“I agree about his reputation, but it’s still a cool name, though.”
“Thanks.” I waited. “And you are?”
“Poppy.”
“Short for anything?”
She snorted. “What would it be short for? Poppins? Poppina?”
I laughed. “Yeah, just Poppy then, like the flower?”
“From whence comes opium, yes.”
“Well, only one particular species of poppy produces opium—Papaver somniferum. And all of the various species of poppy are beautiful, as, I might add, are you.”
She laughed. “Smooth.”
“And genuinely meant. You’re damned lovely.”
“Thanks.” No demurral or deflection, but no ego about it, either, just a dignified acceptance of a compliment. Striking, that trait. She locked eyes with me, and I could tell she was deciding whether or not I was safe to ride with. “So, you’re not heading anywhere in particular? Which means you could, in theory, take me pretty much anywhere.”
I laughed. “I mean, I don’t plan on punting off to Mexico just yet, but if you’re going somewhere I could probably take you that way.”
She smiled. “I’m heading in the general direction of Alaska. But I’m not in any hurry.” She lifted the Minolta. “Like you said about yourself, I’m just sort of exploring as I go, seeing as much of the country as I can, through the viewfinder.”
“Well, Poppy, we’ve got that much in common at least.” I gestured at the van. “Shall we?”
She hesitated another moment. “Well, despite the inauspicious beginning, I don’t get creeper, serial killer vibes from you, so yeah, let’s go.”
She reached down, grabbed her large, bulging backpack, hiked it onto a shoulder, and headed for my van. I admit I may have held a step back just to watch her backside sway in the skirt. Yeah, definitely every bit as fine as it had looked from the van at seventy mph. Better, since my view was closer and it was now in tantalizing, swaying motion.
“Quit staring at my ass,” she said, without turning around.
“Not staring. Just appreciating.”
Now she paused at the tail of the van, glancing back at me with droll disbelief. “Right.”
I laughed. “Fine, I was staring a little. This time, I will apologize for staring.”
“Apology accepted,” she said, her voice crisp and arch.
And she continued toward the front passenger side door, and unless I was greatly mistaken, she’d accentuated the womanly sway of her hips. Whether for my benefit or to bait me, I wasn’t sure, but either way, it worked, because I did indeed look again. I mean shit, an ass that nice, you gotta look twice.
She opened the front passenger door, slid the huge, overland-hike backpacking style bag in the footwell and tried to slide in with it. I stood at the sliding door, waiting for her to come to the realization that the footwell just simply wasn’t big enough for that. After a moment of struggling to fit herself and the bag into a too-small space, she slid back out and glanced at me as I stood at the open sliding rear door, an amused grin on my face.
“Yes, Errol? Have something to say?”
I shrugged. “Yeah nah, I was just thinking you might like to set it back here. A bit more room, eh?”
She blinked at me, stifling a laugh at herself as she hefted the bag by the straps and set it behind her seat, taking a moment to glance over the interior. “Super nice. It’s like an RV.”
“We call it a caravan, where I’m from. Or a campervan. I call it home away from home, for now.”
A moment later we were on the road, headed west, the radio tuned to whichever local country station came in clearest.
I examined my new ride-along partner: fucking breathtaking. Five-seven, maybe? Not tall, not short—just bang in the middle. Thick, long, wavy black hair—she had just the pieces that would get in her face tied up and back, the rest down and loose, and saying her hair was black is like saying the Pacific Ocean is wet, or the Great Wall of China is long. Black is a poor descriptor. Dig into your favorite tropes and clichés, and they’re all insufficient. Jet black. The exact shade of a raven’s wing, with the same purply glint in the sun, as if you could almost see your reflection if it would just polish up a bit. It wasn’t just stick straight, pin-straight, like Wednesday from Addams Family. A roiling cloud of inky waves around her shoulders. Soft, hazy almost. Like wisps and shreds of storm clouds. Glossy elsewhere. I could go on and on just about her fucking hair.
