“How are you?” Leo says.
“I’m fine,” I say tersely. “But I really can’t talk now…I’m at dinner…I just…I just wondered what you had to ask me?”
“Well,” Leo says, pausing, as if for dramatic effect. “It’s sort of a long story.”
I sigh, thinking that, of course, Mr. Cut-to-the-Chase suddenly has a long-winded proposition for me.
“Give me the short version,” I say, feeling desperate for some sort of clue. Is it as frivolous and contrived as a question about his camera? Or as serious as whether I am the culprit for an STD he picked up along the way? Or is it something in between?
Leo clears his throat. “Well…it’s about work,” he says. “Your work.”
I can’t help smiling. He has seen my photos after all. I knew it.
“Yeah?” I say as breezily as possible while I tuck my clutch under my perspiring arm.
“Well…Like I said, it’s sort of a long story, but…”
I walk up the few steps to the dining area, and cautiously peer around the corner into the dining area, seeing that my family is still safely seated. The coast is clear for a few more seconds, at least. I duck back to safety, making a “get on with it” hand motion. “Yes?”
Leo continues, “I have a potential portrait gig for you…if you’re interested…You do portraits, right?”
“Yeah, I do,” I say, my curiosity piqued ever so slightly. “Who’s the subject?”
I ask the question, but am fully prepared to turn him down. Say I have plenty of jobs lined up in the weeks ahead. That I have a booking agent now and don’t really have to scrounge around for random work. That I’ve made it—maybe not in a big way—but in a big enough way. So thanks for thinking of me, but no thanks. Oh, and one more thing, Leo? Yeah. Probably better not to call me anymore. No hard feelings, all right? Toodle-oo.
I will say it all in a rush of adrenaline. I can taste the satisfaction already.
And that’s when Leo clears his throat again and throws down a trump card. “Drake Watters,” he says.
“Drake Watters?” I say, in stunned disbelief, hoping that he’s referring to another Drake Watters—other than the ten-time Grammy-winning legend and recent nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
But, of course, there is only one Drake.
Sure enough, Leo says, “Yup,” as I recall my high school days, how I sported a Drake concert T-shirt to school at least once a week, along with my pegged, intentionally ripped, acid-washed jeans and Tretorn sneakers covered with black-Sharpie peace signs. And although I haven’t been a big fan of his since then, he certainly remains on my elite list of “Icons I’d Kill to Photograph,” right up there with Madonna, Bill Clinton, Meryl Streep, Bruce Springsteen, Queen Elizabeth, Sting, and, although he’s really not in the same league as the others and for perfectly shallow reasons, George Clooney.
“So what do you think?” Leo says with a hint of flippant smugness. “You interested?”
I softly kick a floorboard, thinking that I hate Leo for tempting me like this. I hate myself for folding. I almost even hate Drake.
“Yeah,” I say, feeling chagrinned, defeated.
“Great,” Leo says. “So we’ll talk about it more later?”
“Yeah,” I say again.
“Monday morning work for you?”
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll call you Monday.”
Then I hang up and head back to the table where I harbor a brand-new secret while feigning wild enthusiasm for my spiced cardamom flan with candied kumquats.
Eleven
Monday morning comes in a hurry as is always the case when you’re not quite sure how to play your hand. Since Saturday night, I have been all over the map with my Leo-Drake strategy—everywhere from never calling Leo back, to telling Andy everything and making him decide about the shoot, to meeting Leo face to face to hear all the exciting details of the biggest assignment of my life to date.
But now, as I pause at the door of our apartment after kissing Andy good-bye for the day, with Drake’s mesmerizing voice in my head, singing “Crossroads,” a song about the disastrous aftermath of one unfaithful evening, I know what I must do. I turn and run across the family room, sliding over to the window in my fluffy purple socks for a final glimpse of my husband descending the stairs of our building and striding along the sidewalk in his handsome three-quarter-length navy overcoat and cashmere, red-plaid scarf. As he disappears toward Park Avenue, I can make out his profile and see that he is cheerfully swinging his briefcase at his side. It is this fleeting visual that solidifies my final decision.
