“I want you to get the feeling of it. This is where most photographers run into trouble. You can take the best pictures in the world but if you can’t develop them properly you may as well not bother taking them in the first place.”
Her hand is on the canister, his hand is just above hers, and she casually changes her grip so that the back of her hand brushes against his palm. As soon as she does, his comes down fully on hers, warm, his skin dry and a little rough, and then his hand is all she is thinking about, the closeness of it. It is that simple: first she is not thinking about him, and then she is. She has to shake her head to retrain her attention on what he is saying.
“Pick up the church key and pry the canister open,” he says.
Lee follows his instructions. She has to try a few times before she lines up the key with the canister’s lip, but soon she manages it, the top peeling back with a screech of metal on metal.
“Good,” he says. “Now take the film out and try not to get fingerprints on it. Feel the skinny end? That’s the starting point. You have to cut that piece off, and then hold the film by each end so you can dip it in the trays.”
Lee fumbles in the dark for the scissors. Man moves a bit away from her, giving her room. “I think I did it,” she says. She can hear his breath, smell the woodsy scent of his aftershave now that the smoke has dissipated, and by necessity he is practically hugging her as he helps her, checking her work. It is so intimate—she didn’t realize how intimate it would be. She could so easily turn around and face him, and part of her is curious about what would happen if she did, what it would feel like to really touch him. But the dark is playing tricks on her. What she wants is her pictures, to get them right.
“Excellent,” he says. “Now, start up the metronome, and then dip the film strip into the developer, back and forth, so that it all gets an even amount of time in the solution. A few minutes should do it—I usually count to two hundred and then move to the stop bath.”
Again she follows his instructions, reaches out in the dark for the metronome and sets it ticking, then finds both ends of the film and tries to move it smoothly through the water. Once the film is wet, though, it gets slippery, and as she tries to change her grip the whole strip slithers out of her grasp and down to the ground.
“Oh, damn it!” She is mortified, and if it weren’t dark he would see that her face is crimson.
“It’s all right,” he says, patiently. “Don’t move your feet. The last thing you want to do is step on it.”
“But now it’s probably all covered with dust, and—”
He has squatted behind her and she can hear him fumbling along the floor, his head level with her thighs. Lee stands as still and quiet as she can, willing herself not to move, achingly conscious of where his head is.
“It’s okay. It’s not the worst thing.”
Lee takes a shallow breath. “What’s the worst thing?”
“When you’re commissioned to take pictures of Pablo Picasso and you get what you think are the best shots of your career and then you manage to mix up the developer and stop bath so that not one—not a single picture—is usable. That is the worst thing.”
As he’s talking he has found the film. He stands back up and takes his free hand and rubs it down her forearm until he finds her hand, and the feeling makes her shiver. When he holds her hand for what seems to be a beat too long she stays perfectly still, waiting, before he gives the film back to her.
“What did you do?” she asks.
“Bought the Master a drink at his favorite bar and begged him to let me take pictures of him at his home the next day.”
“Did he let you?”
“Yes, actually. I’ll show you the prints sometime.”
Lee holds the film and begins to dip it back in the tray. The metronome is like another heartbeat in the room with them. She lets out her breath in a rush.
“Almost there. Another minute, maybe, then move the film to the stop.”
As she does it he rests his hands on hers again. It is less startling now. She lets him guide her, and the strip moves smoothly in their grasp. It is only a few short minutes, but it feels longer. When they get the film into the final water bath, the metronome has stopped and the room is silent. “Excellent work,” Man says. In the dark, Lee smiles.
Without thinking too much about it, she flails her hand around until she finds his, and gives it a squeeze. “Thank you.”
“It’s nothing—you’re here to learn, as well as work.”
“I know…but still. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he says. His voice is quiet and she likes the way it sounds, raspy around the edges. She wants to say something more, but nothing comes to her, and eventually he says, “Ready for the light?”
