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Ari and Samantha make a most unusual connection... for the first of many to come.
Chapter 8
From the moonlit shadows of miniature orange trees surrounding orchid gardens and occasional red clay stepping stones came the amber hue of Ari’s cigarette. He watched closely as Samantha studied the dining room and Max studied Samantha. He too knew the look of Samantha’s persona when she chose to immerse herself in the make-believe behavior known to her and many others as the art of acting. Ari also knew and perhaps envied the image of Max in this world of human behavior study. Some had stamped Ari’s more akin to psychological research, as peering into the souls of humankind as a doctor might. Ari saw himself a bit simpler: A privileged voyeur, offering answers to the needy readers of celebrity news. As he continued his study of the couple—now two years of periodic observation—he was convinced there was indeed a very fine line that separated Sam from Samantha.
He wondered if anyone besides he and Max knew this. Could his digital impressions convey this to the public someday? What if the computerized abstractions he primarily created for his own enjoyment were to betray him? He was always questioning himself if it had been a mistake to share them with a publisher who had two first names, an identification usually reserved for Hollywood types. And what of the watercolor renderings that followed? His publisher had especially liked those and had paid considerably more to purchase and hold them for what, Ari didn’t really know. Would they ever get published, or would they forever remain a private collection for this wealthiest of publishing egos? He took another deep inhale of his Gauloise cigarette and thought back on that particular event’s intoxication.
It had been a happenstance for him in New York just nine months earlier when Max had hired the famous Roland Spears to paint a canvas of Samantha. The occasion was to immortalize the image of Samantha reclining on the therapy couch Max had used in his office at St. Luke’s before his retirement. Now holding a prominent position on the parquet floor of Max’s East Side brownstone foyer. He had granted Sam’s request to forever remember the beginning of her “couch” connection with him. She had even been formally quoted by the Times early on in their relationship as saying “…the pre-imminent stage director and former Psychiatrist, Maxwell T. Quinlan, was the only person, and would remain forever the only person to know the real Ms Turner.” She had for some reason decided to let the press know of her scheduled sittings for the month. Then she had proceeded to instruct her publicist to cease all further comment. From that day forward, this was to be a private experience for her alone, or so she thought.
And so it was with much thought that Ari, partially out of professional duty and partially from the New York Times quote, took his camera and snapped several long-lens photos from a rooftop across the street from Max’s apartment. His memory of that day would become indelible, carrying with it the added image of his own hand trembling from the sight before him. Like a queen from ancient Egypt, her body appeared as if poised in state, eyes reaching to the stars, hands in relaxed repose across her breasts, and the robe’s thin veil of chiffon giving rise to both the painter and the photographer’s imagination. Was this deliverance for Max who had nurtured her for the stages of the world? Was it for the veneration her audiences represented? Was it for—just herself?
Even with the apparent intimacy of the pose, it was not a sight that he was ashamed of seeing. He was after all just doing his job. Still, he appreciated the stabilization technology that steadied the tenuous motion coming through his fingers from what he feared might be a sense of personal violation. He pulled his eye away from the viewfinder and wiped the perspiration from his eyelids. As he returned to the small opening, the image of the woman posed patiently for the man with the brushes and oil permanency created a thought foreign to Ari’s short but worldly life. The questionable perception was made somewhat comfortable by the fact he was looking through a lens, and lenses were nothing more than personal tools of his job, just as hammer and saw were to a surgeon. And like a man in green scrubs, and surgical mask, he was aware he was using his favorite scalpel, the same 1000mm lens he had chosen many times in the past. The cylinder of glass reflection had mirrored natural birth in the Amazon, unnatural death in the Sahara and many forms of life in between. Still, he couldn’t avoid the uncomfortable thought that at this moment, he might be witnessing something beyond private something so personal that not even she understood it?
