Before they leave London, Lee makes Dave get out his camera. She buttons her jacket to the collar, stands near a window so her U.S. lapel pins catch the light. Doesn’t smile, doesn’t try to look alluring. For the first time in her life, she doesn’t need to.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It’s been several weeks since Amélie was at the studio, coughing all over everything, but Lee has gotten the girl’s cold, she is sure of it. Sandy throat, a viscous pressure behind her eyes. But Lee is out anyway, out with Man, surreptitiously wiping at her watery eyes and willing herself not to sneeze.
Man offhandedly invited her to the literary salon as if it were a common occurrence for them to spend their evenings together. And even though she is feeling sick, she couldn’t refuse. The idea of being out on Man’s arm is more appealing than she wants to admit, even to herself, and the reality of it is even better: Man pleasingly attentive, guiding her with a hand at the small of her back as they enter the bookstore, helping her shrug out of her coat before hanging it with his on the crowded rack.
The room is jammed with people and hazy with smoke, the bookshelves pushed to the sides of the room to make space for folding chairs, though no one sits, clustered instead in groups of two or three around the perimeter of the small space. Everyone looks stylish, but few of the men look as good as Man does, in his double-breasted jacket and new trilby hat. Lee has always loved a man who knows how to dress. In fact, she can’t help but think they are the smartest pair in the room—even with her cold, Lee has put herself together. She wears her new panne velvet dress, peacock blue, tight through the hips and flaring out in graduated pleats that twirl around her legs as she walks. She worried before she arrived that it was too dressy, but now that she is here she doesn’t mind standing out. If there is one way to make herself feel better, it is by getting dressed up.
Man scans the room, and while he is looking away from her, Lee blots quickly at her eyes with her handkerchief. Everyone is a stranger to her—though not to Man—and Lee wonders what they make of her being out with him. If they think of her at all. She is not sure if it is her cold or the cough syrup she picked up at the druggist’s, with its incomprehensible list of French ingredients, but she feels a little more vulnerable than usual, as if her emotions have lodged just under the surface of her skin. Lee moves a few inches closer to Man and wonders what would happen if she threaded her arm through his. Would he like it? He has invited her out, after all. But he is not looking at her, so she, too, glances around at all the people filling the small space.
“Is that André?” Lee asks, inclining her head toward a man on the opposite side of the room, with thick brown hair swept back off his forehead in an elegant wave. He stands talking to a shorter man and a very tall and striking woman, with a bouquet of blond curls at the nape of her neck. As they walked to the bookstore, Man gave Lee an overview of who would be there, a jumble of men’s names she is trying very hard to remember now. André is André Breton, and Lee stares at him and thinks of the few things Man has told her about him: political, collects masks, self-absorbed.
“Yes, that’s André,” Man says, “and with him is Tristan. He’s the one I make the journal with. And the girl is Tatiana Ia—Iakovenka? Illokovenka?” Man shrugs. “I can never get those Russian names right. She goes by Tata. She’s around a lot, mostly with Mayakovsky. You haven’t met André? Let me introduce you.”
Lee follows Man and tries to think of something witty to say. Tristan opens up his circle and shakes Man’s hand. “We were worried you weren’t coming,” he says.
“Don’t be daft,” Man says, and then turns slightly toward Lee. “André, Tristan—my latest assistant, Lee Miller.”
Tristan and André nod politely, and Tristan reaches out and picks up Lee’s gloved hand, kissing it and then stepping forward to kiss her on both cheeks. Tata merely stares at her, her bright red lips pursed into a pretty pout.
“Charmed,” Lee says to both men, smiling, but in truth she is disappointed. Man’s latest assistant. One in a long string of assistants, no doubt, and probably all of them female. Lee thinks that perhaps she should flirt with these men, so that their interest in her will make Man notice her, but before she can act on this idea, a tickle begins in the back of her throat. She wills it away, swallowing and swallowing, but the feeling gets stronger, and after a few more swallows she can’t stop herself: she steps away from the group and bends double, coughing violently into her handkerchief. Man looks concerned, asks if he can get her a glass of water, but she waves him off, unable to speak. Finally she manages one word—“Lav,” in a strangled voice—and Tata points her elegant finger in the right direction.
Lee locks the door to the lavatory and coughs in glorious solitude. When she has finally pulled herself back together—doing what she can to her face, the eyeliner that has smudged into dissolute halos around her eyes, her blotchy pink skin—she opens the door and sees a line of people stretching down the narrow hallway, obviously annoyed at how long they’ve been kept waiting. Lee stands sideways to edge her way past and wants to apologize to each of them in turn. At the doorway back to the bookstore’s main room, a man stands slouching against the wall, blocking her way. He wears a white jacket, buttoned to the neck like a chef, and has a sign pinned to his chest on which is written messily Ask me about my reasons.
“Pardon,” Lee says to him.
The man doesn’t move.
“Pardon me,” Lee says again, and when the man still doesn’t move, she squares her shoulders and says, “All right. What are your reasons?”
He has a long beaked nose and dark purple bags under his eyes, and his hair is trimmed close to the scalp but tufted here and there as if it has been hacked off with scissors. He looks at her intently. “A childhood dream. A mask. A lie,” he says, his voice deep and raspy, and Lee, confused, takes a step away from him.
“Yes, well,” Lee says.
“Art. The dance of the invisible.” His mouth moves in a strange sideways oval when he speaks, his lips so pale they almost blend into his white face and disappear.
Lee wonders if he’s insane. She fakes a cough as an excuse to get away from him, and pushes past to the main room, where Man spots her almost immediately and makes his way over to her. “Are you all right?” he asks. “You were gone quite a while. The reading is about to start.”
“I’m fine.” Lee is glad to see his familiar face. “Except I just met the strangest man in the hallway—he has on this suit that says ‘Ask me about my reasons,’ and I made the mistake of actually asking him. I think he might be crazy.”
Man goes up on his tiptoes to look back at where Lee came from. He laughs. “You don’t mean Claude?”
Lee follows his gaze and sees the man, clearly visible, making his way around the perimeter of the room toward the small stage. “Yes—that’s him. I guess it’s easy to spot the only person who has things written on his clothing.”
Man chuckles. “Claude’s a woman.”
“No.”
“Yes.” His expression becomes almost gleeful. “I didn’t know either, not at first. That’s how she wants it. She’s constantly performing. André keeps trying to bring her in, but she won’t officially join. She’s quite talented. Writes, takes pictures. I admire her self-portraits quite a bit, actually.”