We All Love the Beautiful Girls

by Joanne Proulx

  How to explain it? How to explain it without breaking every rule? I close my eyes. The bathroom disappears. Walls have never been invented. Time is just a word in a book. I hold on to her. She holds on to me. We exist at the pressure points, a jangle of warm pieces. Hand neck forehead, ankle foot knee.

  This, I tell her. It felt like this feels now.

  —

  “EPIC,” DIRK SAYS, swiping at a slug of blood trailing from one nostril. He and Michael are collapsed in the two high-back Muskoka chairs that remained upright after the battle.

  Michael can’t miss the dark pinpricks tracking up the boy’s skinny thigh.

  The boy sees him staring. “Diabetes,” he says. “Insulin.”

  “Right,” Michael says. As if.

  He takes a minute to catch his breath, then goes to the shed at the bottom of the property, and reaches under the eave for the key. He returns with two blue-and-white-striped towels, one of which he tosses at the kid.

  The boy presses an end to his nose and, sinking back into the chair, drapes the towel lengthwise over his chest and knees. “This your ex’s place?”

  “No,” Michael says. “I’m married.”

  “Yeah?” The kid pulls the towel back and examines the bloodstain. “So your wife,” he says, “she hot or what?”

  Michael snorts. Before he untied her tonight, he took her fancy blouse out of the garbage bag and hung it back up on her side of the closet. Told her he loved her. That he wanted her to love him back.

  On the walk to the diamond—along Springfield, down Main, up River Road, past the Kellys’, across the soccer pitches—the chicken wire protecting the turtle nest now reinforced by a thicket of sawed-off hockey sticks, the old Asian guys still fishing near the public dock—Michael came to a decision: until she initiates contact, he’s not going to touch her. He told her what he wants. If she wants David, fuck it, she can have him.

  And yet. In college, before they’d started dating, tired from a long night of studying, she’d nodded off on his couch. He’d covered her with a blanket—stiff and smelling of closet—and carefully slipped a pillow under her head. He’d felt so undone just seeing her there, such an ordinary, extraordinary thing, that girl from class, Mia, asleep on his couch. Twenty-five years on, everything and nothing has really changed.

  “You got any kids?”

  Michael fixes his eyes on the boy. His hair hanging in wet strings, blood wet and slippery on his upper lip. “This is a friend’s place,” he says. “A former friend. A former business associate. Guy ripped me off.”

  “Big time?”

  “Let’s just say I probably paid for half of this place.”

  “Sucks.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  The kid leans over and fist-bumps Michael’s knee. “We should trash it,” he says. “Like just rip it the fuck apart.”

  “Nah, I’m keeping things legal. Although the lawyer’s getting expensive.”

  The kid grins, showing off his perfect teeth. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Or like, kicking the total shit out of him or something.”

  “Nope.”

  “Come on. Tell me you haven’t had any revenge fantasies. It’s not normal. The cumwad totally screwed you over.”

  Michael has considered bashing Peter’s mailbox in or slamming his head into his office wall, but other than that he’s kept things locked down pretty tight. Tonight, however, sitting relaxed on the cumwad’s dock, post-Gladiator wrestle, it doesn’t take Michael long to come up with a few ideas. He could pay some guys—the kid’s friends under the bridge—to tag the entire house, on a weekend when the family’s out of town. Every window, every door, every square inch of siding obliterated by big cartoon cocks, a two-storey-high fuck you in giant, bulbous letters gracing the river view.

  “If I knew I wouldn’t get caught,” he says, “I’d burn his boat. Twenty-five-foot bowrider, two-hundred-horse Evinrude. Bought it the first time he ripped me off.”

  The kid gives Michael’s knee another bump. “We should do it, Cheerio. Burn the boat. Like a symbol. Or a message or whatever.”

  “It’s at his cottage. On Big Yirkie.”

  The kid throws his head back and practically howls. “Big Yirkie? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s hilarious. Dawg, we’ve so got to do this. You’ve got a car, right? We could go up—”

  “Dirk, I’m not going to burn my partner’s boat.”

  “Former partner’s boat. Former Big Yirkie Douchebag’s boat.”

