The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel (9 page)

“Call your mother,” Amina said when her cousin rolled the window down, and Dimple nodded even though they both knew she wouldn’t.

CHAPTER 2

“T
hanks for meeting with me,” Amina said, walking into Jane’s office the next day. Jane swiveled around in her chair, perfectly pressed into her black suit, her red pageboy swinging. She pointed to the phone cupped to her head and then to the chair across from her. Amina sat.

“Yes, but it was a bar mitzvah. How do you miss the hora?” she asked irritably. Amina turned her attention to the floor-to-ceiling view of the Puget Sound to keep herself from getting unnerved. It was easy enough to do in Jane’s office, the proportions of which (endless white walls, floor-to-ceiling windows) always made her feel like a gnat suspended in a glass jar.

The person on the other end of the phone was still talking when Jane hung up with a clatter. She frowned, repositioning herself in her seat. “I didn’t realize we had a meeting scheduled.”

“I’m having a family emergency and need to go home.”

“Emergency?”

“My dad’s not well.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Amina shifted, something about Jane’s relentless efficiency, her plucking gaze, making her feel like a liar. “It should just be a few days.” Jane turned to her computer, her mouth twitching as she read the schedule. She looked back at Amina. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No, wait—”

“This is unacceptable.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Sure, it’s your father. What does he have? Kidney stone? Diabetes? Lung cancer?”

“No, but—”

“You told me you would see this through.” She rapped her desk with her index finger. “If I wanted someone to screw it up, I could have sent in Peter.”

“I’d leave on Monday.”

“Not to mention that I’ve already gotten two messages from Lesley expressing concern about your ability to handle her event.”

“Monday as in after the Beale wedding.”

Jane looked at her, coolly recalibrating.

“Monday through Friday,” Amina said, discreetly wiping her palms on her pants. “That should leave me pretty much clear, except for the Johnsons’ fiftieth-anniversary dinner on Thursday night.”

Jane turned back to her computer, pulling up the next week.

Amina cleared her throat. “Two messages?”

“Both ridiculous. I took care of it. But I need to know you’re on top of this.”

“I am,” Amina said, annoyance creeping into her voice. Jane looked amused.

“Looks like Earl is your best bet for Thursday. Peter is on vacation, and Wanda has an eighth-grade graduation party.”

“Eighth grade? Seriously?”

“I told you she’s hungry.”

Hunger, like loyalty and willingness to work unconventional hours, was a quality Jane valued in her staff. When she started the company ten years earlier, she had worked solo, talking her way into
weddings by not charging for her time, just for her prints. It was a strategy that led her to build a devoted base within just a year. Now that Wiley Studios was a twelve-person operation, she was always looking for new growth opportunities. (“God willing,” she’d once murmured to Amina in a rare unguarded moment, “we’ll be shooting every event with candles on this side of the Cascades.”)

Not that Amina needed to prove herself to Jane as much as she had in the early years. If anything, the fact that she’d been given the Beale account was clearly a vote of confidence, even if the reality of dealing with Lesley Beale felt like a demotion.

“So what’s the Beales’ venue?” Jane asked, writing a phone number down on a Post-it.

“The Highlands.”

“Of course. How many times have you been out?”

“Three last week.”

Jane raised an eyebrow. “Nervous?”

“I’m not, I just—”

“Of course you are. Lesley is a legendary bitch. But please her and we become the go-to for the lot of them, and that will please me.” Jane slapped her hands on the desk, signaling the end of the conversation, and Amina stood. “Let me know if you can’t get Earl.”

Coming to work for Jane Wiley hadn’t been Amina’s idea. It was Dimple who had known Jane through mutual friends, Dimple who had gotten Amina the interview at Wiley Studios after her career at the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
had derailed, Dimple who had hustled her out of bed and into the shower five years earlier, claiming she had told her about the job interview the week before.

