Animosity Page 10

  “Is that what he does?”

  “Flaubert didn’t say that when he saw a naked woman he thought of romance or of stardust or of the secrets of her soft places . . . he thought of her skeleton.”

  “I don’t know what to say about that.”

  “He doesn’t intuit a woman, he figures her out, like a mathematical problem.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “So here you are faced with this extraordinary young woman—with both of these extraordinary women—and you’ve already turned it into an analytical exercise. You’re going to figure them out, beginning with their bodies first. That’s what you see when you see a woman, a mathematical problem.”

  “Fine. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Wrong? It’s not a matter of wrong. The thing is, there is the woman you see, and then there is the woman you don’t see, la mujer al dentro, the woman within. This is the woman who keeps the secret of who she is. You have always concentrated on the woman you see, but it’s the woman you don’t see who holds the magic. Magic doesn’t make sense. Mathematics is not magic.”

  “Bullshit, Amado. And what do you see when you first look at a woman?”

  “I can assure you, when I first saw Céleste I did not think of her skeleton.”

  He suddenly didn’t want to hear Amado’s emotional—or visceral—responses upon first seeing Céleste.

  “What’s the point here?”

  Amado looked around, caught the eye of one of the waitresses across the patio, raised his empty bottle of Pacifico, and gestured that they both wanted another. Then he turned back to answer the question.

  “I’m only trying to say, really, that I think . . . your usual way of doing things with women is the wrong way of doing things with this woman.”

  Amado paused and nursed his cigar.

  Sometimes Ross lost his patience with Amado’s amorphous, intuitive approach to life, but he had to admit that he felt in his gut that Amado was right about Céleste. He also had to admit that for whatever reasons, and he really couldn’t put his finger on anything in particular, he didn’t want to talk about her anymore.

  “Let’s let it go, Amado,” he said.

  Amado gave him a deferential nod, studying him for a moment before he looked away to survey the crowd in the courtyard.

  Neither of them spoke for a little while as they waited on their drinks, which came shortly, brought by a young Mexican waitress with a face too thick, a lower jaw too heavy. She was fond of Amado and treated him with special respect, wiping up the little circle of condensation where his empty beer bottle had sat, putting his new sweating bottle on a square white napkin instead of the rustic blotter-board coasters, brushing away imaginary ashes and nonexistent crumbs from his side of the table. She emptied his ashtray, which held only a single, neat cylinder of ash. He thanked her with equal politeness and respect. He never spoke of her solicitous attention, nor once gave Ross a knowing wink or made light of the girl’s regard for him, nor did he ever flirt with her. Actually, both he and the waitress behaved with a rather grand gravity in light of what was—or wasn’t—passing between them.

  “Ross,” Amado said, and held up his bottle, reaching across the table. They chinked the necks of the bottles together as Amado said, “Salud,” and a kind of truce was settled between them.

  Amado studied him from behind his cigar. He had returned to his habitual, languid posture, the vantage point from which he most often regarded the world. He put on his best nonjudgmental face.

  “Well,” he said softly and with an air of melancholy, “this will be interesting.”

  • • •

  Ross lay in bed, the lights out, the sheets thrown back, a breeze floating across him. Nearby in the woods a little screech owl punctuated the night sounds with his gentle rising and falling quaver. He thought of Leda’s unexpected relish in posing nude for him. The sketching sessions would not be an ordeal for her, at least not in the ordinary sense. He thought of Céleste’s puzzling anxiety about the night they had spent together. What was she seeing in all of this that was causing her so much apprehension?

  Maybe there was something after all in Amado’s overdrawn observations about the way he understood women. What if he was lying here sleepless in the darkness, baffled by Céleste’s behavior, because in fact he had spent his life immersed in only the flesh and clay of women, never bothering to understand anything else? Was he really blind to everything except that which he could touch? He couldn’t believe it . . . but he was beginning to wonder.

  Chapter 16

  When Leda arrived the second morning she was carrying a pastry box from Kirchner’s Bakery on the river.

  “I thought we should start with some almond croissants,” she said snappily, plopping the box down on one of the workbenches.

  “Did they ask you if you were bringing them to me?” he said, coming over with his cup of coffee.

  “No, why?”

  “I’m their single greatest buyer of almond croissants.”

  “You’re kidding.” She dropped her purse on the modeling platform.

  He opened the box, which was still warm, and the yeasty odors rose to meet him. “God, I love these things.”

  “Any more of that?” she asked, nodding at his coffee.

  “Yeah, in the thermos back there.” He nodded toward the corner at the rear of the studio as he took one of the soft croissants from the box. “There are some cups on the shelf above it.”

  “Any of these cups are okay?” she called to him.

  “Sure. They’ll be dusty. Rinse them out.”

  “Oh,” she gasped. “They’re filthy.”

  He heard water running in the sink, and then after a minute she came back with a cup of coffee and got a warm croissant from the box, too. They sat on the platform, eating the cream-filled pastries.

  “Oh, this is heavenly,” she said through a mouthful of croissant. “How do you feel about it now, the morning after?”

  He looked at her.