Eyes? Same story. I could say they’re brown, like liquid chocolate bubbling in a Swiss chocolatier’s vat is brown. I’ve seen that, and it’s one of those memories with a vivid scent, one I can recall on command, almost smell it just thinking about it. Her eyes are that exact shade. Darker than milk chocolate. Not your shitty American bars of cocoa-flavored turd, oh no. I’m talking real Swiss chocolate handcrafted in copper vessels by tenth-generation artisans. That kind of chocolate. Molten, churning with sweet heat, the kind that melts the moment it touches your tongue. That’s Poppy’s eyes.
Skin…god, how do I describe her skin? Sun-kissed bronze? Too romantically melodramatic. To say her skin looked soft was, again, an egregious understatement. Sun-kissed was right; she wasn’t the type to tan or lay out, but she didn’t languish away under fluorescent lights either. It was impossible. Her skin just begged to be touched, kissed. So perfect it didn’t seem she could be real.
She had the straight white teeth of someone with great genetics and a stellar dentist she saw regularly.
An easy smile, the corners of her lips tipped up as if life had just blessed her and she was happy to simply be alive.
And, yes, those curves. Contained in a plain white tank top, her breasts threatened to spill out the sides just sitting still, and if she moved just so? Lordy lord, I got teases of heaven. Like, fuck me, but I wanted to rip that damned shirt off and just stare at her. How dare she malign the gifts they were by hiding them? They were meant to be viewed like art, but only by me.
Damn, though, where did that come from?
They were fucking incredible, for real. And real, which I was certain of, because you just didn’t get that kind of movement from silicone or saline, not that I had anything against implants mind you, they were very nice as well, but Poppy’s were just…nature’s bounty, barely veiled behind not quite see-through white cotton. I couldn’t quite make out areolae, but glimpsed a hint of darker flesh at the center of those glorious mounds beneath the shirt.
Hips defined by stretched skirt material spoke of mouthwatering curves; squishy, lovely round hips that would fit just so, in my hands, against my own hips. The skirt swirled around her ankles, but as she shifted to cross one knee over the other, I caught a slice of calf, a hint of under-thigh, strong and tan and flawless.
In short—I don’t think smitten is an exaggeration. Stunned that such flawless human female beauty could be found on the side of a remote Missouri road, sitting next to me, looking at me with open curiosity and—if I’m honest—appreciation for what she saw.
“So, Errol.” A smile, friendly, casual. Not flirty, not yet. “What’s your story?”
I laughed. “What, like the whole thing, sad bits and all? A bit much for having just met, I think.”
“You can leave out the sad bits, if you want.”
“Not much to tell, in that case,” I said. “Nah, only joking.”
I wasn’t actually really joking, because there were more sad bits than not in my life story, but you don’t get a pretty girl in bed with you by sharing the tragedies you’ve suffered because, believe it or not, sad girls aren’t horny. So no, not sharing the sad bits is a vital strategy in getting laid.
“Where’s home? Innocent enough place to start?”
I laughed. “You’d think. I don’t actually have a permanent home. I’m a photojournalist for Nat Geo, and I’m on assignment pretty much permanently. So I don’t really keep a proper home, as it’d be empty all but a few days of the year.”
She glanced back into
the interior of the Westfalia—clothes, a few camera bags, a pair of gumboots, a hoodie draped over the backrest of the rear bench seat, a leather jacket, a couple other bags, and odds and ends…
“So that’s, like, everything you own?”
“Yeah, pretty much. I’ve got a storage unit in Christchurch I rent, and I’ve got my dad’s old Rover there, some stuff of my mum’s, a few other things I can’t really travel with. But, day to day, yeah, this is it. Pack it all up right quick and I’m on a plane in the next minute.”
“Photographer for National Geographic, huh?”
“Yep.”
“So you’re, like, a nature photographer?”
“Sort of.” I scrubbed my hand through my hair. “I get the odd shots, the ones that make you go ‘bloody hell, how’d he get that one?’”
