“I got bored waiting, so I went to your Instagram instead and looked through everything.”
Just like that, she’s turned the tables. Now I’m the one naked and on display. Ever since I quit my job, I’ve desperately wanted people to just look at my pictures, hire me for a gig or two. But suddenly, I wish she hadn’t. My work is nothing like her words. It isn’t worthy of her almost-stormy, definitely-confusing gray eyes.
We stare at each other.
Stalemate.
Neither of us wants to talk about our work. It’s too personal. Too raw. I actually care what she thinks, and maybe she feels the same.
“It’s good, your stuff,” she says finally. “But . . .”
My stomach drops. Well, fuck. I guess we are going to talk about it. “But what?”
“I’m—how do I explain this? One of my responsibilities at work is judging art.”
I set her journal on the cushion next to me. “What do you do?”
“Market research for an ad agency. You know how you go into a dentist’s office or a chain restaurant or even a clothing store and they have art displayed? Photos on the walls or sculptures out front?” She waits for me to nod. “I help businesses choose art that speaks to their customers. Or in some cases, doesn’t.”
“Why does a customer care what’s on the wall?”
“Because you don’t want art that’s so good, people get distracted from your product. Or you don’t want a patient to see something aggressive while waiting to have their mouth torn apart. Right?”
“I guess. I never really thought about it.”
“There’s a lot that goes into that.” She purses her lips. “I have a team that collects and analyzes data on consumers. We’ll run focus groups to see how people interpret certain images or colors, types of clothing, hair color. If you’re selling parkas, you don’t want people looking at a beach.”
I drink from my mug to hide my expression. Is my artwork the beach in this situation? After everything I just confessed this is beginning to feel like a sucker punch.
“That’s why I was at the City Still Life exhibit,” she says. “To network and buy some things for clients.”
The coffee tastes stale all of a sudden. “So it wasn’t crap then.”
“No, it was. I went there for cliché pieces. When I want non-crap, I go elsewhere.”
“So you’re the final authority on these things?”
“I don’t know if I’d say that, but by now, I can almost always predict how a piece will make someone feel.”
“Isn’t there a word for that, when you see what you want to see? Confirmation bias.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” She crosses her legs, the leather of her boots creaking. “I’ve just been doing this a while.”
She can’t be much older than twenty-five, twenty-six, which seems young for someone to have all the answers. “Not to discredit you, but I’m fairly certain each person would react differently.”
“You’d be surprised. And anyway, we’re looking at the majority.” She says all this straight-faced, like art is akin to science. “I determine what’s practical. I’m an objective voice in a largely subjective industry.”
“I’ve never heard of a job like that,” I say, mostly because I don’t like the idea of it and I’m a little stung that she of all people is implying my work isn’t viable.
She flinches. “It’s real. It’s what I do. Art analyst.”
“All right, well.” I lean my elbows onto my knees. “Go ahead and say what you were going to say. That stuff you saw—it’s not all current. There’s a lot more.”
“Okay.”
She chugs her coffee like it’s fucking Gatorade. I should offer her more, but I’m feeling like a giant exposed nerve right now, and I don’t really want to move. Maybe it’s a good thing if she doesn’t like what she saw. I want to move people, not have them treat my work like it’s scenery. It’s how I connect. It didn’t occur to me before Halston that the person I was trying to connect with might reject my art.
“Don’t get me wrong, your photographs are nice, but I didn’t feel anything.”
I glance down at my hands. They’re red from gripping the mug. She has balls, I’ll give her that.
“Are you mad?” she asks.
A week ago, I might’ve written off her critique, but when I untied that leather bow and read Halston’s words, something in me jarred loose. I was never angry with Sadie. It was the situation, not her, not me. But yes. I am mad. Because Halston’s right. I’ve been looking through the lens, aiming, and hitting a button. Treating the camera like a tool. Forcing it, because I can’t not take pictures after I quit my job to do this. I’ve felt so goddamn numb the last year, though. It’s not even that I want to be. It’s just how I am now.
