“It’s not a business dinner.”
“Personal business,” she said. “I thought you wanted to hear more about my time in Ocracoke.”
“I do,” he said. “But only if you feel up to it.”
“I really do have to eat. I’m not kidding about that.”
Reluctantly, he nodded just as the waitress arrived and handed them the menus. Surprising herself, Maggie decided she would like a glass of wine, settling on a French burgundy. Mark ordered an iced tea.
As the waitress walked away, Mark took in the restaurant. “Have you ever been here before?”
“On a date, maybe five years ago? I couldn’t believe they had a spot for us tonight, but I guess someone must have canceled.”
“What was he like? The guy who brought you here?”
She tilted her head, trying to remember. “Tall, great salt-and-pepper hair, worked for Accenture as a management consultant. Divorced, a couple of kids, and very smart. He wandered into the gallery one day. We had coffee and then ended up going out a few times.”
“But it didn’t work out?”
“Sometimes the chemistry just isn’t there. With him, I figured it out when I went to Key Largo for a shoot and realized when I got back that I hadn’t missed him at all. That’s pretty much the story of my entire dating life, no matter who I dated.”
“I’m afraid to ask what that means.”
“In my twenties, when I first moved out here, I frequented the club scene for a few years…going out at midnight, staying out until almost dawn, even on weeknights. None of the guys I met there were the kind I could bring home to my family. Frankly, it probably wasn’t a good idea to bring them back to my place.”
“No?”
“Think…a lot of tattoos and dreams of being rappers or DJs. I definitely had a type back then.”
He made a face, which made her laugh. The waitress returned with her glass of wine and she reached for it with a confidence she didn’t quite feel. She took a small taste, waiting to see if her stomach rebelled, but it seemed okay. By then, they’d both decided on what they wanted—she ordered the Atlantic cod, he opted for the filet—and when the waitress asked if they wanted to start with appetizers or a salad, both of them declined.
When the waitress walked away, she leaned over the table. “You could have ordered more food,” she chided. “Just because I can’t eat much, you don’t have to follow my lead.”
“I had a couple of slices of pizza before you got to the gallery.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t want to run up the bill. Places like this are expensive.”
“Are you serious? That’s silly.”
“That’s what Abigail and I do.”
“You’re one of a kind, you know that?”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you…How did you start with travel photography?”
“Sheer persistence. And lunacy.”
“That’s all?”
She shrugged. “I also got lucky, since salaried gigs for magazines don’t really exist anymore. The first photographer I worked for in Seattle already had a reputation as a travel photographer because he’d worked a lot for National Geographic back in the day. He had a pretty good list of contacts with magazines, tour companies, and ad agencies, and he’d sometimes bring me along to assist him. After a couple years, I went a bit crazy and ended up moving here. I roomed with some flight attendants, got discount flights and took pics in whatever place I could afford to visit. I also found work with a cutting-edge photographer here. He was an early adopter of digital photography and was always investing whatever fees he earned in more gear and software, which meant I had to as well. I started my own website, with tips and reviews and Photoshop lessons, and one of the photo editors at Condé Nast stumbled across it. He hired me to shoot in Monaco, and that led to a second job and then another. Meanwhile, my old boss in Seattle retired and he pretty much offered me his client list as well as a recommendation, so I took over a lot of the work he’d been doing.”
“What allowed you to become fully independent?”
“My reputation grew to the point where I was able to book my own local gigs. My fee, which I purposely kept low for international work, always enticed editors. And the popularity of my website and blog, which led to my first online sales, made bills easier to pay. I was also an early user of Facebook, Instagram, and especially YouTube, which helped with name recognition. And then, of course, there was the gallery, which cemented things for me. For years, it was a scramble to get any paid travel work, and then, like a switch had been thrown, I suddenly had all the work I could handle.”
“How old were you when you landed that shoot in Monaco?”
“Twenty-seven.”
She could see the gleam in his eyes. “That’s a great story.”
“Like I said, I was lucky.”
“Maybe at first. After that, it was all you.”
Maggie took in the restaurant; like so many spots in New York, it was decorated for the holidays, featuring both an ornamented Christmas tree and a glowing menorah in the bar area. There were, by her estimation, more than the average number of red dresses and red sweaters, and as she studied the patrons, she wondered what they would be doing on Christmas, or even what she would be doing.
She took another sip of her wine, already feeling its effects.
“Speaking of stories, do you want me to pick up where we left off now or wait until the food arrives?”
“If you’re ready now, I’d love to hear it.”
“Do you remember where I stopped?”
“You’d agreed to let Bryce tutor you and you’d just told your aunt Linda that you loved her.”
She reached toward her glass, staring into its purplish depths.
“On Monday,” she began, “the day after we bought the Christmas tree…”
Beginnings
Ocracoke
1995
I woke to sunlight streaming through my window. I knew my aunt was long gone, though in my haze, I imagined I heard someone rummaging in the kitchen. Still groggy and dreading the barf because it’s morning thing, I gently pulled the pillow over my head and kept my eyes closed until I felt like it was safe to move.
I waited for the nausea to take over while I slowly came back to life; by then, it was as predictable as the sunrise, but strangely, I continued to feel okay. I slowly sat up, waited another minute, and still nothing. Finally, putting my feet to the floor, I stood, certain that my stomach would start doing cartwheels any second, but still there was nothing.
Holy cow and hallelujah!
Because the house was chilly, I threw on a sweatshirt over my pajamas, then slid into some fuzzy slippers. In the kitchen, my aunt had thoughtfully stacked all my textbooks and various manila folders on the table, probably to get me kick-started first thing in the morning. I pointedly ignored the pile because I wasn’t just not sick; I was actually hungry again. I fried an egg and reheated a biscuit for breakfast, yawning the whole time. I was more tired than usual because I’d stayed up late to finish the first draft of my paper on Thurgood Marshall. It was four and a half pages, not quite the five pages required but good enough, and feeling sort of proud of my diligence, I decided to reward myself by blowing off the rest of my homework until I felt more awake. Instead, I grabbed the Sylvia Plath book from my aunt’s shelf, bundled up in a jacket, and took a seat on the porch to read for a while.