Black and White

It’s nearly ten o’clock, and I’m fucking lost. The directions the bride gave me are chicken-scratched on a note stuck to my steering wheel. I’m supposed to be shooting the preparation photos in five minutes. If I don’t figure out where I took a wrong turn, I’m going to miss the getting-ready shots.

I pull over on the side of the road and flip the sticky note sideways. Maybe I’m reading the damn thing wrong. But, no, I seem to have followed every stupid turn and winding road. Having a beach wedding in August seems smart to me, unless nobody can find the damn place.

I wonder if I didn’t get a little lost on purpose. Some subconscious thing. I hate shooting weddings. There are a million-trillion things to photograph in this world, and I like almost all of them more than weddings. I once shot a spider exhibit at the zoo, some rare creature that they were milking for venom. That spider may have had fangs and hairier legs than me in the middle of the winter, but it was no scarier than some of these brides. Done up to the nines, baring their white teeth like they want to take a bite out of you just for being there, mouths all grimaced because they can’t breathe in those tight-tight dresses they’re stuffed into.

But weddings are big money for me, so I put on my smiling face and I go and shoot their pictures. Today’s bride is white-white. That’s an odd thing to say, I know, and you might think I’m being prejudiced here. But, no. It’s all about how to take the best photo. Everybody’s skin is different and takes a different exposure. This bride, she’s likely to wash out into nothing but her blue eyes if I’m not careful. People as dark as me, we have the opposite problem. Become all dark shadowy blur. My favorite people to photograph are those in-between colors. Olive skin’s good. So is anything Middle-Eastern or Asian.

But nothing will matter much if I can’t find the wedding. I’m about to pull out when a car pulls up next to me and stops. A window goes down.

My breath stops somewhere between my lungs and my mouth. In the driver’s seat is a gorgeous woman. Skin dark and creamy as devil’s food cake, the warm brown curls of her hair cut close to her head and a tiny silver ball in each ear. She’s wearing a dark purple spaghetti-strap dress that shows off toned shoulders.

But it’s her eyes that capture me, that make me ache to photograph her. Her eyes are this big, deep dark that remind me of deer I once photographed. It’s not the color that stops my breath, though. It’s the intensity of her gaze, the way she looks at me over the half-down window. I’d photograph her in black and white, using a donut flash to capture it.

I’m suddenly sweating. My pale summer dress had seemed perfect this morning -- professional, but long and loose enough that I could move around easily -- but now it seems like a mistake. I wish I’d worn something that showed off my curves a little more, or a color that brought out the flecks of chocolate in my eyes. Even a little lipstick wouldn’t have hurt. I make a promise to myself to wear lipstick every day from now on, just in case.

She says something. I force myself to stop gaping at her and to listen to the words that come from her shimmery lips.

“...help?” she’s asking. Her hand folds casually over the steering wheel, long fingers natural at the nails, only one ring, a wide silver band around her middle finger.

“Car trouble?” she asks.

I shake my head. I wish. I have a vision of her bent over the hood of my car, her shoulders working some engine part and the curves of her ass visible beneath her purple dress.

“Map trouble,” I say. “I’m looking for Cranberry Point?”

“Really?” she says. “You just missed the turn. Back about half a mile, right-hand side.”

“Damn.”

That thing that’s in her eyes, that intensity, goes up a notch. Is this the way she laughs, I wonder? Or is it just the light changing?

“It’s okay,” she says. “You’re really close.” She must be thinking I’m swearing over being lost. Really, I’d been hoping she was going my way, dressed up the way she was. I’d already been fantasizing about her saying, “Oh, the Schumaker wedding? Why don’t you follow me?”

I hate to admit how long it’s been since I’ve found a girl that I liked, or even wanted to go to bed with. Dannie was the last one. We were good together for a long while, even though she wasn’t keen on me taking off on photo shoots without a minute’s notice. I thought it was okay until she found a guy to spend her time with, someone who never worked out of town and who had promised her a ceremony and a baby, neither of which I could bring myself to do.

“Well, I’ve got to run. Good luck,” she says. She lifts her hand off the steering wheel in a kind of wave as she pulls away, her ring glinting.

