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.