Another silence. The sound of his breath. Or was it merely a fuzzing on the line?

“It’s been over between us for years. It ended when I moved out of her apartment. We never talk about it. Never did talk about it. Nobody knew, not even her children. She would always go back to her room afterward. We never spent the whole night together.”

Genevieve closed her eyes. Her grip on the receiver slackened slightly.

“You have to forgive me!” His voice was louder now. “It’s like you and your photographer. It was an adventure. And it’s all in the past.”

“How could you?”

“Don’t judge me, Genevieve. I didn’t judge you.”

“You betrayed me.”

“What?”

“I told you my secret. And you told Olga.”

( forty-one )

EVERY SURFACE WAS COVERED in clutter. The bed was a disaster area of grubby nighties and patchwork quilt. The only chair was barely recognizable as a chair beneath the heap of clothes—silk dresses, tatty furs, a pair of men’s long johns. Stray black stockings lay about the floor like skins that had been shrugged off, among brightly colored scarves, old newspapers and brown apple cores. The sink in the corner was stacked high with dirty crockery, the tap dripping steadily. The counter was a sea of empty bottles and wineglasses smeared with sediment. The dressing table was a mess of open jars of cream and pots of powder, several odd earrings, a necklace of fake pearls, a heavy turquoise ring, saucers of cigarette ash. Someone had written Le Chat Noir in red lipstick on the mirror. The walls were covered in sketches and photographs: Lulu in top hat and tails, Lulu naked with a wicked smile, Lulu dancing in a tutu, Lulu in a wedding dress with a donkey and a bunch of violets, Lulu under a shroud, Lulu with wings flying above Paris, Lulu as a cat, five Lulu faces—smiling, frowning, laughing, crying and just deadpan, a violin that was unmistakably Lulu, a series of triangles with a Lulu-ness about them, Lulu’s beauty spot on a plain white page. Lulu—the most painted and photographed woman in Paris. Lulu by Picasso, Chagall, Matisse, Léger, Miro, Brancusi, Man Ray. And of course, the real thing. Lulu of Montparnasse, commonly attributed to Frederick Camby.

She was wearing an orange kimono and smoking a cigarette in a long ebony holder. Her drawn-on beauty spot, larger than ever, was on the wrong side. The right instead of the left. She had an odd air about her—was it nerves or hostility?

“About the other night—,” Genevieve began.

“You know,” said Lulu, “Camby went off with that whore, Violetta. Can you believe it? I should be raging, but actually I’m worried. He’s not himself at the moment, and she took advantage of that. He got like this a couple of years ago and ended up in Malmaison. You know, the asylum.”