“It comes with the territory,” Halston says. “If you want to be an artist, you have to be able to take criticism.”
“Really?” I look up. “Is that why you hide your work? So you don’t have to hear what people think of it?”
“I don’t write for anyone but myself.”
I should want to crush her like she just did to me. I put everything into this. I gave up a six-figure salary on Wall Street. I disappointed my ex-wife and her overbearing family. I took stability away from my child. For what? To take uninspired junk photos?
I can’t do it, though. It’d be a lie to say her work is anything but perfect to me. “You should,” I say. “It’s a shame to hide it.”
“I can see you’re good at what you do,” she says quickly, scratching the inside of her elbow. “God. I’m such a jerk. I should’ve started with that.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“No, I’m serious. You have an eye for this. Maybe it’s the models.” She fidgets and glances at the journal every few seconds. “Where do you find them?”
“Wherever. Craigslist, art school, the street—”
“Would you photograph me?” she asks.
She’s just spoken right to my dick. There might not be any quicker way to get me going. Her question inspires all sorts of reactions in me, like how good it feels to look through a lens at someone you want to fuck and know you’re capturing that moment permanently. I’d probably do anything to her she’d allow, but photograph her? I’d give my left arm to have her at my disposal for a few hours—and under my direction.
I don’t need any more invitation. I understand what my work is missing. Her. Someone to move me enough to do more than aim. I pick up my camera bag from the coffee table.
“Oh, no,” she says. “I wasn’t saying . . . I just meant hypothetically.”
“No you didn’t.” I glance up at her. It occurs to me that maybe that’s why she’s here. Maybe this, coming to a stranger’s apartment and having her photo taken, is the red bra. The tattoo. The tell in whatever game she’s playing. “You’ll be a beautiful model,” I reassure her.
“I don’t think . . .” She stares while I unpack the bag, like the camera’s a surgical instrument I’m about to flay her with. “Why?”
“Why not?” I ask.
“This isn’t me.” She uncrosses her legs, smoothing her hands over her knees. “I’m no model, obviously.”
I can tell by the redness creeping up from her collar that she’s nervous. Good. That will come across nicely in the photo, and maybe raw is what I need. “You’d be doing me a favor.” For me, this’ll be almost as good as sex, getting to look at her as long as I like, position her ho
w I want. Except afterward, I can release her back to her boyfriend without feeling like I’ve lost so much. “Ever since I read your journal, I’ve got all this pent-up energy.”
Now, she’s red all the way to her forehead. She’s embarrassed by this, or, maybe she’s turned on. I hope it’s a little bit of both.
“Okay,” she says. “But . . .”
“But?”
“Not my face.”
I frown. Without that, she could be anyone, and that’s not the point of this. She’s the reason I want to take the picture at all. I lower the camera into my lap. “It’s all in the eyes, Halston.”
She shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want it in the shot. It’s better for you anyway. You’re selling a fantasy. Men who want one. Women who want to be one. Without my face, the imagination can play.”
Call me a greedy bastard, but I want all of her. That’s why I sought her out. Why I’m sitting here with her when I shouldn’t be. I pick up her journal again and flip through it.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“I want your face, but if I can’t have it, I’ll take this instead.”
“I don’t understand.”
I’m careful with the pages, as if I’m handling a relic. I hardly know where to start. I want to take a picture that matches how her words make me feel. Sensual, suggestive, unsettled in a way.
I know the passage when I see it. I spread the book and give it to her. “This one.”
“This one what?”
I pick up her coffee mug. It’s empty to the last drop, so I take it in the kitchen, refill it, and return to the doorway. Halston traces her fingertip over the open page. Her blonde hair drapes on both sides of her face, hiding her from me. My couch looks bigger than I remember, she’s so small in the middle of it.
“Read it to me.”
She looks up. “Seriously?”
Steam curls up from the mug. The coffee maker drips behind me. I nod.
“I can’t. I never have, not aloud.”
“Really?”
“When would I have? Nobody knows it exists, except you.”