Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [116]
“Come in here a minute, darling,” his voice called. He was in the bedroom. She rinsed off her hands, dried them, and went to join him. He had switched on his desk lamp and was sitting at the desk adjusting one of his cameras. He looked up at her, smiling. “Thought I’d get some pictures of the party, just for the record,” he said. “They’ll be fun to have later, to look back on. This is our first real party together, you know; quite an occasion. By the way, have you got a photographer for the wedding yet?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “I think they have.”
“I’d like to do it myself, but of course that’s impossible,” he said with a laugh. He began doing things to his light meter.
She leaned affectionately against his shoulder, glancing over it at the objects on the desk, the blue flashbulbs, the concave silver circle of the flash gun. He was consulting the open magazine; he had marked the article entitled, “Indoors Flash Lighting.” Beside the column of print there was an advertisement: a little girl with pigtails on a beach, clutching a spaniel. “Treasure It Forever,” the caption read.
She walked over to the window and looked down. Below was the white city, its narrow streets and its cold winter lights. She was holding her drink in one of her hands; she sipped at it. The ice tinkled against the glass.
“Darling,” Peter said, “it’s almost zero hour, but before they come I’d like to get a couple of shots of you alone, if you don’t mind. There are only a few exposures left on this roll and I want to put a new one in for the party. That red ought to show up well on a slide, and I’ll get some black-and-whites too while I’m at it.”
“Peter,” she said hesitantly, “I don’t think …” The suggestion had made her unreasonably anxious.
“Now don’t be modest,” he said. “Could you just stand over there by the guns and lean back a little against the wall?” He turned the desk lamp around so that the light was on her face and held the small black light meter out towards her. She backed against the wall.
He raised the camera and squinted through the tiny glass window at the top; he was adjusting the lens, getting her in focus. “Now,” he said. “Could you stand a little less stiffly? Relax. And don’t hunch your shoulders together like that, come on, stick out your chest, and don’t look so worried darling, look natural, come on, smile.…”
Her body had frozen, gone rigid. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t even move the muscles of her face as she stood and stared into the round glass lens pointing towards her, she wanted to tell him not to touch the shutter release but she couldn’t move.…
There was a knock at the door.
“Oh damn,” Peter said. He set the camera on the desk. “Here they come. Well, later then, darling.” He went out of the room.
Marian came slowly from the corner. She was breathing quickly. She reached out one hand, forcing herself to touch it.
“What’s the matter with me?” she said to herself. “It’s only a camera.”
27
The first to arrive were the three office virgins, Lucy alone, Emmy and Millie almost simultaneously five minutes later. They were evidently not expecting to see each other there: each seemed annoyed that the others had been invited. Marian performed the introductions and led them to the bedroom, where their coats joined hers on the bed. Each of them said in a peculiar tone of voice that Marian should wear red more often. Each glanced at herself in the mirror, preening and straightening, before going out to the living room. Lucy refrosted her mouth and Emmy scratched hurriedly at her scalp.
They lowered themselves carefully onto the Danish Modern furniture and Peter got them drinks. Lucy was in purple velvet, with silver eyelids and false lashes; Emmy was in pink chiffon, faintly suggestive of high-school formals. Her hair had been sprayed into stiff wisps