Anne Girard - Madame Picasso

Offstage, Mistinguett sank onto the velveteen-covered divan across from her dressing table, leaned back and promptly vomited. Sylvette dove to press the actress forward, but the delicate skirt of Mistinguett’s tango costume bore the brunt nonetheless.

“Pour l’amour de Dieu!” Eva cried.

“Quick, find her something else to wear!” Sylvette called out as she frantically wiped the small amount of vomit with a scarf. “Monsieur Oller always comes backstage to congratulate everyone after the performance and he usually brings guests. We could all be sacked for this!”

Eva felt a mounting panic. She couldn’t lose this job, not when she’d only just gotten it.

“Grab your kimono while I get her out of the costume! And shake some perfume on it to block that horrendous odor!”

Mistinguett was moaning and had seemed for a moment not to know where she was.

“I need more champagne,” she mumbled.

“What you need is a café and a bath,” Sylvette snapped. “Eva, go tell the stagehand to bring a café as quickly as he can! In the meantime, I’ll help her change.”

Eva ran off and returned a few minutes later bearing a cup of coffee. Mistinguett was sitting more alertly and wearing Eva’s yellow kimono. The fabric draped around her body in waves and fit her far better than it ever had Eva. She felt her heart squeeze with longing and regret for all she had given up in a life with her family, and now, at this awkward moment, she dearly missed her mother especially.

“Marcelle, can the costume be cleaned? It’s such delicate chiffon,” Mistinguett asked sadly as she rubbed her temple.

“I am a seamstress, not a laundress.”

“Handiwork is handiwork,” she snapped back uncharitably as panic took control.

Eva knew she could clean it since her mother had patiently taught her that a combination of baking soda and French Javelle water would work even on the most delicate fabric. Tears pricked the backs of her eyes at the memory. But she knew she deserved to feel sad. Eva certainly no longer deserved her family’s love for the way she had left them. Perhaps she could make a difference that would somehow begin to make amends. “I will have it good as new for the show tomorrow,” she promised as Mistinguett sipped from the demitasse of coffee, her pale face brightening slowly.

“You are a wonder, Eva. I’m sorry I misjudged you. All right, I’ve said it,” Mistinguett murmured just as the dressing room door burst open.

Wreathed in a plume of cigar smoke, a group of young, dark-haired men strode in led by the stout, white-haired Joseph Oller, clenching a cigar between his teeth. Though the owner’s presence was predictable after the show, tonight the girls were all a bit startled by it. Eva and Sylvette stepped back as Mistinguett rose from her divan. The length of the yellow kimono fell around her like a pool of water, hugging the ample curves of her tall willowy frame.

“I brought a few gentlemen I would like you to meet. Mistinguett, may I present the noted poet Guillaume Apollinaire, his friend Ramón Pichot, and this is the man of the moment here in Paris, the artist Pablo Picasso.”

Eva felt a jolt of surprise seeing him. Standing at the back of the room, she was hidden by the piles of costume pieces, shoes and hats. Nevertheless, she felt a tremor surge through her and she reached out her hands behind herself to clutch a dressing table for support. It wouldn’t do at all to go weak-kneed now.

Picasso was as alluring as she remembered, and in the evening’s buttery-rich gaslight, he appeared even more exotic with those great coal-black eyes above a cleverly quirked half smile.

Unlike the last time she had seen him, tonight Picasso looked every bit the confident and celebrated artist. He was wearing neatly creased black trousers, a black sweater that seemed to hug his tight chest and broad back and well-polished black shoes. A forelock of hair that fell untamed onto his forehead was the single element that hinted at what his dark eyes promised.

“Monsieur Picasso, it is a delight,” Mistinguett said flirtatiously.

As she extended a feathery hand to him, the elegant sleeve of the kimono slipped back from her wrist revealing her slim, pale forearm. Eva did not believe anyone had a right to be quite so beautiful.

“What the devil have you got on?” Oller huffed with exaggerated indignation. “You don’t receive gentlemen in a dressing gown like that! Monsieur Picasso, Monsieur Apollinaire, Monsieur Pichot, my apologies. Apparently, my star here—”

“I was fitting her new costume,” Eva blurted, hearing her own voice tumble out as though it had come from someone else.

An awkward silence pulsed through the group as Oller scowled at her. “A costume? That?”

“Yes, for a geisha number I’m working on,” Mistinguett responded with a believable smile, retrieving the moment.

Eva felt her face flush as she stepped back, bumping into the dressing table. She heard the bottles clatter behind her and gripped the top of the table again to steady them. She felt as though she would collapse from embarrassment.

“That is definitely creative,” Oller at last proclaimed. He clenched the cigar in his teeth more tightly and his smile lengthened.

Finally across the room, Eva’s gaze met Picasso’s.

As the chatter about the geisha act faded to the background, Eva watched Picasso close the distance between them.

“So we meet again,” he said with a seductive half smile. She felt her body weaken. “Clearly, it is fate.”

“But we have not really met, have we?”

“It was my great mistake not to have asked your name the last time.”

“I am Marcelle.”

“And I am Picasso.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, smiling awkwardly at her own response.

“But did you know also, mademoiselle, that I am going to paint you?”

“Are you?” she asked as the others continued to talk and laugh, which helped to shelter their quiet conversation. Eva had been thrown off balance by his bold declaration and she was doing her best to hide that fact.

“Oh, most definitely.”

“And when might that be, Monsieur Picasso?” She bit back a soft laugh, suddenly enjoying their flirtation.

“Tonight, if you shall permit me,” he answered. “I am too inspired by your beauty to wait any longer than that.”

Eva caught a glimpse then of the very tall man beyond Picasso who had been introduced as Guillaume Apollinaire—a man she had always wanted to meet because of his evocative poetry. But at the moment there really was no one in the room but Pablo Picasso—even if his advances sounded like lines from a penny novella.

“So then tell me, is Marcelle your real name, or just the one you use in Paris?” Picasso asked her beneath the chatter of the others around them. “So many people I meet here want to be someone different.”

His magnificent Spanish accent and his potent gaze had swiftly shut down all of her defenses. How could he have guessed?

“I haven’t quite decided that yet,” she answered, trying her best to sound nonchalant.

“Care is good. Caution, less so.”

“You speak now only of names when you speak of caution?” she asked coyly.

“I speak of whatever moves you not to take too much care with me, mademoiselle,” he said huskily. “Perhaps I should have asked your given name.”

Saints be preserved, but he was quick with a parry! Clever, forthright and handsome. She was not at all certain she could keep up but it was exciting to try. Especially with those huge black eyes seizing all of her attention and making her blush.

“If you must know, it’s Eva—a most unglamorous Eva Céleste Gouel,” she confessed.

Picasso gently placed a hand at the low point of her back. No one in the room noticed the gesture, which made the moment even more deliciously intimate.