Part 1 - Roses Are Red

Yes. A sunny balcony would be nice, I thought, circling another listing in crimson ink. Or maybe a roof garden. I could plant rosemary, and violets. I could paint. I bit the top of my pen and skimmed down the column to another number that didn’t threaten to ruin me.

‘Sur la rue Villeray. 3 1/2 chauffé. 1 chambre, style ouvert. Plancher bois franc. Disponible immédiatement. 500 $’

It was more than a little humiliating that after two years in a francophone province, my ability to decipher written French remained about as pitiful as it had been in middle school. Luckily, those apartments I could almost afford seemed to have much less to say for themselves than did the posh downtown condominiums, and modern pieds-à-terre.

A little longer, I breathed, and maybe I can spoil myself with some sunlight. I shut my eyes and dreamed of the August sun, lashing my skin with hot, muggy rays of golden goodness, until I glowed all over, warm and red.

“Hm-hm-hm,” a pale man cleared his throat, and slid a small box of metal doodads across the counter for my inspection, “Pardon, Mademoiselle. Ça coûte combien?”

Shattering my daydream, his heavy flannel and fleece trapper cruelly reaffirmed that I was not back home in North Carolina; that I was in Montreal, that it was November, and that it was a blasphemous seven degrees below zero outside. Centigrade, that is—I never did quite grasp the conversion to what I still considered the real temperature. I studied his little box of gismos.

“Um, a loonie each?” I offered.

In fact it really didn’t much matter. As best I could tell, Madame d’Aulnoir, proprietrix of Auntie de Luvien’s Bric-à-Brac, was left quite comfortable in the will of her latest late husband. As she told me a few weeks earlier during my job interview with a grin that was at once nostalgic and pathologically kooky, she’d outlived five of them and counting. And now she ran her shop as though it was her own perpetual rummage sale; a chance to redistribute all the clutter, clothes, and curios she’d spent five lifetimes amassing.

“I’d like two,” said the man, plunging a freckled hand into his pocket.

I rang it up on the ancient, brass cash register. The knell of its little bell summoned Madame from beyond a tasseled curtain, and she floated to my side like a silken jellyfish.

“Oh, you found the kakehari!” she sang, plucking up one of the mysterious items. “Do you know what these were for, Penny?”

I stole a glance at the Mora clock along the far wall—still twenty minutes to closing time. Madame d’Aulnoir was sweet and profoundly generous, but there was a part of me that suspected she’d managed to murder her five unfortunate husbands by literally talking them to death. Still, just before expounding upon this particular bit of obsolete objet d’art, she paused—catching my clock-ward gaze—and in an uncommon act of oratorical mercy, said, “We’ll save that one for some other time. Let me get a bag for you, Monsieur.”

He shuffled out, and Madame followed him to the door, flipping the sign from ‘ouvert’ to ‘fermé’ once he was gone.

“Somewhere to be tonight, chérie?” She turned, smiling pertly.

“My friend Marie—the one I’m living with,” I closed up the cash register, “She got us into this ritzy gallery opening in Mile End. She knows the curator, I think.”

I tried hard not to overemphasize the word knows. I roomed with Marie during our final year of undergrad at McGill, and since dropping out of my Master’s program just eight weeks in, I’d been sleeping on her sofa. In the entire time I’d known her, I think she’d spent less than a couple dozen nights alone. Marie was a free spirit—the sort that owned ponchos; believed in palm readings, and horoscopes; the sort that didn’t mind someone crashing in her living room for weeks on end.

“Ooh, très chic,” Madame pursed her lips and began gliding back my direction, her chin raised to scrutinize me through her bifocals. “But what will you wear?”

I shifted uncomfortably. Though we were closing early, I knew there wouldn’t be much time to go back to Marie’s and clean up beforehand. Even if there was, I really didn’t have anything more lavish than what I’d worn to work that morning. My current wardrobe consisted mostly of old jeans, plaid shirts, collegiate hoodies, and enough fuzzy, flannel pajamas to provision a militia. All the little sundresses and sleeveless blouses I’d left hanging in a closet at my parents’ cottage back in Nags Head.

“This, I guess,” I shrugged.

Still squinting at me, Madame shook her head in disapproval.

“Wait here, chérie,” she said, and without another word, vanished again behind the curtain.

I could hear her heels tip-tapping up the old, walnut staircase to her chambers as I went about the labyrinthine aisles, gingerly placing displays of bone china back into their respective cupboards. I knew she was fetching me an outfit. I wrinkled my brow, imagining myself as Mathilde from that de Maupassant story—doomed to slave away here for ten years after spilling red wine on some vintage haute couture of preposterous expense.

