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“Before you go kiss a married man for money,” Khalil asked, “can I see you?”

He was on my phone, propped against the ice bucket on a hotel desk in Miami, still in bed in New York with his voice not all the way awake. I had a call sheet on the pillow that said WHIT in capital letters, because that’s the name I work under, and a robe on that the Maravel had hung in my closet like it expected me to stay. Jace Whitfield, from Durham, North Carolina, twenty-six and up since before light, flown down on the first plane to sell a fragrance for the man who owned this hotel. My agent, Sophie, had booked me through a producer named Nina, and I’d said yes so fast she laughed at me.

“You can see me. You’re looking at me.”

“I’m looking at a robe with a crest on it.” He put his thumb to the gap in his front teeth, the way he does when he’s trying not to grin too early. “Ask me what I’m looking for.”

“What are you looking for, Khalil?”

“The man under the crest. Before wardrobe gets him.”

I laughed and looked at the door like somebody from the shoot might be in the hall. The room was cold enough to hang meat in, and the window behind the desk was all bay and boats and that hard white light that makes everything look paid for.

“Who’s the married man?” he asked, lying back so I got the headboard and his bare shoulder and the gray blanket I’d kicked off that bed so often it felt like mine.

“Malik. Turner. He’s sweet, from the pictures. His husband cuts hair.”

“And you kiss him on a pool deck.”

“By the pool. Feet on the step. One kiss, hand at the waist, turn, separate. It’s in the treatment.”

“I read the treatment. You sent it to me twice.” His eyes came back to the camera. “Whoever lit those reference pictures knew what they were doing. Kiss him like the treatment says, baby. That’s the job.”

“You’re not jealous?”

“Of a man with a call sheet and a husband?” He shook his head on the pillow. “I’m jealous of that bed. That bed’s got you and I’ve got a radiator.”

That went straight down the middle of me. He’d told me something like it when I got home from Los Angeles: it wasn’t who I kissed on a set that got to him, it was whoever got to stand in a room with me when he couldn’t.

“Can I see you?” he asked again, softer.

“Ask me right.”

The gap showed. “Open the robe for me, Carolina.”

That’s Keon’s name for me, from when we first met in New York, and Khalil borrows it when he wants to get under my skin. I tipped the phone so it got me from the chin down, sitting back against the headboard, and I untied the belt slow, because he likes slow and because I like watching him like it.

He went quiet. On a shoot, that’s when the light finally does what he’s been waiting on.

“There he is,” he breathed.

“You’ve seen me before.”

“Not in Miami.” His hand went down out of the frame. I could see his shoulder start to move. “What are you wearing under that?”

“You can see what I’m wearing.”

“Tell me anyway. I like it in your mouth.”

“Nothing. I got out the shower and the robe was right there, and I wanted to see if rich people’s towels feel different.”

“Do they?”

“They feel like somebody’s watching you dry off.” I let the robe fall open off both shoulders. “Your turn.”

He pushed the blanket down. He was hard already, his hand loose around himself, the long dark line of him against the white sheet. The other one in me, the part that wants to be picked out of a room, stood right up and said yes.

“Touch yourself,” he murmured. “Slow. You’re always in a hurry somewhere new.”

“I got a call time.”

“Then you better make it worth the call time.”

I took myself in my hand. The first stroke went through me like a cue I’d missed and caught, and my head went back against the hotel headboard, and he made the sound he makes, the low sound, like he’s the man being touched. That’s the thing about him on a phone. He hears me before he sees me.

“Look at me,” he told me. “Not the window.”

“I’m looking.”

“Tell me the schedule.”

I laughed, breathless. “Right now?”

“Right now. The real one. Not we’ll find time.” His hand was moving faster. “Go on.”

“The pool today, with Malik. Then whatever Nina calls pickups.” My hand kept moving. “Wednesday you land for your own job, the portraits in Little River that already changed their mind twice. Thursday and Friday you work. Sunday I fly home on the ticket in my email.”

“Say the part where I land,” he rasped.

“You land, and I meet you in the lobby, and I don’t let you put your bag down.”

“And then.”

“And then I take you upstairs and I don’t care who’s in the elevator.”

He swore, quiet and filthy, the way he only does when he’s close. “Keep going.”

“And you wear the burgundy shirt.”

“I’m packing it right now.”

“You’re not packing anything right now.”

“I’m packing it in my mind, Jace.” His voice cracked on my name and he let it. “Close. Look at me. Don’t you dare come on that robe, it belongs to a fragrance company.”

