A Division of the Light (19 page)

“Soon, please,” he told her. “Immediately would be even better.”

She stretched up her arm as though grasping for something just out of reach.

“Right, so if you could just lower your head—not too much; a little more; that's right. Perfect.”

The camera click was loud in the hushed room.

“You still haven't shaved your armpits.”

“You disapprove?”

“No. I photograph real women; I have no interest in centerfolds.”

“That sounds like faint praise.”

“I photograph
natural
women, if you want to put it another way. Ones without silicone implants, or tattoos, or wax jobs on their—”

He suddenly stopped, as if uncertain what he could say. Alice realized that she could assert control by being brutally frank. And at times she liked to shock.

“Cunts?”

Gregory nodded as if he had been about to say something else, and then smiled quietly to himself. “If that's the word you want to use.”

And suddenly she remembered Thomas.

What would he think of her now, Alice wondered, as she stood before a lens with her arm raised like a victor and her head lowered as if in a stylized bow, her nakedness unprotected, the textures and contours of her body so freely displayed?

“I want to photograph your back,” Gregory said.

Without even asking, she turned. Sunlight flared against the windows.

“I don't want your hands by your sides, I want them above your head—this time both arms, and stretched up like an exercise. Imagine you're diving upward into space. If you can raise your heels from the floor, that will help the posture. I'm only going to take your upper part, probably from the back of your thighs upward. Maybe I'll crop your hands and the higher part of your arms, I'm not sure.”

Alice stretched as far as she could. She felt that she belonged to the air that flowed across and surrounded every move. Her entire body tingled unequally, as if beneath her skin the web of nerve endings tightened and relaxed in skeins and nodes of intense warmth. Somehow it would have seemed not unnatural for her feet to lift from the floor for a moment, just as they had left the pavement when she had been robbed, except that this time she really would be suspended in mid-air, held aloft by forces no one knew.

The camera noise was like a counter, advancing into the future.

Alice believed that Gregory was the most experienced man she was ever likely to meet. He was used to the female body; he had explored its characteristics and demands for years and years. She was not certain what a love affair with him would be like—she could be his adventure, his relaxation, or his solace. Whatever was to pass between them, she knew that when it was all over he would accept its end. Gregory's profession, and his true passion, was to record the surfaces of life. He would never be in danger of becoming emotionally, sexually or domestically dependent on her. Probably he would not even share the level of intensity that Alice hoped to reach. When that was depleted, she would weep as she had wept for her other lovers, but it was likely that Gregory would not do even that. He would walk away with a contented finality. And afterward, when both he and Alice were older, and Alice less attractive than she was at this moment, his photographs
of her nakedness would still be as startling and as thrilling as they were on the day they were taken. Her limbs and face, her breasts and belly and hair, had been captured for posterity. Alice Fell would have made her mark on eternity.

“One more pose,” Gregory said.

“Just one?”

“For the time being, and then we can relax for a while. I'd like you to recline on that couch.”

Alice walked back across the room until she reached the long shrouded form at its far side. Gregory followed her. She knew he was watching the way that she moved. They each stepped over a patch of crusted red paint as though it had been still wet.

“Should I lie down?”

“Yes.”

Once again the sheet felt rough against her skin. The weight of her breasts shifted to one side.

“I don't look good like this.”

“Of course you do. But that's not what I want.”

He came closer and put his fingers on the couch's covered arm. She could hear a faint noise as he moved them to the exact position that he wanted her to take.

“You should be face down, but with your hands here, where my hands are. And your head raised. And your legs stretched out behind you. You needn't keep your legs closed. If you have them more than slightly apart that will be good—but don't worry, this won't be an Araki.”

“Who?”

“I mean it won't be explicit. I want to focus on your back—on all of your back. It's a continuation of the set we just took. But the spatial dynamic will be very different.”

“All right,” Alice said, and got into position.

For a few seconds she was on all fours on the couch and both she and Gregory thought of the sexual act. He imagined his hands spread across the top of her hips. She imagined the same, and a rhythmic thrust that would make her breasts sway and that she would brace by taking its weight on her hands.

“Is this right?” she asked.

“Shuffle a bit further forward. Are you comfortable?”

“That doesn't matter. How do I look?”

“Almost right.”

“Is this a copy of another photo? That Araki person?”

“I'm not thinking of any other photographer. I'm just thinking of you.”

Gregory had never intended to portray Alice as uninhibitedly sexual. Instead he had wanted to show her as cool, alert, her sensuality available only to someone she would choose. There was something not quite right about the pose at the moment.

“Wait a few seconds.”

He stood above Alice and studied the way in which the light fell across the curves of her shoulders, the long ridge of her backbone, the pale raised buttocks above which he could just see the faintest tracery of down. Below them her legs were parted at an angle, the raised blue vein just visible, the muscle swelling high at the back of her calves.

Alice could feel his fascination. It radiated from him in waves.

“Gregory,” she said languidly, her eyes fixed on the white sheet just in front of her face. It was so close that it was difficult to keep in focus.

“What?”

“This excites you, doesn't it?”

He did not answer. She asked another question.

“You want to make love to me, don't you?”

Gregory did not know which truth he should admit. Momentarily he looked across the room. Sunlight had advanced a little further across the crumpled sheets. He imagined himself standing above Alice so that his hands traced every curve, every joint, every cleft, but dragging like a weight against the luxuriant vision came the suspicion that she could demand more commitment, more permanence than he would be able to give. And yet a hidden part of Gregory wanted an affair that was complicated, lengthy and cathartic—something that would take a torch to his memories and burn out all the longing from his memories of Ruth.

