Whitney Scharer - The Age of Light

“So tell him.”

“But then there won’t be a relationship. Man would never—he would never betray me the way I just did him.” Lee feels her eyes prick with tears and swipes at them with the back of her hand.

“Hmm. Then you, Mouse, are a lucky woman.” Jean pats her leg. “Perhaps the best thing is not to think about this anymore, at least not right now. Do you want me to show you the film?”

They go into a room at the back of Jean’s apartment, where the blinds are drawn and a projector is already set up. Together they watch the film from start to finish, and when they get to the part where Lee appears, her eyes closed, gliding across the stage like marble come to life, she sucks in her breath and holds it in as she watches. Jean glances at her and then takes her hand, threading his fingers through hers and squeezing.

“See?” he says when it is over, getting up and shutting off the projector. “Brilliant.”

It is past suppertime, and Lee knows she needs to leave. She feels calmer now, even though she is still unsure what she will do or say when she sees Man. At the door, Jean embraces her and whispers into her hair, “Be well, Mouse,” and she clings to him a little longer than necessary before she leaves.

Man has not left the note in the usual place on the dining room table. He has not left it in the kitchen, or on the little stand by the door. It is in their bedroom, propped on a pillow on the bed beneath his half-finished painting. It’s folded in half, written on the business stationery he got years ago when he was feeling flush, his monogram letterpressed at the top of the page.

Lee stands beneath his picture of her mouth and reads it.

My love,

Do you know your power? How much power you hold over me? I think if you knew you would not hurt me the way you do. You would not promise to commit to me and then leave me constantly wondering, constantly confused. You would not make me a man who needs a promise.

I need to leave town for a few days, maybe longer. I can’t write or paint or photograph when all I think of is you. The only way for me to get anything done is to leave for a while. If you want to write me you can reach me care of Arthur and Rose. I am sorry I am leaving when the Bal is just around the corner, but I’m sure you’ll find a way to do it on your own.

Yours ever and always, M

Lee reads the note again, and then a third time. Does he know? Does it matter? The room feels recently vacated; she has a sudden vision of catching him at the station. In her mind’s eye she imagines it: the race down crowded sidewalks, her hand waving like a frenzied bird as she hails a cab, finding him just as he is about to board the train and shouting his name until he sees her. The scene feels false, ridiculous. In it Lee isn’t covered in the lingering stink of her betrayal.

Lee puts down the letter, goes to the wardrobe, and gets out her dressing gown. Puts it on. Goes into the kitchen and makes a cup of tea. No part of her pays attention to what she’s doing. The apartment is so quiet. On the street beneath their window people chatter, and in the distance is the rising wail of a police siren. Beneath the worry that has gnawed at her all day, Lee feels something different. She will have to do the Bal Blanc on her own. She knows just what she’ll do—the idea she had last night at Drosso’s. The new feeling inside her is so fresh and clean it is inchoate; she cannot yet pin it down with a name.

Days pass in ways that Lee does not remember. She stays in bed; she oversleeps. There is no one there to see her. She drinks espresso on an empty stomach; she eats the last remaining food. Without Man there the apartment is a cavern. The lights are off and still she pulls the covers over her head.

Lying on the mattress Lee can look up behind her and see Man’s painting. She runs her fingers over the thick texture of the dried paint. From this angle her lips look even more like bodies, and Lee wishes powerfully that Man were next to her, that he hadn’t gone away.

The same groove cuts into Lee’s mind until she is sick of thinking. Antonio: he felt like a simple test of her bad behavior, of how far she was willing to go. But now: the sadness she is left with. Lee stretches her arms and legs to the edges of the bed and cannot find the end of her regret.

After a few days, Lee finally has to rouse herself. Get some food, get to work. On the street the sunshine is blinding; she wears dark glasses and pulls her hat down tight. As she runs errands she feels like an actress, better than she ever was on Jean’s set. She wills the muscles in her face to move when she wants to smile, ties a rope around her thoughts and drags them back to the moment at hand. It works, mainly. But at the bakery, in the middle of a transaction, she forgets what she is doing. Other times she has to leave a shop and take deep breaths to calm herself down.

At the studio, when she finally goes back, there is ringing and ringing. At first Lee can’t figure out what it is. Some sort of alarm, a drill? When she realizes it’s the telephone she runs to get it, her voice breathless when she says hello. On the other end of the line is Madame Pecci-Blunt, her voice imperious. Will Man Ray still be coming the next day so she can show him the solarium where the party will be held? Lee fumbles, blurts out that actually, it is she who will be coming, as Man has been called away unexpectedly.

“Ah, you are the assistant?” Madame Pecci-Blunt says.

“Partner.”

“Yes, all right. The one Jean told me about. He said you were talented. But I need you both. I need Man Ray. Everyone knows him. This party has to be exquisite. It has to be the party of the year, the absolute pinnacle of the season. I don’t want just white cake! White plates!” Her voice oozes money, sophistication, her French a waterfall of tinkling vowels.

There is a pause. Lee remembers Jean’s advice, to just let the client talk until it’s clear what she wants. “It’s not about the food, or the plates,” Lee finally says, encouragingly.

“Ah, you are right! These ideas—they are the ideas a child would have. That is why I’m hiring you both. All I know is that the Bal is about magic, transporting the guests to another place entirely. Like a dream.”

“A dream in white. I had some ideas, actually,” Lee says. She begins to describe them and then interrupts herself. “Mimi—do you mind if I call you Mimi?”

“Not at all.”

The woman’s agreement emboldens Lee further, so she continues, her words coming out in a rush as she explains the idea she had when she was talking to Antonio: projected images, words on the floor, on people’s bodies.

“That is good,” Mimi says. “Quite, quite good.” Before long, they have figured out a plan so grand Lee is just as convinced as the woman that it will be the party of the century. The only problem is that Lee doesn’t really know how to do any of it. For that she needs Man, and his equipment. She tells Mimi that he will be back in a few days.

When Madame Pecci-Blunt asks her to clarify the fee, Lee quotes the number she and Man agreed on, a number that feels so high, so outrageous, she half expects the woman to hang up the phone right then. The number is more than the Wheelers offered Man for his next film, more than three months’ rent on the little whitewashed studio on Rue Victor Considérant. But the woman accepts the number without a question, and they agree to meet the next day to go over the details. Lee finds herself wondering if she should have asked for more.

The next afternoon Lee goes to the Pecci-Blunt mansion in the Trocadéro, where the Bal will be held. She brings her notebook, a measuring tape, and a small portfolio of her work, which Mimi doesn’t ask to see. Instead, they walk around the property as if they are old friends. The grounds are astounding; Lee has never seen such wealth up close. In the gardens, everything is laid out tidily and squared off at right angles as if it’s part of a prep school geometry lesson. Each topiary snipped with precision, the winter cabbages and hardy mums arranged in neat formations. Not a petal out of place. Along the paths, pebble mosaics of angular fish leap at forty-five-degree angles out of symmetrical ponds.

It’s all so perfect that as she walks Lee feels the urge to kick out at something, to gash a hole in a box hedge and cover the ground with shredded leaves. Instead, she smiles, accepts Mimi’s offer of tea, which is served in a sitting room whose ceiling is painted sky blue. Delicate porcelain cups, translucently thin at the edges, are filled with cambric liquid made weaker with too much cream. Espresso, the mud and stink of it, is what Lee wants now, but it would be too much for this refined woman’s palate. Lee perches on the edge of a satin-covered settee and lifts her teacup with shaking hands.

After tea, Mimi takes her out a side door to a giant solarium, in which a tiled swimming pool is surrounded by blooming flowers. The air is heavy with the scent of lilies. Lee is enchanted: a winter idyll, here in the center of Paris.

“This is perfect,” says Lee. “We can set up gauze curtains along the perimeter, and project the film on the curtains, and into the water.”

As she says it, Lee can see it, more clearly than she has ever seen anything: couples in white tuxedos and ivory dresses, dancing at the edge of the pool, white-clad waiters weaving their way through the crowd. She sees the way the curtains will billow from the breeze let in through an open window, the images—her images—trembling as if they are alive. And as she and Mimi work out the logistics, Lee fills with such impatience it blots out all her other feelings—her guilt, her anger at Man, her loneliness—and leaves her with one imperative: to get to work. When Mimi smiles with pleasure at Lee’s suggestions, neither of them mentions Man at all.