Emerald City

by Jennifer Egan

  He was prematurely balding, and Rory admired the look of hardship and triumph this gave him. Lately he’d searched his own hairline for signs of recession, but the blond surfer’s mane seemed even more prolific. Most cruel of all, it was Charles who’d been born and raised in Santa Cruz.

  “Here goes,” Charles said, firing up the blowtorch. They watched as he moved the flame slowly over the meat, back and forth as if he were mowing a lawn. Its surface turned a pale gray. When the entire side was done, he flipped the steak over and lightly cooked its other side.

  “Ugh,” said Stacey. “It’s still completely raw.”

  “Wait,” Charles said.

  He held a long metal spit to the flame until it glowed red. Then he pressed the spit to the meat. There was a hiss, a smell of cooking, and when he lifted the spit, a long black stripe branded the steak. He heated the spit several more times and pressed it to the meat at parallel intervals. Soon it was indistinguishable from a medium-rare steak straight off the grill. Rory felt an irrational surge of appetite, a longing to eat the meat in spite of knowing it was raw and cold.

  Stacey opened the refrigerator. Rory always kept a supply of Cokes for her in there; Diet, of course, but also some regulars in case she had earned one that day and not yet rewarded herself. To his surprise, she pulled out a can of regular now.

  “What the hell,” she said. “I mean, really, what difference does it make?”

  Rory stared at her. She had never said anything like this before. “What about Vesuvi?” he asked, regretting it even as he spoke.

  “Vesuvi won’t hire me. You know it perfectly well.”

  She was smiling at him, and Rory felt as if she had peered into the lying depths of his soul. “Vesuvi doesn’t know shit,” he said, but it sounded lame even to himself.

  Stacey slid open the window and climbed out onto the fire escape. The sky was a strange, sulfurous yellow—beautiful, yet seemingly disconnected from nature. The shabby tree behind Rory’s building was empty of leaves, and made a pattern of cracked glass against the sky. Stacey drank her Coke in tiny, careful sips. Rory stood helplessly inside the window, watching her. He needed to say something to her, he knew that, but he wasn’t sure how.

  He shook a cigarette from his pack and placed it in his mouth. Charles was working on a second steak. “By the way,” Charles said, pointing with his chin at a spot near Rory’s head, “I baked us a cake—a real one.”

  Rory turned in surprise and lifted a plate from above the refrigerator. It was a tall, elegant cake with giant dollops of whipped cream along its edges. “Charles,” Rory said, confused, “haven’t you been doing this all week?”

  “Yeah,” Charles said, “but always for strangers. And never to eat.”

  He bent over the steak, his blowtorch hissing on the damp meat. He looked embarrassed, as if his preference for real cake were a weakness he rarely confided. Charles’s honesty shamed Rory—he said what he felt, not caring how it sounded.

  Rory climbed out the window and sat beside Stacey. The bars of the fire escape felt cold through his jeans. Stacey held her Coke in one hand and took Rory’s hand in the other. They looked at the yellow sky and held hands tightly, as if something were about to happen.

  Rory’s heart beat quickly. “So maybe it doesn’t work,” he said. “The modeling. Maybe that just won’t happen.”

  He searched her face for some sign of surprise, but there was none. She watched him calmly, and for the first time Rory felt that Stacey was older than he, that her mind contained things he knew nothing of. She stood up and handed her Coke to Rory. Then she grasped the railing of the fire escape and lifted her body into a handstand. Rory held his breath, watching in alarmed amazement as the slender wand of her body swayed against the yellow sky. She had no trouble balancing, and hovered there for what seemed a long time before finally bending at the waist, lowering her feet, and standing straight again.

  “If it doesn’t work,” she said, “then I’ll see the world some other way.”

  She took Rory’s face in her hands and kissed him on the mouth—hard, with the fierce, tender urgency of someone about to board a train. Then she turned and looked at the sky. Rory stared at her, oddly frightened to think that she would do it, she would find some way. He pictured Stacey in a distant place, looking back on him, on this world of theirs as if it were a bright, glittering dream she had once believed in.

