FLASH BLIND
We're two shots and a mixed drink into the night when Shannon dares me to drop panties and take a piss on Clarence Schaefer's door stoop. Clarence is that guy who stands behind the camera and tells us models how to pose. Things like, Show me need, Ramona. Show me lust. Lust is his favorite. Even with him peering through a viewfinder you can imagine his eyes trying to figure out what you look like naked, or whether you'll get down on your knees for him after the shoot if he promises you another call back. And despite all of that, I know it's stupid. That it's disgusting. That I could get into so much trouble, and that nobody deserves to have a pretty-girl-pee-stain staring up at them from their front porch.
But the rub of it is, everything seems like a good idea when you're high.
I don't pull my panties all the way back up before I start running. It's only when we turn the corner into an alley about half a block away that Shannon tells me to stop and check my wardrobe, but it's no accident they're still hanging around my thighs under the hem of my skirt. They're designer panties, a Chantal Bécotte black lace V-string that's almost see through if you look at it in the right light, and it costs more than Shannon's entire outfit—some off the rack white sheath dress with a front panel of black lace. Black lace is the next big thing. Neither of us would be caught dead without it, visible without taking our clothes off or not. She takes one look at those panties, and I swear hers drop.
Shannon's been my best friend for as long as I can remember, which is my nice way of saying two years. She's a year older than me, and pretty in the way guys on the street love—big green eyes, long legs, beach-blonde hair smoother than flower petals, and tits you couldn't fit your hands around. She works it, too. Paints her face with shades of honey and caramel that make every man in the city stop what they're doing to gawk when she struts by. But put her in front of a camera, she's worthless.
Me, I know better. I'm not street pretty the way Shannon is. Put my tits in your hands and you've got room to spare. But more than a handful is wasted, and in front of the camera, I make her look pedestrian. See when people look at Shannon, all they see is the legs. The bust. Maybe if they take their hands off their cocks for half a second and really look, just maybe they'll catch a glimpse of her hair, too, and if they're lucky enough to catch that, they've seen everything of her worth showing.
I'm a whole package girl. No, my legs aren't as long. No, my hair isn't, either. And no, I don't have green eyes or honey-caramel eye shadow or milk-makers you could stick your face in and suffocate between, but at least with me, you don't get lost in the spare parts. And when I drop my Chantal Bécotte black lace V-string panties down around my thighs, only part of you is wondering about what's been left uncovered just above. The other part is wondering, How can I look more like her?
Shannon is half laughing and half dying of envy while I'm pulling up those panties, and she says, "Remmy, I can't believe you actually did that."
And neither can I. There's a warm tingle creeping up my legs. It moves higher, over my ass and to the muscles in my back, and it sits. The body buzz. The neon sign that tells you that no matter what happens for the next hour, no matter what stupid things you do, everything's going to be alright, so ride the wave and don't ask questions. My arm twitches, and suddenly all I can picture is Shannon's face when she caught sight of my underwear, and I laugh, and I laugh, and I can't stop laughing.
Shannon says, "You're crazy. Don't you have a shoot with him tomorrow?"
I want to tell her, no, she's the one who's crazy. Yeah, I'm the one who peed on the porch, but she came up with the idea. I did what she dreamed up but didn't have the balls to do herself. And now I'm the crazy one. But I just feel so relaxed, and what I think doesn't seem to have any bearing on what I say. "Tomorrow afternoon." I try to take a breath between laughs, but I can't seem to get any air, and it just makes me laugh harder. "Wish I could see the look on his face when he walks outside in the morning."
"How are you going to be able to look at him with a straight face?"
I don't know, and right now, I don't care. How and what and why aren't in my vocabulary. All that matters now is the dark of the alley and the light splashing in from the streetlamps lining the road outside. The cool July-night air against my bare legs. The spinning in my head from the booze, and the counter-spin from the pot. Tomorrow might as well be next summer for how far away it feels. "I'm hungry. Let's get something to eat."
"Right now?"
"Yeah right now."
Shannon looks down at her watch—an admittedly stylish Vassel Timestamp with a silver plated band and white gold crown—and shakes her head. "Everything's closed."
And of course everything's closed. Somehow I'd already known that. So why did I ask? "What time is it?"
"It's like—" she holds the watch out and up to her face, twisting it until she's made sure I notice it glints in the light "—three-thirty."
"Already?"
"Yep," she says, and she's still looking down at that watch.
She's in love with it. All the shirtless men in Vassel or black lace in Randgriz couldn't pull it away from her. And I want to know why—I want to know how somebody could get so attached to a hunk of metal they strap around their wrist, or a thin strip of black cloth they drape over their vagina. I want to ask her why it's so important, but instead I ask, "What now?"
Shannon finally drops her arm to her side. She fakes a yawn, opening her mouth wider than could ever be natural, and pretends to smother it with her palm. It's all theatrics, but when you look like Shannon does, everything is. "I think it's about time to crash."
What we usually do on nights like this is grab another bottle and start knocking off shots. If we're lucky, we can wander the streets and find a party still going somewhere. We don't even have to know the people. As long as I smile, and she wears a skirt, we're in, no questions asked. Free drinks all night long. "You really want to call it?"
"Long day tomorrow." It's not. As long as we're not counting sleeping in until four in the afternoon or lying in bed with a magazine and a box of chocolates, she's not doing shit. "Let's get going."
She walks out of the alley, and I swear there's a halo around her when she steps in front of one of the street lamps. It's a warm, bright glow that you don't want to be caught noticing, but all the same can't ignore. With the light surrounding her she's a silhouette except for that watch. It glints again, sparkles like hundreds of little stars that not even the light pollution can drown out. And through all the shots and the mixed drinks and the weed it dawns on me why she was so transfixed by that watch. Why I couldn't stop watching her watch it. Even with my Chantal Bécotte black lace V-string panties, and even with her knockoff No-Name white sheath dress with that faux fancy black lace front panel—
Even with the two of us standing there, that watch was the most interesting thing in the alley.
