Ondine and a Party of Three, 1936
SHORTLY BEFORE EASTER THE TELEPHONE rang at the Café Paradis, and Ondine’s ears perked up when she overheard her mother using the code name for Picasso, saying in her warmest manner, “Certainly, Monsieur Ruiz. We would be happy to accommodate you.”
But when Madame Belange ended the call, her tone changed entirely. “How do you like that? He says he’s got two guests coming from Paris today and asks if you could cook lunch up at the villa!”
Ondine, recalling how she’d blundered into claiming entire credit for the bouillabaisse, said quickly, “Don’t worry, Maman, I can do it.”
“Well, you’ll have to,” her mother answered, sizing up the situation pragmatically. “We’re already overstretched—it’s Holy Week, for heaven’s sake! Men never consider what work a holiday is. But what on earth will we serve Monsieur Ruiz’s lunch party on such short notice? Your father just went over the accounts and once again says we must cut costs. I suppose we’d better keep it simple, with plenty of cold dishes.”
“No!” Ondine exclaimed vehemently. At her mother’s surprised look, Ondine said more quietly, “It’s a special occasion, so we mustn’t fail this Patron. His visitors are Parisian and you know how they chatter when they travel! The talk will be all up and down the Côte d’Azur if they love it or hate it.”
“Then what will we feed them? Look in your notebook. What does he like to eat?”
Ondine sat down on the chair in the corner and quickly flipped through the pages of her careful notes. Cooking for Picasso had settled into a comfortable routine. Each time she went into his kitchen she laid out his prepared lunch while he was rustling about upstairs in his studio.
Yet, quiet as he was, the Master was clearly hard at work. The smell of paint wafted downstairs, but more than that, his intense focus and steely ambition were palpable, as if he were an unstoppable, hardworking furnace that, once fired up, could heat the entire house and illuminate every room. Ondine sensed in her very skin and bones that wonderful things were happening here.
And sure enough, she soon discovered the results, for he had the habit of scattering his paintings throughout the house—propped up against a wall here, a chair there, a table beyond—while they were still wet. Monsieur Picasso put them out to dry, just like a woman hanging her wash, Ondine had noted, amused.
Within a week there were four paintings in this impromptu art gallery—strange, compelling pictures in pastel Easter colors, composed of circles and triangles with eyes and noses in unexpected places; and in the backgrounds were seashell-shaped spirals and cornucopias with trees sprouting from them, everything at once celestial yet warmly earthy, an explosive burst of spring fever. In one of them she recognized the Mediterranean’s pale beaches and blue sea as a backdrop for what seemed like a whimsical-looking, kite-shaped face.
When later she returned to collect the lunch dishes, she sometimes found him smoking thoughtfully in the back garden, and he would nod politely without a word, looking absorbed. He seemed to feel no compunction to thank her or to offer any other critique of the meals at all, good or bad.
The only way Ondine could get any inkling of his tastes was by studying each plate he left behind; and soon she was able to read those crumbs for very subtle distinctions, just like a soothsayer interpreting tea leaves. If Picasso had enjoyed his meal, all the dishes would be wiped clean. But if his work was going especially well, although he would eat, he’d leave behind signs of his preoccupation—his napkin fallen to the floor unnoticed, a plate of cheese and a half-eaten apple in an odd place like the small table at the foot of the stairs—indicating that he’d been impatient to return to his vision. And on a rare day when a meal was not quite to his liking, or perhaps his mood was gloomy, he politely covered the leftovers with another plate, as if to save them for someone else.
Ondine always recorded her impressions in the notebook. So now, when her mother asked about Picasso’s tastes, Ondine said thoughtfully, “He liked the beef miroton when we made a sauce of butter, onions and vinegar; and the deep-fried rissole pastry filled with ground lamb and cumin; and the veal braised with carrots and turnips. He prefers more rustic, country meals instead of fancy ones with creamy sauces. He especially liked our spiced stew,” she reported, shutting the notebook.
“But there’s no time or supplies to make a stew!” her mother exclaimed.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Ondine replied, undauntedly peering into the icebox. “Well, there are some langoustines for an appetizer. For the main course…here’s some garlic sausage, and a little duck confit, a bit of slow-cooked lamb shoulder and some roasted pork. Some beef that hasn’t been cooked yet, and marrow bones, fine. I’ll use the goose fat to make the crust…”
“That beef is for Monsieur Renard’s lunch,” her mother objected. “And there isn’t enough of anything else that I can spare for your artist and his guests!”
