by Jenna Blum
The basement was dim and cool, the linoleum squares kind on Elsbeth’s bare feet. She navigated the warren of rooms: Sol’s wet bar, with the six-foot stuffed marlin over it; Sol’s projector room, where he made them watch slideshows; Sol’s framed prints of boats, flowers, peasants in Italy, the onion-dome churches of Leningrad. Sol had won a couple of minor prizes in amateur competitions before realizing that he would never be a professional photographer and sponsoring them instead. But he still used his darkroom, which was down here too, and Elsbeth gave it a curious glance as she passed. She would have liked to peek in, to educate herself a little more about Julian’s world, but she had once opened the door while Sol was developing photos and ruined a batch of film, so she had avoided it ever since. Instead she went to the closet off the laundry room, called the changing room because here Ruth kept the family’s swimsuits and rainbow-striped towels for swimming, and pulled off June’s dress.
Elsbeth faced herself in the mirror with the usual loathing. Her soft breasts, her blubbery belly—as much as she hated the term, Elsbeth understood why June called it a double stomach. She pinched it viciously, her fingers digging into the flesh and leaving pink marks, then turned to the toilet in the corner. She had never tried this before—something her friend Liza had told her about. “It’s only for when I’ve really pigged out,” Liza had said, “like gone absolument fou at Carvel and scarfed a whole cookie cake. Which actually is not bad because ice cream is a cinch to throw up.” Elsbeth bent. She slid two fingers down her throat and waited. Her stomach hitched, once, twice, but nothing else happened.
“Come on,” she mumbled. She pushed her fingers down farther and forced herself to think of how many slices of cheese and sleeves of crackers had been on that tray, and the Mint Milano cookie she’d snatched from the kitchen just out of habit and apparently eaten without even thinking about it, and that morning’s food: the breakfast Peter had made, an omelet with Boursin and sautéed mushrooms; croissants fresh from the oven and his homemade raspberry jam and about a stick of butter—Elsbeth loved butter. She crammed her whole hand in her mouth, gagging, and then she remembered something else Liza had said: “If you’re having trouble, just tickle that little hangy-downy thing at the back of your throat. That’ll make everything come up.”
And it did. The cheese and cracker ball emerged in a satisfying gush, some half digested. Elsbeth did it again and again until she was retching only thick, clear fluid, and then she stood, flushed, and washed her hands and face. Her eyes were bloodshot and her ears were ringing, but she felt as if she were floating. She was serene, empty, and calm. She stripped off her underwear and reached for her Jantzen one-piece, hanging on the back of the door, and Julian’s card—julian wilton photography—damp and curved, fell out of her right bra cup.
Elsbeth retrieved the card and hid it in her clothes, which she tucked onto a shelf, behind extra towels. Then she pulled on her suit—was it her imagination, or did it squeak up a little more easily over her bulges already?—and went out through the garage to the motor court. The afternoon was bright and humid, the sun white in a steamy sky. Elsbeth walked at a queenly pace across the melting tar, between the heat-shimmering cars. The air whirred with cicadas. The pool shone among the tall oaks. Elsbeth could see, from the very corner of her left eye, that Julian was on the terrace again, smoking while a man in a maroon suit talked animatedly to him. Elsbeth didn’t look back, but she could hear Julian’s voice in return, smell his cigarette. She proceeded toward the pool, holding her breath and swinging her hips just a bit from side to side. She knew he was watching.
13
The Shoot
A week later Elsbeth stood on the top floor of a brownstone on Riverside Drive, outside Julian’s apartment door. She had knocked twice already, once quietly, then a little louder. Maybe she had still been too timid, because he hadn’t answered. It was the right day, wasn’t it? Swing by Saturday, Julian had said, when Elsbeth had called him from the pay phone at the Glenwood Deli; come around two. But what if Julian was in his darkroom, and Elsbeth was disturbing some new outpouring of genius? Or what if—as Liza had suggested—Julian was a pervert, and after shooting Elsbeth he would chop her up into little pieces? “If he’s a porno,” said Liza, her eyes alight, “God knows what else he’ll do.” Elsbeth had wanted to defend Julian, to say he was no pornographer, but the fact was, she wasn’t sure. The only real, undisputed porn Elsbeth had ever seen had been their friend Very’s brother’s Penthouses, which his parents had discovered and thrown out in a screaming fit of rage and humiliation. Liza had snatched them from the recycling, and Elsbeth had stolen one from her and flipped through it in her room. There had been a blonde centerfold biting a strand of pearls; a layout of two women touching each other by a swimming pool, the photos growing more and more graphic until Elsbeth could see parts of the women she’d never seen even on herself, red and pink flesh glistening, tongues and fingers everywhere. That was pornography, Elsbeth was sure: it had to expose the most secret places. Julian’s girls might have been nude, but they seemed tame in comparison.
