A Paris Apartment Read Online Free Page A

Marguérite, to all of Paris! For now, I will delay the inevitable as long as possible. I have not yet decided what to tell Boldini. Will I say the baby is his? Will I say it is someone else’s? Lying to this man does not sit well with me, especially with all the lies and secrets kept about my own lineage. However, a woman cannot live on good intentions alone. Sometimes you have to tell a lie to live the truth.

 
    Chapitre VI
    Paris, 1 August 1898
    Boldini, the bastard! His latest sketch is beyond unacceptable. And he intends to use it! The situation is disastrous. He is such a merde !
    The sketch was only practice, he said. I should have known better, and in fact the minute he picked up a pencil I objected. I was in no form for immortalization, having just been très horizontale with him on my purple lounging chair.
    “You look sublime,” he said, when in fact I did not. I had only just sat up. My eyes were slits, my hair tousled and out of its form. I had lost a bracelet in the sheets, and my whitening powder was almost completely rubbed off.
    And my dress! I can hardly stand to discuss the state of my gown. Dear God: crunched-up sleeves, wrinkled bodice, and not even laced all the way closed! It is a dress I hate, no less. One I never meant to buy! I will have to write about the dress. I should have known the blasted pink frock would prove my downfall. Now if Boldini has his way the wretched gown will outlive me!
    “Unless you want me to break your sketching hand,” I warned when he did not stop his scribbling. “Please release the writing implement.”
    “I told you, it is simply practice,” he promised. “You look so beautiful I must capture it.”
    “You are quite the snake charmer. But I am no snake, thus not to be charmed.”
    “Not to worry,” he said, the hint of smile dancing on his lips. “It is just for me, for my private use. Trust me, my sweet, you have never looked so exquisite. I want to remember this.”
    How could I possibly object to the sentiment? My shoulders relaxed. I no longer glanced around trying to locate a pistol.
    Stupid, stupid woman am I.
    For a moment the process was not untenable. It was enjoyable, even, a wonder to see Giovanni actually smile when he worked instead of grimace and shriek and act like the petulant child he is. He called me beautiful and perfect, and as anyone familiar with Giovanni knows, these are weighty words for that man.
    Eventually he finished. As I rose to my feet, he continued to sit at his drawing table, grinning like a madman, pencil clenched in his fist. I said the only thing I could: “Merde.”
    Laughing maniacally, Giovanni threw his pencil to the ground, clapped his hands together, and deemed this the portrait he would paint! Not the one we’d been working on for the devil knows how many weeks. Not the one of the carefully selected frock, proper jewels, and head tilted just so. Donna Franca Florio herself (spit, hack) could never look so good. No, he wanted this, sketched in haste, painted in cruelty!
    “Off to Monte Carlo!” he then said.
    Monte Carlo! For a month! I wanted to lock him in a stranglehold, but even that seemed too generous a treatment.
    “Mon Dieu!” I said.
    He laughed.
    “Never speak to me again!” I said.
    He laughed.
    Stupid, awful, deplorable man. You can’t pry a blasted smile from beneath his mustache for months on end, and suddenly he was giddy as a loon.
    “I hope your genitals rot and fall off!”
    And then I told him.
    Of course I had to tell him. I planned to all along, but his indecorous behavior hastened the news. As it turned out he had recognized the changes in me. He took note of the extra roundness in my stomach and bosom. It was easy enough to hide on the street and in company, but one cannot wear a corset at all times. Well, some people are fond of such arrangements, but not M. Boldini.
    “I did wonder,” he said once all was done, once the confession fell from my mouth and we both said things we