I walk slowly back to the kitchen and check the clock on the stove. Nine-forty-two—plenty late enough to phone anyone. But I stall anyway, deciding I need coffee first. Our coffee maker broke a few weeks ago, and we don’t own a kettle, so I bring a mug of tap water to a boil in the microwave and rifle through the cabinet for a jar of instant coffee, the kind I watched my mother make every morning. I gaze back at the familiar gentleman on the Taster’s Choice label, marveling that he used to seem so old to me. Now he seems on the young side—early forties at most. One of time’s many sleights of hand.
I unscrew the cap and stir in two heaping teaspoons, watching the brown crystals dissolve. I take a sip and am overcome with a wave of my mother. It really is the little things, like instant coffee, that make me miss her the most. I consider calling Suzanne—who can sometimes ease these pangs by simple virtue of the fact that she is the only one in the world who knows how I feel. For although we had very different relationships with our mother—hers was often turbulent as she inherited my mother’s stubborn gene—we are still sisters who prematurely lost our mother and that is a powerfully strong, permanent bond. I decide against calling her, though, because sometimes it works the other way, too, and I can end up feeling even sadder. I can’t afford to go down that road right now.
Instead, I distract myself with the Style section of the Times, leisurely reading about the new leggings trend that Margot predicted last year, while I sip my stale-tasting coffee, wondering how my mother stood it for all those years. I then make the bed, finish unpacking our duffel bag, organize my sock drawer, then Andy’s, brush my teeth, shower, and dress. Still not feeling quite ready, I alphabetize the novels on my bookshelf by author’s last name, a project I’ve been meaning to undertake for ages. I run my fingers over the neatly aligned spines, feeling a rush of satisfaction, relishing the underlying order despite the chaos in my head.
At eleven-twenty-five, I finally bite the bullet and make the call. To my simultaneous relief and frustration, Leo doesn’t answer, and I go straight to his voicemail. In a rush of adrenaline, I give the speech that I’ve pieced together over the past thirty-six hours, while at church and brunch with the Grahams, then afterward as we casually drove around Buckhead looking at more homes for sale, then on our uneventful flight home.
The gist of my spiel is that a) I’m impressed that he has a Drake Watters connection (why not throw him a harmless bone?), and b) very appreciative that he thought of me for the job, and c) would be positively thrilled to take the assignment, but d) don’t feel “entirely comfortable with the notion of a renewed friendship and think it’s best if we not go there.” At the last second, I excise e) “out of respect to my husband,” as I don’t want Leo to think he is in the Brad “You’re so fine you bug my husband” Turner category, rather than the Ty “You’re so harmless that it’s fine to yuck it up with you in my backyard” Portera category.
I hang up, feeling relieved, and for the first time since seeing Leo weeks ago, nearly lighthearted. The call might not be closure in the classic sense of the word, but it is still closure of some sort, and more important, it is closure on my terms. I called the final shot. Which is even more meaningful given that I had the perfect excuse—Drake Watters for goodness’ sake—to meet Leo, jollily chat him up, and even segue into a more somber conversation about “what really happened between us, anyway?” But I turned down the opportun
ity. Slammed the door on it, in fact. Not because I can’t handle a friendship with Leo, but because I simply don’t want one. End of story.
I imagine Leo listening to the message, wondering if he’ll be crestfallen, a tad disappointed, or largely indifferent. No matter what, though, I know he’ll be surprised that his power, once so all-encompassing, has dried up completely. He will surely take the hint—and his photo lead—elsewhere. And I will just have to live with the fact that I could have photographed Drake Watters. I smile to myself, feeling strong and happy and righteous, and then belt out the only uplifting line from “Crossroads” in my dreadful, tone-deaf singing voice: When the light breaks, baby, I’ll be gone for good.
Several unmemorable days later, after I’ve almost completely purged Leo from my system, I am working in my lab on the fifth floor of an industrial warehouse on Twenty-fourth and Tenth Avenue. Sharing the space, along with the rent, are Julian and Sabina, photographers who work as a team, and Oscar, a solo printer, paper conservationist, and fine-art publisher. The four of us have been together in the bare-bones workroom for over two years now, and as such, have become very close friends.