I laughed, and the laugh took me right over. I came hard into my own fist with my heels dug into the duvet and his name in my mouth, and I watched him follow me, his eyes open on the screen the whole way, the gap in his teeth showing, his free hand fisted in the gray blanket.

For a while we just breathed at each other.

“There,” he decided, sleepy and pleased with himself. “Now you’ve got somewhere to come back to.”

“I always had somewhere to come back to.”

“I know. I like reminding you on a work morning.” He rubbed his eyes. “Go kiss your married man. Then call me and tell me how bad he was at it.”

“He’s gonna be good at it.”

“Then lie to me a little.”

Somebody knocked twice at the door, a runner with a wardrobe bag and a voice like she’d been sent to fetch me by name. “Coming.” I grabbed the robe closed, and Khalil laughed at me so hard the phone slid off his chest.

✦

“That button is fighting for its life,” Andrés announced from the screen. “Somebody help it.”

Malik held the phone where I could see him. A man with a comb tucked in his curls leaned in close to the camera, a client’s head half out of the frame behind him and a chair he was clearly paying too much rent on. Malik and I had barely finished introducing ourselves. His husband had already found a problem under my chin.

“It’s supposed to fit close,” I told him.

“Close is one thing. That shirt has a grievance.”

I tried to look down without giving either of them the satisfaction. Malik laughed and made a little opening motion in the air at his own collar, waiting for me to do it myself. I undid the top button of the cream linen and it relaxed across my chest, and I hated that it looked better.

“There,” Andrés approved. “Now somebody might believe you went to a party.”

“And survived it,” Malik added. “Baby, I gotta go. Nina’s coming with her work face.”

“Tell her good morning. And tell wardrobe I didn’t touch nothing.”

The screen went dark before I could thank him. Malik put the phone in a canvas bag under a chair and offered me a mint, and then he took off his wedding band and zipped it into a little pocket inside the bag like he could do it without looking.

“He always consults?”

“Only when nobody’s paying him.” He tucked the bag under the chair with his foot. “You good with the blocking?”

“Hand at the waist, turn, kiss, separate. Nobody surprises anybody.”

“Good. I don’t like surprises before lunch. After lunch I can be persuaded.”

The pool terrace was a long white deck over the bay, with the glass doors of the salon behind us, cleared out for equipment, and a passage at the far end back to the restaurant side, where a server kept propping a gate with a wine crate so he didn’t have to badge through it every trip. The pool met the deck in shallow steps at our end, with a steel rail curving down into the water beside them, and an attendant in a white polo stood by the towels with a rescue ring and a long pole hung on the wall behind him like decorations.

Nina came across the tile with a tablet and half a coffee. She looked at my open button and then at the canvas bag under Malik’s chair.

“Andrés?”

“He says good morning,” Malik reported.

“Leave the collar there, Whit.” Nina showed us the frame on the tablet. “We walk it, then we shoot it. Same hands, same kiss as the treatment. If something doesn’t work, tell me before you fix it with your face.”

“How far am I going in the water?”

“Feet on the step. That’s it.”

“Good. I can look expensive. I can’t swim expensive.”

She laughed and waved the attendant over, and he showed me the steps and where the floor dropped off past the third step, close enough that I could see the color change, and then he went back to his towels. I tested the first step with one foot and kept my hand on the rail. The water was cold enough to rearrange my face.

The fragrance was called Stay. A man coming back to somebody with the party still on his clothes. I could do a man who wanted to stay. I had a man in New York who’d just made me promise I’d meet him in the lobby.

We walked it. I came toward Malik and stopped close enough that he could rest a hand at my side, and we turned together toward the water. He asked if his hand was all right before we did it again. I told him to keep it above the place where the linen wanted to fold.

“You want romance or a garment report?” he asked, deadpan.

“Both, if they’re paying for both.”

He tried it again and caught his heel on the chair, looked down at it like it had insulted his mother, and I quit trying not to laugh. The next turn came easier.

“That,” Nina called. “You don’t have to prove you know each other. Let him come to you.”

Zadie, the sound woman, lifted a hand from beside the monitor with her headphones half on. “Hold. Let the cart through. I don’t want a love scene with six cases of sparkling water in it.”

A hotel man rolled a cart through the salon doors, and we waited. Then the first take. I walked toward him, slowed where Nina showed me, and let him meet me instead of arriving with a finished expression. His hand settled at my side. The kiss was warm and easy and a lot less complicated than the number of people standing around waiting for it. He tasted like the mint.

