allowed to wear it. Romantic, no?”
“Then—”
“How do I come to wear it? Well, they both died and there was money to be made, so
Frédéric Malle put it on the market for us peasants to buy.”
Peasant was a word poor people didn’t use. Just like classy was a word that classy people didn’t use. But Belbalm smiled in a way that included Alex, so Alex smiled back in
a way she hoped was just as knowing.
Colin appeared, balancing a tray laden with a tea set the color of red clay, and placed it
on the edge of the desk. “Anything else?” he asked hopefully.
Belbalm shooed him away. “Go do important things.” She poured out the tea and
offered a cup to Alex. “Help yourself to cream and sugar if you like. Or there’s fresh mint.” She rose and broke a small sprig from the herbs on the sill.
“Mint please,” Alex said, taking the sprig and echoing Belbalm’s movements: crushing
the leaves, dropping them into her own cup.
Belbalm sat back, took a sip. Alex did the same, then hid a flinch when it burned her
tongue.
“I take it you heard the news about that poor girl?”
“Tara?”
Belbalm’s slender brows rose. “Yes, Tara Hutchins. Did you know her?”
“No,” Alex said, annoyed at her own stupidity. “I was just reading about her.”
“A terrible thing. I will say a more terrible thing and admit that I’m grateful she was not
a student. It does not diminish the loss in any way, of course.”
“Of course.” But Alex was fairly sure Belbalm was saying exactly that.
“Alex, what do you want from Yale?”
Money. Alex knew Marguerite Belbalm would find such an answer hopelessly crude.
When did you first see them? Darlington had asked. Maybe all rich people asked the wrong questions. For people like Alex, it would never be what do you want. It was always just how much can you get? Enough to survive? Enough to help her take care of her mother when shit fell apart the way it always, always did?
Alex said nothing and Belbalm tried again. “Why come here and not to an art school?”
Lethe had mocked up paintings for her, created a false trail of successes and glowing recommendations to excuse her academic lapses.
“I’m good, but I’m not good enough to make it.” It was true. Magic could create competent painters, proficient musicians, but not genius. She had added art electives to her
class schedule because it was expected, and they’d proven the easiest part of her academic
life. Because it wasn’t her hand that moved the brush. When she remembered to pick up
the sketchbooks Sandow had suggested she buy, it was like letting a trivet skate over a Ouija board, though the images that emerged came from somewhere inside her—Betcha
half naked and drinking from a hole; Hellie in profile, the wings of a monarch butterfly pushing from her back.
“I will not accuse you of false humility. I trust you to know your own talents.” Belbalm
took another sip of her tea. “The world is quite hard on artists who are good but not truly
great. So. You wish what? Stability? A steady job?”
“Yes,” Alex said, and despite her best intentions the word emerged with a petulant edge.
“You mistake me, Alexandra. There is no crime in wanting these things. Only people
who have never lived without comfort deride it as bourgeois.” She winked. “The purest Marxists are always men. Calamity comes too easily to women. Our lives can come apart
in a single gesture, a rogue wave. And money? Money is the rock we cling to when the current would seize us.”
“Yes,” said Alex, leaning forward. This was what Alex’s mother had never managed to
grasp. Mira loved art and truth and freedom. She didn’t want to be a part of the machine.
But the machine didn’t care. The machine went on grinding and catching her up in its gears.
Belbalm set her cup in its saucer. “So once you have money, once you can stop clinging
to the rock and can climb atop it, what will you build there? When you stand upon the rock, what will you preach?”