“What do you do?” Levon asked. “Besides this.” He gestured around the empty restaurant. “Do you paint?”
She shivered involuntarily. “No. It’s too cold in my room.”
“Even Fifth Avenue landlords are being stingy?”
“I’m not living there anymore. I had to move out.”
“Where, then?”
“The Hotel 17.”
He took her hand. “You’re freezing, even here. Come with me. We must warm you up.”
After checking in with Romany Marie, she left with Levon. His studio was exactly as she remembered it, immaculate and ordered, except for a bowl of fruit rotting on a table. A blackened banana had caved in on itself, and three apples were patchy with mold. Fruit flies fluttered about, and a sickly scent permeated the entire room.
“How can you stand it?” She held her nose while he picked up the bowl of fruit and dumped it out a window. “Are you in a memento mori phase these days? I can’t blame you.”
But when she saw the canvas on his easel, she regretted her flippant response. Levon had attempted to draw the fruit when fresh, but the lines were shaky, feeble. He’d abandoned the drawing halfway through and, knowing him, refused to throw out the fruit as a fetid punishment for his ineptitude.
Levon put some wood on the fire and sat Clara in the armchair in front of it, draping several blankets over her.
“Coffee?” He held up a familiar blue-and-gold can.
“You have Martinson’s?”
“Of course. I don’t skimp when it comes to my coffee. Only the best. I have to keep up appearances.”
“You do a good job of it. I was sure you were a wealthy man when you walked into the restaurant. How do you manage?”
“My private classes. My society ladies treat me like a pet. They bring me cans of coffee and their husbands’ old hats, bestow gifts on me for my services.”
“Your services?”
“An introduction to the world of beauty. They are my patrons, and I grovel accordingly.”
She studied him as he made the coffee, tried to keep her tone light. “Why do I suspect the lessons involve a serious examination of anatomy?”
He shrugged but didn’t answer her question.
“How thrilled the ladies must be to have a distinguished painter visit them in their parlors and provide attention that their distracted husbands cannot.” She checked herself, her sarcasm unwarranted. “You’ve kept the studio, though. Must be worth it for that alone.”
“True. My services are much appreciated.”
She could have sworn that was a smirk on his face.
Clara pushed off the suffocating blankets. “Lucky you, remaining solvent by being able to charm old ladies.” She hit the word charm hard.
He leaned against the table, waiting for his fancy coffee to brew. “You’re angry with me for that?”
“Only because I don’t have the chance. If the situation were reversed, and I was asked by the idle, rich men of New York to tutor them in the ‘painterly arts,’ I could never boast of it. I would be considered a disgrace, a prostitute, whoring myself out. Yet you get to indulge in the same behavior and strut about like a rooster with no repercussions.”
A look of shock crossed his face at her crassness. “These women, they are sad. They are devastated and unsure. Just like you.”
“Does that mean you’re going to mess about with me, too?” She glared at him. “Don’t even think about it.”
Levon poured the coffee into two chipped, mismatched cups, set them on the small table beside her, and knelt down.
“Don’t be angry, Clara.”
Her anger came from all sides, from Mr. Bianchi’s words, which still smarted, from Oliver leaving her to flounder, from the fact that she had had so much and squandered it all.
He took her hands in his. “You must live here, with me, from now on. I’ll keep you warm.”
She’d done everything she could to push him away. Her eyes burned with tears. “I have nothing to offer you.”
“I have nothing either. But I’ve already lived through this kind of hunger, day in and day out. We sucked on stones, we ate grass, anything to fill that void, even if nothing would come of it. But there are other ways to fill the void. With painting, with art. I’ll show you.”
“How to suck on stones?”
“No, no. You don’t understand.”
“I do, Levon.” Her tone softened. “I do understand.” She studied the artworks against the side wall, where he stored his best. “Where’s the painting of your mother?”
“It’s in the bedroom, turned to the wall. I can’t bear to look at it if I can’t work on it.”
He looked like he was about to cry, his eyes big and round, like the boy’s in the portrait with his mother.
Clara’s petty resentments subsided. “I shouldn’t judge you on your students, your arrangements.” She kicked off one shoe and rubbed the arch of her foot, wondering what to say next. She’d never been at a loss for words with him before, and their friendship would never be the same if she didn’t address what happened in Maine. Best to get straight to the point. “The night on the beach, I’m sorry about that.”
“About what?”
“Disappointing you.”
“Yes, I was disappointed.” His forcefulness made her heart sink. “With myself, for having stepped over the lines of friendship. I couldn’t help myself, though, and I don’t regret it. Well, yes. I regret not chasing after you, telling you to stay with me, not Oliver.”
They sat in silence for several moments. She could hear her heart beating.
“I’d like to paint you, Levon.”
He stared hard at her, a challenge, but she knew he’d give in.
He rose and gestured to the art supplies on the worktable. “Help yourself. Might as well get some use out of them. Where do you want me?”
“Sit on the model’s stand. With your arms on your knees.” He did so. The white of his shirt accentuated his darkness: olive skin, black hair falling over his forehead, the thick mustache above his lips. He gazed across the room at the rain falling outside, lost in a reverie as she worked. Satisfied with the sketch, she squeezed lines of paint onto the palate, mixed and remixed them, before dipping her brush and applying paint to canvas. She worked fast, knowing that he wouldn’t sit for her again. This was her one chance.
Later, as the paint dried, they made love on the pile of blankets in front of the fire, a chaotic feast of long limbs, bony elbows, and hunger.
The next couple of months flew by. The painting Clara had made of Levon that first evening was stored in the tiny bedroom, as neither of them wanted any of their friends to see it. It was too personal, a window into their shared pain and pleasure. They satisfied their desires as often as they could as the weather grew cold, as if the friction of their bodies might stave off the harsh winter ahead.
Whenever Romany Marie had leftover food, she’d give it to Clara to take home, and she and Levon invited all the artists they knew over for dinner. Clara provided the household with food and cash, while Levon offered shelter and paint supplies. She harangued him when he insisted on the best: Lefebvre paints and Winsor & Newton brushes. At least once a week he came home with an art book tucked under his arm, an extravagance they could not afford, including a rare edition on Brueghel, which she threatened to toss out the window but surreptitiously curled up with in front of the fire whenever she knew he’d be out for the afternoon.
The only other fights were over his meticulous management of his art supplies. She was used to the chaotic splatter of watercolors, of the mess of paint on her work clothes. He put up with that, flinching whenever a drop of paint fell on the floor, but insisted she place each brush back in the correct pottery vase along the windowsill when finished, arranged by size, the bristles clean and dry.
When he was called for a lesson uptown, they didn’t speak of it. He wandered off, and she didn’t question him when he returned looking rumpled and abashed.