“They weren’t awful.” I chewed halfway through the chocolate frosted with sprinkles and washed it down with coffee. Of course, his pictures weren’t very good, either.
“I tried to blame it on how small, tacky and low-budget the wedding was. But then I saw your photos. They were awe-inspiring. You took a cardboard and Popsicle stick wedding and made them look like a million dollars.”
“That’s because they felt like a millions dollars. All I had to do was harness their emotions. I interpreted what they felt. I didn’t try to dictate any poses or predisposed Wedding Photography: 101 community standards on them. Photography is anthropology. That’s all it is. Don’t tell them how to feel or how to stand or what clothes to wear. They’ll do that for you. You just need to be there to feel it and define it on film when it happens.”
“But that’s just the thing. I didn’t feel anything.”
“I’ve been photographing for a long time. You can’t do this for a gig or two and expect the same results. Start by becoming aware of their needs and not your own. Then learn to blend how they feel with the circumstances of your cultural surroundings.”
“Are you really going to eat that?” Alex tightened the corners of his mouth as he glared at my donut. I shoved the rest of it in my mouth and chewed. “It’s got sprinkles on it, doesn’t it? That’s not a donut.”
“What do you mean, that’s not a donut?” I said it with my mouth full. “You can’t discriminate based on the contents of ones sprinkles.”
“What are you, a sissy of something?”
“And that’s the other thing.” I reached back into the crinkled bag for the next available donut. “If you want to photograph like me, you’ve got to eat like me too.”
“We already went over this lesson.”
“Yeah, and you apparently failed it miserably.”
“Don’t tell me,” Alex frowned. “That’s a jelly-filled, isn’t it?”
I bit into it as an answer to his question.
“Mm-hmm, that’s not a donut.”
10
If you examine swoon in the dictionary, Cobb told me, there’s this picture of his sister, Stephanie, one arm crossing her brow with a lone hand cuffing both bosoms.
“And,” he jokingly added, lighting a cigarette, “no big surprise, her name shows up in the thesaurus as a synonym.”
He was speaking of course not only of his sister but the bride, the most paradoxical feature of her Boston wedding being the fact, Cobb claimed, that she was tying the knot with a highway patrolman while he (being her elder brother) was the isolate pony-tailed pot head in a line-up of seven other police officer groomsmen. I love anthropology.
So there Alex and I were photographing Jay, the officer groomsman, while he called Stephanie on the phone from their Boston hotel room where he and his fellow badge buddies, and pot-head-in-law, huddled together in a frustrated attempt to figure out how one bandages those ridiculously impossible neck ties on.
“Oh God, are you all right?” Jay said to her.
Screaming – clearly defined shrieks of terror streaming through phone speakers to our end of the room.
“Stephanie! Are you hurt? Steph… Steph… listen to me!”
Her rigor mortis shrieking, as though Norman’s knife was continually raining down to pumpkin carve her breasts, would not stop bellowing from her end of the call. Her screaming continued but grew more distant in the receiver now, and it occurred to us that the cell phone was abandoned on the floor while she cried bloody murder from one end of her house clear to the other.
Jay locked eyes on his groomsmen.
“OK, let’s go boys,” he said.
What followed were eight police officers in three lit cruisers, a pot head brother-in-law and wedding day photographer thrown into the back seat of Jay’s wheels, Alex in the caged belly of another, while he and his boys bustled through Boston intersections at nearly a hundred miles per hour.
“No, really,” Cobb calmly explained as we barnstormed past a stop sign and skidded around the corner of a busy intersection. “She’s literally thee drama queen. In college she majored in acting with a minor in art history. If she feels a certain way about anything she’ll make sure to let you and anyone else in the house know about it.”
“We’ve got a possible two-eleven in progress.” Jay called it in, slicing a pedestrian corner at Louis Zamperini speeds.
“I can tell you, first hand witness, that she hates bugs,” Cobb coolly said. “Oh, you don’t really think you need to buckle up in here, do you?” I fumbled to find my seatbelt. “I mean, we’re already in the cop car, aren’t we? Anyways, where was I? Oh yes, bugs.”
