The Age of Light

by Whitney Scharer

  George takes photos of her dressed in Paquin, dressed in Chanel. She is zipped into bias-cut dresses that cling at her waist and puddle elegantly on the floor around her feet. When Lee expresses admiration for a particularly lovely Vionnet, white linen with eye-shaped geometric embellishments, it arrives at her apartment door at the shoot’s end, the box tied with a bow and a card that says Compliments—G.

  George is a consummate professional, fastidious, laboring over a shot long after Man or Lee herself would have called it a success. He is fussy but not to a detrimental degree. His shots are clean-lined, modern; his style perfectly matches the current mood in fashion. It is why Lee is a successful model for him. She feels—as she felt in New York when she began her career—lucky to be living at a time when her beauty is the right beauty. Framed illustrations from years past hang on the Frogue office walls—wasp-waisted girls dripping with frippery—and Lee thanks the Lord she wasn’t born three decades earlier.

  Some of the pictures they take of Lee are reproduced in American Vogue as well, and before long she gets a letter from her father about them. Lee has barely been in contact with him since his visit—she has been trying Man’s approach of not reaching out and finds she barely misses him. His letter is full of praise for her modeling spreads. He says he’s glad she’s working again and that he always thought she was so beautiful and talented. Before it would have bothered her—she’s been working at her real work: making photographs—but she feels very little when she reads his words. Something shifted when he visited; he has lost his power over her. She puts his letter in her handbag and doesn’t respond.

  There is a model with whom George often pairs her. His name is Horst P. Horst and he looks so much like Lee that he could be her brother. He’s tall, lean, with clear blue eyes and blond hair that falls in a perfectly coiffed wave over his forehead. Like Lee, Horst is training to be a photographer and wants to be taking the photos instead of modeling. As Man is for Lee, George is for Horst, and often during a shoot the two of them will work together on an image, the air crackling with sexual tension. Lee just watches—amused, on the periphery and glad of it.

  Though Lee doesn’t yearn to be taking the fashion stills, she does bring her Rollei, capturing images she finds behind the scenes. A row of shoes, their laces undone and tongues lolling, looking for all the world like a line of smiling mouths. A crying woman on the telephone in the hallway, her mascara running in black rivulets down her cheeks. When Lee develops the pictures later, she feels almost as though she is getting away with something, stealing ideas and beauty from her place of employment.

  One evening after a shoot, when they are lingering in the lobby, Horst invites Lee to join him and George for dinner, and though she usually says no, this time she agrees and asks if she can invite Man.

  Lee calls the studio and they arrange the meeting time and place. Before they leave the office George crooks his finger at Lee and Horst and leads them back to one of the closets, and they each pick out something to wear to dinner. Lee chooses an aquamarine chiffon she modeled earlier, backless with an embroidered halter neck. Horst hands her a silvery fox fur stole and jeweled heels and both men match their pocket squares and ties to her. Outside the building one man takes her right arm and the other her left. The fur is soft against Lee’s bare arms and she has never felt more lovely.

  For once, she thinks, Parisians are looking at her—it just takes two escorts and a Schiaparelli original to break through their snootiness. Man is waiting outside the restaurant when they arrive. They spot each other from a distance, and she likes seeing him watch her as she promenades down the sidewalk. When their trio is just a few feet from Man he steps forward and puts his arm around Lee’s waist, kissing her possessively and running his hand up her bare back.

  “Doesn’t she look ravishing?” asks George, and Man nods in agreement, staying close by her side as he shakes George’s hand and goes through introductions with Horst.

  “An honor,” Horst says, “an absolute honor to meet you. Your work inspires me.”

  “Is that so?” Man’s tone is falsely modest.

  “God yes. Your fashion shots—especially your earlier work, the Vogue work from twenty-five, twenty-six. I’ve actually tried to re-create some of them on my own just to see if I can get the lighting right.”

