Picturing Will by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online Page B

being left in darkness. Will was afraid to put his face in water but fearless in the seat of a bumper car. He once cried because he looked into a man’s mouth and saw gold fillings and thought he could catch them, like a cold.
    The band had switched from rock and roll to the big band sound, and Richard Nixon led King Kong onto the dance floor, both stepping aside to avoid colliding with Bozo the matador, still swishing the fur cape. Here was a roomful of people, Jody thought, most of them parents, behaving as if they were children so out of control they had to be threatened. Monsters that all parents swore existed only in their children’s nightmares cavorted with one another, plotting mischief, entering the den of smoke, uncorking bottles with no regret, even if genies were trapped inside.
    Mel smiled at Jody. “Too caught up in this craziness to take pictures?”
    “No,” she said. “I was just wondering who’d have a cellular phone in this town.”
    “Would you like me to get you one?” he said. “Maybe in lieu of an engagement ring? Keep up with the times?”
    She shook her head no.
    “A cop,” he said.
    “A cop?”
    “A private investigator.”
    “What are you talking about?” she said.
    “That’s who had the phone. A guy who’s a private investigator. He’s doing what you’re doing: taking pictures. But he’s got a tiny hand-held job. Some woman who’s off in Aruba hired him to get a picture of her husband with his lover. At first he thought it was going to be impossible, because everybody was in costume, but he came anyway and got the big payoff because the guy’s in regular shoes. They’re the only shoes the guy ever wears. He said he already had a dozen pictures of the guy and the secretary, and that the guy was always wearing those same black wing-tips.”
    “You’re putting me on.”
    “Why would I be putting you on? It’s not to my advantage to make this place sound exciting.”
    “But how did he happen to tell you that?”
    “I went outside on the off chance there was a phone any-where in sight. He was talking on the phone in his car. I hung around, and he let me use the phone. He was happy that he had what he needed and could split.”
    “You just walked up and asked if you could use his phone?”
    Mel nodded. “What’s so strange about that? I said I wanted to make sure my kid was okay.”
    She felt a pang when he said “my kid.” Will really did seem to be as much Mel’s child as her own. He had Mel’s way of sitting with his legs uncrossed, both feet dangling because he could not yet plant them on the floor. He bit his bottom lip when he was concentrating, like Mel. He had Mel’s way of saying no without shaking his head as an accompanying gesture. Both of them often threw their pillows on the floor when they slept. And of course they never drank the right beverage from the right glass. For a drink of water Will would take a tiny glass; for an inch of apple juice he’d reach for a beer glass. It was just the cast of his eyes that sometimes reminded her of Wayne—that way of looking slightly down and to the side, even when nothing important seemed to be happening there.
    “Guess who!” a flamingo said, stepping in front of her. She could smell alcohol on the flamingo’s breath. Like the private detective, she looked down and saw Duncan’s worn Adidas, though she could have told from the voice alone.
    “Duncan,” she said, and he nodded without taking off his headpiece. A palm tree stood next to him: someone in a badly made outfit fashioned out of a sheet painted to look like wood. Big green-painted cardboard palm fronds protruded from the shoulders. The person wore a black eye mask, with a small painted moon curving over one of the eyes.
    “Take our picture,” Duncan said, stepping in front of the camera. He put a pink wing around the palm tree. “Mel,” Duncan said, “I really enjoyed that Harry Mulisch book you let me borrow. I keep forgetting to bring it