  Michael laughs. “I did break a picture of it in his office.”

  “Oh fuck, I bet he’s cutting you a big cheque right now. Pussy old man.” He runs a hand under his nose, and his fingers come away clean. “Listen,” he says, throwing the towel onto the dock, “I’m gonna head. I need something to eat.”

  The kid actually belts his shorts around his thighs before climbing into his bulky red high-tops. Back to hoodlum, he grabs the arms of the chair he’d been sitting in, lifts it awkwardly over his head and, with a grunt, tosses it into the river. The chair throws up a splash, then disappears silently into the water. Michael imagines its slow sinking, the wooden chair floating through liquid space, hitting the bottom, wedging deep in the muck, its exposed parts—half the slatted back, one sturdy arm, a leg—in a silty sway of chopped-back weeds.

  The kid kicks in another chair, already tipped over near the edge of the dock. It disappears as fast as the first, burbling up a stream of bubbles that blister the water’s dark surface.

  He turns with a grin. “Your half of the furniture.”

  Michael knows he shouldn’t, but what the hell. He raises a hand to meet Dirk’s high-five as the kid shuffles past.

  All the legal documents, the financial statements, the photocopied emails are sorted into piles on the barnboard table in Mia’s studio. Her camera bag is pushed to one end of the table, and the studio is swampy from the laundromat. Still, she’s happier working here without Michael ambling around in the background, doing whatever it is he does all day. A knock on the door, and Mia swivels round. She’s expecting David—one more reason she chose not to work at home—but it’s Frankie, her hair beaded with rain.

  “Hey,” she says timidly. “Is it all right if I come in?”

  “Sure. Of course.” She turns the document she was reading face down on the table: the legal action against the girl’s father, thirty-nine pages—without appendixes—detailing his sins against them.

  “How are you?” Mia climbs off her stool and steers Frankie away from the table. Her scent is light and clean, rain and some floral body spray. No adult ever smelled so good.

  “You know,” Frankie says. “Okay.”

  “You want to sit down?”

  “No. Sure. No. I just came by to see if you had any of those pictures you took.”

  “Which ones?”

  “After I got my nose pierced. Remember?”

  “Yes. Right. Of course.”

  Frankie considers the settee for several seconds before plunking herself down. The front windows are grey with drizzle. Umbrellas bob on the sidewalk below, like gophers you smack down with a cushioned carnival hammer.

  “It’s my dad’s birthday on Monday.” Her knees jut coltishly above the crushed-velvet seat. She has one of those bodies; she’ll lose her waist when she’s older, but her legs will always stay slim. “I wanted to give him one.”

  “I haven’t really done anything photography-wise since Finn’s accident.” Which is technically true; she’d had those pictures of Frankie printed before Finn lost his hand. “You want something to drink? Some water? Lemonade?”

  “I just had a latte at Starbucks.” Frankie sinks back into the couch. “I don’t know what else to give him,” she says sulkily. “He buys whatever he wants.”

  Yeah, with our money. Mia’s spent most of the morning reviewing exactly when and how this girl’s father diverted close to a million and a half dollars into Peter Corp. “Sorry,” she says, “I don’t have
them.” A small injury in the arena of the large.

  “I guess I’ll get him some golf balls or something lame like that.” While Frankie studies her phone, Mia fiddles with the snaps on her camera bag.

  “I could look at them early next week and have them ready, oh, I don’t know, a few days after that.”

  “The party’s tomorrow.” Frankie turns her head to the window. “You guys used to come over for cake.”

  “We did.”

  “I don’t really understand what’s going on but I don’t see why you just can’t sit down and figure it out. I mean, whatever happened, whatever you think my dad did, like, it can’t be that bad.”

  “It’s complicated, Frankie.”

  “You guys are friends.” The girl tugs her thin cotton sleeves over her hands. “Or you used to be, anyway.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. We’ll work it out.” Mia flips open the camera bag. Nestled between foam dividers, her Canon EOS and two spare lenses, a zoom and a fixed-length lens, which she uses for portraits. She bought it a few years back, without really much consideration, even though it cost more than she spends in a month now—excluding legal bills, which David has kindly agreed to defer until the case is settled.