She squinted hard, thinking. “You know, my roommate’s mom gave her a lifetime subscription to National Geographic, so she had crates of old issues, and the newest one was always laying around.” She grinned sheepishly. “It was what we looked at in the bathroom, actually.”
“Not your phone?”
“I mean sure, but I once read that taking your phone into the bathroom with you is actually really gross, due to the way germs move around in bathrooms, so I’ve tried to not do it as much.” She waved. “Point is, I’ve probably seen your work.”
“Most people don’t really pay particular attention to the photographer byline, so no worries that you don’t know the name.” I grinned, making a joke out of it. “Did you see last month’s issue?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you read the article on natural sinkholes?”
“Yeah, actually. Wait, that was you?”
“The photos, yeah.”
“Like, the one from the bottom of the giant sinkholes in the forest? That was a great shot.”
“Sarisarinama. Those are in Venezuela, yeah. To get that shot, I rappelled down the hole, for which I had to get special permission from the Venezuelan government.”
“Any others I might immediately recognize?”
I shrugged. “I mean, I’ve done loads of features.”
“So you’ve been all over, then.”
“God, yeah. Everywhere. I haven’t done Antarctica yet, but I did one on the break up of the ice in the North Pole, where I got lots of cool shots from on top of these huge icebergs just off the ice shelf.”
“Oh shit, yeah, I saw that feature! The underwater one, where you can see how much bigger it is under the water? That one was incredible.”
“Yeah, I spent like three days in a dry suit getting that shot. Took maybe a thousand photos and finally got that one, the rest are just fuckin’ rubbish. All you could see was the top and the water. Still dunno what made the difference, but the water just cleared up at the right moment, and I got the shot.”
“Wow. Pretty cool.”
“Froze my sac off, you mean. Even in a dry suit, that water is cold. Had to get out every so often, warm up, let my camera warm up, and then get back in.”
“The whale in the one shot toward the end of the feature? How cool was it to be so close to a whale like that?”
“Cool? Try terrifying. I about pissed my pants, I was so scared. She just came up out of nowhere, about knocked me clear out of the water with her tail, too. Like, you’re just swimming along trying to get a shot of the berg, then just bam, there’s this great big fuckin’ whale the size of a building swimming past you, silent as a fuckin’ ghost, and you just…you realize just like that, you do not belong in that world. You’re a tiny, fragile, weak little thing that belongs on land, and even just swimming past innocent as anything, she could kill you. The current of her swimming past some ten or fifteen feet away sent me spinning as it was, and if I hadn’t had the camera clipped to my webbing, I’d have lost it. You don’t know what it’s like, you really don’t. So yeah, it’s cool, like it’s a memory I’ll never forget as long as I fuckin’ live, but fuck me, it was scary.”
“You got the shot, though.”
“Hell yeah, I got the shot. Second I felt her going past I had the shutter going.”
“Is that the scariest thing that’s ever happened to you?”
I cackled. “Not even almost. My whole job is scary shit. It’s what I do.”
She had her camera on her lap and fiddled idly with the focus ring. “So you’re a professional adrenaline junkie.”
“Yeah, that’s about right. But it’s not about the adrenaline as much as it is the rush of getting a photo no one else has ever got, or will ever get.”
“Oh. Well, that I understand, to some degree. I bet you have some cool stories.”
“People tend to assume I’m making them up to sound cool, so I usually downplay the truth a bit, if anything.”
“Really? Like how?”
“Well, this one time, I was between assignments for Nat Geo and sort of just bumming around the Eastern Bloc, this was…two years ago? My editor is friends with the editor at Time magazine, and there was talk about trying to do a feature on some of the super remote places special forces operators get assigned to over in Afghanistan. Like, places where they’ve likely never seen a white person before, and then suddenly it’s all a big shootout with the Taliban. There was a team of guys from the British SAS and the American Army Rangers going way deep in country, right, like leaving Germany that week and it was gonna be the last opportunity to get someone embedded for the story. All of Time’s best photographers were on assignment in places where they couldn’t get to Germany in time to make the embed, and I was already in the Ukraine, so it was a no-brainer when my boss told the Time editor I was available. So I got loaned out and sent to Afghanistan with this mixed squad of SAS and Rangers, these blokes who were just the most badass humans I’ve ever met. I spent three months with them, and I was either bored out of my mind, exhausted, or scared spitless. I can’t really say what their directive was because number one they didn’t tell me, and number two they’re still over there doing it and I’m sworn to secrecy. That part sounds bullshit, but I swear it’s not. I can say they were hunting Taliban, but that’s generally it. I think they were after someone in particular, but I don’t really know. It turned out a mint piece, though. Some of my most brilliant shots, if I do say so myself.”