  “Take me with you,” he said.

  THE STYLIST

  When they finally reach the dunes, Jann, the photographer, opens a silver umbrella. This is the last shot of the day. The light is rich and slanted. Around them the sand lies in sparkling heaps, like piles of glass silt.

  A girl toes the sand. She wears a short cotton skirt, a loose T-shirt. A few feet away from her the stylist pokes through a suitcase filled with designer bathing suits. The stylist’s name is Bernadette. She’s been doing this for years.

  “Here,” she says, handing the girl a bikini. It is made of shiny red material. The girl glances at Jann, who is busy loading his camera. She slips her underpants from beneath the skirt and pulls on the bathing-suit bottom. She is not close to twenty yet.

  “Is this the cover shot?” asks the girl, whose name is Alice. Each time she’s in a shot she asks this question.

  “Where were you two months ago?” the stylist says.

  “What do you mean?” Alice’s face is diamond-shaped. Her eyes are filled with gold.

  “I mean where were you two months ago?” Bernadette asks again.”

  “I was home. They hadn’t found me yet.” “Home is where?”

  “Rockford, Illinois.”

  “Cover shot or not,” Bernadette tells the girl, “it seems to me you aren’t doing too badly.”

  This takes Alice by surprise. Her mouth opens as if to answer, but instead she turns away and lifts the T-shirt over her head. There is something despairing in the movement of her shoulders. She covers each of her small breasts with half of the red bathing-suit top. Bernadette ties the straps. Alice stares for a moment at the waves, which are pale blue and disorderly.

  “Where are we again?” she asks.

  “Lamu,” says Bernadette.

  Hair and Makeup arrive, panting from the walk. Nick, the makeup man, begins to work on the girl’s eyes. She hugs herself.

  “Where were we yesterday?” she asks.

  “Mombasa,” says Bernadette.

  The photographer is ready. The silver umbrellas are raised to gather the light. He holds a light meter to the girl’s chest. Hair and Makeup share a cigarette. There are two other models on this trip, and they watch from a distance. The sea mumbles against the dunes. The girl looks especially bare, surrounded by people who are dressed. She is still so new the camera frightens her. Jann has removed it from his tripod and is holding it near her face. “This face,” he says, pausing to glance at the rest of them. “Will you look at this face?”

  They look. It is delicate as a birdcage. Jann squints behind his camera. The rhythm of the shutter mingles with the breaking waves. Catching it, the girl begins to move.

  “There,” cries Jann, “that’s it!”

  They look again. Bernadette looks and sees it, too, feels the others see it. In the way the light falls, there is something; in the girl’s restless hands, her sad mouth. A stillness falls. She is more than a skinny young girl on a beach; she is any young girl, sad and longhaired, watching a frail line of horizon. The camera clicks. Then the moment passes.

  Alice leans down and scratches at her knee. Bernadette looks at Jann and sees him smiling.

  “Bingo,” he says.

  In town the wind blows, filling the air with dust and tissue candy wrappers. There are lots of widows in Lamu, old squat women who clutch their dark veils against the wind. In the market square they hunch beside baskets of dried fruit, seeds, purple grain. The air smells burned.

  The group is staying in an old two-story hotel near the waterfront—the sort of place that conjures up pian
o players and rough men toasting their motherlands. It reminds Bernadette of the hotel in New Orleans where she spent her honeymoon. Like that hotel, this place has ceiling fans. Last night she lay in bed and watched hers spin.

  After dinner, Alice tells of how she was discovered. It happened at the shopping mall, she says. All the girls walked through. You had to bring snapshots. She had one of herself riding on her brother’s shoulders. The two other models look bored with the story.

  Bernadette lights a cigarette. She turns to Jann, who is flipping through a magazine. “What does this remind you of?” she says.

  He looks up, his blond eyebrows raised. He is gentle and brawny, like a Viking from a children’s book.

  “What does what remind me of?” he says.

