(Lest They Leave - Chapter 5)

[madscenes]

CHAPTER INDEX

CHAPTER 5




They invited her back to the Dubois mansion, a stone’s throw from Versailles, exactly one week and one day later.

The invitation was exceedingly formal, delivered by mail and written on gold-tinted stationary; mademoiselle Gallard was welcome to paint their son’s portrait, all had been taken care of, a studio had been prepared down to the last detail and was at her free disposal.

Dress code: liberal, had been added at the bottom in a scrawl that Sylvie suspected was monsieur Dubois’, whereas the rest of the letter had been composed in a beautiful, rounded handwriting that must be his wife’s. In response, she had Claire find some of her old dresses from Marseille, otherwise stored away in boxes probably never to be unearthed again, good riddance, and they pinned her artist’s smock to the front of the black one, conservative and dull, monsieur Dubois ought to find comfort in it.

And so, a grey, pleasantly rainy Tuesday, two weeks after the Easter dinner, the Dubois’ chauffeur came to pick her up in an automobile far fancier and newer than her brother’s, not that her brother cared one bit, she knew, and drove her back to Armand’s home, where he took her to the room his father had, he told her with a smile, had an infamous Expressionist friend help design; she wouldn’t lack anything and if anything should be missing, against expectation, they would gladly buy it for her.

Sylvie felt halfway like a celebrity, and her black dress was such an ill fit for that role, wasn’t it? Even if Armand had greeted her by kissing both her cheeks, one hand on her waist, muttering against the side of her face, you look wonderful.

She’d laughed. She couldn’t tell whether he was an exceptional liar or an exceptional optimist. Well, she could. To her knowledge, he wasn’t lying.

And you’re just unbelievable, she told him in return.

The studio that monsieur Dubois had decorated for her was unbelievable, too. It was located in the western corner room, with not only one but two tall, arched windows, allowing light from both the west and the south side, it was the most beautiful inflow of light she’d seen anywhere, and she’d painted in the ancient halls of the Marseille art academy, hadn’t she? The room was filled with old sideboards, drawers full of oil paints and natural resin, watercolours, pencils, brushes, an easel leaning against the wall next to one window along with a handful of canvases, both ones already applied to wooden frames and a whole roll of fabric to be fixed in whatever size she might desire. Armand saw her gaping wonder as she took a walk around, following her quietly.

“Do you like it?” he asked, trying to sound tempered and succeeding at least somewhat. Yet, the hope was there.

“It’s incredible, Armand, did you really arrange for this?” she replied.

“My father did,” he insisted, but Sylvie was beginning to catch on to how he blamed his father for everything he didn’t feel he could take credit for himself. She had a feeling that the idea had definitely not originated with Dubois père. It came from somewhere else, and he wouldn’t even let her thank him properly.

What a funny, old bird he was.

A few of Sylvie’s works had been taken out of storage as well and brought along to the mansion, to give her sitter a sense of her style and colour palette. The voluptuous maid and the old matron with the wart had carried them to the studio and placed them, all three, next to each other on the empty, windowless wall opposite the west window. The light fell on them nicely there. Armand walked over to study them, not in any hurry. He remained silent while looking, which made her nervous.

“Do you like them?” she wanted to know after the minutes had stretched on for what felt a very long time.

“I don’t understand this woman,” he said and nodded at the last painting in the row, the smallest of them, featuring an ocean-inspired background, all blues, whites and light greys, and a woman floating mid-air above a roaring sea, turned towards the spectator, but her face bare, no features, no mouth, nose or eyes, just the pale skin of her head continuing from her forehead and down, like a curtain almost. A curtain which hadn’t been lifted yet. Less poetically, she looked like an egg in a tight-fitting tablecloth.

“I don’t understand her either. She hasn’t told me anything much about herself,” Sylvie explained, meaning that’s why, I haven’t looked her in the eyes yet, I don’t know who she is. He turned his attention back on the canvas, studying her motif – one she had worked on continuously for years now, since leaving boarding school and starting to lodge with the aunties – and somehow, it felt like he was studying her, as if the woman Sylvie didn’t know was herself.

The thought scared her. Moving a little closer to Armand, she took his hand and leaned in against his side, her temple pressed to his shoulder.

“Can you like something you don’t understand?” she asked. Quietly.

