Feral

by Julia Gabriel

  Richard wasn't comfortable in his own skin. He'd been a captain in the Marines and was now a junior representative in the House, and yet there was always that striving to impress. Marie doubted that Luc Marchand spent much time trying to impress people.

  He was holding up a bottle of red wine. Marie frowned. At ten in the morning?

  "Oh right," he said. "Too early for an American. Coffee, then?"

  He set about grinding and measuring and filling the coffee maker. There was a graceful economy to his movements, she noted, a purposefulness to each step and turn. He didn't seem like the kind of person who would go into a room and then forget what he came in for. Marie did that all the time, as though her days were constantly rebooting.

  "Come. Sit." He gestured toward a small metal cafe table surrounded by those grey metal bistro chairs that had suddenly become all the rage. He flipped a chair around and straddled it, then leaned his chin on the chair back. "We won't do much drawing today. We need to get to know each other a bit first. I need to know you so I can teach you properly, and you need to know me so you can learn."

  Marie took a seat on the opposite side of the table. He was maybe a little too pale, she decided, like he spent too much time inside. And he had a small scar on his forehead.

  "I fell out of a tree when I was eleven. My brother pushed me." Luc got back up to pour their coffees. "I'm French, remember?" he said with a smile when he returned. "So. Your friends signed you up for private drawing lessons. Pretty nice friends. I'm not cheap."

  "How expensive is not cheap?" She began to worry about the money Nishi had been spending on her. The divorce hadn't left her destitute—Richard couldn't afford to be seen fighting over money—but none of her friends were rolling in dough, either. Living in the DC area was expensive.

  Luc waved off the question. "Have you taken drawing lessons before?"

  "In school. I minored in studio art."

  "Minored?" His voice oozed contempt for the very idea.

  She shrugged. "My parents were paying the tuition. I couldn't be something so flighty as an art major."

  He nodded, as if that made sense to him. Marie wasn't sure how it would. "Where did you go to school?"

  "Yale."

  He lifted an eyebrow, tilted his head down slightly, impressed. "You must have been a good student."

  Marie shrugged again. "I was. Not that it mattered. My father was a senator at the time. I had my pick of schools."

  "And he's not a senator now?"

  "Lobbyist. No one ever goes back home after they leave Congress." She spit out a sharp laugh. "It would have taken wild horses to drag my mother back to Indiana."

  "And your mother? What does she do?"

  "She runs a foundation that dabbles in good works in Africa."

  "Your parents blame you for the divorce, eh?"

  Marie looked around at the studio, considering how—or whether—to answer that question. The studio looked like most of her professors' studios had. Messy. Canvases in various stages of completion, or inspiration, stood around the room. One particularly tall canvas held the rough outlines of a life-sized woman's head and torso, arms and shoulders. She looked like some spectral creature in the process of materializing. Or disappearing. Marie couldn't tell which.

  "Do you really need to know that in order to teach someone how to draw?" she asked, unable to keep a note of irritation out of her otherwise normally soft-spoken voice.

  "Your parents blame you for the divorce, eh?" he repeated.

  Marie sighed. "I get it. You're French. Yes. My parents blame me for the divorce. They arranged the marriage so, of course, they're bent out of shape that I couldn't just suck it up and keep going."

  "That seems rather old-fashioned, these days. Marrying someone your parents choose?"

  "It was a political alliance. My father needed better military connections and my husband's family is practically military royalty."

  "You couldn't just say no?"

  He regarded her intently, his eyes no longer sparkling with suppressed mirth. Marie looked away, choosing instead to glare at the work table in front of the studio's large back window. Brushes and rags littered the tabletop. Beneath the table the wooden floor was dusty and stippled with autumn light. It was all too ... Vermeer.

  "I thought we would love each other, eventually. I thought wrong." She drained her cup of the remaining coffee, now cold. Luc got up to pour more. "So how did you end up in Middleburg? Not the artistic center of the universe, exactly."

  Luc refilled her mug. Wisps of steam floated up from the hot coffee. He didn't answer her question.

  "I need to know you too, right? So I can learn from you? Isn't that what you said?" Marie prodded.

  "New York is too noisy for me. And distracting."

