Vanilla

Vanilla

By

Xavier Kind

Smashwords Edition

*****

Published By:

Xavier Kind on Smashwords

Vanilla

Copyright © 2011 Xavier Kind

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

*****

Vanilla

The First Frame

There had to be another stick of vanilla incense. Somewhere. Anywhere. Vanilla incense was essential—just as essential as the Canon 1D Mark III, the Booth 42-inch 5 in 1 Reflector and the Manfrotto Tripod. Vanilla incense had burned in the background when Eliza convinced her first client, a friend of her cousin Sarah, to let her take the pictures of the girl’s wedding. She had burned it again when the next clients came over a couple of weeks later, and with little more than her bubbly personality and her promises of producing the most amazing pictures ever, Eliza booked them as well. Vanilla incense was Eliza’s lucky rabbit foot. Her four-leaf clover.

Eliza named her budding business Vanilla Photography after that second stroke of luck. There’s the smell, she had told a friend of hers, which is pleasant and relaxing, and then there’s the perception of purity vanilla invokes…of whiteness…just like a bridal gown.

She pulled all the Tupperware and dishware out of her cupboards and still she couldn’t find any incense. She filed through stacks of wedding magazines and unopened junk mail stuffed into kitchen drawers. Where’s the fucking incense? she screamed. The pain in her neck that still lingered after four years flared up as she bent down and removed the recycling from under the sink. Her father’s voice screamed out next to the pain. These types of injuries don’t just disappear, dear. Don’t settle now, or it will come back to bite you in the ass later. She sorted through empty soup cans and crushed milk jugs searching for half-burned incense she may have inadvertently thrown out. Rancid milk drops spilled onto her fingers and fell to the kitchen linoleum. The clients were coming in twenty minutes and her apartment smelled like onion, the remnants of a ham and onion omelet she had made herself for lunch.

I need a goddamned studio, Eliza mumbled as she washed the stink from her hands. This is ridiculous.

Home-based was not the way it was supposed to be. Eliza had booked nine weddings her first year, based solely on her cousin’s word of mouth. The next year she placed an ad in The Wedding Book, one of B.C.’s many wedding magazines and her bookings doubled. She promised herself that if business were even better the next year, she would move into a studio. Business didn’t get better the next year, but it didn’t get worse either. Moving into a studio was what Eliza wanted, but she couldn’t justify it, or afford it. The weddings she had booked only covered rent, expenses, and basic life sustenance. Her one-bedroom apartment would remain her home and her office. No one ever said being a photographer would make you rich. People got into photography because they loved taking pictures. Eliza was no exception.

Her dad bought her a Polaroid Instant Camera when she was eight. Her first picture was of a bowl of fruit she had set up on her grandmother’s dining room table to look just like a painting of bowl of fruit hanging on the living room wall. Her grandmother was so impressed she framed the picture and hung it on a wall in her bedroom. Eliza took her camera to school and took goofy pictures of the kids in the playground. Kids hanging upside down on the monkey bars. Kids sliding head first down the slide. Kids tossing sand in the air. She kept the pictures in a scrapbook and she charged the kids a nickel to see them. The profits went towards more film for the camera.

The apartment still needed to be vacuumed. Clothes needed to be put away. The hide-a-bed needed to be folded up so the clients had somewhere to sit. The apartment had to be presentable, because the entire apartment was visible when clients walked down the open entrance hall into the bedroom where Eliza kept her makeshift office.

It was the New Year and a whole new wedding season was upon her. Eliza wasn’t concerned she hadn’t booked a wedding yet. She wasn’t concerned that last year at this time she had three already in the bag. Everyone in the industry was suffering the same as her. That’s what Eliza told herself. Her only concern was the smell of onion filling her apartment and the reality that it might overtake her consultation. She knew that when she opened her front door the potential client’s first impression would be, Amateur. For only an amateur would let me, a potential client have to smell an odour like this.

Onion equaled Amateur. Vanilla equaled Professional.

Vanilla Photography was not an amateur operation. Eliza had all the gear others dreamed of owning. She had a 27 inch iMac, a Canon 1D Mark III and two Canon Mark II digital cameras as backups. She belonged to organizations like The Professional Photographer’s Association of British Columbia, and the Professional Photographers of Canada. She had the education in photographic arts and photojournalism to back up her claims of professionalism.

There was no more incense. The mental note Eliza had made almost six months earlier, after her last consultation, had somehow lost itself among the millions of other mental notes she had made since then: pay the phone bill, buy bananas, shave armpits, repeat. What else of importance have I forgotten? she thought. The clock clicked over. Another minute had passed. I have plenty of time to buy some more, she remembered saying all those months ago. Where’s that time now, you silly bitch!? She pulled a book of matches from her junk drawer and lit one. It burned a second and she blew it out. Smoke curled up from the extinguished match towards the ceiling. She went to the living room and lit another match. She blew it out and a small exclamation mark of smoke rose from the extinguished match. Her office, the worst offender, took three matches and still the onion odour was noticeable under the phosphorous stink. But it would have to do.