“Sometimes, it can prove necessary to,” he answered. She wasn’t sure she understood what he meant, but she liked him all the same. Maybe that was the meaning of it.

Without saying anything, they stood some time next to each other, Sylvie holding his hand, Armand’s eyes watching the woman without a face, without an identity, even without a name. Sylvie had never been able to find a title for this particular painting, she had settled with calling it, The Faceless. Even if it sounded like one of the ghost stories they’d told at her boarding school, and she hated getting frightened, really, she hated the jolt fear sent through your system. She’d had enough of that for a lifetime.

Finally, he let go of her hand and pointed to the stool that had been placed in the exact intersection where the light from the west-facing window and the south-facing window merged, creating a particularly sunny spot, even on a rainy day like today. Sylvie liked the grey hues, they were beautiful. Armand would look beautiful, bathed in them, though she didn’t tell him so. He said: “How do you want me?”

Dropping her gaze, Sylvie buried her hands deep in the front pockets of her smock. When he noticed her blush, he blushed, too. She felt wonderfully seen when he did. It was a real thrill.

“It depends on the image you want,” she told him, voice soft. “The king would stand, preferably next to something small, so he looked bigger.”

“I’m no king,” he said, making her once more think of his father, monsieur Dubois who was without a doubt King, capitalised, and whose son Armand was. Prince, then? Heir to the throne. Wasn’t that why Charles wanted them engaged to be married so bad? She moved over to the stool and looked down at it for a while, then back up at Armand who had followed her, trailing behind. She could feel his eyes on her.

“Be comfortable and happy, that’s all I’m asking of you,” she said, before walking over to the easel and manoeuvring it a few metres to the left, to stand in front of the stool; then she picked one of the larger canvases already on a frame and balanced it on the easel, it was a fight against balance points and gravity, but Sylvie won. Lastly, she walked over to the buffet she’d found full of pencils and brushes, grabbing a couple of dark grey pencils, already sharpened. He’d prepared everything for her, hadn’t he?

Armand or Armand’s father, not one and the same thing, but not further apart than that, either. The resources sprung from the same well, if nothing else.

When she turned back around, Armand had sat down on the simple wooden stool, legs spread wide apart and his elbows resting on his knees, his hands folded in a relaxed manner in between. Comfortable and happy.

She did promise not to ask anything more of him.


~*~


An hour and a half later, Armand got up off the chair, stretching languidly. In the meantime, he’d lost his suit jacket, it lay folded on the nearest sideboard, next to paints and palettes, and he was looking just spiffy in his shirt and vest, Sylvie thought he had the appearance of a right cake eater, with his thick, dark hair, sensitive eyebrows and deep pools of brown beneath them. His eyes were gleaming in the light that had brightened considerably since he sat down, the weather outside having taken a turn for the better.

The rain had stopped completely. It was nothing but a spring shower, after all.

On the canvas, an outline of his body had taken form, the shape of his shoulders accentuated, as well as his very relaxed pose, the hands, a ghost of features. This was no new The Faceless. This was him.

It was him as well as her. No model truly existed until the artist’s eyes were on them. Well, she had her eyes on him, all right. In this moment, they were both real. Together.

“Will there be waves and water in my portrait?” he asked curiously, walking over to retrieve his jacket and shrugging it on. Sylvie was busy putting away her five different pencils and the small eraser she’d also been able to fish out of the buffet’s cornucopia of quality supplies. Nothing was missing, really. Nothing whatsoever.

“I was thinking more along the lines of gilded walls,” she remarked; she’d even gone as far as to consider a gilded cage, but she wasn’t sure how much of herself she was putting into it, like that. They shared an experience, Armand and her, yes, but not necessarily an existence.

Not yet.

She wiped her hands on the smock, fine trails of charcoal and dirt streaking the already greying fabric. Could you dirty something that was already stained, however? What would be the point? Turning her back on him, she quickly untied the apron, freeing it from over her head, folding it over twice before placing it on the stool on which she herself had been sitting while sketching. It looked a bit like a cushion that way. Armand came up next to her.

“You say that without having seen the wallpapers in the ballroom,” he commented, looking at the silhouette of himself on her canvas, the faint shadowing, her points of focus. He didn’t say anything about it, and it made her no less nervous than before. “They’re even more elaborate than the ones in the dining room. If you should need to research, consider attending our ball next Saturday.”