Catching sight of my reflection in a silver tea tray, I tried half-heartedly to tame my flyaways. Though I wasn’t exactly anxious to show up to a swank gallery soiree looking like—in my Mother’s words—a ragamuffin, it would finally force me to see what the art scene was really like in Montreal. My autumn, up to then, was rife with failures, setbacks, and procrastinations.

Following that fateful night at Marie’s, when her relentless goading and too much merlot emboldened me, at last, to renounce my academic enterprises and strike out on my own, I’d not stopped to entertain the possibility that a couple months later I might be just another shopgirl; up to my eyeballs in college debt, essentially homeless, a soon-to-be illegal foreign national, and no closer to making my way as a painter than I was in lecture hall, scribbling down the lines of succession for Picasso’s orgy of mistresses.

Truth be told, I never quite fell into step with all the savants and intellectuals at the University, and I was afraid another few years surrounded by them might be enough to exterminate everything I adored about art. I just wasn’t cut out for it. When I walked through an old gallery and saw some lovely little Manet or Cassatt, not once did I feel the urge to vivisect it. What I did feel was wonder, admiration, and—more than anything else—desire to make my own little magnificent something; to craft my own kind of beauty.

But artiste, as an identity, was never a real option for me either. Much as I admired the daring of the hippest of the hipsters, and of the bohemian avant-garde, I had never—not once in my life—been mistaken for cool. The dernier cri of fleeting countercultures passed me like car horns on a wet street below my window. I could hear them, and sometimes I might poke my head out to have a look, but I was never, ever on board. If I was going to be remembered as a painter, it would be as an Emily Dickinson of painters—living like a shadow, laboring quietly in some lonely garden.

Marie Rousseau meanwhile, my only real confidante, was a dancer, and that meant several things: one, that she was never home. With her it was either rehearsal, the studio, or the gym, and all remaining hours were to be divvied up evenly among a bustling queue of impressive men, all anxious for their chance at her gorgeous, leggy frame. And two, that there was no solid food to be found in the apartment. Anywhere. So after two months of trying the ‘starving artist’ gig, I’d pretty much mastered the starving, and all the artist had amounted to was a half dozen or so sloppy red oils of the chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours. I chose the chapel because it sat right across from a little cafe that Marie’s brother ran in Old Montreal. I did them in red because it was the only oil I had left that hadn’t dried out.

Honestly, I don’t quite know what pushed me to keep painting it. Steeples and stained glass were scarcely my specialty, and it was only under duress—and a condition of absolute anonymity—that I consented to let Marie and her brother hang them up around the cafe. Suffice to say, Carr’s ‘Indian Church,’ or Georgia O’Keefe’s ‘Ranchos No. II’ they were not. But still, between its timidity of size in a city bestrewn with huge basilicas, and its lonely Virgin gazing out across the snowy harbor, I sort of sympathized with the sailor’s chapel, and found myself doodling its portrait each time I went.

Besides, riding down to Rue Saint Paul on the weekends with Marie, just to wander around the stone streets and gratify my Latin Quarter fantasies remained one of the few things I loved enough about the city to suffer through another awful winter up north. Plus it didn’t hurt, I suppose, that Marie’s brother made the best caffè mocha in the Western Hemisphere, and had a very chivalrous habit of forgetting to bring us our bill.

Making my way to the end of the aisle, I replaced the box of metal thing-a-ma-jigs with the rest of the sewing supplies, and started dusting down Madame’s little corner of antique horse tack. She had hobbles, and saddles, and bits, and bridles, and an entire umbrella stand full of dressage whips and riding crops. I always saved this corner for last, relishing the smell of the soft, worn leather. But how she ever wound up with all this junk, I wiped down the long, smooth shaft of a crop with my rag, bending its tongue across the flat of my palm, I’ll never understand.

Finishing up, I wandered back toward the counter where Madame awaited me, cradling a blue garment bag like Michelangelo’s Pietà. Shame, I scolded myself. You should go to mass this week.

“This,” she grinned, “is just the thing,” and whipping away the bag with a magician’s finesse, she revealed a 60’s-style sack dress, patterned like a painting of Piet Mondrian’s.

“Far out,” I breathed, genuinely awed.

“It’s a real Saint Laurent,” she cooed, smoothing out an imaginary crease. “Don’t ask me how old it is. Just know that in London, I wore this little number to the Scotch when Jackie O was still Jackie K.”

The way she said ‘Jacque-ee’ made me smile, and I whistled as she handed me the hanger. I knew better than to ask any details about Madame’s rollicking past. If I did, she’d probably still be prattling on long after I was dead. But from time to time, I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of fiery femme fatale she must’ve been. I held the dress up. Wow. It’s short.