A good first impression was imperative. As much as bad odour could detract from that impression, an untidy environment could all but kill it. As much as Eliza resolved to change her ways, the cycle would continue. She was a procrastinator. The e-mail, or the phone inquiry that set a meeting date could come weeks in advance, and no matter how much time Eliza was given, she still found herself running around during those very last moments tidying up, getting changed, vacuuming. Sometimes she’d still be putting on her makeup as the clients were knocking on the door. She was a procrastinator, but she was also a master at managing time when the time in question belonged to someone else. Time was the biggest factor on the wedding day. How much time will the ceremony take? How much time is there between the ceremony and the reception? How much time do we need for family formals? Can we cut some of that time to get more time alone with just the bride and groom? Eliza may have been errant with her time, but when it was a client’s time she was at her very best.

She didn’t hear the first knock. The second knock was louder and just audible over the roar of the vacuum. Eliza looked up at the cat clock on her living room wall. They were five minutes early. Five minutes early. My cushion, she thought. The sheer nerve of these people. Her apartment and its looks had consumed her time. Besides the hint of onion hanging in the air, the apartment was now in a semi-presentable order considering its shape only fifteen minutes earlier. Sometimes sacrifices had to be made when procrastination was a character trait. This time, it would be her appearance. She put the vacuum back and checked herself in the mirror once more. Her hair was a mess, but a quick ponytail fixed that. Her lips were cracked, but a layer of gloss hid that well. She wanted to put on a little blush, but a third, even louder knock stopped her before she could even pull the blush out of the drawer.

That’ll have to do, she whispered as she exited the bathroom.

Nerves were rarely an issue with Eliza. When the wedding of any given client came, she had already spent countless hours researching the locations they’d be shooting at: reading about them online and driving to them to get a better feel for where things were. She had already spent countless hours building a rapport with the couple through an engagement shoot and through several planning meetings. She had already learned the names of the bridal party and the parents and all the secondary players. She believed in her skills and in her equipment. She knew the shots that were mandatory: The Processional, The Kiss, The Recessional, Moms and Dads, The Wedding Party, Cake Cutting, First Dance, Bouquet Toss and Garter Toss. Most weddings did not stray from this formula and when they did, adaptation was not a difficult thing. The only time nerves appeared were in those brief seconds while the front door was being unlocked and opened revealing a prospective client for the very first time. A voice on the phone revealed very little. A voice on the phone revealed whether or not the person was concerned more about the quality of the pictures or about the cost of the pictures. Cheapskates usually opened the conversation by asking how much Eliza’s packages were. Cheapskates usually returned to the cost of Eliza’s services over and over again. Eliza preferred the ones that rarely mentioned cost, but past experience had taught her not to judge anyone until she had met them in the flesh and had that opportunity to sell them on her product and her personality first.

A man’s voice on the other side of the door. I don’t think anybody’s home.

A woman’s voice. I heard someone moving around in there.

Eliza reached for the doorknob. A single pulse of nerves raced through her body. This wasn’t a good start to the wedding season. This wasn’t a good start at all. She opened the door and said, Hello.

Their names were Charlie and Chris. Charlie was thirty and Chris was twenty-four. Eliza knew this because Charlie mentioned it during their first conversation. Charlie gloated about Chris’s agility and abilities in bed and in the kitchen and on top of the laundry machine and even under the patio of her parents’ house. Charlie gloated about this and yet, she had never met Eliza. Charlie had seen Eliza’s website when she did a Google search of Vancouver wedding photographers. She said she liked Eliza’s style and wanted to come in and see more. She never once mentioned cost.

Sorry we’re early, Charlie said.

Sorry to make you wait, Eliza said. She put out her hand and both Charlie and Chris took turns shaking it. Come on in.

Eliza watched their expressions. She watched their noses. Would they sniff out the onion? Would their opinion of Vanilla Photography be made in their very first moments with her?

It must be hard running a business out of your home, Charlie said.

I don’t have to worry about getting stuck in rush hour traffic when going to the office.

Chris smiled, but the joke was weak and Eliza knew it. It would be nice to have a studio, she said moving the conversation up to a more professional level. But my little apartment office does me just fine.