“Cut. Nice,” Nina approved. “Once more, Whit, with less awareness of your own cheekbones.”

“They’re new here. I’m showing them around.”

“They can see the city after work.”

She showed me the frame. Right before Malik touched me, I’d moved my chin into the light and disappeared into a pose. She didn’t scold me. She just pointed at the exact moment, which is worse, and better.

“You’ve got the face,” she told me, briskly kind. “Let the rest of you arrive.”

I asked Malik to say something to me on the approach, something I didn’t know was coming. He waited for Nina to call it, and as I reached him he murmured that he’d forgotten to put the trash out before he left the house and Andrés was going to kill him. I laughed against his mouth and missed my mark so bad we had to go again. On the next take he didn’t say a word, but I could see him already explaining the trash to his husband in his head.

Nina kept that version.

“Tell me that’s it,” Malik begged, crouched beside me on the step while I dangled my feet. “Andrés has food waiting, and he eats the part he thinks I don’t deserve.”

“Two more,” Nina told him.

“That’s how y’all count to zero.”

✦

Adrian Valcourt came through the salon while I was sitting on the shallow step with my feet in the water and my hand around the rail.

I knew that walk before anybody said his name. He’d been the face of his own first campaigns, before he owned the company and then the building, and I’d studied those pictures so hard that Ellis watched me cross our kitchen and asked if I’d hurt myself. In person he was broader, with silver at the temple the photographs had softened. I stopped smiling at Malik and smiled at him.

He noticed. He didn’t make me work for the one he gave back.

“There you are,” he greeted Nina, and then a man behind him came through the doors carrying shopping bags and a paper cup. “Show me what I’ve missed.”

Nina played the kiss. Adrian watched it twice, then put a finger on the screen at the moment before we touched.

“That. Keep him there.”

“Which him?” Malik asked.

Adrian looked up. “Whit. I want one alone.”

Malik stood and held out a hand to me. I took it, and let go of the rail, and he got me up out of the water and passed me a towel before he stepped out of the light, in a single easy move, like a man used to giving up his mark.

“We finish the pair first,” Nina told Adrian. “I’ve got Malik holding the extra pickup Thursday.”

“We won’t need it.” He leaned closer to the monitor. “Give me this face. Everything else is making it busy.”

Malik’s smile stayed on too long. The attendant moved his chair. Somebody bent and peeled Malik’s tape mark off the tile while I dried my feet.

“You’re releasing Thursday?” Malik asked Nina, very even.

“The extra pickup. Let me confirm what’s already booked.”

“Okay.” He zipped the mint tin into his bag beside his ring. “I turned something down for that day.”

Nobody answered him, and I didn’t either. I wanted to. I wanted Adrian to look at me again more.

He came over while they reset the camera. He didn’t touch me. He crouched by the step, where I was sitting on the edge of the deck now with the towel over my knees, and he looked at my right hand, which was still holding the rail out of plain habit even though I was out of the water.

“You don’t swim,” he said quietly. Not a question.

“Not expensively.”

He looked over his shoulder at the attendant, just once, and the man came and stood by the steps without being asked twice. Then Adrian looked back at me, close enough that I caught what he was wearing on his wrist, warm wood and something bitter under it.

“Then nobody puts you past that step,” he told me, low. “Not on my property. Not for any picture.”

I’d been told where to stand by plenty of people who never looked at what my hands were doing. Here was the man who owned the building, and the first thing he’d seen about me was the thing I was hiding, and he’d fixed it without a show. Something in me leaned toward him like a plant toward a window.

“What do people call you,” he asked, “when they aren’t putting you on a call sheet?”

“Jace.”

“Jace.” He said it like he was putting it somewhere safe. “Look over here, Jace.”

I looked. The camera came around. He stood by the monitor with his arms folded and his eyes on me, and I could feel exactly where he was standing through every frame, the way you can feel the sun on the side of your face.

“Don’t arrange everything,” he told me after a few frames, mildly. “You were better before you knew I was watching.”

I laughed, embarrassed and so pleased I could feel it in my teeth, and Nina asked the camera to hold that.

Malik went inside to call his husband. I watched him go until Adrian said my name again.

The man with the shopping bags put them down by the monitor. Nina asked him for the other bottle.

“One bottle, one charger, two pairs of glasses he wasn’t looking for till I left the house.” He opened a bag. “If there’s a piano in here, I’m resigning.”

