Die for Me

As in many Parisian apartment buildings, our elevator was tiny. It barely held two people standing side by side, but a third, or a large painting in this case, was impossible.

I lifted the paper-wrapped painting carefully by the edges and began inching my way up the remaining three flights of stairs. The painting was about half my size in height, but the frame had been removed, so it wasn’t heavy.

I got to the top of the stairs just as Mamie unlocked her studio door, chatting animatedly with Jean-Baptiste as they entered. I stared at the back of his stiffly held form and wondered just what Vincent’s “uncle” was doing here in my house. First Jules, now Jean-Baptiste! I thought. How could I move on if Vincent’s “family” kept popping up in my life? My emotions had been in roller-coaster mode since talking with Jules, but I was determined to stick with my original decision—I was putting my heart at risk if I continued to see Vincent.

As I stepped through the doorway, I breathed the comforting odor of oil paints and varnish deeply into my lungs. Mamie’s studio had always been one of my favorite places to hang out.

Six maids’ rooms that took up the entire top floor of our building had been combined to make one large workspace, and most of the ceiling and roof had been knocked through to install frosted-glass skylights, which flooded the room with diffused sunlight.

Mamie’s current restoration projects were scattered around the room on easels. A time-darkened old master painting of a herd of cows in a meadow sat across from a brightly colored Postimpressionist painting of cancan girls high-kicking their petticoats in a dance hall line, seemingly shocking a Spanish woman dressed in black, who prudishly held a fan in front of her lips on a nearby canvas.

“Let’s have a look at this,” Mamie said, taking the package from me and laying it down on a large worktable standing in the center of the room. She carefully removed the paper, and then turned the painting over and held it up to inspect it. It was a life-size portrait of a young man from the waist up, wearing a dark blue Napoleonic-looking soldier’s uniform and a tall black plumed hat. The sitter was obviously Jean-Baptiste himself.

“My, you can certainly see the family resemblance,” Mamie said in awe, looking from the painting to her client and back again.

Leaning forward, he touched a small rip in the canvas, at the level of the man’s forehead. “The tear is here,” he said.

“Well, it’s a clean slice, so it will be easy to repair. Just a patch to the back, and we may not even need to touch it up. What did you say made the incision?”

“I didn’t say, but it was a knife.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Mamie in surprise.

“Nothing to worry about. Grandkids roughhousing, you know. They’ve been ba

“Well, if you could just wait here, I’ve left my receipt book down in the apartment. Kate, could you please make Monsieur Grimod a coffee?” She nodded toward a coffeepot set up on a corner table and bustled out the door, leaving it open behind her.

The elderly revenant and I stood motionless until we heard the sound of the antique elevator lurching into motion. Then he took a step toward me.

“What are you doing here?”

“We must talk,” he said, his authoritative voice grating on my nerves. “Jules tells me you saw Charles. Please tell me where.”

I decided that the sooner I told Jean-Baptiste what he wanted to hear, the sooner he would leave. “He was standing outside a club I went to near Oberkampf. It was Friday, around midnight.”

“Who was he there with?” Although he seemed nothing but composed on the surface, I could tell from a twitch at the corner of his mouth that things were not well.

“It looked like he had come there alone. Why?”

He glanced toward the door as if calculating the time he had to speak.

“I came here for two reasons.” He spoke softly and quickly. “The first was to ask you about Charles. He disappeared a few days ago after”—he glanced at his portrait with distaste—“boning up on his knife-throwing skills.

“And the second was to pay an inconspicuous visit to your family. I needed to see where you were from.”

My anger returned in a second. “What, you’re spying on me? What do you mean ‘where I’m from’? If my grandparents have money?” I shook my head in disgust. “Well, they do, but not as much as you. I don’t see why it matters anyway.” I began walking away from him, toward the door.

“Stop!” he commanded, and I did. “Money doesn’t matter to me. Character does. Your grandparents are honorable. And safe.”

“What, honorable enough to fix your painting?”

“No. Honorable enough to take into my confidence. If the need were ever to present itself.”

As the meaning of his words began to dawn on me, my back stiffened. He was spying on my family to see if I was good enough for Vincent. He must not have gotten the memo that it was definitely and definitively over. “There will never be a need. Don’t worry, Monsieur Grimod, I will not be intruding upon your precious home life again.” Appallingly, I felt a tear run down my cheek, and I wiped it angrily away.

The sharp lines of his face softened. Touching my arm lightly with his fingers, he said, “But dear girl, you must come back. Vincent needs you. He is inconsolable.”

I looked down at the ground and shook my head.

Jean-Baptiste placed his perfectly manicured fingers under my chin and lifted it until my eyes met his. “He is willing to make extreme sacrifices to be with you. You don’t owe us—him—anything, but I would beg you to please come hear him out.”

My resolve began to crumble. “I’ll think about it,” I whispered finally.

He nodded, satisfied.

“Thank you.” His voice cracked as his lips uttered words they must rarely speak. He walked rapidly toward the door and began making his way down the stairs, as I heard the elevator ascend.

Mamie stepped out, looking down at her notebook, and then up at me as she came through the door. Glancing around the empty studio in confusion, she asked, “Well, where did he go?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

IT WAS RAINING. HARD. I WATCHED THE RAINDROPS hit my floor-to-ceiling windows with a force that made them ricochet into the pond that was forming on my balcony.

I had been thinking about Vincent ever since Jean-Baptiste had talked to me a few hours before, comparing what he had said to what Jules had told me in the café. Vincent was trying to work things out. To find a solution. Should I give him a chance to talk, or would that just be opening myself up to the risk of more pain?

What’s better, I thought, to be safe and suffer alone, or to risk pain and actually live? Although my head and heart were leading me in two different directions, I was certain that I didn’t want my life to resemble what it had for the last three weeks: a drab existence void of color, warmth, and life.

I walked to the windows and peered out into the darkening sky, wishing the answer to my question could be printed there in plain letters across the rain clouds. My gaze lowered to the park below, and I saw the form of a man leaning back against the park gate. He was standing in the pouring rain, no umbrella, looking up at my window. I stepped out onto the balcony.

A gust of cold air caught me, and I was immediately drenched by the beating rain, but I was able to see the upturned face, three stories below. It was Vincent. Our eyes met.

I hesitated for a second. Should I? I asked myself before realizing I had already made up my mind. Ducking back into my room, I grabbed a towel from a chair and dabbed my face and hair as I searched for my rain boots. Pulling them from under my bed, I raced out into the hallway, bumping into Mamie outside the kitchen.