Lee makes the model come to the studio at seven in the morning, long before Man arrives. The light is good, the model compliant and pretty, though seemingly surprised to find another woman behind the camera. Lee feels herself grow decisive and directorial. It takes only an hour to get the shots she wants.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The dress is borrowed. Somehow Man has finagled it. Acid-green moiré, with an intricate bodice of pieced silk shaped like overlapping leaves. A smart row of buttons marching down the front to a trim waist, higher and tighter than the styles have been lately. The gown sweeps the ground and falls into a short train, and it fits Lee as if it was made for her. When she puts it on Man cannot stop staring, and now that they have arrived at the House of Patou she feels the eyes of everyone else on her as well, men and women both. Someone once said to her that dressing up is done mainly for other women, and as her eye is drawn around the room to where the women stand out like hummingbirds against the background of men, casting sidelong glances at one another, Lee believes it to be true.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Man mutters to her. He takes her elbow and guides her through the lavish room. He has done a lot of work for Jean Patou over the years and has said before that he does it just for the parties. “You’d think they could pay me a little better. Let’s drink our weight in champagne to make up for it.”
It doesn’t seem as if that will be a challenge. Dozens of waiters circle the room, their trays laden with champagne flutes, and at her first opportunity Lee takes one and moves off to an alcove, thinking how pretty she must look framed against the windows.
This is actually more her type of crowd than Man’s. He is a bit awkward in his tuxedo, and she wants to tell him to stop pulling at his bow tie. If she were in New York she would know lots of people, but there is something nice about knowing no one. Across the room Lee notices two extremely handsome men, so similar they must be brothers. She tries to look at them without being obvious, but they are scanning the room as well and she realizes that they seem to be heading right toward her. They wear their suits as though they were born in them. She admires the way their narrow tuxedo pants break over their shiny shoes.
Lee searches her mind for a quip to respond with when they compliment her—it is clearer than ever that they are coming over expressly to talk to her—but before she has thought of something to say they are in front of her.
“Man! We have missed you!” one of them says, speaking English with a thick but very polished Russian accent.
They barely glance at Lee. Man tugs at his shirt collar. The other one—they are so alike they could almost be twins—says, “We are meeting at Dmitri’s house next Thursday. You will be there?”
When he asks the question, the man reaches out and helps Man adjust his crooked bow tie. Then he runs his fingers up Man’s cheek. The movement takes only a moment, and it would have been easy for Lee to miss it. But she doesn’t. The gesture is careless, intimate, like accidentally using a lover’s pet name in front of strangers, and something in it makes her wonder.
Man looks visibly uncomfortable, and tells them maybe he will come. For what seems to be the first time, the brothers glance over at her. They say a few more things to Man, none of which makes much sense to her, and then they excuse themselves.
“So nice of you to introduce me,” Lee says after they go.
Man gives her a look. “Alexis and Deni Mdivani. I assumed you knew them—or knew of them.”
“I don’t.”
He relates a convoluted story about a prank the brothers played at a recent party, where they changed into dungarees halfway through dinner and insisted they had to leave early to get to their jobs at the factory.
“They work at a factory?”
Man huffs air through his nose. “They’re related to a czar or someone. They just did it to be funny.”
“Sounds hilarious.”
Lee’s mood has soured and it is clear Man’s has too. They both finish their champagne and reach for more.
“What were they inviting you to?” she finally asks.
Lee can tell he doesn’t want to answer her, but she stares at him, silent, patient, until he is forced to respond. “Paul and Tristan—they both come from money; you know that—so they travel in the same circles as the Mdivanis. We get together once a month or so and discuss art.”
“You discuss art.”
“Yes,” Man says, but as he says it he tugs again at his collar. The room is hot. He is sweating. She cannot understand what he could possibly be lying about, or why.
It is late by the time they get back to Lee’s apartment, where she has insisted they stay because of how complicated it is to take off and store her dress. Man fumbles with the covered buttons. She raises her arms and he helps her shimmy out of it. As he pulls the stiff silk over her head, Lee realizes just how drunk she is, champagne sloppy, and before she goes to brush her teeth she sits on the floor for a few minutes, hiccuping at her reflection in the mirror and listening to Man stumble around in the other room. The sour mood still lingers, and for the first time that she can remember, when they get into bed they pull the covers up to their chins and keep a wide distance between their bodies, even though Lee has to brace herself so as not to roll toward the middle of the mattress.
Finally she says, “You made me sad tonight.” Man moves to hold her, but she puts out her arm and pushes him away. “What happened? Why wouldn’t you tell me… whatever it was you wouldn’t tell me?”
A car pulls up outside. There’s the sounds of people laughing, the car door slamming. Farther away there is a sharp insistent bleat of a siren.
“Have you ever…” Man’s voice is pitched high and hesitant. “Do you like…”
She waits for him to finish.
“Sometimes I like… to be tied up.”
The room is too dark for her to see his expression. Part of her wants to laugh, she feels so on edge. But she can hear in his voice how much he has been wanting to say this.
Lee is so drunk she can barely feel the outlines of her body. Man waits for her to answer. She can hear him breathing; she finds she wants to make him wait. From another floor there is the creak of someone pacing.
She waits until she knows he is about to say something, to apologize or explain, before she gets up. The floor is cold on her bare feet. She stumbles. On her chair is her striped scarf and she feels for another in her armoire.
Lee kneels next to him. “Will these work?”
Her bed has a low brass frame that squeaks when they make love. She holds his wrist between her thumb and index finger and feels their pulses racing.
With Man’s wrist in her hand she thinks again of the two brothers, the way the one reached out and touched his cheek.
“Have you been with them, those brothers?” Lee cinches his wrist tight to the headboard.
“Yes,” he says.
“How many times?”