The Beautiful American (15 page)

The room was filled with a current of expectation.

Jamie continued to arrange the glass plates in the tray, his strong hands moving swiftly and precisely, revealing the athlete, the high school hero who carries the football over the line, who makes the last winning shot on the court. “So, what’s the exhibit?” he asked.

“Just new photographers. No theme other than that.” Man’s eyes focused now on a photograph tacked to the wall—a portrait of Lee wearing the cage he had designed for her arm. “You know how New York is, as far as art goes. Ten years behind Paris.”

“Yeah. I know.” Jamie smiled and light caught on his sharp cheekbones.

Man knew what he was supposed to say, what he had to say, since he had taken Jamie into the studio and made him an assistant. This was how it was done. Friends naming friends. Great people
helping small people up a bit. “I’ll ask him to have a look at some of your photographs before he goes. He’s leaving soon.”

“That would be great.” Jamie had the sense to say it casually, to downplay his thanks. But the electric current that had been building completed itself and there was an invisible arcing of current between Jamie and me. We both knew the importance of that moment.

“I’ll bring him round on Wednesday.”

That gave us three days to prepare.

•   •   •

T
here wasn’t time for any new photographs, but Jamie spent the next three evenings, almost entire nights, printing up old shots. He didn’t sleep except for an hour here and there, and he barely ate. I saw little of him. Man was out of the studio a lot, probably taking Julien Levy around to meet with other artist friends, so Jamie had free use of the studio, the equipment, the chemicals. Lee, to make up for breaking her promise, must have helped him a bit because he showed me some of the prints, explaining, “Lee likes the shadows in this one,” or “Here, she likes how the sun seems to be rising out of the man’s head,” and “She thinks this one might be too naturalistic but I should show it anyway.”

My role was to keep out of the way. No problem. Weeks earlier, I had found a job. There was a little chemist’s shop down the street, and I had convinced the owner I was just the ticket to increase his sales of perfume. “The nose knows,” I had explained to him in English, and he had found that very, very funny, though I wondered if he really knew what I had said. His English was as bad as my French, but we had reached an understanding: I worked on commission only. No sales, no pay. He had nothing to lose.

So, every afternoon I dressed in my best white blouse, dark skirt, high heels, and fake pearls and stood in front of his little perfume counter, pretending to try the various fragrances though I never actually put any on my skin, not until the end of the day when it was time to leave and I could take my scented pulse points home for Jamie to enjoy, whenever he returned.

Our schedule was shot all to pieces, with Jamie spending more and more time with Man in the studio, and some days I didn’t see him until he drifted in after midnight, smelling of developing-bath chemicals, too tired for anything but a hug. When we made love, which occurred less and less frequently, it was quick and without tenderness and sometimes even without protection, it began and ended so fast. “Don’t worry,” Jamie said on those occasions. “I withdrew in time.”

“I’m not worried,” I said.

At the pharmacy, women would drift in for plasters for their children and bromide for their husbands’ indigestion and I, dying of jealousy for their small, wonderful, domestic lives, would open a bottle and spritz a little fragrance their way.

The trick was to make a five-second assessment of the woman and decide which fragrance would most appeal to her. Sophisticated Chanel No. 5? Exotic Shalimar? If she was young and had runs in her stockings, I would pick a little flacon of tuberose and spice from smaller, less famous houses than Chanel or Guerlain.

Perfume must never be sniffed directly from the bottle, but sprayed into the air or, better, on the wrist of the buyer. A quality perfume smells slightly different on everybody, takes on some of the personality of the wearer. Brunettes and blondes may buy the same fragrance, but it will smell like two completely different ones on each wearer. And so when the occasional male customer wandered
into the store and stood bemused and confounded over the array of perfume bottles, the first question I asked was her hair color (“natural, please, sir, if you know it”) and her weight. The heavier the woman, the lighter the perfume must be.

Had she grown up in the city or the country? Was she quick-tempered? No stimulating scents but rather calming ones with lavender. Passionate or cold? Men would invariably take a step back when I asked that question and look askance. The answer was always whispered.

