The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, page 35
“What was that?” she asks, but Luc does not answer. He is now standing several feet away, hands splayed on the railing of a bridge as he looks out over the river.
But it is not the Seine.
There are no burning barricades. There is no cannon fire. No men waiting, weapons at their sides. Only a foreign river running beneath a foreign bridge, and foreign buildings rising along foreign banks, their rooftops capped in red tiles.
“That’s better,” he says, adjusting his cuffs. Somehow, in the moment of nothing, he has changed clothes, the collar higher now, the cut and trim a looser silk, while Addie wears the same ill-fitted tunic, salvaged from a Paris street.
A couple passes arm in arm, and she catches only the highs and lows of a foreign tongue.
“Where are we?” she demands.
Luc glances over his shoulder, and says something in the same choppy flow before repeating himself in French. “We are in Florence.”
Florence. She has heard the name before, but knows little of it, besides the obvious—that it is not in France but Italy.
“What have you done?” she demands. “How have you— No, never mind. Just take me back.”
He arches a brow. “Adeline, for someone with nothing but time, you are always in a hurry.” And with that, he ambles away, and Addie is left to follow in his wake.
She takes in the strangeness of the new city. Florence is all odd shapes and sharp edges, domes and spires, white stone walls and copper-slated roofs. It is a place painted in a different palette, music played in a different chord. Her heart flutters at the beauty of it, and Luc smiles as if he can sense her pleasure.
“You would rather the burning streets of Paris?”
“I assumed you would be fond of war.”
“That isn’t war,” he says curtly. “It’s only a skirmish.”
She follows him into an open courtyard, a plaza scattered with stone benches, the air heavy with the scent of summer blossoms. He walks ahead, the picture of a gentleman taking the night air, slowing only when he sees a man, a bottle of wine beneath one arm. He curls his fingers, and the man changes course, coming like a dog to heel. Luc slides into that other tongue, a language she will come to know as Florentine, and though she does not yet know the words, she knows the lure in his voice, that gauzy sheen that takes shape in the air around them. Knows, too, the dreamy look in the Italian’s eyes as he hands over the wine with a placid smile, and strolls absently away.
Luc sinks onto a bench, and draws two glasses out of nothing.
Addie does not sit. She stands, and watches as he uncorks the bottle and pours the wine, and says, “Why would I be fond of war?”
It is the first time, she thinks, he has asked an honest question, one not meant to goad, demand, coerce. “Are you not a god of chaos?”
His expression sours. “I am a god of promise, Adeline, and wars make terrible patrons.” He offers her a glass, and when she does not reach to take it, he lifts, as if to toast her. “To long life.”
Addie cannot help herself. She shakes her head, bemused. “Some nights, you love to see me suffer, so that I will yield. Others, you seem intent to spare me from it. I do wish you’d make up your mind.”
A shadow sweeps across his face. “Trust me, my dear, you don’t.” A small shiver runs through her as he lifts the wineglass to his lips. “Do not mistake this—any of it—for kindness, Adeline.” His eyes go bright with mischief. “I simply want to be the one who breaks you.”
She looks around at the tree-lined plaza, lit by lanterns, the moonlight shining on the red-capped roofs. “Well, you’ll have to try harder than…”
But she trails off as her attention returns to the stone bench.
“Oh, hell,” she mutters, looking around the empty square.
Because Luc, of course, is gone.
New York City
April 6, 2014
VI
“He just left you there?” says Henry, aghast.
Addie takes a fry, turning it between her fingers. “There are worse places to be left.”
They’re sitting at a high-top table in a so-called pub—what passes for a pub outside of Britain—sharing an order of vinegary fish-and-chips and a pint of warm beer.
A waiter passes by, and smiles at Henry.
A pair of girls heading for the bathroom slow as they come into his orbit, and stare as they leave again.
A stream of words drifts over from a nearby table, the low, rapid staccato of German, and Addie’s mouth twitches in a smile.
“What is it?” asks Henry.