She clapped her hands, “Oh, the boys will be throwing themselves at your feet, chérie!”

I blushed.

“It reminds me,” she leaned forward onto her elbows, speaking in confidence, “Have I told you how I met my second husband, Penny? It was in Nice, at the Hotel Negresco. I could not afford it, of course, but I had romantic ideas, chérie. I was a young widow. I was going to lose my dead husband’s money at the casino, and throw myself into the sea.”

Uh-oh. Here we go. I shifted my weight.

“Well, my baggage took the wrong train out of Madrid, so all I could wear for three days was the little Givenchy robe de soirée I had with me. Can you imagine?” she rolled her eyes, dreamily. “There I was, Penny, drinking coffee at sunrise on the Baie des Anges, dolled up like Audrey at one of her premieres.”

She struck a pose straight out of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and I snickered.

“Even for the Riviera, it was outrageous, no? And he spotted me from halfway across the Promenade. He sauntered over, sat himself down, lit a cigarette, and offered me ten thousand francs for an hour in his suite.” She clapped, “He thought I was une jeune fille de la nuit! Do you know what I said to him, Penny?”

I shook my head.

“Not a word,” she set her hands on her hips, “I just poured my coffee in his lap, and stormed off. But he was persistent, chérie. He sought me out in the casino. Sent ninety-two red tulips to my room. He said he wanted to fly me all around the world, chérie. He was a pilot, of course. Did I tell you that? And how was I to say no? Nine weeks later, we were married in Rome. Or was it nine-and-a-half?” She shrugged, grinning brightly, “Qui se souvient? But we had our honeymoon in Santorini. Have you ever seen the Greek Isles, Penny?”

Again, I shook my head. I breathed steadily, preserving my patience.

“Only in photos, Madame.”

“Oh, you must go someday. Vraiment, every young lady must make love in Greece. But I remember, we went sailing one day. I was laying out on the bow, bare as I dared. He was leering at me like a demon. And he said to me, chérie...” She squinted, “Wait—what did he say?”

Her voice trailed off, and I seized the opening.

“You really don’t mind me borrowing it?” I held the dress up, my eyes pleading.

“Penny, j’insiste,” she smiled, placing her hand over mine. Then, her voice sobering, “But stain or rip it, and I will have you flogged in the streets.”

I froze, feeling her out. I’m definitely Mathilde, I thought grimly. She matched my stare a moment, spluttered, then doubled over, cackling.

“Oh, the look on your face, chérie. Go. Go put it on,” she shooed me away, “At least one of us girls should s’envoyer en l’air tonight, no?”

I flushed scarlet, holding the dress up to shield my face as I made for the changing room; embarrassed, but grateful. I had a gown for the ball.

The truth was, I hadn’t been with anyone since before transferring up here in the middle of my junior year—not that I’d been looking to. At that point, the men in whose company I was most interested were either made of metal or stone. And I was a lot less grasping than Pygmalion. I liked them as statues, and I was just fine with them staying that way. Besides, I’m not sure how many guys could measure up to the likes of Danti’s ‘Honor,’ or the ‘Perseus’ of Cellini. My degree did, if nothing else, qualify me to find the failures of a human form.

Now, slipping out my blouse and skirt, I studied the trembling girl in the mirror. I remembered reading somewhere that ‘nude’ was wedged into our vocabulary by a bunch of artists in the sixteenth century. They wanted a word for the body that could imply balance, poise, and beauty—whereas ‘naked’ was just about being vulnerable; all huddled, helpless torso, and entangled limbs. In depictions of the Last Judgment, the nudes ascend to heaven, and the naked go to hell. I thought of the poor girl in the corner of van der Weyden’s polyptych, crawling on all fours, a bodiless arm dragging her by the hair into the darkness.

My teeth chattered as a draft passed through the stall. Personally, with my clothes off, I’d never felt like I was anything but naked. The mirror was old. It had the smoky complexion of a cataract, making my reflection ghostly, and a little out of focus. It didn’t matter. I knew my faults like the words of the Hail Mary.

The naked girl’s green eyes gazed back at me—not the dazzling green of jade, or emeralds, but pale and glossy, like a blade of wet grass. She worried that her mouth wasn’t wide enough, and that her elbows were too pointy. She blushed easily and all over. A blue comment could turn her, in a flash, from titanium white to alizarin red. And you could tell by the way she walked on her toes that she was accustomed to being the smallest person in the room. With the tip of my finger, I traced the curving surgical scar that stretched from her left shoulder all the way down to the edge of her elbow. I sighed.

It’s going to show.

