“No one will come in while that light is on. You can undress right here, or behind that screen if you want.” I point to a red-and-black printed screen that stands in the corner.
“Here is fine, I guess.” Sarah’s fingers hover over the buttons on her swiss-dot blouse, which she has fastened all the way up to her neck. With her calf-length navy skirt and sturdy shoes, she seems an unlikely candidate to strip in front of a stranger. But love makes you do crazy things.
I connect my phone to the speaker and put on Lana Del Rey. “How’s this for music?”
Sarah smiles and then, keeping her gaze on the floor, peels off her clothes. I busy myself setting up lights around the shell-pink velvet chaise we have chosen for the shoot.
Shoots like this involve a lot of trust. I ask questions about her fiancé, Jordan, who is about to leave for a stint on the east coast of Africa where he will research and write a report on water quality. Soon enough, she has unleashed her long black hair from its bun and donned a fuchsia merry widow she bought for the shoot. I take some test shots of her lounging on the chaise, adjusting her long, black hair so it falls over one shoulder, moving a leg here, an arm there.
The work makes me think of my fake Tinder account. I wonder if Sarah knows how vulnerable she is right now, and not from an aesthetic standpoint but from a privacy one. These photos could do serious damage if they fell into the wrong hands.
The camerawork is second nature to me by now. I’ve known I wanted to be an artist since I was young. I was that girl who oohed over a new set of Crayolas, opening the cardboard box reverently, inhaling the scent of fresh wax. But I had never thought much about photography before I took Paul’s class my senior year of high school. If you had asked me then, I would have said a photographer is a man who takes pictures of beautiful things—women, mountains, buildings. I didn’t know the names Richard Avedon or Ansel Adams.
It was Paul who taught me that he who controlled the camera controlled the truth. He introduced me to photographers like Mary Ellen Mark, Cindy Sherman, and Nan Goldin, women who had the guts to challenge the mainstream and interject their own worldviews into the conversation.
Whatever else happened, he gave that to me.
A weather-shredded American flag flapping in the wind on the side of an old farmhouse. That’s what I was focusing the lens on when Paul Adamson first touched me, pulling my hair out of my face.
It was a windy March day, the icy mud soaking through my tennis shoes as we tromped through the farmland of rural Connecticut. We were still pretending to be teacher and student. Paul had tacked up a sign-up sheet earlier that week, offering to take students out on a field trip to practice taking landscapes, to put what we had learned about hyperfocal distance into use.
I was the only one who signed up.
Paul put his hand over mine, which was stiff with cold, and adjusted the f-stop on my Nikkormat camera, which was a low-end, mass-produced, single-lens-reflex model from Nikon that could also accept the lenses that fit the company’s coveted F series.
Of course, I didn’t know all that at the time.
I knew only that the clunky camera had been my dad’s, one of the few items that escaped my mother’s purge after he died. It wasn’t until I signed up for Introduction to Photography that I ever used it.
I remember Paul’s hot breath on the back of my neck.
The way his lips brushed my ear as he whispered his instructions.
He had long, slender fingers like a pianist’s. I used to love watching him handle the camera, twisting the f-stop, adjusting the focus. For months, I longed for him to turn those same competent hands on me.
And then, that afternoon, in the back seat of his BMW at the end of a quiet, muddy country road, he did.
I shake the memories from my head and turn my attention back to Sarah. “So how long have you known Heather?” I ask.
“Like, three years. I couldn’t imagine working without her. She’s been sort of like a big sister to me. She’s the one who encouraged me to apply to law school. She’s been so sweet.”
“She’s my neighbor,” I say. “We moved in next door to her.”
Sarah’s face brightens. “I know. She’s told me all about you.”
I look up from the viewfinder. “Really? Like what?”
Sarah flicks her hair over her shoulder. “Just like how you’re so pretty and nice and how you are from Connecticut, just like her.”
I straighten up at the sound of the word Connecticut. “I thought she was from Rhode Island. Don’t you have to be in order to work for a representative from Rhode Island?”
Sarah laughs. “No. I’m from New York. I mean, there are a lot of people from Rhode Island that work in our office, but not everyone.”
“What else did she say?” I try to keep my voice steady.
Sarah shrugs. “I’m not sure.”
The camera feels slippery in my hands, which have become sweaty.
Sarah shifts her position and scowls. “I’m not usually this fat,” Sarah says, shaking me out of my reverie. “But I’m studying for my LSATs, so I’m eating like a pint of Breyers every night.”
“You’re beautiful.” I need to push suspicions of Heather out of my head and refocus on the shoot.
“I look tired. I have these purple bags under my eyes.”
“Any bags, pimples, or stretch marks will be gone by the time I’m done photoshopping, don’t worry.”
Sarah giggles. “Promise me I’ll look gorgeous. I know I can send him selfies and stuff, but I want to
