Lee is not sure what Claude means. Aren’t they already here? “Yes,” she says.

Ilse looks Lee up and down, considering her, and then says, “Good,” before reaching out and pinching Lee’s nose between her fingers. Before Lee can register surprise, Ilse and Claude have moved away, and Lee is at the front of the line, being handed a glass, filled gauchely all the way to the brim.

In the gallery Lee looks at the art. Of everything displayed she likes best Dalí’s canvas, The Accommodations of Desire, which she has to wait in line to view. It is a small piece, white lumpen shapes on a beach, covered over with lions’ heads, a toupee, ants, and shells. The shapes look to Lee like labia, the red paint at their centers like menstrual blood, and this both titillates and horrifies her. She knows from Man that Dalí made the painting for Gala, Éluard’s now-estranged wife; knows, in fact, that Dalí’s creation of it coincided with the end of the marriage. Lee wonders how it feels to Éluard to have it hanging here, a visual representation of his wife’s infidelity. If Lee were in his shoes she would be mortified, she thinks, but then she looks across the room and there is Éluard with his arm draped across his new lover, Nusch, his expression sanguine. Nusch looks carefree as well, though she must know the drama about this painting. Gala herself is absent, but then again Breton has always despised her. Dalí stands surrounded by a circle of men in the far corner, untouchable, his hair wild and his mustache waxed to angry points. Lee gulps down her wine and goes to get another.

All these people, each with his or her private drama. Over the past year Lee has worked to get to know them—at first because she was hungry for their fame, to be in their orbit. And then she wanted to know them because Man knew them. As she spent more time with them they morphed from intimidating ciphers into real people, with the same quirks and foibles as everyone else. And now Lee is part of it. This is her set, for better or worse. She feels they have accepted her begrudgingly, because she is Man’s girl, and it is such a different feeling than how she feels with Jean’s crew, with which she was immediately at ease. Perhaps it’s because she showed up at the film set unencumbered. None of that group had any preconceived notions of how she would be. She wasn’t Man’s girl there—she was just another actor, working as hard as everyone else.

Lee wishes she was at Jean’s studio right now instead of here. She closes her eyes and is backstage again, passing around the bottle of brandy. When she was there, she was thinking about Man. Now she is with Man and she’s thinking about the film set. Lee can’t believe it was just yesterday that she was at Jean’s, just yesterday that she saw the ballet—and Antonio.

Lee needs to stop the thoughts that lead back to Antonio, so she begins to walk around the gallery again. Max Ernst is showing a few of his forest paintings, the paint textured with metal and sticks. Jean Arp has a sculpture and a strange painting that Lee likes, black-and-white blobs cut out of wood and arranged in a random pattern. Perhaps these people are sometimes ill behaved, but here in the gallery, their beautiful work hanging on the walls, Lee is reminded that they are serious about their art, and talented too. If only Lee’s work were hanging here also. She’s wanted this so many times, but what has she done to make it happen? Most of these people probably don’t even remember that she’s a photographer—that she’s serious, just like them.

The thoughts make her melancholy, make her take another swallow of her wine, which is cheap and terrible, as if it were made from raisins. On the other side of the room, Man stands with Soupault and Tristan, and when he sees Lee looking at him, he beckons her. As she approaches he holds out a hand to her and pulls her close, and when she is against his side she feels an easing, the familiar feeling of relief.


By ten o’clock glasses clutter every surface, overturned bottles have left viscous red stains on the wooden floors, and the air in the room feels humid. No one is looking at the art anymore. Instead, they are knotted into tight groups, arms slung around one another, their conversations slurred. Five drinks in, Lee leans heavily against Man, who absentmindedly rubs his hand up and down her arm. People start to disband, to say good night, and soon there are only two dozen or so of them left. As if responding to the change in the room, Breton claps his hands and announces that the show is at an end. Man kisses Lee’s cheek and she asks, “What’s next?”

“More drinks, I imagine,” he says, pulling her in closer.

A few final stragglers leave and Breton locks the gallery door. The remaining group moves upstairs to a private space above the gallery. At the top of the stairs stands Soupault, blindfolded and holding a large wooden box. Lee realizes this must be what Claude and Ilse were talking about, the real festivities of the evening.

