Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire

by Paula Guran

  Yes, I made my cut off her. Nothing like what that other photographer must be making, but enough so it still bought this whisky. She was funny about money. I’ll tell you about that.

  But first picture me in 1947. I had a fourth-floor studio in that rathole the Hauser Building, catty-corner from Ardleigh Park.

  I’d been working at the Marsh-Mason studios until I’d got my bellyful of it and decided to start in for myself. The Hauser Building was crummy—I’ll never forget how the stairs creaked—but it was cheap and there was a skylight.

  Business was lousy. I kept making the rounds of all the advertisers and agencies, and some of them didn’t object to me too much personally, but my stuff never clicked. I was pretty near broke. I was behind on my rent. Hell, I didn’t even have enough money to have a girl.

  It was one of those dark gray afternoons. The building was awfully quiet—even with the shortage they can’t half rent the Hauser. I’d just finished developing some pix I was doing on speculation for Lovelybelt Girdles and Buford’s Pool and Playground—the last a faked-up beach scene. My model had left. A Miss Leon. She was a civics teacher at one of the high schools and modeled for me on the side, just lately on speculation too. After one look at the prints, I decided that Miss Leon probably wasn’t just what Lovelybelt was looking for—or my photography either. I was about to call it a day.

  And then the street door slammed four stories down and there were steps on the stairs and she came in.

  She was wearing a cheap, shiny black dress. Black pumps. No stockings. And except that she had a gray cloth coat over one of them, those skinny arms of hers were bare. Her arms are pretty skinny, you know, or can you see things like that any more?

  And then the thin neck, the slightly gaunt, almost prim face, the tumbling mass of dark hair, and looking out from under it the hungriest eyes in the world.

  That’s the real reason she’s plastered all over the country today, you know—those eyes. Nothing vulgar, but just the same they’re looking at you with a hunger that’s all sex and something more than sex. That’s what everybody’s been looking for since the Year One—something a little more than sex.

  Well, boys, there I was, along with the Girl, in an office that was getting shadowy, in a nearly empty building. A situation that a million male Americans have undoubtedly pictured to themselves with various lush details. How was I feeling? Scared.

  I know sex can be frightening. That cold heart-thumping when you’re alone with a girl and feel you’re going to touch her. But if it was sex this time, it was overlaid with something else.

  At least I wasn’t thinking about sex.

  I remember that I took a backward step and that my hand jerked so that the photos I was looking at sailed to the floor.

  There was the faintest dizzy feeling like something was being drawn out of me. Just a little bit.

  That was all. Then she opened her mouth and everything was back to normal for a while. “I see you’re a photographer, mister,” she said. “Could you use a model?”

  Her voice wasn’t very cultivated.

  “I doubt it,” I told her, picking up the pix. You see, I wasn’t impressed. The commercial possibilities of her eyes hadn’t registered on me yet, by a long shot. “What have you done?”

  Well, she gave me a vague sort of story and I began to check her knowledge of model agencies and studios and rates and what not and pretty soon I said to her, “Look here, you never modeled for a photographer in your life. You just walked in here cold.”

  Well, she admitted that was more or less so.

  All along through our talk I got the idea she was feeling her way, like someone in a strange place. Not that she was uncertain of herself, or of me, but just of the general situation.

  “And you think anyone can model?” I asked her pityingly.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Look,” I said, “a photographer can waste a dozen negatives trying to get one halfway human photo of an average woman. How many do you think he’d have to waste before he got a real catchy, glamorous pix of her?”

  “I think I could do it,” she said.

  Well, I should have kicked her out right then. Maybe I admired the cool way she stuck to her dumb little guns. Maybe I was touched by her underfed look. More likely I was feeling mean on account of the way my pix had been snubbed by everybody and I wanted to take it out on her by showing her up.

  “Okay, I’m going to put you on the spot,” I told her. “I’m going to try a couple of shots of you. Understand, it’s strictly on spec. If somebody should ever want to use a photo of you, which is about one chance in two million, I’ll pay you regular rates for your time. Not otherwise.” She gave me a smile. The first. “That’s swell by me,” she said.

  Well, I took three or four shots, close-ups of her face since I didn’t fancy her cheap dress, and at least she stood up to my sarcasm. Then I remembered I still had the Lovelybelt stuff and I guess the meanness was still working in me because I handed her a girdle and told her to go behind the screen and get into it and she did, without getting flustered as I’d expected, and since we’d gone that far I figured we might as well shoot the beach scene to round it out, and that was that.

  All this time I wasn’t feeling anything particular in one way or the other except every once in a while I’d get one of those faint dizzy flashes and wonder if there was something wrong with my stomach or if I could have been a bit careless with my chemicals.

  Still, you know, I think the uneasiness was in me all the while.

  I tossed her a card and pencil. “Write your name and address and phone,” I told her and made for the darkroom.

  A little later she walked out. I didn’t call any good-byes. I was irked because she hadn’t fussed around or seemed anxious about her poses, or even thanked me, except for that one smile.

  I finished developing the negatives, made some prints, glanced at them, decided they weren’t a great deal worse than Miss Leon. On an impulse I slipped them in with the pix I was going to take on the rounds next morning.

