The Art of the Kiss

by Holly Schindler

  Amanda craned her neck. Sure enough, there it was. Between the blender and the toaster, a plate had been filled with mascara and eyeshadow palettes and blush brushes. It reminded her a little of their college dorm.

  “You can go in the bathroom if you want,” Heather offered. “Check out what I’ve been working on lately.”

  Amanda took a cautious step inside.

  Heather lunged in too, hoisting the venetian blind covering the tiny window behind the toilet. Natural light seeped in, illuminating an entire clothesline of images strung all the way around the room.

  Amanda’s scalp tightened up as she eyed her photos. Heather had been taking action-based shots. Student athletes jumped toward basketball hoops. Women jogged down runners’ paths. Metal shopping carts careened through a grocery store parking lot. Stuffing exploded through the air at a Build-A-Bear. Dogs twisted through canine obstacle courses.

  “I wanted to practice,” Heather admitted. “I figured what I’m really going to do for Ryan is take pictures of movement, you know? They’ll be performing. I want to make it feel like their performance leaps right out of the pictures.”

  Amanda nodded.

  “Sharon—the one who’s been helping me develop the film—she says I’ve got good timing.”

  Amanda nodded again. She didn’t really know about all that. But she did know that the images were astonishing. Even better than she’d assumed Heather was taking.

  The longer Amanda stared, the more that infected black sore inside her began to throb and pulse.

  She marveled at the photos. And she hated them. She wanted one of her own. And she wanted to throw them all away.

  Her heart swelled with pride at knowing Heather, this woman with such talent. This woman who had stuck out pursuing her dream, learning and growing through the hard parts. What had she learned to do this well? Amanda the music freak had never even learned to play the piano. Never strummed a guitar on her own. Because it took too much effort? Or because she’d followed everyone else’s rules, convinced it would help her win the game of life?

  “So you’re still using that old camera?” Amanda managed to croak.

  “Yeah—there’s something about it. If my timing’s better with it, clearly that’s the kind of camera I want to use. It responds so differently, you know?”

  “And?”

  Heather smiled. “And it kind of feels like my good luck charm. It’s silly, I guess. But I believe in it. It’s gotten me this far. Right?”

  She gave Amanda a look that said she was waiting for her to tease her.

  Amanda questioned, in that moment, if Heather had honestly believed that old camera was magic. Had the tequila at her country club acted like truth serum? Or had the tequila instead helped her make up another wild tale, not unlike the story she’d told of Darth Billy and the pre-Flag Day parade?

  Amanda couldn’t quite tell for sure. So she let her eyes bounce through the collection of images. Slowly, she made her way into the living room, where the walls were completely papered in black and white photos.

  Until she found it. A picture that made her stop breathing for a moment.

  “Oh, that thing,” Heather grumbled, seeing where Amanda’s eyes were pointed. “I didn’t even mean to take it. I hit the shutter button accidentally.”

  Amanda’s internal temperature gauge shot upward. Anger found her. Pure, flame-throwing rage. And utter abhorrence. For the same person she also loved.

  In the photo, Heather was walking down the street, her hair flying behind her. Taking enormous strides, holding her camera chest-height with both hands. Her reflection in a business’s plate-glass front window was somehow both clear and full of purpose but also slightly blurry around the edges with motion. Heather looked like a woman with direction and a plan, a woman with a dream she was about to pluck right out of the air, make her own.

  Tug down from heaven, like little Aiden.

  The longer Amanda stared at it, the more it also began to sink in that Heather was walking away in the picture. Amanda’d been fearing it was happening. But in that image, she had visual proof. She didn’t just suspect anymore. She could see it with her own eyes.

  It was such a beautiful picture. Startlingly beautiful. Surprisingly beautiful.

  And Heather had taken it accidentally. The fact that she could take a photo so powerful without even trying proved Heather was truly mastering her craft.

  As Amanda stared, terror splashed like acid on her black internal wound. Heather, little Heather, in her rattrap apartment, with all her inane complaining, was about to conquer the world.

  “’Manda?”

  Amanda jumped. “Sorry,” she said, trying to avoid her friend’s eyes.

  “The suits?” Heather asked.

  “Right.”

  Blinking away tears, Amanda examined the living room, with its ratty brown plaid couch and its stained pink side chair. She cleared her throat. “Is your—camera—in here?”

  “Sure.”

  “Show it to me. I know you had it back at the house—the night Tom showed up with the ribeyes—but I didn’t get to see it up close. I’d love to see how it works.” Her voice broke on the last word. She faked a cough to make it seem like she had something in the back of her throat.

  Heather picked her camera up off the small end table where she’d once told Amanda she ate her meals while watching TV. Back then, Amanda had rolled her eyes. At their age, it almost seemed animalistic.

  Now, though, it seemed right. This was where Heather was supposed to be. Where Amanda wanted her to be.

  As right as it was, it also hurt.

  Amanda leaned over the couch and gently placed her armload of clothing down on the roughed-up cushion.

  The jackets and slacks didn’t lay flat. They couldn’t. Not with the case underneath.

  One that Amanda didn’t want Heather to see.

