The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

by Melissa Jensen

  “Oh, Fiorella.”

  I glared at him a little as I climbed down. “Was that delightful list for your benefit or mine?”

  Frankie grabbed my hand and, when I didn’t pull away fast enough, tugged me onto his lap, where he wrapped his arms so tightly around me that I couldn’t escape. Sometimes his strength still surprises me. He tickled my cheek with his nose. “Don’t hate me just because I’m hateful.”

  “I never do.”

  Here’s the thing. Frankie’s taken a lot of hits in his life. He never stays down for long.

  “Excuse me!” The mannequin’s evil twin was glaring down at us from her sky-high bootie-heeled heights. Her NM badge told us her name was Victoria. “You cannot do that here!” she snapped.

  “Do what?” Frankie returned, matching lockjaw snooty for lockjaw snooty.

  She opened and closed her mouth, then hissed, “Canoodle!”

  I felt Frankie’s hiccup of amusement. “Were we canoodling, snookums?” he asked me. “I rather thought we were about to copulate like bunnies.”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed out loud. Victoria’s mouth thinned into a pale line. The whole thing might have ended with our being escorted out the store’s hallowed doors by security. Sadie, as she so often did, momentarily saved us from ourselves.

  She stomped out of the dressing room and planted herself in front of us. Ignoring the angry salesgirl completely, she muttered, “I look like a carved pumpkin!”

  Frankie took in the skirt, layered shirts, and jacket. “You do not, but I might have been having an overly Michael Kors moment. This will not do for a date. Take it off.” He nudged me, then added, “Right here. Every last stitch of it.”

  As soon as Sadie was back in her own clothing and coat—which got an unwilling frown of respect from Victoria; apparently even Neiman Marcus doesn’t carry that line—we moved on. Sadie did better in Frankie’s second choice, a lip-printed sweater dress from Betsey Johnson, but wouldn’t buy it.

  “We’re just going to a movie!” she protested. “Besides, Jared’s not . . . not . . .” She gestured down at her lippy hips. “He’s practical and sensible and quiet.”

  “Oh, my God!” Frankie slapped both palms to the side of his face, and turned to me. “Sadie has a date with a Prius!”

  He had to invoke the sanctity of Truth or Dare before he could even get her into Urban Outfitters. “Sometimes I love you less than other times,” she grumbled as he filled her arms with his last choices.

  “No, you don’t,” he said cheerfully, and sent her off to change.

  He shepherded me across the store and into the sweater section. He held up a white henley that looked tiny even for me.

  “No,” I said.

  The next one was a little black cardigan with fifties bombshell beading.

  “Absolutely not.”

  He snorted but moved on. A second later, he pounced, grinning, on a narrow turtleneck with blue and white stripes. “Marino . . .”

  “No.”

  “Why?” he demanded, surprised. “It is exactly what every girl in Paris is wearing right now, if she’s not wearing the exact same one”—he pointed at my chest—“in black. It is absolutely made for you. So again I ask, why?”

  “Because . . .” It is exactly what every girl in Paris is wearing right now, and I don’t need reminding that I am not that kind of girl. “I am broke, and it’s—”

  “Forty percent off. Come on, Ella, it’s a sign.”

  “Yeah. ‘Stop.’” I took the sweater from his hands and folded it neatly into thirds. “Truth or Truth?”

  He propped a hip on the edge of the display table. “Shoot.”

  “Who are you dressing me for? I mean, really? The three nonrelated men playing any part whatsoever in my life right now are, and I will use your terms here, the spawn of Society Hell, dead as the spat, and queer as a football bat.”

  “Very poetic.”

  “Bite me.”

  “Wrong man,” Frankie drawled. “That would be the inclination of the hell spawn.”

  I bared my teeth. “So, who, Frankie? Who is this for?” I waved the sweater. “I just don’t get it.”

  “I know, Grasshopper,” he said sadly. “I know.”

  I blinked at him. “Where—” That’s as far as I got. Sadie had come out of the dressing room. She was wearing narrow jeans, a faintly metallic tank, and a guy-styled sweater. She still looked like Sadie, only the magazine version.