The pre-wedding photos go about as expected. The bride is shaking so hard I have to use action settings on the camera. And in her big white dress and too much makeup, she looks like a burnt marshmallow. A wiggling burnt marshmallow.

At least it’s cool in the garden. The breeze off the ocean offers some relief. I think that things are going to smooth out there. And then the bride steps right in front of my lens.

“Stop, stop,” she says. “Where the hell is Janice? Where’s my veil?” It’s the kind of wail you hear mostly from girls who’ve lost their dolls.

My viewfinder is filled with her wide behind in vanilla lace, but I don’t lift my head. I just keep pretending that I’m taking photos. I don’t know who Janice is, and I’m not about to get in the middle of things now.

Thank God the groom steps up. “She’ll be here, honey. If she misses a few photos, it’ll be okay.”

The bride goes quiet, but doesn’t move out of my frame. I focus and grab a shot of her behind. The secret to wedding photography success: keep your head down and shoot everything in sight.

“I’m here, I’m here. Sorry, traffic sucked.” Vanilla lace is the only thing in my lens, but I know that voice. It’s my girl in the purple dress. My heartbeat in my ears sounds as fast as a camera on auto-shoot.

I lift my head and there she is, coming across the lawn. Her dress caresses her hips and the swell of her thighs with every step. A pair of heeled sandals dangle from one hand. From the other trails a long strip of white lace. The light comes from behind her, highlighting her curves.

I whip the camera around to snap a few shots of her. One of the tripod legs catches on the bottom of the bride’s dress. When I try to pull it out, it pulls the fabric up. I accidently get a couple shots of her stockinged thighs.

“What in the, what the?” she sputters.

“I’m so sorry.” I go on my knees and try to untangle the mess. “I was trying to...” What? Take a picture of the woman I was drooling over earlier? Not exactly professional.

The bride yanks her dress from the tripod leg and stalks off. I’m on my knees in the grass, wondering if it’s time to switch careers, when I see her bare foot, toes painted purple to match the dress. One wide silver band circles her middle toe, too, just like her finger. I’d like to photograph that: her brown skin in contrast with the green grass. The silver ring. The purple hem. But considering my recent attempt to capture her with my camera, I figure I’d better just stand up.

She drops her shoes on the grass, and offers me her hand. There are calluses on the fleshy part of her palm just below each finger, but the rest of her skin is soft. As our hands press together, I catch a whiff of eucalyptus and lavender.

“Lost down there?” she asks as she helps me to my feet. Her voice contains the up-lilt of a giggle.

She’s taller than me, even in her bare feet, and I take in the length of her neck and the strong line of her jaw before I meet those incredible eyes of hers. They’re just as I remembered: dark and intense, with a bit of light in the corners.

“Janice,” she says, even though I didn’t -- couldn’t -- ask.

I swallow around the heart that beats in my throat. “Liza,” I say.

She lets go of my hand and I can feel the sun warm on my skin again. The tripod is heavy in my hand and the wedding party is waiting for me to take their photos.

Trying to photograph twenty people at the same time and get them all to look perfect is like trying to get two people to have simultaneous orgasms. You try a shitload of times and if it finally happens, it’s most likely a happy accident.

I get a few happy accidents before the wedding is supposed to start, so the women have time to run and fix themselves up again before the big moment. I should take this time to shoot photos of the garden and the kids running around, but I see Janice at the side of the garden and can’t resist the chance to talk to her.

“No makeup to fix?” I ask.

“Is that a hint?”

I focus in on her high, smooth cheekbones, the bare skin, the naturally lush eyelashes. Even her smooth lips are bare of makeup. And those damn eyes, teasing me.

“No, it’s just me being an ass. I do that when I’m nervous.” I fiddle with the settings on my camera, hear the click of an accidental photograph. “See, you just made me take a photo of my feet.”

“Let me,” she says. She takes the camera from me. But when she turns the lens toward me, I put up my hand.

“I belong on the other side of the camera.”

“No,” she says. “You don’t.”

