37. Connections

Bonnie stood in the women's washroom and studied her reflection in the full length mirror. The simple black jersey dress with its fitted bodice, cap sleeves and circle skirt had served her well over the course of her workday, especially with the additional volume and pop of color provided by the brightly-striped and fringed linen wrap she wore loosely coiled around her neck, but it was not a look she could carry over into the evening's invitation-only art show. A transformation was in order, and she began by unwinding the yards of gaudy fabric and revealing the deep scoop neckline and hint of cleavage its folds had concealed. Next she slipped the slim leather belt from around her waist, and toed the practical ballet flats from her feet. She removed her onyx teardrop earrings, and, placing them with the other discarded items in a canvas tote, set about revamping her appearance.

She had just stepped into her favorite ribbon-bedecked heels when the outer door swung inward, admitting Gabby Franklin. At the sight of Bonnie in all her finery, she stopped dead in her tracks and gaped. "My goodness!" she exclaimed at last, one hand clapped to her chest as if to calm a racing heart. "Look at you! I mean, I've always thought you were pretty, but… wow! You're absolutely dazzling, and I'm not just talking bling." She leaned in to inspect the drop earrings, pendant necklace and butterfly-clasp belt. "Are those real diamonds?"

"My grandmother Brennan's," Bonnie confirmed. She fingered the trefoil pendant at her throat uncertainly. "Too much?"

"For fish and chips at the Founding Fathers, sure, but I've got a strong suspicion you're not headed in that direction. What's the occasion?"

"Rose Mundy's having a private view tonight at the Tremont Gallery…"

"Oh, right! I heard Dr. Baer and that Auteuil woman discussing it. A pretty exclusive affair, I gather. That French guy, Beaumont, invite you?"

"No, the artist did. She's a friend of my grandmother's."

Gabby shook her head wonderingly. "What I wouldn't give for a grandmother like that! Twirl for me?" Bonnie completed her slow spin to find Gabby nodding approvingly. "Love the flirty swing of that skirt! And your hair looks amazing slicked back like that. Very elegant."

Bonnie ran a smoothing hand over the tight coiffure, and checked the band securing the short pony tail at her nape. "I would have loved to put it up somehow, but my hairdressing skills don't extend that far." She pasted a smile on her lips, and reached her arms out to the side, hands palm forward. "So… do I really look all right?"

"No, you look incredible, so stop fussing and get a move on, Cinderella, or you're going to miss the ball. Unless…" Gabby regarded her through narrowing eyes. "… that's the whole point of this primping and preening."

Bonnie sighed. "I want to go, I really do. It's just… I feel a little nervous about showing up alone."

"Honey," Gabby chortled, "once you cross the threshold, you won't be alone for more than five minutes, believe you me. Men'll come swarming around like bees to a blossom."

While expressed in somewhat alarming terms, Gabby's homey support gave Bonnie the ego boost she sorely needed, and she was able, finally, to smile at her colleague with genuine warmth. It occurred to her then, much too late, that she could have enjoyed the evening in Gabby's easy company if only she'd thought to invite her earlier. She gave herself a mental head slap, and, taking up her black satin clutch, removed one of the glossy invitations she'd secreted there. "I know it's awfully last minute," she apologized, holding the card out to Gabby, "but if there's any chance you'd like to go, please be my guest. I don't mean come with me now," she added hurriedly, "although I'd like that, of course. Just take it in case, later on, you feel like popping in for a glass of champagne and a look around."

Gabby accepted the card and examined it curiously. "I won't say I'm not a little tempted — free booze and canapés! — so, thanks for the offer. To be honest, though, I don't see myself going to the trouble of getting all dolled up and going out again tonight. Still," she allowed, tucking the card away in a pants' pocket. "You never know. I may have a change of heart. Meanwhile, you high tail it on out of here, and go knock everybody's socks off. You got this, girl!"

It was not, subsequently, possible to say with precision if Gabby had been right or wrong in predicting her young friend would attract a man's attention within minutes of her arrival as, once through the gallery doors, Bonnie was so captivated by the paintings on display she immediately forgot both her solitary state and the passing of time. She could not help but be aware of the crowd, but the other visitors meandering the exhibit halls or standing about chatting in small groups were not so much possible acquaintances, friends and colleagues as obstacles between herself and Rose Mundy's vibrant art. It might, indeed, have been anywhere for the foreseen five minutes to a full quarter hour before Sébastien Beaumont appeared at her elbow, a flute of sparkling wine in each hand.

"I hesitated to approach," he said, when she finally noticed him beside her. He held out one of the glasses to her. "You have seemed entirely mesmerized, a princess enchanted. I hardly dared to break the spell."

