Lunch (5 page)

I can't take my eyes off her, watching her bewilderment as emotions flit unknowingly across her features, kindling her eyes, turning down a corner of her mouth, raising an eyebrow, caressing a lash. I have never seen Nick's precise effect on a woman's psyche reflected so clearly back, ever before.

But then, Nick has never before been entranced by a woman who is real.

I see Olivia worry that her very presence at this table somehow diminishes her love for Olivier, a love that is calm and steady and does not leave her though they are often apart. I see her curious, challenging herself not to react, to prove herself disinterested even though she is not, to prove that her response to Nick, so sudden and shocking in its uncontrollable fierceness, had been a fluke.

I see her relax, finally, secure in the understanding that, no matter where her thoughts lead her, she knows she is loved.

If I told her that Nick, in his own way, is as perplexed by this attraction as she is, she would not believe me.

She sits there, cool and self-­contained. She has been content with the rules and structure she has imposed on her days, so calmly aware of being alive, of having some purpose. She has a life here in London, although she sometimes longs for the familiar comforts of the homes she knew before, she has work filling her days, work that pleases her, work she loves, work that brings her some small acclaim amid the privacy she craves, work that buys her freedom from worries of mortgages and the cost of brand-­new sable brushes and commissions from ­people she does not want to paint.

She has a life where ­people like Nick Muncie do not enter, or if they do, in the unlikely circumstance of her painting them, they are as easily dismissive of the woman she really is behind her professional facade as they are dismissed by her.

They clamor for her portraits, these millionaires craving the exclusive, not to own in pleasure but to gloat over in front of jealous colleagues, and she paints the odd living legend or industrial mogul not for the money but because she saw and was piqued by a hint of the bizarre in them, or the strange quirk of an eyebrow. They blab happily during these sittings, conversation fascinating only to themselves yet absorbed with skillful necessity by Olivia in her concentration, their desultory dronings stunned into speechlessness when they see what Olivia has done to them, not from malicious intent, though it is well deserved, but simply because that is how she sees them, as they are truly: naked, exposed, and shamelessly vulgar. They have been immortalized by the famous Olivia Morgan, and yet when she is finished and the painting shipped off to the mansion where it will hang illuminated in a niche of honor, impressing the same vulgarians who continue to beg, vainly, for her time, she has already forgotten their names.

“N
ICK,
I
have to ask you something,” Olivia says after we order espresso. “Why is it so important for you to be painted?”

“Not just painted. Painted by you.”

“By me, then.”

This is his cue. We have already rehearsed this scene, many times. Nick wanted it perfect: somberly conceived, yet spontaneous. Flawless.

The amount of thoughtfulness he has decided to invest in this preoccupation with Olivia has my senses on alert. Nick is not known for concern, or plans for seduction more premeditated than the few seconds it took a trembling, docile body to acquiesce. There is some strange need surfacing, something I'd seen fleetingly on his face once before when I caught him reading the dog-­eared copy of
The Iliad
I'd left by the pool and he grinned up at me with sheepish embarrassment. “It's the quest thing, isn't it?” he said.

It's the quest thing that has drawn him to
Faust,
that has brought him here today, though he would deny it.

It is the magnet turning back on us. I am only surprised it hasn't happened sooner.

I don't like it, but I still can't take my eyes off Olivia. I should mind more, but I don't want to, I can't help myself. I want to trust her as I could never have trusted any Belinda-­like creature before.

I slide my glance back over to Nick.

Like every skilled actor he has waited a fraction of a beat before answering. This is the audition of a lifetime, and he's not about to blow it.

“I saw a painting you did in Los Angeles,” he says, finally, looking off into the distance as if to conjure it up before him—­which would have been a marvelous feat of recollection, since I was the one who'd seen it, and described it to him before this lunch—­“the portrait that you called
The Director.
I never forgot how it made me feel, that it was a soul, or in his case more like an absence of soul, made visible, painted and two-­dimensional, and yet alive.”

“Why did you think that?”

“I don't know. It's like asking yourself why you breathe.” He sighs. Pause. Perfect. “I want to see how you see me. I want you to make me live.”

She fixes her gaze upon him, trying with all her strength to maintain the cold blank professional curiosity that darkens her eyes into polished pewter, unaware that the expression in them is still many light-­years from the typical fawning interest Nick has grown to expect from every female who has ever heard his name.

She wants to know, I feel it. She is the alchemist of looking. Her curiosity is as avid as Nick's determined will to possess. She wants to know his secrets, she will puncture the hollow shell of his evasiveness, and she is not afraid to ask.

