Chapter Eleven

 

Lisa was beginning to appreciate how much her life was changing into something unrecognizable. If someone had come to her and told her that she would be here right now, in the middle of shooting a scene on the beach, six weeks after Miss Vera kicked her out of the house with no place to go, she would have laughed at them.

She was a far cry from that pathetic creature who had stumbled through the street just a few weeks ago. She was on her way to being an above-average photographer, if Eva and Julius were to be believed.

"That's going to be a gawjus shot, Lisa," Eva said close to her. She leaned over Lisa and examined the shot when Lisa took it. "As I said, gawjus!"

Lisa nodded. It was an abstract wood with sea weed wrapped around it; she had captured the sea throwing it toward the shore.

"Not fair," Marlon murmured near her,"she is seeing the great Nathan Cross. He actually won a National Geographic prize and she is getting lessons from him on the side."

Eva chuckled. "Well even so, she has some natural flare too. Marlon honey, don't be jealous."

Lisa got up from her crouching position and rubbed her back. Of the ten persons in the class, she really had an advantage; Ricky had given her a very good camera with some expensive lenses, far superior to her classmates. And of course, Nathan inspected her pictures and gave her tips. He was so knowledgeable about photography and it was his favorite topic.

Midway through the course, she was beginning to think she had a real affinity for photography. She was getting better at taking really 'gawjus' shots. She mimicked Eva's voice in her head.

After she finished class and said goodbye to her classmates, who seemed as if they didn't want to leave, she headed for the lobby where Nate was waiting for her. He had started doing that after her second class. He was talking animatedly to Julius now. He turned and saw her and his face lit up.

"Gotta go, Julius. "

"Yep." Julius was a short guy with a smooth, almost pretty face, the opposite of Eva, who had a square, almost manly face and towered over him.

"Bye Lisa." His voice was a heavy, deep bass. "Tomorrow, we’ll be working with some still-life pictures. Shadows and light."

Lisa nodded and hooked her hand within Nate's. He smelled so good. She would never sniff Calvin Klein for men again without feeling a full, almost heavy feeling of love.

"Hey," Nate kissed her on her forehead, "I have something for you."

Lisa grinned. He had taken to giving her some odds and ends through the weeks, starting with the shell, and then a bracelet made entirely of blue shells, and then a starfish key ring.

She had given him a cactus plant for his living room.

"No, I drove today," Nate said, steering her toward the car park instead of the main gate through which they would walk home.

Lisa followed him to the car. Of course conversation always came easy for her when she was around Nate. He could talk about photography for hours and he loved to hear about her classes and what she did. The weeks had just confirmed how compatible they were.

"Hey, why didn't you tell me that you won a National Geographic prize?" She pinched him before he could open the car door.

He smiled sheepishly. "It never came up."

Lisa giggled. "You are so modest."

Nate opened the car door. "I entered the competition solely to have something to prove to my dad. I had just left my resident training at the hospital. Walked out after realizing that medicine was not something I really wanted to do. Picked up a camera, went to a course like this and then started traveling.

“My dad was devastated but he said he understood that everybody went through a burnout phase. He'd give me a year to come to my senses. A year later I won the prize in the nature category."

"You proved him wrong," Lisa whispered looking across from him. She always felt a little anxious when Nathan mentioned his father.

"Yes, I did. You should do what you want to and are happy with and not buckle down to the expectations of people or else someday you'll realize that you are losing yourself and denying who you are, which is like killing yourself slowly and painfully."

Lisa widened her eyes. "I agree."

Nathan smiled. "Never just work for money and riches unless you are doing what you love. Money and the other things are a delicious side effect."

"Sometimes, some people don't have a choice." Lisa licked her lips. "Sometimes people get desperate. They don't have any education or job prospects and it's all about survival."

"I agree, for some people, yes, survival is the name of the game but people do things in the name of desperation because they are afraid to take a plunge, they are afraid of change, they are afraid to lose their prestige and they have absolutely no trust in God," Nathan said simply. "And because they have no trust they hold on to those things which are familiar or dear, or are tested and proven—the road most traveled. And this can include any profession. That's why my father wanted me to be a doctor, even though I loathed med school."

"But what if you get kicked out of the home that you've always lived in and you have no where to go and nobody to turn to?" Lisa swallowed. "What then?"

"Then I'd wait for God's direction." Nathan narrowed his eyes at her. "Isn't that what you did?"