  “Oh, Sades!” I nearly dislocated my thumbs, I was so enthusiastic in upping them. “You look incredible.”

  “Hey,” she squeaked as Frankie reached down the back of the sweater. “Hey!” He’d ripped the tag off its little plastic string. “I’m not buying—”

  “Yes, you are. Or I am. All of it.”

  “You don’t have any money,” Sadie reminded him, suddenly looking much more like old Sadie: worried and a little guilty.

  “Very little,” he agreed. “Now go get your bag and clothes from the dressing room. She’ll wear the new ones,” he told the guy behind the counter. Then, to Sadie again, “Do you want to fish out the other tags, or should I?”

  She disappeared again. The salesclerk smiled at me expectantly. “Will that be cash or charge?” he asked.

  I looked down at my hands. I was still holding the stripy turtleneck. “Cash, I guess.” Beside me, Frankie gave a smug little grunt. “We can live without you, I know,” I told him.

  “Of course you can. But why would you? I am here for youse, Marino, forevah and evah.”

  Half an hour and a pair of Frye boots later, Sadie eyed the food court options. “I think I’ll do sushi.”

  Frankie and I had decided to split a meatball hoagie. It wouldn’t be my dad’s, but it was safe. There was something about the shopping mall/raw fish combo that just seemed wrong.

  “Sadie,” I began, but didn’t have the heart.

  Frankie did. “A hoagie it is.” When she protested, he gave her the reptile eye. “Ever hear of salmonella? And I don’t mean the dish Ella’s uncle named in her honor.”

  We think that might have been what killed Ricky’s Top Chef chances last year. Too bad. Disastrous name aside, it had actually been pretty good.

  Frankie bought us an extra order of french fries.

  • • •

  “Okay, three things, and one of them has to be in French.”

  I was back in the weird squashy chair; Alex was flopped on the bed. This time, along with the lemon soda, there were two bags of Doritos on the floor between us. He’d had one waiting. I’d brought one.

  “I don’t think this is what Mademoiselle Winslow had in mind,” I told him.

  Truth: Despite all my good intentions to keep Frankie happy and my hopes down, I’d been looking forward to this all week, hoping Alex wouldn’t forget. I’d thought up and rethought clever things I could say.

  Further Truth: I didn’t want to sound like I’d been looking forward to it all week and thinking up what I wanted to say.

  Home truth: Yes, I am that pitiful.

  “Winslow wants you to learn this”—he waved a few sheets of stapled pages—“and that.” He pointed to the book in my lap. Fifty French Conversations. It was one of our textbooks. I’d stopped at the seventeenth: Mon hamster a mangé trop de fromage. Il a mal au ventre maintenant. “The rest is the Bainbridge Method.”

  “You have a method?”

  “Patented and proven.”

  I waved the book. “Does it include greedy, cheese-guzzling hamsters with stomachaches?”

  He nodded. “Absolutely. French conversation is nothing without rodents and cheese. Is there something shameful in your past involving either?”

  “Not that I can think of off the top of my head.”

  “Tant pis.”

  “And that means . . . ?”

  “Fuhgeddaboudit,” he translated, grinning.

  I sighed. “Do people make Russian jokes in your presence?”

  “How do you get five Ru
ssians to agree on anything?”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Shoot four of them.”

  I thought for a sec. “I’m not sure that’s funny.”

  “No,” Alex said. “People don’t tell many Russian jokes in my presence.”

  “I should start my three things list, huh?”

  “Yeah. That would be good.”

  I did some speedy translating in my head. “Je n’ai jamais lu Huckleberry Finn, Beloved, ou Moby-Dick.”

  “Ella, no one has read Moby-Dick. The French was passable, but as far as revelations go, that sucked.”

  “Ah, but there’s a part deux. All three of those books were required reading last year in my American lit class. I used SparkNotes.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “See?” I daintily brushed Dorito crumbs from my fingertips. “Changes your perception of me, doesn’t it?”

