“What did you do?” she asks.
“Bought the Master a drink at his favorite bar and begged him to let me take pictures of him at his home the next day.”
“Did he let you?”
“Yes, actually. I’ll show you the prints sometime.”
Lee holds the film and begins to dip it back in the tray. The metronome is like another heartbeat in the room with them. She lets out her breath in a rush.
“Almost there. Another minute, maybe, then move the film to the stop.”
As she does it he rests his hands on hers again. It is less startling now. She lets him guide her, and the strip moves smoothly in their grasp. It is only a few short minutes, but it feels longer. When they get the film into the final water bath, the metronome has stopped and the room is silent. “Excellent work,” Man says. In the dark, Lee smiles.
Without thinking too much about it, she flails her hand around until she finds his, and gives it a squeeze. “Thank you.”
“It’s nothing—you’re here to learn, as well as work.”
“I know… but still. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he says. His voice is quiet and she likes the way it sounds, raspy around the edges. She wants to say something more, but nothing comes to her, and eventually he says, “Ready for the light?”
“Ready,” she says, but she’s not ready at all. She wishes they could stay in that darkroom for hours. As Man turns, she could swear he brushes against her unnecessarily. He pulls back the curtain and opens the door, and she is startled by the sudden brightness. It calls to mind emerging from the cinema after a film, the confusion of finding the day just as she left it.
In the bright hallway light, she looks at Man. There are grooves on either side of his mouth she has never noticed before, and when he drops his head for a moment, she notices the neat way he has parted his hair. She pictures him standing in front of his bathroom mirror, going through his morning routine. There is something so private and vulnerable about the white line in his scalp, and she goes warm with a rush of emotion and moves her gaze to the floor.
“I have a few more rolls to develop,” she says to the carpet.
“Yes. Do you want my help with that too?” His tone is all business, and he shakes his watch down his wrist and glances at its face.
She doesn’t know what to think. He seemed so eager to help, and now he seems eager to get away from her.
“No, I can do it.”
“Good. I have to—I’ll be in the office if you need me.” He turns and disappears down the hallway.
Lee goes back into the developing closet. Part of her wishes she asked Man to help her. She thinks of his body behind hers. There is something so electric about him, a coiled energy that animates him and makes people—herself included—want to be close to him. But he is not interested in her. If there is one thing she is good at, it’s telling when a man is interested, and—with the exception of bringing her the hot toddy—Man has shown none of the signs she is used to.
Lee peels open the next roll of film and then dips the film in the developer in a rhythmic back and forth motion. When she has finished all of her rolls, she turns on the overhead light and holds up the strips to it. A few of the images at the beginnings and ends seem underdeveloped, but she counts at least five or six that have come out. There is her lake picture, the picture of the woman’s hand, all the images reversed so the duck is a white blob on black water and the woman’s nails are dark spots against the brilliant white of her hair. Lee doesn’t yet know if they are good, but right now she only cares that they are hers.
She hangs up the film on the clothesline to dry and is surprised to see that it is already five o’clock. The day has gone by quickly. As she goes back through the studio and into Man’s office, she decides she will ask him to get a drink with her, to celebrate this small accomplishment, the first photos she’s developed herself. Why not? But the office is empty and so is the parlor. Lee’s giddiness seeps out of her like a pinpricked balloon. She so wanted to share this feeling with someone. Perhaps Man has just gone outside for a cigarette.
To pass the time she investigates the books in the library cabinet. There are dozens of literary and art journals, a shelf with a matched set of classics that she feels certain Man has never read, a few novels. There is even an Italian edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which she has heard whispered about but is shocked to see Man owns. She is half tempted to thumb through it to find the dirty bits but then imagines how she would feel if he saw her.
Instead, she lies down on the couch and stares at the ceiling. There have been many men in Lee’s life. More than she would admit in pleasant company, more than she has even admitted to her close friends. When she was fourteen, she met a boy named Harry at the bakery in downtown Poughkeepsie. She was buying rolls for Sunday dinner, he was standing behind her in line, he had soft brown eyes fringed with black lashes. Their interaction didn’t mark the first time she knew she had power over men, but it was the first time she consciously made use of it, and she felt no embarrassment when she asked him if he wanted to meet her outside the grounds of her school the next day at lunchtime. With Harry she found that the flirting she’d read about in dime novels actually worked, so she bit her lip and fluttered her eyelashes and gently placed her hand on his forearm as they walked, and she told him that he seemed strong. They went to an abandoned hayloft in the woods behind her school and she liked the feeling of his lean body pressed against the length of hers. She touched him everywhere, curious, but also oddly detached, as if she were floating somewhere above their two bodies, observing herself, saying, This is what a boy’s stomach feels like, this is how his hand feels when it is running up and down my back. They did nothing more than pet but the memories stuck with her all the same.
Lee waits almost an hour for Man to come back. Finally, feeling too keyed up to lie still any longer, she heads out on her own.
There is a bar a few blocks away called Le Bateau Ivre, and the building looks like its name: squat and fat and listing to one side like a man who can’t hold his liquor. Man has mentioned it to her. It’s one of his favorite places, but she tells herself she goes there with no hope of seeing him, that she is choosing it out of convenience more than anything. It has six outdoor tables unoccupied in the winter chill, and inside is empty of patrons too. It was decorated decades ago to look like a pleasure yacht, and Lee climbs the nickel-plated spiral staircase to the second floor, where the bartender, a rail-skinny woman in a gray dress and black apron, sits at the bar with a glass of wine.
Lee sits down a few seats away and takes off her hat. She lays her Rollei on the counter and runs her fingers over it, a comforting habit.
“A drink?” the woman asks.
“Pernod.”
Rousing herself from her stool, the woman moves behind the bar and bends into the icebox and fills a small glass to the brim with cracked cubes before pouring the viscous liquid over it. The ice pops as it begins to melt.
Lee takes a long swallow, the mix of cold liquid and hot licorice a familiar and pleasant burn.
The glass was stored in the icebox and as Lee sits there she cuts patterns in the frost on its surface with her fingernail. Her elation over her pictures has dissipated. When she imagined coming to Paris, she envisioned an immediate ascent into the bohemian circles her father had always warned her about. She thought it would be more open than New York, more welcoming. But here she is, still alone.
The bartender has been staring at her rudely the entire time, and finally says, “You look familiar. Are you an actress?”