Lee sighs. “I get so tired of stories about how wild Paris used to be.”

“Well, they’re true.”

“And where did you live with Adon? What was it like?”

“Small. Cramped. Four rooms in a square, with a tiny garret where I used to work. We had a lovely view, though. When it was clear, you could see all the way beyond the Hackensack to Paterson. And Adon put flower boxes in the windows.”

The flower boxes sound lovely, domestic in a way that Lee isn’t and that she can’t imagine Man wanting. They seem wholly out of character for him, and make real for Lee as nothing else has that Man had an entire life before her that she barely knows anything about. The closest the two of them have come to flower boxes is a rose he gave her once, which she left in a vase in the office until it died, the overblown petals dropping in a brown heap on the desk.

She must look worried because Man says, “Another lifetime,” and reaches for her hand across the table.


At their newly shared apartment, Man is painting a picture of her mouth. He hangs the canvas above their bed and paints her lips red, the color of the lipstick Lee wears almost every day. It comes in a cold gold tube with an etched cap that pulls off with a pop, and the lipstick twirls up almost obscenely from the case, moisture beading on its surface in the humid summer weather. When Lee puts it on it has a matte finish that looks nice, but it’s a nightmare to remove. Dozens of cotton balls in the waste bin, cold cream stained bloody, a stubborn red filigree veining the surface of her mouth.

Man mixes a red paint to match it, a blend of cadmium scarlet and Winsor rose. Pots and pots of it. His canvas is huge—eight feet wide—and on it, her mouth floats disembodied and elongated in a mackerel sky.

Man says she has the most beautiful lips he’s ever seen. But then he says that about her eyes and her ears and her skin and even her snaggly front teeth. When she admits to him that she hates her teeth, he tells her he loves them, rubs his finger along their surface, licks them with his tongue. In a way it is the most intimate thing he has done with her.

Man works constantly on the painting. Lee now understands how single-minded he can be. His behavior reminds her of the first few weeks when they were together: he cancels appointments, skips meals, gazes past the world with bloodshot eyes. But for her it is not the same. Now that she has her own work, she finds she doesn’t want to just watch him, gets jumpy if she sits next to him for too long. He insists that he needs her there. So even though she often doesn’t want to, for hours Lee lies on the bed as he works above her, her head cocked toward him just so. By the end of the day the drop cloth and her skin are dusted with a fine spray of paint spatters.

Most of the time he paints in silence, but sometimes, if he’s struggling to get something right or needs a break after focusing for a long time, he’ll talk to her about what he is hoping to accomplish with the painting. He tells her that her lips are like their two bodies at rest, that the horizon behind them joins them as it does the earth and sky. Behind her mouth, at the edge of the painting, he paints the observatory they see every evening as they walk home down Boulevard Saint-Michel.

“I want the painting fixed in space,” he tells her, “so that everyone will know it’s you I’m painting.”

When Man is silent, sometimes Lee thinks about nothing, or just lets her mind wander. Other times, if she lies there long enough, she starts to think about her life as one long string, all the things she’s done interconnected and stretched out from the past into the future. She finally feels she is here at the prow of herself. All she’s learned. So much that she can see her modeling years as something important, as a way for her to understand the images she now wants to create. The pictures in Vogue or McCall’s whose artistry used to be so impenetrable to her she now views with a critic’s eye. The bones of the compositions feel more obvious to her, and she finds herself questioning the lighting choices or holding her hands to the page to crop an image differently.

“Man,” she says one morning while he is painting, “what has Tristan said about my pictures? For 221?”

He looks down at her and a sheepish expression spreads across his face. “You know… I’m so sorry. I haven’t even seen him since you asked me last. I’ll ask him soon—next week.”

“All right,” Lee says, but she is disappointed. She feels as though she heard Man talking about seeing Tristan just the other day, but maybe she is wrong.

Man paints for a while, and then he says, “Another thing I forgot—I can’t believe I didn’t mention this to you. The Philadelphia Camera Society liked my essay so much they invited me to submit photos for their next exhibition.”

