The Reflection

by Hugo Wilcken

  To distract myself, I put on the radio set I’d bought the other day. Manne had had a liking for somber classical music, but Smith preferred jaunty jazz tunes, and I fiddled about to find a station that fit the bill. I’d looked away from the photo for only a minute or so, but that was all it took to break the spell. The image was no longer an instant of weird drama. It was just an ad again. I’d been so absorbed in my fantasy that I’d failed to observe the one thing that really mattered, the minuscule lettering along the left-hand side of the photo that said “Rigaut.”

  There was a back entrance to Stevenson’s building. I knew that the door was sometimes left open for deliveries during the day, because I’d occasionally used it myself to avoid the doorman, back when Marie and I were still meeting at the apartment. It was locked now, but I managed to open it easily enough with a knife blade. I found myself in a steamy dark passageway, the walls wet as if sweating in the heat generated by the laundry, through an opening on the right. I could hear voices and the sound of machinery as I sneaked past, making my way up the stairs to the fifth floor. For a while I stood with my ear to Stevenson’s door, until I was perfectly satisfied that no one was home. I took the key from under the carpet on the stairs, as I’d seen Marie do on past occasions, and opened the door.

  The noise of traffic below was reduced to a dull hum, dampened by the heavy curtains that remained drawn. I’d been here enough times before, but never by myself, and there was a certain thrill to wandering around someone else’s apartment without their knowledge. I was experiencing the space in a different way as well, seeing things I hadn’t noticed before. In the sitting room, for example, it was now clear that one part of the ceiling was marginally higher than the other, and that the borderline corresponded to a difference on the ground as well: the floorboards on one side of the room were of a slightly different color to those of the other side. A wall must have at one time run through the room, I hypothesized. Perhaps it had originally been two studio rooms, joined together to make the two-bedroom apartment that it was now.

  I found the phone book on the sideboard. I flicked through the R pages until I found Rigaut. The only nonresidential entry was for “Rigaut Images.” Not an advertising firm, as I’d first supposed, but a photographic agency. It was located not far from where I was now, just beyond St. Patrick’s on Madison. I made the call and then wandered into the bedroom. There again was the row of suits in the wardrobe—all seemingly the same or with only minor variations—and a drawerful of new white shirts. It occurred to me that I’d never seen this man, nor his son; there was not even a photo of either in the apartment. It was as if they existed on a different plane, which could never intersect with mine. I took out one of his shirts from the drawer and started to undress. Looking for cufflinks I cast my eyes over to the dresser. Propped up against the mirror was a note, in fastidious handwriting.

  Darling I don’t know if you’ll drop by today. I’m in Boston tonight but back tomorrow evening. I’ll try to call. All my love

  It didn’t surprise me. I’d already imagined that Marie and Stevenson were having an affair, probably long predating our own reconciliation. At the same time, I felt a shock run through me. It’s one thing to surmise that your lover is sleeping with someone else; it’s another to be presented with the evidence. Without that, you can sort of believe and not believe at the same time. You can still play the game that you know your lover is also playing.

  I didn’t feel angry with Marie—why should I? I didn’t even feel angry with Stevenson. I thought back to the night Marie and I had met at that bar on the Upper West Side. She’d been more nervy then, physically more angular. She’d become more confident in the following weeks: her body had changed too. She was somehow more fleshy now, more overtly feminine. I remembered going to bed with her for the first time. It had been so completely different from Smith’s previous sexual encounters, with the young women he’d meet in bars after work. Those liaisons had been like a lighthearted game. With those girls, there’d always be smiles and jokey banter in bed afterward: “Well, you certainly wanted that tonight, didn’t you?” And we’d remain friends, bump into each other in other bars, maybe even go to bed together again. No, in some ways my relationship with Marie resembled more closely Manne’s occasional affairs. But even then, there were differences. Manne’s women tended to be difficult; there wasn’t much sex involved, sometimes none at all. Marie wasn’t like that. She had no hang-ups about sex.

