The Beautiful American by Jeanne Mackin Page A

me in that direction.
    “Rue du Louvre,” she said.
    “For?”
    “Shadows.”
    Lee was almost a foot taller than I was, and when she put her arm around my shoulder, I felt like someone’s kid sister.
    Fifteen, rue du Louvre, Lee’s destination that morning, was one of Blondel’s apartment buildings, large enough to need two separate entrances, one of metal and one of stone. Blondel had been a polymath, fascinated by numbers, and this building was about the number two. Lee led us to the stone entrance, a double arch flanked by two huge busts of muscled, bearded water gods. It felt quintessentially Parisian to me, with the rich stone carvings of male torsos, garlands, wreaths, the balconies and neoclassical supporting columns. It felt very far from Poughkeepsie, and that felt grand.
    “He looks cranky, doesn’t he?” Lee pointed to the Atlas on the right, and in fact, his arm was raised to his forehead as if he had a pounding hangover. His left arm was pressed against his hip, a gesture of impatience.
    “Wouldn’t you, if you knew your entire kingdom was going to sink beneath the ocean?”
    “Guess that would ruin your day,” Lee admitted. “But how come the sculptor made two busts of the same god? Why not a pretty nymph on the other side of the arches?”
    “Atlas was a twin. The second bust is probably his brother, Gadeirus. Together they ruled all the land the gods gave Poseidon, until it sank forever.” The second bust had one hand raised slightly over his eyes, as if he was looking into the distance. His other hand was poised protectively over his stomach, a defensive gesture.
    Lee gave me a knowing smirk. “Well. Someone did her schoolwork. God, I was a rotten student. And it shows, sometimes. Twins, hey. Wonder what it feels like to have a twin, a same-sex twin. I never wanted a sister, did you? Much prefer the company of men.”
    “A sister would have been fun,” I said. “I was an only child.”
    “Ah. Poor little rich girl, all alone in a big house with, let me guess, lots and lots of books for company.”
    “Something like that.” Amazing, isn’t it, the conclusions people leap to? That day, I was wearing a blouse I’d bought in a secondhand shop, cream silk with hand stitching. I wore my father’s gold watch. Silk and gold do give off the whiff of money, I suppose, even secondhand.
    “The best thing about Atlantis,” I continued, needing to show off, “is that its palace was built of amber. Plato called it orichalc, but it was white and yellow amber. Imagine how Atlantis must havesmelled.” I inhaled, trying to envision walking through a city made entirely of amber, that sweet, resinous fragrance that is the smell of preserved sunlight.
    “Isn’t there a palace of amber somewhere in Russia?” Lee was fidgeting with her camera, preoccupied.
    “It’s a single room. In the Catherine Palace in Leningrad. Walls and walls of carved amber and gold leaf, made in the eighteenth century.” Just a few short years later that amber room would disappear as completely and mysteriously as Atlantis, not destroyed by earthquake or tsunami but looted by the Nazis.
    “Move over there, Nora,” Lee said, no longer interested in history or the scent of amber. “You’re blocking the light.”
    I felt certain we were there to photograph the busts, but instead, when she was ready, Lee aimed the camera at the paving stones. She waited, barely breathing. Second by second, the morning sun climbed the invisible staircase over the Paris skyline, and as I watched, shadows began to appear, nothing definite, nothing definable, only lines and angles thrown against the uneven cobbles. Lee moved slowly in a circle, camera held to her face, pressing the shutter, cranking the film.
    “It’s about the light,” she said once. “And where it falls. Everything else is superfluous.”
    She took maybe a dozen snapshots, and when the sun had become a firm reality rather than a suggestion and the shadows lost their