The Exchange
Carrie Williams
Table of Contents
Prologue
In clothes, he looks almost demure. It’s his boyish face, unlined, seemingly open and frank, of a beauty so pure it takes your breath away. He’s looking towards me, or rather towards my lens, and I feel lucky to have such a prize specimen posing for me. I’ve always liked to take edgy shots, pictures of outsiders, the unconventional or even the scarred. I used to think beauty was boring. Not any more.
He’s holding the camera’s gaze, and not for the first time I feel forgotten, superfluous. Professionals such as him often seem to forget the presence of the photographer. It’s as if they’re making love to the camera itself, the way some of them come on to it. As if they want to fuck it. Not for nothing, I sometimes think, are big long lenses described as phallic.
I don’t know what to make of it all. Demureness meets wantonness in one package. It’s disorienting. I feel as if the ground is falling away from under my feet. I feel as if I’m not in control, and a photographer needs to be in control, or the whole thing falls apart. I’m not the kind to leave things to chance and serendipity.
He’s not dressed in designer clothes. This is not that kind of shoot. Today he’s not a fashion model but just a regular guy in jeans and a striped granddad shirt, a regular guy who just happens to be drop-dead gorgeous. Beneath his arms I can even see traces of sweat, blooming like flowers on the fabric. There’s something about that – slight grubbiness teamed with physical perfection – that drives me mad. Teamed with a hint of stubble, it’s leaving me dry-mouthed.
I swallow almost painfully. ‘If you could just …’ I manage. ‘Just, er, turn so you’re positioned a bit more side-on to me. That’s right, yes. And then … I don’t know, maybe if you could undo the top button of your shirt you’d look a bit more relaxed, more natural. That’s right. Great. Hold it right there.’
I look back through the lens, watch as he undoes a second button on his own initiative, sending me a questioning look. I nod, hold one thumb up.
‘That’s great,’ I say.
‘I brought a different shirt,’ he says, ‘if this one’s not right.’
I shake my head. I really couldn’t care less about your clothes, I think. I want to see you naked.
As if he’s reading my mind, he lifts his shirt up and over his head. He grins at me and my pussy throbs so hard I feel like I’m going to explode.
Chapter 1: Rachel
We met on Facebook – where else? She came up as ‘Someone You Might Know’ and, though she wasn’t, she looked interesting. So I clicked on her name and added her to my Friends list. There was also the fact that her name was a little bit similar to mine: Rochelle Renaud, Rachel Reynolds. Not that it means anything, of course, but sometimes seemingly random things can have huge repercussions.
When I say interesting, I mean that she looked very different to me, or to any of my friends. The acquaintance we had in common, leading Facebook to suggest her to me, was a runner at an agency called Twist, specialising in offbeat, ‘characterful’ models. I still don’t know how he actually knew Rochelle. But it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that she piqued my curiosity, with her froth of blonde curls, her red sequin top and her mismatching pink feather boa, slung around her frail neck like the serpent from the garden of paradise.
She accepted my Friend request, but for a while that was it. We didn’t exchange any notes or leave any messages on each other’s wall. Then one day I did get a note from her, short and to-the-point.
‘Hey Rachel. It seems you are a photographer. What kind of images do you make?’
I emailed back, told her a little about my work, directing her to a few websites where it was displayed. Then, on a whim, I told her that if I ever came to Paris, perhaps I could photograph her? I didn’t say that I was captivated by her vulnerable beauty, the fragile edge to her. By then I’d browsed some of the photos of her in her Facebook albums and found her gorgeous but somehow damaged-looking, with eyes like shattered glass. Sometimes you look at a photo and you are desperate to know more about the person within it. Perhaps that’s what makes a successful photographic portrait. And so it was with Rochelle. I was curious to know more.
She emailed back to say that she didn’t think she’d be around for long, that she was talking about quitting Paris. She didn’t say why, but there was a glamorous world-weariness to her tone that made me quite envy her her wanderlust, however unfocused. Perhaps just to try to look as cool as her, I told her I had itchy feet