The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [111]
“Trip’s what I tell the boss,” said Chloé, snuggling against Awa. “It’s more like four times the usual minge money.”
“So long as you’re happy,” Awa muttered sleepily, and they both dozed off as dawn crept under the eaves.
The Judgment of Paris
Awa’s time was running out. The days were passing far too quickly, the nights even faster, and not even Chloé could distract Awa from the truth of the matter. All the signs were there—the brothel’s boost in business as harvest arrived, the few trees Awa passed on her walks losing their leaves like skeletons shedding desiccated skin, the pinch in the air, her own memory that would not be quiet, no matter how much alcohol she poured down her throat. She had reached her final year before the necromancer would claim her.
It had been easier than Awa had anticipated to forget, especially with the help of Chloé and Monique, and Manuel, who had come to visit a year before, no, two years before, bringing Katharina with him. Not to the brothel, of course, but to the city, and Awa and Monique and the artist’s wife had all posed for him. It had been fun, much more fun than the only other time she had posed for Manuel, though she had to argue vehemently with him before he agreed to tweak her features and lighten her skin, lest she be identified by the completed painting. Little details like this told her she had not yet given up entirely, that she would not roll over and let death take her, but she pretended it was modesty instead of self-preservation, and so she convinced herself she would not rage against her fate as she once had.
The sketch for his painting, though—Manuel had wanted Monique to be nude, which had led to blushing instead of blows but nevertheless Monique’s staunch refusal. They had talked it over, the three models and the artist, and if he was annoyed when they hijacked his vision he did not dare voice it. Monique would be the mother instead of Awa, and keep her modesty even if it meant wearing a fashionable dress for a change. Dario was dragged along, but by this point they had a few more hands employed at the brothel and so the five were able to nip off to an uncleared acre of trees and shrubbery in the outskirts without being missed.
The barkeep and official whoremonger sat on a rock facing Katharina, the artist’s wife nude save for a transparent shift that concealed her charms no more than a light breeze might. She held an apple in her hand, the very image of Venus to Manuel’s eye. They had been right, of course, and as he worked he could scarcely believe he had gotten Awa’s and Monique’s roles reversed. The gunner made as perfect a Juno as Katharina made a Venus, but there could be no denying that of the three Awa most embodied her goddess—though Manuel was perhaps a touch mixed up over the historical roles and identities of the goddesses in the first place.
Manuel felt guilty adding the long curls of hair on Awa’s shoulder that she had insisted upon, at softening her at all, at lightening her flesh and masking her features, but still she shone through the disguise he gave her, Minerva as she had first appeared to him in the cave, his sword in her hand, a borrowed shield on her shoulder, his hat upon her head. Catching himself comparing his models, Manuel smiled to himself—he was more in Paris’s position than the seated model, and made sure to replace the barkeep’s face with his own in the finished painting. For now he sketched them as carefully as he could, and upon returning to Bern would have the apprentice he could finally afford make a cartoon of his sketch, which in turn the boy would copy onto a panel for Manuel to paint.
“You look like shit,” Manuel had told her earlier in the day, Awa’s eyes sunken and purple-rimmed, her breath hellish, but now she looked perfect.
“So do you,” she had said, and she was right, a few years away from mercenary work enabling him to acquire a bit of a paunch.
“Come visit sometime,” said Manuel. “I want to show you some