I had lost some customers with those questions, and other even more personal ones. But I had gained even more customers, almost a kind of following, because the choices I guided the customers to were unerringly right. Nine times out of ten, that was my success rate. And on the very first try. Invariably, the customer would sniff at my choice, express delight in varying degrees, try several others, and then purchase the first one.

Boulet’s sales in perfume tripled. After I’d been there only a week, he gave me window space to make a display, a kind of ancient Greek temple made of painted cardboard with perfume bottles as columns. Jamie had photographed statues and fountains from the Tuileries and collaged the photos onto the back wall of the temple, just past the perfume columns. We had thought it rather clever and Monsieur Boulet kissed his fingertips when he saw it.

Two weeks after I’d begun the job, I’d bought a cup of
café crème
at the upstairs salon at Printemps, and been satisfied to overhear a woman at the next table say to her companion that she must, she really must, try the perfume counter at Boulet’s. She’d heard there was a charming young woman there who knew perfumes the way some men knew a deck of cards.

Father would have laughed. He’d made me spend hours sniffing
garden flowers and herbs with my eyes closed so that I could tell a tea rose from a damask, sage from rue. I had thought it a game, no more. In France, where pleasure and sensuality were esteemed rather than stood in a corner and labeled sin, such training was proving very useful.

The day before Julien Levy was supposed to come to our rooms and look at Jamie’s work, I was again at Boulet’s, earning my commission. The early afternoon passed quickly. Two hours at the perfume counter, then a break during which I bought a little cup of coffee from the café at the corner and drank it, shivering, at an outdoor table. The day was damp and windy. Schoolchildren returning home clapped their hats to their heads, and housewives had their aprons blown up into their faces.

I made that little cup of coffee last the full length of my break, so that I could sit and watch the women and men of Paris, some hurrying, some strolling, some silent and stormy faced, others laughing.

Then, back to the perfume counter for another two-hour shift. This shift was always quieter. Most women were home making dinner, or dressing their hair and getting ready to go out for the evening. Streetlamps were shining when the shop bell rang and a final customer entered.

She wore furs, expensive ones, and shoes with heels so high you knew she had a car and driver waiting for her. No woman could walk cobbled streets in such shoes. Her perfume entered before she did. That was always a mistake. Leave a slight trail like a memory behind you, but never let your perfume arrive before you.

Leper bells, my father used to call this heavy-handed application of perfume, after the lepers of olden France who had to wear bells to warn people of their approach. “Here comes Mrs. Brown,” he would whisper in church on Sunday morning without turning
around to see her. “Smells of lilac and mothballs. Here comes Miss Stoltz.” He wouldn’t say what she smelled of, but everyone in the neighborhood knew how she spent her Saturday nights. “Not alone,” Mother said with tight lips.

This obviously wealthy woman in Boulet’s smelled of spice and incense, enough to perfume a dozen churches. The scent was correct: she was a brunette, full-bodied without reaching the point of heaviness. But she simply wore too much.

“I wish a new fragrance,” she announced, slapping her little beaded purse onto the glass counter and sitting on the stool Mr. Boulet had placed there, once he saw how I could convince the customers to linger a while, to sniff and eventually purchase. “Miss . . . ?” She looked closely at the name tag I wore on my blouse. “Miss Tours?” She paused. “Do I know you?”

“We met at the Jockey. I was with Miss Lee Miller and Mr. Man Ray.”

It was Aziz’s wife, Nimet.

“Yes. Now I do remember. Lee is such a funny girl.” It was clear exactly what she meant by that: Lee keeping company with a shopgirl. Nimet narrowed her eyes, and the thick kohl around them made it look as if there were two black holes in her face where the eyes should have been.

“I am learning to swim. We will be going to the Riviera,” she said. “I wish a new perfume. Something suitable for athletics, yes?”

I didn’t think Nimet would be spending much time perfecting her sidestroke. Poolside martinis seemed more her style. But she was the customer and I was there to assist.

“Have you been to the Eiffel Tower?” I asked, trying to make conversation as I studied my artillery of perfume samples.