The trick to sneaking back into your house after a night out is to change the scenery. Move things around a bit. That way when your dad wakes up, he sees how things have shifted and thinks you were just hanging out in the living room all night. You can't make major changes. Those are a dead giveaway. They have to be careless changes. Changes you'd make if you were sitting on the couch reading and got up to get a glass of water or make a snack or something. Changes obvious enough that they'll be noticed, but not so obvious that he can tell it's a set up, and not so subtle that he'll never see them.
Then you always walk as close to the wall as you can. The way floors are made, they've got more support near where they connect to a wall. It's less likely to creak there. When you walk you keep your weight on your back foot, and when you take a step you roll your foot heel to toe. Mind your posture, and take your shoes off before you go into the house. Breathe through your nose, not your mouth. Always assume dad is awake.
When you wake up you've got to play it cool. It's okay to look messy—even a natural beauty looks like a cancer patient in the morning—but you can't look hung over. If all else fails, blame low blood pressure. Yeah, I know it's kind of shitty using my condition as a get out of grounding free card, but when your back is up against the wall, you got to fight, and fighting doesn't have rules. Dad will load your eggs up with a massive heap of extra salt, and it's going to taste like fuck, but it's easier to stomach than another lecture.
The trick to getting through breakfast is you don't look at the empty spot at the table up against the wall. That was mom's spot. At least, that's what dad told me. I don't know. I never knew her.
Dad starts talking about some new book he's been paging through while I stuff bricks of salt-mine egg slab into my mouth, and he pretends he doesn't notice I'm trying not to vomit. He has to leave for work in a few minutes, but he looks just as worn down as I do.
You see all those empty beer bottles lined up on top of the kitchen counter? And the ones piled together in small groups on the coffee and end tables? It's probably best that you ignore those, too. They aren't yours. You didn't play any part in drinking them. They don't mean anything to you.
It's awkward because you can never tell how much he knows. He acts like nothing's wrong, and so do you, but the way he looks at you—tired and defeated—you can't figure out whether he just had a restless night or if he's sure you were sneaking around and he just doesn't have the energy to say anything about it.
I've found the secret is in those empty beer bottles. That's why you have to ignore them. If you count them up before you leave at night, then count them again in the morning when you get back, you're in for a sucker punch of a guilt trip, and guilt makes everything ugly.
So dad keeps pretending I didn't sneak out, and I keep pretending to be interested in his book, and neither of us are sure what we should be doing while we're acting. I've choked down about half of those eggs. I can't stand to take another bite, and just looking at them makes me sick, but I don't know where else to look. Neither does dad. We do this dance where we make eye contact for a second or two, but neither of us can hold it, and before long we're looking for anything else in the room to study other than the beer bottles and the empty seat at the table that mom used to occupy before the cunt up and walked out on us.
The daily routine is I clear the table while dad finishes getting ready for work. You might think that's the easy part—like a reprieve, or a stay of execution. It's not. Because all that time he's in his room getting dressed, and you're standing at the sink rinsing all the salt off of the dishes, you know what's coming next. If you decide you don't want to count those empty bottles, that doesn't make the guilt go away. It just postpones it. Dad is in his room, but before too long he'll have to hit the road, and when he does, he'll tell you that he loves you.
And there's nothing you can say to that except for, "See you later."
My photo shoot is in the agency office just off of 6th Street and Bonnie Brae. It's one of those old brick buildings done in that 19th century Zwolle revival style. It's three stories high, with rows of tall, narrow windows with segmented arches over them. It's got this beautiful low pitched roof, and the eaves hang out way beyond the base of the walls. Everything about it begs you to stop and take a gander. It's a building with history.
If you care about that sort of thing.
The woman who ushers me through the halls is soaked head to toe with perfume three seasons out of style. She carries this clipboard with her itinerary on it, and with how much is written into her schedule it's a wonder she has the energy to do her hair in the morning.
She drags me to the changing room and hands me off to the stylist. He's some guy in his early forties, I think, and he oversees what the makeup and hair artists do. His name is Reese. For what we're doing I need to strip down to almost nothing in front of him, but I don't mind. I can't stand most of the guys working here—either they're pretentious ass-hats who don't have the time to check you out for how long they spend looking at themselves in the mirror, or they're so desperate for a blowjob they can't take their eyes off your neckline—but Reese is all business. I think it's something he picked up in the trenches. He's the only man in the building who fought in the war, and he's got that no bullshit attitude only a man like that can hold onto while whores and hussies are prancing around in front of him with unbuckled bras and half pulled up panties. He knows what looks good and what looks like a raggedy patchwork quilt. He cares about who and what he puts in front of the camera.
Plus I'm pretty sure he's a faggot, so there's that.
He starts giving his assistants orders in hushed whispers, and I can only make out short murmurs here and there. Something about an updo. Something else about my eyes. All the while he's talking, he's watching me with a grimace. I always look forward to seeing Reese because even when he's focused, he always smiles. That grimace means something's seriously wrong.
My first thought is I came in looking like garbage, but when I check the mirror I look pretty good. I wouldn't have known I'd woken up hung over if I hadn't been sick myself. But he's still watching me with that frown, and the way the rest of the style team looks, they can't be talking about the job anymore.
When they see me glancing their way the assistants break out into smiles. They're the kind of reassuring smiles people who pretend to pretend like they're concerned dish out when they're ashamed of how little you really matter to them. Reese doesn't try to fake anything, but he waves for everybody to get to work and doesn't say any more.
One of them starts teasing my hair, and the other is sorting through the massive cache of cosmetics next to the workbench. I'm still trying to figure out what's going on. The makeup artist pulls out some eye shadow, but it's the wrong color. What I'm going to be wearing is a black shift. Lace, of course. The shadow the artist grabbed was white. She reaches into the stash again, and pulls out some pale pink lipstick. I wait for Reese to call her out, but he nods his head, and she starts working. "What's going on?" I ask.
Reese is watching me through the mirror. He's got his arms crossed, and he's drumming his fingers on his forearm like it's a snare. "Last minute change in the itinerary. We had a call for a rush job, so we're changing the shoot. Short notice."
