Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.
–Matt Hardy
Marc
“The website doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but I definitely want to have a screen pop up that encourages donations—”
Laughter from one of the rooms stalls out my thoughts and I’m further distracted when I glance inside.
It’s Gwen.
I stop and Charlie stops next to me.
Gwen’s surrounded by children. She’s laughing and facing away from me at an angle, camera in hand.
She’s wearing jeans and a fitted, long-sleeved T-shirt topped with a colorful, soft scarf. Take the outfit by itself and it’s your average autumn in New York outfit. But on Gwen . . .
The tight jeans hug her willowy figure. Her hair floats around her face, her profile aglow even from thirty feet away.
“Who are we staring at?” Charlie stage-whispers. “The blonde? Dude. She is hot.”
It’s Wednesday. I managed to escape the office somewhat early to head to the kids center in the Bronx. I brought Charlie with me to help set everything up. I wasn’t expecting . . .
Gwen turns toward us. She’s got her camera up and she catches us in her viewfinder. She moves the camera away from her face and smiles, her whole face lighting up and then she waves. “Hi!”
“Mr. Marc!” A few of the kids run over, grabbing my hands and dragging me into the room, all babbling at once.
“We’re getting pictures taken.”
“Am I going to be famous?”
“Do you want to have your picture taken?”
The kids are all chattering happily around us. I try to answer their questions while Charlie shakes Gwen’s hand and fawns all over her.
Then one of the teenage counselors yells for them to line up to head to the gym. The whole room is chaos. I can barely make out what Charlie is saying until I’m right next to them.
“Oh, you’re Brent’s girlfriend?” Charlie says, disappointed. “Do you have sisters?”
“I have two sisters,” Gwen answers, her tone confused.
“Okay. Two questions: are they as hot as you are and are they single?”
I tug at my tie, trying to loosen it a little. “Charlie.”
Charlie rolls her eyes. “Stop being such a square.”
Gwen laughs. “Both of my sisters are gorgeous. One is married with kids and the other will probably be married soon.” She pats Charlie’s hand. “Sorry.”
Finally, the kids have gotten somewhat organized and they’re heading out of the room and down the hallway. The noise level drops at least ten decibels.
“What are you doing here?” I ask Gwen.
“Starlee told me about how you guys are setting up a site for the club and I’m going to take pictures for the website. She didn’t tell you?”
“No.” She probably told Brent, but I haven’t talked to him since he left for his away game. “This is Charlie. She’s in IT at Crawford and Company.”
“Oh great.” Gwen turns to her. “I called over here Monday so they had time to get the parents to sign releases for the pictures. Is there is a photo size you prefer to work with? I like to keep them small so it doesn’t drain the bandwidth, but you’ll need at least three hundred ppi. I can pop them into Photoshop before I email them to you?”
“That’s amazing,” Charlie says, gazing wistfully at Gwen.
Gwen smiles at her compliment, though her eyebrows bunch together—probably since Charlie didn’t actually answer the question.
I clear my throat to get their attention, but it only works on Gwen. “I’m going to show Charlie the computer room so she can get started, and then I can give you a tour of the facility and show you all the improvements we’ve made, along with the things that still need to be done. We can put some shots of that up on the site to encourage donors. What do you think?”
“That sounds great. I’ve already seen some of the building, but I haven’t had a chance to get into a lot of the details. I can meet you in the gym?”
“Perfect. Come on, Charlie.” I tug her arm toward the exit.
She isn’t budging. “It was really nice to meet you.”
“You, too.”
“I’ll probably see you later.”
I tug again and this time she relents and starts walking backward. Slowly.
“I hope so,” Gwen says.
Charlie finally turns, walking with me out the door, but not before shouting over her shoulder, “We should hang out sometime!”
When we’re out of earshot, she elbows me in the side. “Dude. Since when is Brent dating her?”
“Since last week. Don’t you pay attention to the news?”
“I read the news. No offense to your brother, but I don’t read the garbage trash magazines that can’t shut up about Brangelica and the Kardershians and all that other crap that doesn’t mean shit to me.” Her heels tap on the linoleum and cast a faint echo off the walls.
