The artist’s garret was squashed between two tall buildings, accessible only by a narrow set of stairs. Inside, the close air smelled of plaster and silk flowers, and a fine dusting of white powder clung to Magdalena and I’s skirts as we walked. The walls were crowded with blank canvases and half-constructed wooden frames, with chisels lying about haphazardly on tarps. It was like entering the harried mind of the artist at work, untidy thoughts and all. Magdalena and I stopped to admire every bust, every painting, but you strode on ahead, eyes keen as though searching for something in particular.
“Chin a little higher, please.”
A man’s voice, distant yet close. The artist, perhaps?
“Show me imperious,” he went on, and I heard the soft tapping of a paintbrush against a pallet. “I want to see the arrogance of Alexander.”
You ducked behind a sheaf of cloth draped across a doorway, moving towards the sound of the voice. Magdalena and I followed, stepping lightly to avoid pots of paint piled up on crumpled newspaper.
The artist stood wrapped in a tattered smock, taking in his subject as he compared life to the fantasy he was creating on the canvas. The subject in question was a young man, golden haired and lovely, with sea-blue eyes and a full, mischievous mouth. He stood stripped to the waist despite the frost on the windows, holding up a platter of fake fruit and doing his best not to shiver.
“I’d feel more imperious if it wasn’t as cold as the devil’s tit in here,” the model said, in a musical tenor.
I looked at you. You were observing Magdalena, who was watching the model. Desire, as faint yet undeniable as the light thrown by a single candle, flickered across her face.
I swallowed and folded my hands primly in front of me. After living with the both of you for so long, I knew trouble when I sensed it.
“Ah my friend, you’ve made it,” the artist crowed, clapping you on the back. The gesture startled me. I couldn’t imagine someone speaking to you so familiarly, but you seemed at ease around him. Perhaps acting the congenial comrade was one of your new personas. You spun whole personalities out of silken promises to get close to whomever you needed to. It was one of the reasons you were able to keep us alive so long, and one of the reasons I sometimes woke with a start in the middle of the day and stared at you, wondering who I was sharing a bed with.
“Who are these lovely doves you’ve brought?” the artist asked, stroking his greying beard as he looked at Magdalena and I with a twinkle in his eye. Not leering. Friendly. Truly happy to see you and to see us. I was impressed, if a little concerned, at your ability to convince a being you saw as little better than breakfast that you two were bosom friends.
“My wife,” you said, extending your arm and pulling me in close. “And my ward, Magdalena. Her mother drowned in the Spree last spring, very tragic.”
I resisted my urge to roll my eyes at you, and Magdalena nearly managed it.
You delighted in making up stories about Magdalena, whether you claimed she was your ward or your daughter or your widowed niece or your sister in training for the convent. But I was always your wife. I think you categorized us this way less to elevate my station above Magdalena’s — we were both your wife behind closed doors — and rather because no one would believe I was anything but a matron, a spoken-for woman. Magdalena said I always radiated a faint sense of motherly worry.
“Of course, my friend,” the artist said with a chuckle. “Of course.”
I had no idea whether he believed you, but I saw that it didn’t matter to him either way. A true libertine, then.
“I’m freezing, Gregori,” the model complained. “Either tell your handsome friend and his ladies to take a seat while you paint or give me back my coat.”
“Mind your manners, Alexi,” the painter grumbled. He shot a sidelong glance to you as he picked back up his brush and palette. “These young actors, they’re all the same. Heads as big as the moon. Please, sit.”
He gestured to a few mismatched folding chairs and we sat, Magdalena looping her arm through my own. She squeezed gently as Alexi resumed his post. Back arched, neck angled gracefully, eyes shadowed by thick lashes so blonde they were nearly transparent. He was one of the most beautiful men I had ever seen. And he couldn’t have been more than nineteen.
Desire and foreboding curled together in my stomach.
We watched in patient appreciation as the painter worked, you occasionally pointing out some lovely piece of statuary in the studio to Magdalena, who nodded her approval. Your eyes kept creeping back to Alexi, however, in tiny flickers that would have been invisible to someone who didn’t know you as well as I did. You stole glances to him like tiny sips of wine with dinner, and he did his best not to color under your gaze. When he caught your eyes with a disaffected toss of his head calculated to look natural, the electricity between you two went through my heart like a needle.