Janice holds the camera with one hand and pulls my wrist down with the other. The camera between us narrows the focus until it’s just the two of us. Breath and heartbeats. Glass and mirrors. The camera clicks like her tongue against the roof of her mouth. If I sucked on it, would she taste like blackberries and vanilla? Her lips move, plump and succulent, her teeth white between.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she says, but she’s laughing. “Look to the side. You have the best nose.”

I turn and spy the wedding party coming back down the hill.

“The best nose?”

“I’m an artist,” she says. “I like strong noses.”

The wedding party is nearly upon us. I know I have to take the camera back, but I’m not ready yet. With the camera between us, I can get up the nerve to ask, “Are you free tonight? After the reception? We could...” I try to come up with something. “I have a cabin.”

I look beneath the camera to where her lips move. They say yes.

By the end of the reception, I’ve shot more than a thousand photos. Half of them are of her. She knows it, too. When I focus in on her, her fierce eyes meet mine in a way that I’m not sure I could handle if it wasn’t through the glass.

I catch what I’m pretty sure is the last public kiss between the wedded couple, and start packing up my camera bag. I’m looking for Janice, thinking about getting her to my cabin and out of that purple dress, when I see her in the corner of the reception hall. She’s leaning against the wall, her shoes once again dangling from her fingers. Leaning in on her is one of the guys from the wedding party. His hand traces the ring on her finger as he talks. She doesn’t pull away. In fact, she leans in closer and I can just imagine how those eyes are looking at him, dark and laughing.

It’s so intimate that I want to photograph it. But I know that’s only because being behind the lens would give me some distance. It would make this heavy slow thud of my heart seem like it belonged to someone else. She touches his wrist, right there, where his pulse must beat. It’s Dannie all over again, even though it’s not. I have to turn my face away. My fingers fumble to clasp the camera case in the watery light.

I don’t even tell the bride I’m leaving. I just slip out the side door into the night air and hope I can find my rented cabin in the dark.

I don’t find the cabin, but I do find a bench in the garden. The moonlight backlights everything. I sit and think about all the things that you can’t truly capture with a camera: the way the stars shimmer against all that black; the deepness of true dark; the way a person feels when she realizes she’s lost her way.

“Again?” her words come from behind me out of the darkness.

I turn. She’s there, black and purple against black and purple. Even in the no-light, she stops my heart and makes the parts of my body find their edges.

“Again what?”

“Your cabin’s the other way. You really need one of those navigational devices.”

“Like, a compass?”

Her laughter changes the night. Closes the midnight in. Only dark and us.

“Well, I meant GPS, but whatever works.”

She makes a move to sit, but I don’t take my camera bag off the other half of the bench. She stands in front of me, nearly touching my knees. The fabric of her dress whispers when the wind brushes it against her legs.

I quit smoking ten years ago, but God damn if I don’t wish I had a smoke right now, some place to put my fingers and my breath. That’s what the camera’s good for, usually. I fiddle with the clasp of the camera case. Click-click.

She crosses her arms over her chest and shivers a little. I want to wrap her up in my arms, to run my palms across her back until she warms. But something in my heart is stopping me: the mental picture of her leaning in, touching that guy on the wrist.

“Change your mind about the cabin?” she asks.

“I thought maybe you did.”

For a second she doesn’t say anything. I half-hope that she’ll deny that she was flirting, or she’ll tell me he’s her adopted cousin or something. She doesn’t.

“You know, the models I work with have to get naked in a room full of strangers,” she says. “Just strip down, no hiding. It’s hard. So I do it with them.”

She drops her shoes to the ground. With one hand, she pushes the strap of her dress down over one shoulder. I can’t see the strap go, but I can see the movement and imagine. The other strap goes. She dances out of the dress until it falls to the ground. She is dark curves and the silver shine of her rings.

Something opens inside me, lets in a crack of light.

“Can you see me?” she asks, as though she is a ghost. A negative image.

“Yes.”

“Then you know that I’m not hiding anything.”

She turns and steps away from me, toward the sound of the ocean. I click-click the camera case open and closed, watching her shape walk away. The curves of her ass seem to catch what light there is, reflect it back into my eyes. She looks over her bare shoulder and smiles. It’s the perfect picture of desire. I want to hold it there, capture it and keep it closed up in a little box. But that’s what I always do. This time, I want something more.