Today's shoot was one I'd been looking forward to for weeks. That little black shift was going to have me sharing the centerfold of Verve Magazine. "What about what we had scheduled?"
"Maria's about your size. She's taking your place in that one. They'll shoot it tonight."
That might as well be the end of my career. When they start pulling you off of centerfolds and replacing you with someone else, that's when you know you've been pinioned. Verve Magazine isn't even one of the big names. A centerpiece in it would be a personal benchmark, but it's not like I'd have mobs running me down in the streets looking for autographs. I'd still be a no name, but at least I'd be a no name with a centerfold under her belt.
Reese sees that I'm about to cry, and he looks like he wants to say something comforting, or give me a hug and tell me it's going to be alright, or that the shift is going to make Maria look fat, but something is still holding him back. If I hadn't known him I would have said he looked nervous. I knew that wasn't it. Concerned was more like it. Restless, even.
I ask him, "What's going to happen instead?"
"We deal with the shoot we've been handed."
He's all business, but his heart isn't in this one. The makeup artist starts going to work around my eyes, drawing in the liner and spreading a thin layer of shadow over my lids. She acts like it's any other job she's ever done. Like I hadn't just been shot in the chest in front of her.
The eye makeup is the point of no turning back. It's the line drawn in the dirt that says, You're not allowed to cry beyond this point. Suck it up. Take a deep breath. Just don't cry. "So what am I wearing?"
"It's an A-Line," Reese says, and I can hear the diplomacy in his voice. "It's not bad."
The worst part about 'not bad' is that it's never good. It's the bare minimum when you're trying to quantify quality. It's what I always tell dad when he asks me how I slept. "Who made it?"
For a long while he doesn't answer. In between dabs of makeup I can see him grasping for words. He stops drumming his fingers against his arms, and instead he grips himself like he's bracing for an impact. Finally he says, "Department of Corrections."
I'm not just being pinioned. I'm being stowed away in the back corner of the bottom shelf where people only go to look when they need to find somebody who will model a convict's uniform for some government presentation on the utility of jailbird fabrics. "You mean like prisons?"
He nods. "Technically it's funded by the Public Affairs branch of the Defense Department. They contracted a third party designer, and left the actual manufacturing to the Department of Corrections."
A convict made my dress. The makeup artist starts throwing a fit because the tears starting to run down my cheeks are making the mascara run, but Reese pulls her off of me and shoots her a look that can only be telling her to back off. He takes her place and leans against the workbench. Even the woman doing my hair stops. "Don't worry, Ramona," he says, but he's still got that concerned grimace, and it doesn't match his words. "I know how it sounds, but this actually isn't a bad gig. As long as you're not stupid, it'll turn out pretty good for you."
I'm still crying a little, but it's mostly just water welling up in my eyes. "How good?"
His knuckles go white for how hard he's gripping his forearms, and when he speaks the words are hesitant. "It's a cover shoot."
I feel like one of those people who can write but can't read, or those people who can think they're having a full, normal conversation, only to have their voice played back to them after the fact and find out they were just stringing random words together. I understand what he said, but only as individual words. They don't feel like they should be put in the same sentence together. "I'm going to be on the cover of a magazine?"
He nods, then sighs. Then he nods again, raising his eyebrows as if he's been forced to concede the silver lining of a life sentence in a minimum security penitentiary. "Gallian Girl."
I don't dream a whole lot. Usually I just pass out, and on those nights I don't come home plastered or stoned I'm too tired to see anything more than black. But every once in a while, I get one of those dreams where it starts out and everything is beyond perfect. My picture is in every magazine in the country, or I'm the biggest name in designer labels, or I have a mom. The dream shifts. All of a sudden it's the worst nightmare imaginable. Then just as quickly as it became a night terror, everything is good again. Better than before, even. The cycle repeats. The dream can't decide whether it wants to be Heaven or Hell, and my mind can't wrap itself around what's going on, so I wake myself up.
I'm sitting in that chair expecting to open my eyes and find I'm still back in bed. But nothing happens. I can't even talk. Gallian Girl is part of the Holy Trinity of fashion. It's not high fashion like Exquisite, and it doesn't have the critical reputation of Canna, but it's practically sitting front and center on every magazine rack in Gallia.
Reese puts everybody back to work. It doesn't take his assistants long to finish, and when they're done I don't look too different than I had when I walked in. My hair is done up, sure, but it isn't anything fancy, and while they didn't go for a natural look, the makeup is going for minimalism. Reese looks everything over, and when he nods his assistants look like they're going to die happy. He's still grimacing, though, and he walks across the room to a large cabinet near the entrance. Through the mirror I watch him reach for something, and it seems heavy, but when he pulls it out it doesn't look very big. I can't tell exactly what it is from the reflection.
He stands and stares at it for a while. The assistants aren't paying any attention, and they start chatting away about piano lessons, but Reese is looking down at whatever it is he's holding like it's an old best friend whose neck he'd love to wrap his hands around. Finally he walks back over to my station, and he drops the thing down on the workbench. It lands with a heavy thump on the countertop.
"That's a handgun," I say.
"That's a handgun." He hands it over to me, and instinctively I take it out of the holster and pull the slide just far enough back to check the chamber for brass. It's empty. "Strap it to your thigh."
The secret to being a model is you don't ask questions. When the guy running the shoot tells you to give him lust, you give it to him. If he tells you to look sexy, you arch your back and bare your chest to the camera. You never ask him why, because asking why means you're thinking, and when you're thinking you're taking up time that you could be using to shoot another picture. You can't put thoughts on a magazine cover. They won't sell like a picture of a young girl in a skimpy dress with a nice pair of tits will. When you do it for a living, being pretty becomes an arms race. If Shannon is up there rocking a 34E, you can't stop to ask yourself why you wear two bras—you just do it because it'll give your 32B a little extra padding.
I don't think, and that gun is anchored to my leg.