Chapter 2

Stepping off the Metro at Laurier, for the first time in ages I really did feel—as Madame d’Aulnoir declared—très chic. The patent leather go-go boots she tried convincing me to wear having proven too comical, I still stood five inches higher than usual in a pair of strappy black stilettos. Which is what, some dozen centimeters? I smiled nervously. The dress looked übersexy, and I’d been the subject of several forbidding stares on the short ride down from Saint-Michel.

On the platform, I about-faced to give my hair and makeup a last inspection in the train window. Some part of me knew it was shallow, but ever since I was little, pilfering my Mother’s eye shadow and mascara from her purse, I’d secretly adored doing my makeup. I think I discovered lipstick before colored pencils. Tonight, I’d painted on a dramatic violet eye, like something I saw once in a Fellini movie, and watched my reflection mimic a celluloid film reel, jumping from window to window as the train sped away.

My clutch buzzed. Inside, I found the pale glow of a text message.

*U there yet??? I have a surprise for you!*

Marie’s libidinous alto read aloud in my head. Surprise? I wondered sullenly if she had designs to set me up again with one of her peripheral admirers. It seemed inconceivable to her that I actually enjoyed my solitude; that I saw a silver lining in being alone. Rooting deeper, I pulled out the slip of paper on which she’d scribbled the address, and started walking—well, tiptoeing really—gladdened that the gallery was only a couple short blocks away.

A miasma of snowflakes scattered across the escalators as I approached, escaping from the snowy streets above. I sniffed, my nose already running, and pulled the lapels of my pea coat closer. I swear, from October through the Ides of March, I could never, ever get warm enough, and always contracted what seemed like an overlapping cavalcade of colds. I guess that’s why after only two winters, my coat was already threadbare and beginning to fray. I sniffled again, ascending. Up at the top, I couldn’t help but wonder if rather than the designer pillowcase I had on, I ought to have commandeered from Madame’s collection an ice fisherman’s jacket instead. They call it un froid sec, ‘a dry cold’ up in Quebec. They say it’s not as bad as could be. I say they’re plein de merde.

I was half-frozen before I took two steps outside, and still that didn’t stop me from passing by the entrance twice before getting up the nerve to go inside. The gallery was more intimidating than I’m expected. From the sidewalk, I could hear talk women laughing, and the muffled oomp of what sounded like a sacrilegious mash-up of a Nina Simone song. This is going to be painful, I realized, and wondered how long my outfit would disguise that fact that I was both broke, and congenitally uncool. I took a deep breath and pulled open the door.

“Bonsoir. Je peux vous aider, Mademoiselle?”

A severe looking woman in a black, vaguely Japanese cocktail dress appeared in front of me as I stepped across the threshold. Her eyes were fastened to a list in her palm.

“Umm… Penny Foster?” I murmured, apologetic.

She scanned up and down until her long, lacquered nail selected a line.

“Penelope Foster, no?” She contemned, still not quite deigning to look at me.

I nodded, “Oui, Madame.”

I hated the sound of my given name. But having procured the proverbial ‘open sesame,’ she stepped aside and let me through. I lowered my eyes and crept past her, reluctantly trading my coat for a red ticket at the counter.

Inside, it was a typical upscale gallery—historic building, exposed rafters, white walls, dark floors. The paintings hung from the ceiling, suspended by thin wires of braided steel. Marie, meanwhile, was nowhere in sight. I took a few steps back into the corner, where I was guarded on one side by a tall, spiky obelisk of rusted iron, and texted her.

*i’m here*

My phone buzzed a moment later.

*running late*

*how late?* I typed back.

*late late…sorry pens. look around. i’ll find you*

I put my phone away, frowning. I really didn’t feel up to any solo exploring. And this wasn’t the first time Marie had left me in a lurch. Much as I loved her, when it came to keeping engagements she was eminently unreliable. I sighed. Well, at least it’s warm.

All around me, conjoined dyads of graying men in well-tailored suits and statuesque women in dark, silk dresses stood in clusters, chatting, smiling, and sipping champagne. On the outskirts, a couple of coteries of younger, wealthy-looking hipsters sulked around, all wearing hats, eccentric facial hair, and looks of nonpareil annoyance. A few newcomers brushed past me to the coat check, one woman patting the snow from her jacket right onto my toes. I shivered. My teeth started chattering. And now, it’s not even warm. I grimaced.

Whatever confidence I’d mustered up for this ordeal during the journey over was swiftly dissipating. And I didn’t want to wait around all night for Marie. Knowing her, she might never even show up. Back at the apartment, I had a sofa, a thick afghan blanket, some oolong tea, and a little stack of trashy romance novels waiting for me. Plus—the pièce de résistance—my flannel pajamas. Or I could stand around here all night in Madame’s Mondrian dress, and pretend to be one of the paintings.

