Crystal

by Walter Dean Myers

“We went to this club; it’s called Los Hermanos. Kind of a nice place. We had dinner—Portuguese food, which is nice—and then we danced. At least Donald, Pat, and I danced, because Charlie—that’s the guy I was supposed to be with—couldn’t dance.”

  “He Black?”

  “Yep. I asked him how he could play tennis, that’s his big thing, and move around a dance floor so badly,” Crystal said. “At first he got kind of mad because we were laughing at him, but then he came around. Then Donald gets the idea that we should go to Central Park and take a ride in one of those carriages.”

  “You ain’t got to have no rhythm to play tennis.” Daniel put his feet up on the table. “Now, if you playing basketball, you got to have rhythm.”

  “He wants me to come see him play in a match,” Crystal said. “Maybe I’ll go if I can find the time. I don’t think he’s got a lot of money for dates.”

  “He bring you home in a cab?”

  “We took a cab from the subway,” Crystal said.

  “Seems like you had a nice time, though.”

  “I did,” Crystal said. “I can’t tell why, but I did.”

  “I like it when I see you smiling like that,” her father said. “I haven’t seen that smile for a long time.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Crystal said. “I’m always smiling.”

  “Yeah, but lately your smiles look like you’re thirty-six instead of sixteen.”

  “Why is it that fathers always want us to be little girls?” Crystal asked. “At least Mom realizes I can’t stay a baby forever. Is there any soda left?”

  “Yeah, there’s some—enough for a glass or two,” Daniel said. Crystal saw that his expression had changed.

  “I was only kidding, Daddy, honest.”

  “I know you were, baby,” he said. “But there’s a reason I want you to stay a little girl. You know, having a child ain’t that easy. The way I figure, if I raise you like I’ve done everything else in life, I’ll screw half of it up. So the longer you stay a little girl, the longer I’ll have to see where I’m messing it up, and I’ll have a shot at making things right.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” Crystal took the soda out of the refrigerator and poured a glass. “You want some soda?”

  “Yeah, I’m serious,” her father said. “And, no, I don’t want no soda. Reach back there behind the milk and get me a can of beer.”

  “Daddy, you’re okay,” Crystal said. “I think you’re a good father. That’s what counts, isn’t it?”

  “How I know?” Daniel asked. “I ain’t never had no children before. But you know what I figured out?”

  “What?”

  “I ain’t saying it’s right or nothing.” Her father popped the top of the beer. “I figured what I want is to give you something. You know, like you a gunfighter going out to meet the world. I’d like to give you a special gun, or a trick draw or something. Get you ready.”

  “Crystal Brown, gunfighter!” Crystal took an imaginary draw. “I like it!”

  “When I was a kid and things used to go wrong, I used to go sit in Marcus Garvey Park. I remember one time my daddy had come home, and I asked him for money to buy some new sneakers. He said something about not having any money, and I got hot and said he never had no money.

  “He up and popped me one, and I went out the house mad as anything. I went out and sat in the park all night long. While I was sitting there I thought about being a gunfighter. That was my secret ambition, to be a cowboy.”

  “You? A cowboy?”

  “Yeah, a lot of men have these little things they want to do but can’t talk about. Me, I always wanted to be a cowboy. I could see myself riding on a big white horse, carrying a guitar and everything. But when I was mad, then I would be a gunfighter. I’d imagine I was a gunfighter. I’d have this special draw and nobody would mess with me. Lucky for me, I never got my hands on a real gun, or I’d of probably spent half my life in some jail.”

  “And you’d sit in the park and think about things like that?”

  “The park was special to me. It was a place I could go when things weren’t working out for me. That night my father popped me I sat in the park and thought about being a gunfighter. I figured if I had lived in the old West he could have taught me how to shoot a gun, and then I wouldn’t have to ask him for sneakers and stuff. Later, when I got to be a man, I knew why he popped me. I had asked him for money and he didn’t have it, and it hurts to have a kid ask you for something and you can’t give it to them. It really does.”