Not exactly, the little voice in Lisa's head muttered. Visibly she nodded. "Sure. Yes. Of course."

She couldn't wait to change the subject. "So Doctor Cross, what did you have to show me?"

Nathan laughed. "Doctor Cross? I haven't heard that title in quite a long time." He ducked into the back seat and pulled out a framed photograph of her dancing in the sand. It was two weeks ago, and she had worn one of Francine's designer dresses, a multicolored caftan. The wind was blowing her hair about her face; the aqua sea and the sunset hues of pink and orange were in the background.

It made her hair look as if it were on fire and her eyes were almost green. It was a gorgeous photo, vibrant, full of life and colors.

"Wow," Lisa breathed. "It's really good."

Nathan laughed. "I have a copy of this and I am calling it the Real Mona Lisa. It will have a prominent position in my bedroom."

Lisa smiled. "Thank you, Nathan."

"Don't mention it." Nathan winked at her. "So are you up for a driving lesson today?"

He had offered to teach her to drive last week when she had walked to class in the rain.

"Well, sure." Lisa grinned. "I know a thing or two already. I would pick up some things when my uncle tried to teach my grandma how to drive."

Nathan handed her the key and got into the passenger side of the car.

"You never talk about your family except for the fact that your grandma kicked you out and apart from the fact that your mom and your dad met, had a one-night stand and then got married. And your dad died before you were born."

"And that's it in a nutshell." Lisa grunted as she backed out of the parking space without an issue.

" I want to know about your uncle."

"Nothing much to tell." Lisa grimaced. "Uncle Desmond was the apple of my grandma's eye. He could do no wrong, even when he was wrong. So every time he had a quarrel with his wife he would come to stay with Grandma Vera until things cooled down at home.

"He made it his life's work to teach Granny to drive because he was tired of fetching and carrying stuff for her. He wanted her to be independent."

Nathan watched her as she pulled out of the hotel gates. "Seems as if he taught you instead?"

"Yep, I would get a turn at the wheel too, just to show Granny how easy it was; even a child could do it."

Nathan chuckled.

"And your grandmother? Tell me about her."

"She was...is… moody, miserable, cantankerous, rarely, very rarely showed any affection to me, and when she did, it was with some kind of condition. You know, like pay me and I'll hug you. I worked at a bar once."

"You did?" Nathan quirked his brow.

"Yup, it was after my supermarket job and my grandmother was desperate to get me earning again. So she got me a bar job."

Nathan looked at her. "I am beginning to dislike your grandmother."

"After I got paid, I had to give her everything. And then she would give me pocket money."

"Wow," Nathan remarked.

"Yep. So when I lost the bar job, she started getting really inhospitable. I was suddenly a major drain on her resources, so she kicked me out."

Lisa said it nonchalantly but it still hurt.

She turned the car up Great Bay Road. She had never been to that part of Treasure Beach. It was what she thought of as the native side of Treasure Beach.

"Before she kicked me out, she made up this story about me not belonging to my parents to justify it. Get this—she said I never looked like any of my relatives, hence I am not really her grandchild."

"That must have been tough."

"Yes." Lisa slowed down at a depression in the road. "It was a dark day and...night...for me."

Nathan looked at her sympathetically. "But you turned it around?"

"Yes." Lisa nodded. "I promised God that I'd do a couple of things to straighten out myself if he helped me out of it and he helped me."

"Francine Mills called you when you were on the road heading to nowhere.” Nathan repeated the sanitized version of the story she had told him.

"Yep." Lisa nodded. "Ricky needed a housekeeper."

"God works in amazing ways." Nathan smiled at her.

"Yes, he does. More than you know." Lisa inhaled. She hated not telling him the full story.

Nathan nodded and then pointed to a pretty little yard with a lot of flowers. "Some of those flowers are unique. I have never seen those purple ones before."

"We should stop, ask permission to take some pictures," he said excitedly. He reached into the back seat for his camera.

Lisa shook her head. "You are so obsessed."

"It's a healthy obsession," Nathan said when she reversed and stopped at the gate.

Nathan got out of the car and knocked on the gate. He was practically sizzling with excitement to capture the bell-shaped deep purple flower.

A round, short lady came to the door.

"Are you the lady of the house?" Nathan asked politely.

"No sar," the lady answered spiritedly. "I just clean up around here. The lady of the house is Mrs. Marla Scarlett."