Reese pulls out the dress next. The only real way I can think to describe it is, Not bad. It doesn't have a thread of lace on it. It isn't even black. Instead, it's uniform blue with a single red stripe running down the center of the torso. It even looks sort of like a uniform, or at least something a desk clerk or a secretary would wear if they decided to go all out and glitz themselves up while still trying to stay within regulation. Reese helps me into the dress, and then starts handing me all the bells and whistles. He tightens some kind of sash that looks like a defanged bandoleer, and a belt with all sorts of pockets and pouches on it. For my feet he gives me sleek boots that go halfway up my shins and have dark fur lining sticking out of the tops.
The coup de grâce comes when he hands me metal plates. They're like shoulder guards—heavy, steel strips of metal with another red stripe that he buckles around my arms. He gets two more. They're bigger, and he clips them to my belt so that they hug the sides of my hips and cover down to the hem of my skirt. "All done," he says.
I wait for him to laugh and tell me it's a joke. Or maybe I'm still waiting to wake up. When neither happens, I stand and take a look at myself in the mirror. What I see is beautiful, but not the kind of beautiful you put on the cover of a fashion magazine. It's not a pretty beautiful. In fact, it's a really ugly beautiful. The kind of beautiful you only talk about with your friends late at night in a dark room after you've had a few too many shots. "I don't get it."
Reese looks me over, and it's like he's staring into the sun. It seems to take everything he's got not to look away, and his eyes are straining for how much it hurts. "You'll sleep better at night if you don't."
I'm not sure what to think, but thinking isn't my job, so when he waves me towards the door I nod my head and walk. His assistants don't even look my way, but Reese guides me through the dressing room. He's let go of his arms, and his hands are shaking. I can't tell whether he's afraid or angry, but looking at them, I'm scared.
I thank him when he opens the door, and I start walking out, but he stops me before I've made it too far down the hall. "Ramona," he says, and when I turn around he's resting his head against the doorframe. The way he's looking at me is the same face my dad wears when he leaves for work every morning. It breaks my heart every time. It's not the angry look you'd expect from a father whose daughter sneaks out every night to get lit up. I could handle that. It's a look that's partly sad. Partly worried.
More than anything, it's a look that says he's disappointed in himself. "You're a good kid. Just take care of yourself." And when he can't muster the words to say anything more, he shuts the door behind him.
The first thing I see in the studio is Clarence standing behind the camera waiting for me. For a moment, I'm positive he knows that I peed on his porch. I just know that he'll see me come in and bitch me out for an hour instead of taking pictures. Fire me, even—kiss your magazine cover goodbye.
He doesn't. "Remmy!" he says, holding his arms out as if he wants to hug me even though I'm halfway across the room. "You look gorgeous! Come on in, come on in."
Clarence isn't a bad looking guy. He's got that short blonde hair that's just long enough that you want to run your fingers through it, and just enough stubble to tell you he doesn't give a fuck while still looking classy. He's the kind of guy who looks like he should be wearing sunglasses all the time. If he wasn't such a narcissistic dick shaft he might've been a good catch.
I step in front of the camera, and all the while Clarence is asking me how I'm doing. What I've been up to. It's a lot of small talk, and I'm answering with as few words as I can use while still being polite, but I'm not really paying attention to him. Usually when we do a shoot, it's just Clarence and the lighting technicians in there with me. This time, there's a man I've never seen before sitting by the door.
Looking at him, there's no way he's from the industry. He's in plain clothes—a standard white dress shirt and tan pants with the most boring tie you can imagine. His hair is also blonde, but it's cropped so short it'd prick my finger if I touched it. What scare me are his eyes. The way he looks at me, it isn't like most guys who walk in here, and it's definitely not like Reese. He's been watching me since I walked in, but there isn't an expression. Looking at him is like watching a mannequin.
For all his staring, he seems to think the same thing looking at me.
The backdrop for this shoot is a big Gallian flag draped across the back of the room. It's so much blue. The crest in the middle is almost invisible behind my dress, and I feel like I'm fading into the background. There's something about blue that pulls in everything around it. It's not a powerful color like red. Red is striking. It's violent. Yellows and oranges are vibrant. Green is life. But blue never ends. It goes on and on and on until when you're standing in front of it you're just a floating head and a pair of legs.
I get in position, and the lighting technicians finish up their last minute changes. Everything in front of me is lights. When they finish I'm almost blind. I'm waiting for Clarence to tell me to give him lust so he can look through his viewfinder and watch me like he wants to bend me over and fuck me right there in front of the camera, but instead he says, "There's a little more to life somewhere else."
He's almost disappeared with all the lights shining behind him. I can just barely see him looking into his camera, and I'm not sure whether he's still waiting to give me a pose or if he's just given it to me. I narrow my eyes so I can see him better and say, "What?"
The camera flashes. Clarence looks up and smiles. I'm too disoriented to care. That other man is still watching, but he's not smiling like Clarence is. The way his face looks I doubt he's ever smiled in his life.
Clarence drops below his camera again and says, "You're a Gallian Girl, Remmy. You were raised on promises. They're not being paid out."
I would rather he asked for lust. At least with lust I knew what to do. Tell me to give him lust, or wrath, or envy, or whatever the fuck else gets his rocks off while he's pretending my legs are spread for him. I'll be angry. I'll be jealous. I'll be whatever he wants me to be. Just tell me.
The camera flashes, and I've had my mouth hanging open. My hands are, I don't even know where. My posture sucks. My dress sucks. Everything about me sucks.
Clarence says, "You've got a promise of your own, and if you have to die trying, you'll keep it."
I don't know where to look. I know even less about what he's saying. The only thing I can concentrate on behind all the lights is that man sitting by the door. I look to him for guidance. A nod. A smile. Any kind of direction.
Flash, and Clarence says, "It's a great big world, Remmy. There's something out there you're missing. Maybe you never had it. Maybe you had it once, but it's gone now."
"I don't think I understa—"
Flash, and Clarence says, "Or maybe it's a person. Someone who should be there, but isn't. And you can imagine them. They're so close you can almost touch them, but they're still so far out of reach."
I don't need direction to be angry, but I'm too confused to show it. "Seriously, Clarence, what the fu—"
Flash, and Clarence says, "This isn't enough."
I don't know whether he's talking about me or not, but I'm going to cry again. Whatever just happened, I'm not going to be on the cover of Gallian Girl. They'll get someone else and do a re-shoot, and I won't even get that centerfold in the black lace dress to make up for it. "I'm sorry."
Flash, and Clarence says, "Perfect."
He steps out from behind his camera, and one by one the stage lights cut out. All I can see is green—the afterimage of the lamps burned into my eyes. It doesn't remind me of life. Clarence is all smiles, and he nods to the man sitting by the door. "That's it," he says.
The man gets out of his seat. He looks at Clarence for a second, and the only change in his face is a slight frown that seems to mean speaking to him is a waste of his time. He turns to me instead. "What's your name?"
I'm mostly blind, but now that he's standing I see the bulge near his hip that tells me he's armed. "Ramona Linton."
"How old are you?"
"I'm seventeen," I say, and I don't know why, but I call him, "sir."
He steps closer, all the while trying to hide the look on his face that tells me he should be somewhere else, and shakes my hand. "You've done your country a great service, Ms. Linton. Thank you."
All I did was put on a dress. It's not even pretty. "It was nothing."
"Humble. I like that. Your parents must be proud."
I want to laugh and tell him the whole God-awful shitty story, but what Shannon taught me about people is that nobody really cares. They'll pretend as much as they need to, but only insofar as they want me to do something for them. That's alright. At least they want me. "They are."
He looks satisfied. "Well, I look forward to seeing what you can do. Keep up the good work." And before I can respond he's on his way out the door.
Clarence takes his place, patting me on the back and laughing like we'd just dodged an artillery shell. "Remmy, that was fucking fantastic!"
I say, "What?"
"The shoot," he says, and he's looking me in the eyes instead of the tits. "We killed it. I mean, I was giving you tough calls, but you hit it head on every time. It didn't even look like you were trying out there. You made it seem so natural. This shoot is going to put the both of us on the map. You were just incredible."
And I look him square in the face and say, "Thank you," and I don't tell him that it was the only shoot I've ever been to where I didn't have to pose.
Outside it's about as far from blue as you can get. The sky is streaks of red and orange and pink—the vibrant colors, but washed out and muted in the way that forces you to stop and think about everything that's brought you to where you're standing. Introspection can be vibrant, too, and beautiful.
I fuckin' hate sunsets.
When I get home, I stroll past the junk in the living room I'll have to move around later and the empty beer bottles and the empty space at the table where mom used to sit, and I almost make it to my room before dad catches me, but when I put my hand on my doorknob he says, "Hey Ramona. Busy day?"
If I turn the knob just a little bit I've got momentum. Everything is about getting past the starting point. Pull the trigger on a gun and no matter what else gets in the way there's no stopping that cartridge from going off. The result was determined the moment you set it all in motion. All you needed to do was give it the first push. If I'd started turning the knob, not even dad could have stopped me from walking through and shutting it all out behind me. But the knob's as still in my hand as if I'd never touched it at all. "I guess."
"Why don't you come sit down for a second. Feels like I haven't seen you in a while."
It's not that I hate my father. Even if he's a loser who drinks too much and cries when he thinks I'm not home, he's still the only person who actually wants to listen to me when I talk. Shannon's sober about as often as he is, but our friendship isn't so much about listening as it's about getting as many words out between each other's sentences as possible. She's my handbag—something pretty to show off while walking down the street. I'm hers. Reese listens, and he seems to care, but he gets paid for it. Dad just listens. "Had another shoot today."
"How'd it go?"
I avoid my father because I love him. The way he's looking at me now with his eyes wide and leaning forward, it kills me to know that as soon as he finishes drinking and crashes for the night I'll be out the door. I can't stand to face him at home, but all the time I'm gone I'm freaking out about how I've left him behind. He's sad and lonely, and I'm all he's got. "Good, I think. It's just pictures."
It was never just pictures to either of us, and I think dad cares more about my modeling than I do. The way he looks at my photos, it's almost sad. Sometimes he smiles. Sometimes he looks like he's going to cry. Always he sees it as validation—no matter how miserable he is, at least he raised his little girl to be a winner.
When he looks at those pictures he can pretend I'm not as fucked up as he is.
"Come on," he says, waving me over. He's got a space on the couch open next to him. What looks like him patting the cushion for me to sit is really him begging me to come closer. "Tell me all about it."
"Tomorrow. I'm exhausted."
He sits so far back that if he sinks any deeper into the couch he'll disappear. "Going to bed already?"
We both know I'm not. I want to stay and talk. I do. But it's sunset. Sunset means it's almost time to sneak out, and sneaking out means guilt. These days, I can't look at a sunset without feeling like shit. Looking at my father just makes it worse. "Long day."
He nods, and looks at the refrigerator in the other room. "Me too."
And this is always the point where, for just a second, I think the worst is over. I think, It really wasn't so bad. But without fail, when I get back to my bedroom door and start turning the handle, my father says, "I love you."
And all I can say to that is, "Goodnight."
Shannon's idea of celebrating my shoot is heading down to 2nd Street to score a fifth of rum and an eighth. All the while she's pretending she's happy for me. She's wearing black lace, of course, and when I stroll up in a Gallian blue dress and tell her it was a cover shoot, I can see her trying to figure out how much blue she's got in her closet. Not enough, apparently. She congratulates me, though, flashing her Novocain smile while trying to hide her clenched teeth.
"So it was really a cover?" she asks, and she twists the cap off the fifth and takes a long swig.
"It was pretty ugly, really. Blue on blue. I'd never wear it." Except I already was. The moment I got home from the studio I switched from black lace to blue.
Shannon doesn't even grimace as she swallows. "Cover shoots are such bullshit. They pick out the ugliest Goddamn dresses they can find and put it on the cover so bitches who don't know better think it's the hottest shit around and buy in."
She's only saying that because she's never been on a cover. But she's right. I can't think of a single girl on a cover wearing anything I'd have ever bought if it didn't come with the status of having been the first thing you see when you look at a magazine rack. Shannon and I, we pretend that we're part of a special class of pretty people—people who can make anything look like divine revelation. That we make the whole industry work. But we're not retarded. Not even Shannon. What we do for a living, it isn't about us. It's about the status. Not even our status. It's about the designer's name. The dresses. They get on a cover, it doesn't matter what it looks like or who's wearing it. If it's on the cover it'll sell even if it's sitting on a coat hanger.
