“Argyle is still pining for you,” Tanja continues when Lee doesn’t respond.
“How pointless of him.” Argyle. One of Lee’s lovers before she left New York, who flew her out over the sparkling ribbon of the Hudson in his two-seater plane before taking her home with him, his skin smelling of gasoline when they made love. The last in a string of men Lee treated badly. As soon as they told her they loved her she never spoke to them again. Tanja was there for all of them, knows all the details—which is probably, if Lee were to think about it more deeply, part of the reason she doesn’t want to talk to her about Man. If Lee doesn’t talk about him, he can’t be flawed like the other men and Lee can be better too.
Finally Lee says, “It’s not like that this time. And honestly, can’t a girl grow up? Just because I’ve been stupid all my life doesn’t mean I’m stupid now.”
Tanja reaches across the table and gives Lee’s arm a squeeze. “You’ve never been stupid a minute.”
“Well, once or twice, maybe?”
“All right, possibly,” Tanya says, and laughs before growing serious again. “You really like him, don’t you? When you mention him—there’s something different about it.”
Lee nods. It is different. When she thinks back on her other lovers, all she remembers is her restlessness, her dissatisfaction. They were always wanting more and more of her and she had no interest in giving it. She would sit across from them at restaurants or lie next to them in bed and most of the time she’d be thinking about how she could get away. It was as if the closer they wanted to get, the less emotion she was able to express, until it felt as if her body was a wooden box she had nailed down tight. She tried to explain this to Tanja once, years ago, but her friend only looked at her curiously, unable to understand. So now it feels impossible to explain what is different about Man, how when Lee is with him she feels open, pliable; no way to explain that the more time she spends with him the more she craves him. “I really like him,” is all she says. “I’m glad you get to meet him.”
When they arrive at the party, Man is surprised and pleased that Lee has brought a friend. He links arms with both of them and leads them smoothly from conversation to conversation. After some small talk with two of Tristan’s friends, Man takes them over to an older couple and makes introductions.
“Arthur, Rose,” Man says. “So wonderful to see you.”
Arthur and Rose Wheeler are Man’s main patrons; they have funded his films and always seem to swoop in with a commission when work is going slowly. Man is very close to them. In past summers, he even traveled with them to Biarritz—Lee has seen some photos from the trip, has heard a story about a day spent shooting pictures of sheep when they blocked the main road and trapped them in the countryside for hours. In Man’s photos the sheep crowd together, the whites of their scared eyes popping like bright marbles.
Rose turns to Lee, a radiant smile on her face. “You,” she says, “you must be Lee Miller. We’ve heard so much about you—and we’ve seen you too, in Man’s beautiful pictures.”
Man smiles and pulls Lee closer. “Yes, this is my love. I’m so glad you finally get to meet her. And this is her good friend, Tanja Ramm, visiting from New York.”
They all continue talking, elegant cocktail patter, and Lee participates in it, but all she is thinking of is Man’s expression as he looked at her, his brown eyes full of feeling. The words he used: “my love.” Lee could swear that people are noticing, their glances filled with admiration and envy. Lee is so lucky to be the one with Man, so lucky that everyone knows it.
Tanja’s earlier skepticism has dissipated, and within moments of meeting him, Man has charmed her. Lee is not surprised: Man is in a sociable mood, and he is always at his best in a crowd like this, where he knows most of the guests and doesn’t have to posture. He is dressed simply but elegantly, in dark trousers and a white shirt, and he’s wearing the electric cuff links he made, red lights that wink off and on in a random pattern. As he gesticulates in the center of a knot of people, Lee can see them flashing.
Lee can tell Tanja charms Man just as much as he charms her, but of course Tanja charms everyone. It’s part of what Lee likes about being her friend: her ease in any social situation, her uncomplicated nature. They are opposites inside and out: Lee has always thought Tanja had an angel’s soul, clean and unblemished, whereas when Lee pictures her own soul she sees it as thorny, a dark tangled nest. Unlike Man and Tanja, Lee often feels tense in crowded social settings, too aware of how she appears or how she is supposed to be acting.
Now Lee scans the room for Tristan. Ever since Man mentioned that he and Tristan might publish her photos in their journal, she has been itching to talk to him. As she looks around she sees someone else familiar: shaved head, corpse-pale skin, baggy suit. “Look—it’s Claude,” Lee says to Man. He glances over and gives a small nod. “I want to tell her how much I liked her poem,” Lee says, excusing herself.
Claude stands alone in the corner, furiously smoking. Lee goes up to her and smiles. “This was months ago now, but I wanted to tell you I loved the poem you read at Monnier’s.”
Claude blows a smoke ring and closes one eye, seemingly so she can look at Lee through the circle’s center. “It wasn’t a poem.”
“Oh. I thought—what was it?”
“My manifesto. My refutation of the self.” Her English is thickly accented.
Lee wants to roll her eyes but restrains herself. In the past few months, as lines that Claude spoke continued to ping through Lee’s head, she forgot how odd she is. Now Lee glances around and tries to think how to elegantly get away.
“You are the one with Man Ray,” Claude states.
“Yes.” Here again Lee feels a flash of pride.
“The muse,” Claude says, drawing out the word and waggling her fingers in the air derisively.
“I’m a photographer, actually.”
“Are you?”
Lee tries to match Claude’s derisiveness with her own. “You are too? I think I heard that.”
Claude hands Lee her cigarette, the tobacco wet on the end that has been in her mouth, and begins to look through her jacket pockets. She pulls out a stack of small cards and hands one to Lee. On it is a photograph of Claude dressed as a weight lifter and an address on Boulevard Raspail. “I’m having a show,” she says.
Lee doesn’t recognize the address, but still she’s impressed. Claude must be even better than she thought. “I don’t know this address,” Lee says. “It’s a gallery?”
Claude curls the corner of her lip into a scornful smile. “Gallery is too much of a word for this. The owner calls it a gallery, but I would call it a hallway between two other buildings. But then again the owner is a—how you say? A son of a cunt. The whole thing has been miserable. First it was just my work; now it’s my work and twenty other photographers. I’ve been thinking of backing out, but I like the idea of seeing my prints on the walls too much. Wouldn’t you?”
Lee doesn’t answer, but an image rises in her mind: her own work, framed and mounted. A crowd of people clustered in a room, moving silently from print to print. The pictures—her pictures—staying in their minds afterward, haunting them.
Claude scans the room. Lee follows her gaze and sees she is looking at Man, who is still holding court in the corner, his cuff links blinking in the dimly lit space. Claude flicks her eyes pointedly between him and Lee, suggestively enough to express that she can envision everything that is going on between them. “Big man,” Claude says, but her tone says she thinks the exact opposite is true.