“Ready,” she says, but she’s not ready at all. She wishes they could stay in that darkroom for hours. As Man turns, she could swear he brushes against her unnecessarily. He pulls back the curtain and opens the door, and she is startled by the sudden brightness. It calls to mind emerging from the cinema after a film, the confusion of finding the day just as she left it.
In the bright hallway light, she looks at Man. There are grooves on either side of his mouth she has never noticed before, and when he drops his head for a moment, she notices the neat way he has parted his hair. She pictures him standing in front of his bathroom mirror, going through his morning routine. There is something so private and vulnerable about the white line in his scalp, and she goes warm with a rush of emotion and moves her gaze to the floor.
“I have a few more rolls to develop,” she says to the carpet.
“Yes. Do you want my help with that too?” His tone is all business, and he shakes his watch down his wrist and glances at its face.
She doesn’t know what to think. He seemed so eager to help, and now he seems eager to get away from her.
“No, I can do it.”
“Good. I have to—I’ll be in the office if you need me.” He turns and disappears down the hallway.
Lee goes back into the developing closet. Part of her wishes she asked Man to help her. She thinks of his body behind hers. There is something so electric about him, a coiled energy that animates him and makes people—herself included—want to be close to him. But he is not interested in her. If there is one thing she is good at, it’s telling when a man is interested, and—with the exception of bringing her the hot toddy—Man has shown none of the signs she is used to.
Lee peels open the next roll of film and then dips the film in the developer in a rhythmic back and forth motion. When she has finished all of her rolls, she turns on the overhead light and holds up the strips to it. A few of the images at the beginnings and ends seem underdeveloped, but she counts at least five or six that have come out. There is her lake picture, the picture of the woman’s hand, all the images reversed so the duck is a white blob on black water and the woman’s nails are dark spots against the brilliant white of her hair. Lee doesn’t yet know if they are good, but right now she only cares that they are hers.
She hangs up the film on the clothesline to dry and is surprised to see that it is already five o’clock. The day has gone by quickly. As she goes back through the studio and into Man’s office, she decides she will ask him to get a drink with her, to celebrate this small accomplishment, the first photos she’s developed herself. Why not? But the office is empty and so is the parlor. Lee’s giddiness seeps out of her like a pinpricked balloon. She so wanted to share this feeling with someone. Perhaps Man has just gone outside for a cigarette.
To pass the time she investigates the books in the library cabinet. There are dozens of literary and art journals, a shelf with a matched set of classics that she feels certain Man has never read, a few novels. There is even an Italian edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which she has heard whispered about but is shocked to see Man owns. She is half tempted to thumb through it to find the dirty bits but then imagines how she would feel if he saw her.
Instead, she lies down on the couch and stares at the ceiling. There have been many men in Lee’s life. More than she would admit in pleasant company, more than she has even admitted to her close friends. When she was fourteen, she met a boy named Harry at the bakery in downtown Poughkeepsie. She was buying rolls for Sunday dinner, he was standing behind her in line, he had soft brown eyes fringed with black lashes. Their interaction didn’t mark the first time she knew she had power over men, but it was the first time she consciously made use of it, and she felt no embarrassment when she asked him if he wanted to meet her outside the grounds of her school the next day at lunchtime. With Harry she found that the flirting she’d read about in dime novels actually worked, so she bit her lip and fluttered her eyelashes and gently placed her hand on his forearm as they walked, and she told him that he seemed strong. They went to an abandoned hayloft in the woods behind her school and she liked the feeling of his lean body pressed against the length of hers. She touched him everywhere, curious, but also oddly detached, as if she were floating somewhere above their two bodies, observing herself, saying, This is what a boy’s stomach feels like, this is how his hand feels when it is running up and down my back. They did nothing more than pet but the memories stuck with her all the same.
Lee waits almost an hour for Man to come back. Finally, feeling too keyed up to lie still any longer, she heads out on her own.
