The First Time by Joy Fielding Read Free Book Online Page B

was asking, his eyes pleading for a simple yes.
    “I’m fine,” Mattie told him, obligingly. “Thank you.”
    “We could do this another time.”
    “No, really, I’m fine.”
    “Do you want to talk about it?” This time Roy Crawford’s eyes begged for a simple no.
    “I don’t think so.” Mattie took a deep breath, watched Roy Crawford do the same. He has a very big head, she thought absently. “Shall we go inside?”
    Minutes later, they were standing in front of a naked woman, artfully angled around an antiquated wash-stand so that only her buttocks and the curve of her left breast were exposed to the camera’s prying eye.
    “Willy Ronis is a member of the famous triumvirate of French photographers,” Mattie was explaining in her best professional voice, trying to keep her mind in the present tense, her trained eye on the stunning display of black-and-white photographs that lined the walls of one of the institute’s more intimate downstairs rooms.
    When we mix black and white together
, she heard Jake interrupt,
we get gray. And different shades of gray at that
.
    Go away, Jake, Mattie instructed silently. I’ll see you in court, she thought, and almost laughed, biting down hard on her bottom lip to ensure her silence. “The other two members of the group, of course, are Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau,” Mattie continued when she thought it was safe. “This particular picture, entitled
Nu provencal
, is probably Ronis’s most popular and widely exhibited photograph.”
    So let’s take a few minutes and examine the varying shades of gray
.
    Let’s not, Mattie thought. “An interest in the nudefemale form is a distinguishing feature of Ronis’s work,” she said.
    “Is there some reason you’re shouting?” Roy Crawford interrupted.
    “Was I shouting?”
    “Just a little. Nothing to get upset about,” he added quickly.
    Mattie shook her head in an effort to rid herself of her husband’s voice once and for all. “Sorry.”
    “Please don’t apologize,” Roy said, obviously frightened she was going to start crying again. Then he smiled, a big loopy grin that went perfectly with his big head, and Mattie understood in that instant why women of all ages found him so attractive. Part rogue, part little boy—a deadly combination.
    “I’ve always wanted to go to France,” Mattie said, lowering her voice and concentrating on the photographs, trying to assure herself she was capable of normal, adult conversation, despite the fact she was undoubtedly in the middle of a total nervous collapse.
    “You’ve never been?”
    “Not yet.”
    “I would have thought someone of your background and interests would have been to France long ago.”
    “One day,” Mattie said, thinking of the many times she’d tried to sell Jake on the idea of a Paris vacation, and of his persistent refusals. Not enough time, he’d said, when what he really meant was too much time. Too much time to spend alone together. Not enough love. Mattie made a mental note to call her travel agent when she got home. She hadn’t gone to Paris for her honeymoon. Maybe she’d go there for her divorce.“Anyway,” she continued, the word stabbing at the air, startling them both, “this photograph is of Ronis’s wife in their summer cottage.”
    “It’s very erotic,” Roy commented. “Don’t you think?”
    “I think what makes it so sensual,” Mattie agreed, “is the almost tangible depiction of the atmosphere—you can actually feel the warmth of the sun coming in the open window, smell the air, feel the texture of the old stone floor. The nudity is part of the eroticism, but only part of it.”
    “Makes you want to take off your clothes and jump right in the picture with her.”
    “An interesting idea,” Mattie said, trying not to picture Roy Crawford naked, as she led her client toward another group of photographs—two men sleeping on a park bench, workers on strike relaxing on a Paris street, carpenters at