She leans in. “The couple over there.” She tilts her head in their direction. “They’re having a fight. Apparently the guy slept with his secretary. And his assistant. And his Pilates instructor. The woman knew about the first two, but she’s mad about the third, because they both take Pilates at the same studio.”
Henry stares at her, marveling. “How many languages do you know?”
“Enough,” she says, but he clearly wants to know, so she ticks them off on her fingers. “French, of course. And English. Greek and Latin. German, Italian, Spanish, Swiss, some Portuguese, though it’s not perfect.”
“You would have made an amazing spy.”
She raises a brow behind her pint. “Who says I haven’t been one?”
The plates are empty when she looks around, sees the waiter duck into the kitchen. “Come on,” she says, grabbing his hand.
Henry frowns. “We haven’t paid.”
“I know,” she says, hopping down from the stool, “but if we go now, he’ll think he just forgot to clear the table. He won’t remember.”
This is the problem with a life like Addie’s.
She has gone so long without roots, she doesn’t know how to grow them anymore.
So used to losing things, she isn’t sure how to hold them.
How to make space in a world the size of herself.
“No,” says Henry. “He won’t remember you. But he’ll remember me. I’m not invisible, Addie. I’m the exact opposite of invisible.”
Invisible. The word scrapes over her skin.
“I’m not invisible either,” she says.
“You know what I mean. I can’t just come and go. And even if I could,” he says, reaching for his wallet, “it would still be wrong.”
The word hits like a blow, and she is back in Paris, doubled over with hunger. She is at the marquis’s house, dining in stolen clothes, stomach twisting as Luc points out that someone will pay for every bite she takes.
Her face burns with shame.
“Fine,” she says, pulling a handful of twenties from her pocket. She drops two on the table. “Better?” But when she looks at Henry, his frown has only deepened.
“Where did you get that money?”
She doesn’t want to tell him that she walked out of a designer store and into a pawn shop, moving pieces from one hand to the other. Doesn’t want to explain that everything she has—everything besides him—is stolen. And that in some ways, so is he. Addie doesn’t want to see the judgment on his face, doesn’t want to think about how merited it might be.
“Does it matter?” she asks.
And Henry says, “Yes,” with so much conviction, she flushes crimson.
“Do you think I want to live like this?” Addie grits her teeth. “No job, no ties, no way to hold on to anyone or anything? Do you think I like being so alone?”
Henry looks pained. “You aren’t alone,” he says. “You have me.”
“I know, but you shouldn’t have to do everything—be everything.”
“I don’t mind—”
“But I do!” she snaps, thrown by the anger in her own voice. “I’m a person, not a pet, Henry, and I don’t need you looking down at me, or coddling me either. I do what I have to, and it’s not always nice, and it’s not always fair, but it’s how I survive. I’m sorry you disapprove. But this is who I am. This is what works for me.”
Henry shakes his head. “But it won’t work for us.”
Addie pulls back as if struck. Suddenly the pub is too loud, too full, and she can’t stand there, can’t stand still, so she turns, and storms out.
The moment the night air hits her, she feels ill.
The world rocks, re-steadies … and somewhere between one step and the next, the anger evaporates, and she just feels tired, and sad.
She doesn’t understand how the night went sideways.
Doesn’t understand the sudden weight on her chest until she realizes what it is—fear. Fear that she’s messed up, thrown away the one thing she’s always wanted. Fear that it was that fragile, that it came apart so easily.
But then she hears footsteps, feels Henry coming up beside her.
He doesn’t say anything, only walks, half a step behind, and this is a new kind of silence. The silent aftermath of storms, the damage not yet tallied.
Addie swipes a tear from her cheek. “Did I ruin it?”
“Ruin what?” he asks.
“Us.”
“Addie.” He grabs her shoulder. She turns, expecting to see his face streaked with anger, but it’s steady, smooth. “It was just a fight. It’s not the end of the world. It’s certainly not the end of us.”