  “This. All of us.”

  Jann seems confused, so she goes on. “Have you noticed how no one really likes each other?” she says. “We’re like a family.”

  He is amused. He takes a long drink of beer and runs his hands through his hair. “Speak for yourself.”

  Bernadette laughs and then stops. “What’s holding us together?” she asks.

  “That’s easy,” says Jann, leaning so far back in his chair that the cheap wood creaks. “That’s a no-brainer.”

  “Humor me,” says Bernadette.

  He leans forward, resting his elbows on the oilcloth tabletop. The wind carries snaking bits of music in from the narrow streets. The models have wandered away, and the room is filled with people so black their skin shines blue in the light.

  “We’re on a fashion shoot,” he says.

  He rolls a matchstick between his palms and then waves at the waiter for two more beers. Flies settle on the table’s edge. He looks at Bernadette. “To getting those shots,” he says, raising his beer. He sounds uneasy. Bernadette drinks from her bottle, letting her head fall back. Her neck is long and white. Jann watches her throat move as she swallows.

  “To the hand that feeds us,” she says.

  Now the girls gallop over. They want to go dancing someplace. In Mombasa there was a discotheque filled with young African whores who danced languidly and waited for business to arrive. The girls were fascinated.

  “Not in Lamu,” says Jann. “Remember, there aren’t even cars.”

  Alice yawns openly, like a cat. Her teeth catch the light. She leans down and rests her head on Jann’s shoulder. In a helpless, teenage way she has adored him from the start.

  “I’m sleepy,” she says.

  Jann glances at Bernadette and pulls the girl into his lap. He runs a palm over her soft hair, and she relaxes against him. Her long legs scatter toward the floor. All of them are silent. The girl squirms and moves her head. At this hour two months ago, she would be kissing her father good night. She climbs to her feet. “Well,” she says, looking from Jann to Bernadette, “see you tomorrow.”

  She wanders in search of the other two, who have left her behind.

  “Poor kid,” says Jann.

  As they watch her go, Bernadette reaches under the table and touches him, softly at first, then more boldly. It’s amazing, she thinks, how you can just do this to people. Like stealing. Luckily, the youngest girls don’t know it.

  Jann looks at her and swallows. She decides that he is younger than she thought. She sips her beer, which tastes of smoke, and does not move her hand. “What does this remind you of?” she says.

  He shakes his head. Color fills his cheeks.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” says Bernadette.

  They leave the bar and climb the narrow flight of steps to the hotel rooms. Bernadette presses her palms against the walls. She is drunker than she thought. They pause at the top, where insects dive against an electric bulb. Jann hooks his fingers into the back of Bernadette’s jeans and gently pulls. Desire, sour and metallic, pushes up from her throat.

  “Your room?” she says.

  Jann’s bed is neatly made, its curtain of mosquito netting twisted in a bundle overhead. He goes into the bathroom and shuts the door. Bernadette stands at the window. There is no glass, just wood shutters that have been pulled aside to let in the night wind. A bright moon spills silver across the waves. Painted sailboats line the shore.

  She hears the toilet flush and stays near the window, expecting Jann to come up behind her. He doesn’t. The bed squeaks under his weight.

  “You know,” she says, still facing the sea, “this reminds me of something.”

  “Everything reminds you of something,” he says.

  “That’s true. One of these days I’ll figure out what it is.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Nope.” She stretches so that her stomach pulls. “It must be one of the few things I haven’t seen or done.”

  Jann is silent. Bernadette wonders if he has pulled the netting down.

  “Well,” he says, “then it shouldn’t be hard to spot. When it comes along.”

  Bernadette lifts off her shirt. Her bra is black, her breasts full and white inside it. There is too much flesh. This has always been the case, but after a day of dressing girls with pronged hips and bellies like shallow empty dishes, her own body comes as a surprise. She turns to Jann. “I’ll know when I’ve found it,” she says, “because it won’t remind me of anything else.”

  He is lying down, hands crossed behind his head. His photographer’s eye is on her. Her body feels abundant, tasteless. She wishes she had left her shirt on.

