The Age of Light

by Whitney Scharer

  Lee has not spent much time alone in this apartment. It is unsettling. She misses Man, his charged presence. Without him here, the rooms have a dimness to them. She notices dust clotted in the corners, the repeats in the chinoiserie wallpaper that don’t line up at the edges, the pattern of cherry blossom branches breaking where the paper has peeled away from the wall.

  Where is he? She remembers one of the pictures Man showed her of Kiki, her back to the camera and face in profile, imagines the two of them together now, his fingers tracing Kiki’s spine in a delicate curving pattern. Her breasts, pale and swinging, Man’s square workman’s hands kneading them like dough. Without meaning to she imagines Kiki flung facedown on Man’s bed, her hands tied behind her and his body between her legs. The thought makes Lee jittery. She can actually feel the espresso coursing through her. As she moves around the space, three mugs corralled by the handles in one hand, a stack of plates balanced on her forearm, the light from a window hits a framed picture at just such an angle that she can see herself mirrored there—her dress wrinkled, her hair dried to a spoiled snarl—and the sight of her disheveled reflection depresses her, sadness coming in a wave so sudden and strong it almost knocks her over. Lee sets down the dishes and drops into a chair.

  What has she done? What if Man is truly angry at her? Without him, what does she have? She has done nothing to create a life apart from him. She wants to crawl into bed, yield to the sadness, wait for Man to comfort her when he gets home. Whenever that will be.

  Or she can leave. Lee has always been good at solving problems by leaving, ducking out of parties she no longer wants to be at without saying goodbye, moving across an ocean to get away from a job she no longer enjoys. If she leaves, maybe she can stave off the sadness that threatens to engulf her.

  In the bedroom Lee fixes her hair. Pulls on a different dress, puts a dark slash of maroon lipstick on her lips and hangs drop earrings on her ears. She does it all quickly, no wasted motion, and as she leaves the apartment she lets the door shut with a crash. The heels of her oxfords clack against the pavement as she walks away.

  The film studio is in chaos when Lee arrives. Jean is behind the camera in the middle of a scene, the main actor shirtless onstage and pounding his chest in apparent agony. Twenty or thirty people rush from place to place and none of them even glance at Lee as she stands at the threshold and takes it all in. Jean shouts “Arrêtez!” and the actor relaxes, cracking his knuckles and rolling his head around in a lazy circle. Jean approaches him and starts talking excitedly.

  “You’re the poet,” Jean says, holding on to the actor’s wrists and shaking them. “This is your blood. You must feel it. On the film I see none of this. I see ptthttttht.” He makes a noise like a balloon losing its air and then stares at the actor with a hopeful expression. “We try it again, no?”

  “Sure,” the man says. He rolls his head back and forth again, stretching so far that the tendons pop out in his neck. He has dark eyes and sandpapery stubble. He hitches up his trousers and lets them settle back down on his hips while Jean watches him, an intent look on his face.

  “Here’s what I want,” Jean says. “You are living in complete solitude. In this moment I want you to be understanding that what you stole from your childhood you cannot get back from destiny. Do you understand?”

  They go through the scene three more times. Lee thinks the actor is straining to be authentic, but perhaps she does not fully understand the difference between still photography and this newer medium. She wants to make the actor take a few breaths, to slow down; if Man were shooting, he would tell him to forget there is a camera there at all, to picture himself alone in a calm, green field. Jean does none of this. The more keyed up the actor gets the more tensely Jean responds, the muscles flexing in his arm as he winds the film with the crank.

  Finally, after the third time through, Jean seems satisfied. “Good. Fifteen minutes and we begin again,” he calls, and the actor and all the other people who are rushing around move away from the stage. The room quiets. Jean goes to a nearby table and lights a cigarette, inhaling and then letting the smoke out slowly, so that it curls up around his nose like a gray mustache.

  Lee stays where she is, leaning against a post at the edge of the room.

