“Okay,” Jamie said when we had climbed the four flights of stairs and were in our room. “Tell me.”
I didn’t bother to light a candle. There was a full moon and plenty enough light for undressing by. Besides, quarrels always seem easier in the dark, don’t they? Gentler somehow, for not being able to clearly see the other person’s face.
“Two days after we went to Pablo’s house and met him and Olga and Paulo, he sent me a note. He asked me to model for him.” I rolled down my stockings, slowly. Jamie usually loved to watch me do this, but not that night.
“That much I could figure out from what Lee said.” Jamie pulled at his shirt so hard he popped a button. I picked it up and put it on the table so I could sew it back on in the morning.
“Yes,” I said. “I’d love to know why she said it, though. Man was the one picking on her, not me.” I unbuttoned my dress and let it fall to the floor. We stood face-to-face, Jamie bare-chested and me in just my slip, but he didn’t move to put his arms around me. I felt alone, adrift. He was never angry, never cold and distant. That evening, he was. Preoccupied, as well. I thought that if he didn’t touch me soon, I would turn to stone.
“Were you planning to keep it secret?” he said, sounding a little too much like Man.
“It was a note to me, not to us,” I said, sounding perhaps a bit like Lee.
“And you said no. Why? He pays his models.”
“Yes. And sleeps with them as well.”
There was a clatter from the alley, cats jumping on garbage bins or perhaps a homeless man—there were more and more of them lately—trying to find a warm sleeping spot for the night.
“Damn cats,” Jamie said, drawing the curtain.
“I thought you liked cats.”
“He could have helped us.”
“You mean helped you.”
“Prude. You can take the girl out of Poughkeepsie, but you can’t take Poughkeepsie out of the girl.”
“Clever,” I said. “Did you think of that one all by yourself?”
“If only you were a little more like Lee.”
Ah.
It was like a blow, and my knees gave out. I sat on the bed so heavily the springs creaked. Jamie hesitated, then sat next to me.
“Listen to us,” I said. “Like an old married couple. Maybe we should.”
“Should what?”
“Get married.”
Jamie stood up again and ran his fingers through his hair. It reached well past his ears, and curled like a child’s before its first haircut.
“Your timing is incredible. Can’t you see how busy I am, Nora? Working ten, twelve hours a day to pay the bills”—more of Man’s influence here, I couldn’t help but think—“and trying to find time to make my own art, to take a few good photographs, and you want a wedding.”
“Not necessarily a wedding. Just a husband. A city hall kind of thing.”
“Lee doesn’t demand marriage from Man. Or even want it.”
“I’m not Lee.”
“Did you believe that Egyptian guy? What a creep. Looks like a real wet blanket. I’m tired. I’m going to sleep now.” And sleep he did, so far on his side of his bed he almost fell out, till I reached over and pulled him close and we slept in our usual manner, his arm around me, my head on his shoulder.
The next morning, Jamie slept later than usual and I had to tickle him awake.
“You’ll be late,” I whispered in his ear, throwing my leg over him.
“No work today. Man’s going out of town and the studio is closed.” He shifted his weight so that I was fully on top of him. “Time to play.”
“You’re not angry anymore?”
“Well, let’s just see.” He moved my hand down his belly. “Nope. Not angry anymore.”
For the first time in weeks we had a leisurely morning together, lovemaking and coffee and bread, and a talk, a real talk.
“You are working too hard,” I said. “I’m going to get work as well, more work than Huene is giving me. But not as a model. I mean, did you really want me to come home smelling like one of Pablo’s cigarettes?” Do you want me coming home to you from Pablo’s bed? was what I meant, but decided not to say.
“No. I don’t want you to come home . . . like that. But what work can you do?” Jamie looked skeptical, but good skeptical, like when we were in high school together and I had boasted that I was going to get an A on my Latin final. Proud skeptical. Show-me-because-I-love-you skeptical.
“I’ll find something,” I insisted. “And then maybe you can just accept work from Pablo and stop slaving in Man’s studio.” After last night, I had started to think it might be better if we spent a little less time with Lee and Man.
“Impossible. I can’t afford to buy all the equipment I need to set up my own studio, so I need to use Man’s when he allows me.”
“Just don’t spill the chemicals,” I mimicked. That was Man’s mantra in the studio. Jamie had learned immediately what else was not permitted, in addition to not spilling the chemicals: don’t look too hard or too long at Lee. In fact, they didn’t look at each other when Man was around.
“Besides, Nora, Man is an important connection,” Jamie said. “Eventually, he will pass some of the portrait work on to me. Maybe even some of the advertising work he does. He’s going to introduce me to people. Important people. The dough is only half-risen. Too soon to bake it.”
His father said that. Jamie was quoting his father. Talk about taking the boy out of Poughkeepsie.
That afternoon we traced our favorite walk through the city, arm in arm, laughing like schoolchildren, past the luxury hotels near the Champs-Élysées where harried-looking porters and errand boys walked poodles by the dozen, stopping for an aperitif at Fouquet’s, then on to the Luxembourg Gardens.
Jamie had his viewfinder with him and took photographs of facades and iron grilles over windows, of children playing in the street and an organ-grinder with his monkey. He almost took a photograph of a brown wintering bed of rosebushes in the Luxembourg, then stopped himself. “Too romantic,” he said. “No interesting shadows.”
We had mail waiting for us at the American Express office—a letter from Jamie’s father with the same news we’d been getting from home for months. Times were getting harder. He’d had to lay off two more employees. Jamie’s brothers were working too hard trying to keep the business afloat. Time for Jamie to come home. There was no check with the letter, but we were already used to that. We were on our own.
I had a letter from my mother, the second one I’d received since I’d come to France, and she said pretty much the same thing, adding that her arthritis was making her life a misery. I was not to come back to Poughkeepsie until Jamie had “done the right thing.” “Not that I expect him to,” she concluded. “Why should he bother? Have you been to the Folies Bergère?” she wanted to know.
“Do you love me?” I asked Jamie, standing outside the American Express office. The air smelled of burned chestnuts, charcoal smoke, car fumes, and when I looked at Jamie, the odors became a perfume of Paris, of being young and in love.
“Of course.”
I flung my arms around him. “Forever,” I said. “You and me.” I kissed him there on the street, in front of American Express, and an old man in this dusty black beret kissed his fingertips to us.
“My turn!” he shouted, and Jamie waved him away.
“Not a chance,” he said. “This one is all mine.”