Nothing but a Smile (12 page)

For his part, Wink didn't seem exactly kid-glove smooth himself, fidgeting with the lights, checking and double-checking the shutter speed, no time to stop and look her in the eye.

For this first session, his role would have to merely be that of art director, wardrobe assistant, corner man, maybe cheerleader. Since he didn't trust himself adjusting the focus yet, she would still have to supervise the actual operation of the camera, then hop back around in front of it.

The bathrobe was Chesty's, so it dragged on the floor, and underneath, she had on leg makeup and Wink's khaki dress tunic from his army uniform—all of which exposed far less than he'd already seen in pictures from the other two shoots. Heck, the first one, she'd been topless, even. So being jumpy about this didn't make any sense—
rationally.

Of course, those two earlier times, he hadn't been standing right there, right in the room with her. Suddenly, this whole thing felt pretty cockamamy.

“You need a belt?” he asked, and she thought he must be as
flummoxed by this as she was, because he should have understood that she wasn't going to wear the bathrobe once they started. So no, she wouldn't need a belt.

“I don't think so …” She scooted over to the mirror one more time and opened the robe to take a peek. They were set up in the little studio area in back that they normally used for passport photos and children's portraits. The mirror was a little low—just about bow-tie height for the grade-schoolers.

The plan was to mince around in various configurations of his old uniform, like she was trying it on, clowning around for her soldier boy. It wasn't much of a theme, but she thought they'd better keep it simple: it was going to be hard enough concentrating on posing and being sexy with Wink there for the first time.

Adjusting her wig, she turned back to take her place and saw he had slipped away. She could hear him on the stairs, clumping back down, in a hurry.

He appeared with her pop's antique bathtub gin, taking a pull. She'd misunderstood about the belt.

With a gasp and a wipe of his mouth, he held it out for her, giving her another chance to refuse. This time, she took it.

And then she took her place on the
X
they'd marked on the floor with black tape, put on a smile, slipped off the robe, and tossed it clear of the shot.

He was trying his hand at making prints, practicing on their first roll of girlies together, when he heard a rap on the door frame that held the blackout curtain that was the darkroom door.

Sal was running the shop, so either it was even deader out front than it normally was or he'd lost track of the time and she'd already locked up for the day and wanted to see about dinner.

He grunted that it was safe to come in, not looking up, concentrating on the print in the developer tray, watching each click in the sweep of the luminescent clock. He figured she was watching pretty intently—the teacher and her apprentice—and it only made him concentrate harder as he gripped the photo with the rubber tongs, lifted it from the developer, and dropped it into the stop bath. Swishing it around gently, he turned it over, curious to see how he'd done.

There seemed to be a nice range of black and white. This business of contrast was a tricky one. The line of Sal's cleavage needed to be deep and dark but not so overexposed that she looked like she had a stripe of chest hair.

“Hmm,” she murmured, noncommittal.

With the tongs tugging one corner, he held it up to the safe-light for a closer look.

He felt her sliding up behind him, peering over his shoulder. Her hair brushed his neck and he got a whiff of her. Even over the stink of the chemical baths, there was a difference: her perfume was more hibiscus and lavender; Sal's, he'd noticed, was more lilac. This was Reenie. It had to be—it wasn't just her hair brushing his neck now, but her lips.

“Oh,” he said, and she found his mouth.

“Oh yourself,” she said.

He pulled away, realizing she was peering down at the photo in the fix. Flipping it back over, thinking he'd better cover up the work he had hanging up to dry, he said, “Listen, that's not who you think it is.”

“Please,” she said. “Don't hand me that. I'd recognize that cleavage anywhere.” She had that evil arch to her eyebrow she
did so well. “Looks like you and Sal're teaching each other all
kinds
of things.”

Reenie's reaction was not quite what he expected. Instead of acting jealous or disgusted or accusing the two of them of carrying on together, she simply said, “I want in.”

“In?” he said.

Her black pageboy bobbed as she nodded enthusiastically. “On the fun. And the cash, of course. I'm assuming there's cash to be made.”

It was Sal who said, before he could even think of it, “We'd pay a straight modeling fee, sure.”

In other words, Reenie would not be getting a third. Sal was shrewd like that, full of business savvy, and it was amazing to Wink that she and Chesty were having financial problems, with that kind of tough talk.

Reenie didn't seem to be thrown by this. She seemed more concerned with cooking up creative possibilities they could explore, immediately spewing half a dozen ideas for cheap and easy themes for pinup pictures, just off the top of her head, which would involve only a few readily attainable props and costumes. “You're using leg makeup, right? Well, you should shoot her
putting on
the leg makeup as a separate shoot first—one about a gal making do without real nylons—then change the wig and do whatever you were going to shoot. That way you've got two photo stories for the price and trouble of one.”

Sal shot him a look that told him she was damn impressed and would file that idea away.

Reenie asked what Sal got paid for the first batch, and she told her. Reenie then suggested they might consider, at some point down the line, making some bigger bucks with some of
the so-called after-hours clients she'd heard about back at LD&M. “There are people like this character Mr. Price or Pace or something—they come in and hire the art department for special jobs, unofficial. Deininger especially. Girlie calendars, card decks, that angle. Some of it's kind of, you know …
French.
I'm just thinking, if you ever want to cut out the middleman, skip over these magazine publishers. I understand it can be very heavy on the do-re-mi, and that's always a good thing.”

“We're fine for now,” Sal said, a little stiffly, he thought. “But thank you for your suggestion.”