Sabina, a pale, wispy woman whose anemic looks don’t match her brash personality, does most of the talking, rivaling only Oscar’s BBC radio that he keeps at a frustrating volume, one that I can’t quite hear and yet can’t quite tune out. She is now regaling us with a story of her three-year-old triplets’ latest stunt: flushing her husband’s entire vintage cufflink collection down the toilet, causing a flood in her fourth-floor walk-up and extensive water damage to the apartment below. She laughs as she tells the gory details because in her words, “What else can you do but laugh?” I happen to think she secretly delights in the tale, as she often accuses her husband of being materialistic and uptight. I enjoy Sabina’s stories, particularly during mindless retouching projects, which I’m in the middle of now. Specifically, I’m removing a constellation of acne from the face of a skate-boarding teen for a print ad for a small record label.
“What do you think, guys? Should I give this kid a slight chin implant?” I ask.
Oscar, a somber Brit with a streak of dry humor, barely glances up from one of his many small drawers filled with lead, antimony, and wooden typefaces. I know from standing over his shoulder when I arrived that he is working on an artist’s book using Etrurian, his favorite Victorian font. I love watching Oscar work, perhaps because his craft is so different from mine, but more likely because of his graceful, almost old-fashioned manner.
“Leave the poor kid be,” he says as he dampens paper and then mutters something about “digital-plastic-surgery malarkey.”
“Yeah, Ellen. Quit being so shallow, would ya?” Julian, who just returned from his umpteenth smoking break of the day, chimes in, as if he, himself, hasn’t shaved down the thighs on many a size-zero woman.
I smile and say, “I’ll try.”
Of my three workspace colleagues, I probably like Julian the best of all—at the very least, we have the most in common. He is about my age, and is also married to a lawyer—a lively, cool girl named Hillary.
Sabina tells Julian to hush as she scurries toward me in tight blue jeans, ripped at the knee, her long, sixties-style hair swishing behind her. She apologizes in advance for the garlic on her breath, mumbling something about going overboard on an herbal supplement, and then peers down at the print in question.
“Great movement there,” she says, pointing to a blurred-out board in mid-air.
I consider movement my single greatest weakness as a photographer so I really appreciate this comment. “Thanks,” I say. “But what about his chin?”
She holds the print to the light and says, “I see what you mean, but I almost think his chin makes him look more surly…Does surly work for the ad?”
I nod, “Yeah. They’re called Badass Records. So I think surly will do just fine.”
Sabina takes one last look and says, “But I might make his nose a bit smaller. That’s more distracting than his weak chin…Have you ever noticed how often weak chins and big honkers go hand in hand? Why is that, anyway?”
My cell phone interrupts Sabina in mid-thought.
“One sec,” I say, expecting it to be Margot who has called twice in the last hour. Yet when I glance down, I see that it’s Cynthia, my agent.
I answer, and as usual, she shouts into the phone. “Sit down. You’re not going to believe this one!”
Leo streaks across my mind, but I am still dumbfounded as I listen to her gush the rest of the news.
“Platform magazine called,” she says. “And get this, girlfriend, they want you to shoot Drake Watters for their April cover story!”
“That’s fantastic,” I say, feeling a mix of emotions wash over me. For starters, I simply can’t believe Leo went ahead with his lead, although in hindsight, I can see clearly that I left a huge, rather convenient back door open for him to orchestrate everything through my agent. Still, I honestly didn’t think he’d be so selfless. I thought—and perhaps even hoped—that the Drake bone was more of a power play, a design to lure me back in and force my hand in a borderline inappropriate friendship. Now I’m forced to see the gesture, if not Leo, in a new light. And of course, overshadowing all of this is the simple, giddy, unmitigated thrill of photographing an icon.
“Fantastic?” Cynthia says. “Fantastic is an understatement.”
“Incredibly fantastic,” I say, now grinning.
Sabina, always nosy but never in an offensive way, whispers, “What? What?”