Her old, black dress both hid everything and nothing at the same time, and Sylvie looked up at him a moment, meeting his eyes; they were nice and bright and ducky, because they came attached to a nice, bright and ducky guy. They hoped, evidently, in a way she recognised in full.

“Is that an invitation?” she wanted to know, asking only because she harboured an insatiable desire to hear him say it.

“It is,” he admitted, which was another thing she loved about him, that insistence on propriety, manners, in that regard he was better than both Charles and her. “And a clumsy one.”

Shaking her head, she brushed down her skirt with both hands and fixed herself up a little, feeling for the hairpin keeping her bangs out of her face, her short-style bob, she wondered whether Armand would ever call her goldilocks, like the girls at the boarding school had, and which she had hated, detested, loathed. Because, if he did, she thought she might like it.

“Have you asked my brother?” she enquired. There was a passivity to her tone that indicated that she cared more about his answer than she’d willingly let on, than she’d ever show either of them, Armand or Charles, and the sideways look Armand gave her indicated that he could tell.

“Your brother isn’t coming, he has business that requires his attention,” he replied, shrugging, but then quickly adding, as if to assure her, he had gone via the proper channels for that info, he wasn’t simply assuming, “I’ve asked him.”

Sparing that night a thought, when she’d got home after the Easter dinner here, the way Charles had grabbed her and not let go, desperately, convulsively, leading her to her room, waiting for the door to shut behind her before he left, Sylvie’s lips thinned into a hard line and she looked out the nearest window, at the gardens outside, the fields beyond them. The Dubois mansion was the last house before the countryside in these parts. The line of her mouth softened.

“Then, I’ll be happy to come,” she said.

Armand met her eyes, but didn’t comment on it, the stubborn resolve still alive and kicking in her voice. His determination was different from hers; even without coarseness and edges, his was a masculine determination, hers was a woman’s, it was something that just couldn’t be helped. She’d love to learn from him but if she did, maybe monsieur Dubois would be less charmed by her, right?

Nevertheless, Armand said, “Thank you.”

And Sylvie smiled, leaning up to kiss his cheek which she’d outlined just minutes earlier. Meaning, she knew the shape of it, twice over. Across dimensions.


~*~


If Charles’ old party had been overrun with darbs, the Dubois ball was absolutely swarmed.

When dressing her for the occasion, in a heavy gold-embroidered taffeta dress that cut just below the knee, not too hot and not too cold, but undoubtedly perfect for madame Dubois’ precious aesthetic, Claire was biting her lower lip, correcting Sylvie’s headband, so the dingle-dangle near her right ear was dingle-dangling just right, before she finally found the courage to say, “I hear everybody who’s something is coming, I hear mademoiselle Baker might be coming, too.”

For the first time since her arrival in the capital, Sylvie felt borderline Parisian, knowing who the maid was referring to. Josephine Baker was the next big thing in the theatre world, after all, judging by word of mouth and the rumour mill. Herself, she couldn’t help wondering whether Eloisa Paolo was coming to this notorious Dubois affair as well, or if the Italian actress was already yesterday’s news. Her play had closed at the Odéon at this point. Charles hadn’t made mention of her future plans nor theirs, shared, but sure, Sylvie was aware. Charles didn’t make mention of even his regular activities on a good day. Not to her.

Having him talk about his covert girlfriend was simply asking too much, wasn’t it?

Maybe that was the price of carrying the world on your shoulders, ensuring it all stayed in place, the sky above and the sea below. Maybe you had to prioritise your efforts. Sylvie frowned. Maybe you didn’t have the strength left to talk.

“I’ll bring you something from the party, a souvenir,” she promised Claire, reaching out to press her palm to the older woman’s cheek for a moment, confidentially. “Something the big cheeses have left their imprint on, wouldn’t that be nice?”

Claire shook her head, firmly. “Please don’t steal anything for my sake, mademoiselle,” she said.

“Oh, it’s not stealing if they won’t miss it. I’ll take an orange or an ashtray or the doorknob to some room they’ve completely forgotten that they own,” Sylvie assured her with a smile that said, it’s just applesauce, you know. After all, she could easily gift Claire with an orange or an ashtray or even a doorknob from their own house any day of the week, before the maid went home to her chimneysweep husband, it would be the same sentiment, less work.