Elsbeth looked around the landing: cage elevator; Egon Schiele print of a dancer hugging one knee; skylight with a fern hanging from it. Nothing to indicate that a murderous pervert lived here. She had to go to the bathroom, and her hair was inflating in the humidity; it puffed itself up more with every passing minute, like an angry animal. Sweat would ruin her carefully chosen outfit, her white blouse and red culottes with suspenders, and she had a very bad feeling that the dog shit she’d stepped in outside the Port Authority was caking the treads of her Capezios. Elsbeth had tried to scrape it off on one of those little iron fences surrounding a sad city gingko tree, but she feared she could still smell it wafting up.
She was dragging her foot across Julian’s bristly mat when the door flew open and there he was, smiling his toothpaste-model smile as if there were nobody in the world he would rather see on his landing than Elsbeth.
“Hey, Charlie,” he said, “you made it! Sorry to keep you waiting; I just jumped in the shower,” and indeed his hair was in damp ringlets and his Hawaiian shirt plastered to his chest as if he’d thrown it on without drying off first.
“Did I come too early?” Elsbeth asked, although in the elevator her Swatch had said it was twenty past two.
“No, no, I’m moving slowly today,” said Julian. He stepped back and opened the door a bit wider. “Here you are,” he said, “how wonderful! Welcome. Come in.”
* * *
Elsbeth stepped past Julian into a marvelous room. It was a loft space: shining wooden floors, bank of windows overlooking the Hudson, more skylights. The rugs were zebra, the furniture white leather and chrome; there was a red beanbag chair that looked like an actual bean. Running along the length of the windows was a huge architect’s table covered with sheets of contact paper, photos, grease pencils, lenses; a six-foot lamp, a silver globe on a stem, arced over it. Cameras lined the bookshelves on either side of the fireplace, and a forest of tripods bristled in one corner. Over the mantel Julian’s cover girl glared at the room, naked from the waist up; her, Elsbeth could have done without, but otherwise she had never been in such a masculine, magical place in her life.
“I love your studio,” she said.
“Do you?” said Julian; he was rushing around now, collecting newspapers, an ashtray, smudgy glasses. “Thank you. Actually my studio is downtown; this is my apartment. But I do a lot of editing here.” He dumped his armload, ashtray and glasses and all, into the kitchen sink, which was in a line of cabinets against one wall. “Are you hungry? The fridge is pretty bare, but I can order from the deli—”
“No, thank you,” said Elsbeth. “I couldn’t eat a thing.”
“How about something to drink?” asked Julian. “It looks pretty sultry out there.” He opened the refrigerator. “Let’s see, I’ve got orange juice, tonic, milk—whoops, expired. How about gin? Ha, ha.”
“Sure,” said Elsbeth, pleased; he must have been r
emembering last week, when they’d shared his gin and tonic on Ruth and Sol’s terrace. It would be their theme drink.
Julian, backing out of the fridge, looked startled. “Really?” he said. He laughed. “You had me going a minute there, girl. How about coffee?”
“Sure,” Elsbeth said again, disappointed. She watched Julian measure grounds into a French press; his curly hair, like hers, was fluffing as it dried, and his Hawaiian shirt was misbuttoned. Oh, Julian, she thought, helpless with longing.
“Can I use your ladies’ room?” she asked.
“Last door on the left,” said Julian and jutted his chin toward a narrow hallway off the kitchen. “I’ll get things set up out here.”
