on her arm.
Declan liked finding out how passionate Sargent had been about El Jaleo. A musician himself, Sargent had been fascinated by the culture of flamenco, and a trip to Spain had left such a mark that three years later he was still painting studies of dancers and guitarists for the piece that would eventually hang in the Gardner. When the twelve-foot-long painting debuted at the prestigious Salon, it rocketed Sargent to fame and cemented a career that would last his entire life. Was this what it had in common with Madame X? Was it that the painting changed his life, or was it that he knew that it was going to change his life? What was soul? Declan didn’t know, but he liked trying to find out.
Declan liked the new roles his brothers played in this fantastic construct. Even though he felt guilty about letting Matthew’s schoolwork slide (Was he going to college anyway? Would he ever actually be an adult?), he liked ordering takeout with him, and he liked using him as an excuse to see the touristy things, and he liked doing the holidays with him. Matthew’s dreamy episodes seemed to be fewer than before, and Declan felt safe enough to get Matthew a part-time job at one of the local galleries, packing orders, which seemed to improve his mood. Everyone loved seeing him; who didn’t love Matthew? And Ronan—even though he wasn’t in Boston, his presence was still huge in Declan’s life. Once Declan stopped changing his phone number and started going to parties, a Moderator named Carmen Farooq-Lane called to ask if he’d been in touch with Ronan Lynch since the Potomac River incident. (No, said Declan, but while I have you on the phone I should let you know I’ve made very good friends with an attorney since your unannounced attack on my personal residence, a sentence that ended the phone call.) And in the oddest places, people would lean in and suddenly whisper, Are you Ronan Lynch’s brother? Please thank him. This would have petrified Declan back in DC, but now it all made him feel like he was part of something bigger. Golden Matthew, charming the city. Rebellious Ronan, finally grown into something useful. Cunning Declan, trafficking in art and stories. The Brothers Lynch. He liked not worrying about them all the time.