"Oh. Scarlett." Nathan grinned. "I can bet that this Marla Scarlett is related to a buddy of mine, Oliver Scarlett."

"Maybe." The lady shrugged. "This is Scarlett country."

"May I take a few photos of that plant?" Nathan pointed to the purple plant.

The lady looked like she was going to say no.

Lisa got out of the car and stretched, thinking that she could help with the negotiations. Women looked more favorably on men when they saw that they were part of a couple.

The lady squinted at her and then looked at Nathan. "You could have said you had a Scarlett with you. Come on in, then..."

Nathan raised his eyebrows at Lisa, who grinned. The lady went back into the house, watching them curiously while they took the pictures.

 

****

 

Week five of her photography course, Lisa was over at Nathan's house until late into the evening learning to use the photo editing software she needed to polish her photos.

Nathan had already showed her how to use the software and was now sitting in the corner of the living room sorting out which pictures to hang on the walls. He had an extensive collection from what he had termed his Treasure Beach pictures. He had already uploaded some of them to his website and had gotten sales.

Sales! She was still awed by that. People paid real, honest–to-goodness money for photographs.

She paused over a picture that she had taken in class. It was of a colorful fishing boat. It had looked lonely and had spoken to her somehow. It had a word etched into the side. She zoomed in closer to the boat and saw that it read ‘Pops’.

Lisa closed her eyes and imagined the fisherman who owned it. He would be weathered looking and friendly, like the many fishermen she saw on her jaunts to take pictures. Maybe he had dreadlocks and a grin a mile wide and smoked in the afternoon with his friends at one of the several local shacks on the beach side.

She would have loved to get him in the picture but the boat had been parked in the sand. She had taken it from a low angle so that she captured the sand that stuck to the side of the red paint with just hints of the sea in the background.

"Do you like this?" She turned to show Nathan the picture.

Nate nodded. "Love it. You really have an eye for this. I like that."

"That's a real compliment coming from you," Lisa said. She looked at the boat again. "It says Pops; what do you think it means?"

Nathan shrugged. "I guess the fisherman likes Popsicles?"

"Ha." Lisa saved the pic. "I don't know. Maybe it's his name."

"I like this picture. I think this will be my main exhibit piece. It speaks to the whole atmosphere of this place. Old world, peace, quiet, industry, sea, sand."

Nathan was nodding along with everything she said.

"Can I get a copy of it to hang in the house?"

"Sure." Lisa grinned. "Sure. You mean it?"

"Yes." Nathan nodded. "I wouldn't want it decorating the walls if I didn't think it was up to my very high standards."

Lisa clapped her hands in glee. "Are you going to be one of the judges at the exhibition? Eva said they would have expert guest judges."

"No." Nathan headed to the stereo and turned it on. Michael Bolton's voice came on softly in the background. "There is the bias factor. I love one of their students."

Lisa nearly choked on her tongue. She swung back around to him. "Say that again."

Nathan grinned. "Said I loved you but I lied."

She grinned. "The song is saying the same thing. You are a goof."

"But I was serious, though." Nathan swung the chair around to face her; he stooped to her level and came close to her, until they were nose to nose.

"You can't love me," Lisa whispered. "You are a boy genius medical doctor photographer and I am just a high school graduate with an iffy family history and ..."

"... a crazy chip on her shoulder," Nathan finished for her. He pulled her closer to him and kissed her, but she was the goof; she didn't know how to kiss.

By the time she confessed this to Nathan he looked at her with hooded eyes. "You serious?"

"Yes," Lisa said, embarrassment taking her over.

"Then I'll have fun teaching you." He pulled her closer to him and by the time his phone rang and interrupted them, she realized that she was a quick learner.

Nathan pulled away from her reluctantly, kissing her on the tip of her nose.

"Hello." His voice was husky.

When he came off the phone he looked at her apologetically.

"That was my friend, Watson—works at SofServ. He is panicking. Their photographer is down with the flu and they need someone to help them with some professional photos."

Lisa nodded. "It is going to be a long weekend without you."

"I know, for me too." Nathan inhaled. "Your first kiss, huh? I feel honored."

Lisa swung back to the computer, her ears burning.

He hugged her from behind.

"I knew from the moment that I saw you that you were a keeper," he whispered in her ear, which caused her to shiver from his closeness and his words.

She sighed. It was becoming harder and harder not to tell him that the first time she saw him was at his father's house and not Treasure Beach.