“You think so?” he asked.

“Don't deny it. I can see right through your camouflage.”

A sudden touch of vertigo made Gregory stand with his feet slightly apart.

“Whatever I feel or don't feel doesn't matter,” he lied. “We're here to take the best photographs that we possibly can.”

Alice made a murmuring noise that sounded like a dismissal. “You can't expect me to believe that you haven't been in this situation before. There must have been times, maybe lots of times, when you finished your sessions by fucking your model.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. But as far as my present model is concerned, I'd be pleased if she would lift her head so that she could look at the far side of the room.”

“Ah, we're being unbendingly professional, are we?”

As soon as Alice lifted her head Gregory framed her face and back and buttocks. Light touched her like a benediction. Her profile stood out sharp and confident against the unfocused background.

“You must have carried condoms with you, just in case it happened,” she continued. “Maybe you've brought some today. I wouldn't know.”

“My sexual life is none of your business.”

Between Gregory's hands the camera felt like a casing for something that was alive.

“You asked me to take this position,” Alice said as if she were just awakening from sleep. “You must have known it was awkward to get into. When I was on all fours and with my backside raised, I couldn't help but imagine things, and those things made me tingle a little. When you saw me like that, didn't you think the same? Don't you think it now?”

Gregory's mouth was dry and even though his legs did not move they still seemed to be shaking as if an electric current was being pumped through them. He walked back to the tripod and fixed the camera on its apex. He wanted to put his hand down the front of his trousers and move his penis into a less restricted position.

Alice maintained her posture but turned to look at him.

“But that would be no way to start, would it?” she asked.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I mean that the first time people make love, they should do it face to face, shouldn't they? That's the way I've always done it.”

Gregory imagined walking across to the couch, dropping onto his haunches in front of Alice, and kissing her wetly on the mouth. Immediately he knew this would be ungainly and ineffective because she had taken the recumbent position he had requested. Perhaps he could kiss her shoulder instead. Or he could kiss the skin at the base of her spine. He could extend his tongue and
place its tip just at the beginning of the cleft of her buttocks. None of her other lovers, he was sure, would have made first moves such as these.

Alice sat up on the couch, knees tightly together, and placed her hands across her breasts to hide them. Gregory wondered if, impulsively, she had suddenly changed her mind. Or perhaps she was taunting him. There was an expression on her face that he could not quite read.

“We're hardly equal here, are we?” she asked.

“I thought we were,” he said, not understanding.

She clicked her tongue in mock reproof. “How can we be? You're fully clothed and I'm not. I'm
vulnerable
.”

Was this an invitation to undress? Dizzyingly, Gregory saw himself in double focus. Firstly as Ruth must have seen him all those years ago—young, confident, energetic; and then as he might seem to Alice—aging, somewhat overweight, his body no longer firm, and his erection perhaps unreliable now that he had once again remembered his wife.

And Gregory suddenly imagined the reproving figure of Cassie observing him, silent and with her arms folded, her mother's beads around her neck, distaste on her face.

“So,” Alice said, “I think it would be better if I was wearing that bathrobe—don't you? It would make us more equal.”

Gregory tried to get all thoughts of his daughter out of his head.

“What's more,” Alice continued, “I don't think I should be the one to pick it up.”

Without a word, he walked to where the robe lay on the sheets. When he came back he held it just out of Alice's reach. Tantalized but disappointed, she did not move.

“This isn't the time for
games
,” she said.

Gregory leaned further forward to allow Alice to take the robe from him. As soon as she had done so she wrapped it quickly round herself, and then stood up so that it draped the lower part of her body. Her nakedness was once more completely hidden.

“There,” she said, “that evens things up.”

They stood facing each other across a ruche of crumpled white sheet flecked with blue like a broken wave.

“Well, Mr. Pharaoh, what now?”

Whatever happened, Gregory wanted to be absolved of responsibility.

“You seem to be driving this,” he said.

They stared at each other as if they were both waiting for the other to break and confess whatever was the truth.

“I'm used to taking the initiative,” Alice said.

“I see.”

Time gathered in the room, layer pressing down upon layer.

“I don't like the obvious,” Alice told him. “I like to be different. Sometimes, I like to shock.”

He nodded and said nothing.

She crossed the space between them in three wide strides, paused in front of Gregory with their eyes still locked, and then slid her hands under his shirt and around his midriff. He felt an inner breathtaking jolt but did not know if it would transmit to Alice's hands.

“I like to do this,” she said, pushing his shirt high up his ribcage so that he was sure she could feel the shallowness in his lungs. Then she bent and touched his left nipple with the tip of her tongue. The sensation was teasingly charged, but even as Gregory was enjoying it he wanted to step back, without knowing why.

Alice gently fastened her lips, and then her teeth, around his nipple. He wanted to break away from her at the same time as he wanted to pin her to the ground and ravish her. She sucked and slowly tilted her head from side to side. Gregory's mind grew fuzzy, as if full of cloud, and at the edge of his hearing there was an insistent, repetitive, annoying noise that made him think of a circular saw whirling as it cut through wood, withdrew and then sliced through wood again.

She stopped and leaned away.

“I have to answer it,” she said.

Only at that moment did Gregory realize that he was listening to the ringing of a mobile phone. Muffled and insistent, it echoed from within the bathroom.

“You don't have to,” he said, reaching out to place his hands on Alice's shoulders as if this would prevent her. Beneath the toweling the contours of her body were like an invitation. She broke away from him.

“Of course I have to. I left the number on the landline answerphone. I'm just doing what you would do. And for the same reason.”