  “Jean,” she says.

  He looks around, notices her. A smile spreads across his face.

  “Ah, my Calliope! Your keeper let you out of the cage.”

  Annoyance flares in her. “There’s no cage.”

  Jean nods. “Good. Have you come to work, to start today? Or just to see what there is to see?”

  Lee looks at the stage, the black floor scuffed and dirty. The simple walls, white plaster with a single fake window. In the center stand a small wooden table and two chairs. What will Man think when he finds out she is here?

  Two hours later they’ve cobbled together what they need to make Lee’s costume. It is meant to look like the hard shell of a woman’s torso, wider than Lee’s own, with the arms cut off at the elbows to resemble Greek statuary. This they drape with a white cloth like a toga so that she is covered entirely from the neck down. She cannot sit or move her arms, which are strapped to her sides with thick cord. The fabric is covered with a stiffening compound, painted on in several coats with a wide brush and left to harden. Lee itches and sweats inside it. Jean and three other men gather around to discuss her. They take a large sponge and coat her face in white stage makeup, layer after layer, and Jean runs back to look at her through the lens and then returns, muttering that it isn’t good enough, it isn’t statue-like enough, it isn’t right. Soon they decide to try the compound on her face and hair, and instruct her to stay completely still as they apply it.

  “It’s burning,” Lee tells them, her jaw immobilized so that she has to force the words out through her teeth.

  “It will stop,” Jean tells her. This is not at all what she has been picturing. Where is the gold leaf, the radiance?

  By the time the compound is dry, the burning is gone, except for Lee’s tender cheek, which becomes the part of her body that she focuses her attention on so as not to feel all the other parts that are aching. The main actor, Enrique, is called over. He and Jean and the stagehands stand around discussing her as if she is a prop, and she can feel irritation heating her up inside the costume so that she starts to sweat with aggravation as well as discomfort.

  “It’s the folds in the fabric. They aren’t right,” Enrique says. “They’re not hanging the way marble hangs.”

  The men move around the room looking for something they can use, and an Italian stagehand comes over and starts describing something, gesturing as if he is stirring cake batter in a bowl. Then there is butter and sugar and an actual bowl, and the man stirs it up for them and they spread it with a knife along the folds of Lee’s outfit. It smells good, like shortbread baking in the oven.

  Another hour passes. Still the men aren’t done with her. They try her out in various poses on the stage, make her walk so that the bottom half of her body appears to be gliding, but Jean isn’t satisfied. Lee grows more and more uncomfortable and soon she desperately needs to use the lav, but there is nothing she can do until it’s time to take off the costume.

  “She’s still a woman,” Jean says, disappointed.

  Of course she is. What is it that they want from her? Lee is used to pleasing men when they point cameras at her. She walks again across the stage, not lifting her feet from the floor, but it still isn’t right. Her whole body aches. Tension coils in her neck and shoulders and the heat of her own trapped skin oppresses her. She has an almost irresistible urge to move her arms, to scratch, to crouch down, to crack open the stiffened fabric and get free.

  Then Lee remembers a scene from one of Man’s movies that she saw recently, made before he gave up on film entirely. In it he has Kiki lying down, staring up at the camera, and then, when she closes her eyes, painted eyes appear on her lids. She moves to the center of the stage and closes her eyes, knowing th
at this is what they need—her blindness—and then she moves tentatively across the floor, unseeing and ghostly.

  Jean loves it, and when he comes to adjust her costume one final time she tells him through clenched teeth about Man’s idea to paint the eyes on Kiki’s closed lids. A slow, competitive smile spreads across his face. He gets out an eyebrow pencil and she can feel its pressure through her closed lids. Lee opens and closes her eyes once to show him the effect and leaves them closed for the rest of the day’s filming.

  With her eyes closed, the power shifts. Lee suddenly feels as if she has gained control. The men in the room cease to matter. She is separate from them. She walks when they tell her to walk, shifting her body to face things she cannot see, but they are nothing more than sounds to her. After a while she loses her ability to distinguish where the sounds are coming from, everything in the room distorted and murky as if they are all trapped in a giant fishbowl.

  And then the tension eases and she floats out of her aching body, as she has done so many times when her picture was taken. But this time she doesn’t use her wild mind; she stays in the moment. Eyes closed, she watches herself glide across the room, while also still seeing the play of light and shadow across her eyelids from the shifting of the stage lights and the dark spots of the other actors moving past her. And then Lee can’t feel her body at all, but she can see it there, under the plaster, can see how powerful she will be when she brings the stone to life on-screen.

  When the bright lamps are turned off for the day, Jean comes up to Lee and moves her to a chair, where he and a stagehand begin getting her out of the costume. They remove the armor and the cord that holds down her arms. When they are done, she stretches her arms over her head and almost gasps at the pure pleasure of full movement. And then Jean places his hands on the sides of her face and pushes gently until the makeup cracks and he can begin peeling the layers of compound and batter off her like an eggshell. He does this slowly, almost tenderly, and when he is done he gets a big cloth and wipes away as much of what remains as he can.

  As they all leave for the day, she tells Jean she is going to stop by Man’s studio, and he and Enrique offer to walk her there. The men are subdued, but as they walk, Lee feels more and more alive. The day has changed her. Everything about it—the crush and bustle of activity on the set, the frenetic energy—was so different from a photo shoot, so much more alive.

  At first Lee walks a bit ahead of them, but then Enrique moves next to her. “Have you acted before?” he asks. “I’ve never seen you.”

  She shakes her head no.

  “You did great. It’s batty the things Jean makes people do.”

  Lee laughs, but already the agony of the costume feels like a distant dream, and what remains is a strange feeling she can barely articulate, as if her emotions have experienced the equivalent of a slap that has brought them, like blood, to the surface.

  The air is still, and in it hangs the odor of decaying leaves on the wet earth, rubbish bin fires, the yeasty scent of bread and the sweet rot of old vegetables from the restaurants and bakeries they pass. Lee realizes she is ravenous: she cannot stop thinking about food, a thick veal stew, perhaps, and a jammy red wine to wash it down. She has cake batter in her hair and her dress is smeared with plaster dust and stage makeup, but she doesn’t care. As she walks she swings her arms back and forth. Jean glances at her occasionally and smiles.

  “We are lucky to have her, no?” he says to Enrique as they wait to cross the street, watching her as she twists her body to wring the last stiffness out of it.

  Enrique nods and gives a terse smile. He is just as intense as he was during the filming, and he seems almost angry at Jean in a way that doesn’t make sense to Lee.

  They reach Man’s studio, and the familiar sight of his door with its simple brass knocker sets her stomach fluttering—whether from anticipation or trepidation she isn’t sure.

  Jean says, “Lee?,” and she realizes he has been talking to her. “We’ll see you tomorrow?” he asks, and Lee nods yes.

  The men leave and Lee stands on the stoop for a few moments. Man is inside, or he is not inside. She doesn’t know which would be worse. She opens the door and lets a crack of light into the darkened hallway.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Inside, the air is still and quiet. Lee climbs the stairs to the second floor. First into the parlor, then the office. Man is not there. Her stomach grows nervous, a feeling stronger than her hunger. The studio is dark and shadowed, the camera lurking in the corner like a giant sleeping animal.

  Lee considers running home to look for him, but as she walks back toward the darkroom she sees that the amber warning light is lit beside the door.

  Triple tap. He doesn’t respond. She goes to knock again and as she does Man pulls the door open. He stands holding a wet contact sheet and at first he doesn’t really look at her. But then his gaze flicks to her face and he notices her appearance. Brushing past her to take the print over to the table, he says, “Instead of coming home you slept at a glue factory?”

