Wherever There Is Light (21 page)

“Ain't you a sight,” Papa B said, putting an arm around her shoulders. Sometimes Kendall imagined that her father had been like Papa B, with the same twinkling eyes and hearty smile.

Kendall said, “A friend of mine's coming for lunch.”

“He already here,” Papa B replied, placing a hand under Kendall's elbow and turning her toward a table by the jukebox, where Simon was chatting with Mama B. “Introduced hisself. Friendly, fine-lookin' fella.” Papa B chuckled. “Be careful, missy.”

It was good advice. At college, the girls had gone gaga over Simon with his liquid eyes, smooth teak complexion, dimples, and rakish, Errol Flynn mustache.

“Child,” Mama B said, as Kendall approached the table, “don't you look beautiful.”

“Doesn't she,” Simon said, standing up.

Kendall repaid their compliments with a droll curtsy, and when Simon bussed her cheek, she smelled the clean scent of his Aqua Velva and the Reed's cinnamon candies he constantly popped in his mouth, and she remembered their feverish evenings behind the dunes.

Mama B brought them a pitcher of lemonade and took their order.

Kendall said, “You excited about working in New York?”

He gave her one of his crooked, world-weary smiles. “I am. And excited about seeing you.”

Simon appeared to be in a perpetual state of amusement, yet behind that smile, Kendall knew, was an agile mind and a brimming storehouse of anger at the treatment of Negroes—an imbecility that Simon, an aristocrat by birth, viewed as the abominable pursuit of lowborn fools. Kendall had adored him: she had met him in an art class, and he had taught her how to develop film in the darkroom he'd built near campus. They had broken up when Simon had gone to the
Pittsburgh Courier
, but their romance would've ended even if he hadn't graduated. Simon, unlike Derrick, hadn't wanted to marry her. He did want to sleep with her, though, and their final months together were an incessant debate over her virginity, which Simon accused her of guarding like the Holy Grail. Now, after two years of letting herself go with Julian in ways that would've horrified her as a college sophomore, those debates seemed infantile.

“What I really want to do,” Simon said, “is sail to Europe and cover the war.”

“And write that novel you talked about?”

“We've got a white Hemingway, why not a Negro one? And we're going to be in that war sooner or later. With Japan too, now that they're threatening the Philippines.” He drank some lemonade. “Your mother told me you're taking photographs. The
Courier
could use freelancers up here. Interested?”

“I am. But I'm more interested in what else my mother told you.”

Simon laughed and performed a fair impression of Garland, “ ‘That daughter of mine is mixed up with someone entirely inappropriate for her.' I figure she meant a white guy.”

“Correct.”

“Not surprising for Miss Coconut Patty.”

That was what Simon used to call her when he thought she was acting overly prim and proper. It had bothered her then, but she'd been too intimidated by the handsome upperclassman to answer him.

“Simon, you called me that because I wouldn't let you fuck me.”

He winced at the word
fuck
. To irk him—and repay him for teasing her in college—Kendall astonished herself by saying, “And if you keep calling me that, you never will.”

That comment made her feel unfaithful to Julian, but it also got rid of Simon's smile.

“Hope y'all hungry,” Mama B said, putting the plates of ribs on the table.

“Starving,” Kendall said, and she was gratified that Simon said nothing at all.

C
hristina and Kendall couldn't walk a straight line. And neither of them cared.

“Told you,” Christina said, tittering drunkenly.

“You sure nuff did,” Kendall replied.

It was three weeks past Labor Day, and they had come from the café in the Brevoort Hotel, where they had celebrated with two bottles of pinot noir, and were staggering through Washington Square. Old men in bulky sweaters were playing dominoes under the autumn-tinted trees, and Kendall saw her landlord, Mr. Ciccolini, in his grayish-brown suit and fedora, sitting on a bench, reading
L'Espresso
while the young man beside him, in a peacoat and watch cap, was riffling through that new left-wing daily,
PM
.

Christina said, “When your photos arrived in Provincetown, I started shouting. I knew you'd be good. But this good? Who could predict that? Léo was with us for dinner, and Léo became so excited when I gave them to him, he began speaking French. I go, ‘In English, Léo, in English,' and Léo says, ‘Whoever this is must be in my gallery.' ”

This was the twelfth retelling of the story since Christina had returned from Cape Cod, but Kendall was no more tired of hearing it than Christina was of repeating it. Léo Sapir was the proprietor of the toniest avant-garde art gallery in the city, and even though Kendall had spoken to him on the phone and had an appointment with him on Friday, she couldn't get used to the news that he wanted to exhibit her photographs.

“This feels too fast. I'm not ready for my own show.”

“Léo likes the art he likes, and he could care less if you or anyone else thinks you're ready. Léo's a romantic. And a tenacious French Jew who has nothing against money. Wait till you hear him talk to the critics and his rich customers. The tale he'll tell of his discovery. ‘Here is my Negress with the unfailing eye. She is as gorgeous as her photographs.' ”

“Christina, I don't know how to thank you.”

“Thank me? I should thank you.”

“Why?”

“Because Léo was so captivated by your photos, he forgot to extol the greatness of Brig's paintings. With no one paying attention to him, Brig goes berserk and starts up about our chain. I told him I was done with that stinking thing, and if he didn't like it, he could tie that chain around his you-know-what and give it a yank. I haven't had it on since.”