  The camera body, reassuringly solid, seductively smooth, feels good in her hand: her fingers curl around the barrel; the butt of her palm takes the weight. She twists the lens into place. A click signals the perfect coupling of metal ring to metal ring, optics to mechanics, the mated technologies of captured time and converging light. She flips the power switch with her thumb.

  “Miracle of miracles.” The screen grids with lines and numbers. “The battery’s not dead.” As she peers through the viewfinder, her blood slows. One deep breath and she settles the bull’s eye on Frankie. Every freckle sharp on the bridge of her nose, every droplet of rain a mirrored bead in her hair. “Can I take a few shots? I’ve got a wedding coming up.”

  “You doing that again?”

  “Just as a favour for one of Finn’s nurses.” She lowers the camera. “May I? It’ll help me get back in the groove.”

  Frankie shrugs, a weighty shifting of her shoulders. She, of the selfie generation, pulls a tube from her pocket and glosses her lips while Mia adjusts the settings. Having her picture taken, especially by Mia, especially in the studio she’s been coming to for years, is no big deal.

  “Ugh,” she says, checking herself out on her phone. “My hair doesn’t even get wet right. I’m like a dog.”

  “You look great.”

  “Yeah, right,” she says.

  Mia stands a few yards back from the couch and starts shooting. Frankie doesn’t smile or turn her way. She knows Mia wants her as natural as possible, so the first shots are of a slightly hostile adolescent, gloomily contemplating the rain.

  “So, I’m going out with Eli now,” she says.

  “I heard. Can you lift your chin a bit? Sorry. There. How’s that going?”

  “Okay. I’m taller than him. And he’s a bit of a fuckboi.”

  “A what?”

  “I guess you’d say player. But it’s more than that. You know, the internet. He’s trying to get over it.”

  “I hope so.” God. Mia checks her display: too dark. She changes the white balance to the overcast preset, and lowers the shutter speed. Eli’s always been spoiled and can be pretty pouty when he doesn’t get his way, but Mia can’t imagine him as some sort of player.

  Frankie turns to the camera, her eyes shining. “I miss you guys.”

  “We miss you, too.” It feels right as she says it, although Mia has not been aware of missing anyone over the last few months. Even when she’s alone, she feels surrounded, hemmed in by other people’s needs. The shutter clicks harsh into the room.

  Frankie holds up her hand. “Can you please stop?”

  Mia keeps on. She knows without looking at the screen that it’s a beautiful shot, or the next one will be, half of Frankie’s face hidden by the palm of her hand, her hair sparking with rain, one eye bright with tears, a bruise of blurred velvet for a backdrop.

  “Mia, stop!”

  She lets her camera drop.

  Frankie stands up. “I’ve gotta go,” she says, staring down at the couch, searching the cushions for something she hasn’t lost.

  “Frankie.” She’s mad. At her. Mia doesn’t think that’s ever happened before. “Listen, I’m sorry.”

  “I told you to stop.”

  “It was a great shot.”

  “I don’t care. I was trying to talk to you. I was upset. I don’t want a picture of me looking upset.”

  Mia places a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry.” There’s a quivery vibe in the room. “I just remembered something. Wait here, okay?” Frankie nods, biting the gloss off her lips.

  It only takes Mia a second to find it. In the back room, in the file cabinet, in the A–E drawer. Frankie Conrad. Contact sheets chronicling her life. Eight-by-tens. If Mia flicker-fanned the edges, she could watch Frankie grow up all over again. Mia slips a photograph into a manila envelope and hands it to her at the door.

  Frankie immediately slips it out. It’s the one Michael saw the night they came to the studio to put up the sign. Finn was still in the hospital. Michael hadn’t wanted her to give it to the girl. And today, she hadn’t wanted to give it to her either.

  “Oh wow,” Frankie says, unable to hold back a smile. “I remember this. Your story. About your first boyfriend.” Her eyes flicker from the photograph to Mia and back again. “You always make me look so good. My shoulders don’t even look big.”

  “That’s you, Frankie. You are that beautiful.”

