I finished early Friday. I had figured on the job taking a week and a half, but good weather, good fortune and an exceptionally co-operative client meant I finished on Friday, four days early. I made the obligatory call to the airport, but they could not get me a flight out until Monday morning.
It looked like another long weekend alone in a hotel.
That happens a lot in my work. You make predictions on how long it will take to do a project, but the truth is, it's something of a crap shoot. If everything goes right, like this time, then you finish early. A few things go wrong and you're still on site days longer than you had planned. I'm used to it, but still....
Nothing to be done about it however. I was here and would be here until Monday. I grabbed my camera and headed down to the beach. I had been looking at the gulf sunsets all week long from the deck of an oil rig. It would be nice to catch it the way beautiful sunsets should be caught, from a sandy beach.
Photography is something of a passion for me. I discovered it later in life, when I was nearly fifty. I was on a job site in Montreal and the client suddenly decided he needed some high quality images to document the project. I ran out that night and bought a good digital camera and the next morning was at the plant, snapping away. I also caught a couple shots of the foreman's secretary, a lovely oriental girl with sparkling eyes and perfect features. The client was thrilled with his shots of his factory. I was thrilled with the headshot of that girl, smiling at me, the contrast between her in her figure hugging dress and the factory making the picture something special.
I was hooked.
I went home that weekend and talked my girlfriend into letting me take a series of pictures of her in a corset she had just bought from Fredericks. They turned out so good that I sent a few of the best ones to Fredericks and they hired her as a model. Yes, that's her you see in each issue of their catalog overflowing a different corset each issue. Good for her but bad for me – she stayed out in LA to model.
No matter though. Girlfriends come and go. I had found an enduring love – creating beautiful images. You've likely seen some of my pictures. They are on brochures, book covers, magazines. It's not all glamour – in fact most of my work is still on the technical side. But I do enjoy the glamour shoots. Hell, I enjoy anything beautiful, like sunsets on a long sandy beach.
It was still light when I got to the beach, It would be an hour or so before the light would begin to fall. I scanned the beach looking for people that would make an interesting picture.
There was a girl, maybe 3 years old, playing with a beachball as big as she was. Click. Click. And there was an elderly couple, dressed up like they were going to church. Only he had his pants leg rolled up and the both had their shoes in their hands, walking at the water's edge, the waves lapping at their ankles, the picture of enduring love as the held hands and talked. Click. Click. And then, there was the blond.
She was perfect.
I don't say that lightly. I shoot a lot of women, remember and I know the truth – that no twenty something girl can be perfect, no matter how much lighting, makeup and airbrushing you give her. A young girl simply hasn't got the character to be perfect, hasn't had the experience. A girl can be beautiful, but she just hasn't lived enough to be interesting. It takes an extra decade or two to make a woman interesting.
And too many women, in that decade or two that they are becoming interesting, let some of their beauty go. It's there, but often neglected in favor or kids or careers or a life that is too busy to pay attention to her core beauty.
But this woman was perfect. Was she thirty? Forty? Older? It didn't matter. She was wearing a short white dress as she walked up the boardwalk. It was the kind of dress that hugged each perfect curve and gave the imagination plenty to work with, highlighting her hips as she moved, her breasts, her strong, shapely legs that ended in a set of white heels. Heads weren't just turning as she walked by, everything stopped as she walked by. She was that perfect. I almost forgot to zoom in and take her picture.
I watched her walk confident and smiling down the boardwalk until she was out of sight. I smiled. That short moment of watching her had made the weekend better somehow. I suddenly didn't need a picture of the sunset. I had lots of pictures of sunsets. I left the beach and walked idly in the same direction she had gone.
I probably walked for half an hour, until I found a bar that I liked the looks of. Traveling as much as I do, I don't really like the big glitzy generic restaurants that seem to plague every town. I tend towards little out of the way places.
This one fit the bill. It was called "Bob's Bar" and looked like it had been there for a hundred years. There was hardly any paint left on it's clapboard siding. The cars parked outside all had local tags. It looked like the kind of place I would enjoy. I went in.