“So boring,” Nimet said. “If I want to climb something high, I
go to the pyramids.” Was she laughing at me? Her face was so heavily made-up it was difficult to read her expression. Sitting there before me, Nimet made me aware that her name had popped up in several conversations with Lee, thrown in with the other trivia I hadn’t paid that much attention to. Paris was filled with names of artists and celebrities and their mistresses and wives; if you paid attention to all of them, you’d probably have surrealist nightmares.

Lee had laughed at both Nimet and her husband, Aziz: she with her overblown beauty and strong Egyptian accent, he with the promise of a potbelly to come and the hand gestures of a spoiled prince. He snapped his fingers all the time, at waiters, barbers, chauffeurs, Lee had said. He tapped the side of his nose when he wanted to appear cunning. He templed his hands in front of his face when he wanted to look thoughtful. So transparent.

How was I remembering all this now, with Nimet there in front of me? Lee must have talked about him much more than I had noticed.

“What perfume do you wear now?” I asked Nimet, though I already knew, had known from the very first night at the Jockey when she had walked into the restaurant in her private mist of fragrance. Nubian Amber. A pleasant enough fragrance if appropriately worn, though too heavily weighted with musk, in my opinion. It had a kind of leftover “party from the night before” aura to it, no freshness.

“I don’t remember,” she lied, testing me. “I have heard the little countergirl at Boulet’s knows her fragrances. Choose one for me.”

“Madame is wearing Nubian Amber,” I answered mildly. “You like spice and incense. May I suggest Enigma from Lubin?” I took a bottle from the shelf. “Your wrist, please. Let it dry completely before you smell it.”

Enigma was one of the older perfumes and still very popular. It seemed designed for Nimet, the way you sometimes found a book written before you were born and yet that book was about you. Even the advertising used for Enigma shouted “Nimet!” with its sphinx and winged green Egyptian scarab surrounded by art nouveau flowers.

After I applied a single drop, Nimet vigorously waved her hand in the air to dry it. As soon as it began to dry, I smelled heat and sand and the cooling water of the Nile.

“So you know Miss Lee Miller,” she said casually, still vigorously waving her hand as if flies plagued her. Her heavy gold bangles clanged together. The emerald and diamond ring she wore caught the light and sent it back against the dark walls of the shop, prisms of shiny wealth alighting on jars of cheap face cream, boxes of stale candy and shaving soaps.

“I have the honor. Does Madame like the perfume?”

She sniffed tentatively, bringing that lovely nose with its flaring nostrils to her bangle-weighted wrist. “No. It is too mannish. Try another. Something womanly. Flowers. Spices.”

Enigma was one of the strongest florals, so I knew Nimet was stalling; she was there for something other than perfume.

Monsieur Boulet, meanwhile, was watching us from his mezzanine office window. He had observed Madame’s furs, the emerald ring and gold bracelets, and his eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head. He had smoothed his curly hair down with a palm of spit and straightened an otherwise always crooked tie. We didn’t normally have clientele like Nimet Eloui Bey. Housewives and shopgirls were more our crowd. Was this the beginning of a trend? Was his little shop to become fashionable? Stranger things had happened, stranger fortunes made. Chanel, after all, had started out stitching straight seams in another woman’s workshop.

I smiled at him, hoping his heart was strong enough for this, and returned my attention to my extensive display of samples. I chose Bouquet Manon Lescaut out of meanness. It was dated, too overwhelming even for women who liked to overwhelm with their scent, and it was named for a very unhappy love affair and the woman who died because of her infidelity. Even just sitting on the shelf, the flacon seemed dangerous to me. I had often considered throwing it away. Perhaps I had saved it just for this moment. I did not like being pumped for information about the famous Lee Miller.

“Try this,” I said sweetly. “Other wrist. Mustn’t blend scents.” The
départ
of Bouquet Manon Lescaut spoke of tragedy, with its funereal scent of carnation and incense. Sadness washed over me as soon as I opened the bottle. When I applied a single drop to Madame’s wrist, she again flapped her hand for a few moments with a great clanging of bangles, then sniffed. The top notes deepened the tragedy, with a hint of smoke and burning cedar, as if a million funeral wreaths had been set afire. (These were just my impressions. Some women, happy women, were pleased with the scent. They were of stronger constitution than myself.)