Botticelli's Muse by Dorah Blume

Author:Dorah Blume [Blume, Dorah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9981316-1-0
Publisher: Juiceboxartists Press

36

Piero and Sandro Exchange Needs

Piero could tell by the fierceness of the knock on his door it was Sandro. With doll parts drying on his workbench and his hands covered in paper paste, Piero’s first impulse was to rush around hiding all traces of his eccentricity, but something close to confidence welled within him and kept him in his chair. He wiped his hands, stood, and not even taking a second for his habitual glance in the mirror to check himself, he walked to the door and opened it wide.

“Promise what you see here remains here in this room,” Piero said.

“Have you lovers?”

“Many. But none of them breathes.”

Sandro peered into the room.

“What brings you here at this hour?”

“A personal favor, my Dream Patron,” Sandro said. “For if I have not said so plainly I’ll say it now. You’ve given me the freedom to create—without your influence and direction, yet fueled by your infinite trust in me—perhaps my greatest work.”

Piero’s head twitched under the glow of such a heavy compliment. “You honor me.”

Sandro walked around the room. He sunk his hand into a bowl of wet paper pulp, then sniffed his fingers.

“Even though you keep your work secret from me, I don’t want to keep my work secret from you any longer,” Piero said, then led Sandro through the closet door into the chamber that stored the collection of dolls he and Poppi had created. It was a menagerie of two-legged and four-legged creatures, some primitive while others had the intricate decoration and detail of fine jewelry.

“Where am I?” Sandro asked. “Show me to myself.”

“You’re on the ‘active’ tray—the people here and now in my life. These others are people long gone or those I speak with or see from time to time.” Piero closed the closet door and moved toward a tall privacy screen in his main bedroom. He folded back one of the tapestry panels and there on a huge silver tray sat the miniature members of the household. Sandro’s effigy was dressed in deerskin clothes, like the ones he wore on his arrival. Floriana posed in front of him, her belly round, and her hair flowing in yellow silk and tiny flowers strewn over her from head to foot.

“May I?” Sandro took Floriana’s tiny double in his hands. “Show me now, the moneylender, and Graziella, his daughter.”

Piero’s head twitched. “They are business partners. Secret ones. Friends, not usurers,” he said.

“I don’t care who pays me as long as I get paid. Where you get the money is your business. But now show me the moneylender, I mean your friend who happens to be a moneylender, please.”

“Manfredo,” Piero said as he walked back inside the closet to retrieve the doll.

“And bring the daughter too.”

When Piero brought the dolls out, Sandro said, “Now another tray, please. A small one.”

Piero pulled out a small silver tray with a sweet upon it from underneath his bed. He popped the pastry in his mouth, then spilled the crumbs into a nearby plant and handed the tray to Sandro.

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