“You’ve been resigning since breakfast, Danny,” Adrian murmured, amused.

“That’s when the day starts.”

I laughed. Danny glanced at me, handed Nina the bottle, and fished my phone out of the pocket of the wardrobe robe on the chair, from under the wet towel I’d dropped on top of it.

“You’re gonna want that dry.”

“Good first-day advice.”

“I try to give the useful kind.” He put it in my hand. “Everybody else around here’s got opinions about your face.”

Khalil had texted while I was in the water. A picture of his worktable, a lens cap in the middle of somebody’s invoice, and under it: Found the missing thing. It was under the other missing thing. I started to answer, and Adrian asked whether I could stay once Nina had what she needed. I put the phone away.

He wanted a line, recorded, while I stood up out of the chair. Four words.

“I always come back.”

He said it quietly, the way he wanted it, and I could see the picture he wanted before Nina asked where the line was going to be used.

“Over the last image. An option.”

“That wasn’t in the treatment,” Danny said from behind the monitor.

“It’s four words, Danny.”

Nina stepped up beside the camera. “I need to see the sequence before anything goes out with that on it. Whit?”

I looked at Danny. He had an empty box in his hands and his thumb was pressed hard into the cardboard. Then Adrian stepped into the light to show me where he wanted my face. He stood close and turned his head a little and waited for me to follow, and it was useful, and I hated how much better I could feel the picture getting.

“Let’s try it,” I told them.

We did it a few ways. On the last take I let the words belong to somebody I wanted to come back to, and I pictured Khalil in his kitchen trying to find a bowl without hanging up on me. Nina looked up from the monitor and smiled.

“That’s yours,” Adrian told me. “That’s the part I came for.”

✦

Afterward he showed me a still on his phone, standing at the rail with the bay behind him. It was the kiss. Malik’s hand was at my waist, my face turned into his, and the crop ended right before Nina’s elbow and the reflector and Zadie’s boom. It looked like two men nobody had told where to stand. I looked beautiful in it. I knew how many takes it had taken, and I still wanted to be the man in that picture.

There were words underneath it.

Some things can’t be directed. WHIT and Malik, after everyone else went home. Miami looks good on a man who finally knows where he belongs. #Stay

I read them twice.

“Everybody was right here,” I told him.

“It’s a draft.” He held the phone where we could both see it. “You know the difference between the work and what makes somebody stop scrolling.”

“Malik’s married.”

“I know Andrés. I’m not announcing an engagement.” He smiled, and then he stopped watching the screen and watched me instead. “Nina says you listen. I like that. I’m tired of teaching a new face the whole company every time we make something. I’d rather have one man I can build with.”

Behind us Zadie was coiling cable, and inside, Malik was telling Andrés about a pickup he wasn’t getting anymore. I knew that. I looked at the phone and wanted Adrian to go back to the part about one man.

“Is that a real job?”

“It could be. We’d talk about it properly. Dinner tonight, with Nina.” He lowered his voice, though nobody was near enough to hear. “Don’t give me a polite answer. Do you like what you see?”

The picture and the words sat there together. I could have put my finger on the words.

“The picture’s good.”

He took the phone back. “I thought so.”

Nina called across the terrace, asking if he was sending the proposed material over for review. He held up the phone.

“Sending it now. He likes it.”

I opened my mouth. Adrian was already asking her about the restaurant, and I let her answer him. The camera operator lifted the chair out of the shot. Malik came back with his ring on and told me Andrés had saved him some food after all.

“You still coming across with me?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d I miss?”

I looked at Adrian, talking to Nina like she’d been part of what he’d just offered me from the start.

“Another line.”

Malik picked the wardrobe robe up off the chair and handed it to me. I put it on without looking at him.

Danny stayed behind to gather the bags. I bent to help him with the empty bottle box and he took it out of my hands before I could fold it wrong.

“You got a return ticket?” he asked.

“End of the week.”

“Good. Keep it.”

I waited for the joke. He put the box in the bag.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means you came here with somewhere else to be.” He looked over at the rail, where Adrian was still talking, and then back at me. “People forget that about themselves around here.”

Nina called his name, and he picked up the bags and went. Khalil’s text was still sitting there. I’d wanted this booking so bad I read the contract on the subway with my mouth moving. I wanted a search for my name to turn up a campaign instead of a clip of me on a Los Angeles sidewalk with a fire alarm going behind me.

I sent Khalil a picture of the pool with my feet in the corner of it, and under it I wrote that the pictures were going good.

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