I turned around, snapped photographs of the two coppers following pursuit, then husband-to-be Jay speaking gibberish coding to home headquarters. Next Cobb, sitting comfortably at my side like he’d done this many times before, and finally, as we pulled up to his Boston residence, the bride, still shattering windows with her night-at-the-opera screams as three cop cruisers slammed over her front yard curb, opened doors and unholstered pistols, keeping careful aim at what appeared to be, now that we could grasp a better viewing, a Texas-sized cockroach drowned with a container of hairspray and eight bridesmaids backing their screaming bride by lighting up a match and handing it to her.
“See, that’s what you get,” Cobb told Jay from the back seat of his cruiser, competently lighting a cigarette, “when you marry my baby sister.”
11
“Joshua?” One of Stephanie’s bridesmaids said.
I stopped clicking pictures of police officer groomsmen holstering their guns, Jay and Stephanie’s first meeting of the day, though clearly not preemptively penciled-in on the schedule, and the ashes of the bug, who had departed the land of the living for animal hell, set my camera down and turned towards the voice.
I couldn’t believe it.
Standing only several feet away in a strapless emerald gown was the first love of my young adult life, the same woman who was currently on Penny Parker’s wall space and on a life-sized billboard over Broadway (with a title that read REPUBLICAN BLUE on both of them). Blond hair, milky skin, fiery eyes of bronze, a healthy helping of breasts, and she hadn’t aged a day. Well, maybe she’d aged a day or two, like the singular wrinkled that creased from her eye and others, barely noticeable, from the corners of her mouth. But she certainly hadn’t aged a month.
Last we’d left off, I was twenty years old and my voice quivered in the majesty of her presence. “Leah? Leah Bishop? No, it can’t be.” My voice still shuttered.
“How long has it been?” She said.
I could have calculated and whittled it down to the precise minute since our last meeting had I wanted to.
“It’s been too long.”
I discreetly slipped my wedding ring into my pocket.
“It has. Come here.” She opened her arms.
As she wrapped the sweet perfume of her flesh around my neck I had this sudden sensation of scrambled eggs and coffee with Cousin Joe, heat and smoke and a building just outside my own skyline window sledge hammered down its center and engulfed in flames. The heat and the smoke were unbearable. Outside my window I saw a jumper. A woman cried at the mere passing sight of him. I quickly washed the thought of it away.
“What are you doing here?” Leah Bishop exclaimed.
I opened my mouth to answer her.
“He’s our wedding day photographer.” Stephanie cut me off with all the enthusiasm of Broadway Theater. “And I hired him. I hired him everybody!” Her bridesmaids erupted into laughter. Even the cops joined in.
“Yeah, like she said. I flew out here to take pictures.”
“You’re the guy who flew all the way out here just to take wedding day pictures?” Leah squinted half of her face. “And people pay you to do this?”
“U-huh, its kind of what I do for a living.”
“Every weekend?”
“Well, not exactly every weekend, but you have the basic drift of my
whereabouts on almost any given Saturday afternoon.”
“You just fly all over the country taking pictures of other people’s weddings?”
“Mainly it’s for the free booze and the opportunity to meet pretty bridesmaids, but sure.”
“I hired him everybody,” the drama queen exclaimed. “Hands off him – he’s mine!”
Her women howled with laughter.
“It’s probably best,” I heard Cobb whisper with an outdoor voice into Jay’s ear, “if you surround my sister with the sort of friends that don’t encourage her.”
12
As a photographer, there’s often very little time to breathe on a wedding day let alone get caught up with the girl from your high school homeroom. Leah and I couldn’t have spoken more than several sentences in passing, though it was often flirtatious when we did, and I hoped to rectify our silly one-liners as soon as possible. I knew my chance to swoop in and talk with her would be brief, and that it would happen near the end of the reception, when the cake was finally served and the big-bellied guests could finally go home. All that would remain were the dozen party loyalists showing off their moves on the dance floor. If I was ever going to swoop in and apprehend her, it was going to be then.
