Nothing but a Smile (32 page)

She reminded him how he'd mentioned several times that he and Chesty had been friendly with a marine combat photographer who'd gone on to
Stars and Stripes
and was an editor at
Life
magazine now, that he ought to try pitching him on a photo essay, and Wink agreed that maybe he would, that he might just have a shot at it.

She had to slug the big dope, right on the arm. “Of course you do!” she said. “You're a Pulitzer Prize finalist, for pity's sake— no matter if you can prove it or not.”

“Now, I
do
sort of feel funny about keeping the money,” he said. “But I've maybe got a plan brewing should take care of that….”

She told him she didn't doubt it for a minute.

Sometimes, moments like this, she had the strangest desire to have both her men there, living and breathing at the same time, Wink
and
Chesty, working and living with her there in the camera shop, just to enjoy watching the two of them as the gears started to move.

Arriving at the news shop on a Saturday morning, Keeney knew he was at least a couple minutes late. The roll gate was already up. Usually he got there in time to help Sunshine unlock it and grunt it up, but he'd apparently already done it on his own, had the lights on and everything. He imagined the earful of griping he'd get from the old man on this one.

Even before he reached the shop, he had a hunch he was running late. He figured as much when Reenie had started in on him that morning. He'd eyed his alarm clock through the whole proceeding, but she'd insisted on riding him like a rodeo star, clowning it up the whole time, even throwing out a couple
yahoo!s,
which actually added even more time to the event rather than hurrying it along.
Keep it up, sweetie,
he thought,
and that landlady's going to kick us loose.
Reenie had been especially attentive since they eloped, and he imagined it would wind down
eventually. Then again, he hadn't known the girl all that long
before
they eloped, so really, he had no way to judge it. Maybe this was the way she always was.

Anyhow, he figured the old man could like it or lump it. He was a newlywed, damn it. He was entitled to a little slack in regards to rolling out of the marriage bed.

But Sunshine wasn't there. Wink Dutton was there. Inside, standing by the cash register.

“Sunshine State is coming in late,” Wink informed him. “If he comes in at all today. Says he's sleeping in and nuts to you. Asks that you kindly ‘kiss it.' It's his last day.”

“Last day?” Keeney felt about as confused as a color-blind bull. “So who's—”

“You are. You're the new owner. Sunshine State's off to the Sunshine State, and not a day too soon, you ask me—or really anyone on the planet who's met the man. Just as soon as I sign the deeds on Monday, making it legal. You should come to the closing, too—and Reenie—and I'll just sign it over to the two of you there, and then it's all yours, free and clear. I am not a partner, I am not a boss, I am a friend who will occasionally stop by and see what's new on the racks. And if you have our titles prominently displayed.”

He told Wink he must be goofy in the head; he couldn't waste his money like that.

But Wink was shaking the noggin in question. “It's money I never really earned, believe me. Ill-gotten booty.”

“Listen,” Keeney told him, “those girls see you as being just as much a part of that whole thing as them. Or almost as much. I understand you've got some feelings of pride, making money from that, but I've talked to Reenie about this many times, and they do
not
feel, neither one of them, that you've been taking advantage of them or—”

“Not money from that. Not the girlies. This is extra, from the
Tribune.
Trust me. This is free money.”

Keeney wasn't clear what he meant by that—
free money.
Wink appeared almost itchy as he said it, and it reminded him of something his new bride had told him regarding her old cuddle-buddy's war injuries, both physical and unseen. Although Wink had never confided any of this to him personally, Reenie claimed the guy was carrying around a lot of screwy feelings of guilt about the way he'd won his Purple Heart—that he'd actually been hungover and not following instructions or something and that from the day she met him till the end of the war, he'd seemed uncomfortable about enjoying civilian life, like he didn't deserve it.

He tried to tell the guy he could just take out a small business loan from the GI Bill, buy it from the old goat himself, direct.

