The Lover From an Icy Sea (6 page)

“
A glass of water?” he asked.

“
Sure. Why not.” It wasn’t really a question.

Kit filled both glasses, set them down next to the sink, wiped his hands on a dishrag, and lit his cigarette. Only then did he turn around—blowing the smoke out in one, long, dumfounded stream.

Daneka was standing in front of him, unencumbered except by the topaz—earrings, that is.

“
Let’s practise, shall we?” It was neither request nor command. But no matter, as Kit needed neither to be cajoled nor prompted. Still less did he need to be told or shown what to do. He simply needed to revise this visual image enough in his mind to decide for himself what she might consider an appropriate course of action. He stood with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. In the fifteen steps she needed to get from where she’d been standing to the kitchenette, her eyes never left his.

Kit handed Daneka the glass of water; stepped around her; went to his worktable; picked up his camera. He removed the lens guard and inserted a roll of black and white film. He put the camera back down on the workbench and went for his light kit, which he then set up at one end of the sofa-bed—the only piece of furniture he owned that he felt might be suitable for this job. He plugged in the light, experimented with several filters until he’d found the right one, closed the automatic door on the skylight, pulled the curtains on all of the windows in the apartment, and took out his light meter. Only then did he turn back to Daneka to indicate that he was ready for her.

“
Your casting couch, Kit?”

Kit ignored the comment. No rose without thorns, he thought. “Something to drink before we get started?” he asked.

“
But you just gave me this,” she said, holding up the glass of water.

“
I know. What I meant was—.”

“
I know what you meant. And the answer is ‘sure.’ Why not? It’s Sunday.”

Kit went to the refrigerator, took out the bottle of wine, put it on the counter, and rummaged around in the drawer for his corkscrew—a little mermaid with the tail leading off into the coils of the screw.

“
Den lille havfrue,” Daneka murmured as she peered down at the corkscrew. “How cute.”

He cut off the top of the metallic cap, inserted the corkscrew into the cork, worked the screw down into it. The little mermaid’s arm provided him with the necessary leverage to pull the cork, the mermaid’s hand fitting snugly onto the glass lip of the bottle. He pulled slowly and carefully. The cork came out in one, smooth motion. He opened the cabinet over the sink and took down a wine glass—a single glass—which he filled to three-quarters.

“
Not joining me, Kit?” she asked as he handed her the wine glass.

“
Never when I’m working,” he answered, letting only the corners of his mouth suggest that he might be just a tad amused.

“
Then I suppose we should get to work,” Daneka answered in a tone like stiff parchment as she walked over to his sofa-bed. She lay down on it as if this is what she did for a living. He moved his light meter over her with his full concentration fixed on the work. He took three readings over her body, one behind the sofa, then adjusted the light accordingly. It was perfect—as was she.

Kit could not remember when he had last felt more moved by a human subject than by a landscape. Normally indifferent—or at least immune—to any sexual thoughts about his professional subjects for as long as he was working a gig, something was happening to him he couldn’t account for—and so he allowed himself to look at her as a woman rather than as a subject or a client.

“
Give me a couple of seconds, will you. to think about positions?” he lied.

“
Oh, so that’s what this is all about. I thought maybe you liked what you were looking at,” she said, letting her declaration sound like a pout.

“
Never when I’m working,” Kit answered dryly.

He started at the top of her head. Auburn hair, thick, cut short. He suspected her hair would smell of lilacs, even on a bad day. The forehead high, one particularly prominent tributary of the superficial temporal veins pulsing from hairline to eyebrow along the right temple. Eyebrows sparse, same color as her hair. Eyes like tiny almonds, but the color of olives. Nose slightly pinched, but straight, with a fine pair of nostrils for flaring, he imagined. Lips rich, not too abundant, not in the least puffed. An unusually square chin for a woman. In any case, the architecture of it was consistent with that of her cheekbones. One ear was visible as Daneka’s hair fell to either side—large and a bit out of proportion with her other facial characteristics, he thought. Still, he would gratefully spend an hour at each, nibbling like a nervous squirrel over sunflower seeds.

Her neck was nothing less than a pedestal, and with muscles and tendons as voluptuously phrased as anything Rodin might have cared to carve in marble.

Kit followed the lines in her neck down along her clavicle, out to her shoulder, all the way down her arm to the backside of her palm and out to the ends of her fingers. He noted that she had visible biceps, even with her arm in a relaxed position. The fingers at the ends of those arms were long, narrow, prematurely lined and wrinkled. Perhaps too much paperwork over the years, or too much exposure to the sun—both leading to dry and chapped skin. He looked especially at her ring finger and wondered whether it had ever supported the weight of a wedding band.

His eyes crawled back up the underside of her arms—delicately veined, the pale blue lines visible through taught skin—to her armpit, not visible.

Daneka, perhaps bored with his apparent passivity, had closed her eyes. Her breathing was low and regular. Kit thought she might actually have fallen asleep, which he was thankful for: it would allow him to slow down.

He looked at her face once again. Good, solid lines around the eyes and mouth. A woman who slept soundly and laughed a great deal. He liked her. He liked her laugh. He imagined he would like sleeping next to her.

He next looked at both of her breasts. Large, he thought, for such a petite woman. She couldn’t possibly weigh more than one hundred thirty pounds, and was probably no more than five-foot-seven even in heels. Yes, her breasts were large, but well proportioned—and for a woman of her age, unusually youthful. Clearly, she’d never nursed. He wondered whether she’d already succumbed to science—they were that perfect. A pity, he thought, if she had.

