The Age of Light

by Whitney Scharer

Lee has never been very good at being by herself: left to her own devices, she can easily sink into sadness and inactivity. As the weeks have passed, her loneliness has gained heft and power: it has contours now, almost a physical shape, and she imagines it sitting in the corner of her room, waiting for her, a sucking, spongy thing.

She is drunk, but not drunk enough to consider smoking opium. That was her mother’s pastime—morphine, actually, the little blue vials lined up on the window ledge in her dressing room and glowing like sapphires in the sun. Lee looks around the room and sees her mother in all the drowsing women.

The situation and the visiting man remind her of the dinner parties her parents used to throw, the way she was shunted into a corner until it was time for her to help mix drinks. When she was young she looked precious, Lee supposes, all dolled up in Chantilly lace, with starched white bows stuck on her head like giant moths. But as she got older, it became discomfiting, the way the men leered at her when she brought them their cocktails, damp cigars clenched in their tight smiles.

Carefully, she carries the paper over to the developing basin and slides it in, agitating the liquid as she has learned how to do. Within seconds her image spreads across the paper. First there are just the faint outlines of the woman’s hair, then the outline of her shoulders, and then the bright parts of the image show up: the woman’s hand, her nails, the contrast of the light shining on each of her curls. Sparks, Lee thinks, bright white sparks against her hair. Lee looks up for a moment to see if Man is watching. To her it is incredible: her own picture, appearing before her eyes. But he isn’t paying attention. She returns her glance to the image just in time, before it gets overexposed. Once the image has set in the fix, she stares at it. She feels that it is good without knowing how to articulate why. It is just the nape of a woman’s neck, her fingers scratching at her skin, but the image sends a shiver down Lee’s spine.

At first what she feels is utter relief, tension she didn’t know she had unknotting in her neck. This is the most beautiful woman in Paris? To Lee’s American eye, Kiki looks bloated as over-yeasted bread, her makeup garish, her hairstyle outdated by two decades, her derriere wide and sagging as a half-filled flour sack. But some of the compositions are uncomfortably familiar. Here are Man’s bedroom curtains, the same as they are today. There Kiki tips back her head—Man has taken a close-up of her neck. It could be Lee’s neck, the shot is so similar.

Someone once said to her that dressing up is done mainly for other women, and as her eye is drawn around the room to where the women stand out like hummingbirds against the background of men, casting sidelong glances at one another, Lee believes it to be true.

Back then there was no difference between her and her brothers. Whole days were spent outside, exploring; she remembers feeling as though she could hoard the whole world and eat it with a spoon. Before what happened with—she almost hears his name inside her head but stops herself as always. Her childhood is split that way, two neat halves, before and after. It was after when she went truly wild, but not in the way Man means. When her wildness became a thing she felt she had to hide from everyone.

Lee wishes she hadn’t agreed to see her father while he was here. Having him see her new life has diminished it somehow. Diminished her. She remembers the rages she used to fly into when she was young: screaming, kicking at walls, pulling at her hair until it came out in clumps in her fists. All that rage, and in the end it led to nothing. To acquiescence. The submission her father required of her when she was a child—she felt it again when Man was taking their picture, when Theodore’s hand was on her thigh. She thought that part of her life was behind her, but having him here in Paris has brought it back, like two sides of a stereoscope coalescing into one image. And how different is her relationship with Man? She complies with all he asks of her too.

There is no longer any doubt in Lee’s mind: Kiki is ferociously ugly. Her nose is wide and flat; her mouth, even with all the lipstick, is too small; her hair is pulled back so severely Lee can see the skin of her forehead stretching; and the view up her skirt reveals thighs rippled with fat. And yet when Kiki opens her mouth to sing, Lee begins to understand her appeal. Kiki’s voice is high-pitched but gravelly, as if she has just woken up from a too-long nap, and the sound of it makes Lee think of the bedroom. It is almost as if Kiki’s ugliness makes her more sensual. The song she is singing is as louche as her appearance.

This is not the first time homosexuality has come up; in fact, Lee heard them discussing it the one time she joined the men at Tristan’s. Together they are preening, frightened roosters. Lee thinks they should all just fuck one another and get it over with; their childish ridiculing of what they desire disgusts her.

But after they’ve gotten back to their apartment, Man changes his mind. He’s tired. He doesn’t like dance—she knows that. All he wants is a quiet night with her. He misses her, wants to sit across a table from her and just enjoy a simple meal. This is not at all what Lee wants—eating together is all they ever seem to do. They have become an old married couple in every sense but the legal one. Well, with the added exception that Man is the only one of them who is old. But she agrees to dinner, because it is not worth fighting him over something so trivial. If she were to force him to go to the ballet, Lee imagines him squirming in his seat, checking his watch as he always does when he is bored. And as it always does, her acquiescence makes Man happy; his mood lifts instantly, lifting Lee’s too.

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.

The sun dips below the roofline of the grand house next door, and the air gets thick and yellow with the final moments of the evening light. And then as the twilight gathers, the cypress trees beyond the glass of the solarium turn black as sentinels and cast thin lines of shadow across the ground. The swimming pool picks up the last of the sun and for a moment reflects it back, a gigantic oval of fire, brilliant and blinding, and then the sun dips a little lower and the pool goes dark, and that is when Lee turns on the projectors, so that the guests will see the films as they arrive.