Anio Szado (15 page)

“I didn’t realize you were so familiar with my work.”

“The funny thing is, of all the strange landscapes you describe in your books, that’s the one that made me think, ‘This is something I may never see.’ Sometimes I forget there are stars above New York.”

“If you look at them long enough, you can forget there is a New York below. But here, with you, I do not feel the need to forget. The view is magnificent, is it not?”

“This?” The ductwork and fire escapes, the stuff of heating systems, the neighboring houses with their ventilating funnels, the silhouettes of skyscrapers and the peaks of rooftop water towers, the chairs on Bernard’s rooftop spread haphazardly, as though they refused to gather as a set?

“Absolutely. It is one of my favorite places in the whole of Manhattan. These metal channels and workings like a mechanic’s shop, the buildings pieced together like a puzzle, and the sky wide and beckoning so far above … I feel I can breathe when I come out here.” He inhaled deeply. I did the same, and felt my anxieties releasing with the long exhalation of our breath.

The sky wasn’t far at all; it was too close, the stars unabashed, the night air dangerously soft.

Antoine stroked the back of my hand, and when I did not move, he reached up to touch my face. My legs grew weak. His fingers glided along my cheekbone and lingered on my lips that parted slightly to his fingertip. His touch drew down to the arc of my neck and around to my nape.

I turned my face up in anticipation of his kiss, but he only stood looking at me for what seemed like a tremendously long time.

He said, “Tonight you are more beautiful than ever. I have heard of flowers that blossom fully in the starlight. I have never before met a woman who does so.” Still he did not reach for me.

My blood was drumming. I wasn’t a statue or a painting to be admired. Could Antoine not see my desire; did a woman have to speak of it? I couldn’t say the words. I put my hand on the front of his suit jacket as Netta Corelle had done.

Antoine removed my hand and said quietly, “In the daylight it is far easier to remember that you are still a young girl.”

My face grew hot. “I’m not young.” Nor was I entirely inexperienced, even then. I’d had brief romances with high school boys, and interludes with cute French boys in the shadows under the Alliance stairs. I’d had boyfriends at NYFS before my workload got in the way—one brawny and sweetly tentative, the next sharp and hard to please.

“It has been a long time since I have lived in the stars, Mignonne. You don’t know how I envy you your innocence and
promise. If I so lament the loss of my own youth, it would be unconscionable of me to fail to honor yours.”

“But I’m not young! I’m old enough to be married. I’m old enough to know that life is short.”

“Life is sometimes short, yes; but youth always is. You ought to do everything in your power to hold on to it. Don’t let it be taken from you by someone like me.”

Frustration lit through me. I pulled his head down and kissed him until his mouth softened and opened to mine. His arms encircled me and drew me close.

Bernard’s voice rang out from the depths of the stairwell. “Saint-Ex! You’re needed here.”

Antoine released me reluctantly. His jaw clenched. He called brusquely toward the open door: “What is it?”

“They’re hollering for you and your tricks. Bring the magic inside.”

Back in Bernard’s studio, Antoine lifted little Norman into a battered old wing chair, and I perched on the fraying arm beside the boy. As the partygoers gathered around, Antoine pulled a deck of cards from his shirt pocket and shuffled them in flamboyant ways, then ran through three quick tricks, one after another without pause, drawing laughter and applause.

At first he sat in a paint-splattered wooden chair, but the more he dazzled the guests, the more animated and restless he became. He sprang up to perform in the center of the room, shuffling, spreading, smacking the deck into place and sliding its slices one over the other, yanking his cigarette from his lips before he had finished inhaling, so that smoke drifted around his eyes and swirled past his eyebrows, setting his hands waving briskly before they resumed their giddy games. He turned as he performed, presenting his cards first to one side of the room, then to the other. I was mesmerized by the brightness of his eyes when he faced me, and took delight in the reactions of the audience when I watched from behind his back.