Lee knows that the Philadelphia Camera Society is respected worldwide for exhibiting some of the most interesting work of the moment. To many photographers, its annual exhibition is the holy grail, and Lee has long suspected that Man has been annoyed not to be asked to contribute before. “That’s wonderful! What are you going to submit?”

“I’m not sure yet. I have some ideas, but I want to think about it a little longer. It has to be something really spectacular. Groundbreaking.”

Lee knows what this opportunity might mean for him and tries to feel a selfless happiness for his success, but the thought of how he has forgotten to talk to Tristan about her work snags in her mind. “Wouldn’t it be fun if we both had work published at the same time?” As soon as she says it she regrets the words, which even to her ears sound petty.

Man sets down his brush and looks at her. “Lee—I told you, I’ll ask him. Things are fraught for him right now. I have to pick the right time.”

“Of course. I’m sorry I brought it up again.”

Lee closes her eyes and lets him paint her, imagines what the finished painting will look like hanging on a gallery wall.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

All the squares on the calendar are blank.

“Nothing? How many days in a row is this now?” Man’s voice sounds tired.

“Not that many.” It has been three weeks since their last paying client, but Lee knows better than to tell Man this. He has been so obsessed with his painting and his artist statement for the Philadelphia prize that he hasn’t even noticed, and having finances pointed out to him will just make him huffy about how glad he is to have time to spend on his real art.

Man comes up behind her and stares over her shoulder at the empty white calendar page.

“I’ll start on the perfume bottle spreads,” Lee says.

“No, I’ve got a better idea. It’s beautiful outside. No reason to work when there isn’t any. I’ll get the car out and we can drive to Chantilly, have a picnic.” As soon as he says the words Man’s entire demeanor changes, and within moments he has dug a picnic basket out of the closet, along with a pile of blankets and the traveling cocktail set.

While Man gets the car out of the garage, Lee fetches supplies, stocking the basket with bread and radishes and butter, cold pulled turkey and saucisson sec, their favorite little éclairs from the patisserie down the street. She nestles the food around an iced bottle of Sémillon and is on the front steps of the studio before Man gets back with the car, her coat buttoned to her neck, its rabbit fur collar soft against her cheeks. Man rounds the corner and she waves at him, but just then a young Western Union boy on a bicycle stops in front of the studio and runs up the steps to the door, an envelope clutched in his hand.

“For Man Ray?” Lee asks him.

The boy squints at the typed name. “No, for Monsieur Lee Miller.”

“That’s me.”

The boy’s eyebrows push together in confusion, but he holds out the telegram and receipt book so Lee can sign for it, and then rides away on his bicycle. Man is idling in front of the door, the growl of the car engine loud on the quiet street. Lee holds up her finger to Man and opens the telegram, already expecting the worst: someone dead or sick or maimed in some horrible accident. But instead,

LI-LI COMING TO PARIS OCT 1 ON THE SS ALGONQUIN FOR BUSINESS AND YOU STOP

ERIK AND JOHN SEND THEIR LOVE STOP

YOUR LOVING FATHER

Man honks the horn a few times in a row and Lee shoves the telegram in her bag and runs down to him, strapping the picnic basket onto the back of the car and then settling herself in the passenger seat. She pulls her beret lower over her ears.

“Anything important?” Man asks her.

“No, not really. I’ll tell you later.”

“Okay, then off we go!” Man shouts, his voice full of the joy of abandoned responsibility. As he drives he keeps up a steady stream of chatter. Lee is quiet. She has her handbag on her lap, the telegram inside it. Impersonal typeface, the message stilted, nothing like her father, but still it is enough to bring him back to her. Your loving father. For business and you. He will be here in less than a month, in their apartment, poking around the home that she and Man have made together. She has imagined how her new life might appear to him, but now the thought of him actually being here makes her uncomfortable. What will she tell him? How will her world look through his eyes?

Man continues north out of the city, and soon the road opens up into farmland, alternating fields of pasture and plantings, punctuated here and there with stands of beech trees, their leaves not yet turned to fall colors.