Elsbeth’s stomach jumped; that meant she’d have to take off her clothes. She’d done well this past week, eating nothing but pita bread, cottage cheese, and grapes—except once, when she’d gotten so hungry she’d eaten an entire pint of Vanilla Häagen Dazs ice cream, but then she’d used her secret weapon and thrown it all up. She’d been practicing in the mirror in her room, holding her breath, standing at oblique angles to minimize her pudge. She’d lost four pounds, but here under Julian’s skylights, it didn’t seem like nearly enough. The phone rang then; Julian scooped it up, listened, laughed, and said, “Richard, you scurvy bastard.” Elsbeth escaped into the hall.
* * *
It was long and dim, festooned with eight-by-ten photos clipped to clotheslines that Elsbeth looked at as she passed. The blond girl again, making a mustache out of the end of her long blond braid; a boy about ten playing in a lake; the same kid standing on a dock, his penis a button mushroom. On the right, a door was tantalizingly ajar; Elsbeth looked in—Julian’s bedroom! Unmade bed, black sheets spilling onto the floor, one checkered Van sneaker. And on the far wall, a most curious thing: a clock whose face glowed every pastel imaginable, shifting colors every few seconds, lavender, rose, lime, lemon. Its hands were circles, each their own color, and as they swept past each other, they changed hues as well as shifting the colors beneath them.
Elsbeth was mesmerized by the wondrous clock until a bark of Julian’s laughter freed her. She located the bathroom at the end of the hall. It reminded her of the one in her family’s first apartment in New York, which everyone said she couldn’t possibly remember because she’d been only two when they’d moved to Glenwood, but she did: here were the same black-and-white hexagonal tiles, frosted window in the shower, pedestal sink with rust flowers under the faucets. Elsbeth used the facilities, checked herself in the mirror, and scowled—her hair was a travesty. She wet it down with water from the tap, though she knew it was useless. Then, since Julian was still on the phone, she opened the medicine cabinet.
Waterpik; razor and blades; economy-size bottle of aspirin; a lot of prescriptions—was Julian sick? What was diazepam? Cologne that Elsbeth opened and inhaled rapturously, though she’d never smelled fragrance on Julian at all. Vaseline, Q-tips, a box of condoms—glow-in-the-dark, extra sensitive. Elsbeth smirked; why luminescent ones? Did Julian need help finding something? Most importantly, there was nothing in the cabinet at all to indicate that a woman had ever been there.
She was closing it, relieved, when she spotted something else behind the Waterpik: a large purple . . . penis? It was; girthy and rubbery, speckled with gold flakes. It was a dildo, it had to be—something else Elsbeth recognized from Penthouse. She knew what it was for, but—why would a man have one? She was trying to puzzle this out when Julian, finally released from his conversation, called, “Charlie? You okay in there, did you fall in?” and Elsbeth hastily shut the cabinet, glared at her hair once more in the mirror, sucked in her stomach, and opened the door.
* * *
As she emerged into the main room, she was temporarily blinded by a white flare, accompanied by a sound like vssssh! “Ooops, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” said Julian. “I forgot the flash was on.”
“That’s okay,” she said, as Julian took her arm to guide her farther into the room. “I’m used to it from Sol. Except with him it’s in reverse: he’s always like, Okay, people, get ready, and then his flash never works.”
Julian laughed. “He’s using a much older model,” he said, “a Pentax, if I’m not mistaken. This is a new Polaroid Supercolor the company sent me to test,” and Elsbeth, blinking, saw he was holding a black box with a rainbow on it. Julian aimed it at her and pressed a button—vssh!—and a white-bordered gray square slid from it.
“Now,” said Julian, “watch,” and he set the square on the architect’s table among a vast array of others, like puzzle pieces. Elsbeth stood next to him as they looked at it together; she could smell him, warm cotton and cigarette and skin. In the gray center of the white-bordered square an outline was emerging: a body, a face.
“It’s like magic!” Elsbeth said.
“It is magic, Charlie,” said Julian. “It’s photography. You know what photography means, right? Writing with light. Photo is light; graph is writing. That’s what you’re seeing here.”
“Awesome,” breathed Elsbeth, but as more of the image appeared, she cried, “Oh, no, I look like a moon.”
Julian laughed. “I assure you, you don’t; it’s just that I shot you straight on. Nobody looks good from that angle.”