Bonnie took the flute and thanked him somewhat absently. "It's wonderful, isn't it?" she said, gesturing about her with her free hand. "I've always admired Mme Vincent's work, but I didn't know she was capable of this."

Sébastien gulped down some wine before nodding. "She has truly outdone herself this time. The technical mastery I anticipated, but her wit in treating her subjects, that is something remarkable and fresh."

He moved slowly off toward the next canvas, and Bonnie fell into step beside him. "Is it all portraits, do you know?"

"Yes, an homage to her 'connections,' the important people in her life, past and present, everyone from former lovers to her husband's grandchildren. And speaking of the former…" Coming to a halt, he motioned grandly to the portrait before them. "You will not need me, I am sure, to identify the sitter."

Bonnie knew him at once, of course: Bernard Perec, the painter whose name had, over the previous thirty years, come to replace Picasso as shorthand for artistic genius. Like all the other subjects, he was facing out of the canvas, his gaze direct and nearly confrontational, as if to disrupt the traditional assumption of who was the viewer and who the viewed. Rose Mundy had painted him in his characteristic pose: straddling a chair, his legs in paint-stained trousers spread wide apart, arms crossed rather belligerently over the curved back. In the upper right hand corner, as if hanging on the wall behind him, was the painting of a nude, easily recognizable as Perec's famous Odalisque, for which the young Rose had served as model. "Mundy has not only made their 'connection' clear," Sébastien pointed out, unnecessarily in Bonnie's opinion, "she has also turned the tables on her old maitre. At one and the same time, she acknowledges her passive role in the past, and her current position as actor in her own right. Both a tribute and an appropriation. Delicious!"

They continued their leisurely circuit, Sébastien holding forth non-stop, like some over-zealous museum docent. "The influence of the fauvists on the vivid color scheme… the favoring of abstract shape and form over faithful representation… the heavy outlining of the figures so reminiscent of Cézanne…" Bonnie, nearly all her attention focused on her personal reactions to each succeeding image, lent him only half an ear unless he was expounding on some of the more obscure 'connections.' Then, he was entertaining and informative, and she listened with pleasure. When they examined the portrait of the Marquis de Sancerre, Sébastien even managed to tie the relationship clue back to himself. "That painting in the background is an early Rose Mundy work I acquired for the old gentleman. He was so taken with the piece, he asked if I might arrange an introduction to the artist, a request I was only too happy to fulfill. That meeting led, by the usual stages, to their marriage and present connubial bliss, which they would not now enjoy except for me!"

There was one painting, however, whose iconography Sébastien could not elucidate. It featured a child seated on an expanse of gold and tan beach, with a stretch of deep blue water behind and a cloud-flecked sky above. A boy, if the traditional blue of the sun hat and swim trunks was any indication, he appeared to be a toddler, certainly no older than two. Alone of Rose Mundy's subjects, he did not look out of the canvas, but down at the mound of sand beyond his dimpled knees. He held a bright yellow shovel in one pudgy fist and seemed to be concentrating all his baby thoughts on devising the best strategy for achieving his castle-making goal. His seriousness of purpose struck Bonnie as both sweet and comical in one so young, and reminded her of the similarly singleminded expression she had often seen on Danny Baer's face when he applied pencil to paper. As token of connection, in the upper corner of the painting a dolphin was shown in mid-leap, the arch of its body silver-gray against the sky. "One of the Marquis' grandchildren?" Bonnie guessed.

Sébastien shook his head. "The Marquis has only granddaughters. Four, I believe." He stepped up to read the painting's title from the accompanying information tag, but came away unenlightened. "She has called it simply 'Dolphin,' " he reported with a shrug. "No help there."

Before they could indulge in further speculation, a trill of laughter as musical as a scale cascaded some distance behind them. Turning toward the sound, Bonnie could just make out beyond the milling visitors one edge of a stationary group of individuals, three of whom she knew: Henri Perrin, Isabelle Auteuil and Bear. As she watched, Isabelle, in a sheath dress as brilliantly-colored as the paintings around her, leaned across Bear the better to hear what Perrin was saying, and, catching some punch line, threw her head back and once again crowed with laughter. Bonnie's eyes flew to Bear, only to find him looking back at her. She lowered her eyes at once, embarrassed to be caught staring, but not before she saw him tip his chin up ever so slightly in greeting.

Beside her, Sébastien muttered a most unflattering French epithet, and, cupping her elbow, steered her toward one of the alcoves off the far end of the long room. "Do you know, my dear, I believe I have been quite remiss in not telling you how very beautiful you look this evening. You put every other woman here tonight in the shade, not excepting la Marquise herself who ought, by rights, to be the star of her own show. I have been the object of untold envious glares, but I refuse to surrender my monopoly of your time and attention, unless of course you expressly request it."