Their eyes are locked, hers a baffled mixture of blunt denial and inquisitive, subliminal desire, his a silent imploring, desperate to win her over to needs he never thought he'd be able to acknowledge, desperate because losing is not a possibility he allows into his life, desperate because he cannot articulate why this woman attracts him so.

And in that look it comes to her in a flash, she sees it, she knows what to do, the composition of his portrait, his face, who he would be, the specter of his painting comes alive in her mind's eye, whooshing in on a breathless rush of his pheromones, the scent of seduction, odorless, as invisible as carbon monoxide and just as poisonous, unknowable yet all-­pervasive, seeping into the chinks of her subconscious mind, and pushing all other thoughts away.

She opens her eyes and sees him truly, there, only for an instant do they see each other, and she gives in.

T
HE RESTAURANT
has emptied, slowly, and we are lingering, reluctant. Annette wipes her lips and excuses herself to the ladies' room and the phone.

“I dreamed of you,” Nick says to Olivia when there is only me to hear him. “I dreamed that you were at the beach, the ocean near where we used to live, and you were standing on a cliff, your hair loose in the wind, just standing there, staring out to sea.”

She frowns. “And where were you?”

“I don't know. It was just you.”

“Just me.”

“Just you. You don't mind, do you, that I dream of you, Olivia.” He says her name like a kiss. “Little olive.”

Her frown deepens, she is still fighting him. “Don't call me that. It makes me sound like a martini.”

The next day a motorcycle messenger arrives at her studio with a large beribboned box. Inside the soft layers of silken tissue paper lie two martini glasses with stems so thin she marvels that they don't snap in her fingers. And a jar of olives.

There is no note. There is no need for a note.

There is no need because she is standing on a cliff, staring out at the dark illimitable sea, wavering on the brink, ready to fall.

 

Chapter 4

N
ick is standing, lounging really, against a pillar, posing. That is easy, he knows exactly what to do. He is happy, elated, able to watch Olivia, he is close enough to catch the faintest whiff of vetiver and hyacinth, she is moving, her hands move, sketching, she looks at him but through him, she sees his face but her gaze does not linger, he is free to watch her and think his wicked thoughts. She is there, and he is free to watch her.

I am sitting in the corner, watching him watch her.

Usually, Olivia said, she has very strict rules, not just about whom she paints but how she paints them. The quick lunchtime interrogation when she questions their needs and desires. She hears a tale, she makes them tell it, they think it is innocuous, trivial, nothing of importance. From this secret knowledge the portrait begins its formation, magical, she determines what she will paint, how she will paint them, who they will be, what myth is theirs, the transformation awaiting.

She is painting Nick as the Minotaur, a beast, yet still human. He is standing in a maze.

He stands waiting, a ball of string in his hand.

I know that normally, no one else is allowed in the studio during a session, although it is large enough for dozens to hide in corners, unobtrusive. Olivia's living quarters are downstairs, locked to us, although the kitchen and a small bathroom have been built into one side, their doors usually shut to us as well. The studio is white, all white, the only colors her paints, her paintings, her smock smeared with memories of other faces, the only color her hair, gleaming richly red, and the paint freckling her fingers. This used to be a ballroom built specially and detached from the house next door; that is why the ceiling is so high and the room so full of light, Olivia told us, the floor is sprung, it keeps me up. There are cartons of props stacked in neat piles,
objets
peeping out, gleaming things, white bowls on the floor, brilliant Spanish piano shawls folded to hide the bright richness of their woven threads, pushed back behind the cartons into the shadows. They are meant for draping over the chaise, draped over a woman, her skin like a luscious ripe peach in the light of the studio, a
maja
reclining. There are several chairs of white-­painted wood, their cushions a splendid white brocade, pulled near a large round table covered with layers of muslin, falling in soft cream piles on the floor. Centered on it is a scruffy wooden tomato basket, filled with clay pots overflowing with white hyacinths. She has staggered the planting, some stalks only just poking through the earth, other buds swelling, others blooming, I can smell them, delicate, delicious, I can see her deft slender hands spreckled with paint, holding the fat dark bulbs, I can see her fingers rounding a hole in the dirt, I can see her pressing down a bulb, covering it, patting it, sprinkling it, grow, she says silently, bloom for me.

I prefer to sit in the far corner, a book in hand, there only because Olivia asked me to at lunch, her eyes soberly begging. Nick had been waylaid by his fans when Annette was on the phone, leaving us temporarily alone, and me not knowing what to say. She'd smiled at me, then, with no pity, and I felt my heart begin to thump. I could sense her wrestling with the inevitable questions about my face, about Nick and me, wondering how discreetly she could begin to satisfy her curiosity.

