Doug Allyn - The Best American Mystery Stories 2000

Perhaps you’d like the grand tour. I’ll simply detach the videocam from its tripod and point it around for you. As you can see, this is a photography studio. These are my lights. This is my camera. It’s gelling old, I suppose. But these things are expensive. This is my backdrop. It doubles as a projection screen. Turn around again, and this is my projector. I always take at least a few slides of the girls who come in here. That’s my kitchenette over there, and behind that partition I’ve got a mattress. I used to have an apartment across town, but what with rent and everything and since I was always here, you know how it goes... I’ve got some chairs there in the waiting area. This is Jamie’s makeup table. And this is the body.

This ( click) is Beth Dalewell, a petite model who, surprise of surprises, wanted to act. Check her out: shiny dark hair in a bob, those big, brown, watery eyes, her mouth permanently curved into a half smile. Cute, isn’t she? Do you see the way her skin is? Finely knit, like cream-colored silk. And her clothes, sort of preppy, but extremely tasteful. That skirt’s pretty short loo, if you know what I’m saying. I’ll never forget the way she looked me dead in the eye, and said, “Yes,” flat out.

“You will?” I practically knocked my camera over.

“What do you want to sec?” Beth asked.

Jamie was hunching over her makeup desk. Her back, broad as a billboard, was turned to us. She always wore big, droopy pink or yellow sweatshirts and these pleated skirts that she made herself out of all kinds of cheap fabric, weird tartans, paisleys, stripes, and checks. Colorful clothes were supposed to hide her hugeness, I guess.

I had no idea what Jamie was thinking at that moment. I mean, I knew she got uncomfortable when I asked a girl out, but I just thought it was a feminist thing. All I could think of now was, what did I want to see? My mind went blank. I couldn’t conjure up a single movie that was playing anywhere. I get so stupid when a pretty girl’s around. A comedy? A mystery? “I don’t know,” I shrugged at Beth. “Anything, anything you want. You pick.” Beth was looking at me, so I adjusted the lights to blind her. It makes me nervous when people look at me.

“I’ll call you,” Beth said, squinting, “later this afternoon. I’ll look in the paper and then I’ll call you up.”

I was starting to get giddy inside. I felt kind of trembly. My hands shook. I knew what would happen now. At least I thought I did. I’d send Jamie home and cancel the rest of my appointments for the day. I’d go out and buy flowers for the place. I’d do the dishes. I’d spray air freshener around, empty out the ashtrays, throw out the garbage. I’d change the sheets on my bed. I was feeling that agitation already. Beth would call. She’d have picked out one of those English movies set a hundred years ago. We’d meet in front of the theater. After the movie we’d find a nice Italian place, have a bottle of wine, maybe two, a little stimulating conversation. On the way home I’d invite her in for a drink. And so on. And so forth. It was going to be awesome, I was thinking. Truly incredible.

Jamie waddled over to Beth with the powder brush. “Let me even out your skin,” she said acidly. “You’re all blotchy.”

“What are you talking about?” I said to Jamie. “Get away from her with that thing.” It was too late, though. Jamie dusted Beth with the brush. “And maybe after we ran get a bite to eat?” I asked, ignoring

Beth smiled through the powdery makeup, motes of dust floating in the air in front of her face. “Absolutely,” she said. “Why not?” (click) Beautiful Beth. Here’s another picture of her. As you can see, I started shooting wildly after that. (click) (click) I already had the shot, anyway. And, I figured, now that Beth was going to be my girlfriend and everything, I’d have plenty of time to take more photos of her. Especially headshots for her acting career, plus others of a more personal, private nature, if you know what I mean. ( click) Here’s a blowup. I guess her skin was a little blotchy after all. But what a face.

( click) Here’s a face, Nicole’s face, a little girl’s face, a nothing face. I blew this up from an old picture I found in Grandma’s bottom bureau drawer. I was trying to remember exactly what Nicole looked like, her expression, what beamed out. See those wide cheekbones, slits for eyes? This isn’t her, though. I mean, it’s her. But not her. Nicole had a softness, a prissiness, that this doesn’t capture. This is just a faro. She used to sing. Stupid stuff. Tra-la-la. skipping around Grandma’s back yard, around and around that pool.

She would not have been pretty, my sister. When she grew up, if she had grown up, she would not have been a beauty. The truth is, she would have looked like me.

I don’t have many good pictures of Jamie, because I never really took a photo of her directly. Sometimes she’d inadvertently walk into the shot, though. ( click) Okay, here’s one. Ignore the other girl there. Jamie had mousy-brown hair which, look, already had streaks of gray in it, even though she was only twenty-eight or something, a circular face, a narrow, needle nose. Her cheeks always seemed a little reddish — not from makeup, she never wore any, just from running around out of breath all the time, wheezing like an asthmatic. Her best friend was this guy Derek, a homosexual. You saw a picture of him from our ill-fated camping attempt. I always thought Jamie was in love with him. What can I tell you about her? Jamie was from somewhere in Ohio, Columbus or Cincinnati. Her father was a vacuum cleaner salesman or hardware store manager or something pathetic. Her mother was dead or in Canada, I think. She always had a piece of her hair twisted around in her mouth. Her smile indicated nervousness, and her teeth were all filmy. She had small, dark eyes that flew around the four corners of the room when you looked directly at her. She talked a million miles a minute until the one minute a girl showed up in the studio for pictures, then she’d go all silent and shy, and let me do the talking. I paid Jamie almost nothing, just over minimum wage, but she never complained about money. She never complained, period. She liked the Artist Formerly Known As Prince, Ursula K. Leguin novels, and Mike and Ike candies.

( click )

So, you’re saying, what about this body?

Well, let’s start with a hand. Because in the dark, all through the movie, I kept looking at Beth’s. I was like that guy in the Edgar Allan Poe story, right? I was fixated on it. It was sitting there on top of her thigh, on that denim skirt she wore, fingers curling geometrically inward, curving like a nautilus, the whole hand a resting animal, alive but waiting. Beth’s hand. I just wanted to hold that hand. Finally, I got up the courage to reach over and touch it with my middle finger, just lightly, like it was a mouse I might scare off. Beth was firm, though, sudden, and took my wrist — for a split second I thought. Yes! — placing it solidly, lonesomely, on the maroon, velvet arm of the chair. Now it was my hand that was the animal, a dead mole the cat dragged in, rotting there. I didn’t look at Beth’s face, but I knew she was rolling her eyes and sneering, the bitch. I’d seen it before, that look. I was so humiliated, though, that I was deaf, that I couldn’t hear anything, not even the Dolby Surround Sound in the movie theater, just the rushing of blood in my ears. You know that sound, like you’re under water? I would have to forget Beth with some severity, I realized. This would not be easy. Forgetting Beth would not be easy at all. I started planning rituals of drunkenness. I had been feeling my sexual appetite looming, so I thought I might go down to the porno shops on Eighth Avenue. There’s a place you can go where you step inside a booth and a girl takes her clothes off for you. It’s disgusting, really. But sometimes nothing can help you forget a girl better than another one, naked, offering her breasts.