A Clean Slate

by Laura Caldwell

  Instead of the papers that morning, I’d brought two of my photography textbooks, which I flipped through, trying to learn more about light and lenses and developing and such. It was clear that whatever I was going to learn from this job, I would have to gain from watching Cole. He hadn’t turned out to be a very good teacher thus far, and so I needed to augment what I’d seen with my textbooks. I was determined to get something out of this experience, even if it was a passionate dislike of pigs and Brits. But my headache kept pounding, the print swirling in front of me.

  When I got to Cole’s at ten that morning, I was feeling better and bright with caffeine. Of course, the minute I entered the studio and saw the sneer on Cole’s face, the brightness flickered.

  “What?” I said. I’d decided to forget common pleasantries. I didn’t get them in return, after all.

  Cole looked down at his butcher-block table, which was, this morning, covered with prints of William. “Look at these,” he said with disgust.

  I walked to his side. He had color shots lined up there, as well as black-and-white prints, and I had to laugh when I saw them. William actually looked as if he was having a great time in the little car—a pair of sunglasses on his head, his snout turned up so it seemed like he was smiling—and in a few of them, I’d been able to get the scarf just right so it looked fluttery and fluffy.

  “What the bloody hell is so amusing?” Cole said.

  I sighed. “It’s a pig in a car. I mean, c’mon, that’s funny.”

  “God, you Americans have no taste. Look closer, please,” he said. “Try not to be so enticed by the subject matter. Look at the composition of the photos, look at the light.”

  I leaned over the table and studied them, and I started to get his point. “There are weird shadows.”

  “That’s right,” he said patronizingly, as if I was a two-year-old who’d just announced that the sky was blue. “And why do you think that is?”

  I peered closer and studied the dark cast behind William’s pointed, floppy ears, the shadows to the one side of his snout. “We needed to light him better.”

  Cole nodded, his face scrunched up tight.

  “What?” I said. “You’re the one who did the lighting, remember? I did the seamless and—” I was about to go on about the pig wrestling I’d performed, a pretty big effort for the team, if you asked me, but Cole cut me off.

  “Kelly Kelly,” he said. “As my assistant, I need you to be aware of everything—everything—even if I don’t tell you to do it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Yes but what?”

  I was truly irritated now, so I just decided to tell him the truth. “You’re not the easiest person to talk to, so if I see something that’s off, it’s a little hard to approach you.”

  Cole stared at me, expressionless. “Try it. All right?”

  When Tina, William and Artie arrived an hour later, everything was ready to go, with extra strobes set up at Cole’s direction. Once again I adopted my pig whisperer personality, sneaking forward to put the sunglasses on William or adjust his scarf. I was a little more used to him this time, but because of the added lights, it was hotter than the equator, making William slick with sweat.

  “Powder!” Cole or Artie would call from behind the camera.

  I would take a monstrous breath and scoot forward with an oversize puff and a tin of powder and proceed to powder William’s snout, his rounded little rump, even his hoofs. Unfortunately, the sweating made William smell much more piglike than before, and so I had to breathe through my teeth as I patted him down. To distract myself, I fantasized about cocktail lunches at Bartley Brothers and the trips to Manhattan for meetings with the New York office, my elegant room at the Four Seasons. With each foray near William’s sweating, plump body, I missed being a financial analyst more and more.

  “It’s still not right,” Cole said, a few hours into the shoot. “He’s getting shinier, Kelly. Go into the closet and see if you can find some pancake makeup. We should have some left over from one of the fashion shoots.”

  I looked at poor William, panting in the heat, his powder starting to clump in odd white patches. The thought of putting pancake makeup on the poor beast was more than I could handle, and, I’m sure, more than he could handle. Luckily, I had an idea.

  I grabbed a towel and while whispering, “Nice, William. There you go, William,” I gently swiped the powder from his coat, not wiping hard enough to remove the sheen of sweat.

  “Kelly!” Cole said in a sharp voice. “What are you doing?”

  “Just getting him ready for the pancake makeup,” I lied.

  I heard Cole grumble.