He let his eyes for a moment study her aureoles and nipples: a bit darker than the skin surrounding them, but not by much—and small, tight, compact. His glance sank slowly to her breastplate and abdomen. No paunch. A few lines, perhaps, and skin not quite so taught as it might be on a younger woman. But otherwise gently curving, like dunes surrounding the slight cavity of her navel.

From there, his eyes danced back and forth lightly across the wings of her pelvis as if dusting for fingerprints. It was pronounced, perhaps because her stomach was flat, and it stood out in bold relief against the shallow cave of her abdomen. His eyes entered that cave and found her pubis. The hair on it was the same texture, color and delicacy as the hair on her head. The pubic bone itself was quite pronounced, her lips invisible. He moved his head to within inches of her pubis in order to find her animal smell. It was—as he discovered when he next moved his head the length of her torso up to her armpit and neck—consistent, warm and feminine. His own nostrils flared as he turned off all other senses and absorbed her smell.

After a moment, he opened his eyes again and continued his survey. The curve of her thigh, long and gentle, like that of a clam shell, terminated in the abrupt knot of a knee-cap, then continued on down in a slightly less dramatic parenthesis that was her calf. Hers were long legs, Kit decided: a gymnast’s legs—long and well-proportioned to hold the weight of a moderately petite woman. The curve descended from her calf muscle in a quick dip at her anklebone. Her feet were small, the toes like little marshmallows on skewers. He wondered whether he would ever suck those toes….

As if his thoughts had entered some forbidden realm and bumped noisily up against her own, Daneka stirred, then opened her eyes.

“
Do you think maybe we could start sometime today?” she asked.

“
Yes. Today. Now, as a matter of fact.”

“
Good. I was beginning to wonder whether you might have lost interest.”

Kit didn’t answer. He simply made one last adjustment to his backlight, took the cover off his lens, and set his options and focus. He then stepped away from the camera, knelt down next to Daneka, and began to talk “the talk.”

“
Try to forget I’m even here. Ignore both me and the camera, if you can.”

“
I’ve had tougher challenges.”

“
And I’ll try to compensate with shudder speed for the brightness of your congeniality.”

“
Kit, it’s just a shoot. I mean, it’s not as if we’re creating art here. Or making love.”

“
True. But it wouldn’t hurt for you to warm up a bit to the camera, if not to me. That’s what makes for the magic, you know.”

“
All right,” she sighed heavily, making no pretense of an effort to hide her annoyance. “Let me put on my happy face.” Daneka fluttered her eyelashes half a dozen times, pinched her cheeks, and pasted on a smile.

Kit snapped his first shot. “Are you always this gracious, or is it just the spring that brings out your robin?” he asked in a monotone.

“
Chirp-chirp.”

Kit took a second. “Nice!”

She tried hard to suppress a smile. “I’m glad you think so.”

“
Maybe you’re a natural.”

“
Posing for a picture, Kit, is not poetry.” He took a third and fourth shot.

“
No? What is it, then?” Daneka arched her eyebrows, and Kit took three more shots in quick succession. “Nice,” he said again.

“
Posing, Kit. Just posing.”

“
Hung up on phonics, are we?” Kit muttered dryly into the lens. He snapped again. Daneka paused for an instant, then rolled on her back and threw her arms and legs into the air. Her laugh was like a whimsical spring breeze as it rolled over him, and he stepped back from the camera to bask in its warmth.

The humor of their exchange exhausted, Daneka lowered her limbs back to the sofa-bed, from where she turned her head and looked straight at him. Kit returned her stare. He thought he could decipher, for the first time, a kind of appreciation—and it delighted him.

“
You know what Schadenfreude is, Kit?”

“
I have a notion,” he answered.

“
Something tells me it’s your stock in trade—as much as that camera.”

“
Nah. I’m a curmudgeon of the first order, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not others’ pain and suffering I get a kick out of. It’s my own. My own irreconcilability with the world.”

“
I like curmudgeons,” she said simply. “I try to take one to bed every chance I get. They’re restful.”

“
Be a bane to a Dane,” Kit stated flatly.

Irony settled on Daneka’s lips. “Don’t be disdaneful.”

“
What are you talking about? It would never occur to me to be disdainful of you, a possibly rich, beautiful and topaz-tipsy client.”

“
No, I said disdaneful. I’m a Dane. Don’t dis me.” They shared a moment of silence during which Kit registered the pun, and then they both laughed. “You’re good for my word power, Kit. I haven’t been this charged since my freshman year in college.”

“
Nor I since I took my first Polaroid.”

“
Do you sometimes like to play, Kit?”

“
Never when I’m working.”

“
And do you ever not work?” she asked.

“
Only when I’m playing,” he answered. Daneka’s hair had fallen over her face once again, but she made no effort to put it back in place. Kit stepped around in front of his camera and reached out to tuck it back behind her ear. As he did so, she grabbed his wrist and looked directly at him.

“
Are we playing or working now, Kit?” she asked him.

Kit turned serious. “I believe we’re still working.”

“
I’m tired of working.”

Kit looked hard into her eyes. “Then tell me what it is you want. I can be everything you want. Or nothing. It’s up to you. But you have to tell me.”

Daneka had been under the lights and in a battle of wits for almost half an hour and had, she noticed as she brushed her finger over her upper lip, begun to perspire.

“
Excuse me.” She stood up and went directly to the bathroom. When he heard the shower, Kit decided to lie down for a moment and simply breathe in the smell she’d left behind. He stripped down to his boxers and threw his clothes into a pile next to the worktable, then shut his eyes momentarily to rest them. Unfortunately, the stress of preparing for her arrival and trying to keep up with her had taken a toll on him, too. He was fast asleep within seconds.