Naked Read online

  Or so I thought. The mall wasn’t as crazy crowded as it had been during the holiday shopping frenzy, but it seemed as if a lot of people had decided to redeem their gift certificates. And, thanks to some fancy marketing done by Foto Folks in the fall, a lot of women were coming in with vouchers for a free glamour session.

  Every makeup chair was filled when I got there for my shift, and so were all the seats in the waiting area. They’d started signing people up for time slots and handing out short-range beepers the way they do in popular restaurants. Three of the four small picture-taking cubicles in the back were full, too, with the fourth just vacated by a woman in a feather boa and a tiara.

  “Wow,” I said, unable to stop myself.

  Mindy, who did hair and makeup, had just finished with a customer and was ducking back to the coffeepot for a mug. “You’re telling me. It’s been nonstop in here since we opened.”

  A woman in a red pleather jacket covered in zippers—think Michael Jackson in Thriller, and you’d be only half as close to how ugly that jacket was—sauntered past us. From the waist up she was entirely glamazon—hair, fake lashes, bright red lipstick. The works. Below the waist, the part the picture wouldn’t show, she was totally Mennonite. I mean complete with the flowered dress, white athletic socks and sneakers.

  “What the—?”

  “She’s doing them for her husband.”

  “But that’s…Isn’t that against…They don’t…”

  Mindy filled her mug and added sugar and cream. “I don’t know. But she came in, picked that jacket off the rack, told me just how she wanted her hair and makeup done. I’m not going to argue.”

  I wouldn’t, either. It wasn’t my place to tell anyone who came in how to dress or how much eye shadow to put on. “Hi, I’m Olivia,” I said when I went into the cubby.

  “Gretchen.”

  “So, Gretchen, did you have something particular in mind today?”

  I fiddled with the camera while we talked. Gretchen did, indeed, have an idea of what she wanted. She described it to me, including the use of the large electric fan to get the windblown look.

  “My sister-in-law Helen was in here before Christmas and she had this done,” Gretchen explained. “I want what she got.”

  Just because I’d never do it didn’t mean I couldn’t understand the appeal. Gretchen, by the looks of her, didn’t live a glamorous life. If I could make her feel pretty for just half an hour, give her pictures she could gaze at for the rest of her life, I’d do it.

  “All right, let me see you up here on this stool.” I posed her in front of the table, low enough so that she could rest her elbows on it and place her chin in one hand. Classic glamour pose. “Let me get the fan blowing.”

  We worked it hard, Gretchen and I. She was a trouper, too, bending and stretching and holding still when she had to. Her expression didn’t change much. She looked half-terrified in some of the shots, sleepy in some others, but she was laughing in between so I knew she was having fun. Our time and my allotment of shots were almost up, though, when I took the picture that would be the best of the lot.

  “Look at that one,” I said more to myself than her. “Gorgeous. That’s the one.”

  “Really?” Gretchen looked hopeful. “They look good?”

  “Beautiful,” I assured her. “Go on and get changed into your own clothes and meet me in the approval room—the small one with the door on the left. That’s where you can see all the shots and pick which ones you want.”

  We use digital photography at Foto Folks, film being outdated and nearly obsolete except for hobbyists. Customers come to the approval room to look at the pictures on a large-screen monitor, then pick their packages right then and there. They can walk out with the photos within an hour if they want to wait. Most of them do. It’s a far cry from the way we did it when I was in high school working for a local photographer. He’d have a studio session, then call the customers back in about a week later to see a slide show of the best shots, and it was another couple of weeks before they had their prints in hand. We really have become a drive-through society.

  I slipped the memory card into the reader, and had opened up the ordering software to fill in all of Gretchen’s information by the time she came in without the red jacket, her face scrubbed back to plainness. I pulled up the files and showed her each picture, one at a time.

  She didn’t say much until we got to the last one. She was laughing in it, her face turned a little, eyes downcast. It was nothing like any of the rest, all of which had a forced, plastic quality to them that shamed me, even though I knew it was what she’d asked for.

  “I think this one is the best,” I said.

  Gretchen stared at it for a long, silent moment. “I don’t like it.”

  I’d been so ready for her gushing praise I was already hovering the cursor over the add-to-order button. In fact, my finger slipped in shock at her words and I added the shot to her order. “Oops.”

  She shook her head. “That doesn’t look like me.”

  It looked more like her than any of the others, but I wouldn’t argue with her. “All right. We can choose different portraits.”

  “Wait, please.” Gretchen touched my hand on the mouse to stop me from clicking back to the image I’d chosen.

  She looked at it for a much longer time than I should’ve allowed her. I knew there were customers waiting, and Foto Folks based bonuses not only on portraits ordered but number of customers serviced. I wasn’t just holding up myself, but my coworkers, who depended on me to make their handiwork look good enough to convince customers to buy.

  “No. It doesn’t look like me. I like that one with my chin on my hand,” she said, and there was no convincing her otherwise.

  Gretchen walked out of the approval room after ordering over a hundred dollars worth of photos, including wallets. I got the idea she was going to trade them with her friends, sort of like the kids did in school with photos I’d also taken.

  “I’m so glad Helen suggested I request you,” Gretchen said as I walked with her out to the front of the store. “I’m going to tell my other girlfriends about you, too!”

  “Thank you, I appreciate it.”

  She was still bubbling and giddy as she left, and I considered I’d done my job pretty well. It was my turn to think about a run for coffee when Mindy tapped my shoulder. “You have a special customer.”

  I turned to look. “Teddy.”

  “Hey.”

  My stomach climbed into my throat. I managed a squeaky “hi.” Unlike most every other time I saw him, Teddy didn’t open up his arms to give me a hug. Awkward silence hung between us while Mindy watched, her eyes round and mouth open just a little. To be fair, Mindy’s mouth was always open just a little. But it was open a little more today.

  Teddy’s smile should’ve warmed me more than it did. “I was hoping you’d be working today.”

  “I’m working most days.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “Listen, Olivia. Patrick told me…about what happened.”

  This wasn’t a private place and I couldn’t have this conversation with him here. Didn’t want to have it with Teddy, at all. I felt the frown tug the corner of my mouth.

  “Did he?”

  “Of course he did.” Teddy looked sad, a big burly bear of a man who favored colorful sweaters and had been kind to me when he didn’t have to. “What were you thinking?”

  Past kindness didn’t give him the right to scold me, though. “I wasn’t thinking of anything. I told Patrick I was sorry. I don’t know what you want me to say, Teddy. Did Patrick send you over here to be his messenger boy, or what?”

  Teddy looked taken aback by my tone. “He’s very angry.”

  Around us, makeup artists and customers moved back and forth. Most gave us curious looks. I glanced back toward my booth, where Mindy had taken the next customer.

  “I have to get back to work.”

  “I think if you just apologized to him—”

&nbs