Picture Perfect Read online

  "Okay," Alex announced. "Everyone, undress."

  Bernie started muttering in Yiddish, but Alex kept talking, drowning out the sound of the director's voice. "It's only fair that if Janet and I are down to skin, the very least you all could do is strip to your underwear." He looked over his shoulder, to where Janet was starting to smile.

  One of the cameramen was the first to do what Alex had asked, pulling off his T-shirt and pants to reveal a huge belly hanging over Jockey shorts. LeAnne, Janet's assistant, shrugged off her clothes until she stood in her bra and panties. "It's like a bikini," she said to no one in particular.

  Clothes flew into piles at the edges of the set, and by now Janet Eggar was laughing out loud. Alex sat on the cot, talking to her. With a sigh, Bernie unzipped his shorts to reveal purple silk boxers, and that left only me.

  Everyone was staring, wondering why I deserved the special treatment, so without even thinking twice I reached for the bottom of my shirt. Alex caught my eye and shook his head very slightly, but I smiled at him. I pulled the shirt over my head and tugged off my shorts, knowing that the entire time, his eyes were on me.

  When filming resumed, Janet seemed much better. I watched her fall back against the cot, her hair spread over the pillow. I watched Alex's breath steal over her skin. I wondered how much of her he was touching; how many times he'd have to shoot this; whether the sheets still smelled like us.

  After the sixth take, when Janet and Alex were laughing as if they'd been doing this forever, I saw how my nails had cut into the soft wooden armrests of my chair. In the stifling heat, the scene being played before me kept turning into the one I had lived the night before. My throat became so dry I could not swallow. I watched Alex with another woman, holding her the way he should have been holding me, and that's when I realized I had fallen in love.

  I knew he would come after me the moment he finished, but I didn't want to see him. I never wanted to see him again. I had tried--I had really tried--but a casual liaison just wasn't my style.

  I had spent all last night preparing myself to face the truth, but that didn't keep me from feeling its pain. Alex hadn't felt a whole world open up at my touch. Alex hadn't lain under the circles of a ceiling fan, praying for time to stop before it all went downhill again. To Alex, I had been nothing more than a rehearsal.

  I was halfway to the remaining jeeps, planning to get into one and drive myself as far away from this production as possible, when Alex caught up with me and grabbed my arm. "Wait," he said. "You've got to give me a chance."

  I whirled around and glared at him. "You've got one minute," I said.

  "I didn't know we were going to film this today, Cassie. It's terrible timing. If I had, I never would have brought you back here last night. I didn't want you to watch that, but I didn't want you to think I was sending you away, either."

  "Youenjoyed it," I said. "Isaw you."

  "I didn't enjoy it," he yelled. "It's my job."

  "Well, what does it matter to you anyway?" I shouted back. "You've already had me. You've got Janet Eggar foaming at the mouth. Why don't you just go on back and finish what you've started while everyone else goes to lunch?"

  Alex took a step back. "Is that what you think of me?" he said tersely. His fists were clenched at his sides, white with stress. His eyes flashed, and for a moment I thought he would lash out or push me aside as he stormed back to the set.

  I did not say anything for a while, stunned silent by the strength of Alex's checked rage. "I wish I knew what to think of you," I whispered. "I kept seeing us. The same tent, Alex. The same cot. The same everything, except this time it wasn't me." When his face started to swim in front of my eyes, I turned away. "Please don't make me watch that again," I said. I pushed past him, running until I couldn't hear his voice over the hammer of my heart. And I told myself over and over I should have known that someone who could love so hard and so well could also hate, and hurt, as deeply.

  HE WAS TWELVE, AND HE 'D BEEN SHOPLIFTING FOR YEARS, SO IN theory he shouldn't have been stupid enough to get caught. But lately girls had been looking awfully good to him, and the blonde at the checkout with breasts the size of mangoes was giving him the eye, so before he could get the can of Pepsi into his pocket a beefy fist clamped over his wrist and spun him around. Alex found himself staring into the pitted face of the security guard for the second time that week, and when he let his gaze slide sideways he realized that the checkout girl hadn't been looking his way at all.

  "Are you just plain stupid," the guard said, "or is there some other reason you came back to this store?" Alex opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak he was tugged out the electronic door and marched to the police station.

  The precinct was busy with pimps and dealers and felons, and the booking officer had little patience for a kid being brought up on shoplifting charges. The sergeant looked from Alex to the security guard. "I'm not gonna waste a lockup," he said. Compromising, he handcuffed Alex to a chair in front of the booking desk.

  They fingerprinted him and took down his information, but even Alex knew it was all just to scare the shit out of him; he was a minor, and in New Orleans shoplifting only earned you a slap on the wrist. The sergeant cuffed him to the chair again and Alex sat quietly, his knees drawn up to his chest and his free arm clasped around his ankles. He closed his eyes and pretended he was on death row, at the eleventh hour.

  Some time later, the sergeant noticed him. "Shit," he said. "Didn't someone come for you yet?"

  Alex shook his head. The sergeant asked for his phone number and dialed it, leaning on the desk and staring into an arrest log. He glanced up at Alex. "Your mama and daddy work?" he asked.

  Alex shrugged. "Someone should be home," he said.

  "Well," the officer said, "someone's not."

  An hour later the sergeant tried again. This time he got Andrew Riveaux; Alex knew by the way he held the phone several inches away from his ear, as if whatever ran through his father's veins might be catching. After a minute the sergeant handed the phone to Alex.

  The cord stretched to its limit. Alex put the receiver to his ear. He did not know what to say; "Hello" didn't seem quite right. His father began shouting an orange stream of Cajun curses, and ended by saying he was going to beat Alex's hide. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes," he said, and severed the connection.

  But Andrew Riveaux did not come in fifteen minutes, or even in an hour. From his position on the chair Alex watched the sun go down and the moon float into the sky like an old ghost's white, wrinkled face. He knew this was part of the punishment--the pity he'd get from the officers as they passed and the secretaries who pretended not to see him. He shifted uncomfortably, needing to pee but unwilling to call attention to himself by asking to be unlocked.

  The sergeant noticed him on his way home at the end of the shift. "Didn't you call home?" he asked, puzzled.

  Alex nodded. "My father's coming," he said.

  The policeman offered to call again, but Alex shook his head. He did not want the sergeant, whom he'd begun to consider an ally, knowing the problem was not that his father could not come to pick him up, but simply that he did notwant to.

  He wondered if his father had deliberately decided to leave Alex hanging, or if he'd found something better to do--haul his crawfish traps, drink, be a fifth in a poker game. His mother might have come--Alex tried to believe that--but if his mother had been sober enough to comprehend that Alex was at the station, she would have been kept in her place by her husband.

  Alex put his head on the arm of the chair and closed his eyes.

  After three in the morning, he was awakened by the strong smell of perfume. A whore was sitting on the chair beside his. She had cherry hair and skin the color of mahogany and eyelashes as long as his little finger. She wore a string of jet beads that looped over one of her breasts, as if to outline it. She was chewing gum--grape--and she held a fistful of money.

  She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen