Before You Knew My Name (18)

I still jump a little now, though I am getting used to our new routine. I thought, last night, wide awake on this couch, how quickly the strangest thing can come to feel normal, ordinary. That first afternoon, as he photographed my naked body, I sent myself somewhere else, somewhere above the lens, maybe even out of the room entirely. I trembled as he took one shot of me then another, sure he was coming too close, seeing too much. But I never once asked him to stop, never asked him to go back to his easel instead, and when Mr Jackson was done taking his pictures, he wrapped me up in a soft blanket and we talked all night about art and God—‘I believe they’re the same thing,’ he said—and we ate homemade nachos, and he never touched me, not in the way that leads to other things. I slept on the couch, wrapped in that blanket, and the next morning when I showered, he photographed me there, through a half-opened shower door and, later, back on the couch he wanted to do it again—‘The light is beautiful right now, Alice’—and this time I didn’t send myself somewhere else. I stayed locked on the lens, that single eye opening and closing on my body. I felt powerful, staring straight back at it. Mr Jackson showed me some of the images later, and the pale exposed skin, the soft triangle of hair between my legs meant nothing to me. I couldn’t stop looking at the way my eyes were blazing. The slight snarl of my lip.

He said I was mercurial and made up my bed on the couch once again.

And now we are a whole week into this new arrangement. Our conversations have ranged all over the house, and when he goes to school for the day, I am happy here on my own, looking through his library of books by men with names I only sometimes recognise. Nietzsche, Sartre, Jung. And someone called Kierkegaard, who says: It begins, in fact, with nothing and therefore can always begin, which I like the sound of, and almost understand.

When Mr Jackson comes home with groceries and beer, we cook dinner, drink a little, and then he photographs me a new and different way.

‘It’s not pornography,’ he says one of these nights. He has asked me to put my hand between my legs—‘relaxed, like this’—and perhaps he has caught my hesitation this time, the confusion around where this might lead.

‘Pornography has its own purpose, its own merit, Alice. Don’t let the conservative claptrap of this town turn your head. But we’re not doing that, anyway. This is about your body, about showing the world how you inhabit your strong, beautiful body. All the incredible things you can make it do.’

Later, he shows me some videos on his laptop, pornography of merit. Women and men coiled around each other, gasping, clinging, looking, for the most part, like they are in some kind of pain.

‘Agony and pleasure. They can look like the same thing,’ he tells me when I start to protest, and it is true I cannot see the difference, cannot understand whether I am afraid or expanding somehow as I watch these scenes unfold. I know I ask to watch more, and I know I am wet, saturated by what I am seeing on the screen. I feel conflicted by this pleasure, the way it both horrifies and excites me.

What Mr Jackson is showing me cannot be unseen, this much I do know. But, as he leaves me alone for yet another night, I cannot for the life of me figure out what he expects me to make of this new world, beckoning.



Later, I see what he was doing, why he made me wait. He needed to know I could be trusted. He needed to know he was safe. As if my safety did not come into it at all.

The night of Ruby’s work farewell, she finds herself thinking much the same thing. Ash had stayed away from her all night, kept to the other side of the bar, so that she spent the whole evening looking for him, forgetting it was her own party, barely registering each ‘I’ll miss you’ or ‘Remember when . . .’ that came her way. By 11 p.m., it was the knot in her stomach, not the cheap champagne, making her sick, and she excused herself, walked home in tears. How could Ash ignore her like that? On the one night no one would have questioned their closeness, when everyone at the agency seemed to be throwing their arms around her, confessing their affection. Even then, he kept his distance from her.

He showed up at her apartment twenty minutes later.

‘I have half an hour,’ he said, checking his watch. As if thirty minutes could make up for the whole night she had lost waiting for him. When he leaves that half hour later, booking an Uber from her phone instead of his own—‘Just to be on the safe side’—she wonders if he had planned it this way all along, and simply neglected to tell her. Had he considered letting the night be about her, about what made her feel safe, for once? Or was it only ever about him?

She knows the answer to that, of course. We both do. But at this point, we’re still weeks away from understanding the real consequences of our connection to such careless men.





SEVEN

IT HAPPENS DURING ONE OF THE LAST BIG SNOWFALLS OF the season. Mr Jackson arrives home late from school with little flurries on his shoulders and in his hair. We both stand in the open doorway and watch as snowflakes weave their way to the ground, streetlamps turning on one by one, their glow making it look like it’s the stars that are falling. I’m not wearing a jacket and he puts his arms around me, pulls me in close. We’re there for minutes or hours, I don’t know which. I only know that I am shivering, and he too is shaking when he turns to face me.

‘Alice?’

The kiss is gentle, a question. I try to answer against his mouth, but I am suddenly as slivered as the swirling, falling snow. I am in pieces as he pulls me inside, closes the door, his mouth still on mine as we stumble toward the couch.