I force a smile. His blue eyes are caring, genuine.
“Anyway, I was chasing you down because I wanted to say thank you. Gabrielle loved my assignment. And it’s because of you. I never would’ve even thought to document the whole ‘Amazing Race of Marv Robertson.’ The reason I did well on this was you. You forced me to tell the story of trying to find my dad. So thanks.”
“This is turning into a pattern,” I say miserably. “I fail at my own stuff, while somehow aiding and abetting so you come out on top. That’s got to mean something.”
“We make a great team?” Ben says, then reddens ever so slightly and coughs. “Anyway, thanks. A lot.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Hey, what do you say we skip class this afternoon? Go see a photo exhibit at MoMA?”
Even though the thought of going to see that Walker Evans exhibit the halal guy mentioned is appealing, even though going back to class is the last thing I want to do, even though Ben wouldn’t be the worst possible person I could spend the afternoon with, I shake my head. “I can’t.”
Ben gives me a long look, then turns and walks back toward the school. I watch him for a moment, then turn and walk, alone, in the opposite direction.
CHAPTER 13
“Cancel the shoot. With no assistant it’s not only too much work, it’s too much of a headache. Bunch of annoyingly chipper Britney-Spears-circa-2000 girls running around in sneakers?” David’s on his phone when he throws open the door for me, finally, on the third round of knocking. It took me a good hour of wandering the city, certain I was going to get lost and trying not to care, to decide what to do. Actually, it took David’s call, just when I was thinking I would go back to class after all, saying he needed help on a re-shoot and could I come over. And so I did.
“I don’t care that the client wants it done. This is not who I am. Can’t you use someone else? I’m not some chump who shoots ads. I told you that.”
He makes a face at his phone and hits the red End button and tosses his phone on the big oak table where it lands with a clunk.
“Fucking rent,” he says.
“Where’s Talia?” I ask, dropping my bag, kicking off my shoes and slipping into my usual pair of slippers.
David shuffles over to the kitchen and pours two cups of coffee.
“It wasn’t working out,” he says grumpily, rubbing his eyes with his forefinger and thumb. He hands me a mug.
“The assisting or the girlfriend-ing?” I take a sip and put it down. I’m definitely not ready for straight up coffee. Not even at one in the afternoon.
“She wanted to move in. They always do. I had to cut the ties. Same story as always.”
“You’ve broken up with her before?”
“No, not her, exactly. Assistants in the past. Always ends the same way.”
My look of shock-surprise-intrigue makes him raise his hands in the air. “What? Don’t get judgey. I can’t help it. Hot women apply to be my assistant. I’m supposed to purposely choose a not-hot woman?”
“You don’t have to have sex with them just because they’re pretty.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“So what was that on the phone?” I say as he sits down at his computer.
“Shoot tomorrow afternoon. A fucking sneaker campaign.”
“I could help. I still have to assist on a photo shoot before the end of the week. I know I’ve helped you with some other stuff, but technically we’re supposed to be involved in the whole thing, start to finish, not just by fluke,” I add, feeling discouraged.
“We’ll see. Can you put that light stand away? We need the bigger one.” He nods at the stand by the seamless. I grab it with both hands and heave it over to the storage closet, then look around to figure out where to make it fit so it’s not in the middle of the room. I move one of the seamlesses over to make space, but as I’m maneuvering the light stand into place, it knocks a box off the nearby shelf.
Photographs spill on the ground all around me.
“Everything OK, Greene?” David calls.
“Yes!” I call back and begin sweeping up the photos. They look old. They’re dusty, with faded postcards, receipts, slips of paper and opened envelopes mixed in. I sweep the contents together. There’s a great shot of the New York skyline, the rooftops in focus, the Hudson River out of focus in the background. A line of benches through Central Park. One of the bridges that lead in and out of the city. A picture of two people kissing. I pull the photo closer and study the profiles. It’s David, but it must be from years ago. He sort of looks like a late-’90s Backstreet Boy—baggy jeans, boxy leather jacket. His arm outstretched toward the bottom left-hand side of the image, holding the camera. The girl has long red hair in a messy side braid escaping her coat’s white furry hood. I look closer, trying to imagine David in love. Then my breath catches in my throat. The beauty mark. Under her right earlobe. It’s Mom. My hands shake. But Mom kissing David? It can’t be.