  By now I’d worked long enough so I was a bit fagged and nervous, but I didn’t dare waste enough money on liquor to help that. I wasn’t very hungry. I think I went to a cheap movie.

  I didn’t think of the Girl at all, except maybe to wonder faintly why in my present womanless state I hadn’t made a pass at her. She had seemed to belong to a, well, distinctly more approachable social stratum than Miss Leon. But then of course there were all sorts of arguable reasons for my not doing that.

  Next morning I made the rounds. My first step was Munsch’s Brewery. They were looking for a “Munsch Girl.” Papa Munsch had a sort of affection for me, though he razzed my photography. He had a good natural judgment about that, too. Fifty years ago he might have been one of the shoestring boys who made Hollywood.

  Right now he was out in the plant pursuing his favorite occupation. He put down the beaded can, smacked his lips, gabbled something technical to someone about hops, wiped his fat hands on the big apron he was wearing, and grabbed my thin stack of pix.

  He was about halfway through, making noises with his tongue and teeth, when he came to her. I kicked myself for even having stuck her in.

  “That’s her,” he said. “The photography’s not so hot, but that’s the girl.”

  It was all decided. I wondered now why Papa Munsch sensed what the girl had right away, while I didn’t. I think it was because I saw her first in the flesh, if that’s the right word.

  At the time I just felt faint.

  “Who is she?” he asked.

  “One of my new models.” I tried to make it casual.

  “Bring her out tomorrow morning,” he told me. “And your stuff. We’ll photograph her here. I want to show you.”

  “Here, don’t look so sick,” he added. “Have some beer.”

  Well, I went away telling myself it was just a fluke, so that she’d probably blow it tomorrow with her inexperience, and so on.

  Ju
st the same, when I reverently laid my next stack of pix on Mr. Fitch, of Lovelybelt’s rose-colored blotter, I had hers on top.

  Mr. Fitch went through the motions of being an art critic. He leaned over backward, squinted his eyes, waved his long fingers, and said, “Hmmm. What do you think, Miss Willow? Here, in this light. Of course the photograph doesn’t show the bias cut. And perhaps we should use the Lovelybelt Imp instead of the Angel. Still, the girl . . . Come over here, Binns.” More finger-waving. “I want a married man’s reaction.”

  He couldn’t hide the fact that he was hooked.

  Exactly the same thing happened at Buford’s Pool and Playground, except that Da Costa didn’t need a married man’s say-so.

  “Hot stuff,” he said, sucking his lips. “Oh, boy, you photographers!”

  I hot-footed it back to the office and grabbed up the card I’d given to her to put down her name and address. It was blank.

  I don’t mind telling you that the next five days were about the worst I ever went through, in an ordinary way. When next morning rolled around and I still hadn’t got hold of her, I had to start stalling.

  “She’s sick,” I told Papa Munsch over the phone.

  “She at a hospital?” he asked me.

  “Nothing that serious.” I told him.

  “Get her out here, then. What’s a little headache?”

  “Sorry, I can’t.”

  Papa Munsch got suspicious. “You really got this girl?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’d think it was some New York model, except I recognized your lousy photography.”

  I laughed.

  “Well, look, you get her here tomorrow morning, you hear?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Try nothing. You get her out here.”

  He didn’t know half of what I tried. I went around to all the model and employment agencies. I did some slick detective work at the photographic and art studios. I used up some of my last dimes putting advertisements in all three papers. I looked at high school yearbooks and at employee photos in local house organs. I went to restaurants and drugstores, looking for waitresses, and to dime stores and department stores, looking at clerks. I watched the crowds coming out of movie theatres. I roamed the streets.

  Evenings I spent quite a bit of time along Pick-up Row. Somehow that seemed the right place.

  The fifth afternoon I knew I was licked. Papa Munsch’s deadline —he’d given me several, but this was it —was due to run out at six o’clock. Mr. Fitch had already canceled.

  I was at the studio window, looking out at Ardleigh Park.

  She walked in.

  I’d gone over this moment so often in my mind that I had no trouble putting on my act. Even the faint dizzy feeling didn’t throw me off.

  “Hello,” I said, hardly looking at her.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Not discouraged yet?”

  “No.” It didn’t sound uneasy or defiant. It was just a statement.

  I snapped a look at my watch, got up and said curtly, “Look here, I’m going to give you a chance. There’s a client of mine looking for a girl your general type. If you do a real good job you may break into the modeling business. We can see him this afternoon if we hurry,” I said. I picked up my stuff. “Come on. And next time, if you expect favors, don’t forget to leave your phone number.”

  “Uh-uh,” she said, not moving.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “I’m not going to see any client of yours.”

  “The hell you aren’t,” I said. “You little nut, I’m giving you a break.”

  She shook her head slowly. “You’re not fooling me, baby, you’re not fooling me at all. They want me.” And she gave me the second smile.

  At the time I thought she must have seen my newspaper ad. Now I’m not so sure.

