“Besides,” Bel continued, pushing the nose of a cow away from her Mainbocher jacket with the same force she used when disposing of hapless interns, “now you’ll have time to take more pictures for me. And to write for me.”

“Will Condé agree to that?”

Bel eyed Jess, who was still wearing the bathing suit in which her cleavage was displayed so winningly. “Your by-line won’t be anywhere near as intimidating to advertisers as a full-page of Jessica May in the flesh and not much else.”

A peal of laughter rang from Jess’s mouth, so loudly that the team from the shoot all turned to look their way.

“Think about it,” Bel urged. “You know how much I loved the few pieces you’ve done for me.”

“I will,” Jess said. “But right now I need to change, go back to the city, and deal with Emile.”

“What will you say to him?” Bel asked as they walked over to the makeshift dressing room.

Jess unhooked the bathing suit, unconcerned that Belinda was with her, so used to undressing in front of people that it now seemed strange when she was alone in the apartment taking her clothes off without an audience. “Something I would have said to him six months ago had he not returned from the training camp missing two fingers,” she said bleakly.

* * *

Hours later, Jess swept through the Stork Club, past the ostentatiously large flower displays and voluptuous velvet drapes, her eye fixed on a booth she regularly occupied. She was brought up short by two men who wouldn’t move aside to let her through and she dealt with them the same way she always dealt with men who thought the face and body of Jessica-May-the-model was theirs for the groping. “You’ve left them there,” she said, indicating a spot on the floor.

As both men looked down, she shouldered her way past and called back to them, “Your eyeballs, I mean.”

Emile smiled at her when she reached the booth, a smile she’d once thought suave and sensual. As usual, he wore his hair slicked back, his suit just the right side of louche to allow him entry into the Stork Club. He pushed a Manhattan across to her as she slid into the seat opposite. She took the drink and, in return, pushed Bel’s copy of McCall’s over to him.

“I thought you’d be pleased.” His smile widened, as if he thought one of his signature grins was all it took to have her thank him for ruining her career.

“You knew I wouldn’t be. Otherwise you’d have told me.”

His smile stayed on. “You’re always saying I should start working again. I took your advice.”

They both looked at his right hand; at the remaining two fingers and thumb. Once upon a time, the handsome Frenchman, Emile Robard, had been one of the darlings of fashion photography, peer to Man Ray and Cecil Beaton, first in France and then in New York City, where he’d decamped in 1939 when war was declared. To where he and Jess had both decamped, to be precise—Jess might have been an American but she’d lived more than half her life in France with her parents, which is where she’d met Emile.