“Can I ask you something, M,” she said.

“Yes.” I steeled myself, involuntarily.

“How do you stay so fit?”

“Fit?” This was not what I'd expected.

“Yes. You're very strong, it's like your strength is there, it's solid, and believable, but not pumped up. Hidden.” She was still smiling. “It makes me feel safe.”

“I make you feel safe?” I was astonished. I half-­turned my head to see if Nick was watching, but he was table-­hopping on the other side of the room, autographing napkins, and I sighed in relief that he could not see my face.

“Yes, you,” she said. “I don't know why, I just feel it. You must make Nick feel safe, too, or you wouldn't be together, right? And you're observant, as I try to be, but I expect that no one ever notices because of your face.”

I inhaled deeply, calming breaths. Maybe it was anxiety about Nick making her talk this way, and I couldn't blame her if that was so, or maybe she just wanted to know. I couldn't yet let myself relax into trusting her.

“Well, I like your face. And the least you can say,” she added, sensing my discomfort, “is that it's unique.”

No one had ever said that to me before. I didn't believe her, but I tried to smile. I knew she wanted me to, and I wanted, absurdly, to please her.

“I'm sorry,” she said, folding her napkin into neat triangles. “Sometimes I talk too much. You can get very self-­conscious, being an American in London, when ­people are always judging you by the way you talk, and how fast, and not by what you say.”

“Even you?”

“Even me. Especially me.” She sighed. “I'm just hypersensitive. And somehow I get the feeling Nick is going to be a handful.”

I did smile, then, that time for real. “Boxing,” I said.

“What?”

“How I stay fit. I never answered your question.”

“Oh,” she said, biting her lip not to laugh. “Right. I should have guessed.” She looked at me, sideways. “So can I ask you to do something for me?”

“Yes.”

“Will you come keep me company during Nick's sessions? There's plenty of space in my studio. You won't be in my way.” The words came tumbling out, the only true marker of fears she'd rather have kept hidden. “I think you'd keep me calm.”

Safe, she meant to say. She is watchful enough to have imagined what I do, why I am always with Nick, to keep him in line, to save him from himself. To save her from him. This, yes, she knows.

How could she imagine anything else?

All she knows is that, instinctively, she needs me. She needs to be protected. She feels Nick's eyes, she feels his desire rising even though he hasn't moved. It is perfuming the air, invisibly potent. She sees his face, but her training is too fine, her concentration is fierce, she feels it, yes, she knows it is hovering, a mist seeking to invade her pores, but she wants to paint, and so she ignores its full implications, and instead plucks it from the air and transmutes it into the face beginning to take shape before her, grinning softly, wickedly sensual, and very hungry.

She will make him breathe on canvas, standing in a maze.

I close my eyes. I do not need to see her. I hear the soft rustle of her movement, her busy hands swooping up and down. There is music playing, always. I know it is Olivier, his supple fingers scampering over the keyboard, Chopin, Schubert, a sonata, quartet, ballade, it is flowing over us, tranquil and yearning.

There is a world outside, a horrible, gray, empty world, but we are sealed, three figures in a large white room, the ceiling high above it, the dim noontime sun filtering through the skylight, the floor gleaming, burnished, thick Moroccan rugs the color of pale cream scattered around it, needed, she explained with a laugh, for all her prayers when the painting was going badly. Bolts of Belgian linen and stacks of canvases are turned toward the wall, we see only their stretchers and faint streaks of paint along their sides. Jars of the pigments she grinds herself, oils and bristled brushes, a funny-­shaped spray bottle of fixative, and tubes of paints are aligned in perfect rows like little fat soldiers on her work table. It smells of primer, of supplies bought in delirious abandon at Cornellessens, of linseed and turpentine, of the wonder of creation.

The ghosts of portraits painted sit near me in the corner. I can feel them, lingering in the peacefulness of this room. Even they are silent, content. There is no need to talk. Only the soft sound of a piano, and a charcoal stick sketching.

We do not wish to leave.

Be there by noon, don't be late, she told us, if you're late I won't let you in, this is the only time I can have the sitters here, don't ask me to explain it. Four sittings, four sittings only. That is all she requires, for the face, for the body, the rest she can imagine. The rest fills her hours when the sun swings west and fades from the skylight, when the images float through her head and are transferred, miraculously, to the canvas, where they take shape and form, recast, born in layers shimmering, their souls captured, living forever.

W
E ARE
back, a week later. Olivia is relaxed, happy, it is going well, I can see it on her face. She is humming, idly, along with the glorious shower of Schubert's notes. Different hyacinths are blooming.

