The song ends and they step away from each other, and as another begins, a man—Aragon, or the writer, maybe; Lee can’t make him out—steps up to Ilse. She looks back at Lee but moves away from her and starts dancing with him.

Lee dances by herself for a while, a lazy shimmy. Somewhere in the room Man is watching her. She twirls around, slowly, and then she sees him, standing off in the corner. Lee goes over to him. “Puttin’ On the Ritz” starts playing, a song Lee finds ridiculous, but she doesn’t care: she dances with Man watching her and she can tell he wants to join her but isn’t sure if she wants him to. Lee isn’t sure herself, but it is so natural to be with him, so when the next song starts, a slower number, she pulls him to her and they start moving together.

They dance for minutes or hours—later she will not remember. Everything is fogged with whiskey, reduced to snapshots of emotions, snippets of disjointed sound. At the end of the night, or practically morning, Lee and Man stumble out of the room. At the doorway leading to the stairs, Ilse blocks their way, smoking a cigarette in a long silver holder. As they push past her, Lee leans woozily into the other woman’s face. She clamps her fingers around Ilse’s arm. “You’re wrong,” Lee says. “I would have worked with you.”

Ilse lifts one slim shoulder. “Perhaps,” she says.

As they descend the stairs, Lee looks back: Ilse above them, her nipples, freed from the brassiere she never put back on, casting pointed shadows through the light linen fabric of her dress. On her face a hard proud smile.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The next morning, after the salon, Lee’s mouth is as dry as cotton batting and her head is pounding. She gets up before Man and sits in the kitchen, gingerly sipping a glass of water. The night comes back in flashes—the paintings in the gallery, Claude’s smoke rings, Man embarrassing her, Nusch and Paul, the feel of Ilse’s hair—and connecting all the fragmented memories is a sick feeling of failure, as if there was a test and Lee didn’t pass it. Of all that happened, it is her exchange with Ilse and Claude that bothers her the most, their view of her as empty, nothing more than Man’s companion.

Lee wants to go back to bed, to crawl under the blankets and pull them up over her head. She wants Man to get up and see what state she’s in and take care of her. Or better yet, she wants to be back in her childhood bed, her father bringing her cambric tea.

But today is the last day of filming, and after another glass of water and a piece of unbuttered toast, Lee musters the energy to get dressed and go to the set. Man still lies in bed; he far outdrank her last night, so it is the kind thing to leave him be, and the truth is she doesn’t even want to talk to him. There is no way they can talk without addressing what happened during forfeits and the fight they almost had afterward. She leaves a note in their usual spot on the table, telling him where she’ll be. Signs it Love, L after a moment’s hesitation.

Filming goes smoothly. They reshoot a final scene in which a guardian angel removes an ace of hearts from a cardsharp’s pocket, and Lee transforms into the statue and walks through fake snow without leaving any footprints. Afterward, as she takes off the complicated costume for the final time, she thinks she might miss it, even though it’s so uncomfortable.

At the end of the day, Lee, Enrique, and a few other cast members stay with Jean until everything is done and it is time to lock up the set. One by one they leave, until finally it is only Lee and Jean who remain. They walk outside and Jean turns the key in the lock, but neither of them is ready to go.

Jean has booked a ticket to Rome, where he says he can focus and get his edits done. Enrique is not going with him. Perhaps the men’s relationship cannot be sustained outside the insular world of the film studio. When Jean says goodbye to Lee, his face looks sad and drawn.

“Take care of yourself, Mouse,” he says.

“Find me when you get back to Paris.”

“Of course. And you will be one of the first to see the film.”

Lee hugs him and is surprised to find tears stinging her eyes. She can’t believe filming took only a few weeks. It feels as though months have passed since she first got there.

“Ah—I almost forgot.” Jean digs around in his jacket pocket until he finds a small white calling card, which he hands to her. Madame Anna-Letizia Pecci-Blunt, it says in an embossed heavy serif font, with an address in the Trocadéro beneath it. “Do you know her?” he asks.

Does Lee know Madame Pecci-Blunt? Everyone knows her, or at least her name. She is one of the richest women in Paris, almost royalty, somehow related to the Pope. “I don’t know her personally, if that’s what you mean.”

