Die for Her: A Die for Me Novella Read online

  It’s useless to resist. I follow him onto the terrace, where he takes a table a few rows away from hers on an aisle she will have to pass when she leaves. I spend the next half hour trying to ignore the fact that Vincent is only half listening to the stories I’m telling. So I amp up the intrigue and give him a story I’m sure he’s never heard.

  It was about 1910 and Juan Gris and I were leaving the Bateau-Lavoir, that hideous wooden building where we all lived and worked. If possible, it felt even colder inside the building than out. We were so frozen that even with gloves on we couldn’t manage to paint, so our plan was to go sit in a warm café until our fingers unstuck, and then get back to work. Between us, we had enough cash for two coffees, and I guess we were looking pretty rough—but who wasn’t in those days?

  Anyway, on our way back to the Bateau, Juan and I got nabbed by the police. Handcuffed and taken in. We knew we were already on the police lists for suspicion of being anarchists and rabble-rousers (which we were not). But this was no regular roundup of indigents. No—these cops confused Juan with one of the robbers of the rue Ordener bank. They were sure it was him, even though we swore up and down we were innocent artists.

  “Prove it,” one of the cops said. So I grabbed a pen and paper off the desk and drew a picture of one of the Chat Noir cancan girls. But in my sketch, she had forgotten her costume, all except for the feathered headpiece. With a whoop of raucous laughter and slaps on the back, they let us go.

  I’m finishing my story when I realize that Vincent’s not even listening. He leaps to his feet and runs over to the girl’s table. I turn to see Sad Girl standing behind two women who are gathering up a gazillion shopping bags, waiting to get by them to leave. But she forgot her purse—it’s draped over the back of her chair—and that’s what Vincent went to get. He returns with it, and has just sat back down when she gets tired of waiting to leave in that direction, turns, and heads straight toward us, toward the other exit.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asks as she passes mere inches away. She turns and looks at him inquisitively. “Your bag,” he says, and holds it up on two fingers. She thanks him and reaches for it, but he yanks it back. And then they do this kind of strange dance where she’s trying to grab the bag and he’s pulling it away, insisting she tell him her name before he’ll give her the bag. A classic pickup line that he has unabashedly stolen directly from yours truly.

  Of course, unlike me, he fouls the whole thing up. In one catastrophic movement, she grabs, he gives in, and the contents of her bag spill all over the terrace. Her hairbrush lands on my foot, while Vincent picks up her driver’s license and studies it like it’s the Rosetta stone.

  Retrieving her book from under one of the neighboring tables, he holds it up. “To Kill a Mockingbird en anglais,” he says, and then launches into his near-perfect English trying to start up a conversation. “Great book—have you ever seen the film . . . Kate?”

  Her expression morphs from pissed off to astonished. “How did you know my name?” she asks. Vincent holds up her driver’s license, and she turns beet red. She won’t even look at him and he’s apologizing up and down, and I finally butt in to point out the obvious. “Help the girl up, Vincent, and stop showing off.”

  Vincent extends a hand toward her but she ignores it, struggles to her feet, brushes herself off, and grabs the hairbrush I’m holding out to her. Vincent hands her her book, and with a look that manages to combine humiliation with deep hatred, she stomps out of the place.

  “Now that, my friend, was smooth,” I say as Vince and I watch her walk out to the street and then glance back at us. Her face is now puce, but Vincent doesn’t notice. He floats back down into his chair.

  “Hey, spaceman, time to come back to Earth,” I say, waving my hand in front of his face.

  He pops out of his trance and looks me in the eyes. “Kate Mercier. American, Brooklyn address, birthday December ninth,” he says in this awed voice, like he’s just discovered the formula for turning mud into gold.

  I shake my head in dismay. “Man, you’ve got it bad. But you know you can’t do anything about it.” I tap his shoulder. “Amélie and I are going out tonight. Come with us. I’ll have her bring a friend. It’s just what you need to get your mind off what’s-her-name.”

  He shakes his head. “No, thanks. And her name is Kate.”

