Anaïs was sitting on the landing, bent low so she could peer just under the archway and view the double portrait from a distance. How long has she been studying it? I wondered. Her face was angular, spiteful, but the eyes were practically hanging, bagged. Would she suddenly bound down the stairs and rip the canvas off the wall and try to destroy it? I crossed the room, climbed the stairs, stopping on the last step before the landing, and waited for her to acknowledge me.
“Is there anything else I should know?” she said.
“I would do it all over again.”
Her eyes dropped onto me, a whiff of loathing behind shattered glass. The corners of her mouth were pulled down.
“Even after what has happened to us, would you still choose me?”
Her head tilted to one side, letting the ceiling lights enhance her blackened eyes.
I eased onto the landing, kneeled and kissed her, my answer.
She bit my lip hard. “No, you wouldn’t,” she retorted.
I pulled away but she wrapped her arms and legs around me, an anchor. Her mouth nuzzled my ear and her grip tightened.
“I should hate you,” she hissed in my ear.
Tasting blood on my tongue, I waited. Nothing more, the rest was implied, her warm breath in my ear.
I could feel a mass of eyes from below, turning and setting on us. Their voices dimmed, decibel by decibel. The last sounds were dying out when she gestured toward the double portrait.
“You should put our names on it.”
I came nose to nose with her. Searched her expression to make sure I’d heard her correctly. No trace of apprehension in those eyes, impassioned now. The first muse in history to insist on coauthorship with not only the artist but also a fellow muse, her mother.
She had a point. We’d all made that painting together.
Her finger wiped a drop of blood off my lip, held it up like ink on the tip of a fountain pen. “Woods . . . Blanchon . . . Blanchon . . .” she said, drawing our names in the air. One side of her mouth curved into a funny grin and I knew what our next great painting would be.
French Girl with Mother Page 20
