He reads it and shakes his head, confused. “Where did you get this?”

“Jean gave it to me.”

“Does she want her portrait done?”

“No. Apparently she has a party every year, and she’s looking for an artist to help make it really memorable. Jean can’t do it so he passed it on.”

“Never thought Cocteau would do me any favors,” Man says.

Lee takes the card back from him and returns it to her bag. “I think he’s doing me a favor.”

“Hmm.”

Lee waits for him to say more and when he doesn’t she continues. “Jean gave her my name”—she puts a slight emphasis on the word my—“so hopefully she’ll call soon.”

A smile spreads across Man’s face. “Oh, this is good. This is very, very good. If there’s one thing we can do it’s make this party interesting. I did something like this for the Wheelers once—did I tell you about it? They were having a dinner party and I made sculptures for the table and took film footage when everyone was dancing after dinner.” He stands and wanders around the room as he talks, picking up some of the clutter and organizing it, as he often does when he is agitated. It is the only time he tidies anything.

“We can charge a lot,” Lee says. “Jean says we can name our price.”

“We’ll charge aristocracy prices—that’s what we’ll do.”

Lee laughs. “Ah, aristocracy prices! What’s the going rate for those these days?”

“Enough that I don’t have to sell the Voisin.”

Lee is surprised to hear him say it, even though selling the car makes perfect sense. They barely use it, and just keeping it garaged is an expense they really don’t need. Yet she doesn’t want to lose it. She thinks of the drive to Biarritz, the way the wind whipped off her scarf and left her skin tingling, the countryside unspooling past her, framed in the open car window. She wishes, powerfully, that they could be back there right now, lying in the sun and looking out at the sea. Or sitting in the cabaret, her knees pressed tight against his, their forearms touching on the small table as they share a bottle of wine. But then she realizes she could re-create that feeling right here in Paris, that their happiness is not some irretrievable thing; she can create more of it if she wants to.

She wants to bring it up, to remember Biarritz with him. Just thinking about it eases the tension of the past few weeks, of being away from him on the film set and the fight they should have had after forfeits, the bitterness still simmering inside her. But it’s obvious Man’s head is not in the same place as hers. He squares a stack of magazines on the corner of the desk.

“Also… Arthur Wheeler called this morning,” he says.

Lee waits for him to continue. She has met the Wheelers just once, when Tanja was in town. Arthur does something in business—Man is always vague about exactly where his money comes from—but what Lee does know is that the Wheelers have funded many of Man’s more experimental projects and taken Man on several trips, to Italy and the Côte d’Azur, among other places, where he’s done some of his best work.

“They were hit hard—Arthur’s pulling out of his oil venture. And he’s still on me about making another Emak Bakia.”

“But you told him you don’t want to, right?”

“The conversation was more tangled than that. He was rather distraught, actually. But it’s clear I can’t depend on them anymore, film or no film. It wasn’t even clear if there is funding for more work if I was willing to do it. Which I’m not.”

Man goes over to the far wall and straightens one of the picture frames that gets crooked every time they open or close the door. Lee thinks for the hundredth time that she really should get a little piece of putty and put it behind the frame to keep it steady. There are so many chores like this, and she doesn’t want to do any of them. Sometimes the studio and the apartment exhaust her with their daily requirements, the grind of the mundane. There was none of that in Biarritz, none of it, in fact, on Jean’s film set either, where everything was meant to be transitory. Here, watching Man as he rounds the room and sets things in order, she feels a sudden crushing need to escape. She doesn’t want to talk about the Wheelers or the crash or selling the Voisin.

“Let’s do something fun. Let’s go to the ballet,” she says. “You know I’ve been wanting you to go since I first saw it, and we don’t have anything to do tonight.”

Man shakes his head. “You’re like a child sometimes,” he says, but his voice is kind. “I’m telling you we have no money and you’re saying we should go to a show.”

“Well, why shouldn’t we? We can sit in the back. The tickets aren’t expensive.”

“I don’t sit in the back,” Man says, but after a little grumbling he agrees and they head home to dress.