  THREE

  I’M HEADING UP THE STAIRS TO MY BEDROOM after a full hour of working out in the armory. Gaspard walks out of the sitting room and, seeing me, stops in place under the chandelier. “Must you insist on walking around the house naked, Jules? It makes me feel like I’m living in some kind of sordid fraternity house.”

  “I’m not naked,” I say, pointing to the towel around my waist.

  “A towel does not count as clothing,” Gaspard chides.

  “Whatever you say,” I respond, and, yanking off the towel, drape it over my shoulders like a scarf.

  Gaspard shakes his head mournfully and wanders off toward the kitchen, mumbling, “I am living with cretins.”

  Just then, Charles and Charlotte come bustling breathlessly through the front door like an angry mob’s chasing them with pitchforks. Charlotte takes one look at me and starts laughing. I return the towel to my waist and ask, “What’s going on?”

  “Remember that girl who Vincent was following?” Charlotte blurts out.

  “The one he talked to at the café last week? What was her name . . . Kate?” I ask.

  “Yes, well, now he’s gone and saved her.”

  “Where is he?” I ask, feeling a tingle of panic.

  “He’s volant, so he’s probably following her home. A big stone fell off the side of the building above Café Sainte-Lucie and nearly crushed her. Vincent foresaw it and told me. I gestured for her to come over to our table, and she got out of the way just in time. The stone crushed the chair she had been sitting in. She would have been killed on impact.”

  “So it was actually you who did the saving,” Charles interrupts. “Maybe Vincent won’t get the energy transfer.”

  “I definitely got some—I felt it. Look, I filed these down to the nub this morning.” Charlotte holds her hands out, displaying nails that have already grown past her fingertips. “But I didn’t get the full surge—just a bit. Some of her energy definitely went to him.”

  “Crap,” I say. “Whatever mystical forces created revenants, they sure complicated things by making us obsess over the people we save. That’s all Vincent needs. Even more of an urge to follow her around.”

  Just then I feel a presence enter the room. Only one of us is volant this week, so I know exactly who it is. “Vince, man, you are so exceedingly stupid,” I say.

  What was I supposed to do . . . let her die? he responds.

  “Of course not,” I concede. “But you know what this means. You’re playing with fire, man. And I don’t want to be around when you come home with third-degree burns.”

  I know what I’m doing, he insists.

  “Like hell you do,” I say. I want to shake him and remind him of how much Charles suffered the time he fell in love with a human. But Charles is standing right there probably thinking the same thing, so I just grab my coat and leave to go to the one place where I am completely in control: I go to my studio and lose myself in my painting.

  FOUR

  AH, THE MARAIS. MY FAVORITE NEIGHBORHOOD in Paris. The vestiges of history within its two arrondissements span everything from the remains of a Roman wall to ultra-modern art galleries. Whenever someone proposes walking the Marais, they know I’m in.

  So when a volant Ambrose mentions patrolling from the river to rue Saint-Denis, I jump at the chance. It’s easy to talk Vincent into coming along because he’s still mooning about meeting the American girl two days ago. I know, because every time he thinks about her he gets this stupid grin on his face, and he’s got it right now.

  We start off at my gallery, where I show Vince and Ambrose some new figure drawings I’m working
on, then zigzag down rue des Rosiers through the Jewish district, up rue Vieille du Temple past all of the trendy stores, restaurants, and bars, onto the rue des Francs-Bourgeois with its beautiful sixteenth-century mansions, punctuated by rows of fashion and cosmetic shops.

  We head north toward some shadier neighborhoods, specifically the rue Saint-Denis, where our enemies are involved in the thriving prostitution and strip-show businesses. And just as we’re passing the Picasso Museum, Vincent says, “Sorry, not interested.”

  “What’s Ambrose want?” I ask.

  I was just suggesting to Vin that we pop into the museum for a little lesson in Cubism, he says.

  Normally I would pass. I’ve seen every painting in there a million times. I saw several of them before their paint was even dry, since Pablo’s studio was down the hall from mine at the Bateau-Lavoir. But I have been thinking about the linear quality of one of his early self-portraits lately—which has suspicious similarities to one of my own works from that year. And truth be told, I wouldn’t mind inspecting it up close.

