Picture Palace Read Online Free Page A

housewives, girls lugging firewood, scullions, schoolgirls. A girl at a gas station, another one at a cosmetics counter in Filene’s Basement.”
    â€œOne sees them in the most unlikely places.”
    â€œThese were heartbreaking. Afterwards, everyone said I’d posed them. But that was just it—the girls didn’t have the slightest idea of why I was taking their pictures. Most of them were too poor to own mirrors. One was a knockout—a Spanish girl squatting with her skirt hiked up to her waist, sort of pouting, her bare bottom near her ankles. What a peach—there was a beautiful line cupping her bum and curving up her thigh to her knee. She didn’t see me. And another one, a Chinese girl in Hong Kong I did after that Vietnam jaunt—long black hair, skin like porcelain, one of these willowy oriental bodies. She was plucking a chicken in a back alley in Kowloon, a tragic beauty with that halfstarved holiness that fashion models make a mockery of. I weep when I think of it. That’s partly because”—I leaned forward and whispered—“I’ve never told anyone this before—she was blind.”
    â€˜You’ve done other blind people,” said Greene. “I’ve seen them exhibited.”
    â€˜When I was very young,” I said slowly, trying to evade what was a fact. “I’m ashamed of it now. But the faces of the blind are never false—they are utterly naked. It was the only way I could practice my close-ups. They had no idea of what I was doing—that was the worst of it. But they had this amazing light, the whole face illuminated in beautiful repose. They’re such strange pictures. I can’t bear to look at them these days. I was blind myself. However, let’s not go into that.”
    But as I described the pictures to Greene I saw that he had this same look on his own face, a blind man’s luminous stare and that scarifying scrutiny in his features, his head cocked slightly to one side like a sightless witness listening for mistakes.
    â€œI understand,” he said.
    â€œI’ll be glad to show you the others,” I said. “The pretty faces. You’ll cry your eyes out.”
    â€œThere were some lovely girls in Haiti,” he said. “Many were prostitutes. Oh, I remember one night. I was with that couple I called the Smiths in my book. I said they were vegetarians. They weren’t, but they were Americans. He was a fairly good artist. He could sketch pictures on the spot. We were at that bar I described in my book—the brothel. He picked one out and drew her picture, a terribly good likeness. All the girls came over to admire it.” Greene paused to sip at his sherry, then he said, “She was a very attractive girl. If the Smiths hadn’t been there I would have dated her myself.”
    It seemed a rather old-fashioned way of putting it—“dating” a hooker; but there was a lot of respectful admiration in his tone, none of the contempt one usually associates with the whore-hopper.
    â€œDated her,” I said. “You mean a little boom-boom?”
    â€œJig-jig,” he said. “But it comes to the same thing.”
    I laughed and said, “I really must be going.”
    â€œHave another drink,” said Greene.
    â€œNext time,” I said. I had lost count of my gins, but I knew that as soon as I remembered how many I’d had I’d be drunk.
    â€œWill you join me for dinner? I thought I might go across the street to Bentley’s. That is, if you like fish.”
    I was tired, my bones ached, I felt woozy and I knew I was half pickled. I attributed all of this to my sudden transfer from Grand Island to London. But I also had a creeping sense of inertia, the slow alarm of sickness turning me into a piece of meat. I knew I should go to bed, but I wanted to have dinner with Greene for my picture’s sake. I recognized his invitation as sincere. It