Christian can't help but stare.
When La Perla sets up her easel and tools, there's concentration in her eyes. Gears turning, figuring out her plan for their session. Light hits Mediterranean skin, and she glows.
He pretends to busy himself with writing, making marks on previous written pages to edit. In truth, he can't find it in himself to focus. He holds his past in his hands, while the present busies itself in front of him.
"Do you want coffee?" Christian asks, desperate to break the silence.
La Perla looks up from her satchel of paints, blinks before giving a nod and a smile.
"Please." Flicks of her Spanish accent tint the polite response.
"It's… It's good the rain let up." A pathetic attempt at conversation, even by his standards. "Lifts the, um, spirits. Perhaps better for art."
She gives a small laugh. "Depends on the art, don't you think? But for painting, yes. The rain can affect my canvases from time to time. Annoying, but I can fix it."
He hands her a cup filled with black coffee, and fingers brush his own. An innocent touch, and yet it sends him into an internal frenzy.
"It was raining the day I arrived," she mentions offhandedly. "Pouring. The sun showed up right before my audition for the Paris Opera Ballet."
"A good sign," he chimes in.
"Hardly." La Perla laughs. "I didn't pass my entrance examination. Failed it twice, actually."
He nearly tastes his foot in his mouth. Attempts a second time. "I didn't know you danced."
"Not many people do." Another small laugh. "It's not something that gets brought up often. You train for years and don't make it… it's not something I like to rehash often."
"I'm surprised you aren't at the cabarets. As a can can dancer, I mean."
"The girls there have a different energy," she says. "The way they move, their character… it's so different from what I was taught. I feel like I'm almost too trained. Not free enough to dance as gaily as they do."
Christian sees a dreaminess in her eyes, a sense of longing, nearly forlorn. It falls from her face, replaced by the impenetrable understanding of reality she has. Follow every dream, you may get lost. But she has found her way back.
"So you decided to paint instead," he states quietly.
"Yes," La Perla says. "My father would teach summer lessons when university was out of session. My brothers never cared for it, so I ended up tagging along."
He takes a seat at his desk, face in hand as she sips her coffee. It's quiet for a moment, both stewing in the insight La Perla has conceded. He can't help but stare as she balances the cup in her hand as the other flips through past sketches she's made. All of intimate details from how the light filters into his flat to the moles on his face.
"Would you still dance if you could?" He feels a flush start on his face as she gives him a questioning look. "Not at the Paris Opera, I mean. Just anywhere if they wanted a ballet dancer."
"I'm out of practice. It's been two years since I properly trained, Christian." He revels in the way she says his name. "I'm sure though if I brushed up… It'd be nice. I do miss it."
"Satie may write another of his modern ballets," he offers. "A-And we used ballerinas in Spectacular Spectacular! There's always a chance, Perla."
She bites her bottom lip, looks down into the yellowed porcelain cup. He isn't sure if he's pushed too hard.
"If the opportunity presents itself…" La Perla's words trail off. She looks up at him, giving a bright smile. "For now, I paint. And you sit still."
The session begins anew. Concentrated silence fills his garret, the outside world filtering in through far off voices and clacking of hooves against cobbled stone. A gentle wind rustles the stack of papers next to him. La Perla is in her own world, eyes flitting back and forth between his still pose and canvas.
A thought wanders into his head; how she sees him, sitting there. What the eventual translation of him in her mind's eye to canvas will finally be. Christian can only see himself as a shambling fog, a mess of modern words and timeless sorrow.
But he sees before him an idealist who traded one dream for another. He understands it, revels in not being so alone for the first time in months. Her pain has been taken in stride, transformed into some other form of beauty. It radiates from her; art lives in every poised movement and misplaced curl against her face.
La Perla stirs from her spot on the stool she's borrowed from Toulouse. Paintbrush is replaced by charcoal and her sketchpad, a frustrated murmur coming from the Spanish beauty.
"Is everything alright?" he asks.
"It's fine, I just need some closer reference for that typewriter of yours."
She stands, heels clacking against hardwood as she draws near. Before Christian can offer his chair, she seats herself once more on the edge of his desk, scribbling in dark lines the intricacies of the Underwood.
Christian can't help but stare. This feeling is not new, but it has taken residence in a new place in his soul. Part of him screams in torturous guilt, but as he is learning, the present rolls on regardless of the past.
Before he is conscious of his actions, he pulls her close. Kisses her, gentle and unobtrusive. Feels her melt into him before pulling away, hiding with difficulty her ruffled state. Heels clack to the floor as she slides off the desk, rosy cheeks and all, returning to her painting.
"You're worse than Toulouse," he hears her mumble.
"Sorry," he offers. That itself is a half lie.
She says nothing more, concentrating on laying down a deep blue on her canvas.