  “If you close your eyes,” she says, “you won’t know the difference.”

  Jann shakes his head. The ceiling fan spins, touching Bernadetten bare shoulders with its current. She goes to the dresser and finds scattered change, film containers, a pack of cigarettes. She takes one out and lights it. There are Polaroids: two from this morning in town, another from the docks. She finds one of Alice in the dunes and holds it up. “What do you think of her?” she says.

  “Cute,” says Jann. “Stiff, though. New.”

  “She has a crush on you,” says Bernadette. “I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  “Poor kid,” says Jann. “Should be going to high school proms.”

  Bernadette looks again at the picture. Sunlight fills the girl’s hair. The sand is pale and bright as snow, the sea turquoise. She longs suddenly to be in those white dunes, as if she had never seen anything like them before. She must remind herself that she was standing just outside the shot, that she chose the girl’s bathing suit.

  “Have you ever noticed how meaningful these things can look?” she asks.

  Jann laughs. “Have I noticed?” he says. “It’s my shot.”

  Bernadette flips the picture back among the others. Her voice goes soft. “I meant in a general sense.”

  “In a general sense,” says Jann, “that’s how they work.”

  The room is filled with stale light. Bernadette goes to the bed. It’s amazing, she thinks, how lust and aggravation will combine to push you toward someone. She sits on the bed and then wishes she had headed for the door. She would have liked to make him ask. He would have asked, she thinks.

  She stretches out beside him under the twisting fan. It reminds her of a scissors. They do not touch.

  “So,” she says, addressing the fan, “are you planning to cash in?”

  “On what?”

  “On Alice.”

  His arms tense. “Are you always like this?”

  “You bring out my best side,” says Bernadette.

  She takes his face in her hands and kisses his mouth. The sourness wells up around her gums and teeth. She wonders if Jann can taste it. She presses her stomach against him and works the T-shirt over his head. Undressing a person is easy—she makes a living at it. Jann smells like the beach. His chest is nearly hairless.

  “What’s the matter?” he says.

  His eyes look cloudy and small. He pushes her down and moves above her now, pulling off her jeans one leg at a time. She watches his arms, the same thready muscles and veins she has watched as he held his camera these past days.
She probes them with her nails, leaving small white crescents. He doesn’t protest. She has him now, she knows it. And yet, she thinks, what difference does it make?

  Later, when they have made love and the sounds of the bar have died down, Jann and Bernadette lie still.

  “You know,” she says, “this room is a lot like the one where I spent my honeymoon. New Orleans.”

  “Honeymoon?” he says.

  “Sure. What else was there to do in the early seventies?”

  Jann says nothing.

  “I was pretty then,” she adds. “My hair was down to here.

  She turns a little, touching the base of her spine. The skin is damp.

  “You’re pretty now,” says Jann.

  “Please.”

  He runs a finger down her cheek.

  “Stop it,” she says.

  “How come?”

  “Because old skin always looks tear-streaked.”

  “How old are you?” he asks.

  “Thirty-six.”

  He laughs. “Thirty-six. God, what a business we’re in.”

  Bernadette touches her cheek in the place where Jann’s finger was. She presses the skin as though searching for a blemish.

  “I’ve been a stylist for sixteen years,” she says. “I felt competitive with the girls at first. Now I feel maternal.”

  “Sixteen years,” says Jann, shaking his head.

  “They’re younger now,” she says. “You know that.”

  “They get older, too. Think what it’s like for them.”

  “Who knows? They disappear.”

  “Exactly,” says Jann.

  They lie in silence. Bernadette decides she will go back to her own room. Conversation is meant to get you somewhere, and she and Jann have already been and gone.

  “You know,” he says, “it’s hard to picture you married.”

  “I hardly was. It lasted a minute.”

  “How did it end?”

  “Christ!” she says. “What have I started here?”

  “Tell me.”

  She narrows her eyes and sits up. With her toes she searches the floor for her sandals.