Martha leaned back in her chair, pointed her cigarette in Jess’s direction and said exactly what Jess was thinking. “You don’t need me,” Martha said. “You’ve got Jess.”

“Yes. Send me,” Jess said, turning to Bel as her restlessness fell away, replaced by an animation she hadn’t felt for a long time.

Bel laughed. “I appreciate you trying to cheer me up but—”

“I’m serious.” Jess put down her glass and eyeballed Bel. “I can be Vogue’s correspondent.”

“I’m not sending you into a war zone. It’s ridiculous.” Bel took a large sip of champagne, then said, “Brilliant, but ridiculous.”

Jess felt the chink in Bel’s Mainbocher armor. “It is brilliant. And I’m asking to go into a war zone; you’re not sending me. There are other women over there.”

Bel arched her eyebrows. “About two of them.”

“So with me, there’ll be three. Lucky number three.”

“Actually, you’re about right,” Martha said. “Margaret Bourke-White’s the only female photojournalist I know of in the Mediterranean. There are a couple of other correspondents like me. But that’s all.”

This time, Bel’s eyebrows performed such a feat of acrobatics that Jess had to stifle a laugh. “I was joking when I said two!” Bel protested.

“I want to do this.” Jess kept her voice level. “I need to do this. Please.”

Bel gesticulated at the waiter for more champagne. “How on earth am I going to get you accredited? Former model, Emile’s lover—or are you? I can see he’s finding comfort in another girl’s lips just over there—unconventional as all get-out. I’ve heard the woman at the passport office is as easy to get past as Hitler. She’s never going to let a model, who I’m sure she imagines will sleep only on silk sheets at the finest hotels, go to a war zone.”

“You’re selling me short,” Jess said. “You know what my childhood was like, that I’ve lived in tents, slept under the stars, roughed it in a way that probably most of the men going to war couldn’t even imagine.”

“When I landed in Spain in ’37 to report the war over there, I’d never slept in a tent,” Martha added. “Or seen a man shot. I survived. Best way to learn is to throw yourself into the thick of it, bombs and all.”

Bel inhaled smoke, breathed it out, inhaled again. “If only you weren’t so damn right,” she said to Jess. “You would be perfect. And I’ve always known you wouldn’t be a model forever.” She reached out and squeezed Jess’s hand. “Martha, you’ve been over there. Shouldn’t I try harder to dissuade her?”

“On the contrary,” Martha replied. “If you do, we’ll only hear stories of men, told by men. Given I’m married to the biggest chauvinist in the country, I have a vested interest in opening up the discourse.”

“You’re the only person in the world who would make me feel like I was doing her a favor if I said yes to sending her into a war zone,” Bel said to Jess.