  Lee knows that Horst’s words are the wrong ones—referencing Man’s older work rather than his current projects always feels to him like an insult, and he’s never pleased when people use his ideas—but of course there is no way for Horst to know this.

  “And I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to be working with this beauty,” Horst continues, cocking his head at Lee. “You must spend half your time fighting off other desperate suitors.”

  Man gives Horst a strained smile, and Lee can tell he’s already made up his mind not to like him. She pulls Man closer and bends and kisses his cheek. “I can fight them off myself just fine, thank you,” she says, and she can feel Man relax against her as the other men laugh with more amusement than the statement deserves.

  They go inside and when the waiter comes to their table they order escargot, deviled quail eggs, and hearts of palm, which they wash down with pastis and, when they have drunk the pastis, a bottle of Riesling, which Horst insists is the best wine to drink before dinner.

  Now that they are seated, Man is charming. He likes Hoyningen-Huene, likes trading stories with him and discussing technique. The two men are soon trying to outdo each other with stories of strange clients and botched photo shoots. Man tells the story of taking Hemingway’s portrait—even fashion photographers like a story about a celebrity—and Horst leans across the table to hear him better.

  “Tell me,” Horst says. “What is he like? I liked his latest book very much.”

  Man gives a knowing, dismissive shrug. “It was six or seven years ago, I think, and he was really a nobody still. Gertrude Stein asked me to do his picture. Said he was the real thing. She was always asking me to take pictures of her artist friends back then. He shows up half an hour late for a one-hour shoot, and rings the bell about a dozen times. I go down to greet him and he’s leaning against the doorframe like a drunkard with this huge white bandage wrapped around his head.” Man circles his own head with his hand to show what he means. “I ask him what the bandage is for. He says a skylight broke and fell on him. It seemed like a bizarre excuse to me, but what do I care if he’s a lying drunkard? Some of the best portraits I’ve taken are of drunks.” Everyone at the table laughs. “So we go upstairs to the studio. He’s not weaving, doesn’t smell like whiskey, but when I get him situated for the portrait I ask him to take off the bandage and he refuses. I tell him I’ll turn him to the side so no one will see the cut. He says no again. Instead, he takes this little triangular felt hat out of his jacket pocket and unfolds it and sets it on his massive head, looking pleased with himself. It doesn’t cover the bandage at all. But I think, no matter. No one but Gertrude Stein knows who he is, so if he wants a picture of himself looking like a leprechaun with a head injury, so be it.” Man pauses and takes another sip of his wine. “In the end I rather liked that portrait of him, actually.”

  “And then he published The Sun Also Rises,” Lee prompts.

  “Yes, and they used my photo of him in the Atlantic Monthly review. Portrait of the writer! He doesn’t even have his shirt buttoned.”

  “It’s a good picture, though,” Lee says. “Hard to take a bad picture of Ernest Hemingway.”

  Man gives her a look.

  “Agreed,” Horst says.

  “Oh, I almost forgot the best part,” Man continues. “When it comes time to pay me, he insists he wants to give me a painting. Says he doesn’t have any money, but he has this little Picasso that Stein told him to buy. Brings it over personally. He doesn’t seem to understand that I know Picasso. Like he’s letting me in on this secret—a real investment opportunity.”

  “Did you take the painting?”

  “Of course I did
. Wouldn’t you?”

  Lee looks at Man as he holds forth and she feels a rush of affection for him, looks around the table at George and Horst, dressed in their borrowed evening wear, and thinks to herself that this is how she always imagined life in Paris. Delicious food, wine in elegant glasses, men around her treating her like delicate glassware herself, slim and radiant and special. Man has his arm resting on the back of her chair, and every once in a while he runs his hand up and down her arm, and it is warm and comforting against her skin. And she thinks, with a feeling of wonder, that her life is like a giant turning crystal, each surface catching the light at a different time. Who would have thought that going back to modeling would be a good idea? But it is making her happy. It is her own thing, not Man’s, and it is a facet of her life she never realized was missing until it was there again. And somehow, sitting at this table with her lover, her photographer, and her fellow model, she feels as if all the facets are coming together. She moves her chair a few inches closer to Man’s and he holds her a little tighter.