Compared to the Village, the Upper East Side was as staid as a bank, which was logical to Kendall as she came up Fifth Avenue and cut over to Madison, because it was here that New York displayed its wealth—in luxurious rows of apartment buildings and mansions of rusticated limestone shaded by the glory of Central Park. The Léo Sapir Gallery was in a townhouse on East Seventy-Ninth, beside the New York Society Library. A limousine was in front, with a liveried chauffeur standing by. Kendall went through the leaded glass doors and saw the paintings and photographs on the walls—Picasso, Duchamp, Cartier-Bresson, and Evans—and when it occurred to her that her work would be hanging with such august company, she felt like a fraud.

A man in an indigo suit and turtleneck was escorting a silver-haired woman in a chinchilla wrap to the entrance. “Mrs. Johnson,” he said, “the Dalí will be reframed and at your home by five.”

“See that it is, Léo. My guests will be there by eight.”

He held the door for her and, after she walked out, said, “You must be my next discovery.” He kissed Kendall's hand. “
Enchanté de faire votre connaissance
,
Mademoiselle Wakefield
.”

“
Je suis ensorcelée
,
Monsieur Sapir
.”

Up close, he resembled the portraits of Shakespeare—balding with long, wavy brown hair in back and a short boxed beard. “Come,” he said. “I have a sweet tooth and a scrumptious crème de cacao. And you will call me Léo.”

The sitting room had a stained glass octagonal window and a circular table with four Chippendale chairs. Léo poured the chocolate liqueur from a bottle into shot glasses and passed one to Kendall.

“
À votre santé
,” he said, toasting her health.

“
Et à la vôtre
.”

Léo dug through the mail, catalogs, and photographs on the table until he found a desk calendar. “For the opening of your exhibit, I think a Friday evening, November twenty-eighth.
C'est bon
?”

“
C'est bon
.” That was all the conversation Kendall could manage. She was in a mild state of shock, unable to accept that she was preparing for a show at the Léo Sapir Gallery. Kendall watched him sifting through her photographs. “Monsieur—Léo, you really like these pictures?”

He laughed, a deep, operatic sound. “
Ma chère
, they are
magnifique
. Photographers endeavor to freeze an instant for eternity. But you, you in a single glance lay bare the past, present, and future of your subjects. That little girl and the rainbow. I see her life for as long as she is alive. And these two,
mon Dieu
.”

He put them on the table facing Kendall. In one, a leggy teenage beauty in a halter top and short shorts strolls past a young man in a sleeveless T-shirt, who stands outside the Lenox Lounge and eyes her as if she were a glimpse of the Promised Land, while the teenager's phantom twin hurries ahead as if fleeing from the burden his love would bring. In the other, a prostitute in a camisole, the depredations of time and boredom on her face, leans out the turreted window of a row house on St. Nicholas Avenue, her apparition beside her, both of them with eyes as hard as asphalt and watching the men filing up the stoop.

Léo said, “For now, I call them,
Love One
and
Love Two
. Your photographs must have titles—for the catalog and the exhibit. We can address that together. Monday at nine, if that's acceptable. The gallery will keep forty percent of each sale. I will sell these for three hundred dollars.”

“A—a picture?”

“
Bien sûr
. My clientele can afford it and you deserve it. And as an aside, Christina told me you don't have an agent.”

“Do I need one?”

“To collect a proper wage from magazines, yes. I'm starting an agency, frankly, because so many art directors and editors ask that I recommend photographers, and why should I speak to them for free? The
Picture Post
—it's the British
Life
—wants photos of the ambassador to Washington.
Look
wants children at play in New York.
Coronet
wants Judith Anderson—she will be playing Lady Macbeth on Broadway.
Glamour
calls for movie stars who want a touch of
je ne sais quoi
in their portraits.
Life
has Margaret Bourke-White, so it will be difficult for you to break in there, but perhaps they will take on a Negro. We shall see. In these other magazines, I can get you from two to four hundred dollars plus expenses, and you'll have a lab to develop your film and make prints. I earn twenty-five percent.”

Kendall gulped down the rest of her liqueur. “I don't have the technical ability or the experience for—”

“You will learn, and if you don't, no one will hire you again. I say you will. I have regretted disregarding my instincts, but never heeding them. You will make a name for yourself, Mademoiselle Wakefield. And I will help you. Because I want to. And because I can. Are the terms acceptable?”

“Do we shake hands or something?”

“
Oui
,” Léo said, and held out his hand.

Kendall walked out of the gallery, telling herself that she wasn't dreaming. If she didn't have to meet Simon at the Museum of Modern Art, she might have spent the rest of the day wandering Central Park. So far, Kendall had done two assignments for the
Courier
, photographing the author Richard Wright, in his Brooklyn apartment, and A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, at his office near the Apollo. The photos accompanied the columns Simon was writing on the transformation of Wright's novel
Native Son
into a play, and on Randolph's persuading President Roosevelt, by threatening to lead a march on Washington, to sign an executive order prohibiting discrimination in hiring at defense plants. Kendall had earned fifty dollars, fair money for her effort, she'd thought, until talking to Léo. After each interview, Simon had invited her for a drink. She'd made up excuses, which, from his look of bemused condemnation, he wasn't buying. He'd phoned her about visiting the museum for a piece he was writing on the exhibit of submissions for the National Defense Poster Competition. She agreed because she could justify it to herself as helping a colleague, though she suspected that Simon had chosen the poster exhibit because he knew she couldn't resist an art museum.