“Who cares if it’s events? You’ve just got to get out there again. Is this black thing your only suit?” her cousin had said while Amina stood under the pounding water, hungover, hating her.

“Out there” was Wiley Studios in Belltown, where Amina arrived that morning with a tightening forehead, her portfolio and résumé in hand. After a ten-minute wait, she was shuffled down the long hallway
into Jane’s airy office, where a black notebook lay open in the center of a steel desk with a to-do list that numbered into the fifties. Amina’s name was number 14.

Jane had held out a pale hand. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Amina handed over her portfolio and looked away as Jane opened it, feeling, as she always did, that it was a little like watching a needle go into her own arm. Jane’s head bobbed over the pictures.

“What’s this?”

Amina glanced over. A smiling young boy’s face leaned so close, his features were almost blurry. In the background, his older brother sat in a cement stairwell, wearing a Knicks shirt and smoking a cigarette.

“That’s in Brooklyn. For an article on New York’s homeless youth.”

“Is that where you met Dimple? NYU?”

“Yes. I mean, no. Or, well, we met in New Mexico, but then we also went to NYU.”

“And then you followed her here?”

“She followed
me
here,” Amina said, bristling a little, and Jane looked up at her briefly before moving on. The next was an old woman with a puff of white hair, slumping into her lawn chair.

“Record heat in Queens,” Amina offered.

In the next, a young Asian man in a stained shirt clutched his stomach, his eyes rolled back.

“Bellingham hot-dog-eating champion dethroned.”

“Did I see this in the
P-I
?”

“Yes.”

The next photo was of a police officer, a mother, and her son. The officer and the young woman faced each other, while the small boy leaned back against his mother, his hands cupping her knees. A dark look hung in the air between the adults, but the boy smiled, gleefully unaware, his mother’s hands slammed over his ears. His T-shirt had chocolate ice cream stains down the front.

“This?” Jane’s voice was pinched.

“The family of the firefighter who died last year.”

“One of the four in the warehouse accident?”

“Yeah.”

Jane lay the portfolio down. “Well, all we need now is a picture of someone actually killing themselves, and we’ll have a real party.”

Amina sat still, her face prickling with heat.

“Why didn’t you include that one?”

“I thought it wouldn’t be … applicable. To this job. Appropriate.”

“And you’d have been right.” Jane set the portfolio on the desk between them, folding it closed. “But then, none of these are really appropriate, are they? For the job?”

“You haven’t seen them all.”

“I don’t need to. They’re not what I’m looking for.”

“But there might be something—”

Jane held up her hand. “Do you have any weddings in here?”

Amina shook her head.

“Birthdays? Anniversaries? Baptisms? Bar mitzvahs?”

“No.”

“Of course not. Because that’s not really what you do, is it?” It didn’t seem like a question she wanted answered as much as said out loud, and Amina shifted as Jane smiled coldly at her. “What you do is get the stuff that people watch despite themselves. Meanwhile, I need someone who can take good portraits, who knows how to find the smiling moment and capture it. Someone who can replace me at the events.” Amina jumped a little as Jane slapped her hand down on the desk in dismissal. “Thanks for coming. And please tell Dimple I send my best.”

Amina did not move. She knew she should get up, say thank you, and head with quiet composure to the nearest bar, but she couldn’t. Moving would lead to home, to the bed she was never far enough from anymore. It would mean she didn’t have anything else to do in her week. And it was better in Jane’s office, better than it had been anywhere else for a long time. She looked at the files and the memos and the calendar separating days into pristine units of time, aware of Jane’s growing irritation the longer she sat.

“I understand your hesitation,” Amina said at last, her voice coming out softer than she wanted. She cleared her throat. “The thing is that I really can do this.”

Jane frowned. “I’m not sure you’re hearing—”

“No, I can do it well.” Her cheeks blazed. “I can. I have great references from the
New York Post
, and the photo editor at the
P-I
can vouch for me.”