“Forfeits!” Soupault shouts. Lee almost laughs. She hasn’t played forfeits since boarding school, when she and the other girls would gather after lights-out, toss their few pieces of jewelry into a box, and dare one another to do ridiculous things, like throw eggs at the headmaster’s house or eat rotten food.

The line slows as people decide what to give up. Valuable items—a tiepin, a pocket watch—get cheers; smaller items—a cheap tortoiseshell comb, a pair of dice—get booed. Standing a few people in front of Lee, Tatiana takes off her beautiful hat and places it carefully in the box. A writer whose name Lee can’t remember pulls an ivory fountain pen out of his pocket and tosses it in. Claude pulls a heavy signet ring off her finger and adds it to the collection. Lee rarely wears jewelry and has only a paste clip in her hair, which she drops into the box as she passes Soupault. She waits for people to jeer, but as the line moves forward a few more steps, she hears instead laughter and whoops of approval. They aren’t for her. Lee turns to see Ilse pulling her Leica strap over her head and fumbling at her dress. For a moment Lee thinks she is going to put the camera in the box, but then Ilse unhooks her brassiere, snakes her arms out of its straps, and drops it on top of the pile.

In the upstairs room, everyone sits on the floor in a big circle, Soupault and the box in the middle. A whiskey bottle makes its way around. When it gets to Lee she circles the neck with her lips and tips her head back, loving the earthy burn of the whiskey as it goes down, loving, in a sudden liquor-fueled burst of magnanimity, these people and the lightheartedness of this activity, that she is here drinking with them just as she was doing the other night on the film set. She feels more relaxed, sits with her legs folded casually, her shoes cast off to the side. Man is to her left, Breton is to her right, and when the whiskey moves a few people away from them, Breton reaches into his jacket and pulls out a flask, which he hands to her with a collusive raise of his eyebrows. Lee takes a nip and whatever’s inside the flask is even better than the whiskey.

Soupault looks around the room and then picks up the box and sets it on his lap. He peers inside for a few moments before pulling out a bow tie. “I have here a silk bow tie, two decades out-of-date,” he says to ripples of laughter. “Blue with white stripes, and smelling of a certain someone’s gardenia perfume.” More laughter, and Nusch laughs along with them but then covers her face with her hands.

Paul Éluard, his shirt collar unbuttoned, says, “Mine, of course. What is my forfeit?”

Soupault rubs his chin. “Go to town with Nusch.”

This, too, Lee remembers from when she was younger, when she played this game at a birthday party and had to go to town with the boy from a few farms over, Johnny Whiting. Every time he asked her a question she had to take a step toward him, and he chose the easiest questions he could think of so that he could kiss her sooner, his breath smelling of the cucumber sandwiches they’d just eaten.

Éluard laughs. “That’s too easy.”

“I’m starting us off easy,” Soupault says.

Éluard nods and he and Nusch rise and stand in the middle of the circle about eight feet apart. For a few moments they just look at each other. “Do you like rainy weather?” Éluard asks her.

“Yes,” she says. Nusch is tiny, delicate, dressed all in black with a lace scarf tied in her hair. She stands with her eyes cast down and there is something raw and honest in her voice that sucks the drunken hilarity out of the room. They take a step toward each other.

“Do you like T. S. Eliot?” she asks in a whisper.

“Yes.” They take another step toward each other.

Soupault stands up and claps his hands. “I take it back. This is too easy. I will ask the questions. Paul, do you like Salvador?”

“Not particularly,” Éluard says, and a wave of knowing laughter goes around the room. Neither Éluard nor Nusch moves forward.

“Nusch, do you think Paul is handsome?”

“Yes,” she whispers, and they step toward each other.

“Paul, do you like being in bed with Nusch?”

A pause. “Yes.” Another step. The gap between them is only a foot wide now.

“Nusch, has Paul asked you to marry him?”

Nusch does not answer, but they move the final foot toward each other and then they are kissing, and Paul lifts her off the ground and holds her in the air, and there is an uncomfortable feeling in the room that this isn’t something they should be watching, but then someone whoops and sets everyone to clapping. Éluard puts Nusch down and raises his arms above his head like a boxing champion and then they both sit down in the circle. Lee moves her hand along the floor until it’s touching Man’s, and watches the other couple, who sit with their arms around each other, their obvious mutual attraction setting them apart from the rest of the group. Lee glances at Man and he smiles at her and squeezes her hand.