Chapter 32 Mystery Client
The sound of Meka Okuda's squeaky office chair made my fillings ache.
"You ever considered oiling that thing?" I complained.
"Oiling what thing?" Meka asked absently as she worked on a drawing in her sketch book.
The digital clock on a shelf near the door said that it was twenty minutes to noon, Li Hong would be here any moment. Almost against my will, I reached into my bag to feel the thick envelope of cash Meka had given me a couple of hour ago. One thousand five hundred dollars in twenties had such a unique feel and weight.
"That's the tenth time you felt up that money, "Meka said not looking up from her sketching. "Why don't you just rub it against your body and get it over with already."
I pealed two twenties from the envelope, held one in each hand and rubbed the bills over my shirt covered nipples and gasped with passion.
Meka looked up from her drawing with a frown. "You fucking lolo weirdo," she said. Her cell rang, she looked at the incoming number then flipped it opened. "This is Meka, talk to me." A couple minutes later she shut her phone and said, "Deirdre Kaahumanu Smith will be my second tonight."
"Super Goth girl?" I blurted out.
"I've heard her called less flattering things," Meka said with a laugh.
"It's the way she dresses sometimes," I said, "over the top even for a Goth."
What I knew about Deirdre Kaahumanu Smith filtered through my brain. The girl was of Hawaiian and Caucasian mix. Her features classic Hawaiian yet her skin was ghostly white giving her a very exotic look, plus she was tall, at five-eight, maybe more and the chick was one hundred percent pure militant lesbian.
We joke in the painting department, that a person's body piercings is a gauge to one's lack of artistic talent. In other words, the greater the amount of piercings the more you sucked. But Deirdre the goth lesbian is a rare exception to the rule. Her photo portrait work is outstanding, although her subject matter, mainly other goth lesbians, has become a bit repetitive.
A knock came at the door. Meka got up and opened it. Standing outside Meka's studio was an extremely beautiful Asian girl at five foot six inches tall. Her hair cut short like a boys. She wore a clinging cream colored top with short sleeves, jeans and black running shoes. Her figure was tight and athletic. It was of course the famous Li Hong.
"David didn't come with you?" Meka asked. I heard the pang of disappointment in her voice.
You like this David guy, I immediately thought.
"He gave no indication he was coming," Li said.
Meka allowed Li to step in, and then closed the door behind her. It took all my will power not to gush like a wide eyed celebrity worshiping fan. After Don Ho and Brother Iz, Li Hong was the most recognizable celebrity in the islands. Meka introduced me.
"This is Gwen Yoshimura my assistant."
"Hi," Li said with a smile just for me it seemed.
A dorky smile of my own spread across my face. I wanted to tell her how awesome she was and if she could sign a picture of her that I didn't have. Fortunately, Meka pushed me aside before I started babbling like an idiot.
"Please sit and we'll talk about the shoot." Meka said.
Li nodded and sat on Meka's small loveseat sofa. The loveseat was the same size as the one in my studio, but that's where all similarities stopped. My loveseat was a ratty rundown piece of shit I got from Goodwill. Meka's on the other hand, was made of dark brown suede, plush and surely free of bugs. I sat next to Li and Meka sat across from us in her squeaky office chair.
"So what's your vision?" Li Hong asked Meka directly.
"I see you standing on a diving board in a white evening dress," Meka said all business. "You dive fully dressed. I take photos of you on the way down and more as you climbing out looking sexy in the wet garment. I photograph you taking off the dress then shoot you diving again in the nude."
"Where do we do this?" Li asked.
"Don't know yet," Meka said, "I'm waiting for David to tell me. Do you own a white evening dress?" Before Li could answer Meka waved her hands. "Never mind, it would only get ruined. We'll buy one for the shoot." Meka handed me a credit card. "You and Gwen can get one later." Meka fetched her sketchbook, shooed me from the loveseat, and then sat next to Li. Li tapped the armrest next to her indicating I should sit there so I could see too. Meka's thumbnail sketches of the photo poses were elegant and to the point. The sketches were very good; the chick certainly can draw.
"When did you do these?" Li asked impressed by the drawings too.
"Today" Meka said. Just then Meka's cell rang. "It's David," she announced and took the call. After listening and nodding for a few seconds she said goodby and shut her phone. "We have a location for the shoot. A pool at a community college not far from here. The place will be cleared of people for the shoot at five today."
"Can I see some of your photos?" Li asked as she closed the sketch book. Meka nodded went to a shelf full of books and pulled down a large photo album. For the next few minutes Li and I looked at Meka's work. The woman certainly had a knack for quirky portraiture.
