Emerald City (8 page)

They look. It is delicate as a birdcage. Jann squints behind his camera. The rhythm of the shutter mingles with the breaking waves. Catching it, the girl begins to move.

“There,” cries Jann, “that’s it!”

They look again. Bernadette looks and sees it, too, feels the others see it. In the way the light falls, there is something; in the girl’s restless hands, her sad mouth. A stillness falls. She is more than a skinny young girl on a beach; she is any young girl, sad and longhaired, watching a frail line of horizon. The camera clicks. Then the moment passes.

Alice leans down and scratches at her knee. Bernadette looks at Jann and sees him smiling.

“Bingo,” he says.

In town the wind blows, filling the air with dust and tissue candy wrappers. There are lots of widows in Lamu, old squat women who clutch their dark veils against the wind. In the market square they hunch beside baskets of dried fruit, seeds, purple grain. The air smells burned.

The group is staying in an old two-story hotel near the waterfront—the sort of place that conjures up piano players and rough men toasting their motherlands. It reminds Bernadette of the hotel in New Orleans where she spent her honeymoon. Like that hotel, this place has ceiling fans. Last night she lay in bed and watched hers spin.

After dinner, Alice tells of how she was discovered. It happened at the shopping mall, she says. All the girls walked through. You had to bring snapshots. She had one of herself riding on her brother’s shoulders. The two other models look bored with the story.

Bernadette lights a cigarette. She turns to Jann, who is flipping through a magazine. “What does this remind you of?” she says.

He looks up, his blond eyebrows raised. He is gentle and brawny, like a Viking from a children’s book.

“What does what remind me of?” he says.

“This. All of us.”

Jann seems confused, so she goes on. “Have you noticed how no one really likes each other?” she says. “We’re like a family.”

He is amused. He takes a long drink of beer and runs his hands through his hair. “Speak for yourself.”

Bernadette laughs and then stops. “What’s holding us together?” she asks.

“That’s easy,” says Jann, leaning so far back in his chair that the cheap wood creaks. “That’s a no-brainer.”

“Humor me,” says Bernadette.

He leans forward, resting his elbows on the oilcloth tabletop. The wind carries snaking bits of music in from the narrow streets. The models have wandered away, and the room is filled with people so black their skin shines blue in the light.

“We’re on a fashion shoot,” he says.

He rolls a matchstick between his palms and then waves at the waiter for two more beers. Flies settle on the table’s edge. He looks at Bernadette. “To getting those shots,” he says, raising his beer. He sounds uneasy. Bernadette drinks from her bottle, letting her head fall back. Her neck is long and white. Jann watches her throat move as she swallows.

“To the hand that feeds us,” she says.

Now the girls gallop over. They want to go dancing someplace. In Mombasa there was a discotheque filled with young African whores who danced languidly and waited for business to arrive. The girls were fascinated.

“Not in Lamu,” says Jann. “Remember, there aren’t even cars.”

Alice yawns openly, like a cat. Her teeth catch the light. She leans down and rests her head on Jann’s shoulder. In a helpless, teenage way she has adored him from the start.

“I’m sleepy,” she says.

Jann glances at Bernadette and pulls the girl into his lap. He runs a palm over her soft hair, and she relaxes against him. Her long legs scatter toward the floor. All of them are silent. The girl squirms and moves her head. At this hour two months ago, she would be kissing her father good night. She climbs to her feet. “Well,” she says, looking from Jann to Bernadette, “see you tomorrow.”

She wanders in search of the other two, who have left her behind.

“Poor kid,” says Jann.

As they watch her go, Bernadette reaches under the table and touches him, softly at first, then more boldly. It’s amazing, she thinks, how you can just do this to people. Like stealing. Luckily, the youngest girls don’t know it.

Jann looks at her and swallows. She decides that he is younger than she thought. She sips her beer, which tastes of smoke, and does not move her hand. “What does this remind you of?” she says.

He shakes his head. Color fills his cheeks.

“Let’s go upstairs,” says Bernadette.