  “No, I meant, ‘That’s a revelation?’ You can do better that that.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed, “but it’s still early in the game.” His room had two dormer windows and a skylight. I must have been facing west, because he was haloed by the late-afternoon sun. It made his hair glow like real bronze and shadowed his features. That made everything easier somehow. “Two: Anna Lombardi and I used to be pretty good friends before we got to Willing and suddenly weren’t.”

  I said it quickly, evenly. Not a plea for sympathy, just an explanation, a truth.

  “Nous avons été amies,” I added. “There, that’s two in French, and using past perfect, no less.”

  I couldn’t see his expression clearly. It felt like a long time before he said anything. “Ella . . .” He paused, then, “What happened? Between you and Anna?”

  “Other than the fact that I’m a fashion-impaired poor kid who draws doorknobs? Haven’t a clue.”

  Alex leaned forward. Now I could see his face. He looked annoyed. “Why do you do that? Diminish yourself?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Bullshit.”

  I could feel my cheeks flaming, feel my shoulders curving inward. “I don’t—”

  “Right. Don’t. Just don’t, with me, anyway. I like you better feisty.”

  I couldn’t help it; that made me smile. “Did you really just say ‘feisty’?”

  “I did. It’s a good word.”

  “It’s an old word, favored by granddads and pirates.”

  “Yar,” Alex sighed.

  “Face it. You’re just an old-fashioned guy.”

  “Whatever. Three . . . ?”

  “Three,” I said, and changed my mind midthought. “I haven’t been able to decide if Willing is the second best thing that ever happened to me, or the second worst.”

  “What are the firsts?”

  “Nope. Uh-uh. It is not for you to ask, Alexander Bainbridge, but to reveal.”

  He drained his glass and rolled it back and forth between his hands. “I had all these funny admissions planned, but you’ve screwed up my plans. Hey. Don’t go all wounded-wide-eyed on me. It’s cute, that Bambi thing you have going, but beside the point. Now I have to rethink.”

  “You don’t—”

  “Quiet. One: My name isn’t Alexander.” He sat up straight and gave his chest a resounding thump. “Menya zavut Alexei Pavlovich Dillwyn Bainbridge. Not Alexander. I don’t think anyone outside my family knows that.”

  “Not even Amanda?” It came out before I could stop it.

  “Not even Amanda.” He reached for the soda. “Two,” he muttered as he poured, “I wish more people knew that Amanda and I are not a single unit and fewer people knew that she dumped me temporarily over the summer for a lifeguard in Loveladies named Biff.” While I processed that, he finished, “Three. I bombed the PSATs.”

  “Oh. Well, isn’t the point of preliminary tests to help you learn how to do well on the later ones?”

  “Tell that to my dad. He has decided that I am now on the fast track toward a future digging ditches.”

  “Come on. I’m sure he sees that it’s just a prep test.”

  “What he sees,” Alex corrected me, “is that the path of Yale, followed by Powel Law and the family firm, has gotten a little slippery.”

  I had no idea what to say. In my family, whatever we want to do, as long as it involves getting out of bed every morning and satisfying our souls, is considered just splendid. And that coming from multiple generations who’ve struggled to pay the mortgage. I couldn’t imagine being able to give my children everything, and then to demand that they follow the exact same path I did.

  “So, twice a week I have my own tutor,” he said shortly. “Who, trust me, makes my father look like a marshmallow. And on that note . . .” He picked up the sheaf of French lessons again. “We’ll start with the imperfect, used to express actions that are—”

  “Incomplete, unfulfilled, or repeated over and over.” I slumped back in the weird chair. “That I know.”

  At the end of the very imperfect session, Alex gave me a full ten minutes in the downstairs bathroom before showing up. All I’d figured out was that Edward’s faceless girl had had wide feet, and the Bainbridge’s decorator had a preference for green that might merit an intervention.

  “I could probably give you the stupid thing”—Alex gestured to the picture when he came in—“and my folks would never notice.”

  I winced inwardly. “I can’t advocate theft,” I told him, “no matter how noble the intent.”