“I'm just saying,” Reenie said, “if you're doing it, do it all out, is all …”

He knew that she wanted to go back to school to study properly to be an art director. Maybe she was thinking that between the pay from her day job at Stevens-Gross and some extra cash on the side from posing, it would be enough to get her that degree.

Or maybe she was just a little nuts. That was also a strong possibility.

He'd suspected as much the night he'd given his little art lecture for the two gals down the street at the Art Institute, when, after they both said good night to Sal, Reenie quietly tiptoed back up the stairs and slipped into his apartment.

As soon as she had the door closed, she leaned back against it, looked him earnestly in the eye while gliding her hand down his pants, and whispered, “You know I'm not one of those victory girls, right?”

He said he knew.

“I don't just throw myself at every boy who serves, okay? I'm
fun,
sure. Or I can be. But I don't just push right over for every man in uniform. Get me, buster?”

He was having trouble swallowing. “Gotten,” he said, and it came out funny.

“Like you, for inst—you're not in uniform. And I'm planning on climbing all over
you
like ivy on a trellis. So what kind of a golldarn victory girl is that, huh, dreamboat? There goes that theory right out the ever-lovin' window.”

He didn't tell her he'd given up having
any
theories about
anything
having to do with
any
woman
at all
ever since arriving back in Chicago. He didn't tell her anything because she had her tongue in his mouth, and she was pushing him back toward the narrow bed.

She enjoyed it best of all when the letters from Chesty were typewritten, like this one was. Not because his handwriting was so awful, but she had to think that it meant he was safely back out of the fray, working closer to civilization (if they had such a thing down there on the other side of the world) and not pinned down in some jungle skirmish, assigned to cover the wrong story at the wrong time. A typewriter meant he had a chair and probably a desk—both good signs, in terms of danger.

There were six pages to the thing, and this last she handed to Wink to read:

She showed it to him just so he would know she wasn't misinterpreting or misrepresenting her husband's desires in any way.

“Well, okay,” Wink said. “I guess that settles that. Should I run out and get a little throw rug or a potted geranium, maybe a pretty frame for that picture of my girlfriend, really settle in for good?”

She wasn't sure why he was being so sarcastic about it—it wasn't like they were holding a gun to his head and making him stay there.

“You have a girlfriend?” she asked, thinking maybe Reenie had already succeeded in working her charms on him.

He snapped his fingers like she'd suggested a crackerjack
idea. “Oh right!” he said. “I should probably pick up one of those, as well. I mean, as long as I'm getting the comfy rug and the geranium and the picture frame.”

The conversation just sort of ended. When he shuffled off to his end of the hall, and closed his door, she had a good idea he was having a belt of something.

The man took a nip more frequently than she remembered her husband doing, but maybe she was just idealizing Chesty, since he was gone. And maybe her husband would be drinking more now, too; perhaps as much as Wink. War changed men. One more drink or two here and there could hardly be the worst result, given the other choices, like shell shock or paraplegism or trench foot. Or, well,
death.

She thought that if she didn't know better, she'd think Wink was peeved about something, even acting a little hostile.

She'd never felt like she was head of her class in guessing what went on in the thick domes of men, and she was sure as hell out of practice lately.

Tuning in one of the least dreary soaps on the radio, she sat down at her kitchen to write Chesty a nice long response and cram it full of love and understanding and other sweet nothings.

The next check arrived with an advance copy and a friendly note saying,
Send us more of “Winkin' Sally.” Love her!

He stared at it like it was Japanese.

With no idea what they were talking about, he flipped
through the pulpy pages of the magazine till he recognized Sal's smile.

Two pages of familiar photos, with this headline:

Under the photos of Sal in his tunic and overseas cap were the following inane captions: “DRESS
inspection? Gee, I'm not sure
where I left it
last!” … “To be fair, I'm only
half
out of uniform” … “GI must stand for ‘Getting Ideas'!” … “At
EASE
? Who you calling
EASY
, soldier?!” … “Let's try bouncing a quarter off your bed— or
something! …” …
“So does my uniform pass muster, buster?”

He stared at it for the longest time before he could even begin to piece together what in Jesus' name happened.

He'd been plastered. Always a fair guess, but he was pretty sure, thinking back, he'd been feeling mopey and blue up in his room, burned up about his hand, unable to draw, feeling lonesome and still thinking about those shots he'd taken of Sal the night before, half in his uniform, as the corny copy said, and how they were right downstairs, all printed out and the negatives safe in their waxpaper sleeves, all set to go off to the magazine publisher. He remembered that they hadn't sealed the manila envelope, but agreed to leave it there, unsealed, for twenty-four hours, just in case they changed their minds. Also in the envelope was a release form the publisher had sent along when they bought Sal's first series, the shots she'd done on her own in the kitchen.

The late hour and the low spirits and the descending hash mark on his bottle got the better of him, and he snuck downstairs with the bold determination to spread the photos out
on the darkroom workbench and whack his pecker. Wax the dolphin, as someone used to say back in the PTO. Except he couldn't go through with it. Instead, he looked at each of them, in the red glow of the safelight, and took another pull on his bottle each time, toasting her: “To Mrs. Chesty Chesterton …”

And the form was there on the workbench, having spilled out of the envelope with the rest of the contents. She had almost completed it, but it had gotten kind of late, so she'd agreed to finish it when the waiting period was over and they mailed it in.

He was pretty sure now, thinking back to that hazy night, he must have snatched up a grease pencil and, with his shaky left hand, scribbled
Wink-n-Sal
encircled by a heart, right on the form, then shoved it in the envelope and licked it closed. He seemed to remember thinking he was filling out the space for
Contributing artist(s):
but possibly it hit a little closer to the line that read
Working title, if applc.