He slouched and chuckled as he assembled his tricks, his cigarette jiggling in the corner of his mouth. He gave orders by pointing fingers and singing encouragement. “Pick a card, any card” was understood in every language.

As one or another of the guests ventured forward and made their choices, little Norman laughed gleefully. He pressed his small fists against his mouth as the sorcerer’s fingers spun above the depleted deck.

Antoine triumphed every time, and celebrated with hoots and leaps that made Norman laugh out loud. Liquor glasses danced on side tables when he landed, and were quickly clutched and emptied, and refilled with increasing abandon. Bottles were placed on the floor and shoes slipped off. Someone cursed in drunken disbelief: tricked again. In the aftermath of one particularly spectacular and unlikely win, Antoine threw his arms around Bernard and another man, and his back shook with laughter. When he let go, the man was blinking back tears, sniffling, slurring, “My friends. My fine, good friends.”

Then the boy was snoring softly. Antoine stood in a haze of cigarette smoke in the center of the room.

Seated on a purple velvet ottoman, Netta Corelle leaned forward. Her eyes followed Antoine’s hands. He stood facing her. His hands made magic—folding, fanning, hovering, now gesturing at the audience, now sweeping toward the actress and pausing there, cards palmed, fingers plying and caressing the air as he set up his tricks—hands fluent in their own compelling dialect. His suit jacket had been tossed aside, his tie loosened. His shirt was rumpled and coming untucked. Yet he moved smoothly, with the confidence of one who never fails, and smiled with the easy generosity of a man who always gets what he wants.

The actress fingered the pendant at the base of her throat. Antoine’s hands played for her.

Leaving my third drink unfinished, I left the Alliance, crossed the street, and found Bernard’s name still listed beside the door. I pressed the buzzer. His “Yes?” came through the intercom.

“I don’t know if you remember me. I’m a friend of your friend Saint-Ex. Mignonne Lachapelle.”

“Butterfly!”

“Pardon?”

“It’s really you? Don’t move! I’m coming down.”

Butterfly? Had Antoine spoken of the drawings I had labored over before I’d gone to Montreal? What might he have said—and to such an accomplished artist as Bernard Lamotte?
The things she designs! An explosion of embroidery and sequins—applied to butterflies, of all things—the simplest, purest creatures that ever floated above the earth
.

Bernard pushed open the street-level door. “Mignonne! What a pleasure, after all this time. Come up. I’m sorry I used your nickname. I blame it on my surprise!”

I followed him up the stairs. “I didn’t know I had a nickname.”

“Truly? Then I apologize again, and with more sincerity, to boot. I heard Saint-Ex call you this. ‘Mignonne, my butterfly.’ It must have taken hold in my mind. I have thought of you this way ever since.”

So Antoine had not been referring to the ornate ensembles I had designed. He had called me his own butterfly. But why? The last thing I resembled today was a creature of lightness or liberty. I had prepared the weakest of excuses for my visit to Bernard’s, a question about marking Antoine’s birthday at the end of June. Now I realized that excuses would make me seem even more pathetic than I felt.

Bernard poured two cups of coffee. I circumnavigated the studio nervously, looking at the paintings on the walls. I paused at a pen-and-ink drawing that was pinned to a board; it stood on the floor, propped against a radiator next to a painting of the same subject, a vase spherical at the bottom and fluted above, stuffed generously with flowers.

“That ink drawing is wonderful,” I said as I returned to sit with Bernard. The oil painting, with its dull background and pastel-hued blooms, was much more somber and subdued. It was elegant but unremarkable, while the ink drawing shone with light.

“It’s just a study for the painting, which was commissioned by De Beers—it was used in an advertisement for diamonds. They made me paint out the window for better contrast with the jewels. One has to make a living. Not that I’m complaining. Maybe someday I’ll be able to afford the things I help my clients sell. But if you like the drawing, you are welcome to take it.”

“Thank you. I love how the sunlight comes through from behind and pools on the table. It must be beautiful here in the daytime.”