It was a typical Texas Roadhouse, not the kind of touristy mock seafood place you'd expect on the waterfront. A crusty old man about 70 sat at the bar, tattoos on both arms and a pack of camels in his shirt pocket. I would have bet that was Bob and that he and his bar had been here long before the real estate boom.
I found a table and the waitress followed me there. "We got steaks and beer." She said.
"Then I'll have a steak and a beer. Can't go wrong with that." She smiled and never asked me what kind of steak or what kind of beer. I wasn't worried. It would be fine. I looked around the room. And I saw her.
The perfect blond in white. She was sitting at a poker table in the corner, only she wasn't sitting in a chair. She was sitting on some lucky guy's lap. He must have been one hell of a poker player, because somehow he seemed to be keeping his concentration with her there. It was the only lively table in the whole place, which conveniently gave me an excuse to look over there.
It looked like the blond was bringing the guy luck, because most of the money was on his side of the table. Every time he'd win another hand she'd clap and reach around and plant a kiss on him that was something to behold. Not just some cute little wifey kiss but a long deep hot kiss that looked like something out of the movies. I was getting hard just watching them.
My steak and beer arrived at the same time and for a while, I tried to concentrate on dinner but I couldn't help it. My eyes kept straying back to the corner table and that wonderful bundle of curves. I was just about finishing when she got up. "Gotta go sweetie." She said to the lucky man whose lap had been holding her all night. "See you later?" He nodded as he shuffled the cards. "About midnight." He said.
"I'll be waiting." She said, and laid another one of those incredible kisses on the man, and turned, and walked towards me.
OK, she was actually walking to the door, but she had to go past me to get there and so for a brief moment it looked like she was walking my way. As she slipped by the other side of my table, I could not help notice that she was as perfect up close as she was from a distance. I caught the faint hint of perfume. I shook my head at the luck of other men. That was one gorgeous lady. She flashed me a smile as she went by, and that alone was enough to keep my imagination running the rest of the night.
As I watched her go out the door, a couple of the other players from the table were leaving too. I heard a voice come from the corner. "Hey tourist! You play cards, or do you just watch other men's wives?"
I turned to face him. He was smiling and so was I. "If my wife looked like that, I'd still be married." I said. We all laughed. Five minutes later, I was in the game.
Did I mention that I grew up playing poker? I did. My mom was something of a card shark and she taught all three of us to play most every game under the sun. About the only two people I don't beat regularly are my two sisters, who not only have a perfect memory, but can drink any man on the planet under the table. Short of those two, I don't lose much.
And I didn't lose that night. Slowly but surely, the pile of money shifted from his side to mine. He didn't seem too put out over losing what looked to me to be a few thousand dollars. Must be pretty well off.
At five till midnight, I had nearly every cent he had. I know that to be a fact because I had bought the last two rounds of beers. He and I were the only two left at the table. "One more hand." He said. "then it's off to the wife." The broad grin on his face told me what a pleasure he was anticipating. He dealt the cards. He scrounged in his pocket, found a bill, and threw in a rumpled twenty for the ante. I matched him.
"How many" he asked. I looked at my hand. Two threes and nothing else.
"Three." I said.
He didn't draw any.
Now I could have ended it quick and painless there. Thrown in a few bucks, and let him take me, and walked out with a little extra cash for the weekend. But my momma always told me not to take advantage of people who don't play as good as I do. So I always try to figure a way to loose and give the money back when I can. Since he evidently had a good hand, this should be easy. We began to bet back and forth.
After a couple of rounds of bets, he seemed to suddenly realize he didn't have any money on him. I waved him off nonchalantly, "You can send it to my hotel room. I'm at the Bentwood hotel, room 200." It didn't matter if he knew where I was staying, I figured, I was going to lose this hand anyway.
We kept betting. Finally he threw up his hands and said.. "Hell tourist! If I go home losing this much, that little blond gal you saw this evening will kill me.'
"Tell you what," I told him. "Keep all your money." I pushed it back to him. "and if I win, you send her over to me tomorrow for maid service.." We both laughed, and put down our cards.
I had my two threes. He had.... Nothing. Not even a pair. He had been bluffing worse than I had.