  I kept wiping off the powder, taking my time so even more sweat would grow on William’s pink skin.

  “Any day now,” I heard Cole say.

  I put William’s Ray Ban’s back on his face, stepped aside and admired how slick with perspiration he looked. “He’s ready,” I said.

  I turned to look at Cole. His gave me an evil version of his patented sneer. “Where’s the pancake?”

  “He doesn’t need it.”

  “Kelly, I don’t have time.” His voice had gotten lower and ostensibly more civil, which led me to believe that if my hunch didn’t work out, I was probably going to be fired. The thought could have terrified me, but I’d been fired from bigger jobs than this.

  “Remember what you told me this morning?” I said.

  Artie, who stood near Cole, raised his eyebrows and looked back and forth between the two of us, as if ready for and delighted about the fight he saw brewing. Tina, as usual, was outside with her cigarettes.

  “I told you to get the pancake makeup.”

  “No. This morning. You told me that as your assistant, I needed to be aware of everything, even if it wasn’t something you’d told me to pay attention to.”

  “And?”

  “And,” I said, matching his snotty tone, “the ad would look better if William was slick and sweaty looking. He would look more sinister.”

  Both Cole and Artie stared at me in silence. Hmm. Maybe my great idea wasn’t so great. I tried one more time to sell it. “Look, this is an ad for road rage, right? We want people to realize that they’re being pigs when they hog the road, when they yell at other drivers, all that stuff. So we don’t need a pig that looks cute and adorable. That doesn’t get the point across. We need him to look mean and cutthroat and sinister.”

  More silence. I was about to cross the room and just start packing my bag. It might be better to quit than get fired again.

  But Artie spoke up. “She’s right,” he said. “She’s absolutely right. Can we get a few test shots of William as he is now?”

  Cole glared at me, then nodded. I scooted across the room for his old-fashioned Polaroid that he used for trial shots. As I handed it to him, he didn’t even meet my eyes.

  In complete silence, Cole took at least five test shots from different angles. Even William kept quiet, seeming to sense that an ominous moment might be upon us.

  There was more silence as Cole, Artie and I stood around the drying Polaroids, waiting for William’s image to come clear. When they did, Cole pulled them toward himself, so that I could only see them upside down. He and Artie studied them for a very long time.

  Finally, Cole turned a few of them toward me. “What do you think, then?”

  I looked down at the shots. To my mind, they were hysterical, exactly what we wanted. The car gleamed red, the steering wheel a shiny black and William an angry pink. You could almost imagine him tearing down the road, ignoring the Children at Play signs.

  “I like them,” I said, looking back up at Cole.

  “So do I.” He put the pictures down and picked up his camera.

  That night, I did something I thought I’d never do—went out for drinks with my new boss. In college, when I mooned over his stuff in my photography classes, I certainly wouldn’t have thought that I’d ever be chatting over cocktails with the
great Coley Beckett. Since I’d started working for him, I couldn’t imagine a worse way to spend a night. But taking my suggestion about William seemed to have given Cole a new respect for me. The rest of the shoot was ultrasmooth. William appeared to be happier in his sweaty state and was more cooperative, making Tina and me much happier. Cole and Artie became more relaxed, too, and when the shoot ended early at five o’clock, Cole thanked everyone for their hard work in the most cordial tone I’d ever heard from him.

  After William was packed into his silver crate and everyone left, Cole came up to me, running a hand through his spiky hair, and said uncomfortably, “Nice work.”

  It was probably the closest I was going to get to a “thank you” from him, so I nodded in what I thought was a gracious manner. “Sure. I’ll clean up and see you Monday.”

  He didn’t respond right away. I started rolling William’s shiny red car toward the props closet. I had to bend over to do it, and so my jeans-clad ass was in the air when I heard Cole say, “How about a drink, then?”

  I froze until I became aware that I was basically displaying my butt to Cole. I stood up quickly and spun around to search his face. Was he hitting on me?

  Seeming to sense my internal question, Cole held up his hands as if I was pointing a gun at him. “Not for any particular reason. Just to celebrate a good day, right?”