Undeterred by the appetites of the Three Wise Men, Ondine made more discoveries. “White beans already cooked with pork rind! Here’s tomatoes, carrots and onions, good…and a bouquet garni. I can make a splendid cassoulet,” she enthused, feeling inspired. “Then, I’ll bake a special cake for dessert.”
Madame Belange insisted, “But a cassoulet has to simmer for hours! You can’t do that with beans that are already cooked.”
Ondine determinedly pinned back her hair and tied on her apron. “Don’t worry, Maman. The beans and confit are nearly perfect already. I’ve got enough time to make the beef with the aromatic vegetables before blending it with everything else. It will be more delicate for the Parisian guests; they usually prefer a lighter version of what they call ‘peasant’ food anyway. Remember when Isadora Duncan and her friends ate here?”
“Yes, like nervous birds pecking at their food,” her mother replied, finally conceding, “All right. It’s the best solution we’ve got. I’ll find something else for Monsieur Renard to eat today. Go ahead, do it. Get as much cooked here as possible.”
“Where is the cassole?” Ondine asked. Madame Belange handed her the special earthenware pot that was never washed but simply wiped clean after every use, because each new cassoulet contributed good flavors to the pot, thus “seasoning” it for the next stew.
Ondine set to work, seized with a frenzy of inspiration that was fueled by something deep inside her which had apparently lain in wait for just such a chance. This strange hidden vitality now propelled her through the risks and pinpoint timing that gastronomie required; she was, after all, literally playing with fire, like a high priestess making incantations over an altar—and the more dramatically the meat sizzled in the hot pan or the more dangerously the sauces threatened to boil, the more she felt her own exuberance and daring rising within her to meet the challenges.
WHEN ONDINE ENTERED Picasso’s kitchen, she could hear male voices engaged in a spirited discussion in the studio upstairs. “His guests have arrived already!” she gasped, feeling her heart beating faster. Who were they? Would her menu please them? Suppose she was wrong?
Resolutely, she unpacked her hamper. She’d made a small, perfect cake for dessert—gâteau le parisien, a real beauty, layered with almond cream and candied fruit, crowned with meringue. Even her mother had been pleased, stepping back to admire it, saying, “This will impress.”
With great pride now, Ondine enthroned it on a raised cake dish upon a small table tucked away in a corner of the kitchen. Picasso and his guests mustn’t see it until it was time for dessert, she decided.
After she turned on the oven she quickly set the dining room table for three, on a pale yellow tablecloth. Then she returned to the kitchen for the real work. Carefully she cut the cooked meat—duck, pork, lamb, beef—into triangles. In the cassole pot she made alternate layers of the meat, then the white beans with cooked tomato, and some sliced rings of the spiced garlic sausage. She seasoned it all with freshly ground black pepper, and a violet-scented salt harvested from the marshes of the Camargue by saulniers who raked it by hand. Finally she topped the whole thing with bread crumbs and goose fat.
“We’re doing just fine,” Ondine assured herself, briskly pushing it into the oven, then scurrying to the larger kitchen table to prepare the appetizer. But she was moving too quickly now; when she whirled around she stubbed her foot on the leg of the little table where her cake sat so proudly. Stumbling, she regained her balance—but right before her horrified eyes, the cake wobbled and began to slide off its throne.
“No!” she gasped, reaching out to catch it with her bare hands, meringue and all. For a moment she had it, too—until the delicate frosting cracked, and the cake slipped right through her fingers, promptly tumbling to the floor with a soft sweet plop! that shattered it into a mess of frosted lumps.
At first all Ondine could do was to stare in utter disbelief at this disaster. The shame and the weight of her responsibility felt, for the first time, like more than she could handle. “This can’t happen today!” she groaned. For a moment she wished her mother had come with her; yet she also knew what Madame Belange would say if this happened to her. No tears! Start over, make another.
But when Ondine glanced about wildly, taking hasty inventory of the pantry ingredients she kept here, she wailed, “I can’t make another one! I don’t have enough flour.”
