“Yes, I was wondering—how did you make the building appear out of nowhere? Was it lighting?” This question came from the bearded Ezra Pound.
Sylvie and I exchanged glances. We couldn’t reveal what went on inside the circus. Ever. People wouldn’t understand. Moreover, Father forbade it.
Esmé answered from her perch on the bar, “We can’t say.” She smiled mischievously, knowing the comment only made her more alluring.
“Ahh, you aren’t being good sports.” Hemingway pointed his cigarette at her and ordered a beer. “Just one secret, come on.” A big man, he pounded the table a lot when he spoke, quite confident that people wanted to hear what he had to say.
“A French magician never reveals secrets.” I looked up to see Émile Giroux standing above me. “To the French, the circus is sacred. Your question is like asking you to unfurl your current story for us while it is being written or for me to unveil a painting before it is ready. You don’t ask too many questions about the process. It is bad luck. Am I right?”
He looked down and I saw that he had large green eyes, like the spangles on that night’s costume. Those eyes were in stark contrast to his dark-brown hair and hint of brown beard. I sipped my cherry brandy and nodded, grateful for his intervention. Hemingway quickly moved on to another topic, this time poetry. In my short time with them, I realized that just as they preferred to flit through bars, rarely did this group stay on a topic for long, moving from politics to art and finally bullfighting in anticipation of Hemingway’s upcoming trip to Pamplona. Ernest was talking about Spain when two women joined us who were introduced to us as the Steins.
At the bar, my sister held court. With her coal-black bobbed hair and contrasting light eyes, Esmé had a circle of admirers and had caught the attention of a short Spanish painter who had just joined the group. “Picasso,” they yelled to him. I could see that he was revered by everyone, particularly Hemingway, who shouted at him in Spanish from our table. With one glance, Picasso determined that Esmé was the prize of tonight’s group and began positioning himself to speak to her. As if she sensed his interest, Esmé, who had taken to smoking long cigarettes, turned her back on him and struck up a conversation with an unknown artist. As she faced away from him, I observed the Spaniard laugh, then down his drink as though he was leaving. With his popularity, I knew that Esmé would never let him go. As he was passing, as if on cue, she pretended to drop her cigarette in front of him. Dutifully, he picked it up and returned it to her lips then lit it.
I’d seen it enough to know what would happen next. Esmé would go home with this Picasso gentleman. After ending up in bed together and because she is a great beauty, he would insist—demand—to paint her. The world would not be complete until her sketch was realized on his canvas, and no one—no one—could capture her or understand her better than him.
She would finally acquiesce to be interpreted on his canvas and would then strip for him. For her, it was the ultimate form of attention that she craved, and yet, for her, the need for attention was bottomless. After he had agonized over the flesh colors of the insides of her thighs and the perfect hue of her nipples, like foreplay, he would finally fuck her. And in the morning, she would leave him. After she’d gone, the artist would go to the canvas expecting to admire his work, only to find it blank.
At first, he would think that she had stolen his greatest work—for the missing work is always the finest in the artist’s mind—but upon closer inspection, he’d see that it was, indeed, his same canvas. Only now it was bare.
By early afternoon, the crazed artist would have made his way to the last known location of the circus, claiming magic or witchcraft.
It is always the same. Always. The painter’s name is just different.
You see, Esmé and I cannot be captured, not in photos, nor in paintings. In the morning, the canvas will always revert to white and film remains blank. But it’s the painters who are bothered the most. They labor, connecting lines into form to create Esmé’s upturned nose, her small cherubic mouth, only to find that by dawn she has faded into the canvas like she was never there at all.
Within the hour, though, Esmé and the Spaniard had gone. Émile Giroux took a chair and wedged it between Hadley and me. She was amused by his audacity and widened her eyes. He was wearing brown corduroy pants with a sloppy jacket—all the men in Montparnasse seem to wear brown corduroys and sloppy jackets. He told me that he has never gotten a ticket to my circus. I nodded. So this was why he was trying to converse with me. Now it all made sense. I sighed, a little disappointed. “Let me guess. You haven’t gotten a ticket, but all your friends have?” The brandy had gone to my head a little.
“I hear it’s quite a spectacle,” he admitted, leaning back in his chair. “I never much liked the circus, though.” He studied my face, causing me to look away. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Turn away.” He reached over and turned my chin toward him, adjusting it up to the low lighting. “I should paint you.”
I smiled. He could, but my likeness would be gone before the paint dried.
“Are you hungry?”
It was an unexpected question, and I realized that I was famished.
“Let’s get out of here.” He didn’t move, but his eyes motioned toward the entrance.
“Let me guess?” My eyebrow rose. “Back to your flat to paint me?”
He shook his head, finally standing. “No, to Les Halles.”
Hadley overheard him. “The market?” She