  “I think you’ve given me just about everything I’ve ever wanted,” Crystal said.

  “I haven’t given you nothing to get you over,” her father said. “What you got you got from God. I’d like to get you that fast draw I was talking about. Something. But it’s just not that simple anymore. I try to tell you what I know about life, stuff like that, but it don’t work, because most of the stuff I’m telling you got to do with my life and my world, and there ain’t no way in the world you can understand it.”

  “I understand what you say to me, Daddy,” Crystal protested.

  “I think you understand that I mean well,” her father said. “I’m caught between a poor man’s dream and a rich man’s nightmare and afraid to let either one of them go. You’re young enough and smart enough to dream things that wouldn’t even fit in my head.”

  “I still think you’re a good father,” Crystal said.

  “Yeah, maybe.” The vein in Daniel Brown’s forehead bulged as he swallowed hard. “You happy with this movie thing?”

  “Yes,” Crystal said. “I think it’s going to be good.”

  “If it’s what you want, then it’s what I want for you.”

  “I still might not get the part, though.”

  “That’s because that producer hasn’t seen you the way I have. As fine as he thinks you are, he should have seen your face when you got home tonight after being with that—what did you call him?”

  “Cute nerd?”

  “Yeah. I bet he hasn’t seen you look that good.”

  “I bet,” Crystal said, stopping at the doorway to the kitchen before going to her room, “that you weren’t a cute nerd.”

  “Nerd? Me? I was a killer!” Daniel Brown said. “A stone killer-diller!”

  Crystal washed quickly and went to bed. She was tired, very tired. But she was happy. She hadn’t liked Charlie Harris that much, and Donald was silly. But she and Pat had had a good time. She hadn’t felt as good in weeks. Gizmo was on her bed, and she pushed him over to the other pillow.

  7

  The midtown-Manhattan studio looked a lot better than Jerry’s. There were wires running all over the floor, and a small army of aluminum reflectors had been strategically placed about the high-ceilinged room.

  “Crystal, did Loretta tell you how long the session would be?”

  “She said it might last all day,” Crystal said. She tilted her chin slightly so that Frankie Mazzaro could put highlighter over her eyes from behind her.

  “This is a chance in a lifetime,” Jerry said. “And what we want to do is to get pictures which are going to say a lot about you, who you are, and which are going to knock Everby’s eyes out.”

  “Why are we using this studio?” The two-piece bathing suit Crystal wore was almost the same color as her skin.

  “It’s better equipped than mine,” Jerry said. “I worked with Mel Kaplan, the guy who owns this place, all day yesterday to get the feel of it. It’s going to work out just fine.”

  “Did you know that I took some test shots with him once? They’re in my portfolio. I took them over there.” Crystal motioned toward a carousel of backdrops in the center of the studio. There was a beach scene, an outdoor Western scene, and two city scenes and others on rollers.

  “We’re going to use this city scene first,” Jerry said. The backdrop had the outlines of tall buildings lit up at night. “I’m going to put you at a table as if you’re waiting for someone in a restaurant
. The theme will be the same in all the pictures, that you’re young and you don’t want to wait.”

  “Don’t want to wait for what?”

  “For anything,” Jerry said. “How long you going to be, Frankie?”

  “Just finished,” Frankie said. He stood directly behind Crystal and looked at her in the mirror. Crystal looked up at his reflection, and when their eyes met, he smiled. “She’s beautiful. The only thing she has to worry about is perspiration. She gets a little moist around her upper lip.”

  “Can she fix it herself?”

  “Sure,” Frankie said. “Crystal, I’m leaving all of your stuff here for you. Just watch for perspiration. Don’t touch the highlighter, all right?”

  “As soon as you leave, I’m re-doing my whole face,” Crystal said, smiling.

  “If you do, Jerry will kill you, and then I’ll come back and kill you all over again. Now be sweet!”

  “Yes, Frankie.”

