Chapter 30
— NINON
The last three weeks had flown by. Léo had come back from his grandparents’ with a sweater that was too big, a drawing of a cow, and a cold that had lasted a week. Wednesdays had taken their place in my schedule again, so had the bedtime stories, the second sigh before giving in, Monsieur Lapin traveling from bed to sofa. The apartment had closed around us like a hand that relaxes, and I realized with surprise that I felt at home there.
It took me four weeks to keep the promise of the portrait in color.
Four weeks of classes, of corridors, of lunches where our knees brushed under the table without us talking about it. In the evening I went back to Caro and Fred’s, I had dinner with them, we talked about simple things, and no one touched what had been floating between us since Sunday. They were giving me time. I had started giving it back to them in grateful silence. But during the day, my eyes kept returning to Inès, like to an open window.
One Thursday, at the end of the last class, she said to me:
— Come pose at my place. I mean, come paint me. I’ll make you dinner.
I arrived around seven with my watercolor box, two brushes, and a block of thick paper I had bought especially. The apartment was as I remembered it, warm and beautiful, with the brass lamp on and the music very low. Inès opened the door barefoot, in a loose sweater that slipped off one shoulder and cotton shorts. Her hair was tied up messily, no makeup, and I thought it was the first time I was seeing her like that. Younger. Less armored.
— I don’t know how to pose, she said.
— You don’t need to. Sit there, near the window, and do whatever you want.
She settled on the green sofa, one leg folded under her, a glass of wine in her hand. I set up my little improvised easel with a chair and a cushion. For a few minutes we said nothing. She watched me work, and I felt her gaze on my fingers, on my wrists, on my neck. It wasn’t the same gaze as the others. There was no calculation, no game. Only a very naked attention.
— What do you do when you draw? she asked.
— I look.
— No. You do something else. You stop being there.
— Maybe.
— I like that. I wish I knew how to do it.
I dipped the brush, traced the line of the shoulder, the place where the wool slipped. She moved a little, without adjusting it.
Her hair was tied up messily, no makeup, and the copper still came through, darker at the roots, almost blond on a stray strand. The sweater slipped. Underneath, nothing to hold it. Even dressed for no one, she remained a body that people looked at before deciding to.
— Do you want me to talk, or to be quiet?
— Talk. It helps me see.
She took a sip, set the glass on her bare knee.
— Then I’ll give you the short version, because the long one is boring and you’ll draw it badly. Parisian, born here, not adopted by the city. I did an Erasmus in Spain, then a year in England, before deciding. I joined the school late. Not because I had missed something. Because it took me time to admit that this was what I wanted, and not a school that would please my parents. I was already twenty-three. You’re twenty-four, right? We’re the same year. Not the same calendar.
She smiled, not the café smile. A smile that let something else through.
— Over there I fucked. A lot. Not to collect. Because it presented itself, and I didn’t see why I would say no to something I liked. Spaniards who were too sure of themselves, an Englishman who read out loud in bed and was less good with his mouth than with sentences. Whole nights, walks home, apartments that weren’t mine. I know the bars, the lines, the hands on the back on a dance floor. The rest, what you draw, the closed rooms, the rules, I haven’t lived that. No one offered it to me. Or I didn’t know how to see it.
She pulled on the sweater, which fell back the same way.
— Here it’s simpler and stupider. The law student, the bartender. You already know them by name, even if I haven’t introduced them. They don’t know each other. I know them very well in bed, and not very well outside. That suits me. I don’t lie to them. I don’t promise them anything.
The brush was still dry between my fingers. I mixed ocher with pink, for the hair.
— And girls?
The question had come out too fast. She didn’t pretend she hadn’t heard it.
— Never. Not a hand, not a mouth. I’ve been thinking about it since Spain, I think, without having the nerve or the opportunity, I don’t know which. Curious, yes. Experienced, no. Tonight I’m posing. That’s already a lot, for someone who doesn’t like being looked at without being able to answer.
