Chapter 3 #2
“Why do you want a portrait?” she asked, watching him closely. He explained about his father and the bank, and the board. She didn’t object and nodded. She was used to commissions for purposes like that.
“Do you have children?” he asked her, wanting to know more about her as a person.
“No, I don’t,” she said quietly. She didn’t want to share Axel with him.
It was a business meeting, despite the current and attraction she felt.
“I could book you in January,” she offered.
He intrigued her. There was something so strong and determined about him.
“Do you have children?” she asked him. She wondered if he was married.
He didn’t seem like it, and wore no ring.
He had stopped wearing it a year after he married Faye.
She no longer wore hers either. Neither of them cared.
The symbol it represented had become meaningless to both of them over the years.
“I have a son. He left for Paris yesterday. He’s going to study architecture at grad school at Yale in the fall.”
They talked about Paris and San Francisco, the Beaux-Arts and Harvard.
He told her what he did, which told her he was a money man.
It wasn’t a glamorous business, but surely lucrative.
He made her think of fire and ice. She wondered what it would be like to paint him, and if he would open up, or hide who he really was, if he would be bold or vulnerable.
She wasn’t sure. She could sense that he was both.
She had the feeling that he was hiding from himself, or from something.
She studied people carefully and paid attention.
She was quiet as she watched him, and he was fascinated by her.
She was so beautiful and so modest. Now that he had seen her paintings he was profoundly impressed by her and the magnitude of her talent.
“Can I walk you home?” he asked her when they stood up. She made him feel boyish again. When they got to her house, she stopped and thanked him for the lemonade. She was smiling and had enjoyed the time with him, even more than she’d expected to.
“See you in January,” she said lightly when he left her outside her house.
“If you get an opening before that, I’ll rearrange my schedule,” he said with a pleading look. She had explained that she worked from videos and photographs she took at the first session, for people who lived far away.
She wished him a good summer, then floated up the stairs with a light step, unlocked the outer door, waved, and disappeared, her red hair a burst of flame as she went through the door.
Charlie walked all the way back to his apartment, miles from where she lived.
She had stayed for two hours, not one, and he was more intrigued by her than ever and didn’t want to wait seven months to see her again.
If anything, he was more obsessed with her than before.
There was something so haunting and mysterious about her, so fragile and yet so powerful.
She had asked him interesting questions that would help her when she painted him.
She was already studying the angles of his face while he talked to her.
She thought there was more to him than what he allowed anyone to see.
She guessed that he was good at hiding his emotions, and that when anyone came too close to him, he made light of it or fled.
He appeared to be open and straightforward but she could already sense that Charlie never let anyone see his more intimate side.
She had a feeling that he had been hurt, she didn’t know by what, but he protected himself and kept people at arm’s length while appearing not to.
She had a sixth sense for people, and the electric current that ran between them made her feel closer to him than she usually did to her subjects at first. She had a natural reserve, mixed with shyness, but she felt surprisingly comfortable with him as she drank her lemonade, and when he walked her home afterward.
He had talked about his son, but he didn’t say if he was married.
She assumed he wasn’t, or he would have mentioned his wife then.
Most people did when you met them, as a subtle way of sharing their status.
He said he had lived in the East for thirteen years, for boarding school, college, and grad school, and a gap year running his first startup between college and business school, but he had returned to the West immediately after business school, to take his place in Silicon Valley and get to work.
And he said he still loved visiting New York.
He loved the energy and how engaged people were in exciting activities.
She said she loved it too, and how many creative people there were.
They had talked about Paris, another of his favorite cities.
They had covered a lot of ground in two hours.
She didn’t talk about the people she had painted, and he respected how discreet she was.
She was modest to the point of humble, in spite of her enormous talent.
It was obvious how much she loved her work.
She had noticed how his eyes clouded when he talked about his father, and why he wanted the portrait. She was shocked to realize that his father had died only days before.
“You must be mourning him,” she had said, instantly sympathetic, and he thought about it for a minute, wanting to be honest with her.
If she was going to paint him, she deserved to know who he was, and what was true about him.
He thought he owed the naked truth. He didn’t hide who he was from her.
She was easy to open up to, warm and kind.
“Actually, I’m not mourning him. We never got along.
He was a harsh man. He expected a lot. I was never the son he hoped I would be.
I suppose it would be fair to say that we never understood each other.
I tried for a while when I was young. The only way he could accept was his own.
There was no other way with him. We were diametrically different.
I don’t think he even liked me.” He looked sad when he said it.
He seemed so open and unguarded for a moment that she wanted to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t.
“And your mother?” she asked gently.
“She died when I was thirteen. My father sent me away to school a few months later, and I never really came home again. Thirteen is too young to leave home. I made the same mistake with my own son. I let him go to boarding school too soon. He wanted to, as an only child. He wanted to be with other kids, and my wife was a big fan of boarding school. I wasn’t.
The only thing I liked about it was escaping my father.
I was homesick for the first two years. By the time I was sixteen, I actually enjoyed it.
And then I was off and running. You grow up faster away from home, especially with no parents.
” Devon was easy to say hard things to, that he never said to anyone else.
“I don’t remember my parents,” Devon had said quietly.
“I was five when they died. Once in a while, I think I have a memory, but I think it’s probably something my grandmother must have told me.
I don’t actually remember it myself. My grandmother brought me up from five to sixteen.
She was tough but wonderful. She was very strict, but she made it possible for me to go to the Beaux-Arts.
She worked hard and saved the money for it, and left it to me. ”
“It seems like a very good investment.” He smiled at her, and she smiled back at him. She had a beautiful smile and sensuous lips. If he had lost control of himself, he would have wanted to kiss her.
Charlie remembered all of it when he sat on his terrace, playing it all over in his head.
The time he had spent with her was like a movie he wanted to see again.
He hated the thought of waiting seven months to see her, and he was sure that he wouldn’t get bumped up on her waiting list. No one would cancel. He would just have to wait.
He slept easily that night, and woke up refreshed the next morning. He was flying out that day.
He sent Devon a text before he did. He was on his way to the airport when he sent it.
“Thank you for seeing me yesterday. It meant the world to me.” He was intrigued by everything he had learned about her, and had seen for himself, while they sat at Luigi’s, exposing parts of their lives to each other, like a chess game they were playing, but it was real life.
Her early life had been more difficult than his.
Charlie had had every advantage in his life, but he had had a loveless childhood.
There was no one to love and comfort him, which was the cruelest fate of all, as Devon knew only too well.
She had been alone for so many years. There had been a brief moment of true happiness with Jean-Louis and Axel, but it ended all too quickly.
And even with what he knew about her childhood now, Charlie didn’t see her as a tragic figure.
She had too much fire and passion in her to seem that way to him.
She looked peaceful and happy when she spoke of her grandmother.
There had been no fairy grandmother in Charlie’s early life.
There had literally been no one to love him.
His childhood had been far more tragic than Devon’s, although most people wouldn’t have seen it that way. She did.
And she had told him just enough about herself to tantalize him and fascinate him even more. She had given him a lot to think about for the next seven months. It was all engraved in his mind now, along with her exquisite face and incredible all-seeing green eyes.
He thought about her as he sat on the plane, waiting to take off for Chicago. Right before the plane taxied down the runway, she answered his text, and he smiled as he read it.