Fiercely she blinked away tears of frustration as she swept up the cake debris. She reviewed her supplies as if they were a jigsaw puzzle. After washing her hands, she instinctively found herself chopping butter into tiny pieces with what flour she had, adding salt and a little ice-cold water to work it—mixing, flattening, folding—until she had a pastry to press in a pan, trimming off its edges. “I’ll have to skip the cheese-and-fruit platter and use it for this,” she panted, reaching for a soft curd cheese to mix with sugar and egg yolks. She chopped nuts, orange peel and fruit into this filling, added raisins and brandy, then poured it all into the piecrust. Finally she made a crisscross of the trimmed pastry strips for a lattice top. Père Jacques called it crostata di ricotta—a sweet Easter cheesecake pie.
Breathless, Ondine checked on the appetizers, then peered into the oven at the cassoulet. It would be done soon and she’d be able to put the pie in. The cooking fragrances filled the air, and now a thunderous herd of hungry beasts came pounding downstairs enthusiastically.
Ondine smoothed her hair, took a deep breath and went out to greet Picasso and his guests.
Two men stood in the parlor with Picasso, arguing about his new painting which he now propped on the fireplace mantel. “Well, let’s hear it!” he was saying.
His well-dressed guests had been discussing the painting in low murmurs as seriously as if they were bank executives in a meeting. There was an older man who looked to be in his sixties and moved with calm, deliberate gestures. He was tall and dapper in an immaculate suit and tie, large round black-rimmed eyeglasses, and a perfectly groomed white beard and moustache. The only bohemian aspect of his appearance was the hat which he hadn’t bothered to remove, made of straw with a wide brim, slightly curled up at the edges. He doffed it now in deference to a female’s presence, and as Ondine took it from him the guests gave her a frank, curious stare. She glanced back shyly, equally intrigued.
“Merci,” he said to her in a gentlemanly voice with a beatific smile.
He’s not showy enough to be a politician, Ondine was thinking, and not as buttoned-down as a businessman.
Picasso, having already spotted Ondine standing in the dining room awaiting his signal to serve, had given her a broad grin. “Ah—here’s my young chef!” he exclaimed now.
He appeared unusually animated, almost—could it be, a bit nervous? It made him seem vulnerable and therefore more human—like any mortal who was anxious about throwing a party for friends whose opinions mattered. He’s counting on me! Ondine thought worriedly.
The second man now said playfully to Picasso, “So! This is the angel in your kitchen?” He was taller, thinner and younger than the others—still in his forties, surely—with a fuzzy nimbus of brown hair framing a long, poetic face and soulful eyes that gave him a dashing yet slightly fragile air. He was more luxuriously dressed than the others, in a three-piece suit with a silk pocket-handkerchief and a fresh gardenia in his buttonhole. “Ah, yes, mademoiselle,” he said, “I heard your angel’s wings beating gently as you flitted about the house.”
“Watch out for Monsieur Cocteau!” Picasso cautioned her. “He’ll put you in one of his avant-garde films. You could end up on the other side of a looking-glass, unable to get out!”
They were behaving like schoolboys competing for the only girl in the room, Ondine observed, feeling nonplussed. Next to these tall, elegant men, Picasso was like a small, swarthy Arab sultan.
His guests recovered from the distraction of Ondine, and they returned to scrutinizing the painting on the mantel. “Come, Ondine, have a look!” Picasso exclaimed in that over-animated way.
He had never directly invited her to inspect his paintings. Surprised, she advanced toward this new canvas. “Minotaure tirant une charette,” said the man called Cocteau. Yes, indeed, here was a naked Minotaur—she recognized the horned, bullish head from the sketches in his studio—pulling a big wheelbarrow; but this fellow was different, for he was almost like a cartoon, with a friendly, innocent face glancing over his shoulder at his haul, which was an overflowing, mad jumble of strange items: a large painting, a ladder tilted askew, a tree that might be a potted plant…and a poor feminine-looking horse all twisted upside down. In the background was the familiar Mediterranean sandy beach and blue tide; but the stars in the greenish sky looked more like starfish floating in an upside-down sea.
The white-bearded man commented, “You know, this character reminds me of a junk man trundling all his possessions to another town in hope of better luck. Is it moving day for the Minotaur?”
“Exactemente!” Picasso said. But he stared broodingly at his painting. Ondine noticed that he seemed unusually respectful of this older man—was he some sort of critic or art dealer or journalist? This esteemed visitor had an aura of serenity, like a professor who was confident of his expertise.
Whereas Cocteau, the youngest one, was extremely eager to impress Picasso. “But clearly this Minotaur has murdered his mate,” he offered, “so he’s hauling the mare away to bury her, yes?”
