“That photo is about ten years out-of-date,” he says.

“Really?”

“Kiki looks older now. She’s gotten too fat to dance.”

Lee is pleased. “I don’t care how fat she is. We’re going. Besides, I thought you liked a little jiggle in the middle.”


When Thursday arrives, Man keeps his word. He is quiet as they walk to Le Jockey. He wears a new pair of flannel trousers and his beret, which he keeps fussing with while they walk. Lee wears her smartest dress and imagines herself shimmying on a café table—Lee of Montparnasse.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen her?” Lee asks as he takes her arm and threads it through his.

“I saw her just last week, at Éluard’s.”

Lee thinks back to the previous week. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I see Kiki now and then. She poses for a lot of people. I run into her. We’re still friendly.”

“I thought you said she was jealous.”

Man looks over at her, an amused expression on his face. “She was. I was too. It was a part of it. Actually, it’s how I knew we were in love.”

“Because she was jealous?”

“Because we were both jealous. For a time at the beginning we had an open relationship, but that didn’t work out for us. And even when we agreed not to be with other people, I still imagined her with other men whenever we weren’t together.”

Man says this lightly, but Lee does not love this side of him. She is reminded of how displeased he was when she left him on the beach at Biarritz and went for a walk on her own.

“Let’s never be jealous.” Lee’s voice is firm.

“Sometimes jealousy is a good thing.” There is some trash on the sidewalk, and Man pulls her closer as they sidestep it. “I remember Kiki onstage one night. She was singing some old chanson—I could barely understand the words—and I looked around and every person in the room had stopped what they were doing to stare at her. When she dances she has this one move: she gets really low, her knees pushed together, and somehow she shakes her hips and makes her dress fly up a bit. It’s hilarious, and sexy… You can’t stop watching her. I knew that night that I was in love with her, and I remember thinking that I knew it because I saw how badly all the other men and women wanted to have her and that she was mine. I was jealous of them getting to watch her, but really they should have been jealous of me. And maybe they were.”

Lee pulls away and stops on the sidewalk, facing him. She bends her knees and starts to twist her hips, and her dress climbs up her thighs until her garter clips are showing. “Like this?” Lee asks. “Is this what she used to do?”

“Hmm… sort of. But your version is more… Yankee.” He reaches out and grabs her arms and pulls her toward him. They are standing in the middle of the sidewalk, which is filled with people out for their evening strolls. They become a logjam in the river of the crowd: people behind them have to stop and go around them, bumping up against one another and then adjusting their course.

“Do you think all these people are jealous of us right now?” she asks.

“I think anyone with eyes would be jealous of me with you.”

“And what if I wanted to be with one of them? Like that man, over there.” Lee points across the street to where a fat man is just getting out of a taxi.

“You and that man?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Man laughs, uncomfortably. “I don’t want to think about that.”

His tone is final, but Lee doesn’t want to let it go.

“We never talked about it, whether we could take other lovers. Not even at the beginning.” Lee has not thought through what she is saying. All she knows is that they are going to see Kiki, and what she wants is for Man’s attention to be on her, Lee.

“I don’t want you with other men.” They are still standing in the middle of the sidewalk. She wonders if they are about to cause a scene.

“And what about you?”

“I haven’t wanted to be with anyone else since I met you. Not for one minute. I want to spend my life with you, Lee.”

Man doesn’t break eye contact, his expression serious. Lee knows his words should please her, but she finds herself thinking of what this means in a literal way, all the other men she will not get to go to bed with, strangers to her now and always, and then she pictures a different future, those men standing in her bedroom and shrugging off suspenders, their hard stomachs, her hands pulling at the top button of their pants and bringing them down to lie on top of her, the way their tongues would feel, soft and hot as her own. She pictures dozens of them—a hundred, even—all in a line stretching into her future, and then replaces the image with Man. Almost as a test, she leans forward and kisses him on the mouth. He kisses her back, and it feels as good as every time they are together—better, even—and the pedestrians on the sidewalk continue to slip past them like water, and Lee doesn’t care even a little bit that these people are seeing them, not even when Man grabs the back of her thigh under her dress and tucks his fingers inside the top of her stocking. She finds that she wants the other people to see them, so she wraps her leg around him to pull him closer.

After a little while they separate.

“Should we go to the Jockey?” he says, and puts her arm through his again.