  “You wind the film like this,” Heather started, showing Amanda the various buttons and knobs.

  Amanda had never seen Heather exhibit such passion. She’d enjoyed her photography, but since she’d met Sharon, something had changed. Photography wasn’t just an interest. It drove her.

  The sore inside of Amanda started to ooze and pulse, ripping far deeper and wider than ever before.

  Finally, as Heather rattled on, Amanda could diagnose it. She knew what that black hole was.

  It was jealousy. As simple and obvious as that.

  Where had it started?

  When she and Tom had taken Heather and Ryan out to eat? It would make sense. Didn’t Ryan being a musician hurt because his abilities stole the thunder from the one stupid thing she’d had on Heather? The thing she’d known more about? Amanda’d been the one whose teenage years had revolved around the radio and discovering new independent acts online and obsessing over her collection of vinyl. She was the one who’d known all the lyrics. And the dances. Suddenly, at dinner, hadn’t it felt as though Heather was stealing that too? Taking up with a musician boyfriend when Amanda had given up her vinyl and the concerts, cut that part of her life free?

  But it was more than that. Staring at the accidental self-portrait, Amanda knew her jealousy had been with her longer than any few weeks or months.

  It had been with her for years. Decades.

  It had been in Heather’s pretty blond hair. And the fact that everybody liked the way she put together her secondhand clothes, complimenting her in high school more often than they’d complimented Amanda’s designer jeans. It had been in the easy way she’d gotten through Algebra II and how people giggled at the funny, wild stories she told, and called her the sweetest girl in the entire school.

  It had always been there. Jealousy. Ever since the very beginning of their friendship.

  But isn’t that what all villains really felt, deep down? Wasn’t that awful queen jealous of Snow White? Didn’t the stepsisters envy Cinderella’s natural beauty? Isn’t that why they felt the need to push her down, make sure Prince Charming never saw her?<
br />
  Wasn’t jealousy really at the core of so many vicious plans?

  Now that Amanda recognized it for what it was, did that change anything? Was Amanda going to finish the job she’d come to do? Or would she see it as a bad idea, a mistake she didn’t have to make?

  “Going to do any more practicing tonight?” she asked, pointing at the sea of pictures.

  Heather shook her head, replacing her camera on the end table. “Nope. I figured it was best to take it easy. Rest up for tomorrow night.”

  Amanda nodded. Swallowed hard. The black wound inside of her hurt worse than it ever had before. “Guess you’re almost all set.”

  “Almost?” Heather got a funny twisted look on her face.

  “I really have to remind you? You don’t have the outfit picked out yet. Come on, come on, this is the fun part.”

  Heather brightened a bit.

  “How about we start with the Calvin Klein?” Amanda offered a light gray seersucker to Heather.

  “Where’d you get all these, anyway?” Heather asked.

  “I bought them, of course. I still know your size. Since you’re the same size you were in college.” She grimaced, acted like she was suppressing a gag.

  “All of them?” Heather asked, looking horrified.

  “It’s easy enough to take back the ones you don’t want. The best way to see them is in your own setting, not in some stuffy department store,” she lied. “Go on, go on. Try that one on.”

  Heather scurried out of the living room.

  The question pounded Amanda again: Was she or wasn’t she?

  She folded the remaining suits back, exposing the camera case she’d brought.

  She felt dizzy. She put her hand to her sweaty forehead.

  It was hard to breathe.

  She didn’t have much time. Slowly—so as not to make any clicking noises—she flicked the latches open and removed the vintage Nikon she’d purchased on eBay and had delivered express. She tiptoed across the carpet, to the end table. She repeated the same action with the latches. And she exchanged the cameras, putting her own eBay purchase in Heather’s case, then carrying Heather’s magical camera to the case she’d brought from home.

  She quickly covered all of Heather’s magic with the rest of the suits.

  “How’s it going in there?” Amanda asked.

  “Fantastic!” Heather shouted.

  “Same here,” Amanda murmured, before she could stop herself.

  Excerpt from

  The Fairyland Times

  About Town

  June 27, 2018

  Murio’s Bar and Grill on the downtown Fairyland square will be hosting a public birthday party for Murio Vargas, the establishment’s original owner, this Saturday, June 30. As part of Vargas’s eightieth birthday celebration, Murio himself will be in the bar all night to mix his signature drinks and reminisce with all his old regulars.

  “We’re really doing it up,” said Sebastian Vargas, Murio’s son and the current owner. “We’re pulling out all the stops. And by ‘we,’ I really mean ‘my dad.’ I tried to tell Pop to relax and enjoy the night as our Guest of Honor, but he’d have none of it. He’ll be behind the bar, and he’s insisted on being in charge of decorations. Hauling out the old disco ball. Hanging a bunch of old photos taken years ago, when the bar—and Pop—were young.”

  The Tommies, a local Fairyland band, will play a wide selection of both their own original songs and dance hits from the past few decades—including a few of Murio’s own personally requested favorites.

  Cocktails will be buy one, get one half off all night.

  “It’s going to be quite the shindig,” Sebastian Vargas said. “A regular Fairyland ball.”

