in the world to worry about,” he said with a throaty chuckle, and he lifted up his knife and fork. “As long as she likes you.”
“Why, Pablo Diego Ruiz y Picasso, what the devil has gotten into you? I’ll be damned if you aren’t stone drunk!” Max Jacob chuckled as he stepped back from the open door of his brick apartment building on the boulevard Barbès.
“Not drunk enough,” Picasso grunted as motorcars and carriages moved past in the street behind him. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. “Where’s your wine?”
“Haven’t got any, I’m afraid, ol’ chum. Sound familiar?” Max quipped tauntingly. He never missed a chance with his old friend to give as good as he got. He had given Picasso the first roof over his head here in Paris, lent him a few centimes when he needed it and bought him food. Max felt that gave him license that few others had.
“Where’s your ether, then? I know you’ve got that,” Picasso slurred.
“Now what kind of a friend would I be if I told you?” Max put a hand on his arm as Picasso lunged for the dresser drawers. “I’ve gone cold turkey this time, amigo. I woke up two days ago in front of my house in a pool of my own swill, with a stray cat licking my face. Nothing quite so poetic to set you right as that. It put me off the stuff for good. I swear it.”
Max spoke it as a musing but he had battled a drug problem for years. When Picasso and Fernande had given up smoking opium two years ago, Max had gone on with a vengeance, adding ether to his ever-growing list of addictions.
“I need to speak about Fernande and, of all our friends, you’re the least biased in her favor so I know you will be honest.”
“You mean, I’m the one who is the least captivated by her seductive charms.” Max chuckled as he closed the door.
“Sí, if you like.”
“That may have more to do with my sexual preferences than my powers of discernment, mon ami. She’s just never held sexual sway over me. But like everyone else, I do acknowledge her undeniable beauty.”
“I’m not sure she holds that sway over me any longer, either.”
Max stepped back as if he’d been struck. Then he sank into the shabby wingback chair beside his coal fireplace. “Merde. That’s something I truly never thought I’d hear you say.”
“Me, either.”
Picasso washed a hand wearily over his face, and a deep mournful groan escaped from behind it. He was confused, and so tired. Certainly he was frustrated. They were all things he loathed being for how pathetic it made him feel. Power was the only true aphrodisiac worth its while to him.
“Is Fanny Tellier modeling for you again?” Max asked suspiciously as they sat together in the quaint drawing room bountiful with decorative ferns. Heavy fringed draperies hung from the windows and books lined the walls.
“It’s not her. It’s no one,” Picasso lied. To speak of Eva seemed a betrayal of a gentle young woman, albeit one with an alluring spark of fire.
“No, it’s not her at all. It’s me. The predictability of life right now, the way we’ve all been so wild, and will go on being wild.” He sighed. “I don’t know. And then there’s the work. No one but Kahnweiler seems to understand my new paintings. Everyone wants a bite out of my growing success, but no one really cares for the taste of what lies beneath.”
“You’re twenty-nine years old, mon ami, hardly ready for such somber reflection and self-pity.”
“Well, lately I feel quite old and just as frustrated by this path, as if I were ready for all of that.”
“Good Lord, Pablo, what the devil has brought this on? Fernande has always been your muse, your great love.”
“That’s just it!” He held his palms out in a pleading gesture. His face quickly reddened with frustration. “What if she isn’t my muse? What if it’s someone else who is meant to inspire and support me? Will I be trapped in this strangling world unless I break free to claim her? Dios mío, ayudame, where is that ether?”
Max exhaled and shook his head. “It’s the German, isn’t it? Apo told her to be careful but she never listens.... I don’t know which one of you is worse. Maybe the two of you need to get away. It’s nearly summer. Why not leave Paris for a while. Go down to the South, gain some perspective again, hmm? Take your animals. You know how your little menagerie cheers you. Paint, make love. The boy will wither away.”
But would his interest in Eva wither? Would he outrun that curiosity for something different that he could not chase away? Was such a thing possible now that he had become fascinated by her?
The more he thought of Eva, the more he needed to be with her again.
“Think this through carefully, Pablo. Fernande is one of us. The group won’t easily accept another woman after all these years, I warn you. Come to think of it, nor shall I. Fernande might be a bit of a nuisance right now, but she’s our nuisance, mon ami, remember that.”
“The bright red cuffs are just what the costume needed so the audience can follow my movements without words, which is how I plan to captivate them. Marcelle, I owe you everything,” Mistinguett pronounced as she pulled Eva into a dramatic embrace before the show.
“Whoever thought our little sprite here could become a costume designer at the Moulin Rouge,” Louise Balthy chimed as she rounded the door toward them.
“I didn’t actually design it,” Eva demurred, blushing at the praise that she wasn’t accustomed to, and which she did not entirely trust. “I just enhanced it a little.”
“Modesty won’t get you very far in this city,” said the chubby comedienne. “We all must use what we’ve got. For heavens sake, look at me!”
“She’s absolutely right, you know. You have certainly proven yourself to all of us,” Mistinguett decreed.
“And you saved me with my torn stockings and drawers more than a few times these past weeks, so my loyalty knows no bounds,” Louise concurred faithfully.
“I’m glad.” Eva smiled. “But the creation of one costume does not a designer make. It’s a bit premature to give me a lofty title like that. Especially without Madame Léautaud’s approval.”
“True. But you have caused everyone here to stand up and take notice. Some new title is only a matter of time,” predicted Louise.
“So then, what time shall I call for you Saturday evening for Gertrude Stein’s salon?” Mistinguett asked. “You are still going to accompany me, aren’t you?”
Deep inside the pocket of her skirt, Eva touched the little sachet of pipe tobacco she carried with her always now, in this new place, feeling comforted by it when so many things in her life were so swiftly changing.
She knew it would be suspicious if she did not go now that she had been formally invited. She could not risk offending Mistinguett, either, so she was relieved that Louis had been invited, as well, for fear of running into Picasso there.
The whole thing would be over soon enough. That, at least, was what she was telling herself as the show began, though she couldn’t help but steal a glimpse from behind the stage curtain at the table where she had seen Picasso and his friends. Eva hated the disappointment she felt not finding him in his usual spot. There, in his place instead, was a stout, silver-haired woman wearing a prominent hat ornamented with an ostrich feather, her fan wide open and fluttering. Beside her was a man with a ginger-colored goatee who looked entirely bored.
Just as well,