He stops, looking for the photo shoot that Laurel described: the bossy photographer with the cameras draped over him, the fumbling assistant with his windblown reflectors, the muscleman in his tiny swimsuit. And all of the beautiful young people as models, some of them locals that Matt will certainly recognize. But no sign of these. Not here, not south, not north.
So he heads south along the waterline toward the fabled Thousand Steps Pools, thinking that they would be a perfect place to photograph young people doing beachy things. There is also the tunnel you can pass through when the tide isn’t too high, and some dramatic rock outcroppings. And the sweeping, yellow-sand beach.
The pools — big concrete rectangles built by a Hollywood movie director who lived here back in the twenties — are busy with waders and pool-gazers eyeing the swift croaker and perch. But no photographers. Matt stands on one of the walls, watches the fish surge and slash.
He finds a place above one of the big pools and sits. Lets his good strong eyes scan the beach. Maybe if he waits and watches, Jazz will show.
He gets out his sketchbook and a good charcoal stick and does another Laurel in the Gauguin painting. He does an Officer Brigit Darnell sitting across from him in the station; a decent Jordan Cavore looming over him on the Sapphire Cove walkway. He makes people he doesn’t like look uglier than they are, and people he likes look better. Cavore looks pretty bad. He does another Jazz, based on his favorite drawing of her, pretty much wrecked by Cavore. At home, Matt has flattened and pressed that crumpled thing between the pages of a heavy Impressionism tome he bought at a Laguna Beach Friends of the Library sale for a nickel. The best five cents he’s ever spent.
Now he tries his mom in the embarrassing wench’s costume, and manages to capture her expression of whatever’s been eating at her these last weeks. But what is it? Does she have a disease she doesn’t know about? Or worse, she does know about but won’t admit? Ernie’s dad got cancer but lived.
Matt looks up to note that the evening sky is a deepening blue, and a band of low gray clouds lies on the horizon like insulation.
Which is when a man with cameras dangling around his neck, another man carrying large black duffels, and a very big guy in a maroon robe come traipsing south toward him. Camera Man wears a baggy white suit and white sneakers. A caravan of young men and women follows along well behind them, the girls in bright bikinis and hot pants and sheer cover-ups and sun hats; the boys in canvas surf shorts and colorful T-shirts or Hawaiian shirts or no shirts at all. One carries a shiny new twin-fin surfboard balanced on his head like the guys on Matt’s Endless Summer T-shirt. Some have packs and bags or small duffels. Matt studies every one of them. No Jazz. No one he recognizes.
He watches as Camera Man stops and raises his hand like a patrol sergeant. His platoon stops too, except Robe Giant, who approaches the leader. They talk, then Robe Giant goes back to the group and returns to Camera Man with one of the young women by the hand. In her other hand she’s got a pink skateboard with white daisies on it, one of the cool new models with the wheelie deck and fat wheels. She looks a little like Jasmine — a suntanned blonde with square shoulders and long legs. Younger, maybe. Matt counts nine young people against the backdrop of golden beach sand.
Camera Man turns his back to the descending sun and scans his people with a long-lensed camera.
Duffel Guy drops his bags, kneels and unzips one. Robe Giant reclines in the sand on his side before the young woman with the skateboard, his wine-colored robe parting to reveal his sculpted chest and bulging swimsuit. Skateboard Girl looks down on him skeptically.
Matt moves closer, climbs a gentle dune, and settles cross-legged into the warm sand. Opens the sketchbook across his lap and swiftly cuts in the twelve figures, using both pages without even looking at them, trying to set the scene.
Camera Man approaches Robe Giant and Skateboard Girl, kneels, and, cranking the focus, starts shooting. Matt hears the muted clicks carrying on the breeze. Duffel Guy sidles up behind Camera Man, holding a big silver fabric disc that reflects the sunlight onto Robe Giant and Skateboard Girl. Camera Man barks something that Matt can’t make out, but Skateboard Girl drops her board to the sand and hops on. She lifts her arms for balance, and bends her knees as if she’s riding straight at Robe Giant, who gazes up at her with what at this distance looks to Matt like a bored leer.
Matt is drawing fast, barely looking down, letting his eyes and hand do the work, no thoughts to interfere. Turns the page without a glance. Really trying to get those faces right, not just the details but the attitudes. Can make adjustments later.
Camera Man squats and shoots, rises and shoots, circles, changes cameras, backpedals and shoots again. Skateboard Girl kneels with her arms out in a good pantomime of speed. Then squats almost all the way down and raises her hands, the wind catching her hair just right, blowing it back as if from sheer velocity.
The other young models activate. Matt watches them dig through their packs and duffels and produce treasures: a fringed buckskin vest, a pair of Stars and Stripes genie pants, a suede miniskirt quickly zipped on by a girl in a Day-Glo green bikini. Then, two tie-dye peace-sign flags with handles, skillfully deployed by a smiling redhead, as another girl pulls what looks like an enormous unmelted ice cream sundae from her bag. A young man straps a small guitar over his naked shoulder and strums a chord; Surfboard Boy approaches Skateboard Girl, stabs his twin-fin into the sand and starts rubbing on board wax in long suggestive strokes as Camera Man swivels, changes cameras and continues shooting again. Robe Giant, rising, lets his maroon cover drop to the sand, revealing his bulging biceps and armored six pack and the tiny American-flag water polo briefs that revolted Laurel. Matt realizes for the first time how tall the guy is, six and a half feet maybe, a tower of oiled muscle who now squats and lifts Ice Cream Sundae onto one shoulder where she curls her legs up like a mermaid on a rock, smiles greatly, and proffers the ersatz sundae to Camera Man with one outstretched hand.
Matt can’t draw fast enough, but he gets decent faces of the photo crew. By then a crowd has gathered, so he joins them to watch this strange circus, this twisting, ever-changing double-helix of weirdness.
It goes on and on. Matt circles the action and the crowd but it’s not as if different angles give him any more understanding of what he’s seeing. Camera Man has given up shouting direction and the young people seem to be improvising.
By the time the photographer calls it a wrap, Matt and dozens of other spectators are loitering under a magnificent orange and black sunset. The actors and the audience all applaud Camera Man, who opens his arms and calls out.
“Thank you so very much, my friends,” he says. His voice is rough and strongly accented. “Once again we have made our art with our hearts and our bodies. Some of these images will come to be in history and some will be used only to sell products. But you my friends are the soul of art. Thank you. Tomorrow is Diver’s Cove at six P.M. Please reimagine your costumes and your props so that we do not repeat ourselves.”
Most of the audience is still hanging around, and as Matt circulates through he realizes that most have stayed on to see about joining this strange circus.
I got a Barbarella suit that looks great on me!
What, you just do whatever comes into your head and hope the pictures turn out good?
Can me and my old lady get into this scene?