“Us?” I reiterate. “I never said I was with you.”
“Well, you never said you weren’t.” Holding both glasses, his stare is patient. I take a glass and put it to my lips. The air within the glass hits my nostrils like a matchstick, and through the glass I see Roman downing his glass as well.
***
The bourbon tingles in my throat and the ice clinks in the glass when Roman takes it from my hand. “Another?” he asks, seemingly copacetic from the drink.
“I guess you’re just not going to answer my questions,” I say, “So why am I here at all? Why shouldn’t I just go home right now?”
“Where is home, Vylette?” He pours himself another, but I’m firm in shaking my head to pass on this round. It’s not like me to drink with strangers. “I can tell you’re not from here. You’re so rigid. Look at you, standing there like a mannequin.” He leans against the counter, smiling with the glass to his lips. The walls practically vibrate from the music downstairs.
The last thing I’m going to take is an insult from a smug man treating me like any other woman. I remember Malik and the phone in my pocket. I know he’s at the loft with some delicious meal prepared, listening to jazz and waiting for me. But I’ve got jazz here, and there is something else I need that Malik can’t give me.
“I look like a mannequin?” I say, raising one brow. I take the bottle of liquor and fill my glass, then reach into his freezer for two fresh ice cubes. I strut over to the dresser and pick up his head garb like its dirty laundry. “Are you trying to look like a pirate?”
I feel confident in my retort and bookend the joke with a strong swig of the bourbon. It will take a lot more than Jim Beam to get me wasted, but I’m curious to see where things go. I see right through the insult as a joke, something to lure me in. He’s already learning how I work. I would have left minutes ago if he didn’t have the wit to make me laugh. “And by the way,” I finish. “You’re not fooling me saying, ‘This is where I come to work.’ This is where you live, isn’t it?”
I look around at his artwork on the walls, pretending to be a critic at a bourgeoisie art show. I trace my fingertips along the walls, admiring how he used the long cracks in some of them to serve as outlines for trees—but I don’t reveal my admiration for the delicate brush strokes. No, I let his eyes follow me around the room while I peruse everything in the room.
“Not where I live,” he corrects. “But you could say this is where I stay. For now.” Where he stays. He sounds like me.
When I reach the edge of the bed I’m tempted to lie down and stare up at the ceiling, letting the buzz rush through me as I pretend to be engulfed by Roman’s forest. “‘The Brush’ is kind of a funny name for a cheap studio apartment,” I say, keeping my firm posture by the bedpost. Judging by the furniture I would have guessed that he hasn’t been here long—but the intricate details of the full-size mural must have taken months, if not years.
My teasing doesn’t even faze him. From across the room, I see him lean against the tan counter and absorb me with his eyes. He’s actually listening to me. I guess I’m just so used to Malik cutting me off all the time. But I can’t assume that this guy will be any different.
“So, are you going to do it?” he asks, taking a slow sip from his glass. I can hear him sift the bourbon past his tongue before swallowing. Do what? I think. Could he be trying to get it this quick? “Take out your camera,” he laughs, crunching a piece of ice with his teeth.
The first thought I have is that he wants to delete the photo I took of him in the garage, and he would be right for asking that of me, but something deep in me is attached to that photo. I haven’t even seen how it came out, yet. “Don’t you have a camera?” I answer, my mouth playing defense before my brain even has a chance to think.
His head deflates into his hand and he makes a comical, burbling noise with his lips. “Girl, having a conversation with you is like playing a game of dodge ball,” he says, rocking his head at me, our eyes linked. “Listen again. Are you going to take out your camera so that you can take pictures of me, or what? Last week for class you turned in photos of yourself posing in front of the camera. Yeah, Dr. D. made a joke about it being like a selfie, but I know how much work you put into setting up the camera, the self-timer, the focus, and the exposure. And yeah, I could tell you darkened the contrast in a little in Photoshop, but that’s not a big deal.”
