The Way of Beauty

by Camille Di Maio

  “Emmett!” she tried once more, knowing that it would not be difficult for him to hear her.

  At last, he poked his head out. “What do you want?” he shouted.

  “I had to find you. I had to apologize!”

  “I don’t want your apology. Just leave me be.”

  “Are you that upset that I missed our appointment?”

  She was aware that this was now playing out like a radio soap opera for all the riders to hear. At least they weren’t subjected to advertisements. And wouldn’t the soaps be more fun if everyone were shouting their lines?

  “The appointment? You think that’s why I’m angry? How about, why didn’t you tell me you are married?”

  The lovebirds ceased their lovemaking and looked at Alice with rapt attention.

  “I’m not married. Where did you get a funny idea like that?”

  “When you weren’t at the clock, I went by your newsstand, but it was closed.”

  “Didn’t you see my note?”

  “What note?”

  “I left a note. I wrote it—” She laughed. “I wrote it in lipstick. I couldn’t find a pencil.”

  “I can’t hear you!”

  Well, those kinds of details could be discussed later.

  He cupped his hands. “The man at the shoeshine stand said that he hadn’t seen Mrs. Bellavia all day.”

  Mrs. Bellavia. It must have been Mr. Szercy. He wore eyeglasses so thick that his eyes looked like large bugs. He frequently mistook her for her mother, though any resemblance was slight.

  “I’m not married,” she repeated, shouting down to the six o’clock position that he held. The wheel had made its cycle and now they would spin without stopping for several rotations. She wished they could step off and carry on a conversation that was less public, but she had to work with what she had.

  “Then—” He said something else, but it was lost to the wind.

  “What?” she shouted, cupping her hands as he had.

  “THEN WHY WEREN’T YOU AT THE CLOCK?”

  “My parents. It had to do with my parents. I’ll tell you when we’re off this thing.”

  They spun another cycle, staring at each other, not able to carry on the way they had in a conversation that was best suited for quiet. The male lovebird joined Alice at the window, and the delicate balance of the car tipped slightly, causing her to grip a nearby bar in panic.

  “Hey, buddy,” he shouted to Emmett. “You gonna kiss her when we get off this thing?” He grinned. Alice was mortified. She saw many more heads pop out of their Ferris wheel cars. Indeed, they had entertained the crowd.

  Emmett said something that she couldn’t hear, but she saw her unwanted companion give a thumbs-up signal into the air before popping in next to his girlfriend/wife/lover again. The car was approaching the peak, and this time Alice looked down at the landscape that was colorful Coney Island. It looked like miniature dollhouses with moving parts and tiny people. The rides spun, raised, lowered, raced in a flurry of exhilarating activity. The people milled about like lazy ants, sauntering from one fair stand to another. Food, games, prizes. It was an indescribable feeling, being so high above it all as if she weren’t really one of the masses but a bird surveying a kingdom built for amusement.

  Opa would enjoy this, she thought.

  Two more cycles and Alice’s car reached the bottom, where it slowed to a stop. She hopped off ahead of the couple and waited at the gate for Emmett’s turn to come. When he stepped out of his car, she saw that a small crowd had gathered, anticipating this moment.

  A quick vision of a fairy-tale kiss came to her mind. Was this where and how she wanted her first to happen? Would he step out, relieved that she wasn’t married, and sweep her into his arms and delight the onlookers who were clearly hoping for the same thing Alice was?

  If they were, though, it was not to happen. Emmett looked a sight as he stood in front of her. His arms were crossed over his chest, resting on the top of his camera. He was dusty with sand that had settled into the crevices of his shirt seams, and he smelled of the ocean. Alice felt dizzy with what she could now name as desire, wanting more than ever for this, indeed, to be her first kiss. But when he didn’t respond, her lips, left untouched, tingled as if a ghost of what almost was.

  “Emmett,” she whispered, reaching for his hand.

  He unfolded his arms and touched her arm only enough to lead her way.

  “Let’s go somewhere else,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The subway again. She followed Emmett to the train station where she should have gotten off in the first place. Its round, gazebolike appearance was a fitting welcome to the circus of Coney Island that she had seen for all too brief a time. They waited on the platform silently, side by side, until the train appeared, and they entered it together. Had they wanted to talk, it would have become impossible, as the thunderous sound of the tracks was too loud to allow for conversation.

  They exited at the Twenty-Eighth Street station and began walking south.

  “Where are we going?” Alice asked at last. She’d tried to read his expressions on the train. Was he angry with her? Hurt?

  “To my apartment, so I can show you what I wanted you to see the other day.”

  Her heart pounded. If you’d told her this morning that she would be alone with a man in his apartment by this afternoon, she’d have told you that it was about as true as the George Washington Bridge being in China. Maybe that was what he’d meant about her having to be up for anything. Maybe he recognized in her the hunger for something beyond what was familiar and comfortable. Her mother’s generation had fought for women like Alice to have opportunities, but real, actual, tangible change was taking too long. Perhaps it would be her generation’s charge to race ahead to new possibilities.

