Picturing Will by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t know” and have any number of men assume that you only wanted to keep your sphinxlike secrets. From the moment she started studying photographs she had given herself permission to move farther and farther away from Wayne. It had driven him crazy when she taped on the walls photographs of people she did not know. He hated it that she began to submerge herself in a world of nameless faces. He saw himself losing her to a drug called silver halide.
    But they stayed lovers. That was the other part of the trick: to get as close physically as the other person wanted. To jump into the tub when they were showering, pull cold champagne from under the bed, announce on the way to dinner with another couple that you were not wearing underwear. If you came through physically, men would give you a lot of time to decide whether you would marry them, because some part of them would foolishly think that you had already chosen.
    She stood by one of the narrow, drafty church windows and realized that it would probably be easy to reenter the church some other day, even if it was locked. There might be enough Halloween souvenirs and enough character to the rundown church itself to make photographing the empty interior worthwhile. The church faced west; late afternoon would be the time to come. She unscrewed her camera from the tripod and began to take a few last pictures with the lens wide open, holding the camera above her head, aiming down and guessing about what would make it into the frame.
    Mel came up beside her, the leafy celery top hanging down his chest like a pale green jabot.
    “I just called the Careys’,” he said. “Will’s on his second pair of fangs. Nothing seems to be winding down over there.”
    “Where did you find a phone?” she said, surprised.
    “I struck up a conversation with a guy who had a phone in his car.” He nodded toward the door.
    “You found somebody with a cellular phone in Charlottesville?”
    He shrugged. “You’re the one who’s always telling me it’s not Siberia. If I had my way, we’d be in New York right this minute.” He put his arm around her shoulder. Jody was dressed in 1950s regalia: a crinoline, over which she wore a skirt embossed with a poodle that flashed blue rhinestone eyes; a pink blouse with a silver circle pin; white bobby sox; loafers with bright copper pennies. She had pulled her hair back in a pony tail.
    “You know,” Mel said, “you look like the type who wants to party all night but won’t put out.”
    “Not true,” she said. “As silly as this seems, it’s work. And if you remember—”
    He put his fingers over her lips as Bozo strutted by, honking his bulbous nose. Bozo had acquired a fur cape and a wife who had pushed her eye mask to the top of her head. She was trying to steer Bozo toward the front door, but he was drunk and got away from her, swirling his fur like a bullfighter’s cape as she went toward him.
    “I remember,” Mel said.
    Before leaving the house, they had had sex in the shower while Will marched his new G.I. Joe (his fourth) around the living-room floor, making it do maneuvers over such obstacles as Mel’s running shoes and his own plastic-wrapped bubble-gum Dracula fangs, which he was to put in his mouth later that night. Will loved Halloween. The costumes and shrill cries at the door for candy that had frightened her as a child had never intimidated him. It was interesting to see what a child feared on his own, what fears were communicated to him, and what he was absolutely fearless about. The first time he tasted a soda he had been as shocked as if he’d drunk acid. He shrank from cats but would pat any dog. Halloween was a breeze, but as a small child he had not wanted the overhead light to be put off when the Christmas tree lights were turned on. Vampires were shocking but fascinating. Joan Rivers would make him run from the room. He loved cap pistols but was afraid of the vacuum. The flamingo night-light was scarier than