"I like that one," I said looking at a color photo of a pretty Asian girl in a black sleeveless dress. She held a smoldering cigarette in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other. The expression on the girls face was somewhere between a smile and a frown. Her black hair, pinned up but just barely for much of it spilled out around the edges. As pretty and quirky as the model was, it was the odd surreal element of the planet Jupiter with a field of stars dominating the background that held my attention.
"I never got her name," Meka said. "She was from Tokyo I think. I met her at a grad mixer thrown by the Astronomy department. The background is a mural in a hallway. That was the only shot I took of her."
Li turned the page and the next photo was a sexy picture of Meka wearing just a white dress shirt standing facing forward, her dark nipples just barely visible through the material of the shirt.
"I like it, very sexy," Li said.
I suppressed a smile as Meka blush.
The Next photo was of two Asian women posing in some kind of dressing room, a long mirror with lights above it dominated the background. The women looked right at the camera, one sat in a plain plastic chair, the other sat on the edge of the makeup counter under the mirror. Both women were topless wearing just dark blue bikini bottoms; their faces were painted white in kabuki style, lips deep red, eyes made up in blue, green and black giving them a strange avian look. Their long jet black hair was too perfect and had to be wigs. The one seated held a smoldering cigarette in her right hand.
"It's the Kabuki Sisters!" Li exclaimed.
"You know them?" Meka asked.
"I don't know them personally," Li said. "They perform at an upscale club I go to sometimes. Their act is freaky."
"They're a strange pair no doubt about that," Meka said but didn't elaborate further. The topless Kabuki sisters were the last photo in the book.
"David said that you've do a lot of work for him. Do you have some of that to show?"
"Sorry, all that stuff is private. I don't even have copies for myself," Meka said with an edge of irritation. Meka got up, put the photo album away, and then went to stand in front of a strange piece of art hanging on her wall. The piece consisted of a verity of keys glued down in a circular spiral pattern. "Sally from sculpture did this. It's titled Keeping Secrets." Meka reached up and ran her fingers over the keys.
Li looked at me wondering what this was all about. I shrugged for I had no idea.
Meka went to the door, turned the lock, then she walked to her desk, cleared off some of the clutter, crawled onto the top of it and gingerly stood up. She reached for a high shelf mounted to the hollow tile wall above the desk and gripped a clunky ceramic bowel sitting on an old fashion wooden file box with a lock on it, she moved the bowl aside, and then pulled down the box. After getting down off her desk with the file box, Meka went back to the collage of keys made by Sally and plucked a specific key free from the hundreds of swirling keys in the piece. With the selected key, she unlocked the big old brass lock. Inside the file box was a large white envelope that Meka handed to Li.
Intrigued, Li sat at Meka's desk causing the old office chair to scream in squeaky protest. My face twisted at the awful sound and I decided to make it my personal mission to oil the fucking chair. As Li opened the envelope, I noticed that Meka's face was tight with emotion. Li pulled out what looked like a stack of eight by ten photos. From where I sat on the leather loveseat I couldn't see what the photos were. I desperately wanted to, but Meka hadn't invited me to look, so I reluctantly stayed where I was.
"If you make me look half as good, I'd be more than happy," Li said.
The compliment made Meka smile. Li held out a photo and it was a full frontal nude of Meka with head cocked to one side, the same dress shirt she wore in the photo Li and I had seen earlier was slung over her right shoulder. Her other arm rested at her side and she stood with one foot forward in a classic contrapposto pose, ala Michelangelo's David. Meka's mass of wavy hair had it's own agenda, cascading down her shoulders almost covering her right breast. Her pubic hair was a full, black, lusty triangle.
"This is my favorite," Li said holding out another photo of Meka on her knees, fully nude, looking out with a serious expression on her face. An old bulky camera hung around her neck from a strap. The old camera rested snugly between her full breasts.
"I picked up the camera at an appliance repair store on a whim a couple of years back," Meka said.
"Yeah, it's the camera that's the most interesting thing in the shot," I said. Then and there, I decided I wanted to do a nude painting of my new best friend.
Li handed me the stack of photos and since Meka didn't snatched them away, I went through them. They were all nudes of Meka.
"I love this one," I said and held out a color photo of Meka standing nude in a staircase painted to look like a jungle. I knew that staircase well for it was the infamous eastern staircase here at the art department totally covered with murals dating back to the seventies when the art building was first built. "You're a damned good photographer," I stated.