  “The drawings,” she said. “They’ll be helpful?”

  “Oh, sure. It’s a good start.”

  “So what do we do today?”

  “Same thing. Over and over.”

  “And that’s the way it goes?”

  “That’s the way it goes.”

  “Good coffee, too,” she said. “In spite of the cup.”

  After they finished their croissants, they sat for a moment, sipping coffee. Leda had worn a loose shift that buttoned up the front, as had the dress the previous day. It was probably the easiest design for her to deal with. When they were ready to get started, he got his sketchbook and pencils while she went up on the platform, unbuttoned the shift, and slipped it off. This time there were no panties. The shift was all she’d worn.

  He began sketching, and they worked steadily for the better part of an hour as he circled around her. She became more adept at choosing poses that she could hold comfortably, and only occasionally did he need to ask her to move an arm or leg or shift her weight. It went very well, but he noticed that she tired easily in those positions in which she could not easily counterbalance the massive hump.

  Every model, professional or not, who poses without her clothes has her own particular way of making herself comfortable with being stared at intently. Some maintain total silence and lose themselves in a private inner world, others want music. Others need to talk. Leda quickly sensed and accommodated his preference for working in silence and found her own silent way to occupy her mind. He even thought that she, too, fell under the spell of the summer sounds that floated in through the windows, the inescapable drone of cicadas, the somnolent purl of mourning doves, and the loopy vocal flights of mockingbirds.

  But eventually Leda wanted to stop and smoke. And talk.

  “What do you think of Céleste?” she asked, reclining on the red damask-covered bed. He was learning that she wasn’t having trouble being naked at all. Once again, she was using her protuberant back as a prop. It was an od
d thing to see, as if he were visiting with a Minotaur at rest.

  “I think she surprised the hell out of me yesterday.” He was working on one of the sketches. He looked up. Leda was waiting with an expression of curious expectancy.

  “Really?” There was a brittle edge in her voice.

  “She told me who you were.”

  “She did?”

  “You didn’t know she was going to do that?”

  “No.”

  “What were you going to do, just keep it a secret?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “You two are full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  “At the rate we’re going we won’t be much longer,” she said testily.

  Céleste wasn’t the only sister who preferred to hide more than she revealed. God, they sure as hell shared that with Sylvie.

  “You didn’t answer my question about Céleste,” she said.

  “It’s a wide-open question.”

  “Oh, give it a go,” she said with mock goodwill.

  “I try to keep my opinions about people to myself.”

  “Do you really? Are you always successful?”

  “Generally.”

  Leda smoked. “She hasn’t had it easy, you know, these last few years.”

  “Her husband?”

  “Yes,” she said sourly. “Lacan.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “I have no idea. When Céleste ‘inherited’ me, she and Lacan were already through. She was leaving.”

  She stopped and smoked, regarding him with calculating eyes as if she were weighing the wisdom of going on. She seemed to assume that he already knew about Céleste’s guardianship.

  “I’ll bet you wonder why she puts up with it, don’t you?”

  “What, the bad marriage? Sure . . .”

  “No, not just the marriage.” Pause. “I’d be stupid if I didn’t think you’ve seen as much of her body as you’ve seen of mine.”

  He stopped fiddling with the sketch and looked at her.

  “This is something you want to talk about?” he asked, crossing his arms.

  “No. None of my business,” she said, shifting on the bed, “but don’t pretend you haven’t seen the bruises.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Yes, I thought so,” she said. “Well, that’s what I’m referring to . . . why she puts up with that.”

  He waited. Damn right he wondered, but he didn’t want to play this game with her. On the other hand, he did want to hear what she had to say.

  “You see,” Leda said, “I’m at a bit of a disadvantage here. You and Céleste have had a lot of time to talk. I imagine she’s told you a fair amount about me, hasn’t she?”

  “I’d bet a lot of money that it’s less than you think.”

  She laughed. It was a beautiful laugh, and her face was radiant in laughter.

  “Well, all right, then.” She put out her cigarette, and he thought she was ready to get back to the sketching. Instead she reached for another one and lighted it. “But she told you, I’m sure, about how Eva died and left this trust for her to oversee, dole out the money to me.”

  Once again he waited in silence, without confirming her assumptions. She smiled hugely at his reticence, and he had the feeling she found him amusingly predictable.

  “The truth is, Eva had gone through every cent of it when she died,” Leda said, her tone going bitter. “Every . . . cent . . . of . . . it.” She smoked, watching him. “Of course, she had failed to tell either of us that. So, she and her money exited together. As usual, her timing was impeccable. Céleste is ‘administering’ thin air. The only money she handles is an insultingly generous stipend that Lacan gives us.”

  “And that’s why she stays with him?”

  “Right.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “But”—Leda smiled cynically—“there’s more to it.” She arched a lovely dark eyebrow. “There’s always more to it, isn’t there?” Pause. “It’s not just a matter of . . . being ‘kept.’ When Céleste inherited me, she inherited . . . a few complications.”

  She sat up awkwardly on the side of the bed, as if her back were hurting her, though, too, as if it were something she was used to.

