Free The Beautiful American by Jeanne Mackin Page B

lighter even than Lee’s, had fallen out of its chignon and dangled over her red cheeks. She had the kind of full, voluptuous figure that would turn to fat if she wasn’t careful.
    Her husband was busily, almost industriously, flirting with the model—black-haired, pouty-mouthed, wearing a beaded dress cutlow at the neck and high at the knee. His hand pounced on hers and held it prisoner; the bouncing motion of his knee pressing into her thigh pulled at the rumpled tablecloth.
    Lee and Man’s whispered conversation seemed to end in Lee’s favor, for she resumed smiling and he did not.
    Trudie, calmly ignoring how her husband was now nuzzling the model’s long neck, leaned over toward me and whispered, “Six months. Then Miss Miller will leave him. Want to wager? Poor Herr Ray. He’s Jewish, you know.”
    Jamie sat next to me, listening, watching. He was normally full of energy, always in movement except for the moments it took to hold his camera steady, and now he was as still as a cat waiting to pounce.
    Man went to find a waiter and Lee smiled at Jamie. He smiled back.
    “I’m from P’oke, too,” he said.
    “Really?” She leaned toward him in the kind of gesture that is meant to exclude others from what has become a private conversation. “Let’s not talk about P’oke. What do you do now? Why are you in Paris? Most of the others have left like rats leaving a ship. You’d think the world was ending just because the market dipped a bit.”
    “I’m working,” he said. “Trying to work. I’m a photographer.”
    “What’s your name?” the German art collector asked, removing his right hand from whatever it had been doing under the table and pointing at Jamie for emphasis.
    “James Sloane.”
    “Never heard of you.” He turned his attention back to the black-haired girl.
    Lee’s brows met in a little furrow of thoughtfulness.
    Violin music wafted to us from the front of the club, and thesmell of old campfires. Gypsies had arrived to play. Most club owners wouldn’t let them in, but the Jockey liked to be daring, liked to be the exception.
    “Do you tango?” the model’s husband asked me. I looked at Jamie. He was talking with Lee. “Yes,” I lied.
    There wasn’t much room to dance, so he—I think his name was Charles—put his arm tight around my waist and swayed me back and forth in time to the music. We did a few quick turns, a few marching steps, then more swaying, more of that movement that suggests lovemaking. I smiled over my shoulder at Jamie, relieved to see he finally was watching. He winked back.
    “Didn’t know you could tango,” he said, when I returned to the table.
    “Neither did I.”
    Man came back from the direction of the kitchen and sat again next to Lee, so Jamie had to pull his chair closer to mine. A trio of black-suited, white-aproned waiters followed Man, carrying pitchers, bottles, trays.
    “Finally! Eat, drink, and be merry!” Lee ordered.
    We drank a lot that night, French champagne mixed with American cocktails, and we ate, dish after dish brought to the table: smoked trout, cucumber salad, potato salad, little sausages served with their own special mustard.
    I hadn’t realized how hungry I was, had been for days, until those sausages arrived, sizzling and smelling of garlic and grease. Jamie put three on his plate at once, with a huge dab of yellow mustard next to them, and leaned back to smile at me again. Aren’t we lucky? his gaze said. He forced himself to eat slowly, taking thoughtful bites, chewing even more thoughtfully, pretending to be listening to the conversations around us when I knew he wasoccupied, totally occupied, with the exploding flavors in his mouth. As was I.
    Lee and Man and the German collector talked about an exhibit they had visited the day before at a gallery on boulevard Haussmann. Herr Abetz hadn’t liked the work, thought it contrived and a little sentimental. Man was defending the artist, saying his work linked the old