A Paris Apartment by Michelle Gable

Author:Michelle Gable [Michelle Gable]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781250048738
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2014-04-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapitre XLI

Paris, 30 November 1893

It’s been months since I’ve written in this journal. So much to tell but so little I can say!

Well it’s happened. Yesterday the final letter from Pierre arrived. My guano gent knew the sorts of things I’d been up to and declared he’d no longer fund my exploits. To which specific exploits he refers I do not know. He told me not to respond, not to beg or plead or send any more imprints of my flesh. We are done. He paid for the apartment through the end of the year, and then I must find alternate housing. I will have to move! Next month! I cannot afford it. Where has the money gone? Into frocks and shoes and champagne, I suppose. I thought I’d made more!

I went to Boldini. He would save me, I knew. Our relationship has developed into something more than I’d intended at the outset. It is one of kinship, not objects or necessities. Indeed he hasn’t bought me one damn thing, and more often than not I’m paying for his meal at Maxim’s!

Over all these months I’d built goodwill. I was less expensive than any other paramour he might have entertained in his lifetime. As such, he should have no problem helping me through this sticky time. Why, I was downright cheery when I marched toward his flat, figures dancing in my brain. Giovanni would come through, I was certain!

He was fresh from the morgue when I swept into his studio. I was glad for the good spirits in which the corpses always put him. It was the perfect confluence of circumstances. For a moment I was glad Pierre cut me off. No more distant noose around my neck! Able to spend time with Boldini, free of any sense of guilt! Not that I experience guilt, as a rule, but sometimes these feelings sneak up and surprise you.

“I have great news!” I told Giovanni as I strode through the door and twirled for his benefit, the skirt of my gown fanning out behind me. “I am in love with you. I have ended my relationship with Pierre so we can be together without reproach, without the gossiping mouths of the dance hall girls and boys!”

“You love me?”

He scrunched his face as if tasting one of Marguérite’s dastardly collations. Poor child thinks when she’s done with the Folies she will become a chef in the finest restaurants in town. (A female chef!) Her food is dreadful, and the only place she’s actually going to wind up is in jail for poisoning guests. That and too fat for contortioning due to oversampling of food!

“You love me,” he repeated.

Again with the sour face.

“Indeed!” I danced up to him and wrapped my arms around his neck. “We can be together! Forever! No Pierre to block the way.”

Giovanni then looked at me squarely, wiggled his nose, and said, “Marthe, I adore you. But I am not rich enough to love you.”

“How could you say that?” I cried.

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