murmurs, resisting the urge to tear the drawing from the pad, to take it with her. Every inch of her wants to have it, to keep it, to stare at the image like Narcissus in the pond. But if she takes it now, then it will find a way to disappear, or it will belong to her, and her alone, and then it will be as good as lost, forgotten.
If Matteo keeps the picture, he will forget the source, but not the sketch itself. Perhaps he will turn to it when she is gone, and wonder at the woman sprawled across his sheets, and even if he thinks it the product of some drunken revel, some fever dream, her image will still be there, charcoal on parchment, a palimpsest beneath a finished work.
It will be real, and so will she.
So Addie studies the drawing, grateful for the prism of her memory, and hands it back to her artist. She rises, reaching for her clothes.
“Did we have a good time?” Matteo asks. “I confess, I cannot remember.”
“Neither can I,” she lies.
“Well then,” he says with a rakish grin. “It must have been a very good time.”
He kisses her bare shoulder, and her pulse flutters, body warming with the memory of the night before. She is a stranger to him now, but Matteo has the easy passion of an artist enamored with his newest subject. It would be simple enough to stay, to start again, enjoy his company another day—but her thoughts are still on the drawing, the meaning of those lines, the weight of them.
“I must go,” she says, leaning in to kiss him one last time. “Try to remember me.”
He laughs, the sound breezy and light as he pulls her close, leaves ghosts of charcoal fingers on her skin. “How could I possibly forget?”
* * *
That night, the sunset turns the canals to gold.
Addie stands on a bridge over the water, and rubs at the charcoal still on her thumb, and thinks of the drawing, an artist’s rendition, like an echo of the truth, thinks of Luc’s own words so long ago, when he cast her from Geoffrin’s salon.
Ideas are wilder than memories.
He meant it as a barb, no doubt, but she should have seen it as a clue, a key.
Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps—perhaps—they are in reach.
Because two blocks away, in that small studio over the café, there is an artist, and on one of his pages, there is a drawing, and it is of her. And now Addie closes her eyes, and tips her head back, and smiles, hope swelling in her chest. A crack in the walls of this unyielding curse. She thought she’d studied every inch, but here, a door, ajar onto a new and undiscovered room.
The air changes at her back, the crisp scent of trees, impossible and out of place in the rank Venetian heat.
Her eyes drift open. “Good evening, Luc.”
“Adeline.”
She turns to face him, this man she made real, this darkness, this devil brought to life. And when he asks if she has had enough, if she is tired yet, if she will yield to him tonight, she smiles, and says, “Not tonight.”
Rubs her finger anew against her thumb, and feels the charcoal there, and thinks of telling him about her discovery, just to savor his surprise.
I have found a way to leave a mark, she wants to say to him. You thought you could erase me from this world, but you cannot. I am still here. I will always be here.
The taste of the words—that triumph—is sweet as sugar on her tongue. But there is a warning tint to his gaze tonight, and knowing Luc, he would find a way to turn it against her, to take this small solace from her before she’s found a way to use it.
So she says nothing.
New York City
April 25, 2014
VIII
A wave of applause rolls across the grass.
It’s a gorgeous spring day, one of the first where the warmth lingers as the sun goes down, and they’re sitting on a blanket at the edge of Prospect Park as performers file on and off a pop-up stage across the green.
“I can’t believe you remember it all,” he says as a new singer climbs the steps.
“It’s like living with déjà vu,” she says, “only you know exactly where you’ve seen or heard or felt