Shannon and I, we're just along for the contact high.
I grab the fifth from her, take my first drink of the night, and say, "Let's just get stoned."
The closest party is a few blocks over. It's nothing special, but in this city, nothing really is. We don't know anybody there, but there's booze, and pot, and guys, and with the way Shannon and I look, we only have to make out with each other once to get free drinks all night.
Really, the way we look is nothing special, either. What these people don't realize is that the way we're dressed up is kind of like how an albino pigeon looks sort of like a dove.
But nobody notices, and the party goes on. I'm drinking. She's drinking. I'm smoking. She's kissing some guy. James, or John, or Jake. He's cute. That's about all I have to say about him.
It's midnight, and I'm feeling pretty good and buzzed. Next time I look at the clock it's twelve-forty, and I'm tingling all over. By twelve-forty five I've got the jitters. The second hand on the clock, I can hear it over the din of the party. More than hearing, I feel it.
Next thing I remember it's five-thirty in the morning and Shannon is pulling me down some street on the other side of town. She drags me into another alley, and as she runs the bottom of her dress hikes up. The black lace ribbon that was sown to the front of her panties when we started the night is resting above her ass. I lift up my own dress to make sure I'm still wearing something underneath. Everything checks out the way I left it.
Shannon stops, and she's out of breath. It takes me longer than it should to realize that I'm out of breath, too. "Christ, Remmy," she says, and all of a sudden she's got her hands on my shoulders and she's looking at my face really hard. "Are you alright?"
Nothing hurts. My clothes aren't ripped. My underwear is on the right way. I'm winded, but I feel fine. "What's up?"
She shakes her head, and it looks like disgust. In her purse she's got some tissues that she pulls out, and she reaches up at my face like she's going to smother me with them. I push them away and yell, "What the Hell?"
As drunk and stoned as she is, I can't fight her off. She's dabbing at my cheeks with those tissues, and all the while I'm squirming to get away. "Goddammit, hold still," she says, trying to ignore how I've got my hand wrapped around her wrist. "If you go home looking like this your dad's gonna' fuckin' freak."
Mascara. Every time she lifts her hands, there's the makeup she's pulled off of me with her tissues. It's run all down my face, and that means I've been crying. All of a sudden I'm really tired. My legs wobble so hard that Shannon is the only thing keeping me on my feet. My voice is cracking, and I know I should be ashamed when the only thing I can think to ask her is, "Who'd I fuck?"
The way she's looking at me, at first I think she's pissed, and then I think she's disappointed, but after a few seconds, I realize she's scared. So am I. What I feel looking at her is guilt. I'm starting to think that's the only thing I really can feel lately. "Nobody," she says, and she's talking real quiet. "You just—" She shakes her head, and a second later she's rubbing my cheeks with her tissues. "Let's clean you up and get you home."
I don't think I'm crying anymore, but her tissues are coming off wet. The last time I cried when I got drunk, I was fifteen, and even then I only cried because I sprained my ankle. Told dad I did it posing. "What did I do?"
"It's probably better for everyone if you don't remember."
Before I realize what I'm doing, I push her. When she trips and stumbles ass first into the alley wall—well, you can probably guess how I feel. "What did I do?"
She's pissed now. More afraid than she was before. "Since when did you start getting into street fights?"
"What?"
Shannon points at my hand.
My knuckles are scraped and bloody. It hurts. "What the fuck did I do?"
"What do you think you did?"
I don't have an answer. "Forget it," she says. "The guy was an asshole."
I've never hit anybody before. In school they taught us how to fight hand to hand. Everything from how to make a fist to taking someone's own knife and stabbing them to death with it. I scored last in the class. "Why'd I hit him?"
Her tissues are all black. I don't feel clean, but she doesn't pull out more. "Can I ask you something?" she says, and before I answer continues, "Did you ever think about going off and looking for her?"
"Who?"
"Your mom."
Fuck her for bringing that up out of nowhere. Of course I've thought about looking for her. I've dreamed of it as long as I can remember. "Why would I go off looking for that bitch?"
Shannon picks herself up. She isn't looking me in the eyes anymore—the darkness down the alley must be more interesting. "That's not what you were saying earlier."
"No," I say, but I'm not sure. I've blacked out so much in the past few months that I feel like I've spent half my life in a coma. "I wouldn't talk about her. And I sure as Hell wouldn't say anything like that."
"I couldn't shut you up about her." Even as she's talking at me, Shannon is picking pebbles out of her faux designer black lace—Whatever it is. "I step away for ten minutes, and when I come back you're all, 'Oh, she's so pretty,' and, 'Oh, I love her so much.' Then you started crying. That guy who was trying to look up your skirt all night, he put his arm around you, right? Just trying to be all comforting and shit, and when he told you to forget her, you know, because you're better than that, you stepped back and dropped him."
I'd never say any of that. Not after a hundred beers. Not after all the weed in Gallia. Not if I was shot in the chest and bleeding out all over the sidewalk, and only had a few words left to breathe. "Seriously, what really happened?"
Even after her back-handed remarks about cover shoots, and even after picking all of those rocks out of her dress instead of looking me in the eyes, and even after leaving me alone at that party so she could go fuck God knows who in some back room, the way she's looking at me now—scared, concerned, caring—it's all real. "Look, are you doing alright? It's fine if you're not, you know? I'm just worried about you."
Shannon, who always has to have the last word. Shannon, who's always got to one up everyone she'll ever meet. Shannon, who got so blitzed one night last month that she pulled three guys she couldn't name to save her life into a bathroom and didn't come out for two hours, and I had to carry her unconscious, drooling ass back to my father's couch so she wouldn't have to explain to her parents why she was a liquor breathed, incontinent mess. Like Hell she's got the ground to stand on to be worried about me. "I'm going home."
"No," she says, and grabs me by the shoulders again. "We're talking about this first."
