His tone changes immediately and he snaps, “That’s different,” and then he realizes he’s going to have to explain himself.
“I mean,” he says, “Schick, as an individual, is different. Schick doesn’t give a goddamn about anything erotic. He cares about money and manipulation. And his own ego.”
Sylvia stares at him, shocked, and she gives him a second to turn what he’s just said into a joke. But Propp doesn’t take the opportunity and Sylvia can’t help putting her hand on his shoulder, giving him a patronizing pat and squeeze.
“Money and manipulation and ego,” she says. “Yeah, there’s none of that sitting in this room.”
“You don’t know Schick—” he starts.
“Is that right?” she says, wanting to capitalize on his mistake. “And you’re the guy who called the Proppists fools because of their willed innocence.”
“I didn’t—”
“So what’s the truth, Propp? Is there a difference between the erotic and the pornographic?”
He calms down, looks behind him and throws the SnoKone into a trash barrel.
“There probably is,” he says. “And it’s probably different for every individual.”
“Right. Except some individual’s judgment is less valid than others. Like the Proppists. And like Hugo Schick. And like me.”
“Maybe,” he says, “the Proppists haven’t earned their judgment.”
“Earned?” she says, really stunned by the road he’s heading down. “Earned their judgment? Could you just tell me who makes that determination? Is this what happens to someone when they become a hermit?”
“I’m no hermit, Sylvia.”
She can’t help smiling at how self-deceived this man is. “You know, my boyfriend has some new associates you should meet. You’d really get on.”
“You’re misinterpreting everything I’ve said.”
“Just tell me how, exactly, you earned these critical skills that everyone around you seems to be lacking. For God sake, you say Schick has an ego.”
“You don’t know me, Sylvia,” getting angry now, the comparison with Schick pushing his button. “You don’t know where I’ve been, the things that have happened …”
“That’s right,” she says. “That’s completely correct. And no matter what you think, you don’t know me either. No matter what sources you have. No matter how much you’ve spied on me or tried to look into my life, you know nothing about me.”
A naked, heavily tattooed woman with snakes coiled around her neck walks up to them and starts to display her product, which Sylvia guesses to be the snakes. Propp runs a hand over his face and moves brusquely to the other side of the room and Sylvia follows.
“Have you ever been to Bangkok, Sylvia?” he says, staring ahead as they walk. “The real Bangkok. The city in Thailand, you know, that this neighborhood is named after.”
Before she can answer he says, “You haven’t. I know you haven’t. Except for college, you’ve never lived outside of Quinsigamond.”
They come to a stop next to a booth where a small, professorial-looking man in a white lab coat is distributing leaflets on something called the Dillinger & Hindenmacher Miracle Implant Clinic in Tijuana, Mexico. On a rickety wooden easel next to the booth is a poster showing what looks like a technical blueprint for a zeppelin.
“I lived in Bangkok for three years. I lived in one room in the heart of Patpong Road. I had one change of clothes, a Nikon, and a Polaroid passport camera. For three hours every morning I shot Polaroids. Visa shots. Immigration shots. Rest of the day and night I shot for myself.”
“Look, Propp,” Sylvia says, “I’ve read stories about Bangkok—”
“Listen to yourself. Read stories.”
“Fine. It’s secondary. It’s worse than secondary. It’s nothing. I’m carnally illiterate. And you’ve been around. You’ve taken the big trip upriver to the core of all desire. You saw the best and worst of it. And now you’re enlightened. You’re the maven of all things sexual. And the rest of the world just can’t keep up. The Proppists are spoiled children with some storybook dream of this romantic, dewy sensuality. And Hugo Schick is just a cold businessman who knows how to exploit a raw image until it makes a respectable profit. And I guess I’m just a blank slate who hasn’t even considered the possibilities. So we’ve got no right to an opinion, because they’re all going to be uninformed.”
He rubs at his eyes, looks at his feet. “That’s not it at all. That’s not what I’m saying at all. Bangkok has no corner on carnality or lust or lasciviousness or whatever. Neither does Amsterdam. Or Forty-second Street. Or this flea market.”
“Okay,” Sylvia says. “Agreed.”
His voice changes slightly, gets huskier, a little tired. “I’ve spent large chunks of my adult life studying and capturing images, Sylvia. I’ve lived as a photographer. You know what that is. You know what that does to your eye, how it affects the way you view the world in every second you’re awake. And maybe when you’re asleep. You frame everything. You weigh every visual against an approaching better one. You do that over a number of years and it changes you. It makes you a mutant. But it happens so subtly that you might not even be aware of your own transformation.”
She looks at him and his face seems to be losing color, as if pigment is draining away as he speaks.
“When I became aware of what had happened to me, to my sensibility, I went, very literally after a time, underground. I’ve been around, as you sarcastically say. And you want to call the results of my experiences ego. That’s fine. But I know it has nothing to do with ego. And I’ll stand here and judge the Proppists. And I’ll judge Hugo Schick and the Skin Palace people. Because I know how wrong they both are. How ignorant. They don’t have any idea how deep it goes inside us. They approach image as if it were a theory. Or a commodity. They’re on opposite sides of a ridiculous fence, but both groups are fools. I know it, Sylvia. That makes me a fanatic. I don’t care.”
She takes a breath and says, “What about me?”
“I came for you, didn’t I?”
“Why?”
“Because I owe you, Sylvia.”
And she doesn’t want to ask what he owes her. Why he owes her. She stares at him and she thinks of Hugo Schick’s face. And then of Perry’s face. Propp steps up to her, leans in and kisses her, so softly, on the forehead. He puts his hands on her shoulders and turns her until her back is to him and she’s staring across the aisle at a display for self-adhesive mirrored ceiling tiles. Sylvia looks into the mirrors, sees the quilted jacket zipped over the remains of her Victorian nightgown, sees the white-gone-black slippers still on her feet. And then she looks into her own face, smudges of ash on her left cheek, her eyes bloodshot, dark circles underneath. She knows she looks horrible.
There are similarities between you and she, Propp had said back in the station. Similarities between Sylvia and the Madonna. Was he lying or was that genuinely his view of how Sylvia looked through the camera lens? You’re beautiful, he said.
Could what they see possibly be this different?
She looks from her reflection to Propp’s, his face behind her, back over her left shoulder. He looks equally haggard. Then there’s another face next to Propp’s and they both turn around to the smile of this old butterball, this pasty-skinned man who looks like a boozy ad man who’s finally gone to ruin. He’s got jowls and a head of bristly, pepper-colored hair and a brown suit with stained lapels. The fat man nods his head as he smiles and the jowls swing and Sylvia has to look down at the floor.
“Mr. Smith,” he says to Propp in this high-pitched voice like a muted horn, “could I have a word?”