I forced a cheerless half-grin. Resolving to cut my losses and just head home, I returned the ticket for my coat, and was weighing whether to splurge on some cheap Indian takeout when I turned too quickly, and walked smack-dab into the iron sculpture, all but impaling myself on one of its protrusions.

“Oh, for the love of­­­­—” my jacket was snagged.

I tugged hard. A few stitches ripped, but it wouldn’t give.

“Crisse de câlice de tabarnak!” I swore, appropriating the rude sacres from Québécois.

Eavesdropping on my obscenities, a lanky, russet-haired man nearby turned his head to investigate.

Oh God, my eyes widened as he approached. It’s Peter.

“Penny?” he squinted.

I nodded, embarrassed.

I’d met Peter a few months ago when Marie brought back the muddled remnants of a wrap party to her place for a few final rounds. Peter, it turned out, had built the set. Marie soon vanished into her bedroom with a choreographer whose name escaped me. The party fizzled out, but Peter stayed. We talked, and drank up the choreographer’s rum, and snickered at the racket they were making into the wee hours of the morning. By the time the sun came up we were friends, and I was both relieved and humiliated to see him now. He grinned and stepped nearer, gently releasing my coat from its skewer.

“Thanks, Peter,” I mumbled, “I’m glad you’re here. I think Marie might’ve bailed on me.”

Privately, I wondered if his being there had anything to do with her cryptic ‘surprise.’ She loved playing matchmaker, particularly for people with—in her words—‘crazy compatible zodiacs.’ And ever since emerging with her nameless lover that morning to find Peter and me still up, sipping coffee on the sofa, she’d been pestering me with all kinds of intimate questions about him.

“Well, I had to be here,” he shrugged, “to make sure no one hari-karies themself on my work.”

He nodded to my barbed assailant.

“...You did this?” I asked, my eyes growing wide.

As I’d explained to Marie following several tortuous interrogations, set design aside, Peter Mulgrave was an authentic artist. At fourteen he’d started welding metal sculptures at his Father’s salvage yard in Halifax. But this was the first piece of his I’d seen in person. It was impressive—and imposing.

“So, what’s it supposed to be?” I baited him shyly, asking the question said to rankle postmodern sculptors.

“Can’t you tell?” he grinned, “It’s a coat rack.”

I examined the thumb-sized hole in my jacket, “Pretty lousy coat rack.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he glanced me over for latent injuries, “But holy hell, Pens. Look at you,” he stepped back to, and I felt my cheeks and chest begin to flush. “A De Stijl masterpiece,” he teased, “escaped from the museum to hobnob with some art that isn’t dead?”

“More or less,” I shrugged, feeling self-conscious.

On the sly, I appraised him back. He wore a charcoal vest and brow-line glasses. His curly hair was cleanly cropped just above the jaw. He looked dashing, and urbane; like he’d just wandered out of a Fitzgerald novel, slicing open the pages as he went. Peter was clearly in his element, and it felt nice not having to pretend around him. He knew I wasn’t rich, or edgy, or fashionable, or even all that fluent in French. And in spite of everything else around us, I started to relax.

“C’mon,” he jerked of his chin, “I’ll show you around.”

I smiled sheepishly, and followed. We made our way along the edge of a dense throng, many swilling cocktails or champagne flutes. Peter nodded toward the center.

“That’s Claude, the curator.”

Marie’s friend, I thought. He didn’t seem to be missing her much. He was flanked on either side by dazzling, sandy-haired girls with plump, pouting lips. They looked like they could be sisters—maybe even twins.

“And the little guy he’s talking to,” Peter whispered, “Benoît Boucher. The art critic. Kind of a big deal around here.”

I actually recognized Boucher from his headshot in the paper. Back at Madame’s shop, his was the only column I’d stumbled through before flipping back to the classifieds.

Peter grinned, “Don’t let him catch you staring, Pens. Your career might be over before it’s started.”

I nodded nervously, and we moved on. Rounding a corner, I realized the gallery was two, maybe three times larger than I originally thought. By Mile End standards, it was enormous.

“Pretty wild, eh?” Peter nudged me. “Claude really went all out. And he’s got some serious players in here.” He turned to look at me, “Honestly, I was kind of surprised he wanted one of mine.”

I wasn’t. Like Peter’s sculpture, most of the works were stark, modern, and more than a little intense. I thought about my own smattering of oils pinned up at the cafe. By comparison, I felt mine were barely better than finger paints. I followed him clockwise around the gallery’s perimeter as he pointed out his favorites, pausing here and there to introduce me to this or that artist, and passing over all the swarms of socialites. I was enjoying myself. I really was. But at the same time, it was hard not to dwell on how lost I felt. Each painter we passed seemed so sure of themself—so comfortable in their own skin. He waved to someone across the room, and turned back to me.

