"Holofernes looks like he enjoyed being killed,'' Violet said. "The picture doesn't feel a bit violent, does it?"
"No," I said. "I think it's erotic. It suggests the quiet after sex, the silence of satisfaction."
Violet moved her hand down my arm. The intimate gesture was natural for her, but I felt suddenly conscious of her fingers through my shirt. "You're right, Leo. Of course you're right."
She moved to the side of the desk and leaned over it "Judith fasted, didn't she?" She ran her finger down Judith's long body. "It's like the two of them are mingled, isn't it, mixed up in each other? I suppose that's what sex is." Violet turned her head to one side. "Erica's not home?"
"She's doing errands with Matt."
Violet pulled up a chair and sat down opposite me. She took the book and turned the picture toward her. "Yes, he seems to have gotten it here. It's very mysterious, the mixing thing."
"Is this a new idea?"
"Not really," she said. "It started because I was looking for a way to talk about the threat anorexics feel from the outside. Those girls have overmixed, if you see what I mean. They find it hard to separate the needs and desires of other people from their own. After a while, they rebel by shutting down. They want to close up all their openings so nothing and nobody can get in. But mixing is the way of the world. The world passes through us—food, books, pictures, other people." Violet put her elbows on the desk and frowned. "When you're young, I think it's harder to know what you want, how much of others you're willing to take in. When I was living in Paris, I tried on ideas about myself like dresses. I was always reinventing who I was. Chasing after the stories about those girls in the ward made me itchy and restless. I used to roam around the streets in the late afternoon, stopping for a coffee here and there. One day, I met a young man named Jules in a café. He told me that he had just gotten out of prison—that very day. He had been serving eight months on an extortion charge. I thought that was very interesting, and I asked him about prison, what it was like. He told me that it was terrible, but that he had done a lot of reading in his cell. He was a very handsome guy with big brown eyes and those soft lips, you know, the slightly bruised kind that look like they're always kissing. Anyway, I fell for him. He had this idea that I, Violet Blom, was a wild young American thing, a late-twentieth-century femme fatale who had been unleashed on Paris. It was all very silly, but I liked it. The whole time I was with him, I watched myself like I was some character in a movie."
Violet lifted her hand off my desk and gestured to her right. "Look, there she is in a café with him. The scene is well lit, but a little fuzzy to make her look better. Cheesy music is playing in the background. She gives him that look—ironic, distant, unknowable." Violet clapped her hands. "Cut!" She looked across the room and pointed. "There she is again. Dyeing her hair in the sink. She's turning around. Violet's gone. It's V. Platinum V walks out into the night to meet Jules."
"You dyed your hair blond," I said.
"Yes, and you know what Jules said to me when he saw my new hair?"
"No."
"He said, You look like a girl who needs piano lessons.'"
I laughed.
"Well, you may laugh, Leo, but that's how it started. Jules recommended a teacher."
"You mean you actually went just because he said you needed piano lessons?"
"It was my mood. It was a dare and a command at the same time— very sexy. And why not take piano lessons? I went to this apartment in the Marais. The man's name was Renasse. He had lots of plants, big trees and little spiky cacti and ferns—a real jungle. As soon as I walked in there, I had the feeling that something was going on, but I couldn't tell what it was. Monsieur Renasse was stiff and well-mannered. We started from the beginning. I was probably one of the only children in America who never played the piano. I played the drums. Anyway, I went to Monsieur Renasse every Tuesday for a month. I learned little pieces. He was always très correct, boringly so, and yet, when I sat beside him, I felt my body so intensely that it was like it wasn't mine. My breasts seemed too big. My butt on the bench took up too much room. My new white hair felt like it was blazing. As I played, I squeezed my thighs together. During the third lesson, he was a little fiercer and scolded me a couple of times. But it was during the fourth lesson that he got really frustrated. He stopped suddenly and yelled, ''Vous êtes une femme incorrigible.' And then he took my index finger like this." Violet leaned over the desk, grabbed my hand, then my finger, and squeezed it hard. She stood up, still holding on to my finger, and bent over me. With her mouth to my ear, she said, "And then he whispered like this." In a low, hoarse voice, Violet said, "Jules."
Violet dropped my finger and returned to her chair. "I ran out of the apartment. I almost knocked down a lemon tree." She paused. "You know, Leo, lots of men have tried to seduce me. I was used to that, but this was different. He scared me, because the whole thing was about mixing.
"I'm not sure I understand you," I said.
"When he squeezed my finger, it was like Jules was doing it, don't you see? Jules and Monsieur Renasse were all mixed up together. I was afraid of it, because I liked it. It excited me."
"But maybe Monsieur Renasse was attracted to you, and you to him, and he just used Jules."
"No, Leo," she said. "I wasn't attracted to Monsieur Renasse at all. I knew it was Jules. Jules had set it up, and I was attracted to the idea of acting out one of Jules's fantasies."
"But weren't you already Jules's lover?"
"Of course, but that's just it. It wasn't enough. He wanted a third person in it."
I didn't answer her. I understood the story better than she imagined, and whatever had happened in that plant-filled apartment, I felt as though the story now included me, that the chain of erotic electricity continued unbroken.
"I've decided that mixing is a key term. It's better than suggestion, which is one-sided. It explains what people rarely talk about, because we define ourselves as isolated, closed bodies who bump up against each other but stay shut. Descartes was wrong. It isn't: I think, therefore I am. It's: I am because you are. That's Hegel—well, the short version."
"A little too short," I said.
Violet flapped her hand dismissively. "What matters is that we're always mixing with other people. Sometimes it's normal and good, and sometimes it's dangerous. The piano lesson is just an obvious example of what feels dangerous to me. Bill mixes in his paintings. Writers do it in books. We do it all the time. Think of the witch."
"Bill's witch, you mean?"
"Yes, 'Hansel and Gretel' is Mark's story. It's like his very own fairy tale, the one that speaks to him personally. Bill painted it because of Mark. Sometimes Mark says to me, 'You're my real mommy' and then, two minutes later, he gets angry and says, 'You're not my real mommy. I hate you.' All I can say is that every time I'm with him, she's there. She walks through every game I play with him. She whispers behind me every time I talk to him. When we draw, she's there. When we build blocks, she's there. When I scold him, she's there. Whenever I look up, she's there."
"You mean that you're always moving between good mother and witch in his eyes?"
"Wait and I'll explain," she said. "For over a year now, Mark and I have been playing a game after his bath. He lets me see him naked now. He never used to. The game is called Master Fremont. It goes like this. Mark is Master Fremont and I'm his servant. I wrap him up in his robe and carry him out of the bathroom to his bed. I put him down on the bed and then I start hugging and kissing my little master. He pretends to be very angry and he fires me. I promise to be good and never hug him again, but I can't control myself, and I throw myself at him and kiss him and hug him all over again. He fires me again. I beg to be given another chance. I get down on my knees. I pretend to cry. He relents, and the game starts all over again. He could play it forever."