June did, Elsbeth thought. Julian walked away to secure a different camera to a tripod set up next to the big arcing lamp; he bent and peered through it, adjusted a lever on the top and pressed a button. Clickclickclick vssh! Elsbeth hovered uncertainly by the table, turning sideways and sucking in her stomach. “Are we shooting?” she said. “What should I do?”
Clickclickclickclick. Clickclick vsssh click. “Nothing,” said Julian, “you don’t have to pose, just act natural,” which made it worse because Elsbeth had no idea what she was supposed to be doing. What would June do? Elsbeth gazed with worldly disdain toward the windows, but because Julian had pulled down blackout shades, there was no view.
Julian glanced up from his camera and smiled at her. “Should we have some music?” he asked. “Sometimes that helps.”
Elsbeth’s eyes burned. She was blowing this. “Sure.”
“Go ahead,” said Julian, pointing to a stereo in the corner, “ladies’ choice.”
Elsbeth crossed the room, holding her breath. Clickclickclick vssh clickclick. The on light of the stereo glowed red, and there was a record on the turntable already, so she just set the arm on it. “Ssssssexxxxx,” said a man’s voice, and a blare of chords and throbbing beat blasted the room.
“Whoops!” said Julian, leaping out from behind the tripod and hurrying over, “not that one, hahaha,” and he scraped the needle off the record. “How aboooout . . . some classical? Something more genteel.”
“Sure,” said Elsbeth, and then, wincing, “except maybe not this?”
Julian looked surprised. “You don’t like Prokofiev?”
“Not especially,” said Elsbeth, rubbing her arms, which were suddenly covered in goose bumps. Prokofiev terrified her: once in third grade, she’d had Bethany Chase over to play, and they’d been listening to albums in her room when the door slammed open and her dad ran in. “Who put this on?” he demanded, his face so red and furious that Elsbeth barely recognized him. “Who brought this music into my house?” She had jumped up, fearing he was having another heart attack. “Daddy,” she said, “what’s wrong?”
Peter yanked the album off the turntable. He tried to snap it, but when it proved too thick, he threw it into the hall like a Frisbee. “I don’t want to hear this ever again,” he said, “never, understand?” and he’d stormed out. Bethany, whose record it had been, had gone crying home—Elsbeth could hardly blame her. Ever since that day, Elsbeth had never been able to listen to Peter and the Wolf, or anything by its composer, ever again.
Julian put on a third album. “How’s this?”
“Better,” said Elsbeth with relief; he had chosen Cats. “Oh, well, I never was there ever / a cat so clever / as magical Mr. Mistoffelees!”
Elsbeth had seen Cats on Broadway with her parents and Sol and Ruth, and she remembered Mistoffelees, a baritone in black, leaping off the stage right in front of her. Julian looked a lot like Mistoffelees, lithe and sinewy and brunet, and Elsbeth imagined him materializing in her bedroom in an explosion of smoke, in black unitard and tights—poof!
Clickclickclickclick vssssh clickclick. “There you go,” Julian murmured, “very nice, very nice.” Clickclickclick. “So, Charlie, how old are you?”
“Almost sixteen,” said Elsbeth, padding her age by a few months.
“Have you done any modeling before?”
“Moi? Please.”
Julian laughed. Clickclickclickclickclick. “I’m surprised, Charlie. Your mother was a very famous model in her day, no?” Clickclickvsssssh. “I remember one shot of her by Avedon—she had a birdcage on her head. She was magnificent.”
“Well, that’s kind of the problem,” said Elsbeth.
“Oh, Charlie,” said Julian. “Don’t you remember what I told you at your grandparents’ house? You’ve got a look. You might not see it yet, but I’m trained to notice composition, to see structure beneath the surface of things, and you’ve got it.” Clickclickclickclickclick. “In a few years—bam! You’ll be a bigger supermodel than your mom ever was, if you want to.”
Elsbeth shook her head, and one of the big hoop earrings she’d borrowed from Liza popped out and rolled away. “Shit,” she muttered.
“That’s all right, we’ll find it later.” Clickclick vssh clickclick. “It’s true you don’t look like your mom, though,” said Julian, “or your dad either, though he’s a handsome guy. You’ve got your own thing going on. Who do you look like?”