  ~Photography Fact~

  Sharon and Heather’s

  Basement Chat

  2018

  There’s a kind of conversation that goes on between you and your camera, Heather. You already know that. You’re feeling it more and more as time goes on, but…

  Listen, the thing is, you have to acquire a ton of faith to be a photographer. Faith in your ability. Faith in yourself to try new methods of setup or lighting or even something as simple as a change of subject matter. I know at the beginning, you think you’ll always be experimenting. But once you master a few techniques, it’s easy to succumb to doing the same thing over and over again. It worked once. So why would you ever deviate, right? Why would you go through that awful period of floundering and failing and trying to master something else?

  You can’t just spin your wheels. You have to grow. To do that, you have to believe you’ll eventually master a new technique you initially saw as something of a long shot.

  You have to have enough faith to keep moving out of your comfort zone.

  You also have to have faith that your camera will do its job. You have one shot at it, to get the image right. Having faith in your camera means you can think less about the mechanics and more about the emotion of the moment. You can explore, even in that split-second of time you have to take the picture. You can search for the artistry. You can truly find your own way behind the lens. A way unlike anyone else’s.

  If you know that the tightrope beneath you will never snap, you can suddenly take faster, bigger steps. The kind of steps you might not have believed possible.

  And yeah—that’s pretty magical, isn’t it?

  ~On Air~

  Ah, the moment of truth.

  That’s what we live for, isn’t it?

  Those times, in our favorite stories, when our hero loses everything.

  The worst happens.

  The dark night arrives.

  And our hero seems doomed.

  We love that. Not because we want our hero to suffer. But because that means we can now feel the moment of resurrection and redemption is on its way.

  Once he has lost, our hero can triumph.

  Yes, that’s what we live for.

  We live for the scenes in which love wins…

  ~Let’s Go~

  Invitations arrive from professional printers, sometimes in linen envelopes. If we’re lucky, they arrive with handwritten messages across the bottom. Lovingly addressed to us. The more elaborate, we assume, the better. The more exciting the event will surely be.

  Someone has thought about us. Someone wants us to be with them at some life-changing ceremony.

  Often, the most important invitations we receive don’t even really sound, at first, like personal invitations to special events at all. It’s a phone call from Ryan offering Heather a job photographing the band. A notice in the newspaper of a birthday party for Murio. It’s a casual text from Liu to Tom asking him to meet him for drinks at Murio’s—“and be sure to bring your lovely wife.”

  It’s a note left on a kitchen table from Sharon to Michael: “Heading out to Murio’s. Won’t be gone long.”

  It’s warm weather on a pitch-perfect lovely Saturday night.

  A night with bright stars and a glowing neon sign.

  It’s a tug in your belly—maybe even out of nowhere—that says you need to head out.

  And so you do.

  ~Michael~

  Murio’s—and its pulsing silvery blue neon sign—shone that night like a castle on the edge of the Fairyland square. A solitary wolf in a white shirt and black jeans paced back and forth in front of the entrance, making sure the night’s clientele were of proper age—no potential troublemakers allowed.

  This wolf’s name, if I’d heard him right, was Cody. He had a long nose and small, dark, deeply set eyes. There was something slightly threatening in the way he held himself, pitched slightly forward rather than leaning back against the bricks, snarl on his face, a lock of black hair across his forehead. His muscles bulged as if any minute—at the right provocation or for the right prey—he could pounce. Like the many wolves who had come before him throughout the decades, it was clear, simply by looking at him, that he had spent quite a few nights devouring Red Riding Hoods only to spit them out again co
me morning.

  I slowed on the sidewalk as I got closer to the entrance. Cody was engaged in a long, rehearsed recitation of the history of Murio’s building as he checked IDs and took cover charges. “Used to be a...” He snapped his thick fingers a few times, searching for the word. “A mortuary! That’s it. When you go in there, look at those wooden platforms along the walls. It’s where they used to lay the bodies—you know, to drain them.”

  The girls’ eyes widened as Cody piled adjectives onto his already rather gory tale.

  I did my best not to laugh. Same old wild story. After all this time, it hadn’t changed. Here he was, repeating it just as I imagined he’d learned it from the last wolf, the one who had handed this job over to him. Repeating it like a fairy tale. A warning, just as Red Riding Hood’s original tale offered warnings to children about talking to strangers. In Cody’s tale, of course, the dangers were inside, and Cody was himself the grand rescuer. If Cody was at all the drinking kind, the details would be greatly exaggerated after a beer (or four).

  As he moved slightly closer to one of the girls, I got a funny feeling suddenly, as if the past had folded back around to tuck itself into a corner of the present.

  It was all still here. The wolf at the door. The old story, the gruesome details.

  But another question immediately begged to be asked: What else still remains?

  It came back to me, the nights I’d been here with Sharon. The two of us on that very sidewalk exchanging knowing smiles as we waited for the current wolf to finish telling the story to the current group of young girls so we could hand over our own cover charge.

  I remembered stepping inside and ordering a drink, watching her work. And God, how I loved watching her work. Taking her nightlife photos. A project that had begun before we’d met and continued on strongly for a while, somehow fizzling out without announcement or any kind of big triumphant fairy tale turning point.