“Listen.” Jane’s voice dropped an octave. “Your cousin told me you were having a hard time after all the hubbub, and I agreed to meet with you, but I can’t go giving out jobs to people just because they’re having a hard—”

“I wouldn’t expect you to pay me,” Amina blurted out.

Jane blinked. “What?”

“I …” Amina licked her lips and felt the words come out rapidly, hitting her tongue and brain at the same time. “Not until you knew I could do it, of course. Until I proved myself. By shooting a wedding. Or weddings. A month of weddings.”

Jane’s mouth puckered.

“If you let me shoot with one of your other photographers, you’ll see,” Amina continued, breathless, terrified. “I wouldn’t get in the way, and I would show you the finished product. If you like any of my shots, they can be made available to your clients. And if I’m not what you’re looking for, you haven’t lost anything.” She pitched back against her chair.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jane said.

“It’s free.”

Jane looked her over warily.

“Fine,” she said at last. “Get to St. Joe’s on Capitol Hill on Saturday morning. A nice big Irish Catholic wedding.”

Amina rose quietly, quickly putting her portfolio away before Jane could change her mind.

“Thanks,” she whispered on the way out the door.

“Ten o’clock sharp,” Jane replied.

That weekend, when Amina showed up at the Murphy-Patrick wedding, she saw someone she barely recognized. Gone were Jane’s terse manner and the dark suit, replaced by a bubbly woman who gave everyone nicknames and winked like she had a nerve condition.

“Thanks, honeys!” she had shouted, waving a hand to dismiss the bridesmaids. “Now I want one with Snow White and Elvis and the Backup Singers! Yup, in a line, just like that.”

The following Thursday had found Amina back in Jane’s office, contact sheets spread across the light box in the corner. She listened to the silence of Jane’s scrutiny—the woman was unnervingly quiet until she didn’t want to be.

“Oh,” Jane said finally, with some surprise. “This one is good.”

“Which?”

“Bride-fixing-hair-before-ceremony.” She glanced up. “Good angle.”

She moved on to the next sheet. “Not bad. Most of these with the bridesmaids are decent. You need to watch your shadows a little, though, make sure you always cheat to make the bride look better than anyone else.”

“Okay.”

Jane paused again over the shots taken during the ceremony.

“Mother of the bride crying works,” she said. “She’ll think she looks noble.”

Amina squeezed her hands together behind her back in a kind of inverted prayer, surprised by how much she cared. Jane moved quickly through the next sheet and the next. She came to the portraits outside the church.

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “Your portraits are off.”

Amina’s stomach fluttered a little. “What?”

“They look uncomfortable.” Jane pushed the loupe toward her. “Look. See how your group look like they’d rather be somewhere else? My guess is you’re coming in late, when the smile gets a little tighter and the shine in the eyes fades. You’ve got to talk between shots to keep them with you.” Amina heard Jane rummaging around next to her. “Look at mine.”

The contact sheet Jane placed down on the light box showed bright-eyed, shiny-cheeked, smiling groomsmen, the Irish Catholic version of the Pips.

“Backup singers,” Amina said.

“Exactly.” Jane took the loupe back, skimming. “Your dance shots are good, but you need to get closer during the toasts.”

“I didn’t want to get in the way.”

“Don’t worry about that. Just be quick.”

She moved on, nodding at several pictures, circling others with a red grease pencil. On the last sheet, her head stopped abruptly.

“What’s this?” she asked.

It was the best picture Amina had taken all night.

“A bridesmaid.”

“Obviously. I can tell by the bouquet and the shoes.”

The shot was a side view of a bathroom stall. The bouquet lay at the base of the toilet bowl like an offering at an altar. Behind it, two taffeta-covered knees pressed to the ground, followed by calves and feet in scuffed satin pumps. And while Amina had known that the bride herself wouldn’t want to see the picture, something—vanity?—had convinced her that Jane would appreciate it compositionally, suddenly understanding the talent she had in her midst.