They leave the bar and climb the narrow flight of steps to the hotel rooms. Bernadette presses her palms against the walls. She is drunker than she thought. They pause at the top, where insects dive against an electric bulb. Jann hooks his fingers into the back of Bernadette’s jeans and gently pulls. Desire, sour and metallic, pushes up from her throat.

“Your room?” she says.

Jann’s bed is neatly made, its curtain of mosquito netting twisted in a bundle overhead. He goes into the bathroom and shuts the door. Bernadette stands at the window. There is no glass, just wood shutters that have been pulled aside to let in the night wind. A bright moon spills silver across the waves. Painted sailboats line the shore.

She hears the toilet flush and stays near the window, expecting Jann to come up behind her. He doesn’t. The bed squeaks under his weight.

“You know,” she says, still facing the sea, “this reminds me of something.”

“Everything reminds you of something,” he says.

“That’s true. One of these days I’ll figure out what it is.”

“Any ideas?”

“Nope.” She stretches so that her stomach pulls. “It must be one of the few things I haven’t seen or done.”

Jann is silent. Bernadette wonders if he has pulled the netting down.

“Well,” he says, “then it shouldn’t be hard to spot. When it comes along.”

Bernadette lifts off her shirt. Her bra is black, her breasts full and white inside it. There is too much flesh. This has always been the case, but after a day of dressing girls with pronged hips and bellies like shallow empty dishes, her own body comes as a surprise. She turns to Jann. “I’ll know when I’ve found it,” she says, “because it won’t remind me of anything else.”

He is lying down, hands crossed behind his head. His photographer’s eye is on her. Her body feels abundant, tasteless. She wishes she had left her shirt on.

“If you close your eyes,” she says, “you won’t know the difference.”

Jann shakes his head. The ceiling fan spins, touching Bernadetten bare shoulders with its current. She goes to the dresser and finds scattered change, film containers, a pack of cigarettes. She takes one out and lights it. There are Polaroids: two from this morning in town, another from the docks. She finds one of Alice in the dunes and holds it up. “What do you think of her?” she says.

“Cute,” says Jann. “Stiff, though. New.”

“She has a crush on you,” says Bernadette. “I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“Poor kid,” says Jann. “Should be going to high school proms.”

Bernadette looks again at the picture. Sunlight fills the girl’s hair. The sand is pale and bright as snow, the sea turquoise. She longs suddenly to be in those white dunes, as if she had never seen anything like them before. She must remind herself that she was standing just outside the shot, that she chose the girl’s bathing suit.

“Have you ever noticed how meaningful these things can look?” she asks.

Jann laughs. “Have I noticed?” he says. “It’s my shot.”

Bernadette flips the picture back among the others. Her voice goes soft. “I meant in a general sense.”

“In a general sense,” says Jann, “that’s how they work.”

The room is filled with stale light. Bernadette goes to the bed. It’s amazing, she thinks, how lust and aggravation will combine to push you toward someone. She sits on the bed and then wishes she had headed for the door. She would have liked to make him ask. He would have asked, she thinks.

She stretches out beside him under the twisting fan. It reminds her of a scissors. They do not touch.

“So,” she says, addressing the fan, “are you planning to cash in?”

“On what?”

“On Alice.”

His arms tense. “Are you always like this?”

“You bring out my best side,” says Bernadette.

She takes his face in her hands and kisses his mouth. The sourness wells up around her gums and teeth. She wonders if Jann can taste it. She presses her stomach against him and works the T-shirt over his head. Undressing a person is easy—she makes a living at it. Jann smells like the beach. His chest is nearly hairless.

“What’s the matter?” he says.

His eyes look cloudy and small. He pushes her down and moves above her now, pulling off her jeans one leg at a time. She watches his arms, the same thready muscles and veins she has watched as he held his camera these past days. She probes them with her nails, leaving small white crescents. He doesn’t protest. She has him now, she knows it. And yet, she thinks, what difference does it make?

Later, when they have made love and the sounds of the bar have died down, Jann and Bernadette lie still.

“You know,” she says, “this room is a lot like the one where I spent my honeymoon. New Orleans.”

“Honeymoon?” he says.

“Sure. What else was there to do in the early seventies?”

Jann says nothing.

“I was pretty then,” she adds. “My hair was down to here.

