“I did. One dines early when the Lord is expected at every meal. He’s on a tight schedule, evidently.”
“Come back to the studio, Jimmy. I’ll make you a treat.”
“Thank you, but I’m not hungry.”
“Who said anything about food?”
He stepped out of her embrace and up to the canvas. “No, Jo, I need to work.”
“It’s not like you have to capture the bloody light; it’s dark as a black dog’s ass out here. Come in and warm up.”
“No, you go. I’ll try to stop by the studio to see you tomorrow.” But he wouldn’t be stopping by. If things went as he’d planned, he’d be on a steamer to South America tomorrow. He unfolded and sat on a three-legged stool before the easel, pretended to be engrossed in his painting.
She said, “That creepy little brown chap came by the studio today. He said you owe him a painting.”
“I’m beyond that, Jo. My work is selling. I can’t trade a painting for a few tubes of paint.”
She nodded and removed her gloves with more care than was really required, as if considering what would come next. “I think you know it’s more than a few tubes of paint.”
“Fine then, I’ll pay him in cash. If he comes by again, tell him I’ll be in the studio on Monday.”
By Monday he’d be in the middle of the Atlantic, steaming his way to Chile to paint the war there. His mother haranguing him about his dropping out of West Point to become a painter, as well as his brother’s noble service as a surgeon in the Confederate army, had given him the idea. He wondered what it said about a man that he would actually go into a war zone to avoid his mistress.
She went to him, ran her hand through his hair, traced the fringe on his forehead with her fingernail. “You’re not still angry about my posing for Courbet?”
They’d gone to Normandy with Whistler’s friend and mentor the French Realist painter Gustave Courbet, and one afternoon James returned from painting fishing boats on the beach to find Jo spread out naked across one of the beds, the sun through the window lighting up her red hair like copper fire, and Courbet at his easel, painting her. Whistler didn’t say a word at the time. They were artists, after all, and Courbet’s mistress was in the next room doing needlework, but he’d exploded at Jo as soon as they were alone.
“No, I’m not angry,” he said, not looking up from the nocturne he was painting. “His picture wasn’t as good as mine of you.”
“Ah, so that was the issue. That explains it.” She ruffled his hair, then took the crown of his head in one hand and his chin in the other and held his head against her breast. He didn’t push away, but he didn’t lean into her embrace.
“Ah, Jimmy, you’re such a love.” She bent then and held his head tightly as she whispered in his ear. “Good night, my love.”
She kissed his cheek, stood, and walked away toward Battersea Bridge.
He watched her go and realized that he had been holding his breath from the time she’d first touched his chin. He thought for a moment about painting her as a shadowy figure in the fog, but then it spilled back on him, the lead poisoning, the wave that nearly killed him, the temper tantrums, the loss of memory, the deep unsettledness that always seemed to follow his painting her, and he shivered and put his brush into the tin he’d hung from the easel.
She turned back toward him then. He c
ouldn’t even see her face, just the corona of red around her head, the gaslights of Chelsea reflecting off her hair. “Jimmy,” she said in a whisper, which he heard as if it were coming from inside his head instead of from fifty yards away. “That day in Normandy? I’d just fucked Gustave, right before you came in. He had both of us, me and Elise, one after another, and we had each other while he watched. I thought you should know. That was a lovely painting you did of the fishing boats, though. One of my favorites. I gave it to the Colorman. Don’t be angry. You don’t know it, but Gustave saved your life. Tonight. Bon voyage, love.”
“Ah, Jimmy, you’re such a love.” Weary—James McNeill Whistler, 1863
“WELL?” SAID THE COLORMAN.
“No painting,” said Bleu.
“But soon, yes? No more painting in the dark? A painting soon, yes?”
“No. He’s leaving. I went by his house. There are trunks in the foyer. He ordered enough color for a whole season from Windsor and Newton. The bill came to the studio, but the delivery went to the house.”
“Those fucks at Windsor and Newton. They’re using Prussian colors.” He spit off the bridge to show his disdain for those fucks at Windsor and Newton, Prussian colors, and the river Thames in general. “Where are we going?”
“You and I are going to France. I don’t know where he is going.”
“You’re going to just let him get away?”
“I have someone else in mind,” she said.