After arriving in New York, it took only a year for Emile Robard and Jessica May to become the darlings of both the scandal sheets and the social pages, the royalty of Greenwich Village artistes. A sought-after model and a French photographer, both, according to the press, blessed with enough beauty to lift any gathering to greatness.

That she’d shockingly dared to live with Emile, to be his mistress, was both titillating and thrilling to most Manhattanites whose values were far more conservative than their cosmopolitan facades implied. What she hated most about it was the word—mistress—implying she lived off Emile’s largesse. But her modeling career meant she had more than enough money of her own. In fact, over the last few months, he’d been the one burning through her money like packs of Lucky Strikes. He’d taught her photography, the press said—another lie, although he had bettered her skills. He’d ensured she was the face most loved by the fashion magazines—another untruth; she was perfectly capable of finding her own work and hadn’t had to attend a go-see for two years.

And then earlier in the year, having witnessed the glory surrounding photographers like Robert Capa and Edward Steichen who were taking pictures of war, Emile had decided he wanted some of that luster for himself. He’d cast off models and magazines and got himself assigned to an army training camp in Texas. Jess had been glad to have some time apart from him; the six months prior had seen Emile throwing himself at parties with the same passion he used to save for photography, and consuming whiskey as if it were air. It wasn’t a lifestyle that Jess desired, given that late nights were incompatible with a magazine-worthy face, and nor did she want to be the vapid party-girl whose only concern was locating a suitable sofa to pass out on at three in the morning. She’d hoped that Emile’s sudden urge to shoot training maneuvers would result in him finding inspiration in something other than late nights and drunkenness, but he got into an argument with a private at the camp and ended up being shot himself, losing two fingers in the process.

When he returned with a bandaged hand, Emile told Jess he’d been defending her honor, that the private had made lewd comments about a photograph of her naked back in a magazine. It was her fault he’d lost his fingers and could no longer hold a camera properly. So she’d stayed with Emile even though she wasn’t sure that she still loved him.

But now they were done. Jess could no longer go to work in the morning, leaving him in her apartment to drink whiskey all day, could no longer dance with him in the evenings with a model’s empty smile pasted on her face, could no longer help him home and to bed because he was too drunk to walk. Could not ignore the fact that he’d lined his pockets with Kotex money at her expense.