  I mentally ran through my social calendar for the night. Nothing. “Okay. Where do you want to go?”

  “You pick,” he said. “You’re the local.”

  I couldn’t imagine Cole trying to mingle with the lawyers and traders at any of the Loop bars, so thirty minutes later, we were in Bucktown at Soul Kitchen, a hip Cajun place with killer martinis. Because the dinner crowd hadn’t arrived yet, we were given a curved corner booth with polished orange seats. The booth seemed too big for us, though, and silence filled in around us with each stab at polite conversation. Meanwhile, I kept peering through the dimly lit restaurant toward the door, looking for Laney, whom I’d called from my cell phone and told to meet me ASAP. I needed backup.

  Cole, with his black spiked hair and black clothes, fit right into the scene, but even he seemed uncomfortable that it was just the two of us. I didn’t get the feeling that he was trying to flirt with me, yet still I couldn’t figure out why he’d asked me to have a drink.

  “Look,” he said, when he was halfway through his gargantuan martini. I was barely sipping mine, fearful of bringing on another doozy of a headache. I’d had so many of them lately. “I have to tell you that I’m not always like…” Cole seemed at a loss for words, but I refused to help him out, so just looked at him expectantly.

  He tried again. “I’m not usually such a complete arse.”

  “Hmm.” I nodded, debating between, “Could have fooled me,” and “What, you’re usually just a prick?”

  “I don’t want to harp on about it,” he said, swirling his drink with one hand, “but I’ve been going through a rough time. Professionally, I mean.”

  I nodded again, wondering if he’d tell me now why he’d been blacklisted from the fashion world.

  “Things are looking up, however.” He gave me a half grin, before dropping his eyes back to his glass. “I think I might be getting an assignment soon, quite big, actually. Well, I shouldn’t say anything, not just yet, you never do know, right? But it would mean a lot, professionally anyway. But as I said, I shouldn’t speak so much about it. Jinx factor and all that.”

  He looked up at me then with an expression that seemed uncharacteristically human and hopeful. Was he actually seeking some kind of reassurance or approval from me? Didn’t he have model girlfriends for that? And what had he really said? Just some ramblings about an assignment.

  “Well,” I said finally. “It sounds like it could be…” What was the word? “Big.”

  “Right, right.” Cole nodded like an eager puppy.

  Another pall of quiet fell over us, but—thank God—just then Laney blew through the door, looking gorgeous in her tall black boots and red coat. She waved when she spotted us, and started picking her way through the tables.

  “Ah yes, your ‘official friend,’” Cole said, watching her closely as she made her way toward us, not taking his eyes off her.

  Laney and I hugged, and she and Cole shook hands and did the nice-to-see-you-again thing. She seemed lit up with a Friday-night buzz, and somehow, she’d brought some electricity to our table. Soon we were gabbing over a bunch of appetizers, Laney asking Cole where he’d grown up in England and how he liked living in Chicago. Cole seemed more at ease than ever, answering her questions and making us both laugh by imitating his mother’s Cockney accent and the messages she left him on his voice mail every day.

  “So,” Laney said at one point, leaning her elbows on the table. “Kelly tells me that you were run out of Manhattan. Want to tell us about that?”

  Cole froze, a croquette halfway to his mouth.

  I shot Laney a look that said, Shut the fuck up, please! How could she? I’d just gotten the guy on my side, and now he was sure to hate me again.

  She only shrugged as if to say How bad could it be?

  Cole put his food down on his plate and looked from Laney to me and back again. “Well, ladies, I don’t think we know each other well enough yet for that conversation. My memories of it are rather like having a full proctology exam. Not suitable for dinner conversation.”

  There was a short pause, during which I struggled in vain to come up with a new topic. But then Laney lifted her glass. “Let’s toast then. To taking it up the ass…and surviving it.”

  Oh, God. I hung my head. I should have cut Laney off after the first martini. Vodka does strange things to her. But then I heard something even more strange—the sound of Cole laughing. I looked up to see him shaking his head, his eyes crinkled happily.