I turn the photo over but there’s nothing on the back. No clue as to when this was taken. But it’s definitely Mom. The hair, the skin, the eyes, even shut, I know they’re hers. I know it’s her. She has to be in her twenties. But why is she kissing him? I should put the photo back, pretend I never saw it. Surely it’s no big deal. I think back to Ben surprise-kissing me on the lips that day at the hospital in the parking lot, months ago. How Dylan totally got the wrong idea. But how it meant nothing to me—how I was so over Ben and totally into Dylan. But what if someone had captured that? What if I had a daughter and she found a photo of that years later? She would’ve assumed the worst, that I was with Ben instead of Dylan. Just like I’m doing, right now.
Maybe Mom knew David first. Before Dad. Maybe they dated before Dad?
But of course they didn’t. They all met the same night. She and Dad started dating immediately. That’s the story she told me, the same story Dad told me, the same story David told me. So a joke? But who joke-kisses someone they don’t even like? I stick the photo in my back pocket and continue sweeping the rest into the box.
“Sure you’re OK in there?” David calls.
“Yeah, I just … dropped something.”
“Need help?”
“No!” I say a little too quickly, a little too loudly.
Mom’s working the day shift, so I have to wait, under my Sabres blanket, in agony (or technically, in Greeneland, which actually feels like a million miles away from Mom) until she gets home at six to talk to her, even though I’ve left her three messages and a billion texts telling her to call me on a break. Good thing I’m not being held for ransom.
“I saw …” Now that I’ve got her on the phone, I can’t say the words.
“You saw what?” Mom says, but she’s distracted. Which is maybe better than having her full attention. I feel less panicky all of a sudden. I take a deep breath.
“A picture of you and David.”
“Oh?” she says, breezily. As though it’s nothing. So it must be nothing. I almost let it drop.
Because I don’t want to know.
Except, I do.
“Kissing,” I say before I lose my nerve.
Silence.
“Oh Pippa …” Mom says.
“Did you two … have a thing?”
“I … oh Pippa … I was a model. I kissed a lot of guys. Wait. That came out wrong. Don’t get any ideas. Or do. It’s just kissing.”
“But Dad’s best friend? Really?”
“Please try not to think about it. It was nothing,” she says. “It’s nothing that matters now. I need to eat something. Can we talk about this later?”
“I think my mom and David had an affair,” I blurt out as soon as Dace answers her phone. Ramona got home from class and tried to get me to come with her to dinner, but I refused and she said she’d bring me back mac ’n’ cheese. The dorm room is empty again.
“Oh my god, what?”
“Hang on.” I snap a pic of the photo, then text it to her. A second later I hear the ding on her end of the lin
e. “Check my text.” I hold my breath as she does, hoping she’ll come back on the line telling me it’s nothing, telling me not to worry or having some idea what the photo really means, something I didn’t think of, something that’s totally plausible.
“Wow. Who knew? What do you think it means?” She says, pulling a Dr. Judy.
“Well, I don’t know. Except David even told me himself he didn’t know Mom before she met Dad. So …”
“OK so maybe … they left out part of the story. Maybe she dated David for a bit? But it was, like, not a big deal?”
“Then why not say that?”
“’Cause it’s weird. Parents always lie about their misspent youth. And David’s not going to be all like, ‘Hey, I know your dad’s dead, but I banged your mom before they hooked up.’”
I groan.
“Feel better?”
I can’t sleep. I want to call Dylan, to hear his voice, to hear him tell me it means nothing, but I know I can’t—or that I shouldn’t—call him, not even for this, and so I put my phone under my pillow and then flop over onto my back and stare at the ceiling. I know I should just accept that the kiss means nothing, but I can’t. I would feel totally betrayed if Dace kissed Dylan, even if it was just as a joke. The photo’s on my desk, and I alternate between looking at it, trying to look for clues as to what was going on outside that split second that’s captured in the image, and flipping it over so that I don’t have to see it. It’s right beside the framed pic of Dad, and I feel guilty, even though I didn’t do anything. I flip off my light, turn over and squeeze my eyes shut.
