Exposure by Mal Peet Page B

his is white.
    On the seventh floor of La Nación, Paul Faustino is struggling with the hot drinks machine when Edgar Lima arrives and helps him with the buttons. Lima is the photo editor for the weekend color supplement. He looks about seventeen years old, has his hair in a gelled tsunami, and in the top of his right ear wears a clip fashioned from an antique silver coffee spoon. Naturally they begin to talk about the burning issues of the day.
    “It’s absolutely brilliant, ” Edgar says. “One of those images that are instantly iconic.”
    “Yeah?”
    “God, yes. I spend my days praying that one of our guys will come up with something like that.”
    “What, a soccer player shaving a woman’s armpit? I don’t want milk with that, by the way.”
    “Okay, there you go. Actually, it’s not really about shaving armpits. Well, it is, but hey, Paul, c’mon. Deconstruct it a bit, and what do you get?”
    “You tell me. I know you’re dying to.”
    “All right. It’s wonderfully complicated, but the first thing is, of course, it’s about Otello and La Brabanta.”
    “It’s not her, though. Is it?”
    “I very much doubt it. But we want to believe that it is, right? We want to believe that we’re seeing an intimate moment — albeit a slightly grotesque intimate moment — from the private life of the country’s most celebrated couple. Like they’ve just got out of the shower or something, and she says, ‘Darling, would you mind shaving my armpits?’”
    Lima sips his tea. “No, it’s more than that. What we secretly want to believe is that she says, ‘Darling, would you please shave my armpits because you know how much it turns me on.’ That’s why she’s hiding her face. She doesn’t want us to see how turned on she is. Which signals to the viewer that she is very turned on indeed. That’s why she’s holding herself the way she is, right? And the intent expression on Otello’s face tells us that he knows it. The armpit itself is a metaphor, of course.”
    Faustino considers this for a moment or two. “You are a very unwholesome person, Eddie. I’ve always thought that.”
    “No, I am a very ordinary person. I see what everybody else sees. That’s why I have my job.”
    “No, you have your job because you have a university degree in stuff that most people don’t understand, and because somehow you charmed the pants off our man-eating boss at your interview.”
    “That is also true.”
    “I’m glad you know it. Please continue.”
    “Okay. So. As well as the sex thing, there’s the violence thing. Or maybe ‘violation’ is a better word. You know, the way he looms over her. He looks twice the size she is. The photographer obviously got him to pump that arm up, because the muscles stand out like knots in a ship’s cable. Like he’s doing something that requires a lot of effort. And what he’s doing is taking a razor to this defenseless, submissive white chick.”
    “Aw, c’mon, Eddie. It’s a stupid little green plastic thingy.”
    “Maybe. But it’s a razor nonetheless, a thing with a blade. One false move, and there’s bloodshed. At the same time, he’s doing this slightly icky task for her. So you get this dangerous twist on the master-servant relationship. Or mistress-servant relationship, I should say.”
    Faustino harrumphs skeptically, but Edgar Lima is not deterred.
    “All that is pretty obvious. You might even say crudely obvious. But what makes the image really interesting, its stroke of genius, is that Otello is wearing a skirt.”
    “No, no. It’s a sarong. Perfectly conventional beachwear.”
    “Well, yes. Some guys wear them at the beach. But at home ? What kind of guy wears a sarong around the house? But the point is, Paul, right, that in the poster she is wearing one, which is like saying quite plainly that this is girls’ wear. Thus, by extension, that Otello likes wearing the same clothes as his wife. And enjoys joining in with the kind of thing that