Chapter 2

The next day, Pierre had a headache. He walked down to the dispensary to pick up some drops for it. He wondered whether the op**m had made him sick as he administered the medicine at their kitchen table. Leon took some drops, too, before they gathered some bread for lunch and picked up a couple of bottles of cheap wine to accompany their packed lunch. They arrived at their studio and then sat down to paint and sculpt for the day. At noon, a girl from the pleasure house down the road knocked on the door.

“Josephine!” Leon said with a smile. “Glad you could come!”

Pierre smiled shyly from his easel. Josephine had been seeing Leon for a few months. She worked at the brothel nearby as a cleaner, the younger sister of the owner. She and the working ladies there used to sometimes model for them because there was no way that ladies of society would model for fringe dwellers such as artists. Pierre was grateful, and Josephine was always very kind to him.

“Focus on the model, or I’ll school you,” Leon said to him as they stood up to organize their workstations.

Pierre ducked out of the way. Leon’s fondness for the fighting styles of the rogues on the streets always astounded him.

“Of course. Josephine, do you want a drink?” he asked.

He stood up to remove the cork from one of the wines.

“Sorry, we don’t have a glass,” he said as he handed her the bottle.

Josephine took it with a smile before she stripped to her corset and pantalettes, leaving her dress and bustle on a bench near the door. She took her place at the chair in the middle of the room. Leon fussed around her, positioning her in the pose that they had previously been working on. As he opened the windows to let more light in, she took a sip from the bottle and then rested it at her feet.

“Thanks for doing this, Josephine,” Pierre said with a smile.

She laughed lightly. “Pierre, of course, I’d do this for you. Thank you for letting me be your muse.”

Pierre smiled; she was a really nice girl and his only female friend in the city.

“Hey, Pierre!” Leon said as he moved a large lump of clay to the center of his workspace, “Don’t hit on her.”

“Sorry!” Pierre called back.

Josephine laughed at that as they settled to work. Pierre took a sip of his wine as he searched for some willow charcoal on the bench beside him. He found some leaves of paper beside the twigs, vowing, as always, to tidy up his workspace. They spent the afternoon drawing their model until she had to return to work to set up for the evening. The whole time, Pierre kept thinking about the man from his dream.

He had unruly hair, rectangular glasses, and sideburns. He’d been about the same age as Pierre—maybe twenty-two or twenty-three. His lips had tasted like aniseed herbs with a delicate hint of copper. It had been the strangest but most erotic moment in Pierre’s young life.

Pierre, in that dream, had been too plastered to turn his head to the side to give the man a proper kiss. Now that he was awake, he hoped that he’d dream of him again.

When the light weakened as the day faded to evening, Pierre and Leon tore their loaf of bread apart and ate it while critiquing each other’s work.

“What were you drawing?” Leon asked as he studied the pages of sketches that Pierre showed him. “That’s not Josephine.”

Pierre blushed as he swallowed his bread. “I got distracted by my thoughts. This is the man I dreamt of last night.”

Leon examined the portraits closely.

“Dreams of a man with spectacles, hmm? Yup, I definitely didn’t see him. He reminds me of someone I know...Anyway, you’ve given him quite an otherworldly quality. He looks pretty young, too. What were you dreaming about?”

Pierre blushed when he remembered the dream before answering his friend.

“It’s because I can’t remember him in much detail. It probably looks that way because I was filling in the blanks. And I really have no idea what the point of the dream was.”

Pierre felt like he was grasping at straws while drawing from memory—and a hazy, confused memory at that. After some discussion of Leon’s sculpture, they decided to move on from their work for the day. They washed their bread down with wine and then returned to their small boarding house. They went into their rooms, which were located side by side.

“There’s a meeting tonight,” Leon called out as he washed at his basin.

He walked into Pierre’s room as he dried his face and neck with a towel.

“What’s happening?” Pierre asked.

“Just drinks. Clean up and come with me.”

Pierre was happy to join him. He didn’t want to stay at home thinking about the handsome man in his dreams for the whole night.

He stripped to his undershirt so that he could wipe the sweat and charcoal from his face and arms. He decided to strip down to his drawers to wipe down his legs as well. Pleased with his cleanliness routine, he slipped on a new striped shirt and some trousers and buttoned his braces on as quickly as he could. After he slipped them up over his shoulders, he stopped to examine his face in the looking glass hanging above his washbasin. What had he looked like when the spectacled man in his dreams had kissed him? He posed in front of his reflection, wondering why someone would stop to kiss him at all. He touched his lips, remembering the man’s feather-light touches.

When Leon yelled at him from the hallway to hurry up, he quickly slipped on a vest and a tan frock coat. He tied and pinned a faded mustard ascot around his neck, doing his best to look good in case there were attractive dames at whatever establishment they were going to. He ran a hand through his unruly hair to tame it. After that, he pinched his cheeks to give his face some color. Then, he was ready to go.