But, frankly, not as much fun. Claire hadn’t seen the opulent wallpapers at the Dubois mansion. Sylvie had, however, and she was dressed to match.

Exactly how much of a match she would be for the Dubois house’s huge ballroom, she couldn’t ever have imagined. She arrived at a mansion, smack in the middle of nowhere, yet still overrun by people, fancy folk and celebrities and she was almost certain she did glimpse Josephine Baker in the crowd. The atmosphere was electric. The champagne towers were taller than her.

Not to mention the wallpaper. It looked like goldleaf, a thin sheen of metal bearing repetitive floral imprints, lilies as far as Sylvie could tell, though she didn’t get close enough to check for sure. She’d just disappear into the tapestry, really, her dress was the exact same nuance as the wall. Both things even shone faintly, Sylvie’s dress and madame Dubois’ décor. It made her laugh, loudly.

“What’s so funny?” a voice asked from behind her, and she recognised him immediately, spinning around so fast that the dingle-dangle in her hair slapped against her temple. Sylvie was smiling long before she saw the small curve forming on his lips, before she was reminded how he was always so simple and always so splendid at the same time. Armand bowed his head to her in acknowledgement. He was also bringing champagne, two coupes.

“I look like I’ve torn a piece of your mother’s wallpaper right off and made an outfit out of it,” she giggled.

“You look wonderful,” he said.

“You say that to everyone, don’t you?” she teased, accepting the offered glass and taking a drink out of it. It was dry. No, to be more precise, it was dirty rich; if she weren’t already in her aunties’ evening prayers, she would be, if they saw her now. Alcohol, gold dresses and men she had kissed. She had turned into their worst nightmare; Eve, the temptress, the fallen. Looking up at Armand, smiling – at the end of the day, Sylvie thought there were worse things she could be.

And then, she decided that the crystal saucer was going with her home, to Claire.

Armand looked thoughtful for a moment, as if he was really considering the question and deliberating the best response, when she’d mostly asked to hear him say, no, only you, baby, only you. “Would you?” he replied after a couple of seconds that felt longer, even when she was sipping champagne.

“Would I say to everyone that they looked wonderful?” she repeated, stupidly, trying to follow the joke, but Armand nodded in subtle invitation, go ahead, meaning it was no joke and Sylvie cocked her head to one side, giving it some actual consideration with a curious purse to her lips. What a silly game. She adored it. “Possibly everyone but my brother,” she continued after a while, reluctantly, like it pained her a little to admit, and it did. Her brother always looked so sharp, one day she’d like to tell him, and see his reaction. See him actually react.

“Both men and women?” Armand insisted.

“I don’t see why not,” she told him.

“Then, I would do the same,” he said, in a way that implied, she was a good influence and an example to be followed, in her goldleaf-coloured dress that could easily work as camouflage in this magnificent space.

Sylvie beamed at him.

The champagne was dry, but nevertheless didn’t last long, and once she’d emptied her glass, she caught Armand’s gaze while she opened her purse and slipped the coupe inside, the slight clinking sound of it hitting her lipstick and her face powder cannister quickly muted as she tied the purse shut with the long, tassel-ended velvet string, dangling down along the side, the same way the dingle-dangle in her hair did over her ear. He looked at her for a long moment quietly, then smiled his trademark soft smile and pointedly averted his gaze, pretending he hadn’t seen.

Like Sylvie had told Claire, there were so many things the new kings of Paris wouldn’t miss, as long as their power stayed intact, and their heirs were promised to one side, so they might keep it that way for generations. Crystal champagne saucers were one of those things, obviously.

“Show me the balcony,” she said to Armand after another long while, passing through the room and watching couples return from the outside, it looked to be big enough and April had turned into May at this point, and May had turned up mild this year. She wouldn’t freeze, if only because she knew Armand would ensure she didn’t, and maybe she wanted that, specifically. “If there’s anything to see out there.”

She was being playful. He gave her the courage to, seeing as he never discouraged her, he never confused her.

“It’s facing in the direction of Paris,” he replied, so what he was saying was this, the city of lights lies out there.

“Come on, then,” she urged him, hooking her fingers in the soft fabric of his suit jacket’s sleeve, laughing. “Let’s go see Paris!” For sure, they were going somewhere. Armand followed indulgently. He was such a good man. Sylvie really wanted to deserve him, didn’t she, since she wasn’t convinced that Charles did, and apparently poor Armand had to choose between one or the other. What awful odds. Totally unfair.