She laughed, low.
— And you, you stop being there when you draw. That, I wish I knew how to do.
— Yes.
— When you told me, at the café… the woman. Caro. You said “the woman, then the man.” In that order.
My brush stopped in the air.
— That’s how it happened.
— I know. But she’s the one you named first. And in your notebook, the rose, the hand, the neck… it’s almost always her.
I said nothing. I felt heat rise along the back of my neck.
— I’m not judging you, she added, softly. I’m wondering, that’s all. I’ve never… Well, I’ve thought about it. Often. Not seriously, not enough to ask myself the question. But these last few days, watching you draw, listening to you, I’ve been wondering things.
— What things?
She set her glass back on the coffee table. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and her face came out of the lamp light.
— What it would feel like. To touch someone like you.
The silence stretched. My heart was pounding under my ribs, so hard I thought she could hear it. I put the brush in the glass of water, which turned pink. I stood up. My legs didn’t really obey, but they carried me to the sofa, and I sat beside her, close enough to feel her warmth, not close enough to touch her.
— I’ve asked myself the same question, I said. Since the first day. Maybe even before.
— And so?
— So I don’t know. I’m very mixed up, Inès. I’m coming out of something huge, and I don’t want you to be…
— An outlet.
— A mistake.
She smiled, that slow smile she has when she really understands.
— I won’t be a mistake. I promise you. And if you tell me to stop, I’ll stop.
She raised her hand, very slowly, the way you approach an animal you don’t want to scare. Her fingers touched my face, along the cheek, then the line of the jaw. They were cool, a little trembling. She brushed the corner of my mouth with her thumb.
— You’re trembling, she murmured.
— You too.
— That’s true.
I don’t know which of us leaned in. I think we moved together, at the same moment, with the same hesitation. Her lips found mine, first barely, a brush, a question. They were soft, with a taste of wine and something sweet. I closed my eyes. I thought of Caro, of her more assertive, more knowing lips, and the difference went through me like a light: here, nothing was controlled, nothing was led, we were both learning at the same time.
She deepened the kiss, very slightly. I answered. My hand settled on her waist, on the warm wool, and I felt her breath catch against my mouth. She slid her fingers into my hair, without haste, as if she wanted to hold every second.
When we separated, my head was spinning, my cheeks burning. She rested her forehead against mine, eyes closed.
— Oh, she said.
— Yes.
— That was…
— Yes.
She laughed, softly, a slightly strangled laugh. Then she opened her eyes again, and I saw them change: a shadow, a worry.
— And them? Your couple. Do they know about me?
I straightened, and the question brought me back to earth as surely as a hand on the shoulder. The rule. The only rule. No lying. I hadn’t talked to them about Inès except as “a school friend who put me up.” And there I was sitting on her sofa, my mouth still wet from her kiss.
— Not yet, I said. I’m going to tell them. I don’t want to hide this from them.
— You don’t have to tell them tonight.
— No. But I don’t want it to become a secret. It would… spoil something.
She nodded slowly.
— So we stop here, for tonight?
I looked at her lips, her bare shoulder, the strand falling on her cheek. I thought I wanted to continue, a lot, with a force that scared me. And I thought that was exactly why I had to choose fully conscious this time, that no one would follow an arm or a sheet in my place.
— We can stay here, I said. Just here. Without going further.
— Just here, she repeated.
She pulled me against her. I nestled into the hollow of her shoulder, my cheek against the wool, one hand on her belly. She put her arm around me. On the improvised easel, the portrait waited, unfinished, a pink shoulder, a barely sketched face, a still-white smile.
— You’ll finish it tomorrow, she said.
— Yes.
— And then you’ll tell them.
— Yes.
We stayed like that for a long time, without speaking, listening to the music and the sound of the street. I felt her heart against my ear. I told myself it was the first time since Sunday that I wanted to stay somewhere without being afraid of what would come next.