  “To surviving,” he said, and we all clinked glasses.

  13

  The next morning I lectured Laney about her behavior during the Cole dinner, telling her that although it had gone surprisingly well, she should never, ever say anything to him again about Manhattan or what had happened there.

  “Well, he’s such a hottie that he makes me nervous,” she said. “I was just trying to razz him.”

  “You think he’s hot?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Really? Hmm.” I guess I could see Cole being Laney’s type. “Well, you can’t ever bring that up again!”

  “Fine, fine,” she said. “You’ve told me twenty times now, I get it. Next topic. What are you wearing to Jess and Steve’s wedding?”

  “Shit! Is that today?”

  I’d been so busy despising my boss during the week (and then worrying that I’d pissed him off) that I hadn’t given any thought to the wedding or the maddening fact that Ben would be there, looking, I was sure, gorgeous in one of the suits I’d spent hours picking out, with Therese on his arm, looking, I was sure, gloatingly beautiful in some fantastic dress.

  I spent a few hours trying on everything in my closet, with Laney on speakerphone doing the same thing. Everything looked different on my new body. Dresses that used to cling to my curves hung baggy now. Others that were forever tight suddenly fit well. I finally decided on a chocolate-colored, raw silk dress with a deep V-neck that Laney had made me buy when we were at Saks. I’d kept the tags on, just as I had the silver beaded dress, sure that I wouldn’t have a chance to wear either of them. But the chocolate number was absolutely perfect, I decided, because it showed off some cleavage, and Ben hadn’t seen it before.

  I put on a ridiculous amount of lipstick and gloss, trying to force myself into a sultry, seductive, make-the-bastard-miss-you mode, but too many emotions kept batting around in my brain. I hated Ben, I kept reminding myself. The asshole had dumped me on my birthday. But my thoughts kept sliding to my good memories of Ben—our ski trip to Telluride when we barely left the hotel room, the way he’d surprised me with my first photography classes at the university. Then, of
course, there were the jealous thoughts, spurts of rage over him being made partner ahead of me, wondering what he’d known about my getting laid off, sick with envy that he was with someone else so quickly. Lastly, I kept seeing the way his eyes had showed concern when we’d talked at Tarringtons. Those eyes tugged at me the most. I could tell he still cared.

  I finally made myself leave my lips and the thoughts of Ben alone, since I was already late to pick up Laney. Ten minutes later, she slipped into the cab looking gorgeous in a black dress with her red coat over it, her hair sleek and tucked behind her ears.

  “Ready?” she said as we executed the air kiss that we only did when we were wearing huge quantities of lipstick.

  “Ready,” I said.

  The wedding was, unfortunately, a lengthy, wallop-packing Catholic mass. Clearly, this was the only time in the week where the priest was able to deviate from his usual script, and so he waxed on and on about the “formidable” institution of marriage, which of course he knew nothing about. I turned my head discreetly every so often to search the huge, drafty church for Ben and Therese, but I couldn’t spot them. Most likely Ben was playing his “reception only” card, because of some running engagement he had this morning.

  The reception immediately followed the ceremony. None of that lounging-about-in-a-bar-way-too-dressed-up-waiting-three-hours-until-the-reception-starts stuff. It was held in an old restored building off Clark Street, in a huge ballroom with gold-painted ceilings at least two stories high. Waiters in tuxedos circled with champagne, and a jazz quartet played muted elegant numbers in the corner. Still no sign of Ben and Therese, I noted as I swiped a champagne flute from one of the trays. It didn’t matter, anyway. I’d mustered up more of the hatred for him, and planned to stick with that emotion for the rest of the evening.

  After waiting in the receiving line for forty minutes so that we could hug Jess and Steve, and uncomfortably congratulate relatives we’d never met, Laney and I made our way over to the place cards. We’d been designated table 7, and we immediately began surveying the room and the rest of the place cards to see if we’d gotten a good table. God love Jess, because she hadn’t stuck us at a singles’ table, but put us with the rest of the crew from the advertising agency where Laney used to work, a fun, rowdy bunch.