“Drop by anytime to see for yourself.” He pulled over a wheeled tray table that held sugar and cream. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“I’m sure I have. It’s been quite a year.”

“I know you were away, of course—and Saint-Ex says you’ve made a terrific start on what promises to be a busy career.”

“You’ve seen him since he’s been back, Bernard?”

“He’s back?”

“Isn’t he? He was supposed to be gone for just a few days.” If he wasn’t back, he had disappeared. Or he wanted nothing more to do with me.

“I’m assuming he’s still in Montreal. He was spending a lot of time here before he left. I would have expected him to visit straight from the station, or close enough. But you know Saint-Ex; I’ve learned to take things as they come. Maybe he’s holed up somewhere writing. You’ve tried calling him at home?”

Antoine had not given me his number; he had only given me his wife’s. Imagine, thinking I had any claim on a man who hadn’t even given me his telephone number. What right had I to hope that he might want to contact me again? I was a blockhead, coming over to interrogate his very patient friend.

“I’m sorry, Bernard.”

“Why?”

“I shouldn’t burden you with my concerns.”

“I understand how you feel. Saint-Ex is like a brother to me.”

“That’s why I came.” I turned my coffee cup around on its saucer. “I thought you might know if he’s okay.”

“I’m sure he’s fine. His wife phoned me looking for him, as she is wont to do from time to time. I’m not sure what’s going on up in Canada”—he pointed toward the high ceiling, as if to indicate north—“but Consuelo seems sure that our friend is still there.”

“Aren’t you at all worried?”

“When it comes to worrying about Saint-Ex, it’s best to pace oneself. You know he has had at least thirty broken bones?”

“Thirty!”

“So I’ve heard, though not from him. Some of them several times.”

He told me that Antoine rarely spoke of his injuries, except incidentally while eulogizing his adventures. What Bernard knew had come mainly from newspaper clippings, snippets from Consuelo’s stories, and speculation by friends. Antoine’s crashes had been numerous, and some legendary—like his Guatemala accident in ’38. Antoine and Consuelo were separated at the time. He had begun a New York–Patagonia challenge; she was sailing to her Central American home. When his monoplane crash-landed, she returned to his side. He was an unrecognizable monster moaning in a hospital bed—or so Consuelo had often told Antoine, who had groused of it to Bernard. Broken bones had contorted his body and punctured his liver. His hand had barely avoided removal. Bandages soaked in colorful disinfectants made a pungent quilt of his skin. One eye was inches lower than the other; his lips hung close to the apparatus that caged his jaws. His head, Consuelo claimed, was several times its original size.

Bernard said, “He’s been put back together more often than I can keep track of, and not always well.”

“How can he even want to fly again?”

“It’s a calling.”

“It’s dangerous!”

“He’s very brave. Anyway, he’s probably safest when he’s facing danger. They say he’s a genius when the stakes are high, but otherwise he’s a menace to himself. He forgets to wear his oxygen mask. He writes or draws while he flies. And even now, when he’s grounded, he has …” Bernard trailed off.

I had no idea what sort of confidences men shared with each other, or what would cause a man as carefree as Bernard to admit concerns about his friend. I only knew that Antoine had looked older and wearier than a year ago, and he had already been sad and frustrated back then. I could help him if he would let me, if I knew where he was. But maybe Antoine had told Bernard he was involved with some other girl.

Bernard seemed reluctant to continue, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.

He dropped a sugar cube into the dregs of his coffee. A brown stain crept up the sides of the crystal square. He spoke carefully. “There is one thing that may be keeping him in Montreal, Mignonne. Saint-Ex has some kind of mysterious, unpredictable illness. It started after that terrible crash and has been plaguing him on and off for years. He has described it as a burning knife plunged into his lower gut. The doctors can’t seem to fix it; they just medicate the pain and have him wait till the fevers pass. It could come on anywhere—even in the air. It has happened here as we sat drawing together.”