“So have you started that masterpiece yet?” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, “I remember you said you wanted to do something big.”

My brow furrowed. I’d confided in Peter under the twin intoxications of sleep deprivation and alcohol that I wanted to go large-scale with my first real work. A big, beautiful, blank canvas; something with infinite potential, something with space for me to explore.

“No,” I admitted, “Still waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” he squinted.

“I don’t know. The right moment?” I dropped my eyes, “My muse. Or inspiration. Or whatever. Furor poeticus... Something like lightning,” I felt my cheeks heating, “Something that’ll hit me, and tell me exactly what to do.”

“Uh-huh,” he nodded sardonically, “Got some bad news for you, Foster. It doesn’t work that way.” He took a step closer, “Believe me, I’ve been there. But I promise you, the best thing to do is just take what’s in front of you, and run with it,” he shrugged, “Might not be perfect, but it’s a start. And you can always smooth out the edges as you go. That’s how Rodin worked.”

Maybe. I frowned. But not Camille. I knew I was naïve. I knew I didn’t have his success, or experience. But I didn’t much care for Peter sucking all the magic out of the process. I wanted my first piece to be strange and special—to maybe even a hurt a little—like losing your virginity. I don’t know how exactly, but I felt it should shift, ever so slightly, something essential inside me; to change the lens on how I saw the world, and the way in which I fit into it.

Alright. So maybe you’re really naïve, Penny.

Peter glanced from me to the rafters, and back again.

“You know, I’m actually working on something pretty big myself. Toughest piece I’ve ever done,” he fidgeted, “You should stop by the studio sometime. I could use some help from someone like you.”

“Someone like who?” I asked, still a bit miffed.

“You know, like an... art nerd.”

I scoffed, “Didn’t realize I came off that way.”

“No, I just mean, like, someone who really knows the classics,” he backpedaled, “I’ve never done anything like this before, Pens,” there was a nervous energy in his voice, “For real. It’d mean a lot to me if you stopped by.”

I cocked my head. He’s out on a limb, I thought. But seriously, why me? I scanned the room, already forgetting two-thirds of the names he’d given me. Why me, when he’s got a whole battalion of experts right here to choose from?

“Yeah. Sure,” I turned back to him, nodding cautiously. “I um, I think I’d like that.”

Peter smiled, and put his number into my phone as we continued our circuit. It was, I’ll admit, a little strange for me to be in a room full of paintings about which I knew absolutely nothing—and all the more so to be lectured on them by someone my own age. Around the works of the Renaissance, the Impressionists, the Neo-Classicists, Academicists, Naturalists, Post-Impressionists, Expressionists, Realists, Surrealists, Fauvists, Futurists, Orphists, Cubists, or Romantics, I all-too-often could revert to my preteen self—a precocious and insufferable know-it-all. Had we been across the Parc du Mont-Royal at the fine arts museum, I might have rendered Peter whole. annotated volumes of commentary before we passed the ticket counter. But he made for a great tour guide—kind, and funny—and it actually felt nice to take the back seat for once, and just let him lead me. He handed back my phone just as it buzzed.

*seen anything you like, babe?*

It was Marie again. She must’ve spotted me with him, I thought, spinning, hoping to catch her. Even in heels, though, I couldn’t see much. Apparently Amazonian supermodels were a key demographic in the Montreal contemporary art scene.

*where r u?* I typed.

Her reply popped up.

*on my way. I swear!*

I stared at the message, rereading it twice.

Weird. Guess she’s not here. I knitted my brow. Marie could be such a space cadet. Peter was waiting patiently nearby, watching me, and smirking.

“Something up?” he asked.

I shrugged, “Guess not.”

I knew I was just being paranoid, but whenever this happened, I couldn’t help dreading for Marie. For the next few minutes, my mind wasn’t really there at the gallery. Instead, I was imagining in ghastly detail how she was probably in the midst of being kidnapped; gagged, bound, and stuffed into a trunk by some deranged balletomane. Through her eyes, I saw his sinister smile, and the glint in his eye as he snapped the hatch shut.

Stop. Just stop. You’re being ridiculous. I shook my head, trying to clear it. She isn’t you, Penny. Marie knows how to handle herself.

