Read Selected Stories by Fritz Leiber for Free Online

Leon. She was a civics teacher at one of the high schools and modeled for me on the side, just lately on speculation too. After one look at the prints, I decided that Miss Leon probably wasn’t just what Lovelybelt was looking for—or my photography either. I was about to call it a day.
And then the street door slammed four stories down and there were steps on the stairs and she came in.
She was wearing a cheap, shiny black dress. Black pumps. No stockings. And except that she had a gray cloth coat over one of them, those skinny arms of hers were bare. Her arms are pretty skinny, you know, or can you see things like that any more?
And then the thin neck, the slightly gaunt, almost prim face, the tumbling mass of dark hair, and looking out from under it the hungriest eyes in the world.
That’s the real reason she’s plastered all over the country today, you know—those eyes. Nothing vulgar, but just the same they’re looking at you with a hunger that’s all sex and something more than sex. That’s what everybody’s been looking for since the Year One—something a little more than sex.
Well, boys, there I was, alone with the Girl, in an office that was getting shadowy, in a nearly empty building. A situation that a million male Americans have undoubtedly pictured to themselves with various lush details. How was I feeling? Scared.
I know sex can be frightening. That cold, heart-thumping when you’re alone with a girl and feel you’re going to touch her. But if it was sex this time, it was overlaid with something else.
At least I wasn’t thinking about sex.
I remember that I took a backward step and that my hand jerked so that the photos I was looking at sailed to the floor.
There was the faintest dizzy feeling like something was being drawn out of me. Just a little bit.
That was all. Then she opened her mouth and everything was back to normal for a while.
“I see you’re a photographer, mister,” she said. “Could you use a model?”
Her voice wasn’t very cultivated.
“I doubt it,” I told her, picking up the pix. You see, I wasn’t impressed. The commercial possibilities of her eyes hadn’t registered on me yet, by a long shot. “What have you done?”
Well she gave me a vague sort of story and I began to check her knowledge of model agencies and studios and rates and what not and pretty soon I said to her, “Look here, you never modeled for a photographer in your life. You just walked in here cold.”
Well, she admitted that was more or less so.
All along through our talk I got the idea she was feeling her way, like someone in a strange place. Not that she was uncertain of herself, or of me, but just of the general situation.
“And you think anyone can model?” I asked her pityingly.
“Sure,” she said.
“Look,” I said, “a photographer can waste a dozen negatives trying to get one halfway human photo of an average woman. How many do you think he’d have to waste before he got a real catchy, glamorous pix of her?”
“I think I could do it,” she said.
Well, I should have kicked her out right then. Maybe I admired the cool way she stuck to her dumb little guns. Maybe I was touched by her underfed look. More likely I was feeling mean on account of the way my pix had been snubbed by everybody and I wanted to take it out on her by showing her up.
“Okay, I’m going to put you on the spot,” I told her. “I’m going to try a couple of shots of you. Understand, it’s strictly on spec. If somebody should ever want to use a photo of you, which is about one chance in two million, I’ll pay you regular rates for your time. Not otherwise.”
She gave me a smile. The first. “That’s swell by me,” she said.
Well, I took three or four shots, close-ups of her face since I didn’t fancy her cheap dress, and at least she stood up to my sarcasm. Then I remembered I still had the Lovelybelt stuff and I guess the meanness was still working in me because I handed her a girdle and told her to go