"Shannon, you and me, we play dress up and go out and get stoned together. We really don't have much to talk about."
And now she's crying—the first lines of smoky black mascara trailing down from the bottoms of her giant, bloodshot blue eyes. "Fuck you, Remmy." Those tissues she was holding fall to the ground. "You think I'm just your handbag then fine. I'll be your handbag. You can take me around and I'll look pretty for you, and you can go ahead and use me and do whatever it is you're going to do. I don't mind. Really." When she sniffles it sounds like my father cracking open another beer. "I'm not a cover girl. I know that. You probably know it too. I'll—" her voice cracks "—I'll live with that. But right now you're the only real friend I've got. You're not going home alone, and we're not leaving until you answer me."
I step away, but my back hits the alley wall before I break her grip. Her fingers are clutched so tight around my dress that she's stretching the fabric. With her so close, all I can see is her crying. "Don't take your shit out on me."
"What are you going to do?" she asks between breaths. "You going to hit me?"
No. Never Shannon. I'd never hit anybody I cared about. Even her. But when I look down, my hands are already balled into fists.
Her hands slack. When she sees my fists she steps back herself—almost all the way to the other side of the alley. She's not crying anymore. Not even sniffling. "This is it, isn't it?"
I say, "Yeah."
She nods. While I'm trying not to think about how much she's going to cry later, she's rummaging through her purse. She pulls out what looks like a vial and pours something into her palm. Then she holds it out for me. "Take this."
It's pills. "What are they?"
"My mom's." Her voice is strained, but she's doing everything she can to keep it steady. "She was doing really bad, right? You remember. But then she got these prescribed and—"
"I don't need anxiety meds, Shannon."
"—she's doing a lot better now. She's like she used to be. And maybe if you—"
"Shannon, I don't need fucking pills!"
"Just Goddamn take some!" The force in her voice, I've never heard it before. She's not looking at my dress. She's not trying to size up my shoes. She doesn't care about the jewelry or the makeup. All she's looking at is me. "I don't care what you do after. You can go. Just don't leave like this, okay? Please."
I have to unclench my fist to grab the pills, and it's harder than I imagined. My knuckles want to curl back in on themselves. I don't know anything about dosage, so I swallow two of the pills and put the rest in my bag.
And that's it. I don't know what to tell her. After two years of being best friends, I should have something to say, but looking at her—puffy faced and worn—I've got nothing. She's standing across from me, silent. Maybe part of her is hoping that I won't go—that those pills she gave me are going to snap me out of whatever she thinks is wrong like she's flipped a switch. She shudders when the only thing I can think of is, "I like your watch."
Shannon's dumb, but she's not stupid. She doesn't look at the watch. Even she knows the truth. We paint our faces and wear nice watches and expensive dresses and name brand underwear, but at the end of the day, we're still just fucking pigeons. "Take care of yourself," she says.
And all I can tell her is, "Goodbye."
I'm about halfway home when the pills hit and holy mother Christ am I wasted. It's nothing like being high. I feel light. Bouncy. My feet, there's no way they're touching the ground. Everything is a blur. The lights melt into one another—fuzzy around the edges—and it's all a bunch of colors floating like sunspots in fog. It's just like being high.
Shannon and I, I have no idea what we were upset about. Why she was being such a pouty bitch. But man, am I glad she got me those pills. They're nothing like being high, because when I'm high I'm guilty. I hate feeling guilty. Pills don't feel guilty. Pills don't really feel.
It's like one of those dreams I have where everything is the best it's ever been, except it never comes down. It can only get better, so I close my eyes and spin, because maybe when I open them again mom will be there and she'll hug me and she'll tell me all about how she loves me and about how pretty I am and about how she never wanted to leave and how she's so happy to be back and how she'll never leave us again. So I spin, and when I open my eyes there's nothing but green and red and yellow fog. I spin again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and then I stop.
It's blue. Uniform blue. Same color as my dress. The fog from a neon sign. It's down the street, but everything looks so fluid that I can't read it from where I am, so I walk closer. Through the blur, the sign says:
ARMED SERVICES RECRUITING STATION
There are two men inside. Walking around with papers and coffee cups. Sorting the place out from last night. It's barely six o'clock, and the doors were just unlocked, but the sign is so blue and so pretty, and the men inside don't even realize that once my magazine cover hits the racks they'll be the most wanted men in the city, so I push that door open, step through, stand tall, and say, "Hrmmlg mrlmer."
They stare at me—coffees steaming and papers silent—until the one closest says, "The fuck?"
I can't feel my tongue. If it's my tongue. It feels twice its size, and tingles. I swallow hard, and concentrate on forming the right words. There are so many thoughts running through me I can't pick any of them out. The neon blue of the sign. The blue of their uniforms. My convict's dress. Mom. Dad. Home. "I want to join the Army."
The thought doesn't come to me until after I've said the words. My head is magic—explosions of color so brilliant and so sudden they're startling. Thoughts that come to me before I think them. I know what the recruiter is going to say before he says it. He says, "Lazy Army bastards aren't here yet. You don't want to join the Army. They think they're hot shit, but you join the Army, you're just a number. You're better than that."
"Marines then. I want to join the Marines."
"You want to be a jarhead?" They're both laughing. It bellows, and it goes on and on and on and on and—"Trust me, you don't want to be a Marine. Guys are fucking retarded. You're smart, you'll join the Militia."
And the truth is, I don't know the Army from the Marines from the Militia. "I want to join the Militia."
"Good call. Pretty girl like you, the Militia is the only real choice." He turns to his partner—who still looks like he's laughing, but there isn't any sound coming out—and says, "Get the papers."
His partner has these really ugly glasses that look like they came fresh off an assembly line, and he still can't stop from almost laughing. He looks stupid. He looks like he should be a Marine. He says, "Right now?"
"Yeah right now."
"You think maybe we should tell her to come back later?"
The man closest to me, he's got beautiful eyes. They're blue. Uniform blue. He turns to me and asks, "How old are you?"
"I'm seventeen."
"You hear that?" he says to Glasses. "She's seventeen. She's old enough to make her own decisions."