Bonnie murmured some noncommittal reply to this flowery speech. She had heard the words only distantly, her ears still ringing with peals of laughter and her mind replaying obsessively the interchange she'd just glimpsed. It was to be expected, given the crush of people and their attendant noise, that conversation would be possible only in tight groups, but even so, Bonnie did not think it necessary for Isabelle to stand so very close to Bear. She was not so frail, after all, to require resting her slim shoulder so familiarly against his. Bonnie drew some small consolation in recalling Bear's impassive expression. Either the joke had not been particularly funny or his attention had not been sufficiently engaged. She found herself hoping, rather unkindly, that it was the latter.

Preoccupied with these thoughts and mental images, she set eyes on the next portrait without really seeing it. The sitter, an older woman of regal bearing, sat on a high-backed, throne-like chair with, loosely held between long, slender hands, a professional-grade digital camera on her lap. Jogged out of her abstraction, Bonnie quickly sought the woman's face, and inhaled sharply. Her suddenly nerveless fingers lost their grip on her largely unsampled glass of champagne, and it might have plunged disastrously to the floor had not Sébastien, noting her disarray, steadied her hand around it.

"Ma foi, Bonnie," he said, breathless in his alarm. "Whatever's happened? All the roses drained from your cheeks in a moment, as if you'd seen a ghost."

Bonnie had recovered enough from her surprise to laugh at herself. "An apparition, yes, but a very welcome one." She held a hand out toward the painting, as if in introduction. "My most dear, incomparable grandmother, Angela Montenegro."

Taken aback, Sébastien leaned away, and studied her suspiciously. "You are not having me on? You are truly related to l'ange américaine? That is how she is called, you know, in Parisian art circles. For my part, I must say, I do not find the slightest resemblance between you."

Bonnie was about to concede the truth of this observation when she felt an arm slip companionably through her own. "Superficially, that is true, Sébastien," Mme Vincent answered in her stead. "In appearance, they are not at all alike. But in character, in spirit, there they are very much the same." She released Bonnie's arm, and stepping round to face her, saluted her young friend's cheeks in the French manner. Bonnie was relieved to see that, contrary to Sébastien's representation, Madame was gorgeously dressed, and out-sparkled her by a noticeable degree. "Why, Sébastien," she said, turning to that gentleman. "I see your glass is quite empty. The wine is decent, I hope? Do you know, what with flitting about here and there, and stopping to chat with this one and that other, I have not tried so much as a sip!"

Sébastien took the hint good-naturedly, and, with a promise to return shortly, went off to the bar to procure champagne for himself and his hostess. Left to themselves, Madame turned back to Bonnie with a grin. "I hope you will forgive my pouncing on you like this, ma chère, but when I saw you making for this area, I could not resist observing your first reaction to this painting with my own eyes. What do you say? Have I done Angela justice?"

Bonnie turned back to the portrait and let her eyes rove fondly over the erect carriage, gracefully-disposed limbs, and striking, angular features. She recognized the look in her Grammy's frank gaze for having been its recipient so often over the years; the almond-shaped eyes shone with humor, compassion and love. Madame had captured as well her grandmother's secretive smile, as mysterious and knowing as the Mona Lisa's. "You have caught her likeness and her essence, Madame, both her outer and inner beauty. It's… magnificent! If I thought I could possibly afford your price, I would beg you to let me buy it on the spot."

Mme Vincent inclined her head gratefully. "I'm so pleased you like it. As to selling, I'm afraid I couldn't oblige you, not for any amount. You see, someone has been before you."

Even knowing it could not have been hers, Bonnie felt a terrible dismay. "It's already been sold?"

The artist nodded. "Before it was even finished. But I assure you, the painting will be in excellent hands. The buyer loves Angela devotedly, and he will cherish it on that account, if no other."

There was only one man, to Bonnie's knowledge, who had been courting her grandmother assiduously, but he had the reputation, at least, of being financially strapped. Still she ventured, "Le Comte de Clermont?"

"No, no! You are on the wrong track entirely! Think, instead, of the strongest, most fundamental of all human bonds. The most sacred, too."

Under Madame's watchful eye, Bonnie pondered her meaning, and then, in a joyful flash, it came to her. "My father!"

Madame laughed merrily. "Just so! Michael-Vincent happened upon us one day when Angela was sitting for the portrait, and he insisted no one should purchase it but himself. So you see, Bonnie, you need have no regrets. Before long, the painting will be hanging in your family home, and you will be able to see it whenever you like."

"That, Madame, is the very best of news!"

"I had an idea you might think so! And now, my dear, very quickly, on another topic, before Sébastien returns…"