Picturing Will by Ann Beattie Page B

anything, but neither did he seem weighed down with the cynicism so chic in his profession as advisor to artistes . Or rather, those concerned with the fates of artistes . Or, to be honest, those concerned with their own fates, who trucked with artistes . The little dog was all bright eyes and tongue and looked as if it had lived all the sexual moments Haveabud imagined. Haveabud raised his hand to gallantly kiss hers, but she surprised him by taking his hand and leaning forward to plant a little kiss on his knuckle. Women were never what you expected, even when you thought you had no expectations. When she sat down her chair scraped the concrete. She stood again, after drawing it in toward the table, to drop the top of the leash under the chair leg.
    “What is it like?” Haveabud said, searching her face. He waited for confusion to register. When it did, he moved an inch closer to her. “Being an artist but … taking photographs of weddings. We all have to keep ourselves amused, don’t we?”
    Amused? she thought. Ah, he must mean the amusement of eating. The amusement of buying your child’s corduroys. The amusement of paying the electric bill.
    “Because Mel has explained to me,” he said, moving his hands as if cutting a deck of cards, “that the intensity of what you do is something no one would want to sustain. I myself go and scream my head off when the Mets play. I certainly do not merely immerse myself in the world of art. The intensity—I keep coming back to that word—the intensity would be too much to cope with.”
    Intensity? Did he know what it was like to be home with a child who had a fever and who would not keep the blanket over him and whose only happy moments came when people were crashing their cars into walls on television at ear-splitting volume, because his ears were blocked up and he could hardly hear? Could this man have any idea what her previous week had been like in terms of intensity?
    But she did not answer him. She shrugged, considering a minute. She could have said that photographing weddings was not the easy diversionary activity that he supposed. You were part shrink, part philosopher, part stand-up comic. At weddings you moved snooty great-aunts shoulder to shoulder with skeptical children from the first marriage and linked them for all time in one shot. You tried to subtly communicate in any way you could that there was a sure future, that this was the beginning of a trip that would be sunny, a send-off for people who for one day, at least, had the countenance of angels. You assured the mother of the bride that her daughter’s beauty was due to her; you pulled the tick off the top of the dog’s head without comment; you piled napkins in puddles of champagne on the furniture. You tossed rice if you had a free hand and a free minute, danced one dance if asked, and won their hearts by taking picture after picture and by being the last to leave. Then you went away with memories of the day that would be larger than life because you had a machine that could do the enlarging, smiling with the assurance that you had zoomed in on details people were too preoccupied, or too nervous, to notice.
    Would he understand if she made an analogy?
    She told him that after the pictures were taken they were pieces of a puzzle. That in the darkroom they would float for a while, like a rose petal that had fallen into a glass of champagne.
    She looked at a spot on the table where no glass was placed. He looked at the same spot.
    They were images ruffled by currents, she said. Those slips of paper in the developing fluid.
    “Images ruffled by currents,” he said slowly.
    Whatever mood he had meant to establish, she had broken it. She looked at the tabletop, secretly proud of herself. Then she looked up and gave him a smile as lovely as she could manage, being sure that it was still tinged with regret.
    Haveabud knew that his momentum had been interfered with, but he was really quite captivated with