  Within minutes we are inside the museum, standing in front of one of Pablo’s Analytical Cubist café-table-with-newspaper-and-bottle still lifes.

  “It just looks like one big mess to me,” says Ambrose.

  “No, see, he takes each individual item—the newspaper, the bottle, the glass”—I point each one out—“flattens them, and then rearranges those two-dimensional forms on the canvas. It’s genius, really, but the point is it wasn’t his idea. It was Braque’s. And the two of them got into this how-Cubist-can-we-get? competition until you’ve got canvases full of barely recognizable splinters of objects. But did Pablo give Georges credit for coming up with the idea in the first place? Of course not. Because he was a narcissistic megalomaniac.”

  “Don’t look,” says Vincent.

  “What do you mean, don’t look? The more you look the more you’ll see how I’m totally right and . . .”

  “No, don’t look behind us,” he says.

  So of course I do. And there she is: Not-Quite-As-Sad Girl, sitting there spaced out in front of one of Pablo’s abstracts. I can’t believe it.

  No, actually, I can. “What an incredible coincidence, Ambrose,” I murmur, “that at the same moment you propose a lesson in Cubism, Vincent’s obsession is sitting right here in the Picasso Museum. Nice one.”

  I hear Ambrose chuckle, and know he set the whole thing up. “This is not being helpful, Ambrose,” I growl. “It’s being hurtful.”

  Vincent doesn’t seem to think so, he replies.

  I turn to Vincent. “Don’t go talk to her. I’m warning you. This is the last thing you need. You’re too into her to make it a one-night stand, and having a mortal girlfriend is the worst thing that you could do. Just pretend you didn’t see her, and let’s walk. Look, she’s looking down. She won’t even see you.”

  Vincent just stands there like he’s hypnotized or something.

  “I am leaving in five seconds, Vince, and you are coming with me. Four. Three. Two. You’re on your own, dude.” I book it out of there. I don’t want to stay to watch this train wreck happen.

  I feel Ambrose’s presence nearby, keeping up with me. “Just a warning,” I tell him. “I’ll get you back for this next time you ask me to come with you volant to the racetrack. It’ll be the biggest losing streak of your life, man.”

  Vincent could use a little distraction, Ambrose says. He hasn’t gone out with a girl for years.

  “I think you will agree that there’s a difference between a girl and that girl. As in Vincent’s so obsessed with her already that he’s going to fall. Hard. And then we have Charles Mach Two on our hands. Resentful for what he is, and making all the rest of us suffer for it with his raging attitude.”

  But Geneviève . . . Ambrose begins.

  “Geneviève was already married to a human when she died and animated. That’s a totally different case. Speaking of, are you still pining away for her, waiting for Philippe to die?”

  Hey, I like Philippe, Ambrose rebuts. He’s good to Geneviève.

  “But you still want him to die.”

  It’s not that I want him to die this very instant. It’s just that he’s got to pass away sometime soon. The guy is ancient. I just need to be ready when it happens.

  “That’s twisted,” I say. A security guard watches me cautiously as I “talk to myself” while exiting the museum. Probably thinks I’m some kind of nutcase, come to splash paint all over Pablo’s canvases. Not that it wouldn’t be an improvement for some of them.

  FIVE

  I SCRAPE THE OILS ONTO MY PALETTE: A MIX OF Zinc Buff and Montserrat Orange for her slightly tanned skin, Vandyke Brown for her long, thick hair, Venetian Red for her succulent lips, and Perylene Black for eyes like oceans.

  Valérie lies on my antique green couch, wearing nothing but what she was born in. I stand ten feet away, near the window of my studio, letting the natural light illuminate my canvas.

  I’m painting Valérie as a reclining nude, Modigliani-style. I miss the guy, even though he was obnoxious. Always drunk or high and picking fights. Doing outrageous things so that no one would notice the fact that he was dying of tuberculosis and avoid him like . . . well, like the plague.

