Page 32 of Dirty Diana
I take a step back, because I can’t think properly when I’m standing so close to him. His explanation sounds reasonable. Cut-and-dried. Like it’s just work. Which is for the best. I could use the extra money, and I’ve always wanted to see Marfa. Justine leaves tomorrow for two days visiting family, so if Melodie can fill in for me today, I could make up the hours next week. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Maybe?” He laughs. “You’d be saving my life. And if you’re worried that there are any weird kind of strings attached, please don’t. You’ll have your own hotel room, and I have a decent budget—we’ll work hard, eat well, and you’ll have a little time to see Marfa, if you haven’t already.”
Annoyingly, my body had said yes the minute he appeared in the parking lot, before he’d even asked the favor, but my brain is still trying to catch up.
“Let me make a call.”
Jasper grins. “That’s a yes?”
“Sure. It’s insane, but I’ll do it.”
His eyes widen in surprise—and I wonder, then, if I should have said no.
—
The weather takes several huge swings on our seven-hour drive from New Mexico to Texas, much like the energy inside the truck’s cab. At first, the drive is peaceful and we’re both quiet for a while, calmed by the muted colors of the desert sliding by. Jasper smokes his herbal cigarettes, drumming his fingers to the music. I make an effort not to be noticeably quiet, but my mind is racing, trying to figure out exactly what we are to each other. Friends? Employer and employee? Friends who might have sex? Jasper gives me nothing but mixed signals on the drive. When we stop for gas he brings me a lollipop, like he’s presenting me a bouquet ofroses. In the next breath, he asks me to check the case at my feet and inventory his lenses, a painful reminder that I’m being paid to be on this trip. “And could you call the hotel,” he asks, “to confirm our reservation?”
Halfway to Marfa, we pull off the highway for something to eat. Jasper’s never hungry before a big job, he says, so we sit in the bed of his truck and he watches me eat a plate of nachos. The sun is high in the sky and the sharp piney air mixes with the salty food. It’s windy enough that I have to tuck the hem of my dress tightly between my legs and sit on my napkins to keep them from flying away. By the time I finish, the weather has shifted again. The clouds are fat with coming rain and I wish I hadn’t left my sweater in the cab. I take a sip of my drink and shiver.
“Here.” Jasper drapes his jacket across my shoulders.
“Thanks.”
“Of course.” He pulls the collar tight around my neck and starts to button the coat from the bottom up. When he gets to the last one, our eyes meet. He drops his hands and looks up at the gray sky. “We should probably get going, anyway.”
For the next hundred miles, we hum along to the Police and any weird tension slowly melts away. We can work together and still have fun, I tell myself. I begin to wonder, too, if I imagined the way he froze buttoning up the coat. By the time Little Feat’s “Willin’ ” comes on, it’s sunny again and we’re singing along, loud and terrible.
Jasper turns up the volume. Instead of resting his hand back on the wheel, he places it on the center console, inches from mine. Both of us watch the road straight ahead. When I do glance at him, he bites his lower lip and runs a hand through his hair. Then he replaces his hand again, next to mine. Our fingers are so close I can feel the heat of his skin.
Long minutes pass where neither one of us moves. Jasper clears his throat and lets his ring and pinkie fingers rest on top of mine. Myheart races. He traces my hand with his finger and looks at me. “No jewelry?”
“No,” I say, quietly. “I’ve never worn it.”
Jasper’s hand lingers and he shifts in his seat. The late-afternoon sun beats through the front windshield. When it’s too hot to ignore, he rolls down his window. I pretend not to notice and let the wind lift my dress high up my thighs. I hear his sharp inhalation and turn my head toward the window so he can’t see my smile.
Close to Marfa, he tells me about his favorite restaurant in town and says we should have dinner there tonight. “You’ll love it,” he tells me, and I don’t know what excites me more—the thought of being on a date with Jasper or the idea that he’s already guessing at what I’ll like.
I spend the last few miles of the drive quietly imagining Jasper is my fiancé and we take weekend getaways like this often. Packing our bags and heading out on the next adventure. I don’t even realize that I’m smiling when Jasper pulls up to the location of the shoot.
The house we’ve come to photograph is a massive adobe structure with large circular windows facing out on a desert garden of prickly pear cactus and brilliant red salvia bushes. The walkway is lined with large agave plants and tall stalks of rain sage showing tiny lavender flowers. Jasper’s subject—a country music singer named Annie James—opens the door to her house in bare feet. She is petite and beaming, with neatly made features and warm eyes. She is wearing a loose white cotton shirt and heavily beaded necklaces, which clack against each other as she wraps us in a hug. “I’m so happy you’re here!”
Nothing about the home’s plain exterior prepares you for the grandeur of the inside. We enter a large room like an atrium with a ceiling made of steel and glass. Sunlight splashes down on the white walls and cream-colored floors and catches each crystal petal of the two massive chandeliers. An oil portrait of Annie brandishing a guitar hangs on one wall, and there is a white grand piano on a furry whiterug. A row of waist-high ceramic vases hold stalks of feathery pampas grass.
At a long wood table, a woman with close-cropped hair is arranging camelias in bowls of water, her long gold earrings brushing against her shoulders. A small man in a squat bowler hat is helping himself to a dish of strawberries and cream. “My publicists,” Annie says by way of introduction. “We’re in a bit of a crisis.” She lets out a throaty laugh. I’ve never seen three people look less in crisis, but we just nod.
“Nothing Jeremy can’t handle,” says Annie pointedly, staring at the man in the bowler. “Let me show you around.”
Maybe it’s the long drive or the soft perfection of the light, but by the time we reach the upstairs I am wondering why a house like this would need to be photographed. If it were mine, I would not want it to appear in a magazine. I would wander these rooms in private, probably congratulating myself for whatever I’d done to acquire it.
“I spent so much time as an expat in Europe, I guess I really fell in love with Georgian proportions,” Annie says. “It made me want a home that felt grand but still welcoming.” She gestures to a massive fireplace in one of the bedrooms covered in mosaic for her by a local artist. In the next room, a handmade quilt, a gift, she says, from a Tuvan shaman she met in Russia.
The house is full of art and very few everyday objects. I’m lingering in a large bathroom, peering into a copper bathtub that shows no signs of use. There’s toilet paper on the roll holder but no soap, no shampoo, nothing in the medicine cabinets. I hear Jasper cry out excitedly, “Diana, check this out!” and find them at the other end of the long hallway. There on the wall is one of Justine’s pieces—a beautiful blue-and-gold tapestry. “How crazy is that?” Jasper grins at me with something like pride and explains to Annie that I work with Justine.
Annie looks genuinely starstruck, even though I’m only an assistant. “When I saw it, it reminded me so much of Marfa. I just had to have it.” I know this tapestry—it used to hang in Justine’s studio and was finished shortly before I was hired. I start to say that it wasinspired by a Talking Heads song, but Jasper and Annie have already moved on toward the next bedroom.
Annie and Jasper find a million things to talk about. They discover two friends in common, and a mutual love for the now-defunct Panorama club in Berlin. Both attended the same performance piece last summer in New York City—oh, they must have been days apart! I can’t shake the sinking feeling that I’m on someone else’s first date.
By the time we head downstairs, Annie’s two publicists are packing up to leave and I’m ready to follow. As everyone kisses goodbye, I stand woodenly nearby. Jasper notices and presses the keys to the truck into my hand. “Why don’t you get some air. I’ll be right out.”