Outside, she spotted a few high-ranking politicians that she knew Charles also associated with, lobbying for the import taxes to be lowered or some other nonsense, it wasn’t because they lacked the funds to pay, after all. They were there with elegant ladies in long dresses, weighed down by heavy jewellery, so Sylvie imagined it wasn’t the kind of party you Charlestoned at. Looking at Armand sideways, she found it a shame. They’d had fun. They still did.

Slowly, he led her to the bannister and pointed towards the horizon where a faint edge of light could be glimpsed in the horizon, making her squint.

“Is that Paris?” she wanted to know.

“Don’t you recognise it?” he teased her, playing her silly game by the rules that she’d established, and she loved that about him, like the fountain in Saint-Germain and the painting sessions in her studio here. Armand was stiff the way leaves of grass were, they’d bend to the wind, but they wouldn’t break as easily as you might think.

“It looks like a completely different place,” she commented.

He paused for a moment, staring straight ahead; she was pretty sure he wasn’t seeing Paris anymore at all. She remembered the Moroccan lamb soup. She remembered his, not now. Though, if not now, when? Was there a right time for everything? Or would the time simply never come for some things? Sylvie wasn’t very good at the unspoken.

Case in point, their hands were resting next to each other on the railing, so she moved her right hand to cover his left, bigger and stronger, but also soft and warm beneath her touch. He turned his hand over in her grip, grabbed her by the tips of her fingers and pulled her in against him, his arm around her shoulders. She didn’t think, everyone can see us. Sylvie thought, let them see.

Let all of Paris see, the darbs and the big shots and Josephine Baker, let them see.

Even so, Armand didn’t move in to kiss her. He pushed a few strands of her hair behind her ear and then, caressed her cheek. “You make the place different,” he said. True, she could argue, he said that to every pretty girl, but she genuinely believed that he meant it and if she hadn’t, she’d still have selfishly clung to this moment. She was a natural at imagining things the way she wanted them, Charles had told her so himself, and what Charles said still felt like truth to her.

Anyhow, one of them had to be. Horsefeathers! Charles didn’t imagine enough. He’d be happier if he did. Maybe he could imagine the world a less heavy place, yes? The sky in its rightful place, the sea tamed. Maybe they could have imagined the world right, together.

Her lips quivered. Armand’s reached up with his free hand and brushed his thumb over them. “Don’t be sad. It was meant as a compliment,” he quickly assured her. She shook her head, not to say no, but to say, it’s all right. His arm fell to his side once more, and he regained his composure more easily than her who had to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief she retrieved from her purse, the champagne coupe jingling around in there.

“So, ‘different’ is all ducky?” she asked. Like he was, nice and bright and ducky. She looked up at the characteristic profile of his face, no coarseness.

“’Different’ changes the world,” he said, making it sound like a promise. More of them, huh – didn’t this Dubois boy ever run dry?

Sylvie took a step closer and kissed him, just a peck, on the lips. He was inspiring her with this courage not to wait, not to stay quiet. Afterwards, they were both smiling. They were smiling until, across the balcony, one of the high-ranking politicians with his big moustache and his receding hairline and his willowy lady hanging off the other, raised his one arm and waved at Armand, obviously requesting his attention. Armand sighed.

“Apologies, work doesn’t rest,” he explained. Sylvie didn’t smile, but she forgave him.

“So, I know. Don’t worry, I can keep myself entertained.”

“Please find someone to keep you company while you do it.” He left her with a squeeze of her hand.

I’ll just tell everyone that they look wonderful, she thought, leaning down until she could rest her chin in her palm, elbow on the bannister, face turned towards the thin sliver of Paris, home to thousands of people and to her, too, now. Imagine that.

Someone is sure going to come along.


~*~


The orchestra playing at the ball was a full six-man deal, and they went through all the popular numbers, not a single piece of music was repeated throughout the evening, from Sylvie came till she left. She, at one and the same time, envied and didn’t envy that trumpet-player’s lungs, gee!