“Save that for the
next
location, when you branch out. Or for a delivery truck or something. This is a wedding present. End of discussion.” And as if to make it final, Wink walked over to the cash register and dropped the keys on the little worn wooden counter, and they stood and stared at each other for a time.

This business about a wedding present, on top of his insistence that Reenie needed to sign the papers, too, made it pretty clear, Keeney thought, what this was about. Even more than the issues with his injury and discharge, the guy felt guilty about the way he'd treated Reenie. Or
felt
he'd treated her. As far as Keeney could tell himself, Reenie didn't seem to have any real beef with her old flame. But they both got the idea sometimes that Wink felt he'd treated her a little like a victory girl, never a serious girlfriend or potential wife.
All the better for
me
to come along,
was the way Keeney saw it, but if the guy needed to make some grand gesture like this for it to sit right with him, peachy.

“Thanks then,” Keeney said finally. “You're something else.”

“As are you,” Wink said. “And you're welcome. With only one string attached.” He raised a finger in the air. “Not really a condition. A request. I want you to help me with something. Once you're settled in, just let me shoot a photo essay of you running this place, showing how you make it work, the daily stuff and how you've adapted.”

Keeney sucked his teeth. He wasn't crazy about having his picture taken, even when the hook was out of sight. Then again, folks stared all the time anyway, especially kids and 4-F types, so what the hey? What he'd seen of Wink's more serious photo work, it probably would turn out pretty nice.

He asked Wink if there'd be half-naked girls in the shots, prancing around the shop, flashing their ta-tas while he sold magazines and newspapers and gum.

Wink grinned. “Not unless that's how you normally run this joint. And if it is, I think maybe I
do
want to keep a piece of this, because you're sitting on a gold mine, my friend!”

“Too late,” he told him. “You're out.”

“Cheap bastard,” Wink muttered. “Fucking ingrate.”

“Degenerate,” Keeney shot back.

Wink stuck out his hand to shake, and it turned into a little bit of a quick embrace—not much, just a backslapping shoulder grab, the way things sometimes got back in the service, when no one wanted to choke up and get gooey about things, but they sort of were. Keeney didn't want to think about it too much and get all blubbery, but thinking about his hand and the “adapting” Wink was talking about made him think about how far he'd come himself since going through physical therapy. And not just in operating the hook. He remembered how he'd thought, lying in that hospital cot, that the world was pretty much a dark place that took things from you. And maybe it was, if you didn't make an effort to fall in with the right group of people, in which case,
maybe all bets were off on the world making any headway in the taking things department.

At the door, Keeney told him, “You're the swellest guy ever once screwed my wife.”

“Once?”
Wink said, grinning like a goddamn movie star. “Stop kidding yourself, brother!”

Keeney told him he'd have to ask him to leave if he was going to engage in such risqué banter. “I own and operate an upstanding establishment here, sir.”

“Yes,” Wink said, tipping his hat to leave. “You do.”

Mr. Price was still pressuring them to sell out. He'd just appear, unexpected, to “say hello” and start in again as if they'd never been through it before.

Wink was starting to wonder if the man considered him a softer touch than Sal. Lately, he seemed to show up only when she was upstairs or in the darkroom or, more often, out on an errand. Maybe he'd switched tactics because they'd married and it was all common property, but Wink suspected, more likely, Sal was just too frank with the man and wouldn't listen as politely as Wink tried to do.

Each time, Wink tried to act like he was hearing him out, then suggest that maybe at another time, in the future, but right now it just wasn't feasible.

Mostly he managed not to be rude because of what he'd learned about the man since they designed the card deck for him. And he was afraid if he lost his temper with Jericho Price, it might not be the only thing he'd lose.

Lately, Price's tactic seemed to be to make it “absolutely clear” that he had no interest in the camera shop itself—”just the licensing, images, and all other entities held by S&W Publishing.”

He said it like he was doing them all a huge favor in not trying to take away her pop's twenty-year business.