I stand from the bench and follow her. I have to run a little to catch up to her, and my dress catches around my legs, nearly tangling me.

I put my arms around her like she’s standing on the edge of the ocean and I’m afraid she’ll fall in. I can feel the taut push of her nipples against the pulse in my arms. I kiss the back of her neck, the side of her neck, everywhere on her neck and shoulders that I can reach without letting go of her. The width of her back feels strong and warm. Her ass curves in the most perfect way. I let my hands find their way down her body to cup the sides of her hips. After holding the camera all day, her flesh feels so real, so substantial, in my hands.

She reaches back and pulls the fabric of my dress up, until the hem is at my thighs. Her fingers brush beneath the fabric, letting in the warmth of her skin and also the cool breeze that comes off the ocean. I shiver. I’m wet already, which embarrasses me somehow, but also makes me even more wet.

“I can’t paint you if you’re dressed,” she says.

“I don’t want you to pain me. Paint,” I say, correcting myself.. “I don’t want you to paint me.”

She turns and gathers up the rest of my dress to pull it over my head. I wrap my arms around myself. Even though it’s dark, I don’t like to be naked. And I definitely don’t like to be naked outside, with her dark eyes watching in the night.

“You know, for a photographer, you’re not that great at exposing yourself,” she says.

This is when I normally pick up my shit, say fuck you, walk away until I am at a tele-photo distance, a far-away safe distance. But her curves are there, pressing into me. So solid and warm. And I realize I can’t move, that I don’t want to.

Janice pulls my arms open and pushes them down to my sides. I can’t meet her eyes. Without letting go of my wrists, she leans forward and brushes her tongue over my nipples. They tighten and pucker between the warmth of her mouth and the cool of the sea air. The pucker spreads all the way down my belly. The inside of my thighs grow slippery, wet. There’s nothing to say beyond the rush of the exhale that leaves my lungs, enters the night.

She ducks her fingers between my thighs, curving them into the hollow space, the wanting space, and I groan against my bitten lips. Softly, she puts her lips to mine, pulling them away from my teeth, replacing my grip with her own.

“Touch me,” she says, the words murmured against my mouth, her teeth clenching tight around each sound. “I’ve been waiting all day...”

I swallow back the moan that her words bring, and then join her in exploring. First her mouth with my tongue, the taste of her, salt and lemon, sinking back into my throat. And then, together, our fingers tangling and wild, slipping into the in-between places, letting the shadowed parts of our bodies open, grow warm and wet. I bury my fingers in her heat, to the knuckle and when she bucks against me, further still, until I am beckoning her forward with each curve of my fingers, my thumb on her clit like it’s a camera button.

Each push another pop of flash, another captured moment, another chance to hear Janice whisper my name against my parted lips.

Janice slides her fingers out of me, and drops to her knees. She pushes both hands between my thighs and they spread for her. I can’t stop them, don’t want to stop them. Her fingers are raw and soft and hard at the same time. Janice looks up as though she can see my glistening insides in the dark.

Her warm breath happens before her warm lips, and her warm lips happen before her warmer tongue. She touches each part of me, exploring inner thighs and lips and then, finally, oh, finally my clit. The point of her tongue working tight circles that make me dizzy. I look down as she tongues me, focusing over the broadness of her back and shoulders, and the way her waist narrows in before it widens back into the curves of her ass.

She leans back to inhale, looks up at me. In the dusk, I think I can see her eyes, deep and warm. “You taste amazing,” she says. “So good...”

Then she sinks back into me as though the sea isn’t behind me, but inside me, drinking me up. Her tongue glosses along me, the softest of brushes, painting my skin with a colorless pleasure that slides up through me, layer over layer until I shudder against her mouth.

“Janice...” I breathe her name into the dark as though it’s an incantation or a prayer. I want to lay her down in my rental cabin, wherever it is. I want her on top of me and beneath me, inside and around me. I want to be in the light, exposed to her and her to me.

But I know that chance will come, if I just stay focused on what I want. For now, I take her face gently in my palms. And I zoom in on the warm laps of her tongue, as it finds its way into all of the dark, pleasure-filled places inside me, opening them to the light.