“Well, it obviously does mean shit to you since your new-girl crush is in those crap magazines with my brother.”
“Huh.” Her lips are pursed and I can feel her eyes on my profile. The scarred side is facing her, but that’s not what she’s looking at. It’s probably one of the reasons I like Charlie so much. She doesn’t care about my face. Doesn’t even faze her. “Has Marissa met her yet?”
I pause before answering. I haven’t told Charlie everything that happened. I haven’t really told anyone, because it’s either none of their business or they’ve already formed their opinions based on the media. Plus it’s embarrassing. But apparently Charlie isn’t kidding about not reading the tabloids. “She knows Marissa already,” I finally say.
“Did Marissa try to gouge her eyes out or is she being civil?”
I frown at her. Did she know about the real Marissa, too? I must have a huge blind spot. We turn into the dark computer room and I flick on the lights. “Marissa and I are no longer dating.”
“What?” she barks. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s a long story. And I can’t really talk about it. And if you read those trash magazines, you could have already figured it out for yourself.”
“Can’t talk or won’t talk? Marc, you know you can trust me. And you’ve gotta have someone to lean on sometimes. No man is an island.”
“You’re right, John Donne. But I’m fine.” I point over at the computer parts—a few monitors, a couple slim towers, extra hard drives, and some other items I can’t identify. “Here’s your stuff. I’ll come check on you in an hour. Don’t text me if you need anything.”
“This conversation isn’t over, Marc!” she calls after me as I make a hasty exit.
I don’t want to talk about Marissa. Or think about her. Not because it’s painful or anything, but I’ve already moved on—a surprisingly easy endeavor.
I find Gwen in the gym on the basketball courts.
She doesn’t see me at first. I sneak in the door and stand beside the counselor, who’s sitting on the bleachers.
On one side of the large space, a group of kids are skipping rope, mostly older kids.
Gwen is with a group of smaller children on the opposite side, the same ones that were crowding her in the classroom. After a minute of watching, I figure they’re playing some kind of freeze game. She plays a song on her phone and they all start shaking their little bodies and dancing. She stops the music at random intervals and everyone has to freeze. Whoever is still moving when she pauses the music is out of the game. They don’t even get upset when Gwen points to whoever lost because they get to go stand near her, their faces bright, leaning toward her like they’re little flowers and she’s the sun.
They play for a few minutes. Her camera is around her neck and she takes some random shots during the game. She keeps glancing over into the corner, and after a minute I realize there’s a boy standing off to the side. He’s leaning against the wall and watching with his hands shoved into his pockets. He’s partially hidden by a section of the bleachers, so I didn’t even notice him at first.
“Come play,” Gwen calls to him.
The kid on her left leans into her and says something.
“Ven acá.” She motions with her hand for the boy to come over. “Te mostraré cómo jugar el juego.”
His eyes brighten and he runs to her. She bends down to tell him something, but they’re too far away for me to make out the words. After another minute, he’s out boogying with the rest of the kids.
I recognize him then, a recent transfer. He doesn’t speak English. Some of the other kids are bilingual but only a few, and apparently they haven’t quite made friends with the new kid yet.
After the game ends and a winner is declared, the kids corral Gwen, pulling on her hands and trying to get her to dance. She relents with a laugh, passing her phone to one of the kids who had been sitting next to her, and then she’s dancing with them.
I half expected someone with her height and grace to be a professional dancer. I thought she would stand up and bust out some hip-hop moves or something. Instead, she immediately acts the goofball, showing them “the sprinkler,” what appears to be “the lawn mower,” and then some kind of weird chicken dance that has them dissolving into giggles all around her.
When she sees me watching and laughing, she surprises me with a walk-like-an-Egyptian move straight from the eighties while sticking her tongue out and crossing her eyes. The kids erupt in fits of laughter as they try to emulate her until the music stops.
We clap and I stand, meeting her in the middle of the gym while the counselor rounds the kids up for another game.