They removed their shoes and followed Eliza into her office. They each took a seat at the desk Eliza had pulled out into the middle of the office. Eliza’s three showpiece albums were lying on the desk. A client’s full knowledge of Eliza’s technical ability was achieved through these albums. There was the Parks-Dawson wedding album, or, The Green Album for it was covered in a sage Bengaline, and followed a theme using shades of green throughout it. There was the Chan-Park wedding album, a blackish-blue Buckram covered album Eliza nicknamed, The Black Album. And lastly, Eliza’s pride, the album people often returned to view once more before making their final decisions, the album which spurred two clients to book her immediately after having looked at it. The Red Album. The Jolliet-LeDuc wedding was Eliza’s crowning achievement as a wedding photographer. The near perfect pictures translated into an award-winning album. Clarice Jolliet’s red wedding dress set the tone for Eliza’s untraditional take at wedding photography and it paid off. She chose red Buffalino leather for the album’s covers. She won top prize among B.C. wedding photographers for the album design and came second place for a three quarter length cross-processed shot she had taken of Clarice. The Red Album was her bait and her hook. Without it she was no different than the guy with the expensive camera who once shot his cousin’s wedding and now felt he could compete in a market already over-saturated with photographers.

Eliza walked around the desk and took a seat across from Charlie and Chris. You said on the phone you’re getting married on July seventeenth, she said, at the… at the… she reached for her notebook and checked over the list of inquiries. Charlie and Chris and a few wedding tidbits were the only things written down.

We’re getting married on the pier in White Rock, Charlie said.

That’s right. I should have remembered that. Can you do that?

Do what? Charlie replied.

Get married on the pier?

You can get married wherever you want. We just told our JP to meet us there at three and to bang the thing off as quickly as she can.

Chris made a Mona Lisa smile and reached for the black album.

And the reception’s just up the road at the Pacific Inn at four thirty? Is that the big pink hotel you see on the way down to the border?

The one and only, Charlie said. It’s just so tacky, how could we not have a party there?

And are you looking for reception coverage?

We want about six hours of coverage. I want shots of me getting ready for the wedding all the way up to the first dance.

Six hours should be enough for that, Eliza said. Why don’t you take a look through the albums, you know, see if there are certain shots you like, certain shots you don’t like. And then we can go over any other questions you might have.

Charlie smiled and picked up The Green Album. Eliza watched her facial expressions as she flipped through the pages. She listened for the oohs and ahs that signified the pictures were winning her over and price was not going to be an issue. But Charlie remained blank, eyeing each photo as if it was taken from a crime scene, as if there might be a clue hidden deep within it. Eliza looked over at Chris who still held The Black Album, but his eyes weren’t on the pictures inside it. His eyes were on Eliza. He quickly averted his attention back to the album in front of him, but it was too late. Eliza had caught him. She had caught him just like she had caught half a dozen other husbands-to-be staring at her breasts. It sickened her that these men who had professed a love so great that they were willing to spend the rest of their lives with one woman, could trivialize the process by staring at Eliza’s breasts instead of the pictures Eliza had taken. It sickened her that the women never noticed. It sickened her that she never said anything. But Eliza knew better.

She knew better.

So what do you think? she asked, an edge purposely added to the question.

Yeah, they’re pretty good, Charlie said.

And how about you Chris. Did you see anything you like?

Chris didn’t look at Eliza. He mumbled something like, Yeah, they’re okay, and started flipping the pages of The Black Album.

Time to close the deal, Eliza thought. She pushed The Red Album towards Charlie. Take a look through this one. It’s a little less conventional than the other two. A little funkier. It’s not to everyone’s liking, but if you’re looking for something different, this is a good place to start.

Charlie picked it up and opened it. She flipped through the pages quickly stopping only once to look at a detail shot of the bride’s bouquet. I love the flowers she chose, she said. Are those all orchids?

They’re spotted butterfly orchids. Nice, huh?

Nice indeed, she said, and without looking at the last few pages she closed the album and handed it back to Eliza. Not a good sign.

Definitely different, Charlie said and looked over at Chris who was still clinging on to The Black Album. That must be some album, she said and chewed down on her lip. You haven’t let it go since we sat down.

Chris placed the album back on the desk and dropped his head. Charlie’s eyes focused in on the side of his head. She glared at him for several silent seconds. In that silence Eliza heard Chris’s breathing speed up. She thought she heard his heartbeat. Diffuse this, Eliza thought. Diffuse this and bring it back to what’s important.

So how did the two of you meet?

Charlie’s demeanor changed. She cut Chris loose and looked over at Eliza. He was a friend of my brother. He is a friend of my brother.

Oh.