She turns a little, touching the base of her spine. The skin is damp.

“You’re pretty now,” says Jann.

“Please.”

He runs a finger down her cheek.

“Stop it,” she says.

“How come?”

“Because old skin always looks tear-streaked.”

“How old are you?” he asks.

“Thirty-six.”

He laughs. “Thirty-six. God, what a business we’re in.”

Bernadette touches her cheek in the place where Jann’s finger was. She presses the skin as though searching for a blemish.

“I’ve been a stylist for sixteen years,” she says. “I felt competitive with the girls at first. Now I feel maternal.”

“Sixteen years,” says Jann, shaking his head.

“They’re younger now,” she says. “You know that.”

“They get older, too. Think what it’s like for them.”

“Who knows? They disappear.”

“Exactly,” says Jann.

They lie in silence. Bernadette decides she will go back to her own room. Conversation is meant to get you somewhere, and she and Jann have already been and gone.

“You know,” he says, “it’s hard to picture you married.”

“I hardly was. It lasted a minute.”

“How did it end?”

“Christ!” she says. “What have I started here?”

“Tell me.”

She narrows her eyes and sits up. With her toes she searches the floor for her sandals.

“You can’t answer a simple question,” says Jann. “Can you?”

Bernadette touches her knuckles to her lips. The door is ten feet from the bed. She wishes she were dressed.

“I got restless,” she says.

“Restless,” says Jann.

“You know—restless? I kept thinking how many places there were.”

Jann laughs. “I guess you picked the right life.”

“I guess so,” says Bernadette. She fumbles for her lighter. “You know,” she says, “you ask too many questions.”

She lights a cigarette and smokes it lavishly, sending out plumes through her nose and letting the smoke roll from her mouth. She thinks how much she loves to smoke, how conversations like this would get to her otherwise.

“So,” says Jann, as she stubs her cigarette into the half-shell ashtray, “were they as nice as you thought? The places?”

“Sure they were nice. They were very nice. This is nice.” She waves her arm at the ceiling. “I’ve been all over the world. You’ve done it, too, right?”

“I’ve done it, too,” Jann says.

She shrugs, then slides her feet into her sandals and lights a last cigarette. One for the road, she thinks.

“My only regret,” she says, “is that I hardly have any pictures of myself. All I’ve got is the shots I styled.”

Jann nods. “It’s like looking through someone else’s photo album.”

Bernadette twists around to look at him. He has a sweet face, she thinks. “That’s right,” she says. “That’s exactly how it is.”

She stubs out her half-finished cigarette. She wishes she had left ten minutes ago. She will stay another half hour, she thinks.

She lies back down, her body facing Jann’s. His shoulder smells faintly sweet, like beeswax. She places her palm on his stomach, but when she tries to move her hand, Jann covers it with his own.

“Of all those places you’ve been,” he says, “which was your favorite?”

Bernadette sighs. She is tired of questions. Strangely, she cannot remember anyone having asked her this one before. Is that possible?
she wonders. Surely someone asked, surely she had some answer. She tries again to move her hand. Jann holds it still.

“I liked them all,” she says.

“Bullshit.”

She feels a surge of regret at finding herself still here, at getting caught in this discussion. Jann moves her hand from his stomach to his chest. The skin is warmer there, close to the bone. She can feel the beating heart.

“There must be one that stands out,” he says.

Bernadette hesitates.

“New Orleans,” she says. “My honeymoon.”

It is the only place she can think of. She feels suddenly that she might begin to cry.

Jann lets her hand go. He turns on his side so they are facing each other. Their hips touch.

“It must be quite a place.” His voice is gentle now.

Bernadette moves against him. She cannot stop herself. Jann takes her head in his hands and makes her look at him. “Hey,” he says, “what does this remind you of?”

He is playful, teasing. A thin silver chain encircles his neck.

“Nothing,” she says. Something is caught in her throat.

For a moment neither moves.

“Okay,” says Jann, pulling her to him. “Here we are, then.”

The next morning they stagger through the dunes, giddy with exhaustion. It is still early, and the light is pale, frosted. It bleaches the waves. Jann is unshaven. Bernadette can’t stop looking at him.