I liked the way Leah was ever vigilant to my whereabouts, even if we hadn’t the time to talk. Her spirit was ever present whenever I was in the room. I liked the way she turned to smile at my camera lens throughout the ceremony as she held up a single wax candle. It wasn’t simply a friendly smile. It was deeper, with history and the hint of intimacy. Or maybe she was just a Broadway girl attempting to put on a good show for her fans. Or worse, perhaps she was trying to figure out if I was always staring at her through my camera lens. Her face glowed angelically in the light of her candle.
“So how do you and Leah Bishop know each other?” I asked Stephanie, the original drama queen, towards the end of her reception.
Drama Queen blushed with amusement at the mere mention of her name. I was horrible at hiding infatuation. I even eyed Leah on the dance floor as I asked the question.
“Isn’t he adorable?” She told two bridesmaids, Savannah and Olivia, standing with mixed drinks at her side. “He’s like a little lost puppy. They’re probably gonna hook up. And I hired him!”
“Oh, didn’t you know? This is a Broadway reunion,” Savannah enthusiastically said. “Leah and all of Stephanie’s bridesmaids, we were all in it together. It was actually just off-Broadway, called Barge. Ever hear of it?”
“Barge?” I probably tilted my head sideways like a dog, simultaneously pushing an uneasy queasy-like gurgling further down into my bowels. “I can’t say that I have.”
“It’s like Stomp,” Olivia added. “Only it’s not.”
I nodded my head enthusiastically. “I’ve always wanted to see Stomp.”
“Yes, but this wasn’t Stomp. It’s Barge, and so much better,” Olivia continued. Or was she Savannah? “That was the problem. We had to close after only two months because everyone went to see Stomp and hardly anyone went to see Barge.”
“Well, somebody went to see Barge.” The other Olivia or Savannah smiled at Stephanie. “A certain Boston police officer hitting up the town for the weekend. We shan’t name any names.”
“I’ve just thought of something!” Drama Queen said. “Next Barge reunion…. when Leah and Joshua get married!” Her girls howled along. “And just think, he’s my wedding photographer and I hired him!”
13
“Joshua,” Leah patted the empty chair next to her. She was weary from the dance floor. I could have watched her for hours, but finally, the moment had arrived. “Joshua. Joshua. You don’t know how thrilled I am to bump into you like this. What have you been up to?”
“This mainly.” I nudged my head at the room. “The world is my stage.” I said the world is my stage holding my chin high, like a stuffy lover of the arts. I thought Leah might approve. She did. She laughed. I liked the fact that I cuffed Leah into the incarceration of laughter. I must have utilized hours of emotion in high school and college trying to make Leah look at me, let alone laugh…. or kiss me…marry me…or get into bed with me…. whichever order came first.
“Well, as you’ve probably heard, I’ve been on Broadway a good many years.” Then she mimicked my stuffy-air comment about how the world is my stage with an elevated nose of her own. “I’m quite successful, you know.”
This time I laughed. And on a completely separate side note, I think I needed to throw up.
“I’m in this one play right now. It’s called REPUBLICAN BLUE, a twenty-million dollar production about the First Lady, which I play.” She took a bow. “It’s basically about how she’s a closeted blue-blooded Democrat and married to a right-wing president who holds an all Republican cabinet, and she has to deal with his involvement in a war that she doesn’t believe in. It’s a musical, you know.” I got lost in her words. “You should come out and see it.”
“You know I will.”.
Yes, I was quite certain of it now, I really had to throw up.
“Joshua, you don’t look so good. You look pale.”
“I’m fine.” I shoved the thought of it down. “So, I was thinking, maybe we should go find a PANCAKE HOUSE or something that’s open 24 hours so that we can catch up and talk – you know, when this is over.”
“I’d like that.” She smiled again with the same deep-seeded familiarity that spoke of our history together.
“And I have one more request.”
She locked eyes with mine. It was haunting, as if looking into the flames of a bronze furnace. I shivered.
