Anio Szado (28 page)

There: a slight smirk. Madame could hardly wait to get into the ring with me.

I said, “I came in after you left. In fact, I was here almost the entire night.”

“You expect me to feel sorry for you?”

“No, but thanks for offering.”

“I warned you, Mignonne. I was very clear.”

“I don’t mind putting in the extra hours. That’s how one learns: by making the time to try something new. Did you learn anything new yesterday? I noticed you played with the white chiffon.”

“This is not a joke.”

“I agree, Madame. You’ve taught me an important lesson with your shears.”

“That was my intention.” Madame waited, her expression tight as wire, until it became clear that I was not about to continue. “You have learned what?”

“That sometimes the only way forward is through destruction.”

She slammed a hand on her desk. “The way forward is through discipline and self-control.”

“I guess I’ll have to learn that one some other time.”

In the evening, Yannick came to the apartment and Leo let him in. When I walked out of the bedroom wearing the white silk dress, Yannick removed his hat. “Holy Toledo. I’ll be the envy of every man at Le Pavillon.”

Leo faked a dramatic stagger. Hand on his chest, he stumbled backward until he banged into a wall. “Jesus, Miggy! Will you put something on? You make Ready Hedy look like she’s wearing a barracks bag.”

A wide grin had spread across Yannick’s face. “Leo, my friend, your sister would upstage even Rita Hayworth in that dress.”

The dress I had built was a series of bands salvaged from the remains of what Madame had wrecked. I had snipped clean and rolled under the uneven edges, sewn swatches together into ribbons, combined ribbons into rivulets that wanted to curve and flow. I had studied how the long swaths could twist and move
like water around stones. I had stood in the studio wrapping my body, testing the lie of the fabric on my breasts, across my belly and my hips. I had passed panels of silk over and under each other, trusting the fabric and my eye—drawing strength from my year of learning to make do in Montreal, thankful for lessons of resourcefulness.

The dress left my arms and shoulders bare, save for a rope of fabric that came curving down from my nape and bisected my collarbones before spreading open to sheathe my breasts. All down my midsection, horizontal bands drew in from each side and met in the center, where they linked together and bent back upon themselves, wrapping my rib cage in separate, softly pleating planes that left spaces between them where my torso was exposed. The skirt portion, spared injustice as it had hung stretching in a dark corner of the studio, draped straight down from my hips. It broke gently in an elegant wave where the fabric met the floor.

The long corridor of tables down the center of Le Pavillon was reserved for truly prominent guests—a couple of whom I recognized from the newspaper, and one legendary diva from the opera. Heads turned as Yannick took me past them to a table that had a banquette seat along one side and chairs on the other. I settled into the banquette and Yannick fidgeted in a chair, turning this way and that to watch the goings-on in his restaurant.

Bernard’s murals surrounded us on the walls. They made it seem as though we had gathered to dine alfresco at a French seaside town. Sunshine danced on water. Seabirds perched on dock piles and sailed through blue skies. Their depth and perspective made Le Pavillon feel larger and more open than it had when I’d last been here. Good for Yannick for seeing what could be achieved through the use of artistic
trompe l’oeil
.

But even as the murals were bright and sunny, they were also
slightly and inexplicably sad. I wondered whether Bernard, like Antoine, missed his homeland. Maybe he, too, was planning to go back.

At the front of the restaurant, the maître d’ greeted Antoine and Consuelo and began leading them to our table. Antoine stopped several times to shake hands with this or that patron, while Consuelo either sidled up to or stood stiffly behind him.

As they neared, Consuelo was chastising her husband in a low, rapid voice. “Can’t we go out without running into one of your girlfriends? It’s like walking through a hallway in hell. No wonder you never—”

“Consuelo!” interjected Yannick. He took both her hands in his. “My God, you look stunning tonight!”

Her scowl fell away. She glowed as Yannick kissed her cheeks. I shook her hand while Yannick greeted Antoine.

Consuelo said, “Such a strong grip for a willowy girl.”

I loosened my hold, but Consuelo’s hand lingered.

“Your dress, Mignonne.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s terribly alluring. Move over.”

She slipped in beside me on the banquette. The two men were already talking. Antoine had not even looked at me. He was usually unfailingly polite, I thought; how livid he must be.

As the waiter was taking our drinks order, I slid my foot over and tapped Yannick’s ankle. When he looked at me, I indicated Antoine with a tiny tilt of my head.

“Saint-Ex,” said Yannick as the waiter left, “I am monopolizing you. I haven’t even given you a chance to say hello to my niece.”

Antoine turned mechanically. As his gaze fell on me, some sort of disjuncture—a disturbance or a thrill—rippled through his expression. His Adam’s apple bobbed. His gaze slipped down the front of my dress, descending the triangles and diamonds of my bare skin between the bands of silk.

He said coolly, “Please excuse my lapse of manners. You have been well? Consuelo tells me that your work with Madame Fiche is progressing smoothly.”

“Madame has been generous. She gave me this special silk, which is impossible to come by these days.”

To any other observer, Antoine might have looked angry, his eyes intense and his nostrils flaring. But his lips opened as he inhaled, and I saw that he was remembering the intimacy with which he had moved the fabric—and me.