  She blushes and reaches into her pocket. “My mom gave me money.” At the mention of Helen, her money, Mia suffers a prideful pang. “It’s on me.” She taps the photograph with her nail. “I liked your nose ring. It gave you a little je ne sais quoi.”

  “My parents hated it.” Mia knew they would, their little princess, their only child. Like Mia, Helen couldn’t have any more kids, another thing they had in common. “They thought it made me look tough.”

  “No, it didn’t. You should push back a little.” A hard edge settles inside Mia, the thrill of a little harmless revenge, nudging a child to defy parents who have hurt her own family, but she also loves this girl and believes Frankie has always been too compliant. “You should put it back in.”

  Frankie frowns. “I should.”

  “Definitely,” Mia says. “I’d do it.”

  —

  MIA STARES DOWN into David’s kitchen drawer. “You have one knife.”

  “Yeah,” he says, “but it’s sharp.” He sidles up beside her and considers the nearly empty cutlery tray. “What can I say? My needs are few.”

  Unlike every other man on the planet, Mia thinks as David hip-checks the drawer closed. “I do have wine. Or beer.”

  “Wine sounds good.” Mia opens a glossy overhead cupboard. Inside, a kid’s blue plastic cup and one white dinner plate. “How long did you say you’ve lived here?”

  “Three months, twelve days, ten hours. Or something like that.” David is lit by the open panelled-to-match-the-cupboards Miele fridge that Mia knows cost three times as much as she paid for her first car, a six-year-old Volkswagen Golf with a hole in the dash for a radio the previous owner had been too cheap to put in. “So…no wine,” he says.

  Feeling vaguely depressed, Mia shuts the cupboard; it swings with a precision soundlessness on perfectly engineered hinges. She retrieves a Moleskine notebook and churns through her purse for a pen. She’s going to need a list.

  “Guinness?” David says.

  “Too heavy.”

  “That’s all I’ve got.”

  “I’ll just have some water.”

  “Come on. It’s Friday night,” he says and keeps rooting through the fridge.

  Except for the electronic equipment on the living room floor—TV, stereo, a clutter of speakers, a gaming console—and the mattress in the bedroom, the condo is emp
ty. David has already given Mia the tour. He was obviously eager for her approval, and it was easy to be enthusiastic; the place is gorgeous, generously sized for a new build. Big, bright rooms, oiled hardwood, even the bathrooms are elegant: walk-in glass showers roomy enough for two, heated floors and teak vanities with thick composite countertops complete with sculpted-in sinks. It’s obvious to Mia that David paid for the premium upgrades, and then some.

  “You’ll want some stools,” she says, sizing up the kitchen island. “You need two feet per stool minimum, so you’re not banging elbows. You could squeeze five in, but four would be better.”

  “Four’s good,” David says, returning with a can of Guinness, two glasses and an octagonal mustard-yellow tin scripted with Chinese characters. Mia jots in her notebook, putting the stools at the top of the first blank page, followed by the words counter-height, rotating, industrial. The living room has to be fifteen by twenty-five at least. She sketches an appropriately sized rectangle onto a fresh page and starts chunking in furniture: a large sectional, two accent chairs, Barcelona chairs or something more comfortable. A coffee table, at least one side table, a carpet, a couple of lamps, roller blinds for all—

  When Mia looks up from her notebook, the tin is open and David is rolling a joint.

  “Seriously?” she says.

  “When was the last time you had a bit of fun?”

  She studies the tiny furniture arranged on her page. Retraces the L of the sofa, darkening each line, pressing the tip of her pen hard into the paper, all those things she’ll have to buy. She doesn’t even like shopping. Hates it, in fact.

  Beside her, David sweeps a scatter of twiggy stems and crispy flakes into his cupped palm, brushes them into the tin and snaps the lid back on.

  “I haven’t smoked in forever,” she tells him.

  “Like riding a bike.” He slides open the balcony door. Behind him, a washed-pink sky spired by office towers all set to glitter as daylight sinks to dusk.

  “David?” Mia says, and he pauses, one foot already out the door. “I’ll have a puff but we’re not going to, you know—fool around.”