There
was
one thing Wink was damn glad to sell. And it was a relief to see the generous whim he was starting to consider slightly foolhardy benefit him in some way beyond just making him feel like less of a heel.

He'd given Keeney a week or so to set up shop, get the place reconfigured the way he wanted it without any input from the old man, and then he approached him again about shooting a photo essay. Keeney could hardly turn him down.

The first day Wink spent following him around the tiny shop, it was obvious the guy was straining to act natural, slipping into wooden poses with each click of the Argus. But by the second day, Keeney got used to him being there or forgot about him, because the shots were incredible. Going over the contacts in the darkroom, with Sal peeking over his shoulder, he thought he'd almost call them powerful and moving.

His pal from back in the Pacific, now a photo editor at
Life,
thought so, too.

For the second night in a row, she stirred around one a.m. from dreams of being out in the middle of Lake Michigan, rocked by
waves, and sat up, light-headed, queasy, and slipped out from beneath the gangly trap that was her long-limbed new husband and just made it, quietly enough not to disturb him, to the bathroom to throw up. If she hadn't known that morning was only an option, that sickness could come at any time of the day, and if she hadn't been well aware she was significantly late, she might think she was coming down with something.

Yeah, boy!
she thought.
I'm coming down with something, all right.

This second night, after emptying her stomach as quietly as possible, she pulled off her nightie, uncovering the stomach in question, and examined it in the mirror.

This was as flat as it would ever be. Tugging Wink's ratty robe down from the back of the door, she left the nightie on the floor and put the robe on instead and went out into the hallway and down the stairs, turning on lights. In the studio, she began setting up for a shoot, positioning the lights, the camera, arranging some throw pillows on the wooden riser.

She heard Wink on the stairs, tentative, probably still asleep.

“Babe?” he said. “Everything okay?”

She almost laughed. He sounded so quiet and unsure, as if maybe she were a prowler. What if she
had
been—calling her babe and being gentle would disarm a prowler?

He stood before her now, squinty-eyed and swaying from sleep. “What's the idea?”

“My swan song,” she said and dropped the bathrobe. “You need to get it down for the record. Before it's gone.”

“Gone?” he said. He still didn't get it.

“Changed. Everything changes, sweetheart. It's okay.” She was laughing at him a little now, mostly because he still seemed so confused, partly to keep from crying and worrying him more. She patted her belly and a look came over him. Maybe he finally
got it, the big dope. She knew she was grinning at him like a moron, even if she felt like she might start seriously bawling any second. These would probably be totally unusable—full nudes, bush and all, with a grinning girl with misty eyes, pointing to her slender but seemingly unremarkable midsection—but she wanted them anyway. For posterity.

“Just take my picture, dear. Take
our
picture.”

He came across a letter one day, among the general camera shop correspondence and bills, that looked like fan mail, addressed to Weekend Sally in care of the store, though they now had a separate PO box down the street for such things. Right off, it was a little troubling, that much alone.

On a single piece of lined legal paper, handwritten, it said only this:

It was postmarked from right there in Chicago. He burned it immediately, keeping it from Sal.

But he couldn't hide everything. She claimed that lately she'd begun to notice the occasional “creepy hoodlum teen” looking shifty, looking like he was watching her or following her. Wink didn't imagine it would be very reassuring to her to admit that if it were a threat, he didn't think it was threatening in a particularly sexual way because he was pretty sure they were watching and following him, too.

Another time, soon after, returning one night from taking in a Loretta Young picture with Reenie and Keeney about a pretty farmer's daughter going to the big city and having to change her plans, Wink found a pane of glass smashed on the back door. Likely, it was kids again, hooligans. It seemed like an exact replica of the broken pane he'd repaired about three years before.

“This,” he said, trying to get her to laugh about it, “is where I came in.”

But he wasn't honestly sure it was something to laugh about.

They already had names picked out for the baby. If it was a girl, Manuela, her own mother's name, though they'd probably just call her Manny. If it was a boy, Billy, in honor of Chesty. That one had come from Wink. He insisted.