“Anything,” she said.
“Would you care to have this dance with me?”
The song abruptly changed, as if the DJ, somehow omnipotent and living outside of time’s restraint knew with perfect confidence that Sinead O’Connor, Nothing Compares With You, was the perfect song to play.
Leah blushed, tucking bronze eyes onto her lap. When they scrolled up and latched onto my own, I quivered at the sight of them.
“We danced to this once.”
“We did.”
I extended my marriage hand out, minus the ring. She accepted it. The hair across my arm stood on end.
“I’d like that.”
“I hired him!” I heard Drama Queen exclaim as I escorted Leah out to the dance floor. And I had to throw up. Really, this time, I was quite certain of it, I had to throw up.
“Joshua, you don’t look so good,” Leah said.
I covered fingers over my mouth, gagged, and scrambled as fast as I could through the thinning crowd for the bathroom while Sinead O’Connor let everyone know that Leah Bishop once took her love away from me.
And nothing, no nothing, compares…to you.
14
Studies had been told before, how the donut shape of a toilet seat was cleaner than the biscotti surface of an office desk, or how most germs were transmitted in business deals from one gentlemanly handshake to another. But now that my stomach boiled with tears, now that my neck was yoked in the frame of a porcelain guillotine, I was not comforted.
In the next stall over, the belly of a drunken wedding guest was hurling stars and planets into a cosmic primeval soup. He’d been forming his universe for several minutes now while I pleaded with God to hook His finger down my throat and pull.
“Are you OK?” I pushed my own nausea aside.
“Yes,” he whispered. He moaned something terribly painful then vomited.
The bathroom door opened. A pair of high heels clapped down on tile and two women’s voices spoke something about Tommy, who was sleeping with a sleaze, and some guy named Brandon, who was apparently both rich and handsome and far more importantly available.
Didn’t they know they were in the men’s room?
I crunched my aching body down on both shins, pressing ten fingers and the left side of my face on the tile to spy underneath the opening in my stall. Two youthful girls in knee length dresses, one gr
ay, the other pink; low tops, curled hair, pearls and waist-bows, were staring into the mirror glazing on a second coat of lipstick when the brunette in the pink dress and pearls turned towards me and entered the stall on my left.
I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t she know she was in the men’s room? She tugged paper from the roll, crumbled it and wiped. I was listening to a woman clean her most private area. She didn’t even care that there were two men present. That’s when it occurred to me. I didn’t pass a train of urinals on my way in, did I?
The drunken moaner in the next stall over exhumed another milky way of bile. I flipped my body over, pressing ten fingers and a cheekbone to the floor in hopes of maneuvering a better view. Quivering body, skintight dress levitated to his hips, legs finely shaven, high-heeled shoes, not at all what I was expecting in a man.
Oh God, I’m some sort of sick pervert. I’m in the woman’s bathroom. I wondered what nation-wide studies or statistics had to say concerning pervert encroachments in powder rooms.
Another fresh pair of high heels knocked on my stall.
“I know this is a weird question, but Joshua, is that you?”
It was Leah’s voice. I lifted my feet above the door and firmly slid the bolt in place.
She knocked again.
“Joshua, is that you?”
“No,” I said in my best soprano, and flushed the bowl.
15
I offered to drive because Leah Bishop had swigged one shot glass and perhaps several mixed drinks too many to maneuver her feet and jingle car keys at the same time, and because she’d promised to drive two other bridesmaids back to their hotel across town from Boston to Bedford, also in the category of one swig too many, and because I simply wanted another excuse to talk with her, alone if possible, seeing as how my excursion to the women’s bathroom had interrupted a perfectly pleasant time with Sinead O’Connor. I squeezed Alex into the back seat in-between Savannah and Olivia, because he’d also had one too many, with the added instructions to behave himself. Hey, you know me, he said, cocking his finger as Savannah giggled and fell into his arms. Or was it Olivia?
Wrong Flight Home (Wrong Flight Home, #1) Page 21