Nick stands, lounging comfortably against the pillar, easily sinking into the pose. This time he feels like talking. She feels like talking too, he can sense it.

“Olivia,” he says, the very syllables a caress, “can I ask you a question?” He is going to try the pseudo-­intellectual approach, proving that he can indeed talk about subjects more pungent than the latest restaurants or box-­office grosses.

I'd often thought Nick should divulge more of his buried self, although he wouldn't have believed me had I told him so, but he remained convinced that it was better for me to write the lines, clever but not too brilliant, and for him to say them. In that way, he gave me my voice. I hear it as he speaks now, calm, unthreatening. He'll talk, she'll grow accustomed to his talking, and she'll begin to crave hearing the sound of anything he might have to say.

After that he can pounce, when she is lulled into believing the silken cadence of his words.

“Mmm,” she says. She has barely heard him.

“How do you paint?”

She looks at him, bemused.

“No, I mean, where do your ideas come from? What do you think when you're painting? What's in your head when you look at me?”

Her charcoal stick dances across the canvas. “I don't know. The ideas, if that's what you call them, just arrive, I see them. I wake up with them.”

She steps back, cocks her head, steps forward, a minuet.

“We meet at lunch, as you know. Even then, no matter how much they want a portrait, I'm still waiting for—­I don't know, this sounds a bit crazy—­but something unique.” She smiles to herself, thinking of Olivier. “A word'll jump out, or a sigh, or the way they cock their heads, and it's as if this meaningless gesture becomes, instead, the actual DNA of the portrait, the key to their essence. That's when I can hope it might work.”

“So that's what you were thinking when we met,” he teases.

“Well, not all the time.”

“Oh, so there is some hope.”

“ 'Fraid not, dearie.”

“I'm crushed.”

“Sure.” She rolls her eyes. “There's not a whole lot I can do to make a dent in your ego. That's one of the things I admire about you. During a sitting, even with someone as full of himself as you are, it's like automatic writing for me. I mean, even though I paint what I want, deep down I still want to please my sitters. I try not to show that because I really wish I didn't feel that way. Being freed from it might make my work better.” She sighs, deeply. “So it's a constant struggle, because I have my own ideas about what I want to do, but I still know that drawing is just finding out what the drawing will do. It's like groping in the dark for something you know is there, hidden in the shadows. The marks come and you have to accept them. Only then does the painting really begin to happen. It's like discovering the heart of a pearl, there, buried beneath the layers of nacre, the pearl's true color. Even though I can't see it yet, it's not tangible, I still know it's buried there under what I haven't yet created. My hand moves, I don't think, I look, I see, but it's already there.”

“How can you be such a poet and so mean to me at the same time?”

“I'm not mean,” she says in mock protest. “Try to make me believe you don't get off on it.”

“Why, Olivia,” he says, drawling, “I do believe you're flirting with me.”

“Dream on,” she says, laughing. “It's just chitchat to keep me going. Maybe I make it sound so easy, but it isn't. I'm just used to it, I guess.” She wipes her elbow across her brow. “­People are at their most vulnerable during these sessions. Even someone like you, who's used to being looked at. All you've thought about who you are and how you appear to the world becomes terribly exposed.”

She glances over at me, and smiles, soft. “Artists know that—­or should know that—­and feel torn between this incredible responsibility to that vulnerability, and the struggle between their own intellectual ideas and their gut instinct guiding them, or guiding me, I should say, to what I hope is the truth.” She frowns, eyeing the canvas. “Anyway, isn't it a bit like acting, when you're so submerged in character that your unconscious takes over?”

“I guess,” Nick says, looking thoughtful. “I try not to think about it either. If you think too much it never works. I just do it.”

“You empty out your self so something else can flow in. There's an old Chinese proverb: When you're taking a boat through the rapids, you haven't got time to think.”

He laughs. “Never anything that profound, especially with all the wonderfully trivial movies I've made.”

She smiles. “Yes, but I can't do much with my talent. Actors can reach millions and millions. They see you, they want to touch you, they want to be you. All I can do is react to the moment in my own imagination.”

“I don't think you should put yourself down like that.”

“I'm not, it's just what painting is. I was born into the wrong century, I suppose. No one appreciates us portrait painters anymore, not truly, not the way they used to be appreciated. Why paint? Take a picture instead, even though a successful portrait can be so much more alive, more truthful, than any photograph will ever be. It's because ­people's faces change all the time. It's why we look at photographs and say, ‘That's not me, I don't look like that, really, do I?' A photo is only a snatching of one teeny part of a second. But a portrait, well, it's a record of changes over time, of how much your face changes even as I'm watching it, of who you are and all the emotions flooding out of you and colliding with mine.