“So you’ve done literal, actual war stories?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess you could call it that. There were times I thought for sure I’d catch one. Mainly because the only way to get the good shots was to ignore my handler and put my head up when he was telling me to put it down. I learned bullets make different noises depending on how close they get to your face. I learned mortar shells don’t whistle before they land. I learned you don’t get thrown backward when bullets hit you. I learned you may not even notice your mate’s been hit until he’s already bled out beside you.”
Shit. Too heavy. Way too fuckin’ heavy. Stupid ass, Errol. Stupid.
She was quiet a while.
“Sorry, Poppy. Went a bit too far into the sad bits, there.”
She eyed me. “You know, I think I’d rather you be real than feed me just the cool stories.”
“Why don’t you tell me a story, now?”
She rolled her eyes. “I got nothing that can compete with actual war stories.”
“Ain’t a competition, though.” I grinned, hopefully winningly. “Hit me with one.”
“I’m actually more of a painter than I am a photographer, that’s the first thing to know. I discovered in, like, fourth-grade art class that I just sort of…got…oil painting. My hand, my eye, my brain, they all just…do things and I go along with it. Give me a canvas, palette, and brush, and I’m in my happiest place.”
“What style do you do?”
“Oh, I’ve tried them all. If I’m going to just do something for fun, I’ll probably veer into Van Gogh’s world. I like the not quite abstract, you know? Smears, lots of paint. If I want to spend a few days or weeks on something, I’ll do a reproduction of a
classic. Vermeer is the hardest, by far. Everyone knows he’s a master, one of the greats, but until you understand technically how good he was, you just won’t get it.”
“Sort of like black-and-white photography and Ansel Adams.”
“Exactly. You know his prints are just…sublime. Anyone can appreciate that. But go get a black-and-white camera and stand in the exact spot he stood and take the same photograph, and you’ll be like, ‘ohhhh, shit, now I get it.’”
“Because your shot will be shit, which is why he’s famous and you’re not.”
She laughed. “Yes, exactly. But with trying to paint like Vermeer? It goes deeper. He could do things with light and depth that are just…you can’t explain them.”
“And you can paint like Vermeer?”
She shrugged. “I mean, you won’t mistake mine for his, no. I’m no van Meegeren, that’s for sure. But it’s fun to try.”
“I got no clue who van Meeg-whatever is, but what you’re saying without saying is that you’re a talented as hell painter.”
“I did get a full ride to Columbia University’s art program on the basis of my portfolio alone.” She smirked. Not too humble, then. “Van Meegeren was famous for forging Vermeer. It’s a whole art history thing. A cool story, but not the point.”
“What’s the point, then?”
“It was my second semester at Columbia, and I was still trying to cram my homework, classes, my own painting projects, art department projects, and a social life into twenty-four hours. Basically, not sleeping hardly at all. Like, three or fours a night, and I am not that person. I need eight hours or I’m a serious bitch. So, I was doing classes, going out partying with friends half the night, then cramming for tests till four in the morning, and waking up for an eight a.m. class.”
“Yikes. That doesn’t usually last long.”
“No, and it didn’t. I’d met some friends way the hell uptown at this stupid hoity-toity Upper East Side bar, a real swanky place where everyone dressed up all fancy and the drinks were like fifteen dollars a pop. Not my scene, but they’d been invited by these guys they’d met and they dragged me along. So the night wears on, I’m getting sloshed—”
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