  “Yes, Crystal.”

  Frankie gathered the rest of his materials and left.

  “What do you think of that guy?” Jerry asked.

  “Frankie? Frankie’s nice,” Crystal said.

  “He is.” Jerry leaned against the dressing table. “You like everybody, don’t you?”

  “Unless I have a reason not to,” Crystal said.

  “You ready?”

  “What am I going to be doing?”

  “First, I want you to tell me what Everby’s paying for.”

  “The pictures?”

  “Why the pictures of you, though?”

  Crystal shrugged. “Because he likes the way I look, I guess,” she said. “That’s what you said.”

  “He likes the way you look,” Jerry said. “But it all gets back to mood. That’s why you’re a model. You create a mood. You can make things happen. An actress does the same thing, except she has words she can use, gestures. If she feels good she can say she feels good and that helps. In print you don’t speak. You have to say everything with mood.”

  “And I’m supposed to be sexy, right?”

  “Are you sexy?”

  “I think I look pretty sexy.”

  “That wasn’t the question,” Jerry said. “The question was are you sexy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How sexy?”

  “Smokin’!”

  “We’re talking about a career, right?”

  “A career,” Crystal said.

  “And you know what this whole thing means to me. It means big bucks down the line.”

  “Big bucks,” Crystal said. “I know what it means.”

  “Okay, we’ll see,” Jerry said. “I told you what you’re going to be dressed in, right?”

  “The fur coats.”

  “Right, and please don’t drag them along the floor. I don’t want to have to pay a cleaning bill.”

  “Okay, you want me to start now?”

  “Fine, get the bathing suit off and slip into the silver fox.”

  Crystal stood and then stopped near the chair. “Get the bathing suit off? I thought I was supposed to wear the bathing suit under the coat?”

  “You mean you’ll be nice and covered up and then you’ll put on your sexy face and that’s it, right?”

  “I didn’t say that was it,” Crystal said.

  “Well, what are you saying?”

  “Why do I have to take the bathing suit off if nobody can see under the fur coat, anyway?”

  “How sexy are you going to feel with the bathing suit under the coat?” Jerry asked. “Do you know what sex is all about?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “I know!”

  “You know? You can’t even say it.”

  “It’s about doing it, okay?”

  “No, it’s not about doing it!” Jerry said. “Not for us. You make out in the backseat of a car, and nobody is going to buy that. Nobody is going to pay you for that. You have sex in your house, and nobody cares.”

  “Then what is it about?”

  “It’s about guys seeing a bare leg sticking out from a fur coat and looking at your face and imagining you’re sending them messages. They feel good; they buy the magazine. Everby makes money.”

  “I don’t think I should take my clothes off,” Crystal said. “Why…why didn’t you want my mother here? Loretta said you didn’t want my mother here.”

  “You think you can make somebody want to run up and rip your clothes off if you’re sitting here with a bathing suit on and your mama sitting over there watching the whole thing?”

  Crystal sat down. “I don’t want anybody wanting to rip my clothes off,” she said.

  “That’s what they’re paying you for, Crystal.” Jerry spoke quietly. “They didn’t go out there and find some ugly girl to pose. You know that. They don’t get fat old ladies to pose in La Femme.”

  “I still don’t think I want to take my clothes off,” Crystal said.

  “No problem.” Jerry went to a bench and picked up a camera. “As long as you know what we’re trying to do here. I’m sure you’ll do your best.”

  Crystal took a deep breath and went to the rack where the three coats hung. She took the silver one, letting her fingers run through the soft fur. She slipped the coat on and looked at Jerry. “You want me to button it or just hold it closed.”

  “Whichever way you feel best,” Jerry said.

  Crystal closed the coat and fastened one of the buttons. She sat in the chair at the table and turned toward Jerry. On the table was a bottle of wine with a single black rose in it. She didn’t feel good. Somehow she had pushed the sex part of it out of her mind. She had told herself that she was beautiful and believed it. But what did it mean? What did it mean when people, when men, were impressed enough with it to pay for it?

