Chapter 7
7
Saturday, June 28
65 Days Left at the Lake
Ihave the nightmare again. I’m in the stairwell of my condo building, running up one flight, then another, heavy footsteps following me. When I finally reach the top, I find no door, only a black rotary telephone. I pick up the receiver and dial with shaking fingers, but I can never make my voice work.
I open my eyes to the sound of my ringtone, thinking I’m in Toronto. But then I track the water out the window, the green paint-chipped dresser, and the Algonquin Park poster on the wall. Groggy, I answer the phone.
“I can’t run these, Alice,” Willa says by way of greeting. I sit up, immediately awake. “I’m sorry to call you on the weekend. But I wanted to give you time to fix things. I appreciate what you’re trying to do. It’s noble.”
“I’m not trying to be noble. The photos are exactly what was asked for originally.”
“They’re good,” Willa says. “But too many lumps and bumps will distract readers. This is supposed to be about the bathing suits.”
“I don’t think you’re giving your readers enough credit.”
“Trust me,” Willa says. “I’m only asking for a little bit of polishing and a few nips and tucks.”
“Nips and tucks?” Suddenly I feel sick. Nips and tucks were never part of the conversation.
“I’ll show you what I mean. I’ve marked a few areas to slim down. Nothing major. We’ll keep it tasteful. I’m sending the files to you now, okay?”
The email lands as soon as I hang up.
Willa has annotated the photos with red circles around various body parts and instructions.
Smooth, trim, erase .
I pinch my nose between my thumb and middle finger. I can’t deal with this now.
“Is everything okay?” Nan asks, glancing up from her iPad when I shuffle out to the living room. She’s always got a memoir on the go.
“Of course,” I say, kissing her. “Everything’s perfect.” The last thing Nan needs to worry about is my professional angst. “Who are you reading about?”
“Ina Garten. It’s called Be Ready When the Luck Happens .”
“A good motto for a photographer,” I say.
I duck into the kitchen and see that Nan hasn’t fixed herself anything. “Can I make you breakfast?”
“You might be able to fool someone else, but I know when you’re hiding something,” she calls to me.
“Just work stuff. Orange marmalade?”
“I’m thoroughly capable of making that myself,” Nan says as I drop two slices of bread into the toaster.
“But you don’t have to,” I call back. “That’s why I’m here.”
“I hate being a bother,” Nan says when I set a plate of toast in front of her.
“I know.” I’m the same way. “But you’re not a bother. I like helping. It makes me feel useful.”
I return to the kitchen to make my own breakfast. I eat the same thing every morning: two eggs, scrambled; a slice of buttered multigrain toast; and one cup of coffee with steamed milk. “Speaking of which, I’m going to make a meal plan for the week. I’ll go into town for groceries and see if I can find us a sewing machine. Any requests?”
“Scotch.”
Technically, Nan can have a drink, but I don’t want her to take another fall. “I’m not buying scotch.”
“You’re no fun,” she says, but there’s no bite in her tone.
“I’m a little fun.” I think of the selfie I texted Charlie Florek last night.
In the light of day, I can’t believe I sent it, and I can’t deny the rush it gave me. But I’d rather sass Charlie behind the safety of a screen than meet him in real life. There’s a chance he’ll show up this morning with the end tables he promised to bring. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other this summer , his letter said. So once Nan is settled in a patio chair on the deck with her crossword, I pull my hair up and escape to town.
I park beside a black Porsche at the grocery store and roll my eyes at such a blatant display of wealth in a working-class village of twelve hundred people. I’d bet my Pentax the owner is from the city. I scan the other shoppers, wondering whether I could pick out who’s local and who’s an out-of-towner. Bearded lumberjack dude in plaid, addressing the teenage boy refilling the green beans by first name: local. Blonde with the Tiffany bracelet interrupting to ask whether the store carries harissa paste: cottager. It strikes me that Charlie might know the lumberjack. He might be the lumberjack.
I’m choosing from the baskets of local strawberries when I spot a tall man with a head of short golden-brown hair. Even with his back to me, he’s magnificent. My gaze travels over the colossal set of shoulders stretching his blue T-shirt, down to the red bathing suit on his bottom half. His calves are like slabs of concrete—thick and tan and toned. Bodies like this are meant to be rendered in white marble and displayed in a Florentine piazza. He picks up one basket of pickling cucumbers, examines it, and then exchanges it for another. I slide beside him, reaching for an English cucumber with a quiet “Excuse me.”
The man jumps as if I’ve sprung out from behind a bush wearing a clown mask. I squawk, leaping back, and my elbow collides with the field tomatoes. I lose my grip on the cucumber as the tomatoes fall to the floor. Plop, plop, plop. I kneel, cleaning up my mess, and he crouches beside me to help. I catch a glimpse of big hands and bronzed forearms.
“Thank you,” I say, glancing up to find myself confronted by a pair of pale green eyes and one of the most remarkable faces I’ve ever seen.
And that’s saying something. I come across a lot of exceptional faces in my line of work—so many that I’ve become indifferent. It’s not that I don’t appreciate beauty. I do. But classic good looks don’t excite me. I’m far more interested in the features we don’t typically see on the screen and in advertising campaigns.
But this face.
I feel this face in my body. In the twitch of my hands, which desperately want a camera between them. I need to capture this face.
There’s the odd color of his eyes. The way his eyebrows are tapered slashes across his forehead, a touch darker than the hair on his head. His lashes are fringes of feathered gold. He has a mouth made for kissing; his lips are full and pink and pouty. His jaw is squared off, befitting someone who headlines a superhero franchise and bench-presses small cars for sport.
It’s not just that he’s handsome—it’s that nothing about him is too perfect. His nose is slightly crooked, as if it’s been broken. Fine lines fan out from the corners of his eyes. He’s sporting a day’s worth of tawny stubble, like maybe he didn’t get enough sleep last night. I think of twined limbs glowing in the moonlight. He looks like sex.
He’s doing a similar inspection of me, a corner of his grin slowly lifting. My mouth has gone dry, my skin stovetop-hot, and I can’t seem to pull my eyes from his. I chew on my lip. Maybe I could ask to photograph him…
But then he smiles, and the gods of summer must be smiling, too, because a matching set of dimples appears in his cheeks, startlingly boyish and sweet.
It slips past my lips before I can stop it: “Whoa.”
His eyebrows lift.
I scurry to my feet, dropping the bruised tomatoes in my cart while more words continue to tumble from my mouth. They might be thank you and tomatoes and bye . Before he can say anything, I steer my cart toward the next aisle with the speed of a NASCAR driver, cucumber abandoned, just as awkward as I was at seventeen.