  It is true: she must look very strange. Lee raises her hands to her hair and feels the cake batter crusted there, looks down at her clothes, smeared with plaster dust.

  “I was at—”

  He cuts her off. “Why didn’t you tell me where you were going? You could have been anywhere. With another man. How was I supposed to know?”

  Her own anger snaps to match his. “Well, I didn’t feel much like talking to you after you ran to Kiki when she slapped me in front of everyone.”

  “I had to get her under control. When she gets like that—you have no idea.”

  “You’re right: I have no idea. And I don’t want to. I can’t believe you were with a person like her for ten years.”

  “By the time she was calm you were gone. Gone! I had no idea where you were.”

  Lee throws out her arms in a defiant gesture. As she does it she can smell herself, batter and plaster and the sweat under it from the hours of filming. “Well,” she says, feeling wobbly, out of control, “I didn’t realize I had to tell you where I was every minute of every day as if I were a child.”

  “A child. So then I’m your father? I wouldn’t think you’d want to bring your father into this.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  Man pauses and seems to consider his words. “You’re being ridiculous. You and I both see the difference between knowing your every move and having you never come home.”

  “For all I know you never came home either.”

  “That’s because you weren’t at home.”

  Lee makes a sound that is half growl and half sigh. “Jean took me to his house and I slept in his guest bedroom.”

  “Jean? You and Jean are on first-name terms already?”

  Lee’s stomach growls audibly and she crosses her arms over it. “He asked me if I wanted to be in a movie he’s making. He took care of me.”

  “Lee, not every man can want you. Let the homosexuals alone.” Man smiles at her as if he is being funny, and his smile fills her with rage.

  “I’m going to be in his film,” Lee says. “I won’t be coming to work here. For a week, maybe a little more.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “It’s a week! And he’ll pay me.”

  “I mean you can’t work for him. Cocteau—he’s such an unctuous little sycophant. His politics are anathema to what I’m doing. Tristan can’t stand him, André can’t stand him—I’m not alone in this…”

  Lee wants to push Man and see how far she can make him go. “But that’s exactly the problem: you don’t like him. It’s your art. But I’m not you.”

  Man rubs a stiff spot in his neck. “You’re not not me.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” As always happens when she is angry, Lee feels her eyes well with tears. There is a chair near her and she slumps into it, rubs her forehead, and watches plaster flake off onto the floor.

  Man lifts up his chin. In a sm
all voice, he says, “Last night—when you didn’t come home—I realized things have changed between us. Those things I said to you about jealousy, when we were talking about Kiki—that’s how I felt when I was with her, but it’s not how I feel with you. I need more from you. I’m no longer—I can’t be happy, can’t be with you unless I have some sort of commitment from you.”

  “You need more.” Lee stares up at him.

  “You want to know what I did last night? After you left, I put Kiki in a cab and sent her home. I didn’t want to spend another minute with her—all I could think about was you. Do you know what you’re doing to me? I’m not like this. I’m not this sort of person. And I went home and I sat in the kitchen and I waited for you and I waited and waited and you never showed up. And I imagined terrible things—” Here his voice breaks, and she can see him cross his arms tighter to keep from trembling. “I imagined you hurt, or with someone else, and I couldn’t stand it. I truly could not stand the idea of you with someone else.”

  “I wasn’t with someone else, I told you—”

  He stops her. “It doesn’t matter. I just can’t ever have you be with someone else. I need you to agree to that…or…”

  Lee stands up and crosses her arms, suddenly cold. “Or what? I don’t really know what you mean.” She turns away from him. “I need a drink.”

  She walks through the office and into the parlor and goes over to the bar cart and pours a glass of Scotch. Man follows her and she hands him the glass and pours herself another. She holds her glass tight and rubs her fingers over the etched design on its surface. When Man speaks again his voice is much steadier.

  “Commit to me and you can work on this film,” he says. “That’s what I want. That’s the way it has to be.”