It went swiftly. He made his small professional adjustments in depth of field, composition, lighting, nailing her in her beauty into the emulsion, until near the end when he knew he had it and thought himself safely lost in work, she was turned toward him and suddenly his eyes filled and he could not see her in the ground glass. There was the music and the three of them waiting, and he could not see and he could not look up. He took the shot and turned away.
“That does it,” he said.
Ritchie said, “That’s only eleven on...”
“I told you that does it!”
The rudeness shocked them. Ben cut the music. Out of the corner of his eye, Joe Kardell saw Ritchie shrug, saw Jean Anne head for the dressing room. He did not look directly at any of them.
Ritchie took the rolls out to be marked for the color lab pickup and came back and said quietly, “We got the little kids here for the candy thing, Joe. Any ideas how we should set it up?”
“You do it,” Joe said.
Ritchie looked blankly at him. “But you were going to...”
“Do I get arguments, or do you take pictures?”
Ritchie’s face was white. “I’m not going to take this kind of...”
“I’m sorry. I’m very sorry, Ritchie. I... don’t mean any of this. I’ve just got to get out of here. I’m taking off. You’ll do a good job on it.”
“You taking off with her?”
“Don’t push it, Ritchie.”
“Okay. I work for you. But I thought I was your friend. Am I?”
“I’m not keeping track lately,” he said and walked away. He got his hat and topcoat and waited in the corridor. She came out in her rain cape, carrying her kit, and stopped when she saw him, her look startled, glad, apprehensive.
“Joe?” she said, her voice soft and tentative.
“We’ll drive around,” he said.
“All right.” Maybe she was supposed to be somewhere else. But it couldn’t matter to her. Not even enough to mention it or phone in about it. That was the way it took you. It pushed everything else out of focus, like a long lens that brought the clarity to just here and now and the dear beloved face.
They walked down the street to the parking garage and stood silent in the grubby gloom while they brought his car down. All the years of scrupulousness and he could not feel any sense of holiday out of walking away from his work in the middle of the day. He felt heavy, troubled, yet so glad to be with her.
They got into the car, and he turned the wipers on when they turned out into the slow soft rain. He went up to 42nd and west, and then up onto the highway and north, past the piers and the ships and the yellow-gray look of the river. He remembered how it was a thousand years ago, a brassy kid with a used Rollei, the first decent camera he had ever owned, taking that winter essay on the tramp ships and the men, working in the cold pearl light of dawns until his hands were too numb to set the lens. Then all the labor in the borrowed darkroom — cropping, editing, dodging, bringing it all down to fifteen pure, savage prints. Nothing sentimental. Just the hard flavor of how it was to be working on the ships in the winter.
“Jean Anne,” he said, “we have to...”
“I know, darling,” she said. “But not here. Not like this. Where I can see you. Driving along, it’s like talking on the phone, sort of.”
“How did it start? Can we talk about that part while riding?”
“The day you had the headache, Joe. That’s when it started making bad jokes, all trying to make you feel better, and we all got laughing. And when the job was done, there wasn’t anything else scheduled and we did that crazy ad.”
“Forlorn little match girl selling matches outside the Zippo factory.”
“Was it then for you?”
“Sooner. Two weeks earlier. On that eye thing.”
“I wondered about that. I wasn’t right for it. Joe... was it very specific that early?”
“No. I just wanted you there. The jobs I used you on, they seemed more fun for everybody. I told myself that’s all there was to it.”
“Like I did. That’s what people tell themselves, I guess. It’s just this much and nothing more. When they know it can’t be anything more. I didn’t want it to be more.”
“Do you think I did?”
“Now we’re getting into the what-do-we-do part of it, darling, and I have to look at you when we talk about that.”
“Did you know we would talk today?”
“I knew we had to. Soon. I knew you knew it. I knew one of us would... make it possible.”
He took the Cross County over to the Thruway. Traffic was light. He had fifty dollars on him, blank checks, credit cards. She did not ask him where he was going. She had all that quality of trust, of gentle compliance. He wondered how it would be to just keep going. He knew he could not. But he wondered.
He exited at Suffern and drove to the motel road that went up the mountain, turned up that road and, out of some obscure impulse of cruelty, said no word of explanation. He glanced at her. She sat with that blind acceptance of all of it, and there were no tears. But her face was set for tears.
Atop the mountain, he drove past the motel office and on to the restaurant. The parking attendant was not on duty. He drove into the lot, parked, started to open the door to get out. She put her hand on his arm. He looked back at her, and she said his name with her mouth without making a whisper of sound.
As he took her in his arms to kiss her he realized this was the third kiss for them. Such a weight of guilt. Three kisses. In his despair, he made it too rough a kiss. When he realized it was too rough, he made it more cruel, hurting her mouth. The kiss said, at first, this is a man. Not some game. It was pride, and then it shamed him and he released her, got out of the car, and walked around to let her out.
They went to the big restaurant. Quarter to four. The lounge was empty.
“Drink?” he said.
“I don’t think so. Tea, maybe.”
So they went to the restaurant part. It was big and nearly empty. They took a table for two by the windows where they could look far into the gray misty distance, down at a half-seen cloverleaf, a few cars crawling. The waiter brought tea and cakes. She looked at him and then looked down, her face pale.
He made a professional measurement of the quality of the light against the left side of her face and thought, I would use the Nikon with the 105 mm lens, a Plus-X load, go back six feet about, and take this angle, probably a thirtieth at f/2. Portrait of a girl who thinks her heart is breaking, taken by a man who knows his is.
“Mostly it’s how much you are,” he said.
Her eyes lifted. “I think I know what I am.”
“Do you?”
“I’m not fluff, Joe. I’m of consequence. I have value. I take pride. I’m twenty-three.”
“A very old party.”
She took a little cake, bit a corner off of it, then put it down. “Not a pretty baby, or a pretty child, or a pretty little girl. So that they always said, ‘Ah, darling.’ Nobody started saying ‘Ah’ until I was nineteen. Now a pretty woman. Yes, indeed. Pictures to prove it. But it came along late enough so I know what it is. So I don’t give it the wrong value. Do you understand that?”
“I think so.”
“Strong, too.”
“Are you strong, Jean Anne?”
“There was the polio. I told you about that, didn’t I? But not how it was those years of bringing those nerves and muscles back. A lot of hurting, Joe. And pride. But strong for loving, too. I’m sure of that about me. A lot to give. But is there enough strength for us? That’s what I don’t know.”