  I had one of Stevenson’s suits on. I chose a tie and then went to the bathroom, where I found a compact, no doubt Marie’s. I dabbed a little powder on my scar, which took the edge off it and softened the appearance of my face. I looked into the mirror and for a second had the impression that Manne was staring back. Funny how the simple fact of wearing a suit made you stand differently, see things differently. I went back to the bedroom and helped myself to some of the cash Stevenson had left on the bedside table, then jammed a few of his business cards into my coat pocket as well.

  Madison Avenue was just a walk away. I went back out through the main entrance, sure that the doorman wouldn’t stop me in my new clothes, even if he couldn’t remember me ever going in. Stevenson would never realize that one of his suits was missing: that was how it was with men who bought the same of everything. But Marie would notice. I thought of her again. Only this morning I’d been contemplating the end of our affair with complete equanimity, and yet now I felt a sexual yearning, a sense of mourning for what couldn’t be. I recalled that time Marie had taken me down to the Battery and we’d sat on the promenade looking out at the Statue of Liberty. She’d asked me then if I remembered when we’d last been there, just before I’d supposedly disappeared. Yes, I’d replied, and in a curious way I hadn’t been lying, because the affair took on a new reality in Marie’s retelling. The haunting nostalgia I’d felt had been all the more strange and powerful precisely because I’d never been there previously with Marie. I caught myself thinking of Abby, for the first time in a while. My feelings for the two women were coming from the same place, or perhaps merging from different places. Tears were welling, and I stopped for a moment. Was Abby returning because of Manne? Because I was back on the Esterhazy case?

  I walked down Madison past the polished gold plates of all the big names in advertising. I had this vision of a swanky agency with its glass cubicles, clinical like a hospital, complete with an immaculately turned-out secretary, giving me the brush-off. Instead, there was something decidedly furtive about Rigaut Images. It was just a few rooms upstairs from a jeweler’s store, fronted by a middle-aged woman behind a chaotic desk. As I waited to see the person I’d spoken to on the phone, I took out the ad from my wallet. There they were again: the man, the boy, Mrs. Esterhazy, frozen in their moment of eternal expectation, like models in a museum. In forbidding all movement, the photographer was a sort of taxidermist, it struck me. The people captured inside the frame were the animals, stuffed into dramatic poses. The more I stared at the image, the more it seemed to be its own world, referring to nothing outside itself, not even to the product it was ostensibly promoting.

  “Is that the one you’re interested in?”

  A Dickensian man in wire-rim glasses and a shabby jacket was looking down at me.

  “It’s one of yours? I was wondering if I had the right place.”

  “You’d be surprised. We do quite a bit of work for the slicks.”

  I followed him into a windowless office. One entire wall was stacked with files, and as the man fiddled about trying to locate the right one, he kept up a salesman’s patter: “We’re cheap, we’re highly professional, and sometimes that’s all an advertiser needs. We use stock images so we don’t have the expense of setting up new shoots for each commission. When the shots are reused, we make sure they’re for different markets. We can change their look through filters, removing or adding people or objects or backgrounds … here it is.”

  He’d pulled a file and opened it up on the desk between us. There
was the picture again, in larger format, stripped of the text and slogan. There were other versions too, for different products, but all with the same shot—some in black and white, some with the husband or child cropped out, some with different color schemes. A half-dozen Mrs. Esterhazys smiled uncannily back at me.

  “You’ve chosen a popular one. We’ve used it several times. What was your line of business again?”

  “Insurance. Here’s my card.”

  “I see. Managing director. Um. You deal with the advertising account as well?”

  “Let me explain. I …”

  “No need to explain, Mr. Stevenson. You told me you were interested in the female model, is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not the image per se.”

  “No.”

  The man put his elbows on the table, his hands under his chin, and stared at me.

  “Well, there are various things we could do. We could of course draw up a contract right now for the use of the image. Or I could organize another shoot with the same model, if you’re willing to pay. But I’m guessing that’s not what you want.”

  “No.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t simply give you her details. It wouldn’t be acceptable.”

