The Lean
The retoucher’s room was behind the stills lab and had one window facing a wall.
He had the print on a board under a lamp with a magnifier on a swing arm. Beside the board were the airbrush, three scalpels, a jar of grey, and a saucer of water going cloudy.
Celia stood at his shoulder.
Twelve people at a long table. A wrap dinner. Somebody had said something and the whole table had turned toward the middle of it.
“Which one,” Celia said.
He pointed without touching the print.
The woman was fourth from the left. Dark dress. One hand still on the stem of a glass.
“Her lawyer called publicity.”
“I know.”
“They want it out today.”
Celia looked at the woman.
“Does she know it’s this one?”
“They didn’t say which.”
“So she doesn’t.”
He wet the brush.
The dress went first. It took most of an hour. Celia stayed for it. He worked from the outside in, laying the wall of the room in behind her, matching the grain, going back over it with the scalpel where the grain came up wrong.
The arm went.
The hand and the glass went. He had to put the tablecloth back where the hand had been, and the tablecloth had a fold in it that ran from the left edge of the picture and stopped at her wrist.
He took the fold across.
“You’ve had worse.”
“Much worse.”
He changed the water.
The near shoulder was the last of her. He took it in three passes and then sat back.
Celia leaned in.
Where the woman had been there was a wall, a chair back, and a stretch of cloth with a fold in it.
“That’s good,” she said.
He did not sit back further.
He was looking at the man on the left.
Celia looked at the man on the left.
He was turned about fifteen degrees toward the middle of the table. His near shoulder was low. His head was tipped in the direction of the chair that was now empty.
She followed the line of him across the gap.
On the other side of it, she was doing the same thing.
Her own shoulder was down. Her chin had come around. Her weight had gone onto the far hip and the near elbow was on the table, out toward the space where the woman had been.
She did not remember any of it.
“They’re leaning,” she said.
“Yes.”
“At nothing.”
“Yes.”
He picked up the scalpel again.
He worked on the man’s shoulder for twenty minutes. He raised it, filled the shadow under the collar, brought the coat line up and squared the lapel.
He sat back.
The man was straighter and still pointed the same way.
“It’s the head,” Celia said.
“The head I can’t move.”
“Why not.”
“Because his ear is against the woman behind him.”
Celia looked.
It was.
He wiped the scalpel on the cloth and set it down. He looked at the print for a while without doing anything to it.
“I can take the two of them,” he said. “Him and you. Then it’s a picture of nine people at a table and nobody’s looking anywhere.”
“How long.”
“Tomorrow.”
“And the nine who are left.”
He did not answer.
Celia put her hand flat on the edge of the board.
The lamp was hot above the print. The room smelled of the water in the saucer.
Twelve people had turned toward something at that table and she had been one of them and she could not remember what it was.
“Send it,” she said.
“Like this?”
“Like this.”
He looked up at her.
“They’ll see the gap.”
“They’ll see a wall.”
He took the print off the board and stood it against the lamp housing to dry.
Celia stayed where she was.
The two of them were still leaning.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.
Source note: The originating photograph anecdote was found in Michael Shnayerson, Bugsy Siegel: The Dark Side of the American Dream.
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