Indeed, the horse’s head hung prostrate from the cart, almost touching the ground, her eyes staring, her open mouth revealing teeth grimaced in pain, her legs and hoofs in the air.
Picasso snorted. “Wake up, Cocteau!” he chided with a scornful expression.
The older gentleman, looking perplexed, agreed with Cocteau, saying, “Bien sûr, she’s dead! Her entrails are hanging out!” He pointed to thickly painted lines of red and white at the poor horse’s belly.
Beneath their jocular manner lurked an air of fierce professional competitiveness, Ondine noted; an underlying tension, as if they were soccer players who each didn’t want to be the one to lose the ball.
“Well? What do you see?” Picasso asked, turning to Ondine as if to a referee. Startled, she realized that he truly expected an answer. His other guests did, too; the older man’s eyes twinkled behind his thick glasses, and the younger fellow’s soft mouth dropped open in amused suspense.
Like a student who’d been singled out, she gulped and studied the horse, following the bold brushstrokes so closely that she had to tilt her head as far upside-down as she could, to see the animal right-side up. Viewed this way, she realized, the red lines coming from the mare’s belly were not entrails, but the outlines of a tiny creature, also upside down, with a distinct little face—a miniature version of the mare’s, with a similar long head, wide eyes and flared nostrils. Yes, of course—a tiny baby horse.
“Comme il faut?” the white-bearded man exclaimed, craning his neck to see upside-down, too.
Ondine blushed as she straightened herself upright again. “Go ahead, say it!” Picasso demanded.
“I don’t think the mare is dead,” Ondine said earnestly. “She’s just given birth to a foal.”
“Hooray!” shouted Picasso. “Thank heaven for the pure eyes of youth!” he added with a triumphant smirk at the other men.
“Surely this angel has a name?” queried Cocteau before he returned his gaze to the painting.
“She’s my Ondine,” Picasso announced. “Straight from the sea. She’s come to cook you the best lunch in all of Juan-les-Pins,” he boasted cheerfully.
The older man peered at her more appraisingly through his owlish eyeglasses. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “if I were to paint this jeune, I would make her hair purple and red, because she has both beaujolais and bordeaux in those long curly grapevines of hers!” He bowed to Ondine.
“Henri Matisse, à votre service, mademoiselle,” he said in the most charming way possible.
Ondine gasped. No wonder Picasso was so deferential! She’d heard diners in the café arguing about Matisse’s genius for years. One customer even came in proudly carrying a Matisse painting he’d bought; a landscape of the bay of Nice in shockingly primitive strokes and colors, yet, Ondine noted at the time, magically devoid of anything ugly like telephone wires, traffic, advertisements—and people.
She felt herself curtsey in response to the artist’s gallantry. But Picasso was scowling with ill-concealed jealousy now. “Well, are we going to eat, or are we going to stand here talking like ladies in a tearoom?” he said abruptly.
Henri Matisse calmly, peaceably reached out to a low table where he’d apparently left two bottles of wine with gift ribbons on their necks. He picked up one bottle and presented it to Picasso.
“À votre santé,” he said amicably.
Ondine reached into a drawer and handed Picasso a corkscrew. He went into the dining room to open it, and the others followed him.
Ondine slipped back into the kitchen, even more worried about this business of preparing “the best lunch” in town. Quickly she arranged the appetizers on their dishes and loaded them onto a big tray. Ready. She took a deep breath, hoisted the tray and carried it into the dining room.
Picasso and his guests stood there with filled wine glasses in hand. Now they took their seats. Ondine served langoustines “Ninon”—shellfish in a leek, butter and orange sauce, with a chiffonade of greens topped by a few edible flowers. “Ah!” the men chorused, dropping their napkins in their laps.
Back in the kitchen she became deeply absorbed at the stove with final preparations of the main course. When she re-entered the dining room to collect the empty plates, the men had resumed conversing in that low, businesslike way. Picasso did not look up at her, nor give any indication of what they’d felt about the appetizers. She hurried off to put the dishes in the sink.
“Well, they all ate every bite. They wouldn’t do that if they hated it,” Ondine consoled herself. “But these men are connoisseurs of the world’s greatest art. They must have highly sophisticated palates, too!” Her fingers were shaking as she put the cassoulet and clean dishes on her tray. “Mother of God, give me deliverance!” she said under her breath.