Inside Le Jockey every table is full and every person looks interesting. The room is spacious but divided up by large columns, each painted with a different scene of cowboys and Indians. In the corner is a small stage where a man with an accordion and a feral-looking monkey are performing a chanson Lee actually knows. A visible haze of cigarette smoke hangs in the air. Man turns to her and asks a question, but it is so loud she can’t hear him.

“What did you say?” she shouts.

“Do you want a drink?” he shouts back, miming someone sipping from a glass.

“Yes. Get me a drink!” He merges with the crowd and she moves over to lean against a column painted with a picture of an Indian warrior rearing on his horse.

Soon Man is threading his way back to her with two gin martinis, perfect corkscrews of lemon peel suspended in the glasses. On the way, though, he gets stopped by a pair of men, and he talks to them for a minute and then gestures with a cocktail in Lee’s direction. Just then the accordionist stops playing, and the noise level in the bar lowers slightly. Lee walks over and Man introduces her, two names she does not recognize. The men look her over wolfishly. Man finds two empty chairs and pulls them up to the table. As soon as they are sitting, Lee takes her martini and downs most of it in one big gulp. She wants to get another but Man and the two men are deep in conversation, hunched over the table and practically excluding her. Then she feels a tap on her back and turns around to find a seated man holding out a Tom Collins glass filled to the brim with bright fizzy liquid. He stares at her intensely and she takes the glass from him.

“I make films,” the man says in accented English. He has thick brown hair curling back off his forehead, a long straight nose, dark brown eyes. He is sitting backward in his chair, and his lips are so close to her ear and his voice so deep that she can hear him perfectly.

“I take photographs,” Lee says back, and takes a swallow of the drink.

“I am making a new film. I’ve been inspired by the paintings here and I need someone to play a statue. Have you been in films? You’re very beautiful.”

His directness is unnerving, and his gaze never wavers from her. Man is still having his own conversation with the two men at their table, but his glance keeps sliding toward her too, which makes Lee feel that no matter where she looks she will accidentally meet the eyes of someone. She takes another sip of the gin fizz. It is delicious, light and lemony—a shock since all she can smell is smoke.

The man doesn’t blink, which is disconcerting. “I don’t see why you need someone to play a statue,” Lee says. “Can’t you just get a statue?” She makes her tone teasing.

“The poet is looking for a muse. The statue comes to life. You have the look.” He leans back and seems to compose himself. “I’m Jean Cocteau,” he says, grabbing her hand and kissing it lightly. “Have you heard of me?”

“I haven’t.” The drink is already gone and Lee is finding this man too intense. She looks over at Man and when she catches his eye she makes a subtle help expression and flicks her eyes in Cocteau’s direction. Man realizes what is happening, stands up, and comes around the table to her.

“Jean!” he says. Lee feels a rush of pleasure at having him come to her rescue.

“Hmm—mm—mm,” Cocteau hums through closed lips. He doesn’t even look up at Man.

“Jean,” Man says again. “It’s been a long time. I don’t think I’ve seen you since our last session.”

“Mm,” Jean hums again, and it is clear that he is humming a little tune, as a child might do. Lee feels deeply uncomfortable and wonders if she can move to a different table.

Just then everyone starts applauding. They turn their chairs to face the stage.

Kiki appears through a side door and walks primly up to the stage, moving exaggeratedly in what is almost a waddle. She sets one foot on the stair and then pulls it away, laughing. The room is silent. She sets her foot back on the stair and sticks out her arms as if she is walking a tightrope, then slowly and carefully steps up. The stage is empty except for a café chair, which she turns away from the crowd and straddles. Her dress is short, and even from the back of the room Lee can see her knickers. Kiki laughs again and everyone laughs with her, including Lee, though she isn’t sure why she is laughing. From a small bag sitting next to the chair Kiki takes a mirror and some makeup, and proceeds to do her face. It is fascinating to watch her. She picks a red lipstick and traces her lips, then presses them together to blot them. She takes a bright blue eyebrow pencil and draws two arches above her eyes, almost an inch above where she has shaved off her real eyebrows, then gazes out at the crowd with her mouth in a surprised O. Her eyelids she paints green, the apples of her cheeks get coated with vivid pink circles, and then she slowly and painstakingly puts all the makeup and the mirror back in the bag and sets it on the floor.