  “I’m aware of that. But perhaps if I …”

  He stopped me with his hand. “I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Stevenson. You’re not the first person to get in touch with me like this. I’ll tell you how we operate here. We don’t use a modeling agency. It’s more like a family. If I need Dora, I’ll get her on the phone. If she’s not free, maybe she’ll recommend me someone, one of her young friends. That’s the way it works. That’s how I keep expenses down.”

  “Dora? Her name’s Dora? Where’s she from?”

  “She’s French, but she speaks perfect English. Now, I don’t know what these girls get up to when they’re not working for me. Most of them are trying to scrape a living together. Some of them don’t have papers. It may well be that Dora would be perfectly happy to meet a gentleman for a drink. I can see that you’re a gentleman.”

  “Tell me something more about her. Is she married? How long has she been here? What else does she do for a living?”

  The man shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t really say anything more. What I’m willing to do, for a fee, is pass on your details to the girl in question. I’d be happy to do that. Now, what she does with them is none of my business. If she doesn’t get in touch with you, then there’s nothing I can do about that. There would be no point in coming back here. You do understand?”

  “Yes. I do understand.”

  8

  Darkness seemed to rise rather than fall. Thick snow blanketed the city, deadening the sound, the air curiously still. Few cars were risking the icy streets, and pedestrians moved slowly, silently, along the sidewalk, as if they were gliding just above it. Everything had been stripped of color, transformed to white-gray, and with the contrasting twilight shadows, you had the sensation of having wandered into an old photograph. I looked up at the skyscrapers, the lights pricking on one by one as if the buildings were gradually coming to life. I had the fleeting impression of seeing New York for the first time as it really was—an immense museum of strangeness.

  I was outside Stevenson’s apartment building again. I could see the light on, on the fifth floor. I’d told myself that I was coming back to return the suit I’d taken from Stevenson’s wardrobe, but actually I knew it was about Marie. Not wanting to mess with the back entrance in the dark, I simply walked in through the front, with a cursory nod to the doorman’s desk. He should have stopped me, had me wait until he’d called up to the apartment, but he didn’t. Perhaps, I mused in the elevator, it was because I was wearing Stevenson’s suit. Perhaps I resembled him now.

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me.”

  I could hear her fiddling around with the locks and then the door swung open. She had her hair up, and was wearing a bathrobe tied loosely at the waist, opened almost to her breasts. I could smell food cooking from the tiny kitchen.

  “What are you doing? You shouldn’t be coming around here.”

  “I wanted to see you. You weren’t home.”

  “I never said I’d be home. I never said I’d be here. You shouldn’t come around. Mr. Stevenson might have been here.”

  “But he isn’t, is he?”

  She went to turn off something on the stove, leaving me in the sitting room. Medical books were scattered about the floor, untidily piled up around a large notepad filled with a tiny scrawl. She’d been studying, lying on a cushion instead of sitting at the desk, obviously at ease in the apartment. I followed her through to the kitchen. She had her back to me. I put my arms around her waist under her bathrobe and kissed the nape of her neck.

  “Come on. Let’s go to the bedroom.”

  She didn’t answer, but allowed me to lead her by the hand. I could feel a slight hesitation as I turned left in the corridor toward Stevenson’s room instead of right to the boy’s, where we’d slept together on previous occasions. She sat naked on the bed, her bathrobe at her feet, looking up at me almost quizzically. She must have just showered, as I could smell fresh soap on her, mixed in with her own perfume. I started kissing her, which again she let me do, without really responding. The passivity further stoked the tension building in me, and I undressed quickly. There was no resistance as I pushed her down onto the bed. For a minute or two she had her legs wrapped around me, but then she turned her face away from mine.

  “No, stop. You’re hurting me.”

  She was shifting underneath me. Without even noticing I’d had her arms pinned to the bed. Now I released them and took my weight off her. I lay beside her in a state of frustration. Eventually, Marie gathered up her bathrobe from the floor and wound it around her, pulling the cord tight. She pointed to the clothes I’d heaped on the chair by the desk.

  “Why were you wearing his suit? How did you get it?”

  “I needed it for a meeting. I knew there was a key outside under the carpet.”

  “Who were you meeting?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t matter? You think you can just walk in here and take his clothes? You could have at least asked me. What if he’d been here? Who were you meeting?”

  “Too complicated to explain. Look, I …”

  “Was it Dora Morel?”

  “Dora? How do you know about her?”

  Marie stared at me with pressed lips and then got off the bed. The mood, already ambivalent, had turned on a dime. I pulled on my clothes and followed her through to the kitchen, where she was stirring something steaming on the stove.

  “How the hell do you know about her?”

  “Are you seeing her? Is that it? Are you sleeping with her too?”

  “I’ve never met her. I’m not sleeping with anyone else. Unlike you.”

  “What are you dreaming up now?”

  “You and Stevenson. I’m not dumb.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He already has a mistress.”

  “That’s not true, is it? You’re lying. You’re lying to me!”

  Marie turned around, and caught in her sudden movement, I pulled sharply at the lapels of her bathrobe. She yelped and pushed back savagely at me. In surprise I let go, losing my balance, my shoulder cracking hard against the sideboard. I was flailing about trying to right myself, in a fog of pain, and I reached out and grabbed the first thing that came to hand, an almost empty whiskey bottle. As I spun to the floor, the bottle caught the corner of a cupboard. A fine amber spray spattered Marie’s white bathrobe, like some sort of effluent. The bottle hadn’t shattered; the bottom had sheared right off, in an almost perfectly clean break. I breathlessly got to my feet, still holding what was left of the bottle.

  “Put it down. Put that thing down!”

  I was in shock, or perhaps I hadn’t understood what she was referring to. I froze as Marie dashed past me. She was on the phon
e, talking with her hand over her mouth: “He’s threatening me with a broken bottle. Please come, please come at once!” I let the bottle go; I didn’t know why I hadn’t put it down. It bounced on the kitchen linoleum without breaking any farther. At first I thought Marie had been calling Stevenson, but then I realized that couldn’t be the case, he was in Boston. She was speaking to an operator, or the doorman, or more probably the police.

  I passed by a clock in a store window. It was a little after seven. I couldn’t have been at Stevenson’s apartment more than a half hour, although it felt much longer. Everything had happened very quickly and I was still reeling. It was minutes since I’d left the building, but already my recall of what exactly had happened was blurring. I’d lost Marie. I’d probably never see her again. Not unless she came around in person to collect her things. Perhaps she really was the one I wanted. I remembered the way I used to watch her as she lay on the bed, eyes closed, breasts rising and falling with her breathing. Tears fell, but all of a sudden they felt theatrical, and I wiped them away with the back of my hand.

  I was wandering down a typical midtown street—largely empty, save for pockets of activity around the occasional bar or restaurant. In my shock and tiredness, colors had taken on a hallucinatory quality and the scene seemed secondhand. I hadn’t grown up in Manhattan. Even after years of living and working there, it remained mythical. I’d be walking along, I’d look up at a famous facade, and it would remind me of a movie I’d seen, a postcard I’d sent, a book I’d read. Behind the iconography was the real New York, whose secret life I’d never know.

  Under the haze of a streetlight I took out my wallet photo of Marie. The old one from before the war, where she looked so much younger, with different hair, in a thirties style. You could almost imagine that it was someone else. It actually brought back memories of the hospital, rather than of Marie herself, as the photo had sat on my bedside table the whole time I’d been there. But I stared at it for quite a while, all the way to my station, trying to work out exactly what my emotions were. The sadness that had pierced me the moment I knew Marie was lost, the feeling that she was the one I really wanted—all that was already subsiding. It was a remnant of Manne’s way of thinking, his sense of romantic tragedy, of only wanting what you can’t have. Smith would take a more pragmatic attitude. He’d be upset by events, no doubt, and yet aware that life moves on. That there were plenty of other opportunities for a man like him, in a city like New York. That even tonight, if he wanted, he could go to a bar and find someone to share his bed. Manne and Smith were both passionate and both cold—but in very different ways.