Consuelo took note of the effect Mignonne’s dress had on the restaurant’s patrons. Fashion at its best was the most subtle and complicated of aphrodisiacs, and the girl had a witch’s instinct for the nuances of desire. Of course, every young flirt knew that dominance lay not in the ability to give people what they want but in making them want—but few knew how to govern their own power. Consuelo had known from a prepubescent age, and had perfected it over three decades. Now it was all she had. And Mignonne was besting her; Consuelo was on the other side. The girl’s flawless skin half sheathed, her expression both dewy and determined, her blood pulsing too quickly where the fabric touched her neck: it all took the air from Consuelo’s lungs.

These fleeting flecks of girl-lust that pricked like shards weren’t the same as Consuelo’s love for men. She didn’t care if she never touched a woman’s breast. She would hardly care if she never again consummated the sexual act with anyone.

But she would be wanted as Mignonne was at this moment wanted. To be wanted was everything. To make oneself wanted by those who think they are in control: this was ecstasy itself.

She reached over to feel the weight and texture of the silk. Tonio was watching surreptitiously as her fingers slid along Mignonne’s collarbone and into the gap between the fabric and her skin.

She thought, He envies me my liberty. Even as he turns away, he finds it necessary to demand of himself that he mask his emotions and become stone. And the girl is no different—staring
blankly around the room, crossing her legs and swinging a foot as though oblivious to the tornado of desire that swirls around her. Damn her.

Consuelo reminded herself to relax her face. It was unflattering to grit the teeth; it made the jawline uneven.

She could never have imagined a dress such as Mignonne wore now. She would not even have been able to commission it; she didn’t have the vocabulary. Decades of mastering the politics of want, years of wielding clay, a lifetime of getting what she desired, of making miracles out of mud and a countess of a country girl, and Consuelo was reduced to this: child’s words.

“I want it. Make me one.”

A commission from Consuelo! Madame would be impressed; the rent would be paid; everything would be fine. I tried to keep my voice nonchalant. “Of course. When can you come to the studio again?”

“Christ. What’s wrong with Véra Fiche, that she doesn’t have a salon?”

“She had one before,” I fibbed. I had practiced my tale. “It was the parlor of her ex-fiancé’s apartment. He was an art dealer. Apparently he had a bit of everything, from the Pre-Raphaelites to Dalì.”

“It’s true that the right apartment could make a very good salon.”

“I’ve heard that Valentina holds shows in her own parlor, very in demand.”

A waiter came to take our food order. I chose
madrilène en gelée
—a cold clear soup—to start, and a lobster entree.

“Tonio.” Consuelo reached across the table to tug on her husband’s cuff. “I have too much space in my apartment. You know I rattle around in it.”

He groaned. “Not here. Not now.”

“But it’s just occurred to me: Atelier Fiche needs a salon, and my parlor is the perfect setting.” She tugged again. “Are you listening? I want to make my sitting room into a fashion salon. It will be marvelous! Ladies will beg to be invited.”

Antoine pulled his hand away to rub his eyes.

“Tonio? You’re always so busy, and I’m lonely without you. I could use the company of a few creative girls.”

Anticipation was taut in every muscle of my face. Did Antoine realize what it would mean if we could use Consuelo’s apartment? Madame Fiche would go there regularly, and he and I would have the studio to ourselves more often. It would be a chance to lift Atelier Fiche and my career off the ground. No doubt I would be made a partner for such a feat.

Consuelo said, “Darling? May I invite Véra and Mignonne to use my parlor? It will be so much fun.”

Antoine refused to glance at me. He said, “You never tire of coming up with new tricks.” Then he turned his chair toward Yannick. “How is the restaurant business these days? There appears to be no shortage of the ingredients for
haute cuisine
.”

We had finished dessert by the time Consuelo finally excused herself to powder her nose. I glowered at Antoine. “Why can’t you let Consuelo share her apartment?”

“She doesn’t want to share it, she wants to give it away and move in with me. Should I stop writing to allow you and Consuelo to make your names in fashion?”

Yannick said, “One can’t compare the value of one art form to another. There isn’t a hierarchy.”

“Tell that to him,” I snapped. “His writing brings him respect everywhere on earth. As it should. But that doesn’t change the fact that I work just as hard at my art.”

Antoine said, “I have never suggested you don’t work hard.”

“Making it in fashion isn’t like finding a publisher who will print and promote your words. You can look down your nose because I have to beg, borrow, or steal what Madame and I need to survive, but you’d be doing the same thing if you had to go and find a buyer for every copy of your books.”

“You think I would borrow? Steal? A publisher does not make words appear in my manuscript. Why do you think I need to live as I do? You see what it does to me. I haven’t written in days. It kills me not to write, yet writing is agonizing.”

“All artists suffer for their art,” began Yannick.

“I’ve watched you write.” I met Antoine’s eye and felt my
anger begin to drain. Images were pervading my head: his pen clipping across his notebook; words rolling across the page like stones kicked along a path; rock walls slashed to nothing with a hard stroke of his hand. The memories filled me with a hunger I couldn’t explain. I could feel the silk of my dress straining against my rib cage and my breasts. “It isn’t agony. It’s power and compulsion. It’s passion.”

Yannick picked up his wineglass, pushed back his chair, and walked off.

“It’s like a tide rises in you and a fire burns above your head. You go somewhere.” In that moment, with all my being, I wanted to be with him there. My throat was growing hot and sore. Consuelo was approaching. “Come to the studio tonight. Come write. Read to me. You’ll feel better. We both will. Please.”