  Perhaps it started with things like going to a man’s apartment if she felt like it. She told herself that Pearl would have done the same thing, though she had no way of knowing if it was actually true.

  So here she was, under the spell that his mystery cast, following him up three, four, five flights of stairs to a door at the end of a hallway. There was nothing to suggest that anyone lived there. Behind other doors, she heard the sounds of radios, the smells of dinner cooking. But this one seemed lonely in its quiet.

  Emmett opened the door. It was a small space. A kitchen with a counter so narrow that a rolling pin would hang over its edges. A small table sat in the middle with only one chair, as if no company were expected. The sole light was a bulb hanging from the ceiling. Holes surrounded it in an even pattern, the remnants of some long-discarded fixture that must have covered them. A sofa faced the narrow window, which blocked all view save for the diagonal pattern of the fire escape.

  This was not merely absent the touch of a woman. This room had a stale air about it, as if its sole purpose was to be a cemetery for unwanted furniture that went unused most of the time.

  But with one stunning difference: the walls were lined with photograph after photograph, every inch covered in perfect eight-by-ten blocks as if they were wallpaper. One wall featured architecture in and around New York—some items were recognizable, such as the fountain in Central Park, and others had been taken so close that it took the eye of an artist to see the beauty in the detail over that of the whole.

  Another wall showed animals, mostly dogs, captured at all stages of activity. Some were action shots and others, like the architecture wall, homed in close on eyes, paws, tails.

  The third wall showed people. Old, young, but mostly young. Children playing. All joyful, with the exception of one. A small boy with light hair and light eyes with a look as if he’d just lost his puppy. It felt even sadder as those who held balloons and toys and slid down slides surrounded him. She wondered why this particular boy had touched Emmett’s heart.

  The final wall—the one with the window—was smaller than the others. And fittingly, it held landscapes—flowers, beaches, trees. The pictures were trimmed to
fit around the window, sometimes cutting right through a photograph. She wondered why he didn’t just print it in a smaller size so as to appreciate the entire image.

  But when she stood back and looked at them in their totality, she saw the genius of it. So orderly that the images themselves took center stage instead of their arrangements.

  She looked at Emmett, who closed the door behind him and set his camera on the counter. Only then did they face each other, and she felt an electric current pass between them that could have overpowered the lone bulb.

  Her mouth felt dry. She was not as brave as she’d convinced herself. Had she been stupid to think that she could score a point for women by putting herself in this position with a man of whom she knew little?

  “Something to drink?” he offered.

  “Some water, thank you.” She felt the rumble in her stomach again, a reminder that she hadn’t eaten since dawn, when she’d left to work at the train station. But from the scant belongings in his apartment, she wasn’t sure he even had anything on hand.

  After he’d turned off the sink, he ushered her over to the sofa. She sank into it and thought that its softness was likely due to its age, not its construction. In fact, the slightest movement might have her falling right onto the floor.

  Emmett handed her the glass of water and looked down into his own. He sighed.

  “Why would the man at the shoeshine stand call you Mrs. Bellavia?”

  “That was Mr. Szercy. He couldn’t see his two hands if they were right in front of him. He’s always confusing things. Once he asked my father what it was like growing up in Russia. My father is from Italy. If you’d talked to him for two minutes longer, you would have suspected as much. Nice man. But I think he lost three sons in the first war, same unit, and he’s never been the same. Or so I was told.”

  Emmett leaned back into the sofa and, placing his glass on the floor, put his hands behind his head. But she was afraid that she might disappear into it if she followed suit. Not to mention that the casual situation might imply something that there wasn’t. She sat stiffly with her hands on her lap and faced him.

  He laughed in a way that made him sound nervous. “Then that will teach me to be brash in my reactions. I mean, you weren’t where we were supposed to meet, and then he said that. It sounds pretty silly now that I think of it. But I was—”

  Emmett stopped and looked intently at her. His voice became tender.

  “Why weren’t you at the clock as we’d agreed? I heard you say something about your parents, but it was too loud to hear on the Ferris wheel.”

  She told him a brief history about William Pilkington and her parents. He nodded without responding.

  Alice smiled. “That was some way to have a conversation, wasn’t it? Over there at Coney Island.”

  “I felt like we were on Bachelor’s Children or something, the way everyone started watching it.”

  “I just—I just didn’t want to miss the chance to talk to you. I felt awful about standing you up. And Bertie said—” She looked down at her hands and picked at her nails. She knew that she was revealing more than she wanted to say. “Bertie said that you are going away for several weeks, and I didn’t know when I’d see you again.”

  “No, that got changed. It was a project that fell through.”

  “For Life magazine?”

  He offered no more to his statement, and she decided not to press it for now.

  Instead, she looked around the room. “Is this all your work, Emmett?”

  “Yes.” He stood up and reached out for her hand. She took it, and he walked close to one of the walls.

  “It’s spectacular. It’s like a gallery in here,” she said.

  “Four years in New York. That’s enough time to take a few pictures.”

  She laughed and pulled away so that she could look at the photos more closely. The shadows cast by the Brooklyn Bridge into the water. A baby with a knitted bonnet leaning over its seat to toss a piece of bread to an eager dog.

