Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [44]
When she hesitated, his face turned solemn, as if he was on the verge of taking offense. “Sweetie, I feel like we already know each other so well,” he said. “I understand you. I know what you’re trying to escape from. But you have to trust me. So keep me company. Sit.”
She sat.
It was called TeenHeaven. The letters were spelled out in a flowing script with a pink heart where the “a” should have been. The Place Where All Your Non-Nude Dreams Come True,” a second line read.
“Whose dreams?” she asked.
He turned his head to look at her. She could feel the heat of his leg just a few inches from hers, and all at once she was aware of her body. Her heart pounding beneath her breasts, the band of her panties digging into her hip, a tickle of sweat snaking down the back of her neck.
“Yours,” he said softly. “Your dreams, Tania.”
“And theirs too.” She glanced at him. “The members.”
“Yes,” he said. “And why not? Why shouldn’t we please them? They’re men and women who appreciate the energy and spirit and beauty of youth, and are willing to open their wallets to prove it.”
His smile was warm on her face.
“But deep down they’re nothing to me—just ghosts, phantoms out there in cyberspace. Numbers on a credit-card slip. You …” he sighed. “You’re real. You’re sitting right here with me. And your dreams are the only ones that matter.”
A row of portraits, eight in all, each contained within an oval of a different pastel color. Cameos, they looked like, or popsicles, or candy eggs with girls trapped inside.
Pretty girls, fifteen years old, sixteen, seventeen. A name below each portrait, with the i’s dotted with smiley faces: Jessica and Kristi and Nata, Suz and Miki and Beatriz. Smiling at the camera or giving it a pouty look.
“This is where I’ll be?” Tania asked. “Here?”
“At first,” Gary said. “Just at first.”
He reached up and brushed the side of her face with his fingers, the lightest of touches. “I’m amazed by you,” he said. “You must be the most beautiful girl in Baltimore. I know that the camera will love you as much as I do.”
She blushed.
He turned back to the computer. His fingers moved across the touchpad, the moisture from her cheek leaving momentary trails on the gray surface.
“Here’s how it’ll go,” Gary said. “We’ll do the first few shoots today, here. I’ll introduce you on TeenHeaven as my newest discovery—” She heard him take a breath. “Boy, will the members be happy to meet you And then, in a couple of weeks, we’ll get together again and do a full-scale session, maybe ten, twelve different outfits. Get a thousand great shots, easy, and use the best of them for the grand opening of your own site.”
He paused, thinking, then smiled at her. “What say we call it ‘Blooming Tania’?”
Glorious Gloria was tall and slender, with dark, wiry hair and olive skin. She often wore short-shorts, halter tops that were a size or two too small for her, long dangly earrings, brightly colored headbands. She always looked only half-awake, smiling sleepily over her bony shoulder at the camera or lying on a tan sofa in a living room with splintery floors and peeling wallpaper, her toes pointed to accentuate the length of her legs.
Starlight Stacy lived on a farm someplace warm. Even in winter she was always outdoors, feeding the chickens in her shorty pajamas, posing in muddy boots and a bathing suit amid rows of vegetables, scraping the flesh of an orange off the peel with her even white teeth, swinging on a tire in a miniskirt.
Dream Jeannie had freckles everywhere: her face, her arms, between her breasts. All her photographs were taken indoors. She almost always wore bathing suits, and had moved from tankinis in her earlier galleries to thongs in her most recent, suits so insubstantial as to leave her practically naked.
Tania felt her face grow hot again.
“I know,” Gary said. “Not until you’re ready. But you’ll be amazed at how fast you become comfortable with the … more revealing outfits. Everyone does.”
Joyful Jane, though,