There is a bar a few blocks away called Le Bateau Ivre, and the building looks like its name: squat and fat and listing to one side like a man who can’t hold his liquor. Man has mentioned it to her. It’s one of his favorite places, but she tells herself she goes there with no hope of seeing him, that she is choosing it out of convenience more than anything. It has six outdoor tables unoccupied in the winter chill, and inside is empty of patrons too. It was decorated decades ago to look like a pleasure yacht, and Lee climbs the nickel-plated spiral staircase to the second floor, where the bartender, a rail-skinny woman in a gray dress and black apron, sits at the bar with a glass of wine.
Lee sits down a few seats away and takes off her hat. She lays her Rollei on the counter and runs her fingers over it, a comforting habit.
“A drink?” the woman asks.
“Pernod.”
Rousing herself from her stool, the woman moves behind the bar and bends into the icebox and fills a small glass to the brim with cracked cubes before pouring the viscous liquid over it. The ice pops as it begins to melt.
Lee takes a long swallow, the mix of cold liquid and hot licorice a familiar and pleasant burn.
The glass was stored in the icebox and as Lee sits there she cuts patterns in the frost on its surface with her fingernail. Her elation over her pictures has dissipated. When she imagined coming to Paris, she envisioned an immediate ascent into the bohemian circles her father had always warned her about. She thought it would be more open than New York, more welcoming. But here she is, still alone.
The bartender has been staring at her rudely the entire time, and finally says, “You look familiar. Are you an actress?”
“No. I work nearby. I’m a photographer. I’m actually studying with someone. Man Ray. He comes here sometimes.”
“Ah! Of course.” The bartender’s demeanor changes. “We all know him. Lillet with a slice of orange.”
“I guess so.”
“But he is photographing you, no?”
“No, I’m his assistant.”
The woman laughs. “And what does Kiki think of that?” she says.
“Kiki?” Lee asks, but even as she says the name aloud she knows who it is: the K of the ledger.
The bartender laughs again, louder, and then shouts something to the kitchen behind her in French too rapid for Lee to understand. A shout comes back, and then a loud rendition of a chanson.
“Who is Kiki?” the bartender asks. “How can you know Man Ray and not know Kiki?”
Lee doesn’t respond. The woman has made her feel embarrassed, as if here again, even in this one small slice of Paris she has fit herself into, she doesn’t quite belong.
The man who has been in the kitchen comes out, and they begin singing the chanson together, adding some sort of bawdy dance. The bartender shakes her shoulders and shimmies back and forth, and the man sticks out his tongue and leers at her until they both fall against the bar, laughing loudly.
The man turns to Lee, holding up his arms and saying, “You can catch our next show at the Jockey on Saturday night. Hortense and Pierre of Montparnasse!,” and then he returns to the kitchen, still chuckling.
The bartender says, “Don’t mind us—we just saw Kiki perform a few nights ago.”
“She’s a dancer?” Lee remembers the tailor fees, the milliner.
“You really don’t know her? She’s a dancer, a muse, a singer. She’s everything. Some say she’s the most beautiful woman in Paris. She’s been with Man Ray for years now. Treats him horribly from what we hear. But she can treat people however she wants—that’s just how it is.”
Lee nods, picks up her Pernod, and goes over to a table in the corner where she can look down at the street below. She has left midconversation but she doesn’t care if she is being rude.
So this is the mysterious K. Some sort of beautiful chantey singer. And with Man, for years. Lee wonders if Kiki modeled for him, wonders if things would have gone differently if she, Lee, agreed to be his model the one time he asked her. He hasn’t mentioned it again, and all of a sudden Lee wants him to notice her, to want her. His hands on hers, his body behind her in the dark. What if she turned around in the darkroom, put her lips near his? Would he have kissed her?