That was the impression the Nikon’s latest digital camera, a bonus gift from his publisher, could create for him merely by transferring the images over to his iPad and continuing the exploration and manipulation until he articulated what for him was the essence of the images. His early days of 35mm work had left him beholden to a limited source of exploration, but the digital age had created an even more intense desire, an obsession to discover more profound meaning for his own life through an in-depth exploration of other lives around him. Through this electronic “magic carpet” as he chose to label his iPad, he only needed his brain to talk through his arm to the fingers holding the “Aladdin’s Lamp.” Here, a kind of magic that could only be realized by the gentle thrust of the touch sensitive pen, gave life and a realm of truth he believed in, a truth that was frightening in its honesty, like a sighting of the Madonna image bleeding through some innocuous wall.
He had made an impression on his publisher by delivering in a few short months these computerized abstractions that although unpublished, became a sizable personal investment, a sort of buried card the man of power didn’t yet know how or when to present to the magazine’s readers. Ari’s approach was very different from the Paparazzi style that up until very recently dominated the world of celebrity images. Both the publisher and Ari had agreed that the reworking of the images could represent a revolutionary way for readers to perceive celebrities, but… the celebrated woman he was viewing now was more than just a celebrity to Ari. The fact he didn’t know why gave him concern.
Gazing from the mid-Manhattan rooftop was a peculiar way for a stranger to react to someone merely posing for a painter. He leaned away from the camera and lit a cigarette. Excusing the perspiration and slight dizziness as a return bout with Malaria was easier than to admit it was because of what reflected back through the lens at him. Who was he, he thought, to be so audacious and conceited to think that through a camera he received some kind of special insight into this captivating and famous woman? Insight of this magnitude was the realm of Dr. Quinlan’s work, not his. He walked to the other side of the roof and looked out over the Hudson. Why all of a sudden do I have so many questions? Why? Yes, they were disturbing, but not nearly as disturbing as the one that was about to haunt him for long time.
He put out his cigarette and returned to his camera, only to be met with Samantha standing at her window, looking directly up at the rooftop. He stood frozen beside the tripod. Why had she interrupted the session to move to the window? Was she aware of his presence? It was then that from somewhere deep inside his being there surfaced a mysterious question that made all others pale in comparison. Was he a young man possibly in violation of not only her privacy, but his own as well? Was there something he, she, they, were not supposed to experience, at least not yet? He looked at his camera for a moment. Was he playing with merely an electronic image duplicator or a Frankenstinian aberration that should be exorcised?
As he reached for the shutter cable, as if in some kind of defiance, he asked himself if he was not about to violate her with worse fury than any critical audience or reviewer might ever inflict in the future. He pressed his eye once more to the viewfinder. At the window, she was now perhaps twenty feet closer, enabling the lens to give him eye contact. Would she understand that he was not a voyeur; that first and foremost he was a man with a selective soul viewing a woman whose talents mirrored selective souls everywhere? As he pressed the small plunger he vowed to himself that any further documentation of her with his camera would serve only as a beginning. From this day forward, he would respect the transcendent nature of her image and try to define it through his digital lab inside the iPad. The camera in one swift moment became his capturing instrument for defining the essence of one Samantha Turner.
***
Here he was then in Mexico, nine months later, peering through a window remembering that decision, and wondering if he had fooled himself. He could only wonder why he was uncomfortable thinking that this was the formal beginning of her shared life with Max—not him.
Sam and Max enjoyed dancing on occasion. Tonight being part of a special occasion, they waited until the rare slow dance began before stepping out onto the smooth tiled floor. As Max placed his hand on her bare back, he closed his eyes for just a moment. Samantha’s skin had always been of special allure to him. His first memory of ocean water beaded on her face and neck had always remained a fixation second only to the flushed way her flesh would always appear after they made love. Max allowed as much appreciation of the olive colored silkiness as was politically correct.
Max opened his eyes as Samantha catered to her fetish, Max’s hands. In this case, just his left hand that held her right as they began to move ever so slowly to the music. Max grinned and leaned back slightly as she placed her fingers in-between each of his and gently, but with just enough pressure, forced his hand back slightly. It was a reminder of the gesture she enjoyed using on both his hands while he made love to her. At first, the idea of enduring the strange pain she would inflict seemed out of place. But he also remembered that during one of the many therapy sessions, she had revealed that she believed certain manifestations of physical pain were addictive. Max learned quickly she was right and began enjoying it.