But after they’ve gotten back to their apartment, Man changes his mind. He’s tired. He doesn’t like dance—she knows that. All he wants is a quiet night with her. He misses her, wants to sit across a table from her and just enjoy a simple meal.

This is not at all what Lee wants—eating together is all they ever seem to do. They have become an old married couple in every sense but the legal one. Well, with the added exception that Man is the only one of them who is old. But she agrees to dinner, because it is not worth fighting him over something so trivial. If she were to force him to go to the ballet, Lee imagines him squirming in his seat, checking his watch as he always does when he is bored. And as it always does, her acquiescence makes Man happy; his mood lifts instantly, lifting Lee’s too.

He takes her hand. “Let’s go to that bistro in the Fourth that I mentioned to you. They have the most delicious roast chicken.”

They debate a taxi but decide to walk, pleased with themselves about this small act of thrift. They walk in silence in the direction of the bistro, a good twenty minutes from their apartment. The wind cuts through Lee’s thin dress under her coat and she can feel the metal in her garter belt go cold against her thighs. Already the lift in her mood is deflating. She can think of nothing to say, and compares how she is feeling now to how she feels when she talks with Jean, how his infectious energy always cheers her. Thinking of Jean makes her think of the ballet, and before she knows it she is thinking of Antonio, of how much she was looking forward to seeing his sets again, to knowing he was up in the rafters behind the stage.

As they walk, Lee feels her face go warm against the cold. She keeps her eyes trained on the sidewalk and does not look over at Man. Nothing has changed. All she is doing is thinking. She used to think about other men all the time, before she was with Man. But the things she is now thinking: Antonio’s cock inside her. Bruises on her legs from his hands. Her makeup smeared, his fingers hooked into her mouth. She feels the imaginings in her bones. If Man were to look at her, there is no doubt he would be able to see it in her face. She keeps her head completely still and stares straight ahead.

“We’ll see the ballet another time,” Man says, even though she hasn’t mentioned it.

Lee sucks in her breath. Has he read her mind? “It’s all right,” she manages to say. “But I think you’d like it.”

“Oh, maybe.” Man’s tone is dismissive. “You don’t know the intricacies of it because you haven’t lived in Paris long enough. Rouché wants the opéra ballet to matter again, so he hires Lifar. Lifar can probably do it. But why start with Prométhée? The music is so lilting, so flippant. I would have thought he would have wanted to make a bigger start. Giselle, maybe. Or something grittier. Le Sacre du Printemps.”

“I don’t know,” Lee says, willing her mind to engage with this change of topic. “All I have to compare it to is what I’ve seen in New York.”

“You don’t need anything to compare it to to be able to gauge its success. It should stand alone. Lifar’s a dancer, and a good one. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into artistry. It’s as if… oh, I don’t know… as if Amélie were to suddenly start taking pictures.”

They have just turned down another street, and his words make Lee stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Are you being intentionally rude to me?” she asks, pulling her arm from his.

Man looks at her with surprise. “What? No! I’m not talking about you at all.”

“So you’re just talking in general terms about a model not being able to be a good photographer.”

Man lets out a little laugh. “Not everything is about you, Lee.”

“Not even the things that are exactly about me?”

Man groans and reaches out to hold her shoulders. “The ballet is probably good. We should see it together. You are a good photographer. I love you. I’m hungry, and tired, and I just want to find this place and sit down with you and relax over a glass of wine.”

They keep walking and walking, and finally Man admits the bistro might have closed down. Ravenous now, they choose another place, fancier probably than Man intended, and once they are seated several waiters fuss around them with wine lists, napkins, and small adjustments to their place settings. They both get chicken—Man has made her crave it—but when it comes it is disappointing: lukewarm and undersalted.

They are quiet while they eat. Lee’s mind swirls. Antonio. Man’s comment about Amélie. She wants to probe him, as if Man is an infected tooth she can’t stop touching with her tongue. Or maybe she wants to shock him—wants, suddenly, for him to know where her mind has been, that he is not everything to her. She takes a bite of chicken and wonders what he would do if he knew what she was thinking on the walk here.