I stare at him, my mouth open, head tilted sideways. My stomach gives a lurch as I laugh. I can’t help it, but my first thought is how preposterous Roman is. Without control, instantly an image of him flashes before my eyes, images of me behind the camera, and him laughing…
“So, obviously what I’m saying is,” he interrupts my daydream, “You can expand your portfolio by taking pictures of me. Don’t get my face, but you can get my body. I liked your work. I feel you on the vision. The teacher made it sound stupid in class, but it really isn’t.”
I exhale, and when I breathe in, that dank musty air fills my nostrils. Suddenly I’m looking around the room from a different perspective than before. Next thing I realize, my hands are going for my bag and I feel the cold plastic of the camera’s body and the scratchy surface of the strap.
“I’ve never really modeled, or whatever,” Roman says, “but I know damn well you don’t have anything prepared for class. What, were you about to turn in, a picture of Downtown CC from the roof of the parking garage? I can already imagine the flack you’ll get for that. You might as well just choose the lesser of two evils.”
He finishes his glass and sets it on the counter. Puckering his lips from the punch of the liquor, he starts walking over to the wall on my right and the other side of the bed. “I can hang a backdrop up here,” he says, “And the rest is up to you.”
The dizziness from when I first entered this place, Eighty8 Lounge, returns now. It can’t be that I’m drunk because this is nothing compared to what I go through when I’m editing photos at home. Malik’s wine supply is endless, after all. What will he think if he sees me editing pictures of Roman? My beating heart trembles as I take off the lens cap. I’ve never taken pictures of a man, not even Malik. It’s sad to say, but as much as I love photography, I’ve had little professional experience. By the time I look from my T2i and back to Roman, he already has the backdrop hung up—it’s a soft pink sheet.
With my nerves flustered about how to do this properly and professionally, I force my eyes to transfix on the thistle colored sheet. For all he knows I’m contemplating my artistic vision. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asks. When I look over, he’s not only holding a joint and a lighter, but he’s also shirtless.
***
The outline of his pecs form a perfect double-u, his abs and obliques underneath it etched like a statue. Scars run like a broken string of vines continue from his ear, down his back, chest, and right arm. On his tight, left chest muscle there is a tattoo of a heart, but it, too is vine-laced, forming a heart shape. The tattoo is a little on the nose, but it’s the first I make out of the dozen or so others that I see from this angle.
The fact that I didn’t even ask him to take his shirt off doesn’t occur to me until well after 10 seconds of me gawking at him, biting the insides of my cheeks. I’m so flustered, I retract my lips into my mouth just to ensure that it stays shut and I don’t make a fool of myself.
“This is awkward,” Roman says, fumbling to put the joint and lighter away. “It’s cool if you’re not down with smoking, I just like to get a little lit before working, and I’m kind of nervous so—”
“No, smoking is whatever,” I say, swallowing hard, noticing how dry my throat is. “I just didn’t expect…”
It takes him a moment to realize that I’m referring to his body, and then he looks down at himself, looks up to me, and his eyebrows hop in instant embarrassment. “Oh, fuck, I just thought,” he puts everything down and then goes for his shirt. “I just thought, since in your other photos, you were like, bare or whatever, but—�
��
Watching him gracelessly attempt to put his shirt back on sparks something in me, and I say, “Hey, hey, no, I misunderstood. You’re fine. You just have a really toned body, I wasn’t expecting it, so I started thinking of muscles in the human body,” I take the last sip of watery bourbon, “in an artistic way.”
Ridiculous, Vylette, I think. Sometimes it’s impossible to make the best ethical choice in a situation when every option seems so strange and new. What I know is that my cheeks tingle, and when I breathe in the air no longer feels damp, but earthy and rich.
“Right,” he says, dropping his shirt. “So, then you are cool if I smoke?” With him buying the ‘human body’ thing, a flush of relief washes down my own.
“Yeah,” I answer. “I’m cool if you smoke.”
“Cool,” he says, immediately lighting the joint, rolled in a black paper. “Just don’t get it on camera. I don’t need any more incriminating photos, okay?”