  “And now I’ll tell you how we’re going to work,” she went on. “You aren’t going to have my name or address or phone number. Nobody is. And we’re going to do all the pictures right here. Just you and me.”

  You can imagine the roar I raised at that. I was everything—angry, sarcastic, patiently explanatory, off my nut, threatening, pleading.

  I would have slapped her face off, except it was photographic capital.

  In the end all I could do was phone Papa Munsch and tell him her conditions. I know I didn’t have a chance, but I had to take it.

  He gave me a really angry bawling out, said “no” several times and hung up.

  It didn’t faze her. “We’ll start shooting at ten o’clock tomorrow,” she said.

  It was just like her, using that corny line from the movie magazines.

  About midnight Papa Munsch called me up.

  “I don’t know what insane asylum you’re renting this girl from,” he said, “but I’ll take her. Come around tomorrow morning and I’ll try to get it through your head just how I want the pictures. And I’m glad I got you out of bed!”

  After that it was a breeze. Even Mr. Fitch reconsidered and after taking two days to tell me it was quite impossible, he accepted the conditions too.

  Of course you’re all under the spell of the Girl, so you can’t understand how much self-sacrifice it represented on Mr. Fitch’s part when he agreed to forego supervising the photography of my model in the Lovelybelt Imp or Vixen or whatever it was we finally used.

  Next morning she turned up on time according to her schedule, and we went to work. I’ll say one thing for her, she never got tired and she never kicked at the way I fussed over shots. I got along okay except I still had the feeling of something being shoved away gently. Maybe you’ve felt it just a little, looking at her picture.

  When we finished I found out there were still more rules. It was about the middle of the afternoon. I started down with her to get a sandwich and coffee.

  “Uh-uh,” she said, “I’m going down alone. And look, baby, if you ever try to follow me, if you ever so much as stick your head out that window when I go, you can hire yourself another model.”

  You can imagine how all this crazy stuff strained my temper— and my imagination. I remember opening the window after she was gone—I waited a few minutes first—and standing there getting some fresh air and trying to figure out what could be back of it, whether she was hiding from the police, or was somebody’s ruined daughter, or maybe had got the idea it was smart to be temperamental, or more likely Papa Munsch was right and she was partly nuts.

  But I had my pix to finish up.

  Looking back it’s amazing to think how fast her magic began to take hold of the city after that. Remembering what came after, I’m frightened of what’s happening to the whole country—and maybe the world. Yesterday I read something in Time about the Girl’s picture turning up on billboards in Egypt.

  The rest of my story will help show you why I’m frightened in that big general way. But I have a theory, too, that helps explain, though it’s one of those things that’s beyond that “certain point.” It’s about the Girl. I’ll give it to you in a few words.

  You know how modern advertising gets everybody’s mind set in the same direction, wanting the same things, imagining the same things. And you know the psychologists aren’t so skeptical of telepathy as they used to be.

  Add up the two ideas. Suppose the identical desires of millions of people focused on one telepathic person. Say a girl. Shaped her in their image.

  Imagine her knowing the hiddenmost hungers of millions of men. Imagine her seeing deeper into those hungers than the people that had them, seeing the hatred and the wish for death behind the lust. Imagine her shaping herself in that complete image, keeping herself as aloof as marble. Yet imagine the hunger she might feel in answer to their hunger.

  But that’s getting a long way from the facts of my story. And some of those facts are darn solid. Like money. We made money.

  That was the funny thing I was going to tell you. I was afraid the Girl was going to hold me
up. She really had me over a barrel, you know.

  But she didn’t ask for anything but the regular rates. Later on I insisted on pushing more money at her, a whole lot. But she always took it with that same contemptuous look, as if she were going to toss it down the first drain when she got outside.

  Maybe she did.

  At any rate, I had money. For the first time in months I had money enough to get drunk, buy new clothes, take taxicabs. I could make a play for any girl I wanted to. I only had to pick.

  And so of course I had to go and pick—

  But first let me tell you about Papa Munsch.

  Papa Munsch wasn’t the first of the boys to try to meet my model but I think he was the first to really go soft on her. I could watch the change in his eyes as he looked at her pictures. They began to get sentimental, reverent. Mama Munsch had been dead for two years.

  He was smart about the way he planned it. He got me to drop some information which told him when she came to work, and then one morning he came pounding up the stairs a few minutes before.

  “I’ve got to see her, Dave,” he told me.

  I argued with him, I kidded him. I explained he didn’t know just how serious she was about her crazy ideas. I pointed out he was cutting both our throats. I even amazed myself by bawling him out.

  He didn’t take any of it in his usual way. He just kept repeating, “But, Dave, I’ve got to see her.”

  The street door slammed.

  “That’s her,” I said, lowering my voice. “You’ve got to get out.”

  He wouldn’t, so I shoved him in the darkroom. “And keep quiet,” I whispered. “I’ll tell her I can’t work today.”

  I knew he’d try to look at her and probably come busting in, but there wasn’t anything else I could do.

  The footsteps came to the fourth floor. But she never showed at the door. I got uneasy.

  “Get that bum out of there!” she yelled suddenly from beyond the door. Not very loud, but in her commonest voice.