Deliverance - James Dickey [6]
And I called Jack Waskow, the photographer, to see if he was ready for me. He wasn't, quite, and I sat down to see if there was anything I could do right quick, anything I could get out of the way. Before I made a move, though, I sat for maybe twenty seconds, failing to feel my heart beat, though at that moment I wanted to. The feeling of the inconsequence of whatever I would do, of anything I would pick up or think about or turn to see was at that moment being set in the very bone marrow. How does one get through this? I asked myself. By doing something that is at hand to be done was the best answer I could give; that and not saying anything about the feeling to anyone. It was the old mortal, helpless, time-terrified human feeling, just the same. I had had a touch or two before, though it was more likely to come with my family, for I could find ways to keep busy at the studio, or at least to seem busy, which was harder, in some cases, than doing real work. But I was really frightened, this time. It had me for sure, and I knew that if I managed to get up, through the enormous weight of lassitude, I would still move to the water cooler, or speak to Jack Waskow or Thad, with a sense of being someone else, some poor fool who lives as unobserved and impotent as a ghost, going through the only motions it has. I picked up a rough I had done of the Kitts' ad. If there was one thing I felt a reasonable certainty about, it was my ability to get the elements of a layout into some kind of harmonious relationship. I didn't as a rule like too traditional, cheap Boraxy ads, with screaming typeforms and an obvious and chillingly commercial use of sex, nor did I like the overly "creative" kind of ad, with some farfetched or gimmicked-up formula or calculated craziness. I liked harmoniousness and a situation where the elements didn't fight with each other or overwhelm each other. I had won a couple of modest awards for art direction around town, where admittedly the competition was not of the first class, and they were hanging in the office. I took a close look at the Kitts' layout, which was for a line of artificial silk women's underwear called Kitt'n Britches. It showed a girl in nothing but panties with her back to the camera looking over her shoulder. As we had planned it, a kitten's head was to appear under her chin as she held it, and I was a little worried that, with a photograph large enough to show the britches, the cat's head might be too small. We could crop in, of course; we didn't actually need to show the girl's feet, as the account man had said, but I kind of wanted to. I like feet, for one thing, and a whole being in a photograph is in an odd way more effective, a lot of times, than someone who has been cut up with scissors. We had gone back and forth with the agency about this, and with the Kitts' sales manager, an incredible countrified jerk who had originally had the idea of using a real girl in a situation like the one in the Coppertone ad, where the Scotty is pulling the little girl's bathing suit down off her bare behind. "If we did it with a cat," he said, "it would also show that the pants won't run or tear." The agency and I had managed to talk him out of this, explaining that a reputable trade book wouldn't run it, and we couldn't find a decent-looking girl who would pose for it, either. He agreed with us, finally, but he still wanted more obvious sex in the ad than I did, and had told me when we broke up that "Whoever we get should really fill out those panties." I fiddled with the elements of the rough, bringing the girl forward and moving her back, until I thought I had what was a good compromise, with the type centering around the girl's hips. Who will she be? I wondered. Whose body will try to fill out these lines I've put down? I went in to look at the studio. Thad was there, moving things and people around with his expert, interior-decorator's formality and fussiness. The model was sitting in a camp chair, shading her eyes against the lights. She was in a checked black-and-white robe that -- at least to