  It is the sort of meal that lasts for hours. The Riesling is replaced by a Burgundy, big and dark. Plate after plate of food arrives. More escargot, stuffed with garlic and parsley and butter they have to wipe away when it runs down their chins. Baked Camembert, so rich and stinky it makes Lee’s tongue ache. Moules marinières. A veal stew she’s never tried before. Green beans and summer squash with garlic. Through it all, more wine, and the wine loosens a screw in Lee’s spine, leaving her pliable and content.

  George is talking about their swimwear shoot that afternoon. He took Horst and Lee up to the roof, where he posed them against the sky and told them to pretend it was the sea.

  “It’s hard to get Vogue to pay for location shots anymore,” he says, turning companionably to Man, who is pushed back from the table, his ankle crossed over his knee, the picture of relaxation. “So I’ve been doing more of this sort of thing, shooting close and letting the background suggest a mood rather than dominate the image.” George picks up his glass and swirls around the inch of wine in it. “But they want a big shoot for the summer issue, and Horst had this idea of Biarritz or Saint-Tropez, on the beach. Wouldn’t they be stunning? Those two blond heads in that light?” He tips his glass at Lee and Horst in turn. “You know the magazine better than I do. How can I convince them to let me do it?”

  George is looking at Man, eager. Man says, “You have to have a better reason than the light to get them to let you go on location. In fact, I’m sure whatever you’re thinking of shooting there you could easily do here. You’re right when you say the setting doesn’t matter as much in fashion right now.”

  Horst leans in toward the center of the table, makes his voice low. “But we want to go to the beach. Let them pay us for lying in real sand, with real sun on us.” He laughs and gives Lee a wink.

  He and Lee had this conversation this afternoon, as they sat back-to-back, shivering in the strong rooftop wind, on the wooden plank George fashioned to look like a diving board. “If my balls were any colder they’d crack right off my body,” Horst whispered to her, and to forget the frigid air they spent the rest of the shoot describing to each other the sun-splashed paradise they’d be in if they were shooting in the Côte d’Azur. It felt funny then, a lark, but now, with Man staring at them as if they are naughty children, Lee just wants to change the subject.

  “I can never tell if it’s a good thing or a bad thing to fantasize about warm weather in the winter,” Lee says. “I grew up in the coldest wasteland in America, so I have a lot of practice.”

  But Horst won’t let it go. He reaches out across the table and touches Lee’s cheek. “A face like this deserves the perfect setting. As does this one.” He puts his hands to his own face and frames it, giving them a joking smile. “I want to get out of this city. Have an adventure.”

  “Well, try to get Vogue to pay for it if you can. They never did much for me,” Man says, his voice clipped. He raises the end of the napkin he has tucked into his shirt collar and wipes his lips with it before looking over at Lee. “Obviously, if it works out, you wouldn’t be going. You’re needed here, in my studio.”

  Lee sees Horst and George exchange a glance, and she lifts her wine goblet and takes a deep swallow so that she can look into the bottom of the glass instead of at their expressions. The moment is a small one—right afterward the conversation shifts to Dalí’s latest film, set to premiere in just a few days—but it is the end of the good feeling of the evening for Lee, and she cannot help but feel as she did so many times when she was young, as if she has been chastised for doing something she didn’t even know was wrong.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Over the next few weeks, as Lee continues to switch off between modeling and Man’s studio, she keeps thinking back to the dinner with Horst and George, keeps seeing Horst frame his face in his hands and insist he wants an adventure. And then she pictures herself on the beach, her skin warmed by the sun. And every time she thinks of it, she thinks of Man’s reaction, and the dinner becomes the moment when distance opens up between them. Nothing huge, just a crack in the sidewalk, with her on one side and him on the other. Just the sense that he is suddenly unfamiliar to her. And that she herself might be unknowable to him.