She staggered back to the dining room with her heavy tray. This time, the men stopped talking and glanced up hungrily, their eyes following her every move as she deposited the main course in the center of the table. They continued to watch while she lifted the lid of the pot. More intense silence. Ondine raised her spoon to break the cassoulet crust with a ceremonial crack! The guests broke into applause. She almost wept with relief, carefully placing each serving before them. Then she stood quietly in the doorway to assess if anything more was needed. Picasso and Cocteau dove in heartily.
Matisse used his spoon to delicately taste the sauce. “Ah. Superbe!” he sighed. “Ondine, vous êtes une vraie artiste.” She was thrilled. No one had ever called her, or her mother, a “true artist”. From the head of the table Picasso smirked at the food—not her—with pride, nodding.
Ondine said, “Bon appétit,” before she slipped out to check on dessert. She heard a second bottle of wine open with a loud pop! and soon the men’s voices rose in volume, boisterously laughing and even shouting.
“Good, they’re happy now,” she sighed in relief as she ground the coffee beans.
But when she came into the dining room to collect the empty plates, the atmosphere had changed palpably, with a dangerous tension in the air that made her want to hide like a child behind the sofa in the parlor until the guests had gone home. Already she felt she’d been holding her breath all day.
“You’ve really got Herr Hitler all wrong,” Cocteau was saying plaintively. “He’s a pacifist at heart! And he truly has France’s best interests in mind.”
Picasso snorted. “He’s got France’s best bridges in mind for his bombs,” he replied belligerently.
“No, no!” Cocteau insisted unwisely, as if he were confident of words he’d heard repeated a hundred times at other important luncheons. “Hitler loves France. He’s a true patron of the arts.”
“It remains to be seen,” Matisse cautioned. “The odds are that we are all on his blacklist.”
Picasso turned to Cocteau with terrifyingly piercing scorn in those coal-black eyes. “You think Hitler will let a ‘degenerate’ like you keep staging your pretty little films and ballets?” he said tauntingly. “He’ll eat you alive for breakfast, and he’ll still be hungry before noon.”
Cocteau wore the shocked look of a schoolboy who’d had his knuckles rapped. Picasso saw this, but rather than let his friend off the hook, he pressed on in an even crueler tone, with the look of a bird of prey swooping on a mouse. “But if you, Jean, salute whatever flag the Nazis run up the pole, then perhaps the Führer will keep you for propaganda value, as the Daisy in his buttonhole.”
Ondine caught her breath but managed not to make a sound. Even she knew what it meant when one boy called another one a Daisy, but she kept her expression neutral so that Monsieur Cocteau would not be embarrassed to have a local girl hear this. Quietly she placed her Easter cheesecake pie in the center of the table, wishing she could disappear into thin air. But she had to slice it and serve it.
Matisse broke the silence. “Now, gentlemen,” he said in a soothing but firm tone as she moved around them, “let’s not speak of monsters like Hitler today. The world has enough ugliness. Let us turn our thoughts, and our appetites, to the luxe, calme et volupté of Ondine’s magnificent table.”
Cocteau nodded. Picasso sat like an emperor. Ondine ducked out to make coffee, her nerves jangling. “Today they like my food. Tomorrow, who knows?” For, despite their warrior-like confidence, these artists were ultrasensitive, highly strung creatures whose mercurial moods were tricky to negotiate. She’d hate to have them turn their guns on her. Especially Picasso. He was as relentless as a bullfighter.
Cautiously she re-entered the dining room with her coffeepot. The atmosphere had changed yet again; now the men looked supremely sated from the meal, and they’d produced a secret bottle of absinthe while joking about mutual friends. As Ondine moved among them, pouring coffee, she saw Picasso glance at her backside and exchange a look with his guests. Matisse waggled his eyebrows.
They think I’m sleeping with Picasso, Ondine realized. And furthermore, their host was doing nothing to make them think otherwise.
“Ondine, which one of us do you suppose is the best at kissing?” Picasso asked slyly.
“I’ll have to ask your wives,” she answered quickly, and they all laughed uproariously.
Matisse winked at her through his owlish glasses, while Cocteau, fully recovered from tangling with Picasso, lifted one of his long fingers and waved it as if it were a conductor’s baton as he sang:
“Belle Ondine, Belle Ondine,
your shoes are all a-shine.
And your flowery dress so fine.”
Ondine giggled, for he had slightly altered the lyrics of a popular dance-hall tune, “Caroline”. The men stomped their feet and clapped as Cocteau finished the song.
