Now, Condé released her from his embrace, told her that she was still his favorite model and commanded her to enjoy herself.

Which was not going to be difficult, she supposed, when the bar was fully stocked with impossible-to-get French champagne—a man like Condé probably had a cellar big enough to outlast the war—when everyone around them was attired in expensive gowns, when the air smelled heavy with French perfume. The orchestra played Cole Porter, George Gershwin sat at a table chatting to a group of admirers, overladen buffets were set up, as usual, on the terrace under the forgivingly warm fall sky, and the dancers took up most of the space in the room. Dancers, Jess noted, who included Emile, almost lip to lip with a girl she knew, another model, four years younger than Jess, barely eighteen. She waited for jealousy to swirl through her but she felt, if anything, relieved. She sat at a table, lit a cigarette and heard a woman say her name.

“Martha Gellhorn,” Jess replied with a grin.

“I see my fame goes before me,” Martha said with a wry smile, sitting beside Jess and lighting a cigarette too. “Which you must also be used to.”

“Perhaps not as much as Ernest Hemingway’s wife,” Jess said. “Does it make your blood boil every time they call you that?”

Martha laughed. “I’ve considered wearing a label that lists my other achievements but few seem interested.”

Jess shook her head; she knew that although Martha was one of the few women—perhaps the only woman—reporting on the war from Europe, her single biggest claim to fame in most people’s eyes was as Ernest Hemingway’s other half.

“I’ve read all of your pieces,” Jess said. “I can’t say that I enjoyed them because nobody could enjoy stories of war and death, but I appreciated them.”

“I’ve read yours too.” Martha eyed Jess appraisingly. “And seen your photographs. The one you took of the artist’s canvas sitting beside the propaganda posters she now paints was better than any newspaper report. I like the way you blurred one image into the other—”

“Solarization,” Jess explained. “I wanted to make it look like one painting was literally bleeding into the other.”

Martha nodded. “I thought that might have been it. It was the subtlest commentary; you didn’t need words to explain the conundrum: the wish to appear selfless and donate one’s talents to one’s country at the same time as mourning the loss of true art.”

“Thank you.” Jess felt herself blush, which was something she hadn’t done in a very long time.

“What are you working on now?” Martha asked, sipping whiskey rather than champagne.

“That’s a very good question. Besides asking my paramour to move out,” Jess nodded at Emile, “not much.”

“I heard about his hand,” Martha said without sympathy. “I also heard that if it hadn’t been for his hand—”

“I’d probably have asked him to move out a long time ago.” Jess finished the sentence for her.