Free The Last Nude by Ellis Avery

until I hear Daniel leave. But I’m not spending another night out like that.”
    “Fine,” Gin said, exasperated. “Now, will you get out of the tub?”
     
     
     
    Just before I hunkered down in my room that evening, I caught a glimpse of Gin tripping past the kitchen in her underwear, setting out candles for Daniel’s visit. She was wearing the chemise I had made for her, a scanty thing we called a tunic in those days: rose colored, a heavy, drapey peau de soie —the kind of fabric you could just sink your hands into. Later, when I heard Gin and Daniel through the walls, I knew she was still wearing it. As I lay awake, listening to them, I wanted it back.
     
     
     
    The sound of Daniel pulling the front door shut behind him woke me the next morning. I could feel it like a thumb pressing into the soft notch at my collarbone: the need to do something. Thanks to the wheezy grandfather, the need wasn’t about money; it was about Gin’s pained lying smile, the sound of Daniel’s leather shoes flap-flap-flapping down the stairs as he left. When Gin and I ate our morning tartines together, she thanked me for making myself scarce the night before. “It wasn’t too terribly cramped in there, darling?”
    I shrugged. “It sure beats the pox. Or getting chopped into little pieces. Or arrested. Or pregnant.”
    “All right! Shut up!” Gin said, laughing.
    “So where exactly does Daniel work, anyway?”
     
     
     
    The phone booth at Café Lorette was as snug as a confessional. “So you aren’t calling to elope with me, are you?” asked Anson.
    “Your dance card’s a little full for that.”
    “Your loss.”
    “Listen, we were at the bar for a long time before you brought this up, but you mentioned that you had a friend who might be able to help me out.”
    “You’re the soul of tact, Rafaela. But I wasn’t as drunk as all that. Your roommate has a rotten boyfriend. Shoot.”
    I settled onto the shabby velvet bench in the phone booth and told him everything. “So now I have two weeks to save her from Meaux,” I concluded.
    “Mustardville.”
    “She doesn’t know a soul there. She can’t get work. I can’t imagine he’ll want her singing and dancing in his tiny town. What’s she supposed to do all day, just sit in their little flat? The town’s probably full of his wife’s friends, who will snub her.” I felt self-conscious for talking so long, but he listened quietly, letting me wear myself out. “Maybe he isn’t lying,” I concluded, “but an almost-divorce isn’t a divorce.”
    “Very true,” he said.
    “I see .”
    “Leave me out of this. Let’s stick with your roommate.”
    “I just think if she knew,” I insisted.
    “Knew what?”
    “I don’t know. Whatever this lie is, about his divorce. I even think she knows he’s lying to her, but she doesn’t want to admit it.”
    “Sounds like. But you truly think if she knew, for example, that he hadn’t actually filed for divorce, it would change her mind?”
    “Of course. She loves Paris more than anything.”
    “More than she loves him?”
    “Oh, come on .”
    “I just wanted to make sure, before I bother my friend.”
    “I’m certain.”
    “All right. There’s not much time. I’ll see what I can do. Let’s make a plan to meet in a week and I’ll tell you what I find out.”
    “ Meet you? Is this how you get dates?”
    “So you are going to elope with me! Actually,” he said primly, “I was going to propose we meet in a bookshop. You know Sylvia’s?” He gave me the address, not far from the Luxembourg Gardens, of an English-language lending library called Shakespeare and Company, owned by an American girl named Sylvia Beach. “She published Ulysses . She lives with Adrienne Monnier, who owns a French bookshop up the street.”
    “ Lives with lives with?”
    “As in sin, my child.” I laughed, my body flickering with the memory of Tamara’s hands. “But you never met a more married couple, really,” he