But now she was acutely aware that they were sitting at the level of her bosom, their lips just inches away; and she almost felt in peril of being seized by her hips and pulled into a man’s lap so he could bury his face in her breasts. This image came so suddenly and graphically that she flushed with shame at having such strange thoughts. She returned to the kitchen, relieved to be alone.
By the time she’d cleaned up and packed her hamper onto her bicycle, the guests were gone, the sun was sinking, and the damp evening air was stealing in from the harbor. Picasso had stepped outside to see off his friends. Now he remained in the front yard, working intently on something, occasionally bending to pick up a stray branch that had fallen; but instead of throwing it away he’d attach it to the other items in his hand by twining it with string.
Ondine didn’t think he noticed her as she wheeled her bike past him; yet at the last minute, he beckoned for her to come to him. She parked her bike and crossed the lawn.
“So,” he said as he kept working, “you can cook. And now you can tell your friends you’ve fed three artistes in one day. Which of these ‘geniuses’ did you like better?” he asked with an ironic smile.
Ondine shrugged, unwilling to choose. Picasso exclaimed, “Certainly not Cocteau! He is talented. But he is the tail of my comet,” he declared. “As for Matisse, well, he’s the only other great artist of our time worth talking about, but he’s too old for you, right?”
“He was very kind,” Ondine demurred, secretly thrilled to think that such a master painter had expressed the desire to capture all the shades of color in her hair.
Picasso immediately guessed her thoughts. “Hah! How would he like it if I went into his house and announced that I was going to paint his cook?” he said belligerently. “Well, perhaps I will!”
With a sudden flourish, like a magician, he handed her the thing he’d been working on. A diamond-shaped construction of tissue-thin paper, attached to a crossbow of delicate branches and sticks, with a long tail of colorful torn rags. The paper, she saw in delight, had a wonderful abstract face painted right on it, just like his earlier canvases she’d seen this week.
“It’s a kite!” she exclaimed in utter delight. “You just made a kite! It’s wonderful!”
Picasso feigned a casual attitude, reaching into his pocket for a cigarette, watching her as she swished the kite around the lawn in a little dance of delight. “You like it?” he said. “Then keep it. You’ll have to take it into the park to give it a good run,” he added, as if it were a pet. He lit his cigarette, drew on it and exhaled, watching the smoke rings rise up and then disappear.
“Merci beaucoup, Patron!” Ondine exclaimed breathlessly.
“Au revoir,” he said calmly as he picked up his newspaper from the front step and then disappeared inside.
ONDINE WANTED TO go right out and fly it, but she did not dare make a detour to the park, where someone might steal her mother’s pots and pans from her bike. She decided she’d take the kite out early in the morning when fewer people would be there. Back at the café, she slipped upstairs quickly and hid it under her bed, for fear that somehow her father might confiscate it.
As she returned to the kitchen to unload her basket, her mother asked, “So? How did it go?”
“Just fine,” Ondine replied, feeling suddenly weak with fatigue and relief.
Madame Belange said pragmatically, “Perhaps so. We’ve had no complaints.”
Later that night Ondine indulged in a hot bath and finally allowed herself to relax, although it was hard at first for her nerves to “come down”; she felt like a sports car whose heart was still racing.
But when she climbed into bed and snuggled under the covers, feeling warm and silky inside, she could almost feel the presence of that kite underneath her, its face turned upward as if it could see her in her bed. Drowsily she recalled those lusty male voices singing her name all around the table.
“Mmm,” she murmured, “I wonder which one of them really is the best kisser.”
She imagined the three men insisting she test them, and she pictured herself moving from one to the other around the table, just like when she’d served the coffee. She guessed that Picasso would be a brutal kisser, and Cocteau might nibble on her ears like a deer; but Matisse might oh-so-politely lift her onto the table, push aside her skirt and savor her like a dessert, tickling her thighs with his bristly beard as he kissed her, higher and higher until he reached the rose of her sex, his connoisseur’s tongue encouraging the kind of yielding that makes a woman even hungrier than a man.
“I can’t choose who’s best,” she’d have to announce finally. “I want you all.”
“Alors! It takes three mortal men to satisfy this one sea nymph!” they’d proclaim.
Lying there in the dark, breathing deeply now, Ondine hummed the song that her triumvirate of great artists had sung to her today; and with this lullaby she drifted off to a most satisfying, peaceful sleep. For the first time in many months, she’d gone to bed without thinking about Luc.