Howard recounts the story of how he and Amy first got together, he tells people it began with New Year’s resolutions and ended in love. As with most unreliable narrators, there are a number of details he omits. But that’s where I come in.
Howard Venn was not the type of man likely to be cast in the role of romantic lead. Statisticians are generally under-represented in cinema and Howard’s footwear alone was enough to disqualify him. Pairing orthopaedic sandals with white socks, Howard carried himself with a punctilious bearing that said simply pedant. To most people, he looked like an ascetic. But then most people didn’t know that Howard had spent the last hour of this rainy Monday afternoon hunched over in the supply room on Level 3 of the Baker & Sons building, wanking over pictures of Amy that he wasn’t supposed to have.
Howard had not had much luck with women. He found it too intimidating to approach them out of the blue, without a formal introduction. Howard preferred structured environments. He had signed up to several adult education classes in the past few months, such as Still Life for Beginners, Part 1: Fruit and How to Get Your Game On (although he never ended up attending that one). He also enrolled in a salsa class for singles, rationalising that everyone would know why they were really there, thus forestalling the awkwardness and recriminations with which his attempts at seduction were usually met.
The consensus among the class was that Howard led well and always maintained a perfect frame, but would never set the world on fire. Howard had picked up on this, of course, and could only look on with a mixture of detachment and despair as one by one the students paired off. Brent – a fortysomething-ish man with a bad comb-over who was almost as wide as he was tall and could not get through a single song without sweating through the back of his cheap polyester shirt – seemed to fare particularly well. Howard was at a loss as to the source of Brent’s unusual magnetism. When he made discreet inquiries with his fellow students, they replied that Brent had personality, Brent was fun. No one had ever told Howard he was fun.
By the end of the course, Brent had succeeded with not one but two of the female students. Howard wondered how such an arrangement could possibly work. Having little experience in these matters, he could only assume it would operate as some sort of sexual time-share where each woman got precisely half of one week, and alternate weekends. Howard did not imagine this would be a particularly satisfying state of affairs for any woman. But then he could not imagine one woman, let alone two, being attracted to Brent, so clearly there was more than one part of the equation he hadn’t solved.
The upshot of all this was that Howard was the only man left standing alone at the end-of-class dance, in a red sequined shirt that caught the light like a disco ball, and a pair of trousers so tight he feared he’d caused himself permanent testicular damage.
Across town, Amy Jenssen was having a similarly disheartening evening. She had been harangued into a striptease class by her well-meaning friend Celine, who thought that it would improve Amy’s self-esteem. She had ignored Amy’s protestations that having to gyrate in front of floor-to-ceiling mirrors – next to women more lithe and coordinated than herself – in little more than a feather boa and underpants would likely be counter-productive. But Celine was determined, and so Amy gave in.
Tonight was the final night of class, when each student was to invite their significant other and perform for them a routine they had learned over the past month. Not having a significant other, Amy performed her lap dance to an empty chair.
Both Howard and Amy had resolved that this would be the year they found love, but at the six-month mark, things were not looking so good. Amy had been on one failed blind date after another and Howard had not fared much better. Neither, though, had considered an office romance. Sure, they had shared a brief kiss under the mistletoe at last year’s Christmas party, but the punch had been heavily spiked, and it was a kiss executed with more enthusiasm than skill, the clunky frames of Howard’s glasses colliding with Amy’s own in a graceless plastic pas de deux.
When Howard sees Amy in the photo and framing store the evening after the salsa dance ball, he hides behind a display case. It’s not that he dislikes her – quite the opposite, in fact. He still remembers their kiss with fondness (and bewilderment at his uncharacteristic boldness). But, after his demoralising evening, the last thing he wants to do is put himself out there. And Amy – who isn’t in the mood for company either – is concentrating intently on which photos to print at the self-service kiosk. She stares at the screen in indecision, and casts furtive glances over her shoulder before finally confirming her selection. When a shop assistant stops to ask if she needs any help, she blocks his view of the screen with her body. Howard watches in fascination as a pinkish blush creeps up her milky-white neck. When she hurriedly gathers up the photos and stuffs them into her bag, he can’t help but wonder what she has to hide. He won’t be wondering long.
In her haste, Amy hasn’t finalised her session properly. The machine has begun to print a duplicate set of photos and shows no signs of stopping. Howard knows it will charge Amy’s credit card with each frame it prints, and as there are no staff nearby he steps in, cancels the operation himself and collects the extra prints. Most of Amy’s photos are happy snaps, innocuous enough. But not all of them. The last three are experiments for Amy’s erotic self-portraiture class (another of Celine’s bright ideas).
The first of this triptych is a picture of Amy dressed as a harem girl, in a costume that to most people wouldn’t be terribly risqué. But it is to Howard, accustomed as he is to seeing Amy in her regulation business shirt-and-skirt combo. He examines the image in detail, trying to determine if Amy has underwear on beneath her filmy blue trousers, and, if so, what colour.
In the second picture, Amy wears a lacy black skirt and a tight beige sweater that plunges into a deep vee between her ample breasts. She’s lying atop a heavy oak desk and her shapely legs are stretched up into the air at a right angle to her body. Howard’s gaze travels along the long line of her pins, past her lacy stocking-tops and over her neatly crossed ankles. When he sees her shiny black Mary Janes with their stiletto heels, his cock jumps in his trousers. It jumps even higher when he sees the way Amy’s back is arched, her head hanging just a little over the edge of the desk, her brown eyes staring directly at him through her spectacles, the epitome of the naughty librarian, every bibliophile’s pin-up girl. There’s a sign on the desk saying ‘Shhh’, and Amy has a finger pressed up to her crimson-painted mouth.
The last photo is the most revealing. It shows Amy facing the camera, legs spread wide as she sits astride a wooden chair. All she’s wearing is a satiny red bra, a black underbust corset and frilly red panties. Her tiny waist is whittled down to practically nothing by the bones of the corset, her already generous breasts and hips and ass now the obscenely exaggerated curves of fertility statues. Her feet are bare, which Howard finds hopelessly erotic. He wants to drop to his knees and suck on her pretty pink toes.
He finds himself now in a rather awkward position. For one thing, he has an erection. And he doesn’t know what to do with the photos. He can’t leave them there for some stranger to find, but he can’t give them to Amy at the office either, for reasons that are obvious. So he carries the photos with him when he goes to the framing counter to pick up his Still Life achievement certificate, then heads back to his empty apartment.
The next day Howard brings the photos with him to work. To leave them at home would be an admission that he intends to keep them, and he knows that would be wrong. He puts the innocent photos into his filing cabinet, but dares not leave the others there. Those he carries on his person at all times. He promises himself he’ll return the whole set to Amy today. All he has to do is wait until he knows she’ll be away from her desk, and leave them in her drawer. She gets the photos back, he gets to remain anonymous. Simple. Except that the pictures are so bewitching he can’t bear to part with them, even though they’re burning in a hole in the pocket of his jacket and the longer he keeps them the guiltier he feels.
But
