Read Online The Green Muse by Jessie Prichard Hunter - Free Book Online Page B

companion; she too looked changed: older, more sure of herself—­there was no more little girl. She turned to smile at me and for an instant I was afraid, then she was just a woman again, a potential conquest, the most prized of any I had ever known, it is true, but merely a woman nonetheless.
    â€œAh, V, how are you tonight?” The voice came from behind the vast mahogany bar. I had her name. A light name, a girl’s name, a charade. I was instantly furious with this man who knew her name and used it so casually.
    â€œI am well, Etiènne,” she said, also casually. She felt my jealousy, I knew. She smiled. “I would like my usual booth.” She was smiling at him on purpose, not for him but for me, to make me squirm. If every other smile she had ever given him had been genuine, this one was not. I tried to hide my annoyance as we walked down the narrow aisle. All the men’s top hats glinted in the candlelight, moving like waves as we passed. ­People at the bar had to move aside to let us by; one woman let her calf slide along my thigh as I walked by her. The thrill of excitement I felt was not for her but for V; even my annoyance had felt like arousal. When we reached the booth, it was V who stood to let me sit first; when I would not, she laughed and sat where she could see the crowd, as if she knew that every time her eyes moved past me I would wonder whether she was exchanging glances with Etiènne.
    When she slipped her cape from her shoulders I almost gasped; I had not before seen just how exquisite she was. She was wearing an evening dress totally unsuited to the weather: Her gown and sleeveless overjacket were of pale yellow striped with purple; her wipe, square lapels bore intricate patterns of lavender, and her sleeves, full and round, nevertheless left her arms bare far above the elbow. Her wide silk waist was of rich purple, but the blouse beneath the overjacket was of almost sheer black lace, tightly tatted, with the lace spilling down the yellow dress in an unexpected, flowing waterfall of black. When she removed her scarf I saw she wore a delicate black choker around her neck with a small cross affixed to it; it gave her the impression of being chained.
    But as my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, I noticed something that took my mind away from V. In the last booth against the wall, the only thing that I could see, really, from my vantage point opposite V, slouched an old, ill-­kempt man. His jacket sleeves were not long enough for his arms, and they were grubby at the ends; his shirtfront was shocking. His head nodded back and forth almost imperceptibly; I know that movement well, having both seen it and felt it. But this man was lost. He clearly saw nothing of the table before him, the last creamy, glinting drops in the glass, the shining slotted metal spoon. His chin was sunk almost to his chest. His eyes were almost closed. Whether he was in misery or in ecstasy I could not say. But I knew who he was.
    I looked enquiringly at V, and she smiled and nodded.
    â€œFor the price of an absinthe he will recite his poetry for you,” she said. I hesitated. “Go to him,” she said. “I will have Etiènne bring him a glass.”
    I slid out of the booth and moved quietly toward the man.
    â€œExcuse me, Monsieur,” I said gently. I did not want to do this—­to be just another stranger with a handout, another face appearing to dispel the great man’s absinthe dream to demand a memory.
    Paul Verlaine, France’s greatest living poet. And among her most notorious. Lover of Arthur Rimbaud, who came to Paris at seventeen and lived in the streets until one day he appeared at Verlaine’s front door—­and the great poet fell in love with him in an instant and left his wife, his children, his home, to begin a life of scandal and madness. When he and Rimbaud went to the opera, the papers reported that Verlaine and Madame Verlaine had