So she did. Or she started to, anyhow. “Let me take some snaps of you undressing,” I said, knowing damned well few girls who aren’t pro models will let you shoot that kind of thing; don’t ask me why; maybe because they’re the sexiest shots in the world.
“Okay,” she said, and started in.
She stepped up onto the model’s pedestal I have in the studio, and began taking off that pale blue poorboy jersey. Now, hold it a second.
You’d better understand this.
She wasn’t doing a strip. None of that chubby housewife trying to hold onto her fat-assed hubby by learning to belly dance or excite him with “imaginative sex” fantasies bullshit.
She was doing it for me, of course; I’d asked her if I could take the shots, for God’s sake! But she wasn’t trying to do it to me; do you know what I’m saying here? There’s nothing more cornball than some female trying to pull a Theda Bara, batting her eyelashes and all turkey-flapping with what “family programmed” television and sexploitation films have conned her into believing is a turn-on. Jesus, it’s a puker.
No, there wasn’t any of that going down. She was just doing it … for me … at me … but not purposely to me …
Click!
The sweater was stuck in the top of her skirt. She yanked at it, and it came loose, dragging up the top of her black lace panties, too. My eyes had trouble focusing on the camera. She pulled the sweater off, letting her arms go back and her breasts jut out at me, and the sweater fell down behind her, off the pedestal, onto the floor. Her breasts were just as I’d imagined them in the sweater.
Click!
They were large and round, and they stayed where they were. But then, they must have been where they were all the time, because, you see, she didn’t have on a brassiere. Then she unfastened the catch on the side of the skirt.
Click!
I watched her, and the thought that this girl was going a lot further than was expected for just a little modeling hit me right in the head. Was she a nympho, who let every guy pick her up? Was she a psycho? What was the score?
To hell with Click!
I dumped the camera and moved toward her. She stood there, naked but for the black lace panties, and her breath was coming with difficulty, rasping in and out faintly. Her hands were quivering. Then I was beside her, and I slid my arms around her. She was on the pedestal, and I locked hands behind her, the smooth curve of her back strange and wonderful to me. I let my hands slide up to the small of her back, down to the indentations where her legs joined her trunk. Was this girl real? Was all this happening to me? Then she bent, and she kissed me.
Then she bit my lip. She bit me right where I’d bitten myself, and I felt the trickle of salty warmth, and her tongue smoothed over it, and I felt her shudder.
I stood up, from where I’d slumped against the pedestal, and let one hand slide under her legs at the knees, the other behind her back, turning her to me, lifting her, cradling her in my arms.
Then we were in the bedroom, and she was on the white sheets, whiter than they could ever hope to be, with that flame hair and those hell-green eyes staring at me.
Without movement, without time, without the feeling of penetration, it was done, her voice dying stillborn, and her hands scraping terribly at my back.
My God! It was unbelievable.
Neither one of us thought about rest, or food, or anything else, much less photography, till an hour ago. I woke up and looked across at her. Even after the passion-effort I’d expended, and the fatigue coursing through me, she still looked untouched and magnificent; her hair an amber aurora sprayed out across the rumpled pillow, her eyes closed, and her breath shallow. I felt weak in every muscle, every joint. My back was ripped from the sharp ness of her nails, and my lips were raw. It had been so unlike any other thing I knew, I couldn’t let her go. I had to have Nedra around all the time.
I lay there for a few minutes, and then the excitement of those films I’d taken earlier sent me out of the bed. I grabbed my bathrobe and got the rolls of film from my case, flipped the last one out of the camera, and made for the darkroom.
They developed nicely, and they were clear as hell. Some of the best shots I’d ever taken. I’m standing here looking at them now.
There’s just one thing wrong with them. It must be a trick of the light, or something … or something …
But here are the pictures I took in the Park. Here’s the fountain, and the two children with the hound, and the bench, and the trees and the sky and the river and the grass, and everything …
But no Nedra.
Yeah. That’s right. Everything else in perfect focus, but there isn’t a sign of her in any of the shots. I’ve got the pedestal, and the backdrop and the apartment and the shadows, but no shadow of Nedra. In fact, no Nedra at all.
But she’s no figment of my imagination. That’s for sure. A girl with a horizontal mind like that couldn’t be imaginary. I just don’t believe in anything like that.
Well, when she wakes up, I’ll go in and just ask her what she’s … oh, hi!
I was just coming in to wake you. Say, look at these crazy pix I shot of you today. Aren’t they screwy? Yon just didn’t photograph. You know, I was thinking all sorts of crazy stuff, and listen to this, this is the craziest thing yet.
I started to think, and the only kind of person I could think of who doesn’t reflect in a mirror, or who won’t show up on a photo … now I know it’s crazy, it must have been the light or something, but …
Nedra!
Five: Opposites Attract
Bombs had to be handled carefully. It took more than just caution. It took a sort of thinking; a way of looking at them; an attitude.
Erwin Beltman had developed that attitude long ago. At least thirty-five years before. That was in 1941. Just two months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. That had been when he’d laid his first bomb. It had been difficult, during the war. No one seemed to realize he wasn’t a saboteur … my goodness, not. He had tried to correct that wrong attitude on the public’s part (strange how attitudes played such an important part of things), by sending an anonymous letter to the New York Times , explaining his motives. But those who didn’t call him a saboteur now, called him insane.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t insane, there was no sense telling them otherwise. They just wouldn’t understand. To people who derived their only pleasure from sitting in front of droning TV sets, someone who searched abroad for a more sympathetic thrill was thought insane.
Erwin Beltman had planted over one hundred and ninety bombs, big and small, in the city of New York in thirty-five years.
That was his thrill; and as he made the bombs, forming them from black powder and plumbing pipe, Erwin Beltman knew he was alone in his thrill. Anyone could watch a TV, but only Erwin could lay a pipe bomb.
But to lay a bomb properly, the right attitude had to be there from the first moment. Erwin thought on that as he rode up the escalator in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. He carried the brown paper bag loosely, casually, as though he had nothing in it but his lunch. He walked off the balls of his feet, in the eventuality that he should trip, so that he could regain his balance quickly. He treated the bomb as though it were a young child who only needed slight hand-guidance to cross the street … not a temperamental baby that had to be clutched tightly. He swung the bag from his right hand, letting the sure weight of it almost propel him up the steps of the escalator.