Knowing no one besides the host, socialising was work cut out for her, but apparently she was a recognisable figure in the Parisian elite, who would have thought, because more than once she was approached by girls and, especially, a handful of interested gentlemen who asked her to dance, to have a drink with them and to inquire whether you want a smoke, sheba, lighting her up when she said yes. After that, they were curious about her brother’s business, and even more so about a series of no doubt completely random personal facts like her spending habits, had she been hitched yet, how did she drink her coffee and was she the Coffee Baroness, then? I’m the Coffee Lady, she corrected them, I’m not married to a baron, I’m his next of kin.

His sister, she meant. That Gallard girl.

They laughed about that, and she shooed them off on their way after the second glass of champagne, the next cigarette. None of them got the honour of being told they looked wonderful, neither did any of the men that she danced with as the evening grew late, because after Armand had to leave her on her own, she filled out the hours and a whole dance card that way; never doing the Charleston, but she had fun regardless.

Although Charles wasn’t invited and shouldn’t, in all fairness, have a say, he’d insisted that she was to be picked up at midnight, at the latest, and Edgar had been vocal about respecting the master’s wishes. It isn’t proper for a young girl to hang around in strange company for so long on her own. Sylvie had reminded him, she was twenty-two and Armand would be there, but it only made his expression harden more. Yes, that egg, he’d muttered. So, it had come to be like that. At midnight, she’d be collected by Edgar and driven home, straight to the door, straight to her room, Charles had instructed. She had thought they were both being exceedingly silly.

However, as the party went on, midnight approaching fast but too slow, still, and there was no sight of Armand anywhere, Sylvie began to think, maybe Charles had had a point, loathe as she was to admit it. Her feet were growing sore, and she had no real patience anymore for increasingly drunken guys coming up to her, the last one even forcing her to retreat hastily out into the hallway, when he tried to embrace her from behind.

The light was dimmer out there, the chatter muted by walls and distance. She followed the huge ballroom round, until the far end of the hallway where the adjoining quarters lay in dim and quiet discretion. From inside the nearest room, a clock struck half past eleven, she only had to endure another half hour of (faint, now) dance music and cigarette smoke everywhere, champagne towers that never seemed to grow smaller and definitely didn’t end, a king’s display of his power, then she could leave – and hopefully also get to leave a message for Armand with one of the servants.

I’d have liked to kiss you properly tonight, but alas!

Sighing deeply, she hesitantly opened the door to the small room – which proved to be a sitting room, from what she could gauge in the dark – listening intently for love birds anywhere inside, but it was quiet as a tomb and chilly, too. Sylvie stepped over the threshold and quickly closed the door, locking it from the inside. Oh. A little bit of peace. Please! All of Marseille wasn’t as huge as the Dubois mansion, she was sure.

Walking slowly across the space of which she could see close to nothing, and she was trying not to bump into anything or fall, Sylvie made it to a windowsill, drawn curtains that she pulled aside, letting in the gentle moonlight that filtered through the clouds outside, falling onto the lawns, the house, her hands where she held the curtains, then let go. She turned around to admire the room but came to an abrupt stop.

In the opposite corner, a cigarette had lit up and was moving from hand to mouth, the figure smoking it mostly in shadow, all Sylvie could see was the long, shiny cigarette holder, a pair of feet in high-heeled shoes and shapely women’s legs until the hem of a dress cut them short. They looked ghostly.

Her heart was racing.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, “I didn’t know anyone was here.”

“Relax, chérie, it’s just good, old me,” a voice sounded, and the cigarette moved back on level with the woman’s lips, she inhaled it deeply through the tube, then blew a big cloud of smoke.

It was Eloisa Paolo.

While Claire had been excited at the prospect of Josephine Baker, Sylvie had no words for how thrilled she was that the Italian actress was at the event as well, invited, in attendance, sitting right here in front of her, beautiful. From the knees down, since that was everything she could make out of her, that and the burning tip of her cigarette. Finally, Sylvie could relax back against the jut of the windowsill digging into her backside.

“Mademoiselle Paolo,” she greeted her.

“Disappointed? Were you waiting for some guy?” The other woman sounded amused.

“No, not disappointed. Not at all.”

“You’re sweet, little Sylvie.”

Having mademoiselle Paolo use her name like that made her feel elated. She smiled widely and looked down, blushing. At the other end of the room, she could hear the actress get to her feet, and for a moment she was afraid she was going to leave, but instead she sauntered over, past the dark mahogany furniture and the pristinely polished silverware on the shelves, placing herself next to Sylvie, their hips almost touching, Sylvie with her back to the window, while mademoiselle Paolo was facing it. Looking out. Could she see Paris? Was Paris home to her?