  “I’m going to need some operations,” she said. “Expensive ones. And I have ongoing medical expenses.” She tried to smile wryly, but it didn’t work very well. “I’m an expensive woman to keep. Monsieur Lacan most graciously agreed to absorb all the medical bills, and provide us with an allowance. Most graciously.”

  “In exchange for . . .”

  “Yes. And then he developed this . . . this aberrant taste. . . .” She stopped. Silence. She stared into space, preoccupied.

  He waited, watching her, and she remained that way for so long that it began to seem like truly strange behavior. Minutes passed. The sounds from outside drifted into the studio, and she remained fixed. He was tantalized by this sudden and complete catatonia, and then a sense of discomfort gripped him as he began to fear that her immobility really was a kind of genuine paralysis, a peculiar sort of seizure.

  Just as he was about to say something, she sighed smoothly and slowly and stirred, seeming to recover in increments, and stood wearily.

  “Well,” she said hoarsely, “gaze at me some more, Mr. Marteau. Feast your eyes.”

  Leda had related her sordid story about Céleste and Lacan with an effortless mien that gave the horrible story a creepy aftertaste. The more he thought about it, the more awful it became.

  Before they could get started, the telephone rang. The remainder of the partial shipment of limestone blocks that had been delivered two days before was at the front gate. They wanted to know where to unload the stones.

  “This is going to take at least half an hour,” he told Leda, who was sitting naked on the daybed. “You might as well get dressed. We’ve done enough, anyway.”

  “One thing,” she said from the bed, stopping him as he started out of the studio. “I’m always saying more than I should. I’m much more impetuous than Céleste, as you must have noticed. What I told you a while ago, well, she would consider that way out of line. She would be horribly ashamed to know that you knew about it.”

  She looked at him from the bed, a kind of sibyl, as strange as the mythic Sphinx herself.

  “Don’t let her know I’ve told you. If you want to talk to her about it, it’s none of my business. But don’t bring me into it.” Pause. “And, please, be clever about it.”

  This last was said with a tone of condescension that seemed almost impertinent. Leda, he was learning, was quite capable of that and never suffered any pangs of conscience about it, either. It said a lot about her and about the kind of life she had had. It said a lot, but it didn’t say nearly enough. His growing curiosity about the two sisters was gradually shouldering aside his concentration on the Beach commission.

  “I won’t say anything,” he said, and turned and walked out of the studio, leaving her alone on the bed.

  He walked through the woods to the house and then up the drive to the gates. He told the driver that he wanted to check the load before he maneuvered his truck all the way to the back of the property, and he climbed up on the side rails and looked in. The blocks were the wrong size. The blocks he ordered were an odd size, and the yard foremen at the quarry were always trying to send him a near size that was also a common size used for building construction.

  Frustrated, the driver climbed out, and they measured the blocks. The mistake confirmed, the driver climbed back into the truck, radioed the quarry, and had an argument with the yard foreman. Then in disgust he slammed the truck in gear and pulled out onto Las Lomitas and headed down the hill again. Ross started back to the studio.

  He took a shortcut through the woods and came up on the studio from the side of the kiln rather than from the path that led to the front of the studio from the house. As he passed the front of the kiln, his eye caught the unmistakable flash of a mirror’s reflection on t
he deep sill of one of the tall windows.

  Recognizing the flash for what it was, he instinctively slowed his pace. Mirrors? The flash had been too big to have come from a hand mirror that Leda might have kept in her purse. The only mirror in the studio was in the bathroom . . . and, yes, there were two old full-length mirrors on rickety wooden stands next to the back wall of the studio, not too far from the rear of the modeling stand.

  He impulsively gave in to an adolescent curiosity to spy on her. He crossed in front of the building and went to the windows opposite the side where he saw the reflection. He knew which window he could look into without being seen from the position of the mirrors.

  Feeling every bit as foolish as he would have appeared if he’d been caught, he nevertheless gave in to curiosity and carefully approached the open windows.

  Leda was not difficult to find in the dim interior. She had angled the two mirrors so that one of them picked up the sunlight from a nearby window and threw a spotlight of hyperbrilliance onto her still-naked body, causing her to stand out in the dim interior of the studio as if she were caught by lasers. She had positioned the mirrors so that she could see her reflection in both panels at once, one presenting her front, one her back. Though her reflection was bright, she saw herself through a chalky, speckled haze of grime and dust that covered the long-neglected mirrors.

  She stood in front of herself, motionless, her eyes moving over the beautiful and strange terrain of her body as if she were studying a map of fascinating interest. She was intent and serene, much as she had been earlier during her catatonic episode. But he was sure that he and she were not seeing the same images in those reflections.

  After a few moments of this singular concentration, she raised her arms and reached straight back and gripped the hump on her back with both hands. She held it with spread fingers, and he could see the pressure she was applying to her back as her fingers bent and buckled with the effort, becoming angular claws.

  Just as he thought she was about to bury her fingernails into her own flesh, she released herself with an upward jerk of her arms, which she then held high over her head, hands stretched upward, out of the laser light and into the shadows so that she appeared truncated, her arms missing above her elbows. She studied herself.