  I knew I had to figure out what to do with the photograph and the letters. Beyond the fact that I didn’t think I wanted anything to do with them, stealing them had probably been the worst thing I’d ever done. Something I don’t want anyone to know, Alex? I am a disillusioned former hopeless romantic with larcenous tendencies. But I did kill the verbal part of the PSATs.

  The way I saw it, I had three options:

  I could take the stuff to Maxine. “Hey, look what I found.” Confession of theft optional and probably not smart.

  I could slip them back into the book and pretend they never existed.

  I could destroy them.

  Option two sounded just marvelous.

  “So, I’m curious.” Alex dragged me from my pleasant contemplation of cowardice and back into the bathroom. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, his feet almost touching mine. “What is it you like so much about this guy? I looked up his stuff. It’s good, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

  What a difference a week and a shock to the ideals makes. I felt my defense of Edward sticking a little in my throat. “I like his portraits. He really saw people. It was his great strength, that intensity.”

  Alex tilted his chin toward the picture. “Not to seem crude, but she could be any girl with a nice ass.” When I glared at him, he uncrossed his arms quickly and held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, all I mean is that if I were all about really seeing someone, that’s not the angle I would choose.”

  He was probably right. No matter how I looked at it, he was probably right. “You’re probably right,” I told him.

  He bowed. The small space suddenly got a lot smaller. “Stick with me, Grasshopper. I will never lead you wrong.”

  • • •

  At midnight, I was still at my desk. The drawing was still tacked over Edward’s face. I hadn’t heard any more of his faint protests recently.

  I had my battered copy of The Collected Works of Edward Willing open in front of me. Of course, not every piece he ever did is in it, but it’s a pretty comprehensive collection. The book itself has been out of print for twenty years. For most of freshman year, I read it in the school library, under Edward’s portrait. Amazon and all of my fifteenth-birthday money finally made a copy mine. I’ve read it so many times that the spine is as yielding as linen.

  This time, my search was very specific. Edward used dozens of models for his paintings: women, men, old, young, friends, students. I was looking for one particular blonde.

  I found her first on page 279. Woma
n #6, 1906. It was a watercolor, just a seated figure, anonymous and amorphous. There was another watercolor on page 298: Summer, 1907. She had her face buried in an armful of flowers. The same year, she was the central figure, on a bicycle, in a large oil painting called Boathouse Row. I found her as a shrouded Eurydice, 1908, in a series called Wissahickon, 1910–1912, where she sat in profile on a bunch of different rocks, and once more, Marina, Marseilles, 1914. In that one, she was seated on the beach, looking toward the marina filled with fishing boats and beyond. It wasn’t Edward’s best work. Seascapes never were.

  He’d painted her over at least eight years. She had traveled with him to France. Only Diana had ever been featured in as many paintings, in multiple locations.

  I ripped the sketch from the wall.

  “Liar.”

  Edward looked more ravaged than usual. “That is a terrible word, coming from you.”

  “Yup.”

  “And not entirely fair.”

  “You had an affair with this . . . Woman number 6 . . . Were there five others? Seven, eight, and onward?” When he didn’t answer, I waved at the (admittedly small) stack of Edward Willing books on my desk. “She isn’t mentioned anywhere. What did you do, keep her tucked away for your private entertainment?”

  “Tsk, Ella.”

  “Oh, no, don’t you go all proper and disapproving on me. Was it that she wasn’t posh enough for your social circle? Or did you just know it was a bad thing—bad—to follow Diana with . . . her? What’s her name, anyway?”

  He didn’t answer, just stared at me with his pained expression.

  “I looked up dorogaya. It isn’t a name. It’s a Russian endearment. There’s no mention I can find anywhere that has anything to do with you and anyone Russian. So who was she, a model? Is this just one of those clichés?”

  He didn’t answer that, either.

  “I believed in you,” I told him. “I have this stupid project all planned on your muse—how Diana made you the painter you are. How it was all about love.”

  “Didn’t we decide it’s all about love or money? Everything.”