Did she miss Italy, ever?

“Where has Charles disappeared off to?” mademoiselle Paolo wanted to know, while finding her cigarette cannister and pulling out one, holding it out towards Sylvie in offering. “Ciggy? Haven’t got any extra holders, alas. Your pretty lips must suffer the tobacco.”

Sylvie couldn’t say no. Automatically, she took the cigarette, caught it between her lips and leaned forward as mademoiselle Paolo lit the lighter, the flame casting both their faces in an amber hue. Eloisa’s red hair was aflame like that.

“Maybe the same way as the dinosaurs,” Sylvie replied. If nothing else, it meant neither of them was in the know with these things. Charles didn’t inform anyone, not his lover, not his little sister.

“I hope not,” the actress laughed. “He still needs to pay for my new automobile.”

“Automobile,” Sylvie repeated, stupidly. She didn’t understand.

In the faint moonlight filtering through the window, Eloisa Paolo turned towards her and blew smoke right into her open, welcoming face, smiling all the while, small, sharp, fond in some way Sylvie couldn’t categorise. Friendly? Not friendly. Certainly not friendly. Stubbing out the rest of her own ciggy right onto the windowsill, mademoiselle Paolo carefully placed her metal cigarette holder next to her, then put her hands on her own, feminine swing of hips and more or less draped herself against the small, horizontal surface. Posing. She looked like a Greek statue from the Louvre. Just like that. Aphrodite, not Botticelli’s, the original deal.

“We’re not those kinds of lovers,” Sylvie was told. Mademoiselle Paolo waved one hand, dismissively. “He buys me things, I pay him back, that’s it. No strings attached.”

A part of Sylvie was completely scandalised, it had the shrill ring of auntie Marguerite and Marceline, a concert of nagging for two voices; another was utterly fascinated, and she didn’t know which side to abide. In the end, she simply asked: “Does he know you feel that way?” Her voice was a breathless whisper.

“Who do you think suggested it? I’m not doing anything he doesn’t want or like, there are no benefits to that.”

“I didn’t know,” Sylvie said. She wasn’t sure what it was she didn’t know, but something was escaping her, or she was refusing to grasp it properly, either way. She didn’t know.

“Know what? That your brother was that kind of man, or that I am that kind of woman?” When she spoke like that, her Italian accent sounded much more pronounced and it was almost impossible not to be reminded of where she came from, although Sylvie had no honest clue where from Eloisa Paolo came, what her story was. She was curious, sure, but nothing was given and very little was hinted at. On stage, the actress spoke perfect French, and no one would know anything else about her but that.

Maybe that was what she wanted. Maybe this, the car and all, was what she wanted as well.

“I don’t know either of you well enough to judge,” Sylvie told her. It made Eloisa laugh, she threw back her head and laughed, raucously, like she’d done at that old party at Sylvie’s own house, hanging off Charles’s arm, almost kissing him but not really, not quite.

“You’re an odd one, huh?” It appeared to delight her. And for some reason, Sylvie wanted to delight her, it wasn’t any reason she understood this time either. “Charles’ ward,” mademoiselle Paolo proceeded to call her.

“Sylvie,” Sylvie corrected her, but it sounded like begging, please.

“Sylvie. All right, call me Eloisa,” the other woman said, pronouncing her name the Italian way and Sylvie couldn’t replicate that, she tried, and she failed, and she blushed and Eloisa stepped closer to her, right into her space and then, she looked down into Sylvie’s face, because she was taller by more than a few inches, she had to be able to reach Charles’ heights, after all, and she smiled. It was softer now. Like when Sylvie had complimented her on her play, the last time.

Carefully, Eloisa reached down and took Sylvie’s hand, plucking the cigarette from between her fingers and stubbing it out on the windowsill, next to her own little scorch mark, the metal tube that shone like silver in the moonlight and so, the stubs lay next to each other, like some sorry partners in crime after a grand theft.

