obelisk.
The three of us talked awhile. Shadow was most admiring of my photographs. She said she thought the ones I, raits she'd d taken of Kim were among the best port ever seen.
'Geoffrey didn't like me when we started out,' Kim told her.
'The first thing he did was tell me to undress Shadow smiled.
'He meant just down to my underwear. But then I fooled him-I took off everything.' Shadow's eyes enlarged.
'Then- what happened?'
'The poor man was totally embarrassed. Shadow was amused.
'Is that true?' she asked me. I nodded.
'It was a good move for both of us.', 'I'd love it if you'd photograph me,' Shadow said.
'The guys I usually work with use me for a prop.' I was hesitant.
'Go on, Geof,' Kim urged. 'Why don't you give it a try?'
I looked at them, they were both staring at me, waiting for a response.
I nodded, crossed the room and started to load my Leica. My hands weren't shaking, but they weren't all that steady either. Then, when I heard Kim urge Shadow to take off her top, I turned around. 'That's not necessary,' I said.
'No, I'd really like to,' Shadow said.
'I think it would loosen me up.'
She stood and pulled off her jersey. She turned to me.
'You don't mind, do you?'
I shrugged, She bent and took off her skirt. When she straightened up she looked fabulous, in her all-black lace bra, garter belt and stockings. Self-assured, totally elegant, the very opposite of 'candy ass.'
As I set up the lights she and Kim joked around. Their girlish banter made me envy them their youth.
I started slowly, working my way around Shadow, not giving commands as I had the first time with Kim. I liked her immediately, I could see she had a way with photographers, knew how to establish a fast rapport, and that she had the kind of face the camera loves, strong sculpted features and skin that can model light. She was a pro. Her moves were good. But I couldn't shoot her face. The only way I could photograph her was to cut her off at the neck and at the knees.
I bluffed the scene out. My hands didn't shake and I managed by pretending I was shooting an advertisement for lingerie. I didn't think Shadow could tell I was avoiding her face, but I was badly disappointed.
Though I had tten to the point where I could shoot intimate pictures of Kim, I realized I was still a long way from being cured.
After half an hour, when I put my camera down, the three of us went out to eat. Shadow led us to a crazy place in Tribeca, a hangout for models and photographers. Here plastic Madonnas, model Statues of Liberty and other souvenir-shop knickknacks were mounted on pedestals and carefully lit. The point, I gathered, was to proclaim that if junk can be presented as art, it must therefore follow that art is junk.
Shadow was a regular there. People greeted her when we came in. Kim was greeted too, by a heavyset man at the bar with big sad eyes and gray wavy hair. She shrugged when I asked her who he was.
'Just one of your own, Geoffrey. Another photographer.'
After we ate, Shadow excused herself. She had a late date, and had to go home to dress. When she was gone, Kim suggested we go on to one of the downtown clubs.
'I feel like dancing. For hours,' she said dreamily.
'Maybe it's the age gap,' I said, 'but I hate those places. I really do.'
'Oh, don't be such a stick, Geoffrey. It's time we had some fun.'
'It wouldn't be fun for me,' I said quietly.
'Something's the matter, isn't it?' She was staring closely at my eyes.
I shrugged.
'It didn't go well-the session, I mean.' So she knew.
'No,' I said, 'it didn't go well.'
'You looked like you were getting into it.'
'I shot her body. I couldn't shoot her face.'
'Well, that's a start at least. Next time it'll go better. It will.
You'll see.'
'Maybe if she hadn't gotten undressed,' I said.
'I think that distracted me.'
'My fault, Geoffrey.' She took my hand.
'I was worried when I saw you hesitate. I thought you needed a distraction. I'm sorry. I really am.'
I think that may have been the moment that I fell in love with her, consciously at least. She was so sincere, solicitous, so sensitive to my needs. She'd seen I was in trouble and had tried her best to help.
'I'll tell Shadow you weren't satisfied,' she said.
'I'll tell her you don't like to show work you don't think is good.
She'll understand. She'll respect you for it. Next time, and there will be a next time, Geoffrey, I'll bring her down and you'll do it like nothing was ever wrong at all…
In the taxi on the way back to my loft she told me she'd been invited to a dinner party by a painter friend and his wife.
'It could be amusing, but I don't want to go alone. I'm going to turn them down. Unless… well, if I could get you invited too, as my date'@he smiled'would you come? Would you, Geoffrey? Please.'
I told her that of course I'd come, and that I'd love to meet her friends.
She kissed me, and when we got home she asked me to put on Double Indemnity again. She wanted, she said, to define for me the very moment when Barbara Stanwyck makes her decision to seduce and recruit Walter Neff.
The next hot, sticky Sunday I took her on an afternoon tour of Soho galleries. I wanted to see the work of various up-and-coming young photographers whose pictures had been touted lately as 'photographic art.'
I hated everything, and by the time we reached the last gallery I was so annoyed I swept her by the pictures fast.
She chased around after me.
'Hey! Stop! Let me look.'
'Nothing here worth looking at,' I muttered, guiding her to the door.
When we were out on the street, she turned to me, mad.
'What's the matter? I liked that stuff.'
'All those perfect prints of sodomy!'
'Well, I kind of liked the style of them,' she said.
'Sure, they're pretty. What he does, he applies 1930s fashion-glamour style to sleaze. The idea is to make ironic comment on the meaning of glamour. Assuming anyone's interested.
'Well, okay.' She pouted for a moment.
'Whose work do you like? What about that Susan Kaufman's?'
'Her stuff's okay, but awfully easy. Take pictures of yourself standing in weird positions, then inscribe feminist slogans across the tops.'
'Stan Kesten?'
I curled my lip.
'Hang out at beaches, airports, amusement parks, shoot snapshots while allowing yourself to be pushed around by the mob. All based on the no doubt sincere belief that by this false-naive technique you'll record the frantic rhythm of contemporary life.'
'You're cruel, Geoffrey.'
'Am I? That's what I'd call Johansen, the one Artforum says is such a corner. For me he's the most sinister.'
'Sinister? Why?'
'On account of his approach, the smarmy way he goes into a suburb, then uses his camera to coldly trap the