“I never know who you are going to know. She has a big party every year. Everyone goes. I saw her out one night recently and she told me this year she is going to do a white ball. The Bal Blanc. All the decorations in white. The guests in white. Everything like a ghost, like purity. She asked me if I would help her make it incredible. I can’t do it, so I gave her your information.”

“Mine?”

Jean makes an impatient noise. “I gave her the address of Man Ray’s studio. But it was you I told her about. When she calls, you should be the one to talk to her. It can be your shoot, if you want it to be. With that in your portfolio you could get more business, start your own studio. I spoke very highly of you.”

“You did? I didn’t even know you liked my work.” When she showed him her photos at the studio a few weeks ago, she felt as embarrassed as she used to feel when showing her work to Man. She didn’t even want Jean to see many of them, and rushed through her portfolio, as if letting him linger on any one image would reveal her as the imposter she always worries she is.

“Mouse, of course I do. You should already know this, but you are good. Are you as good as you’ll be in years to come? Surely not. But you have that something. I had it too, and look at me now. This business—it favors the bold. It doesn’t favor the assistant. You need to find a wealthy patron. It is the only way to do it. The vicomte—he gave me my million francs. Without him, no film.”

This is the first time Lee has heard this figure and she is impressed. But more than that she is happy to know that Jean thinks she’s talented. She says, “What would Madame Pecci-Blunt want me to do? Take photographs?”

“Here is what you do. You meet with her. After proper introductions you ask if you can call her Mimi—it will put you on the same level. You hear what she has to say. She tells her vision. Ghosts, white, purity. You say, ‘What you are saying is so exciting. I have so many ideas—too many to choose from.’ You get her to keep talking until you understand what she wants. These people—they think they want to hire a talented artist, but what they really want is to think they’ve come up with the idea themselves. And then whatever trifling concept she comes up with you take it and make it something worthwhile. Maybe you… I don’t know… put everyone in white and they all have to carry white parasols or wear the same white mask. Or give them white paint and let them paint all over things. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Jean loops his scarf around his neck and kisses her on both cheeks. Lee holds the card in her hand and looks at the ornate font of Madame Pecci-Blunt’s name and tries to picture herself in the meeting Jean described. It is easy to turn it into the fantasy she wants it to be, in which she confidently charms the rich woman over a lavish afternoon tea. Lee likes the fantasy very much. She thanks Jean, gives him a hug, and rests her cheek against the soft fabric of his coat. They stand that way for a while and then Lee watches as Jean walks off toward his home. She heads in the other direction, down Boulevard Raspail, and as she walks she rubs Mimi’s card between her fingers.

The fall air is mild, the sun just beginning to set and turning the light thick and yellow. Lee decides to take a long way home, past the Sorbonne and the Panthéon, its columned facade deep in shadow. When she gets back to Montparnasse she ducks down a side street she’s never been on before, and at the corner of Rue Victor Schoelcher and Rue Victor Considérant there is a small sign in the ground floor window of a narrow building: STUDIO SPACE TO LET: INQUIRE WITHIN. Lee pauses in front of the building and tries to look inside, but it is all in shadow and she can’t really see anything. The windows are large, running almost from the floor to the ceiling, and she imagines what the room might be like, what she could make it look like if it was hers. Like the party she might create, she would paint the studio white: floor, ceiling, walls. She would have a white couch, a white stool. And when the afternoon light came filtering through, the room would glow like a candle and the clients who came for their portraits would be their most beautiful selves, illuminated, the light washing their eyes clear and their skin smooth and creamy. On the door she’d hang a little sign. Simple, small, discreet. Three words: LEE MILLER STUDIO.

She keeps walking, and by the time she gets home the sky is purple with sunset. In the apartment, she finds Man in the bedroom, painting. His hair is wild and disheveled, and before he notices her he bows his head and rakes his paint-stained hands through it. Lee clears her throat and he turns to her, his expression a mix of relief and anxiety.

“I didn’t hear you come in. Is the filming wrapped up?”

“Yes, all done. Jean is leaving for Rome.”