“I didn’t know you were a professional dancer, too.”
“Oh yeah. I got moves. No one can ‘running man’ like I can.”
We laugh and then the kids come over to say goodbye, hugging both of us and pulling on our hands before the counselor rounds them up again.
“Shall we?” I hold the door open for her and we leave the loud, echoing gym for the much quieter hallway.
“I didn’t know you were bilingual,” I say once the door shuts behind us.
“My mom’s Latina. She was born in Mexico and moved here when she was eleven. She didn’t speak a word of English when she got here, much like Ramon.” She motions to the boy who’s now laughing as he messes up the jump rope. “They didn’t have anything like ESL classes back then. She’s told me stories about how hard it was at first, not understanding anyone and then they expected her to take normal grade-level classes. But she learned quickly. Now she has two master’s degrees and she’s a college professor.”
“That’s amazing.”
Gwen’s smile is blinding. “She is amazing.”
“What about your dad?”
“Ah, well that’s where I get my coloring. My dad is Irish. It’s funny because me and my oldest sister—Gabby—we’re both like our dad, but my middle sister, Gemma, looks like my mom, all dark hair and curves and unburnable skin. I’ve always been so jealous of her. No one ever believes we’re sisters.”
“What does your dad do?” I ask.
“He used to work for the city. He’s retired now, but he still plows the roads every winter and stays home and drives my mom crazy every summer. What about your dad? Brent mentioned you work for him?”
“Yep.” I really have nothing nice to say about that situation, and luckily we’ve reached one of the rooms I wanted to show her. “This is the music room.” I open a side door and click on the light. “We funded the purchase of all of the instruments, and there’s an orchestra teacher that comes in once a week and teaches some of the older kids the strings.”
“That’s so cool.”
“It is.”
She snaps a few photos and then shoots me a sidelong glance. “Can I get a picture of you over there by the cello?”
“Oh no. I don’t do the whole picture thing.”
She pouts. “Please? Shots with people are so much more interesting. And I’m sure people who donate want to see the man behind the charity.”
“I’m not the man behind anything.”
“That’s not what Brent told me the other night.”
“You guys talked about me on your date?”
She glances around the empty room, as if paparazzi are hiding under one of the teeny tiny desks. “You know it wasn’t a real date.”
“Either way, it seemed to work.”
She nods. “It did.”
There were some tweets from TZM and an article in Page Seven the very next morning. “That’s good. Brent doesn’t deserve this kind of backlash.”
“I’m sure it will blow over soon. People with half a brain will realize she’s doing it for the publicity and personal gain.”
“I hope you’re right. It’s crazy how he just wants to play a little ball, but it comes along with all this other crap.”
I nod. “We talked about that. And I can completely relate. Well, sort of. I’ve never been named the world’s sexiest anything.” She flashes me a wink. “But I modeled for a few years. In any industry where you’re subject to public scrutiny, it’s always about optics. Appearances are more important than reality. It’s why I wanted to leave. It has a way of wearing you down, you know? And I wanted to do something more than base all my dreams on my face because eventually those looks will be gone and you can’t base your entire self-worth on that.”
“Is that why you got into photography?”
“One of the many reasons. I enjoyed modeling—minus the drama and politics—but I want to make more of a difference. You know? Like what you guys are doing here.”
“It’s nothing. Our mom started the funding for this place. I’ve just kept it up.”
She takes a few more pictures and I watch her. We’re silent, but it’s not uncomfortable. She’s focused on her shots, crouching down in a few places before standing up.
When she’s finished, we exit the room and I lead her farther down the hall, pointing out the walls we’ve repaired and painted, the floors that have been redone, and also the things that still need work like the chipped plaster and the leaky AC units.
My phone keeps ringing—people from the office calling—but I cancel the calls and eventually put my phone on silent. Everyone relies on me too much.
As we walk I try to keep Gwen on my good side, the uninjured side, but somehow she keeps drifting to the scarred side again. I can feel her eyes on me as we traverse the school, no matter how many times I point out the kids’ quiet room, a lending library, a freaking water fountain, anything to get her spotlight off me. I didn’t have this concern with Charlie, but that was different. I care more about what Gwen thinks of me.