As he takes a hit the smoke rolls out of his mouth, he tilts his head, and returns my glance. His hand reaches out, the joint between his fingers and pointed toward me.
“I don’t usually smoke,” I say. “Actually, I’ve never smoked.” There is no point in lying about it. I haven’t. There are a lot of things I haven’t done, but the list is getting smaller the longer I’m here with Roman.
“You don’t have to. I’m not going to force you,” he says. “I’m not that type of dude. But out of courtesy, it’s here if you change your mind. Plenty of it. Hell, it might help chill you out.”
“Chill me out?” I say, instantaneously catching how offended I sound, and am. I want to relax because Roman’s casual attitude is so reaffirming. The dank aroma of his joint clouds the room. It’s not like I haven’t been around it before; I’ve just never taken a direct hit of the stuff. Once I take enough steps backward, I feel the bed against my calves, and I take a breath. Like a warning sign, my phone goes off again. Buzz buzz.
“Ah!” Roman laughs, taking a last hit of the joint before placing it safely in the ashtray. “You cannot escape your destiny, Vylette. It’s calling you. Literally.” He laughs at his own joke and then stands in front of the thistle sheet. His coffee complexion bounces aesthetically off the soft pink backdrop as he embraces his own buzz, leaning against the wall with his head, his abs twisting around. With his torso like this, I can see a new tattoo—a flower.
“Is that seriously a violet?” I ask. It’s been a curse and a blessing carrying such a common name for a flower.
“That is seriously a violet, Vylette,” he laughs soft this time, tuning in to the continuous and jumping music below. It must be around eight o’clock, and Roman’s moving to slow trumpet, snapping his fingers. The whole scenario doesn’t even feel real, but I can’t blame the guy for going with it after a little bud. The violet on his lower back is rooted somewhere below his beltline, and I can only imagine if there is an array of roots tattooed beneath the flower.
I stand up, put the strap around my neck, and say, “Okay. How do we do this thing?”
“Don’t make it so weird,” he says. “This is art.”
“Right,” I answer. “Art.”
“Remember,” he says, still snapping, “No pictures of my face, and try not to get anything in the apartment. Just my body and the sheet, dig? This is for you. Nobody else.”
“Yeah, I dig,” I repeat, knowing how stupid I sound, like some kind of apprentice. I am dreadfully precise when taking his body into my frame. With the rubber viewfinder against my eye, I focus on his stomach. The 50mm lens allows me to capture a sharp image of his abs and naval with the background blurred out. Looking at the viewfinder after the image is taken, the hairs on my neck prickle and then the photo disappears. I look up to him and he’s ready, waiting for another.
It goes on like this for hours, both of us lost in the smoky haze of the joint and the ambiance of muffled music. The more photos I take of Roman, the more of his body he reveals to me. Finally, he walks toward me. I only notice at first because his lower pelvis goes out of focus. “You must be getting hot,” he says, referencing the heavy Carhartt that I’m still wearing. Come to think of it, I do feel moisture building up in my lower back. The longer I’m in The Brush, the more it really does feel like a rain forest. Inches away from me, I want to reach out and touch Roman’s scar, get my body tangled in his vines.
***
The next morning, I wake up and try to go through the photos of last night before Malik wakes up. If I’m going to get them turned in before class I need to compile a 10-page essay in less than hour when Malik’s alarm will go off, 6 A.M. on the dot, every morning. I upload the photos to the computer and by the time the transfer is complete, there are 112 photos in the new folder.
Somewhere around photo 80 is when I took my Carhartt off, and somewhere around 100 came the rest of my clothes. I look at the remaining 12, trying to piece together what happened before each one. The first of 12 is Roman wearing nothing but my Carhartt, the focus on his pelvis. It required getting the camera very close to the subject in order to get the photo just right. The remaining 11 are all taken from the point of view of Roman’s bed, with him getting closer and closer in each one, until the last picture, which is completely black—his entire body swallowing the frame.