Idly, Sylvie wondered if the actress was going to star in something else soon, whether she could get Charles to take her to see it, and if not Charles then Armand, but would it be wrong to bring Armand when she thought about the other woman’s lips drawing nearer, the lush red hue of them, the beautiful Cupid’s bow, accentuated, which would be such a pleasure to draw…

“Don’t slap me,” Eloisa said, her lips all but brushing over Sylvie’s lips. Then, she kissed her. It wasn’t a kiss like Sylvie’s first kiss with Armand, or the second or even like kissing Agnès at school, in their dormitory, alone. It was nothing like that. Eloisa’s lips were soft and slightly dry from smoke and just, the way the air dried your make-up as a par for the cause, shrivelling all of them right up. At the same time, her breath was hot and moist, and her tongue, when it pushed into her mouth, tasted like cigarettes and champagne and something wetter and darker, intimately her own. Sylvie’s hands scrambled for purchase, finding the front of the other woman’s dress, a black lace thing. She dug her fingers in, don’t go, it meant.

Not slapping you, it meant.

They kissed for a very long time, it felt like. When Eloisa eventually stepped back, righting her hair nonchalantly, arms elegant and seemingly untouched by the whole thing, Sylvie was shaking and licking her lips repeatedly, searching for the last sense of lipstick, pressure, wetness. She couldn’t breathe quite right. The air didn’t go down.

“Deep breaths, chérie,” Eloisa muttered, arms falling to her sides. Sylvie breathed.

“Do you kiss many girls who slap you?” she finally managed to squeeze out in a thin voice, weakly.

“You have no idea,” Eloisa said, laughing, her hoarse, shrill laughter. There was nothing in this world Sylvie wanted at that moment but to get the chance to kiss her again. She didn’t care what she didn’t know, she didn’t care what she didn’t understand, or even that her brother kissed that mouth, too. She just wanted to feel that rush all over. Everywhere.

“What kind of woman are you?” If not Charles’ lover, then what? What else could you be, if not a saint, a wife, a mother or a whore? Weren’t those the choices? The only options you had? Herself, she was neither of those things. Yet. Sylvie met the other woman’s eyes desperately, grasping for something she hadn’t known existed until five minutes ago. What was this want? What was it she wanted? Who?

She thought of The Faceless. Suddenly, it looked like a nightmare in her mind.

Behind them, the ornate grandfather clock struck twelve. And Sylvie was back to being Cinderella again. Eloisa saw it in her face.

“I guess home’s calling,” she murmured, stepping closer again and grabbing Sylvie gently by the shoulders, leaning in and kissing her temple, next to the silly dingle-dangle in her headband. Eloisa didn’t seem to mind it, though. “Topolina.”

It wasn’t the same nickname by which she’d called Charles at the theatre. Suddenly, Sylvie wanted to write her initials violently and possibly in blood all over it, claim it for herself for perpetuity. But Eloisa didn’t let her, she pushed her in the direction of the shadow-shrouded door to the hallway and tilted her head slightly to one side, when Sylvie looked back at her over one shoulder. When she had arrived, she’d thought her one proper kiss tonight would be with Armand. She hadn’t imagined this, but now she couldn’t imagine anything else. There were no other options left.

Except two, of course, to stay or to go.

“Shuffle along, now.” Eloisa gave a little wave, coquettish, before fishing out her cigarette canister once more, digging out another ciggy. Au revoir, she might as well have said.

Her stomach in knots, Sylvie knew exactly what au revoir meant and au revoir, she had learned, were the two single most dangerous words in the French language, because they could mean, see you, but they could also be more definitive than that and sometimes, you didn’t get to choose yourself, which it was.

When her parents had left for England, that was what they’d told her brother and her. To him, while we’re away, take good care of your sister, and to her, au revoir, chérie, be good until we see you again. In the end, that had proven to be a final goodbye.

So, down to one option, Sylvie spun around right in front of the locked door and said to Eloisa, “Please don’t disappear.”

Shaking her head, Eloisa refused even that. “Everyone does, little Sylvie. At some point,” she observed. Sylvie remembered. The dinosaurs, right? She smiled feebly and nodded a couple of times, turning around and unlocking the door. The fear was not a jolt to her system as much as an undercurrent of devastating sorrow. Leaving the room, somehow she could tell, she’d never be back, not here. She had a studio in this house, a model and a sweetheart, but this particular room? It would be shut to her forever.

Because this moment wouldn’t repeat itself, it wouldn’t come back. It couldn’t. Whatever followed was going to be new.

Even now, she was on her way somewhere. When she’d left Marseille, that was what she’d wanted for so long. Oh, horsefeathers!

What an awful feeling.