“No one takes my picture.”
“That’s absurd,” she says, and holds her camera to her eye.
Shrugging, smiling, he agrees. She frames him with the wide stone railing running off to a point on the horizon, holding the camera slightly off axis so his body is parallel with a lamppost just behind him. He wears a white scarf, cream-colored linen pants. He is still smiling, just a little, and the wind catches his hair and his scarf and blows them straight out sideways. He looks old, a bit tired, and for some reason that makes her love him all the more.
Biarritz, when they finally arrive after two days of solid driving, is a postcard. The sun is setting as they pull into town, and Man puts the Voisin’s top down and takes them along Esplanade du Port Vieux to Villa Belza, which rises narrowly from the road as if it has been gouged out of the sandstone cliffs. Man parks nearby and together they walk up the path to the villa’s front door.
Man books a room while Lee waits, admiring the lobby’s elegant furnishings and thick velvet drapes. He comes over to her with a giant key, and when she sees it in his hand she feels dizzy. They cannot move fast enough. She walks in front of him up the stairs and brazenly he puts his hand between her legs as they climb, his fingers hot on her skin right up above the lace at the top of her stockings, so high he must be able to feel the wet heat between her legs. As soon as the hotel room door closes behind them they are on the bed together. The window has been left open and as Man makes love to her—hard, fast, the way she likes it—she smells sea and salt and thinks that from now on she might always think of salt when she thinks of him. When they are finished she lies back on a gigantic pillow and looks around for the first time. The hotel room walls are covered in red brocade. Red curtains are suspended from the ceiling and drape over the headboard. Even the vanity and sitting areas are upholstered in red fabric.
“What is this place?” she asks him.
“Isn’t it amazing?” he says, laughing at her expression. “Just wait until you see the cabaret.”
They nap and make love again and emerge from their room for dinner, where they stuff themselves with seafood dishes: moules marinières, amberjack in orange marinade, a crudo made of some fish Lee has never had before. They refill their wineglasses again and again. Lee feels as though she will never stop being hungry. Eating like this—ordering whatever she wants, scraping the last bits of frosting off her dessert plate—makes her feel like a child again, and for a moment she grows antsy. But then Man takes her into the cabaret, which is as lavish and ostentatious as he promised, and she relaxes. They sit at a mirrored table with their knees pressed together. On the stage, women in sequined brassieres and tall feathered headbands dance the Charleston. The music is loud and brassy and when the show ends and the music continues, most of the patrons get up to dance. Man pulls Lee up onto the floor. He is a wild and uninhibited dancer, not particularly graceful, but so full of joy she cannot help but get caught up in moving with him, following his steps and growing wilder and wilder herself. When they are sweating and winded, Man nicks a wine bottle and two glasses off their table and they go upstairs and climb into the giant red bed and talk until three o’clock in the morning. Art, inspiration, the difference between painting and photography. The conversation is its own dance, looping and circling back on itself until she is practically breathless.
“I had this idea,” Man says, “a series of self-portraits I want to do. Maybe six or seven of them, all with subtle variations. A close-up of my face and on the desk in front of me a mask, a death mask. The change in the images would be in the other objects on the desk. I’m not sure what they are yet. Maybe in one a noose, in another a feather. Like how it feels to be an artist—”
Lee nods with excitement. “Yes! How one day you can’t think of a single original picture and the next day there’s almost too many of them—and how do you capture that, or how do you hold on to the feeling from the good days—”
“And not let the noose days be all you’re thinking about.”
“Yes,” Lee says. She tips the last drops of wine into her mouth and sets down her glass. He trails his fingers across her arm and she moves her hand to his, lifting it up and pressing just her fingertips to his.
“Let’s set it up when we get back to the studio,” she says.
“Yes,” he says, and kisses her.
In the morning they walk to the Rocher de la Vierge and then to the Grande Plage, where they take off their shoes to stroll along the hard-packed sand. It is mid-May, before the summer season, and the beach is not that crowded. There are rows of empty sun shelters, and when Lee expresses interest, Man rents one. They open its canvas doors and watch the rise and fall of the white-capped waves. Lee lies half in, half out of the sun, marooned under a gigantic sun hat she buys from a passing pushcart, sitting up only to sprinkle water on her legs so she can feel the sea breeze on her skin. The water leaves a filigree of salt when it dries. Man naps next to her in a sun chair. She watches him, his jaw slackened, skin loose around his neck, perfectly at peace. Lee decides to take a walk while he is sleeping. She grabs her camera and heads up to the sidewalk where the chic hotels line the waterfront. Everyone is beautiful. Men in straw caps and cuffed trousers walk hand in hand with women in gauzy palazzo pants. Lee takes a picture of the rows of sun shelters sprouting like button mushrooms from the sand, another of a couple carrying a gigantic parasol and arguing while they walk. At the edge of the beach a woman sells necklaces made out of sea sponges, which charms Lee enough that she buys one to show to Man. It smells of brine and ocean rot, but she puts it around her neck anyway and heads back to him. He is still sleeping, so Lee sits down near him, her head tipped back to the sun. After a few minutes he opens his eyes and sees her and picks up her camera. She doesn’t move, closes her eyes as he takes pictures of her, the sun warm on her face, melting into her bones like butter.
Before they leave they go into the shelter, close the doors. Inside the thick canvas enclosure the sound of the sea is muffled to a whisper. They lay their towels over the soft white sand and lie down, and Man kisses her, a long deep kiss as if he is drinking her. Lee is astounded at how much she desires him. She takes his hand and puts it at her waistband, and he unbuttons her pants and thumbs aside her underwear and touches her until she is spent and trembling, her skin damp and lightly textured with sand. Afterward she lies against him, her body completely relaxed. He holds her close, and she wants the moment to last forever, for nothing to break the way she feels.
Lee hears the phrase in her mind but wants Man to say it first. She directs all her attention to him and wills him to say it, even nuzzling her head into his chest and clearing her throat a few times. I love you. They are both silent for a long time, listening to the soft sucking hiss of the surf.