  “Four years? Where did you come from before that?” she asked.

  “All over.”

  “That’s a vague answer.” She turned back to him. He was grinning.

  “Then take a guess. Take three guesses. If you’re right, I’ll show you what is behind there.”

  He pointed across the way to a door that had appeared invisible to her, as it, too, was plastered with photographs, along the architectural wall.

  “Oh, please show me now!”

  His finger traced the side of her face and rested on a tendril of hair that had escaped from the rest. She took a quick breath, and he stepped back.

  “Not yet,” he said softly. “What are your guesses?”

  “Florida.”

  “You’re just throwing that out. What would make you think I’m from Florida?”

  “I don’t know. You said to guess.”

  “Make a thoughtful guess. You want to see behind the door, right?”

  She’d heard that girls liked the brooding types, the Mr. Rochester types, and Emmett fit that bill with the little he revealed about himself. The mystery as intoxicating as the man.

  “Iowa.”

  He crossed his arms like hers and laughed. Her second laugh from him in mere minutes. “And where did you pull that straw from? I said make a thoughtful guess.”

  “That was a thoughtful guess. Iowa kind of represents the whole heartland, but I didn’t know how specific you wanted me to be. See, don’t many people from the middle of the country dream of coming to New York City? And if you were from the cornfields but you loved to take pictures, wouldn’t you be apt to photograph everything you see—buildings, landscapes, people, animals—because it was all so new to you?”

  He nodded. “I’ll give you that. It was a thoughtful guess. But it was still wrong.”

  She sighed. “Are you from outside the United States?” She doubted it, as he had no trace of an accent.

  “That’s not fair. You don’t get hints.”

  “That’s not a no.”

  “That’s not a yes.”

  “You’re insufferable.”

  “I’ve been told as much.”

  She looked at his eyes, holding them there with her own gaze as if they might reveal their secrets.

  “I am going to do this,” she determined. And she felt its truth. “You are fair-haired, fair-skinned, and have bright-blue eyes. Your name is Emmett Adler, so you’re probably not Irish.”

  “Unless it’s really O’Adler,” he suggested.

  “Stop! You’re distracting me!” But she smiled. “And though you appear to be able-bodied and of the right age, you are not serving in the war, so you might be foreign. All that baffles me is that you have no accent. But that’s my guess. You’re German.”

  His eyes grew dark and he turned around. “You have a good imagination. Let’s go see what’s behind the door.”

  It did not occur to her until later that he never acknowledged if she was right or wrong.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Alice followed Emmett, more curious than ever as to what he had to show her. He pulled from his pocket a key ring, which seemed to hold an inordinate number of keys, given that he just had this small apartment and apparently one locked room in it. He jostled the key into the hole and opened the door.

  Immediately, a stench of chemicals tickled her nose.

  He pulled a cord from the ceiling, and another solitary bulb flashed on.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

  Photos hung on limp paper from strings spread across the room, held in place by clothespins whose grip was softened by tiny pieces of cotton. She assumed that was to avoid damaging the prints.

  Below the paintings lay bins of what looked like water but must be developing chemicals.

  She’d read about such places. But she never imagined she’d see one.

  “It’s a darkroom,” she said in reverence.

  “Exactly.”

  He pulled t
he cord again and then flipped a switch. A haunting red glow permeated the room. Two red bulbs were attached to the wall. As Emmett approached them, the front of his face seemed to be illuminated while the back was still in shadows. Like a Jekyll and Hyde, interchangeable with the slightest movement. His usually pale skin grew warm with color, and she saw angles on his face that weren’t otherwise so pronounced. It made him more attractive, if that were possible, and she wondered if it did the same for her.

  He reached around her and closed the door. It felt unbearably intimate to be here with him. Not only in his apartment but also in a room that was supposed to be a bedroom. But instead of a bed, a worktable. Instead of a lamp, this otherworldly illumination.

  All sense of time or place dissipated.

  The room was not unusually small, but it was so full of equipment that there was little space to move about. Emmett stood very close to her, and when she turned to face him they were nearly nose to nose. He could have stepped back, but he didn’t.

  Instead, she felt the warmth of his breath on her skin.

  “Is this what you wanted to show me the other day?” she whispered.

  “Yes.” He looked down at her, and she thought, as she had at the Ferris wheel, that this might be the moment that she received her first kiss, and she was glad that it would not be so public after all.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, and she closed her eyes, preparing for him to bend down toward her. She felt goose bumps rise on her arms in anticipation.

  But instead, he turned her around and guided her to one of two chairs in front of the table. Why he had two chairs in here but only one in the other room, she didn’t know. Unless he took girls here regularly.

  She dismissed that thought.

  “Do you want to see how it all works?” he asked.

  She nodded. She was conflicted—torn between disappointment at the romantic moment passing by and equal intrigue at seeing this place. There was a camaraderie among creative people that was not discernible by others. But Alice understood this room. This was his canvas, just as old buildings were hers and watercolor papers were her mother’s. Letting her into this space had one of two purposes: to impress her, as maybe was his habit with women. Or to invite her into something that was meaningful to him. She hoped it was the latter.