*****
I was only gone a few minutes. I didn’t know what she’d like, so I ordered two enchiladas, two crispy tacos, two chalupas, each of them one with chicken and one with beef, a quesadilla, with some beans and rice. I asked for a couple of cervezas too, but the sweet Mexican mama at the register said she couldn’t. An extra twenty-dollar tip and a vow on my mother’s life that I wasn’t a cop later, she capitulated.
When I arrived back up from the joint downstairs, my arms full of food, the mood in the studio had changed dramatically. The second thing I noticed was the fluorescent tubes that lined the ceiling were switched off, replaced with the standard lamps, my studio lights with filters covering them, even some candles around the cot, which I didn’t know I had.
The third thing I noticed, as I put the food down on a small table by one of the sinks, was that Paige seemed to be reordering my prints. She’d found a few more in another folder and was hanging them, taking them down, then rehanging them in a different sequence.
Oh, and she’d found and changed into one of my old shirts, too. It was white once, now more of a beige, and had a developing fluid stain on the left cuff, and hung kinda baggy off her slender body. She’d also ditched her pants, as well, and that firm, toned ass, wearing only a thong and peeking out from under the shirt as she reached up to hang a print, that was the first thing I noticed when I walked in.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she called without turning around, “those industrial lights were making me feel blotchy. And I needed to get out of those clothes.”
“I don’t mind at all,” I replied, the unencumber view of her buttocks sending signals through me that only my cock could respond to. It all came flooding back, the desire I had for her, and I suddenly felt like a drooling manimal. “What are you doing, by the way?”
She turned around, the shirt covering her again, except for a tasteful glimpse of the swell of her breast and her long, shapely legs. “I was trying,” she began with a girlish smile, “to organize your previous works into the order I think you took the pictures.”
“I see you have the one showing you on the far end.”
“I needed a reference point,” she said, then pointing at the print on the end nearest her. “This one looks like the earliest.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked laying out all the food so it was easily accessible, then twisting open the two beer bottles.
The picture showed a nearly naked actress, smiling, laying on a dark floor, kicking her feet playfully in the air. She was supposed to be the next big thing not long not long after the photoshoot but she disappeared into obscurity,thanks to a dreadful Michael Bay movie. I couldn’t even remember her name. “You can almost feel the fun, the irreverence, the sexual energy,” Paige told me, “I’ve no doubt you guys fooled around after the picture.”
“Actually, it was taken during,” I mumbled. That I did remember. I expected Paige to judge me but she just smiled.
“Then this one,” she pointed at the one set next to the shot of her, “Looks like the latest one.”This was a shot of Helena. Black and white, she looked gorgeous, made up and dressed up to attend some power meeting, looking at us from her own reflection in a mirror. Only she was naked from the waist down and acting like she had no idea her bare ass was on show. “It looks so…”
“It’s okay, I’m a big boy,” I reassured her.
“It looks so staged, so unnatural. The model is beautiful, sure, but its missing something. If anything, I’d put your picture of me more like here.”
She moved the image of herself another two-thirds of the way along toward the first. “That’s amazing,” I told her. She came and sat back down next to me, a plate of food on her lap. “You’re right, Paige, absolutely. You’ve got some eye.”
“But why?” she spluttered, her mouth full of food as she demolished the pile on her paper plate. “Why does the picture of me fit so far down the line, but not at the end?”
“It’s something I’ve been struggling with for a long time,” I decided to confess to her. She’d come clean with me about everything, it seemed only fair I do the same. “When I told you, and the class, that your picture was the best I’d taken for as long as I could remember, I meant it.” I actually struggled to breathe. This was the first time I’d spoken out loud about what I’d suspected for so long. “I lost whatever it was that made my pictures special, years ago. I haven’t produced anything I could call art in over a decade. I sometimes feel like I never did.”
“That’s bullshit,” Paige offered.
I carried on, regardless. “I haven’t created for such a long time because I haven’t felt inspired for years. I used to think all the sex and partying inspired me, but the further I indulged into that world, the further I got from taking a decent picture.” I stopped talking because I could feel a tear welling in my eye. “Until I saw the shot I’d got of you.”
I suddenly realized, as I closed my mouth, that our faces were so close together, I could feel her soft breath on my lips. I couldn’t deny myself any longer. I sure wasn’t feeling on top of my game and I felt like I’d never been in a moment as intimate as this in my life. I was actually nervous, terrified she’d pull away and slap me, but I leaned in and kissed her.