Three hundred years she’s dreamed of this.
She always thought it would be easy.
The opposite of Luc.
“I don’t know how to be with someone,” she whispers. “I don’t know how to be a normal person.”
His mouth quirks into a crooked grin. “You’re incredible, and strong, and stubborn, and brilliant. But I think it’s safe to say you’re never going to be normal.”
They walk, arm in arm, through the cool night air.
“Did you go back to Paris?” asks Henry.
It is an olive branch, a bridge built, and she is grateful for it.
“Eventually,” she says.
It had taken far longer to get back there, without Luc’s help, or her naïve drive to reach the city, and she’s embarrassed to say she did not hurry back. That even if Luc meant to abandon her, stranding her there in Florence, in doing so he broke a kind of seal. In yet another, maddening way, he forced her free.
Until that moment, Addie had never conceived of leaving France. It’s absurd to think of now, but the world felt so much smaller then. And then, suddenly, it was not.
Perhaps he meant to cast her into chaos.
Perhaps he thought she was getting too comfortable, growing too stubborn.
Perhaps he wanted her to call for him again. To beg him to come back.
Perhaps perhaps perhaps—but she will never know.
Venice, Italy
July 29, 1806
VII
Addie wakes to sunlight and silk sheets.
Her limbs feel leaden, her head full of muslin. The kind of heaviness that comes with too much sun, and too much sleep.
It is ungodly hot in Venice, hotter than it ever was in Paris.
The window is open, but neither the faint breeze nor the silk bedding are enough to dissipate the stifling heat. It is only morning, and sweat already beads on her bare skin. She is dreading the thought of midday as she drags herself awake, and sees Matteo perched at the foot of the bed.
He is just as beautiful in daylight, sun-kissed and strong, but she is struck less by his lovely features, and more by the strange calm of the moment.
Mornings are usually muddled with apologies, confusion, the aftermath of forgetting. They are sometimes painful, and always awkward.
But Matteo seems utterly unfazed.
He doesn’t remember her, of course, that much is obvious—but her presence there, this stranger in his bed, seems neither to startle nor to bother him. His attention is focused solely on the sketchpad balanced on his knee, the charcoal skating gracefully across the paper. It is only when his gaze flicks up to her, and then down again, that she realizes he is drawing her.
She makes no move to cover herself, to reach for the slip cast off on the chair, or the thin robe at the foot of the bed. Addie hasn’t been shy about her body in a long time. Indeed, she has come to enjoy being admired. Perhaps it is the natural abandon that comes with time, or perhaps it is the constancy of her shape, or perhaps it is the liberation that comes with knowing her spectators won’t remember.
There is a freedom, after all, in being forgotten.
And yet, Matteo is still drawing, the motions swift and easy.
“What are you doing?” she asks gently, and he tears his gaze from the parchment.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “The way you looked. I had to capture it.”
Addie frowns, begins to rise, but he lets out a stifled sound and says, “Not yet,” and it takes all her strength to stay there, on the bed, hands tangled in the sheets until he sighs and sets the work aside, eyes glazed with the afterglow unique to artists.
“Can I see?” she asks in the melodic Italian she has learned.
“It is not finished,” he says, even as he offers her the pad.
Addie stares at the drawing. The marks are easy, imprecise, a quick study by a talented hand. Her face is barely drawn, almost abstract in the gestures of light and shadow.
It is her—and it is not her.
An image, distorted by the filter of someone else’s style. But she can see herself in it. From the curve of her cheek to the shape of her shoulders, the sleep-mussed hair and the charcoal dots scattered across her face. Seven freckles charted out like stars.
She brushes the charcoal toward the bottom edge of the page, where her limbs dissolve into the linens of the bed, feels it smudge against her skin.
But when she lifts her hand away, her thumb is stained, and the line is clean. She has not left a mark. And yet, she has. She has impressed herself upon Matteo, and he has impressed her upon the page.
“Do you like it?” he asks.
“Yes,” she 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.