Lee orders another drink, and then another, sipping each so slowly that a few hours pass before she is done. As she sits there, staring out at the street below, the bar fills up around her. Each time someone new comes up the stairs a part of her expects it to be Man. Instead, more and more strangers. Women with rolled stockings and Eton crops. Men in jackets with wide lapels and homburgs cocked just so. They come in pairs, in groups, they sit close to one another at tables so their shoulders touch, and they do not notice anything beyond their own circles.
Just then a man ascends the spiral stairs and walks straight for the bar. He has a thin mustache, a gray tweed suit. He sets his hat crown side down on the counter, and as he looks around the room he spins it with his fingers, like a top. His hair is slicked down so perfectly it reflects the line of lights from across the room. Lee thinks he is American from his tie, wide with orange and red checks. A Parisian man would never wear something that loud. She makes eye contact with him, not dropping her gaze until he does so first. He turns to the bar and speaks to the bartender, but as soon as he has ordered, his gaze is back on Lee, who tilts her head at the empty chair next to her and cocks her eyebrow up at him. He smiles, nods, walks over after getting his drink.
“These seats are much more comfortable than the bar,” she says to him in English.
“They do appear so. Are you waiting for someone?” She was right—he is not Parisian. But his accent is British, not American, and up close he has that apologetic half smile she has always found so attractive in Englishmen.
“I’m waiting for you,” she says, brass bold.
“I doubt that very much.” He pulls out a chair, waits for her to speak again before he sits down.
“Oh, no, really I am. None of these Frenchmen will talk to me.” Lee gives him a flirty pout.
“I think they might be intimidated by you.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. You’re the best-looking girl I’ve seen since…well, maybe ever.”
Lee laughs. She feels her good mood, the mood she was in when she developed her photos, come back over her.
She leans toward him. “I used to be a model.”
“I’m not surprised. What are you now?”
“I’m a girl who hasn’t had a glass of champagne since I left New York.”
He throws back his head and laughs so she can see the fil
lings in his molars. With one quick tip of his hand he finishes his drink and lifts his finger in the air to signal the bartender, who comes over and gives the two of them a sharp look.
“Jouët split,” he says, but when Lee looks disappointed, he says, “Full bottle, please.”
The bottle comes in a nice silver stand that sits next to their table, and the champagne bubbles are like kisses tickling Lee’s throat on the way down. The man’s name is George, he is from Dorset, and he is in Paris for three days on business. He is a financier, which means nothing to Lee, and she lets him prattle on about his work as she used to let men do night after night in New York City. He has green eyes and a tender-looking mouth, and if she charmed him when he was sober she charms him much more the drunker he gets. Soon the sun has set and they are both sitting with their arms on the table, their elbows touching.
“Can I tell you something?” she asks him, stifling a small burp from all the champagne.
“Anything.”
“I haven’t kissed anyone since I got to Paris.”
“Isn’t that a crime of some sort?”
“I think so. City of Love and all.”
“Is that what they call it? I thought it was the City of Light.”
“Maybe it is. But that doesn’t change the fact that no one’s kissing me.”
George clumsily picks up their latest champagne bottle and fills both their glasses again, spilling just a little on her arm. He says quietly, “I come here every few months or so, and for me this has been more like the City of Sadness. I’m always walking about all by myself, mooning around and wishing I had someone to share it with.”
“The City of Sadness—that’s how I feel too.” They stare at each other and he gives her a small smile and she feels a rush of power. She licks her lips, lightly, and takes a sip of champagne.
“I’m tired of mooning about,” George says, and Lee leans toward him as she wishes she had done with Man, and finds his lips with hers, and they are so warm, and they are kissing in the bar, across the small table, their tongues hot and wet against each other, until they bump the table and the champagne flutes fall to the ground with a spectacular smash. They both gasp at the same time and look toward the bartender like two children caught stealing from the candy jar. George puts a wad of bills on the table and they leave as fast as they can, their arms around each other, and he holds her hand as she goes down the spiral staircase, as if they are executing some sort of quick and elegant dance.
The Age of Light Page 9