I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling a little flare over the scar on my shoulder. And when I reopened them, I saw something so bizarre and so beautiful that I forgot all about Marie, about Peter, and even about myself. Alone on a rough brick wall, above a cluster of murmuring bodies, there hung a huge, arresting oil of a female nude. And she was definitely a nude—though her only coverings were a crystal choker, rendered with Vermeerian fidelity to the dance of shadow and light, and a little crimson drapery across her white thigh—there was nothing ‘naked’ about her. Her body was tense, and sinuous. Her red hair, like embers, seemed to scintillate through the paint, and extinguish itself in the ashy black. Like the Urbino Venus, her palm was cunningly placed. But what caught me up most was the moment, the split second in which she was captured. She was recumbent. And she was coming.

I blushed a deep, deep crimson, inching closer. I don’t think I’d ever seen something—not even Bernini’s Theresa—that crystallized the climax, all the agonies and the ecstasies, with such vicious and cutting clarity. If the Mona Lisa’s smile was a subtle, sphinxian riddle, the look this woman wore was the Gordian knot. Like an O-face, I thought blasphemously, for the immaculate conception.

I edged even closer, and my eyes grew wider as I spotted the little golden cuffs around her wrists, and the chains to which they were fettered. Is she Andromeda? I squinted, rising perilously onto my tiptoes to read the placard.

‘The Old Master / Evelyn X’

I bit my lip. Not Andromeda? With a little gasp, I realized the man over whose tweedy shoulder I was peering was none other than the venerable art critic, Benoit Boucher. He was speaking to a lithe, lovely woman with dark eyes and an adorable black pixie-cut. I lowered myself off my toes and listened.

“Magnifique, Mademoiselle. C’est la différance incarnée. But by your title, I confess I am stumped. You must tell me. Which of the Old Masters inspired this? Titian? Correggio? Rubens, peut-être?”

“Alle und keinen, Monsieur,” she smirked, pushing a sable thread of hair from her temple, “I was thinking of Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts.”

“Ah, je vois, je vois,” Boucher nodded wisely.

Oh wow. It’s her... I stared at the girl, swelling with equal parts envy and adulation. I wanted to hear her speak again. Her voice had a tragic little lilt to it. Is she Irish? I wondered. She must be. No one else sounds so plain and so pretty. And her painting, my Christ—it was graceful, and terrible, and shocking all at once—and as I had with only a handful of others in my life, I could feel myself falling in love with it.

Evelyn X. I watched her for as long as I dared, only half-aware of how awkward it would be if she caught me staring. I couldn’t help it. She just looked so demure; so pretty and poised. And so talented. She was everything I wished I could be. I glanced again to her painting, and then back to her.

Oh. Oh my God. My lips parted. I don’t know how I’d missed it at first, but apart from her hair—and, of course, her blazing, brazen nudity—the girl in the painting was a mirror image of Evelyn X herself. A deep crease cut across my brow. I’m mean sure, there’s plenty of precedent for scandalous self-portraits. But to do this one—to have that kind of daring, and audacity—I couldn’t even to imagine it. I felt myself blush on her behalf, even though her own cheeks were porcelain-pale, and dropped my eyes, embarrassed as I backed away.

After the obelisk you might think I’d have learned my lesson. But again, not looking where I was headed, I backed up right against a silver-haired man in a trim, grey suit, knocking myself off balance, and splashing champagne over the edge of his glass. I heard it hiss like a serpent as it spattered on the floor.

“Prenez garde, mademoiselle,” he caught me, “Est-ce que ça va?”

“Yeah. Yes, I’m fine, thank you,” I stammered, “I’m sorry, sir. I just, um—I wasn’t looking.”

“No,” he let go, answering in clipped, aristocratic English, “I dare say you were looking, my dear.”

He nodded to the nude, lifting two fresh flutes of champagne from a tray as it passed. I felt my cheeks burn brighter.

“She’s quite the creature, isn’t she?” He reached out, offering me a glass.

I nodded bashfully, folding my hands to decline, “Yeah. I guess she is.”

He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and pressed closer until I grasped the stem of the glass. All the while he gazed past me, into the painting.

“Do you know what she reminds me of?” He sipped.

I shook my head, beginning to glimpse around for Peter.

“Cleopatra,” he pointed, “bitten by the asp.”

Cobra’s kiss. It bit her breast, right?

My brow furrowed, “Maybe. My thought was Andromeda.”

“Because of her chains?” He sniffed, his eyes darting down to the wrists, “I disagree. Cassiopea’s daughter—she was a woman waiting for death, now wasn’t she? A picture of silence, of stasis. But this poor creature here,“ he grinned wryly, “she’s already met her end. Embraced it. Just look at her, my dear. The ‘Dying Slave.’ Suffering in extremis.”

My stomach churned, and I gritted my teeth, growing more uncomfortable by the moment.

