Free Paris Red: A Novel by Maureen Gibbon

bored.”
    “You think that’s what it is? That she’s bored?”
    “I don’t know,” I say. I do not want to say that the girl’s eyes look dead to me. That what I see in her goes far beyond bored. “It’s hard to tell from a picture.”
    “I have others,” he says.
    But instead of showing more, he puts the photos away. Only then do I realize that Nise has not been studying the photos as I have. That she has wandered across the studio to where a window looks out on a shabby courtyard. He does not want to lose her entirely so he puts his photographs away.
    I would have gone on looking.

    When the three of us sit down on the divan I think it is good it does not have a lace throw. If it did I think I would start to laugh again, or Nise would—something. When we first sit down, he holds one of each of our hands but then he lets go. Lies back and crosses his arms behind his head so he can look at us.
    “What was it like? To pose?”
    “I got overheated,” I said.
    “Did you?”
    “You don’t do things like that in real life,” I say. “We don’t sit around holding a string of pearls between us. Pillowing our heads on each other.”
    “No, I imagine not,” he says. Then, because Nise has not said anything, he turns to her and asks, “What did you think of it?”
    “I wouldn’t do it again.”
    “Not ever?” he asks.
    “Never.”
    When she says that, she looks off at the light coming in the windows. He sits up again, there between us. I think he is going to say something else but he does not. He takes Nise’s hand in his again and moves his head close to her shoulder.
    So I say, “You kissed her first last time. In our room.”
    Which is selfish. I know she wishes I did not tell him anything about posing for Moulin, I know she is feeling whatever she feels. But I take the hand of his closest to me and move it up to my breast.
    “Kiss me first this time,” I tell him.
    So he does. He kisses me first. I feel both of his arms go round me and that is how I know he has let go of Nise’s hand.
    I know she is sitting there beside us, but I do not let myself think about it. I do not think about anything but getting him to touch me.

    When we are done kissing—when everyone has had their turn—Nise says to him, “So that’s what you wanted that first day.”
    “What did I want?”
    She gestures around us. “To put us in your pictures.”
    “I couldn’t paint the two of you,” he says.
    “Why?”
    “If I painted like Botticelli I couldn’t paint you.” And when he sees the name means nothing to us, he says, “He painted angels. Red-haired and brown-haired and blonde angels.”
    “Why can’t you paint us like yourself?”
    “I couldn’t paint you as you are. To paint you as you are, I’d have to paint this,” he says, and leans down and kisses my breast through my dress. When he goes to touch Nise, though, she stands up.
    “Are you tired of it already?” he says.
    She shakes her head no, but then she says, “Maybe. It’s all a game to you. The two of us.”
    She is right. We are a game to him. But he is serious about the game, and what he wants is for none of us to tire of it. For all three of us to go on teasing and kissing and touching. All of us blending together. I think that is why he says the next thing.
    “If I slept with just one of you, I would ruin your friendship,” he tells us.
    I know he partly says it to see our reaction, to see the effect of his words. And for a moment there is an effect. I want to strike out at him for thinking he knows anything about us. But instead I watch him, just the way he watches me, and what I see is this: now that he has said the thing, he seems mournful. As if he were imagining the future he just foretold, or weighing the choice in front of him. Brunette or redhead. He looks sorrowful at the thought of losing either one of us. Just a little while ago he was touching our breasts through our dresses, and even now his arm is still around my