CHAPTER 14
Ramona convinces me to come back to class in the morning. Gabrielle doesn’t say anything when she sees me—Ramona told her I wasn’t feeling well, but I think we both know I skipped yesterday afternoon because of my evaluation. We spend the morning in the darkroom, which is a good thing because then I can’t stare at the clock, waiting till we’re let out for lunch so I can go to David’s. He said I had to be there by 12:30 if I wanted to help with the sneaker-ad shoot, and when Gabrielle finally opens the revolving door to the darkroom and I squint in the bright light of the hallway, I see it’s nearly quarter after. I practically run to David’s, getting there in record time, but when I try his apartment door it’s locked. I hit David’s name on my phone. No answer. Same thing happens the third, fourth and fifth times. Where is he? Out picking up something last minute for the shoot?
Behind me, the crashing of wood and grate means the elevator’s arrived at this floor. From the elevator’s mouth appears a girl. Older than me, but not much. Maybe 22. Motorcycle boots, black tights with a rip in the right shin, some sort of black cape thing, enormous glasses, a black bob. Lugging a black box, she mumbles, “Excuse me,” basically pushes me out of the way and tries the door. “Shit,” she says, then pulls out her phone.
“I just tried him,” I tell her.
She says “Westerly” like it’s a swear word. Then: “Who are you?”
“He’s my mentor. So I’m his, um, mentee? I guess. I’m at this photography camp at Tisch. He said I could assist—”
She looks me up and down. “Just stop. God, he’s so disgusting. He gets older every year but they keep staying the same age.”
“It’s not like that—”
“Oh, don’t defend him. Listen, I just want to do this shoot. He’s done this before. And we probably should’ve booked a full day for this as it is. I’m Lauren, by the way.”
The two of us lean against the wall by David’s door for a while, and I consider how another photography fail will affect my chances of ever getting into Tisch after high school. I check my phone again, which is rather unnecessary since it’s fully charged and still no calls and, yes, it’s nearly 1:00 but I know that because Lauren’s been saying things like “12:45, 12:46, 12:47 …” with exasperated sighs in between every minute on the minute.
Lauren’s phone buzzes with a text. “Great. And now the talent will be here any minute.”
“What happens then?”
Lauren doesn’t appear to hear me over her moaning; she’s getting apocalyptic on me. “My parents said I’d end up selling my body if I moved to New York. Is that really what’s going to have to happen? I don’t want to be a call girl, but is this how it happens? Is this what happens to innocent girls, coming to New York, trying to make it as actresses, dancers, singers? They trust the wrong person, one wrong turn, and that’s that? Ugh, why did I have to beg the agency to book David?”
“Lauren, I’ve got an idea.” I lead her up the stairs and there’s a hatch to the roof, which turns out to be covered in tarpaper, with empty beer bottles and lawn chairs decorating the flat area beneath a rusty water tower. Lauren follows me to the roof edge, and the two of us look over at David’s balcony below. Where a sliding door beckons.
“What if the door’s locked?”
“He’s a smoker—maybe there’s a chance he left the door unlocked?”
“I’ll hold you,” Lauren says.
“Why don’t you do it?”
“I’m afraid of heights.”
Which is why seconds later I’m up on the edge and then on my belly and my legs are dangling with maybe eight feet between my own motorcycle boots and the balcony below. Which doesn’t sound like much. Eight feet—that’s not even the height of a basketball net, right? I don’t think? Oh, how would I know? Who do I think I am—Lebron James? Dace would probably know, but Dace isn’t here, and I’ve got to focus. Anyway, it seems far, particularly when it’s December and icy and I can hear New York below, with all its honking and sirens. Waiting for me to fall.
“You’re not going to fall,” Lauren says instinctively, pressing herself against the edge of the roof and I kind of use her as a rope ladder, lowering myself from her shoulder, to her elbow, to her wrist, I’m dangling in space and then I drop—and fall three feet to the balcony.
“Are you OK?” she calls.