I scribble the words Platform and Drake Watters on a notepad. Her eyes widen as she does a comical exotic dance around a pole connecting raw ceiling to cement floor and then rushes over to give Julian the news. He looks up and flips me off with a smile. We’re not competitive, but definitely keep a friendly score. Before this, he and Sabina had the solid lead with a Katie Couric shoot for Redbook out in the Hamptons where Julian used to do all his work before he married Hillary and she lured him into the city full time.
“Did they say how they got my name?” I calmly ask Cynthia after she runs through a few details of the shoot—namely that it will take place in L.A.; the magazine will pay three thousand dollars, plus airfare, equipment rental, expenses, and a stay at the Beverly Wilshire.
“No,” she says. “And who really cares? You should be celebrating right now, not asking questions!”
“Right,” I say, wanting so much to believe this very thing. After all, I think, as I thank her, hang up, and field a round of congratulations, there is principle, and then there is stubborn, prideful foolishness. Malarkey, as Oscar would say. And surely anyone, even Andy, would have to agree that Drake Watters isn’t worth sacrificing for a bunch of ex-boyfriend malarkey.
Twelve
About a week later, after much informal revelry, Andy and I are officially celebrating my upcoming Drake assignment at Bouley, one of our favorite restaurants in the city. Beyond the exquisite food and warm atmosphere, Bouley has sentimental meaning for us, as it is where we dined the night we first made love, which was, incidentally, exactly one month after our first date. The morning after, I teased Andy that it took Chef David Bouley’s New French fare to inspire him to want to sleep with me.
“You’re right,” he snapped back playfully. “It was the venison. I will never forget that venison. Best I’ve ever had by a long shot.”
I laughed, knowing the truth—that the wait had everything to do with Andy’s romantic, respectful ways. Aside from the high stakes of my friendship with Margot, Andy cared about me enough to want to do things right rather than rush into bed after one too many drinks, the methodology most men favored on the New York dating scene—or at least the two I had slept with after Leo. And although some might have criticized our first time as lacking spontaneity, I wouldn’t have changed a thing about it. And still wouldn’t.
Which makes it an even nicer surprise tonight when we are seated at the same intimate corner table in the vaulted din
ing room. I raise my eyebrows and say, “Coincidence?”
Andy smirks with a shrug.
Clearly, this is no coincidence. I smile at my husband’s unwavering thoughtfulness. Sometimes he really does seem too good to be true.
In the next few minutes, after an extensive review of the wine list and menu, we decide on our appetizers—the foie gras with a fricassee of cremini for me and the eggplant terrine for Andy—along with Bouley’s best bottle of champagne. Andy stumbles over the pronunciation when ordering the latter, despite having taken at least ten years of French growing up. Our waiter murmurs his wholehearted approval, if not of Andy’s clumsy accent, then at least of our selection.
Minutes later, after our champagne and appetizers arrive and Andy makes a toast to his “beautiful, brilliant wife,” he launches right in with the nitty-gritty of the shoot. “So what poses are you gonna put Drake in?” he begins.
I smile at the word poses, which hardly conjures a glossy, stylized magazine spread, but rather a Sears portrait sitting of the sort Suzanne and I endured growing up, complete with a white-picket fence, fake clouds in the background, and a nappy brown rug, rough against our elbows.
But I know what Andy’s getting at—and the question, stated in a more technical way, has occurred to me dozens of times in the past few days. I tell him I’ve yet to talk to the art director or photo editor—so I’m not sure what they want, but that I have some definite ideas about the feel of the shoot. “I’m thinking moody. Almost somber,” I say. “Especially in light of Drake’s AIDS work.”
“Will you shoot him inside or out?” Andy asks.
“You know I prefer natural light. Either near a lot of windows or outside. Maybe overpowered,” I say.
“What’s overpowered?” Andy asks, the way I frequently ask him what are probably basic procedural, legal questions.
“It’s a technique where the subject is well-lit, usually in the middle of the day, but the background sort of fades to black,” I explain. “It’s a pretty common way to shoot outside. You’d know it if you saw it.”