Yeah. So I’d just been dumped by this guy I’d been dating for six years. He came to the conclusion after wasting six years of my life that he wasn’t cut out for long-term commitment. Isn’t that the funniest fucking thing you’ve ever heard? Oh, sorry. Still burns me up a little. I mean, this guy who has already been in a relationship for six years realizes out of the blue commitment isn’t his thing. So, I’m walking home from his apartment wondering what the hell just happened to me and my cell phone rings. It’s my brother Matthew. He says he and a buddy of his are up at the Starbucks drinking mochas and they were wondering if I might want to join them. It was divine intervention, I tell you. Divine intervention. Matthew and I aren’t that close, but after six years committed to someone you find the rest of your friends kind of fade away. I needed his shoulder. When I got there I found two shoulders to cry on. Chris and I just connected right away. The three of us sat in that Starbucks until it closed up and then we stood in the parking lot for another hour afterwards talking. The next morning all I could think about was some of the things Chris had said to me. He had quoted Shakespeare and Buddha. He had left an impact. I called Matthew and got his number and eight months later...well here we are.

Connect with the client on a personal level. Treat them as you would treat a friend. Eliza could never be a friend with someone like Charlie. Charlie was controlling and over-sensitive. Eliza had picked this up quickly. They were traits she knew well, because they were traits she also possessed. Their personalities would never mesh. One would always be attempting to outdo the other with her tales of woe. But Eliza could pretend. Some of the best advice her first boss ever gave her was to just smile and nod. Smile and nod. It represented so many things. Sympathy. Acceptance. Regret. Understanding. It was a gesture, which made even a stranger feel like a friend. Eliza could be that friend. Eliza was that friend to almost thirty of her past clients.

Eliza smiled and nodded. Charlie lifted her arm and ran her hand behind Chris’s neck. Everything was good again.

So, Eliza said, feeling it was once again safe to return to business. How much were you looking to spend on your photography?

Charlie continued to scratch the back of Chris’s neck. We’re more interested in the pictures and the person taking the pictures, she said.

Just the type of people Eliza liked working for.

Do you have any questions for me? Eliza asked.

No. Not really, Charlie said. I think we’ve seen all we need to see.

Seen all you need to see, Eliza thought. Seen what? Seen a few albums and your husband-to-be staring at my chest. Do not judge lest ye be judged, sweetie. Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’d like to know?

Charlie picked up her purse and pulled out a notepad from inside of it. She removed the pen that was attached to the pad and flipped the pad open. Chris’s attention was on an 11-by-16 print of a bride’s face half covered by her veil Eliza had hanging up on the wall. You see, Charlie said as she crossed something off in her notepad, this is our only full day off together for the next two months and we kind of booked a whole bunch of appointments today. Don’t get me wrong. I love your work and you seem really (a short pause) nice, but the wedding guides all say to never book a photographer on the spot. They say it is imperative you visit three or four photographers before you make your decision. We’ve still got a couple more to go to and they’re all the way over on the other side of town. We’ll check them out and we’ll give you a call either way we decide to go. It’s the least we can do.

Eliza smiled and nodded. She pushed out her chair and stood up. The urge to punch Charlie in the face and kick boy-toy Chris in the balls briefly crossed her mind, but that would have definitely ruined any chances for their possible future business. Last year, it wouldn’t have been an issue. Last year she would have slammed the door behind Charlie and Chris and said, bitch behind the closed door just loud enough that the two of them would have been left wondering if in fact that was what she had said. But last year at this time she already had some money coming in. She already had dozens of inquiries she hadn’t responded to. Last year, the loss of one potential client wasn’t anything to panic over. Another would surely come along.

They did not exchange words as they walked to the door. Eliza was in a daze. Her first meeting of the New Year had gone horribly wrong and the prospect of future business was non-existent. Chris and Charlie slipped their shoes on and Charlie smiled one of those, Well, it’s been nice smiles.

Well, it’s been nice meeting you, Charlie said. We’ll talk to you soon.

Ever the professional, Eliza said, It was real nice meeting you, too. Good luck with your planning. I’m looking forward to hearing from you again.

Chris turned the knob and pulled on the door. It didn’t open so he tugged a little harder.

Oh, the deadbolt’s on, Eliza said. She reached past him and unlocked the door. Charlie grabbed Chris’s hand and the two of them left Vanilla Photography without even saying, good bye. When Eliza closed the door behind them she didn’t scream, bitch! as the situation called for. She couldn’t scream, because there was too much blood in her mouth from biting down on her tongue so hard.

The Second Frame

Cassandra had done this a hundred times. She couldn’t understand why she still got nervous. Nerves are God’s way of telling us He’s with us when we are so utterly alone, she concluded. But she had put herself in this position willingly. She had pinpointed the corner and had chosen the clothing and said to herself, This is what I must do to pay my bills. This is what I must do leave my little imprint on the world. Because it disgusted her,