“I um, I’m not sure it’s pain that she’s feeling, sir,” I murmured.

“Algolagnia,” his dark eyes glinted, apparently intrigued, “Eros, Thanatos. Yes... Perhaps pleasure and pain are more closely woven than we care to admit. There is a reason, after all, that we call it la petite mort, no?” He swallowed another sip, and sighed, “Poor Evie’s always had a penchant for entangling the two.”

Evelyn? A tight knot formed in my throat, and for the first time since our collision, I raised my gaze, daring to fully face him. He was older, to be sure—probably my Father’s age—but without a trace of softening, or sag in his face. Like a limestone cave, the trickle of time seemed to have just carved his features deeper, to make him more hollow, and sharp. Above his left eye, a deep, diagonal scar bisected the brow. I tried not to stare. I knew how it felt when somebody stared.

“You know her?” I murmured.

“Intimately,” his eyes narrowed, leering over in the girl’s direction, “Would you like for me to introduce you, Miss—?“

“...Rousseau,” I shook my head nervously, wearing Marie’s name for a mask as I backed away, “And thank you, Monsieur. But no. I should really be getting back to my friend.”

“Bien sûr,” he stared, a slim, unsettling grin still twisting the edges of his mouth, “Do watch your step tonight, my dear.”

I nodded once more, and left him, shuddering as I wove my way out of the crowd. I wanted to find Peter—but even more so, I wanted to get away from him. Fast. Whoever he was, whatever game he was playing at, the guy creeped me right the fuck out.

I found Peter at the periphery, chatting casually with a couple photographers. Catching my eye, he excused himself, slipping his hands in his pockets as he approached.

“Hey stranger,” he smirked, “Thought I lost you for a second.”

I shook my head, sinking my incisors into my lip.

“You alright, Pens?” He touched my shoulder, knitting his brow, “you look a little pale.”

“I’m good,” I shrugged, setting the un-sipped champagne aside, “Let’s just move on.”

He held out for a moment, still wary, but didn’t press me any further. I suppose he could tell I needed a distraction.

“As you wish, milady,” he bowed theatrically, and offered his arm.

I put on a faux-smile. And just like that, we resumed our tour, strolling along toward the far wall. After that run-in, I was gladder than ever to have him for an escort, and it wasn’t long all before he had me grinning again, and forgetting all about the unsettling Englishman. I guess that’s the beauty and the curse of Peter’s charm. It was amnestic, in a way. It made you forget more than it made you forgive.

“Brace yourself,” he nudged me, “We’re coming up on the back end. They always stick the weirdos near the fire exit.”

I nodded, narrowing my eyes.

“Now, this guy says he’s deconstructing the New England lighthouse portrait. Says he’s picking up where Edward Hopper left off,” he pursed his lips, “I think he’s just got some big Freudian hang-ups.”

I giggled shyly. They were awfully phallic.

“You’re one to talk,” I teased him, recalling his iron obelisk—the one that almost impaled me.

“Funny, Foster,” he rolled his eyes. “Oh, this is special,” he pointed, “This lady from Vancouver. She makes all her own paints out of bone ash and crushed beetles.”

Mommia. Cochineal. I wrinkled my nose. It was interesting, and intricate. But it was pretty gross.

“Some of your most expensive offal on the market,” he adjusted his glasses in mock scrutiny.

I snickered, clasping my hand to my mouth. I felt guilty for laughing. These painters—the ones at the back—they were people like me; all struggling blindly to get something out from inside of them, to share whatever it is that they see. But Peter. He had a knack for making things whimsical. He could’ve pointed me to a guillotine that evening, and I still might’ve giggled. Silver bells and cockle shells. I shook my head, ashamed.

At last, we came to the far corner of the gallery, where seven small pieces were strung up right alongside the backdoor.

“And these—” he pointed, paused, and cocked his head, “...These I don’t recognize.”

A blast of cold air whistled in as Claude, accompanied by his two comely caryatids, slipped outside and lit cigarettes. I shivered, and smirked. Some head-scratching suited Peter. He’d been so cocky all night. It was nice to see he didn’t really know everyone ever to lift a paintbrush in the city. He took a few steps closer, fixing his glasses. My eyes trailed along listlessly, curious to see what had him so stumped.

...No.

My blood ran cold. My mouth dropped open, and my eyes went wide. There was a reason, clearly, that he didn’t recognize these. There, dangling like hanged men from their cords, were the clumsy red oils I’d painted of the chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours. In brazen black letters, the placard beside them displayed the text: Penelope Foster / Cardinal Sin No.1, Cardinal Sin No. 2... All the way up, inexorably, to seven.