“Can I ask you something kind of personal?” She stops in the middle of the hall, and I stop next to her. “You don’t have to answer,” she adds.
I nod. “Go ahead.” Here it comes—the scar talk.
“What happened to your mom?”
Or not. I take a breath before answering. “Heart failure. One moment she was fine, the next she was gone.”
“I’m so sorry. It sounds like she was a wonderful person.”
“Yeah, she was a great mom. We wouldn’t be the same without her. We grew up in a middle-class neighborhood upstate when we could have afforded a penthouse in the city. But that’s not what she wanted for us.”
“That’s smart. You appreciate things more when they aren’t so readily available.”
I nod. “She was raised in a middle-class family, and she wanted us to have a normal childhood. I think because of our dad.”
“He had a different childhood?”
“Our grandfather started the company when he was eighteen and built it from the ground up. It started as a small supplier of specialized items for restaurants, and then he kept adding and expanding until it became a huge empire. Dad took it over when grandpa died. It was already a success though, so he basically just had to maintain everything. It made him perceive things differently, but I think that’s why he loved our mom so much. She never cared about the money and she was the only person he let affect him at all.”
She nods and opens her mouth to speak, but then closes it again.
I can’t believe I even shared that much with her. We barely know each other, but there’s something about her. Something beyond the blonde hair and fresh-faced good looks.
Perhaps sensing my reluctance, she changes the subject. “What’s in here?” She peeks into an empty room.
“Ah, this is a good one. The art room.” I open the door and flick on the light to reveal the mural on the opposite wall. A couple of the older kids are handy with the spray paint cans—something I don’t want to think about too closely.
One of the windows was left open to air out the smell, letting in a cool fall breeze.
The wall is covered in a mishmash of various pieces. There are different faces, brightly painted flowers, musical notes, and instruments. There’s a random bunny with giant teeth in the opposite corner, a painting of a half-peeled banana, and other smaller items, all squeezed into the space, a collage of bright oddities. The amazing part is the intricacy of each piece. Although none of them really make sense, they all fit together like they’re meant to be here.
“This is amazing.” Gwen snaps a few pictures. “Who did this?”
“A couple of the older boys. Jake and Marcellus. They’re both very talented. This is an attempt for them to showcase their art in a way that doesn’t involve the destruction of property.”
I move closer to the piece, smiling as I remember helping the boys paint the base coat. When I had to stop and take a break because my back hurt, they kept calling me “old man.”
The snap of the shutter nearby startles me.
Gwen is standing next to me, camera in hand, closer than I realized.
“Sorry.” She smiles, sheepish. “I told you I wanted to take your picture.”
“No, I’m sorry. Because no doubt your camera is now broken.”
She chuckles and rolls her eyes before putting a hand on my arm. “Stop with the self-deprecating comments already. You’re a handsome guy.”
“Maybe once upon a time.”
She’s standing so close I can see the darker flecks of blue in her eyes. The world stops, the moment inflating between us like a slowly expanding balloon. When will it pop?
She reaches up and I suck in air with an audible hiss as her hand feathers over my face. The scarred side.
Then I forget to breathe completely as her fingers smooth over my cheek, just a whisper of a touch, before her hand drops to her side. “What happened?”
I gather my wits and remember to breathe. “Shark attack.”
Her brows lift. “Really?”
“No.”
She laughs. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m very nosy today.”
“It’s no big deal. I’ve always wished I had a cool story but the reality is that it was a snowboarding accident when I was a teenager. And before you ask, I’ve talked to professionals about getting it fixed and it’s not worth it since it’s right around the eye area. Too risky.”
She tilts her head at me, her lips purse a little. “I wasn’t going to ask that. Why would you need to get it fixed? I told you, chicks dig scars.”
I laugh. “That hasn’t been my experience.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Believe it.”
We’re silent for another long moment, considering each other.
Then she speaks. “Do you want to get some food?”