So the two allowed their separate appreciation and secrets to carry on as they placed their feet, legs and bodies close to one another for the few minutes they had together before—
“Oh, my God,” was all that either heard coming from an intake of breath directly behind them. They both turned and were faced with a man attired in traditional dinner jacket and non-traditional tie and cummerbund that depicted a subtle Picasso pen and ink sketch of eroticism. The dress on his partner was equally adorned in just enough traditional/strange with the strange being exotic floral patterns accessorized with Mickey and Minnie Mouse jewelry cast in gold and platinum. “You’re Samantha Turner,” he blurted out. His partner equally taken aback by the realization uttered, “Oh, I…I…”
“Don’t know what to say,” Samantha filled in with a charming smile reserved only for her public. “Please, it’s alright. Just keep dancing and enjoying…” Max did a cordial turn, smiled and rotated her naturally away as Samantha continued, “… the evening is young.”
The couple stood for a moment, then continued dancing as Max and Samantha danced their way over to the sidelines, away from the center lit floor.
It was at that moment that Ari realized she was turning and pivoting to Max’s lead. Just as a ballet dancer might choose to find a focus point to keep from becoming dizzy, Samantha’s eyes focused on Ari standing outside the windowed door in the shadows. The movement was different, but the look in her eyes was as Ari remembered her stare nine months earlier while looking through her apartment window at him.
Coincidence? Imagination? Ari wasn’t sure. His artistic eye had taught him that most things are not what they appear, so why should this be the exception, unless he wanted it to be. He snuffed out his cigarette and withdrew further into the shadows as she stopped, walked to the door, opened it and taking Max’s hand stepped out onto the stone veranda. She walked toward Ari, but stopped at the wrought iron table and chairs and sat. “Max, have you ever thought about smoking?”
He smiled and sat down beside her. “What a strange question.” He took from his coat her pack of cigarettes and offered her one. She maintained her gaze out over the garden and gestured them away. “No thank you. I was just thinking how interesting the smell of foreign tobacco can be.
Max smiled. “Smell of Mexico. Cheap Tobacco. It’s everywhere.”
“No. French cigarettes. You don’t smell it, do you?” She asked. “It’s the smell of New York. The aroma that trails behind Chesterfield coats on Madison Ave.—behind the white silk scarves in Schubert Alley. The breath of control. The scent of power, Max.”
Samantha rose and walked to within arms reach of the trellised roses shrouding Ari in their shadows. She idly gazed ahead into the darkness of the flowers, into the unseen eyes of Ari gazing at her behind the lens.
Max rose and stepped to her side. He gazed up at the clear sky and smiled. “French prose.” He took her in his arms, kissed her gently and whispered in her ear “I can’t help but love you, you know.” Her eyes remained open, the full moon reflecting off the misty gaze that portrayed her infamous chameleon innocence. “You’re such a romantic behind all that craziness of yours,” he continued. She gave him an assuring hug, turned and walked back toward the dining room entrance. “You’ve probably not discovered the half of it, Max.” She stood at the glass paned door looking at his reflection behind her. “Coming?”
As he walked up to her, Samantha found herself wanting to believe Max was the best thing that ever happened to her. He stepped up, reached across and opened the door. She stood a moment, smiling softly at him with love and affection, an expression Max had not seen very often.
“Will you love me tonight Max?”
“Of course.”
“Will you smoke a French cigarette with me as well?”
“Honey, I don’t smoke.”
“I know.”
Max paused, looking into her eyes, trying to see her mind.
“Yes. Of course. But why?”
“Because it''s my honeymoon. Because I’m a romantic behind all my craziness, remember?”
Samantha stepped into the dining room followed by Max. As he turned to close the door, an amber glow in the garden caught his eye for a split second. Max didn’t know why it caused him to pause, but he did know he suddenly felt uneasy.
As Ari inhaled a new cigarette, turned and walked back toward the motor home, he realized he too felt uneasy, but for different reasons.
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Love ya!
Jane
And, you're bringing in the latest technology perhaps creating the next Mona Lisa is something that I like from my scientific and technical point of view.
Ron