Jack O'Connell - The Skin Palace

They’re smiling in every picture. They look like they’re having the summer of their lives. The woman looks like a definition of the word vibrant. She looks like she’s placed a ban on all variety of problems. She looks beautiful and she looks like she knows it.

And Sylvia finds herself thinking I want your life, Mrs. Claudet when she hears the tapping on the glass. She jumps and the photos fly into the air and rain down around her. She looks up, ready to find the aerobic goddess staring at her, spying on her as she envies the record of a perfect summer. But it’s not Mrs. Claudet. It’s Leni Pauline. And she’s holding Sylvia’s camera.

Sylvia slides the window open and Leni says, “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I was just inspecting,” Sylvia says. “Checking the pictures.”

“Quality control,” Leni says, maybe sarcastically, then “I brought your camera,” holding it up in the palm of her hand, waitress-style.

“God. Thank you. Thanks so much. I thought I’d never see it again.”

“Hugo got it back last night,” Leni says. “He asked me to drop it off to you.”

“How did you find me?” Sylvia asks.

Leni shrugs. “Hugo gave me the address. I thought you’d given it to him.”

Sylvia takes the camera from her and says, “Not that I remember.”

“Yeah, well, yesterday was a little confusing, you know.”

“How’d Hugo get hold of it?”

Leni gives a laugh. “Hugo can get hold of anything if he wants it badly enough. Coco calls him the Evil Santa.”

“Coco?”

“One of the girls,” Leni says. “Down at the Palace.”

The camera looks perfect, looks like it’s been sitting in the darkroom all night. Not a scratch.

“How can I thank you guys?” Sylvia asks.

Leni stops herself from smiling and says, “Listen, here’s a little tip. Never say that to anyone in my profession, okay?”

Sylvia laughs and then realizes Leni’s not joking. Leni takes a step back from the window, looks up and studies the Shack. She’s wearing jeans and a burgundy silk blouse, ankle boots and a leather bomber jacket that’s cracked and fading from chocolate to dusty white.

She shakes her head and says, “You like sitting in this thing all day?”

“It’s not bad.”

“It looks bad.”

“You get used to it.”

Leni walks back up to the window and says, “You can get used to anything. That doesn’t mean you like it.”

“It’s a job. I don’t have to think.”

“You have something against thinking?” Leni says.

They stare at each other until finally Sylvia shakes her head no.

Leni changes the subject and says, “Hugo said to tell you there was no film in the camera when he got it back. He said sorry about that.”

“Dammit,” Sylvia says. “I had some great shots of the riot.”

“There’ll be other riots, Sylvia.”

“Not for me.”

Leni says, “That’s because you’re stuck in this goddamn camera-thing all day. Honest to God, I’d lose it in there. I’d get claustrophobic. I hate small places like that.”

“It gets pretty annoying sometimes. The day can go by pretty slowly.”

“See, my days, they fly. They’re gone. I get up, I get out, I do things. I walk around. I see people.”

“What about work?”

Leni shakes her head. “It’s not like I work every day. Average week, I work maybe three days. Nights a lot. Hugo loves shooting at night. He says people are more relaxed at night. I don’t know. Everyone’s different.”

“What do you—” Sylvia starts and then stops herself, embarrassed.

“What do I make, right? That’s what everyone wants to know. That’s the big question.”

“I didn’t mean to be rude—”

“It’s not rude,” Leni says. “If I didn’t want to tell you, I wouldn’t tell you. I do all right. I’ve got an arrangement with Hugo, so I’m not really the norm. I’ve got kind of this contract thing with Hugo. So I’m a little different. But the average is four, five hundred. The guys make more, right.”

“Five hundred a week,” Sylvia says.

Leni gets a big kick out of this. “A day, Sylvia. Five hundred a day. The real names, the women who headline, they can go up to a grand a day, a few go higher. Once you’re up there you can put together a more complex package, you know? You can have contingencies. You’re a name, you might take back a point or two after the net.”

“That’s over a hundred grand a year.”

Leni leans on the lip of the window’s counter. “You’re assuming you work fifty-two weeks a year, Sylvia. You know what you’d look like, you worked fifty-two weeks a year?”

Sylvia’s embarrassed but too intrigued to shut up. “She can’t help asking, “How did you get into this business?”

Leni pushes her hair off her face and says, “How’d you end up sitting inside a camera, Sylvia?”

“I just needed a job.”

“There you go.”

“It’s a little different, Leni.”

“Why’s it so different?”

“I don’t know. You didn’t just answer some ad—”

“That’s exactly what I did.”

“C’mon.”

“That’s how everyone I know got into it. You answer an ad.”

“What? You open a newspaper and it says woman wanted to get naked and be filmed having sex with strange men.”

The words sound insulting after they’re out there, but Leni just smiles and says, “It’s a little more subtle than that.”

“Like what? What does the ad say?”

Leni takes a long breath and says, “You’re really fascinated by this, huh?”

Sylvia feels defensive. “It’s just really foreign to me.”

“Honey,” Leni says, “you don’t know foreign. You’ve never even seen foreign.”

“You make that sound so depressing.”

“You hear it that way. It isn’t anything to me. It isn’t one way or another.”

“How long have you been working?”

Leni doesn’t answer. She leans down and actually sticks her head inside the window and looks around.

“It’s incredible to me that you sit in here all day,” she says. “It can’t be healthy.”

Sylvia shrugs. “I’ve got a radio. I bring a book. I can read. I get a lot of reading done.”

Leni stares at her and says, “Listen, you’re so curious, what’re you doing for lunch? You must eat lunch. They let you eat lunch, right?”

“Yeah, they let me eat lunch. I usually just just run down to that convenience store and grab a yogurt.”

“A yogurt,” Leni repeats and Sylvia nods.

“You want to go to lunch?” Leni asks. “I know a place. We’ll have something. I’ll give you the lowdown.”

“Thanks, but I can’t leave.”

“You just said you run to the convenience store.”

“That’s like five minutes. You can leave to go the bathroom or on a quick errand—”

“Aren’t they generous.”

“Really,” Sylvia says, “I’ve got to stay here.”

“Yeah, I know,” Leni says. “You’re just so busy. The lines are backing up here.” “Business is dead. I’m amazed the place is still open.”

“Sylvia, no one’s going to miss you for a half hour. I know a place five minutes from here. You’ll love this place.”

“Leni, I can’t just—”

“You have to, Sylvia. It’s not healthy in there. You’ve got to trust me on this.”

“I can’t. They’ll be furious.”

“What will they do, huh? They’ll fire you? It’ll be really tough picking something up this stimulating. And I’m sure the money is tremendous, right? You said yourself the place’ll probably close up in a month—”

“I never said—”

“—and will they give a damn about you when it does? This is crazy, Sylvia. Do something fun for a change.”