  "Paris is too noisy, as well? I hear Provence can be nice and quiet." She was working up a good head of indignation, her well of patience with arrogant French artists all of a sudden run dry. She'd come here for drawing lessons. How complicated could that be? Her divorce present was not supposed to involve talking about her actual divorce.

  "My grandfather was a very well-known artist in France. I came to the states to get away from his rather long shadow."

  "Ah." Marie returned his glare. So he was in the same familial vise that she was. "But why Virginia? So not New York, but that still leaves forty-eight other states. And the District of Columbia."

  "I was seeing a woman who taught art history at UVa. I liked the area, so I stayed."

  She glanced over at the materializing/disappearing woman on the tall canvas, wondering if that was Luc Marchand's ex, then stretched out her fingers before wrapping them around her cooling coffee mug.

  "You want to get to drawing, don't you?" Luc asked.

  "That's what I'm here for, isn't it?"

  "Is it? It's why your friends sent you here. But why are you here?"

  "I'm here because I want to begin drawing again."

  "If you were really passionate about it, you would never have quit."

  Marie flicked a hand through the air, conceding the point. "Do you only take on passionate students?"

  Luc Marchand flipped his chair around so he could lean back, away from the table. He crossed his arms across his chest as he studied her face. Marie dropped her eyes to stare at the paint rag tied around his neck instead. At least the paint rag wasn't staring darkly at her.

  "I prefer to, yes," he admitted at long last. "I'll grant you an exemption there, however. But I still need to know whether this is something you want, or whether you're just here because your friends paid for your lessons."

  "Most people don't care, as long as they get paid."

  "But I do care, Marie. I don't teach for the money. I don't need the money, particularly. So I don't want to invest the time in someone who doesn't know why she's here." He tilted his chair back and up off the front two legs. "Would you be here if your friends hadn't paid for your lessons?

  Marie was stuck. The answer, of course, was no. The simple truth was that, even though she wasn't strapped for cash yet, drawing lessons—or any kind of lessons, for that matter—were a frivolity she wouldn't have indulged. The harder truth was that no, she hadn't even thought about picking up a charcoal pencil or brush in years. The idea had not been on her radar until Nishi and her friends had presented her with it.

  But now that it was on her radar, yes, she did want to take drawing lessons. She just couldn't say why. It was something she felt, not something she knew.

  Outside, a gust of wind swept up a small pile of leaves and twigs into a sudden, cyclone, a swirl of red and orange and yellow. Just as quickly, the wind lost its gumption and released them. Marie and Luc watched, together, as leaves hit the studio's large picture window and then were quickly whooshed away.

  She could have been drawing. Or painting or knitting or quilting or cooking or something. Anything. All those nights Richard had worked late at the Pentagon or spent the weekend going from one campaign fundraiser
to the next, she could have been doing something more constructive than emailing her mother or surfing the web or shopping. She'd been going through the motions, living the life she was given. It hadn't occurred to her to do otherwise. She couldn't say why.

  "So Marie?" Luc said. "No reason? No reason why you want to take up drawing again?"

  Marie remained silent.

  "You have to go, then. I don't teach people who don't know why they want to learn. When you have a good reason for taking up my time, return."

  Outside, Marie slammed the car door shut, narrowly missing her own ankle. Well, that went well. She hoped Nishi could get her money back. Was he being serious when he said he only taught people who know why they want to learn? Or had she just pissed him off by making him admit that certain aspects of his own life—where he lived, no small aspect that—were governed by his family, just like hers was?

  As she drove off, a hard knot of irritation bounced up and down in her chest. Luc Marchand had wasted a perfectly good morning for her. But at the same time, she felt an alertness, an edge to her senses, that she hadn't felt in years.

  About Julia Gabriel

  Julia Gabriel is the author of the romantic short stories "Feral" and "Drawing Lessons," as well as the forthcoming novel, Muse. In addition to romance, her literary short stories have been published in literary journals and an anthology. She holds a master's degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University.

  Visit Julia Gabriel's web site at http://www.authorjuliagabriel.com to learn about upcoming releases. Follow Julia Gabriel on Twitter at authorjulia.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  An excerpt from the forthcoming novella,

  About the author