  There was that time we were at a bar near the Bateau-Lavoire, and he did a striptease in front of a table of “ladies of a certain age.” Ripped off every last stitch of his clothing. Almost gave the biddies a heart attack. “Serves them right for hanging out in Montmartre,” he told the policeman who showed up. Those were wild days, and he was the wildest of us all. But give him a brush and he painted like no one has or ever will. Touched by angels. Breathed on by God. And inspired by the devil.

  I use one sweeping stroke to define the upper curve of Valérie’s body, from shoulder to foot. She’s reading a paperback, clearly bored. I only need her to look up at the end of the composition, when I paint in her face, so I allow her this off-time. “Okay, let’s take a break,” I say, and she stands, her soft, curvy body as exquisite as the Venus de Milo, as fresh as a ripe peach.

  I will never tire of looking at women. Appreciating their beauty. Reveling in each girl’s individual charm. There’s nothing more beautiful on earth. And even more tantalizing are the ones you can’t touch, like Valérie: I never mix business with pleasure. And not just because of security. (Lovers aren’t allowed into our permanent residences.) No, it was a hard-earned lesson after a few catastrophic encounters. All you need is for one model to see another painted in a suggestive pose, and voilà—you’ve got a catfight in the middle of your painting exhibition.

  Valérie scoops up a robe and drapes it lazily around her before picking her book back up and lying on her stomach to read. I walk back to the bathroom to wash out my brushes, and hear the front door open and close and Valérie talking to someone. It’s Vincent. Good—I’ve been trying to reach him all afternoon.

  I step out of the dark bathroom into the sun-drenched studio to see Sad Girl—Kate—standing in front of the window, backlit by the warm sun of the summer afternoon. She looks like a saint from a medieval painting: pure, beautiful, glorious, crowned with rays of golden light.

  But she is not a saint. She’s a hundred percent human, and totally falls into the “lover” category. She shouldn’t be here with Vincent. I manage to tear my eyes from her to see Vincent standing by her side, looking like his head’s about to explode.

  “Kate, this is Jules. Jules, Kate,” he spits out as fast as his mouth will move. “Listen, Jules, Kate and I were walking around the Village Saint-Paul and I saw someone there,” he says, raising his eyebrows. I can tell from his tone that someone is not just anyone and that a numa must be mere blocks away.

  “Outside,” I order, frowning at Kate as I usher Vincent out to the staircase and close the door behind us. Before I can say anything, Vincent launches into the story. Lucien and one of his guards were sitting at a café with some unlucky human—a businessman, from the looks of him. And from
the pitiful look on his face, the numa had probably ruined him financially and were going to blackmail him or something.

  “And you just left him there?” I ask.

  “I had to,” Vincent responds. “It’s not like I can fight two numa alone and in public. I can’t do anything without backup.” He’s upset. There was his archenemy working his evil ways with an unsuspecting human, and Vincent was powerless to intervene.

  “I’m with you now,” I reassure him, “and Ambrose can be our third.”

  Vince pulls out his phone and speed-dials Gaspard, telling him to send Ambrose to my studio. “He’s on his way,” he confirms.

  “Good. Now you can tell me . . . why the hell did you bring her with you?” I cross my arms to control myself; I’m so tempted to throttle him.

  “I’m not on duty twenty-four seven. She’s with me because we’re on a date.”

  “That is exactly why she should not be here.”

  “JB only said we couldn’t bring people home,” Vincent says. “I don’t see why she can’t come here.”

  “Dude. Anywhere we have a permanent address is off-limits for . . . ‘dates.’ Or whatever. You know the rules.”

  “Valérie’s here,” Vincent protests.

  “I don’t date Valérie, or else she wouldn’t be here. In any case, your date is over!”

  He scowls like he wants to punch me in the face. And then he sighs and his shoulders slump. He knows I’m right. He takes Kate down to the courtyard and says his good-byes. She looks disappointed, but that’s not my problem. Once she leaves, Vincent runs back up the stairs.

  “Ambrose is here. He saw Lucien and Nicolas,” he says. “They’re making their way in this direction. But more importantly, Ambrose foresaw the human who’s with them throwing himself in front of a Métro train in about three minutes’ time. We have to go now!”