Before Lee has a chance to respond, André gets up on the makeshift stage at the far end of the room, and the crowd shifts, finding seats and settling in. A few poets perform one after the next. Lee tries to pay attention, but even when she isn’t sick she has trouble focusing on poetry: her mind can lock in for a few lines, but then wanders, and minutes can pass before she realizes she’s been thinking about what she ate for breakfast, or a conversation she had with a cabdriver, or a pair of shoes she saw in a shop window a few days ago. She looks over at Man surreptitiously. He is leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, the pockets of his jacket sagging with the weight of all the things he stuffs into them. His hands are folded together and he rests his chin on them, and there is something about the attentiveness of his posture that Lee admires, that makes her snap her own attention back to the readers. A murky sea, Odysseus, sirens’ songs like bells ringing out across the water. The poem is quite beautiful, now that she is hearing it. Odysseus twines the sirens’ hair around his neck, the hair is music, but then it’s choking him, the sea pulls him down, and the poem ends.
The next person to take the stage is Claude. She—Lee can still hardly believe this person is a woman—jumps up and then stands silently for a few moments, staring out at the crowd. When she begins, her deep, raspy voice fills the room.
“What—can—I—do?” she shouts, commanding everyone’s full attention. The audience is silent.
Her eyes squint to slits, her mouth a black hole in her white face.
Claude pauses, lights a cigarette. No one moves, and Lee feels her own breath held tight in her chest, her cold forgotten, her eyes seeming to water only to give the scene more clarity. Claude blows a smoke ring that hangs in the air before she sucks it back into her mouth, and then she turns around and takes off her jacket, beneath which, pinned to the back of her shirt, is a photograph of her own face, one eye heavily shadowed, her mouth on that side done up with lipstick in a Cupid’s bow, and on the other side her skin bare and white. Both man and woman, neither man nor woman. Claude stands still so that everyone can see it, then reaches around with one arm, pulls the photo off, and rips it neatly in two, letting it drop to the floor before she walks from the stage to the crowd’s applause.
Later, walking home, Lee is able to breathe deeply through both nostrils for the first time in days, and to smell things—a fire, or roasting chestnuts, she thinks, but then remembers that chestnuts are in New York, and this city must have different winter smells she can’t even identify yet. Her annoyance at how Man introduced her to his friends has faded, and she feels relaxed and happy.
Man walks next to her, matching his pace to hers.
“I thought that was absolutely wonderful,” Lee says, and then, softly, “Thank you for inviting me.”
“My pleasure. I loved Tristan’s new work. The frog poem.”
Lee doesn’t remember Tristan’s poem. “I thought Claude was the best. ‘To travel at the prow of myself.’ Wasn’t that good?”
“Yes. It’s exactly what André was getting at in the manifesto,” Man says, and launches into a long monologue about Surrealism that Lee has heard before. The prow of myself, she thinks. Lee doesn’t know—or really care—if she has fully understood what Claude was getting at, but she wants to be how the words made her feeclass="underline" alone but not lonely, needing no one, living her life with intention.
“I think what I liked about Claude,” Lee starts again, when Man has stopped talking, “is that she just didn’t seem to care if anyone liked her.”
“I don’t think liking her is the point.”
“I just mean—” Lee is frustrated at how inarticulate she feels. “I guess… I don’t know. She’s just so ugly.”
Man laughs, and Lee continues. “That’s not what I mean. Stop laughing at me.”
“Why should I?” Man says, but kindly, and as they cross a street, she notices that they have matched their steps exactly. They walk a few blocks in silence, close to home now, and the streets and shops, shuttered and dark this late at night, begin to look familiar.
“Oh dear,” Lee says, then sneezes several times in a row, pulling her damp handkerchief out of her purse and dabbing her face with it.
“Poor cricket,” Man says, and pulls out his own handkerchief and offers it to her. “I’ve kept you out too long. Let’s get you home. You’re close to here, aren’t you?”
“Two streets over.”
Lee clutches Man’s handkerchief in her hand. When they get to the door of her hotel, Man says, “You’re going to be all right?”
“I’ll be fine.”
He nods, looking unconvinced. “My mother always recommends a hot toddy and a flannel around the neck. I never bother about the flannel, but the toddy helps. Here they make them with Lillet.”
“That sounds nice.”
“I could get you one.” Man peers down the empty street, at a shuttered bistro a few doors down.
Lee forces a smile. “I’ll be fine. I just need to go straight to bed.”
“Of course.” They stand together on the same step, the sudden silence awkward until Lee breaks it with another cough. She turns from him and fumbles with her key at the door. Once she’s pushed it open, she gives him a wave because she can’t think of what to say.
“Stay in bed tomorrow, if you still feel sick,” he says. “Don’t worry about work.”
Lee locks the door behind her and leans against it, and inexplicably her eyes fill with hot tears. Sniffing, stumbling, she makes her way through the dark hallway and up to her room, where she sheds her clothes quickly and crawls under the covers, the pillow cool against her warm cheek and soon wet as the tears keep trickling from her eyes.
She wakes to voices below her, with no idea how much time has passed. In the hallway she hears the hotel proprietress, Madame Masson, arguing with someone in a loud whisper. Lee rolls over and tries to go back to sleep, but before she can, there is a sharp knock on her bedroom door. She pulls a blanket around her shoulders and opens the door to find Madame standing in the hallway.
“Ah, you are awake,” Madame says. “A man at the door brought this for you.” She holds a teacup in her outstretched hand.
Lee, confused, sleepy, takes the cup from her. “Is he still here?”
“I sent him away. It is far too late for visitors.” She sniffs dramatically to express her disapproval.
Lee carries the teacup over to the window and stares down at the dark, empty street.
Back in bed she cradles the teacup in both hands. Lillet and whiskey, sweet and bitter both. As she sips it she is shocked to feel her eyes fill with tears for the second time this evening. Lee pictures Man carrying the cup down the street, the liquid spilling into the saucer. The tenderness of the gesture. Even though the toddy has gone cold, the warmth of the liquor goes all the way through her.
In the morning Lee is not better. Though it’s freezing in her room her sheets are damp with sweat. When the weak January sun has risen high enough in the sky to pierce the curtains with light, Lee knots her wrinkled dressing gown at her waist and hobbles down to the kitchen, feeling deeply, profoundly sorry for herself. She puts the kettle on to boil, and rinses out the teacup Man brought her so that she can use it again.