  She works more, stays out later, goes out for drinks with Horst and some of the other people she’s met at Frogue. In addition to her modeling, Lee starts to take on small writing assignments, fluff pieces, mostly, but she finds she enjoys pounding out the stories on her typewriter, likes even more seeing her name as the byline. Lee becomes friendly with one of the women in the finance department, a British expat named Audrey Withers who is desperate to get back to London, the first woman Lee has become true friends with since Tanja. And she starts staying out so late each night that Man is asleep when she arrives home, and then it’s Thursday and she realizes she needs to be at the studio and she hasn’t had a real conversation with him since Sunday, and she hasn’t even noticed, not really, hasn’t even missed him all that much.

  One day when she shows up at the studio, at first she doesn’t pay much attention to his mood. He is hunched over his desk, scribbling furiously in a large notebook, with an extra pen stuck behind one ear and lots of crumpled sheets of paper dotting the floor around him.

  “Tea?” she asks.

  He looks up briefly. He is unshaven, with pouches under his eyes. “Yes, thanks.”

  She puts the kettle on. From the other room she hears him rip another sheet of paper out of the notebook, then silence, then the loud scratching of his pen. When the water boils she gets out their two teacups, fills the teapot, drops sugar cubes in the empty cups, and places everything on a tray, which she carries into the office with the grace of someone performing an action perfected over time. She sets the tray at the edge of his desk and slides the cup near him, stands for a few minutes waiting for the tea to steep, and pours it in the cup, twirls a spoon around. Through all this Man doesn’t speak, just scratches at the notebook without stopping.

  “Is that your artist statement, for the Philadelphia prize?” she asks when he pauses.

  “Yes—it’s finally coming. I figured out what I wanted to say late last night.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Lee says, and means it. After fixing her own cup of tea and standing over him for a few more moments, she continues. “I’m going to start printing the Artaud shoot. We said we’d deliver it Friday.”

  Man looks up at her with an unreadable expression. “Actually, do we have anything this afternoon? I’d love to shoot you. I have an idea for a project.”

  Lee is surprised. Flattered. It has been a while since he’s taken any pictures of her, and it hits her that this is what must be missing between the two of them right now, the collaboration that used to fuel everything.

  Lee works all morning and when she comes into the studio in the afternoon he has two of his Graflex cameras looped around his neck. She feels almost shy. He stands at the window and stares down at
the street below. He says, “The light is good right now.” Lee starts unbuttoning her shirt, but he shakes his head no. She poses by the window where he places her, resting her palms on the windowsill. Man gets very close to her, the camera lens only inches from her face, its eye peering at her eye. He focuses and releases the shutter quickly, a few times in a row.

  “What are the pictures for?”

  “I can’t quite explain it yet,” he says. He switches to the other camera, again getting as close to her as he can. He takes pictures of her ear, her eye, her mouth, her nose. Lee holds perfectly still, hardly breathing. The camera obscures Man’s face, and she can actually feel the chill emanating from the metal of the camera case. In the curved surface of the lens, she sees her features, shrunken and distorted, and feels a rising sense of panic at the idea of his camera touching her. It doesn’t help that Man is completely silent, engrossed in the work.

  “Your eye,” Man says, pausing to reload one of the cameras with a new roll of film. “When I get this close to you, I can reduce it to pure geometry, to the golden rule. I see it that way when I’m shooting it.”

  Lee’s heart is beating fast; she can feel it in her throat. “It’s just my eye.”

  “Your eye is what I make it into.” He moves her shoulder gently so the light will hit her face. “Now there is a beautiful shadow across your iris that’s going to run the length of the frame. I might crop it even more when I print it. Total abstraction. Geometry. That’s it.”

  Lee wishes he would move away, give her space. She closes her eyes but he keeps shooting. Her eyelids flutter wildly. After a few moments, she can’t take it anymore and steps away from him.