“I think I’m OK.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am surprised.”
The balcony door’s open. In fact, I beat Lauren to the front door. When I open it she’s just coming out the stairs and down the hallway and her face breaks into a smile as she strides my way. “I cannot believe that worked.”
Inside the studio, it’s clear David’s not just a really heavy and late sleeper. There’s no sign of him, though the place is a disaster, like he had a party last night, then abandoned the place. Beer bottles, pizza boxes, cigarette packs litter the floor. I confess to being a little concerned about him but Lauren shrugs, seemingly disinterested. “Photo camp. So you can handle a camera?”
“Sure.”
“Great. The models are going to be here in 15 minutes. Here’s the project sheet. I’ll get the clothes. Let’s get to it.”
It’s while I read the project sheet that it becomes apparent to me why Lauren asked whether I can handle a camera—because in her mind, we are going ahead with this and she wants me to shoot whatever we’re shooting. Like, we’re not canceling even if David doesn’t show up. Because, of course, who else is there? I study the sheet, hoping for some clue as to what, and how I’m supposed to do this.
Project Sheet
ZePPys are a new line of athletic-style shoes. But they’re not just shoes. And they’re definitely not boring. And they’re most certainly not for adults. Designed to appeal to the pre-teen set, ZePPys will make you ZANY + PEPPY. Get it?! ZePPy! The campaign is based around bright, bold images. The tweens should be zany! They should be peppy! They should be ZePPy!
It’s awful. It can’t just be me, can it? This sounds like a terrible campaign. What pre-teen wants to feel zany or peppy? And I feel full-fledged stressed out. In fact, I feel about five seconds from needing a Dr. Judy intervention.
“I think … what if … what if we just postpone?” I text David again.
Lauren’s bustling around the studio, doing this, doing that, I have no idea what, I’m so unfocused.
&n
bsp; “You’re doing it.”
“But what if I don’t do a good job?” I want to say How can I do a good job when this is what I have to work with?
“You have to do a good job.” Lauren goes back to setting up the clothes on the rack.
“But won’t this ruin David’s reputation if I screw this up for him? It’s totally unrealistic. I’m not a real photographer. I can’t just step in and take over an actual shoot for someone like David. Not for an actual shoe campaign. Not for a real ad agency.” Is Lauren crazy?
But she just tilts her head and looks at me, holding a hanger with a white tuxedo shirt. “Did you read the shoot sheet? It’s not like I just handed you a Nike campaign.”
Is that supposed to make me feel better? But it’s clear Lauren’s serious about me shooting this thing. This campaign.
I look at my phone again. Nothing from David. I pull up Ramona’s name.
Me: Help.
Ramona: What’s up?
Me: I need u. Can u come here?
Ramona: U OK??? Shooting look book with Jed!
Me: Can u come after? Really need help. Will owe u.
And seriously not 20 minutes later Ramona shows up. With Ben. I don’t even have time to ask her why or how that came together, because all I can focus on is how they thankfully beat the models and hair/makeup team to the loft. They take the situation in stride, both of them, and I’m so glad they’re both here—yes, that’s right, I’m so glad Ben’s here—that I hug them both. Does Ben hold me for a second longer than a couple of friends might hug? I don’t have the time to ponder it. Ben goes around rustling up more lights from the storage closet, while Ramona tidies up the beer and pizza mess. Lauren sets the sneakers up. They’re highlighted in electric shades—neon orange, that sort of thing—and so I get the orange seamless and roll that out, and by that time Kat and Maxi—not the models’ real names, their fun and zany names for the campaign—are getting their hair and makeup done. An hour later they’re ready: Kat’s kind of a spy-looking figure in a tux. She carries a gun. A fake gun, obviously. At least I hope it’s a fake gun. Maxi’s in a slinky cocktail dress, all sequins, which looks ridiculous on her, given that she’s 13, tops. The models’ agency rep doesn’t seem to notice—or care?—that Ramona, Ben and I are in charge of this shoot, or that we’re teenagers. Maybe he thinks it’s all part of the zeppyness? Anyway, he’s on the couch, engrossed in his phone.
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