“I’d rather just get started. I brought this too,” she says and out of one of her army coat pockets, she pulls an eye shadow kit.
I’m overcome by this kindness. I’m about to say, Yes! Thank you, but she looks up at my eyes. “Wait, is that . . . Are you still wearing what I put on your eyes, like, a week ago?”
“No,” I say, even though it is. “This is just my stuff,” I tell her now. “I was just experimenting. Before you came.”
“Oh,” she says. “Well it looks good like that. You should just leave it. Unless you want me to touch it up?”
Now it feels like too much to ask.
“Oh, no, that’s okay. I mean, if you think it looks good like this . . .”
She’s staring at me, blinking. I realize she’s waiting for me to get going. I go get changed without her help, without her consultation. It all feels like drowning.
“So where do you think I should stand?” I ask her when I come back.
“Wherever.”
“I was thinking here?” I say, gesturing toward the space between my bookcases and my CD towers, beneath my print of The Scream.
After she gives me a very slight nod of her head, I arrange myself in my chair and crane my neck as far forward as possible while letting my hair fall in front of my face.
“How do I look?” I say, without moving my lips.
“Like Cousin Itt in mourning. Might try moving your hair out of the way. Also, smiling.”
I can’t tell her I don’t want to broaden my cheek circumference. She wouldn’t understand. Also, with the camera on me, my face stiffens. Feels paralyzed. I force my lips to curl on one side.
“How about now?”
She lowers the camera and looks at the pomegranate-scented tea light I’ve lit and placed on the nightstand.
“Think we’re going to need more light.”
“What if I lean into it more?” I crane my neck forward toward the candle flame.
“Yeah, that won’t work.”
“I thought you said your dad had a special camera. One that can see in the dark.”
“There are no cameras like that, Lizzie.” She flips a switch on the camera and then starts clicking again. This time a flash goes off. Blinding. I reel from it.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t need flash,” I say.
But she keeps clicking and clicking. “What?”
“I said, ‘How do I look?’”
“Like I just murdered your gerbil. Relax a little.” She clicks some more. Clicks and clicks. Too fast. I want to tell her to slow down. Tell me how it looks. Give me a chance to change outfits, lighting, location. Angles. We need to try different angles.
My Wonder Woman phone rings and rings.
“That him?” she asks me, jutting her chin at the phone.
“Yeah,” I say out of the corner of my mouth.
“Answer if you want,” she says.
“It’s fine,” I say. I don’t really want her to hear us talk. Also, I’m afraid if she stops now she won’t take any more.
“Answer,” she says. “I could use a break anyway.” She puts down the camera and picks up my pack of cigarettes.
When I pick my phone up and say hello, I’m aware of how my voice changes. I become the oversexed nymph who will wander the hinterlands of Calcutta with him. The one who is all sinew and braceleted bone. I hear the wistful notes, the breathy affectation I can’t help. I turn away from her while I talk.
“Are you taking the pictures?” he says.
I look over at China. She’s at my desk surfing the net, smoking.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, okay. I didn’t mean to bother you. It’s just I can’t wait to see them. I’m honestly getting hard just thinking about it, I swear. I’m in the middle of creaming my pants right now.”
“That’s nice,” I whisper into the receiver.
“What did you say? How come you’re talking so softly?”
“No reason. I just said, ‘That’s nice.’”
“You keep saying that! And I keep telling you it isn’t nice. It really isn’t.”
“I should go.”
“Wait! When will you send them to me?”
“Later today, probably. Like, tonight, I guess.”
I hang up and turn around to find China still sitting at my computer. She’s found one of the pics Blake sent me in my drawer.