And I turn to Glasses and I tell him, "I'm old enough to make my own decisions."
Glasses looks at me like I've turned him down for prom. He sets his coffee on his desk, and stops almost laughing. "I'll get the papers."
Once he's got the papers, he hands them over to Blue Eyes, who grabs a pen. "Alright," Blue Eyes says. "What's your name?"
I answer, "Ramona Linton."
"Birthday?"
"September 9th."
He writes it down, then pauses. And waits. And waits. "Year?"
I tell him, "September."
"1916," Glasses says from his seat across the room.
Blue Eyes writes it down. Then he asks me for my address. My family. My schooling. He asks question after question after question, and I answer. I don't ask myself why I suddenly decided to enlist. It's not my job to ask why. Asking why means I'm thinking, and when I'm thinking I'm taking up time that Blue Eyes could be using to shoot me another question. He can't put thoughts on enlistment papers. He says, "We need your signature here."
The pen doesn't fit my hand. Or my hand doesn't fit the pen. My fingers aren't my fingers. They're somebody else's fingers, and they're flailing every which way to keep a hold of that pen. I drop it, then pick it up, and drop it again. The pen feels heavy, and that feels right. What I'm doing now—it was my idea. For once in my life. I'll show that slut Shannon. Show her that, Goddammit, I can do more than look pretty and drink and smoke and fuck. I'll show my father that, no, I'm not the waste he turned out to be. I'll show that whore we call my mother. I pick up the pen and sign.
Blue Eyes looks at my signature for a long while. Turns the paper sideways. "Hey Brad," he says to his partner. "What counts as a valid signature?"
"Was she holding the pen?" Glasses asks.
"Yeah."
"Did she mark the paper?"
"Yeah."
"It's good enough."
Blue Eyes smiles, and stores my papers in a manila folder. He sets the folder aside, but he hesitates, and his hand hovers above it. The way he's looking at me, I wish I had eyes like his. He says, "Fuck it," grabs the folder again, and pulls my papers back out. "Brad, get me the papers for the fitness test."
Glasses hesitates himself. His voice goes quieter. Softer. I can feel it vibrating. "Doesn't standard procedure say the physical exam needs to be scheduled at least two weeks after the initial papers are signed?"
"Something tells me we should expedite this one." He's still watching me. I know the look. Guilt. "No big deal," he says, matching Glasses' tone. "I'll fudge the dates."
Blue Eyes is looking at me, but Glasses is looking at Blue Eyes. Nobody says anything. All I can hear is the clock ticking. Ticking and ticking and ticking and ticking. It doesn't stop. "Alright then."
When he's got the papers, Blue Eyes takes the pen back and looks down at them. He doesn't look back up. "Can you run two miles?" he asks.
"Yeah," I say.
He writes down: 15:28. "Can you do twenty push-ups in two minutes?"
"Yeah."
26. "Forty sit-ups in two minutes?"
"Yeah"
54. "Two pull-ups?"
I say, "I can do twenty."
He writes: 4.
He puts those papers in the manila folder, and pulls out another stack. The lines on the pages melt together, but it looks like it's just a bunch of words with a place for a few signatures on the bottom. "Do you know what this is?" he asks.
It's so blurry. I lean closer, but the floor isn't there, and I stumble back. Somehow I don't fall. It takes me a second to find his desk again. When I do, I grab its edge and hold myself up. "Why is that clock so loud?"
He says, "Sign the bottom of every page."
That pen is so heavy. I don't know what these papers are, but they're important. I'm doing something important. Not magazine cover important. Real importance. Something that matters. Something that will get me the Hell out of here and to somewhere I can make my own life. Everyone I know wants me to be something for them. Clarence wants me to be his body. Reese wants me to be his mannequin. Shannon wants me to be a pet she drags around on a leash so that she doesn't always have to feel so alone all the time. Dad wants me to be happy. It's all too much pressure, or not enough, or not me, or not what I want, or all of it at the same time. The only person in the world who never wanted anything from me is my mother, and fuck her for that. I pick up the pen and sign.
Blue Eyes says, "Raise your right hand and repeat after me."
So I let go of the table, and as if Clarence told me to give him patriotism, I stand tall, raise my arm, and nail every word.
Coming home, I follow the same procedure I run through every morning. Walk close to the wall. Roll my feet heel to toe. Change the scenery. None of it matters. It's ten o'clock, and dad's already left for work.
That pill buzz is gone. The weed, too. All I am is a little drunk, and drained. I've got my enlistment papers in my hand, and I don't know what to do with them. I can't show Dad. Showing Dad would be telling him I was leaving. He'd drink himself to death. I wouldn't blame him, either. They have to stay hidden.
I've got a place for the papers in my closet, but as I walk down our hallway, the light streaming through where dad left his bedroom door open a crack catches my eye. I don't like going in there, but some days I can't help myself.
He's still got the same bed from when he was married—a queen with one side worn and imprinted, and the other almost immaculate. It's not the bed that keeps me out of his room. Nor is it the empty bottles, or the pile of dirty clothes on the floor.
Dad keeps things in the places you only find when you're high. In the space between the back of his nightstand and the wall, he keeps the only thing in the house more dangerous than the gun he keeps unlocked under the stack of shirts in the bottom drawer of his dresser. It's a picture of my mother.
It's the only one we've got. I've never seen her except for in that picture. It's back from before I was born. Maybe from before they were married. She's posed for a portrait—all done up in a bonnet and sundress whose colors have faded along with the photograph—and she's smiling.
And I've made the right decision. I need to get away from here. I need to get away from staggering home at ten in the morning still drunk from the night before. I need to get away from Chantal Bécotte, and Vassel Timestamp, and Exquisite, and Canna, and Gallian Girl. I need to get away from Shannon, and Clarence, and Reese, and Dad. I need to get away from Mom.
More than anything, I need to get away from me.
I take after my father. I inherited his eyes. His nose. His hair and jaw. Ears and skin. But I take that picture from behind the nightstand, and I sit on the edge of Dad's bed, and I stare down at it.
And for the first time I realize that my mother looks just like me.