  “Okay, now, look sexy,” Jerry said. His voice was flat. He moved toward Crystal with a light meter, took a reading off her face and then off the coat. He adjusted the lights. He measured the coat again, then the face again, and looked at Crystal through the lens of the camera.

  “You’re bored—and sexy,” Jerry said. “Keep that in mind.”

  The camera clicked again and again as Jerry took pictures. Crystal moved, changing positions so that the angle would be different for each shot. She closed her eyes and then opened them halfway. She parted her lips slightly. She knew how she looked. That’s what being a model was, knowing how she looked, looking the way the photographer wanted her to.

  The camera clicking, the motor transporting the film between each shot set up a steady rhythm.

  “Put your leg out,” Jerry said.

  Crystal put out a leg, holding the coat closed with her hand away from the camera so that the bathing suit wouldn’t show.

  She bent the leg. She turned and put them both out.

  “Shall I stand?”

  “If you want to,” Jerry said.

  Crystal stood for a few pictures, but it didn’t feel comfortable. She sat again.

  “You want to drop the coat from your shoulders?”

  Crystal let the coat slide down her shoulder. The lens on the 35-millimeter camera clicked. The motor whirred.

  “Try the next coat.” As Crystal went for the next coat Jerry adjusted the lighting.

  The black coat was heavier, and she felt nice in it. It was luxurious and made her feel important. Jerry changed the backdrop. The table with the black rose was now in front of a backdrop of snow-covered mountains.

  Jerry was still using the 35-millimeter camera.

  “Try turning the chair around,” Jerry said.

  Crystal stood and turned the chair around. She tried the same poses with the right side of her face nearest the camera, but it didn’t feel right.

  “I feel awkward from this side,” she said.

  “Okay, change it back,” Jerry said. “Let’s get a little more smiling in the pictures, too.”

  Crystal changed the chair back, then sat on it, and crossed her legs. She leaned forward.
<
br />   “The sleeve is hanging over your thigh,” Jerry said. “It would help if we could see more thigh.”

  The camera clicked and whirred.

  “How do you think we’re doing?” Crystal asked.

  “I don’t know. How do you think we’re doing?”

  “I don’t know, either,” Crystal said.

  “You want to rest for a while?”

  “We’ve just started,” Crystal said.

  “Okay, let’s keep at it, then,” Jerry said. He spoke quietly, slowly. “Sometimes you really can’t tell what you’re getting until you see the proofs.”

  The camera clicked, whirred.

  “I shot my landlady yesterday,” Jerry went on. “I think if the pictures come out the way she wants she won’t raise my rent.”

  “I hope they come out,” Crystal said. She turned toward the camera and put both legs before her.

  “Let’s switch from the table,” Jerry said. He moved the table away, and when Crystal stood, the chair as well. “Sit on the log, it’s sturdy enough.”

  Crystal sat on the log and found that it was too low for her.

  “I can’t get my legs in a good position,” she said.

  “Just sit with your knees together and your hands on your chin,” Jerry said. “Don’t put your hands on your face, because I don’t want your makeup smudged.”

  Crystal leaned forward with her knees together and her chin on her hands.

  “I feel like I’m sitting on the john,” she said.

  “That’ll probably turn some people on,” Jerry said.

  “That’s disgusting!” Crystal smiled.

  “It’s disgusting that everybody isn’t beautiful and handsome and rich,” Jerry said. He moved in for a close shot. “But we aren’t, so we spend our lives looking at people who are and dreaming.”

  “That’s not my fault,” Crystal said. Her teeth were clenched in a smile as she spoke.

  “I think this works better than the table,” Jerry said. “The set’s a little more interesting. It has more textures. Relax for a moment while I set up the Bronica.”

  The Bronica stood on a tripod twenty feet from the set. It had been sitting there since Crystal arrived. It was as if it knew that it was the main camera, that it was waiting.