Read Belinda for Free Online Page B

that others didn't know about.
    Precocity, yes, surely that was there, and maybe even a little cynicism. I saw that in the pictures, though I had nor seen it when I was taking them.
    She'd showered before she put on the nightgown. Her hair had been loose and full of wispy little tendrils, and in the photographs these caught the light. And she had played the light rather naturally. In fact, she had been extraordinarily relaxed before the lens; she would sink almost into a trance as I photographed her, responding just a little now and then as if she were actually feeling my eyes on her, feeling the click when I took the shot.
    There was something seductively exhibitionistic about her. And she knew things about how she photographed. Once in a while she'd made some little remark about an angle, about the light. But this was pretty unobtrusive. She had let me do what I wanted to do. And I had never quite had a subject like her. No stiffness, no posing; almost a deep and automatic surrender to the situation. It was distinctly wonderful and odd.
    The best picture was one of her sitting sidesaddle on the carousel horse in the living room, her naked ankles crossed beneath the hem of her gown. Key light from above. Then there was a very good shot of her on the four-poster bed with her feet drawn up under her, her knees to the side. These I enlarged and printed right up to poster size.
    Another excellent picture was of her on the living room floor kneeling beside the old doll house, her face beside the turrets and the chimneys and the lace-curtained windows, and all around her a scatter of other toys.
    Tb. is~ . r~ i b~ rhr~ rr~v:% F~irJy: wrJ L , f~ct. ir~ F~j-. mrs. ro dc ll~ dlr to bed before we started. I wanted to make love to her right there on the living room carpet, but I didn't want to frighten her, and maybe it wouldn't have if I'd suggested it. But it was frightening me.
    The shots of her on the stairway with the candle were supposed to be pure Charlotte. I had gone up ahead of her, shooting as she came towards me. Minimal light. Here she really did look like a child, like a child I had painted a hundred times, except for something in the eyes, something .... We almost didn't make it to the bed.
    But then taking her in the four-poster was too good to miss. She'd been more relaxed, less anxious to please and more ready to be pleased than at the hotel, which was perfect. The first time I don't think she had enjoyed it really; this time I knew that she had. And it had been a big thing to me that she enjoy it. I had wanted to make her come, and she had, certainly, unless she was world-class at faking it. We'd done it twice actually. And the second time was better for her, though it really left me knocked out and just wanting to sleep after that, the night over too soon.
    Sleeping next to her, though, feeling her naked in that usually empty bed, the big cold bed full of faint memories of New Orleans childhood-ah, that was too good.
    Her face was smooth in most of these pictures. No smile, but she looked soft, receptive, open.
    And when I had them up on the wall, I really began to know the anatomy-the wide cheekbones, the slightly square jaw, and the childlike tightness of the skin around the eyes. I couldn't see the freckles in these photographs, but I knew they were there.
    Not a woman's face. Yet I had kissed her breasts, her nipples, her scant smoky pubic hair, felt her bottom in my open hand. Hmmmm. Pure woman.
    I thought of a joke I'd heard a few years ago in Hollywood. I'd gone down there to close a deal for a television remake of one of my mother's novels-my mother had died years ago-and I was having a celebratory lunch with my West Coast agent, Clair Clarke, at the new and very fashionable Ma Maison.
    The whole town was talking then about Polish film director Roman Polanski, who'd just been arrested for allegedly carrying on with a teenage girl.
    "Well, you've heard the joke, haven't you?" my agent said. "She might have