I think fast and try to organize all the photos quickly by ‘Ones That I Can Use For Class’, ‘Ones That No One Can See Ever’, and ‘MEO’, which is my code for ‘My Eyes Only’. Although I haven’t slept all night, I work with precision and fervor. The last photo I look at is the one of Roman painting right before the cops showed up. I question deleting the photo altogether, and am surprised that Roman didn’t go into the camera and do it himself when I fell asleep. I’d rather keep it to myself, for safe keeping, because for once it is a photo of a person in their habitat that I am proud of. I put it in the ‘MEO’ folder just before Malik’s alarm goes off.
Thankfully the University runs early and late busses, so I can get out just before Malik is out of bed. I don’t think I could face him and our normal morning routine of bullshitting while I pretend to do homework. Not after what happened last night. I never answered his texts, and instead, when Roman laid down next to me, I shut the phone off completely. I didn’t want to be bothered, or have anyone question what I was doing.
I get to campus super early; the sun is just coming up. It’s moments like this, moments in the crisp California air, that I can’t help but marvel at the beauty all around me. The sky begins its cascade of blue, and in moments, the classic Los Angeles sun is bearing down again.
I nod off in the hallway outside my class, and my eyes barely jolt open as the last of the students file in an hour and a half later. Even sleeping sitting up, it only felt like five minutes. I look around the hallway for Roman, but figure he must have walked right past me and is already in the classroom. I go in after everyone else and sit in my normal spot, but he’s nowhere to be found.
I pull my CD-R from my bag and pass it down the row with everyone else’s from my right, and Professor Danteridge collects them as he walks down the stairs on my left. The empty chair troubles me. Maybe he’s just running late. I can just picture him sleeping in past his alarm, nestled in his black comforter in the dim light of The Brush.
Then it hits me that he could totally be ashamed of the pictures I took, and didn’t want to show face. Even though I was careful not to get any of his face, it was also possible that he just didn’t want to see himself on the big screen and listen to Professor Danteridge criticize his abs.
If that were the case, it would be a good thing, because the professor pulls out my disk from the stack first. While on one hand it’s a relief to get the assignment done and over with, I still feel the same nerves pulsing in me, afraid to expose my work to people. Fifteen minutes into class and still no sign of Roman.
“I’m sure we’re all looking forward to your work, Ms. Edwards,” Professor Danteridge says. I’m in the hot seat, about to get questioned bef
ore the slideshow because his computer is still booting up. “Tell me, should we expect more of your self-portraiture, or have you explored some new terrain, this time?”
“Um,” I stammer. “A little bit of both?”
“Answering a question with a question, Ms. Edwards,” he corrects me, popping my disk into the computer and clicking the folder open. “That, I’m afraid, will not work on your final exam.” The room fills with a forced laugh from the rest of the class. I’m not partaking in the chorus.
The professor turns the lights off and opens the first photo from my disk. In an instant, there is a giant still image glowing in the darkness.
“Well, I have a feeling you let someone borrow your selfie stick for this image, Vylette?” The professor’s accusatory tone gets another pity laugh from the class. I stand up and look the professor in the eye.
“The image is an extreme close-up of a scar running down a male’s right deltoid down to his left lower back. This image explores the canvas of the male’s torso using black and white, sorry, gray scale to contrast the tattoos against the skin,” I say, not stumbling once in my delivery. “Otherwise, the ink would blend in with the skin tone.”
“I see,” Danteridge replies, unimpressed, clicking to the second photo of three. “Oh, and here we have another anatomical exploration, Ms. Edwards?” The photo is a close-up of the area just underneath Roman’s left pec, with the vined-heart tattoo in soft focus on the background.
“I thought this one was a simple representation of the heart,” I say, trying to not fall into his trap of anatomy descriptions. And before I can catch my mouth, the words escape, “A representation of love.” Without question, the word rings true, and the professor actually looks satisfied with the response. I realize that he’s satisfied because the response is real, from my soul.
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