Cabaret Delancey 02 - Negatives
David was fine, until he heard the music through his wall.
The apartment in Spanish Harlem had come to David by chance. After his five-year relationship with Anne ended suddenly, a friend of a friend got a job in LA and needed someone to take over their lease. The rent was unbelievably cheap, so David made the somewhat foreign trek uptown on the 6, then walked east, almost to the river.
Without much debate, he moved in and converted the larger bedroom into a darkroom, something he’d wanted to do for years but never had the space, money, or freedom to. After the chaos of the breakup, he had found a new kind of happiness there, away from the claustrophobia of downtown. The solitude of inconvenience.
Like many people living in a New York City apartment, David didn’t know his neighbors. He’d run into the nice couple above him once or twice, as the two men often walked their dog when David was leaving for a photoshoot or coming home from one.
At some point, someone moved in next door. David only knew that because of the music.
It was a Wednesday, around nine at night, the first time David heard the music through his wall. He was hanging eight by ten prints to dry on a long line he had strung from the two far corners of his living room. He enjoyed the process. It was one of the many reasons he still shot on film. The tactile sensations of a physical medium.
As he hung them, a low bass line started on the other side of the western wall. He’d never heard music from any apartment in his building. He knew the walls were pretty thick.
The song was not one he knew, but it was familiar somehow. A walking bass line, like jazz but more contemporary. As he listened, he heard a little cry. A moan and then the rhythmic pounding that was not music, so to speak.
He moved closer to the wall, his mind puzzling together images of the sounds he heard. Words that were too muffled to make out. Furniture scraping against the floor. The sharp sound of a smack. Then the moans again, the pounding.
David backed away from the wall, realizing he had been pressing his ear to the cool paint. He shook his head, trying to break the spell the sudden eavesdropping had put him under. He swallowed and tried to ignore it, but he was alone and the sound was there. There was no one to judge him for listening, no one to stop him.
That was the first wicked Wednesday. He didn’t know then or even the next time that it would become a weekly affair. That second time he didn’t even realize it was the same day.
It was after the fifth wicked Wednesday that David finally met his neighbor. He was carrying about a hundred pounds of equipment the short distance from the elevator to his front door. When he got off the elevator, the door of his neighbor’s apartment was open.
She appeared there, turning from the kitchen and smiling, “I hope you’re hungry... oh!” She stopped, just as surprised as he was.
David smiled back at her and there was a moment of silence.
“Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” she said, waiting for him to react. “I didn’t make enough for everyone in the building unfortunately.”
David forced out a chuckle. “That’s okay, I just had a hotdog. I’m David, I’m in 2B.”
She wiped her hand on her jeans and came out to shake his hand, but he was holding bags and his suitcase. Her eyes widened. “Oh, do you need help?”
He shook his head. “No, no, it’s fine. I do this a lot.” He passed her door and got to his own. He awkwardly fished out his keys. He felt her walk towards him and his heart pounded.
She was beautiful. In a strange and almost uncomfortable way, she was what he imagined. Tall, curvy, almost R. Crumb-ian field hockey stature. A choppy artfully messy mop of black hair. Olive skin. The tattoos were everywhere, thick black lines, red details. Nautical stars, swallows, anchors, pinup girls in bikinis, handcuffs.
She picked up his bag of stands from him and gave him another smile. “Mona, 2A.”
She followed him into his apartment and seemed to have a similar reaction to what he had a moment before. His apartment was colder, but more complete. The walls covered in framed photos, the floors in rugs, the bookshelves overflowing. Across the living room, a row of prints drying.
“Wild guess, you’re a photographer.”
David reached for something witty to say but only smiled. She put down his bag a little harder than he liked.
“Well, it’s good to meet you, David. This building is kind of... intimidatingly private. I mean, except for Tim and Lawrence upstairs.”
David put his things down and nodded. “Yeah, I only know them as Arlo’s two dads.”
Just then the buzzing of her intercom came from the wall between their apartments. They both looked at the white wall.
“That must be my friends. Thin wall, huh?” She said with a chuckle. “Nice to meet you, David the photographer.”
“Nice to meet you, Mona the cook.”
And with that, she was gone.
Knowing what she looked like, the sparkle in her honey brown eyes, the way her ribbed tank top clung to her buxom form, showing a little sliver of her belly, made the next Wednesday both more intense and more shameful. The fog of mystery lifted slightly. Her fat lips open in an O in his mind’s eye as she moaned. The swell of her wide hips and thick thighs as the rhythmic pounding rang through the wall.
His commercial work, catalogs mostly and the occasional ad, funded his real passion: film photography, the archaic and anachronistic art. A money pit that captured his heart in college and became his driving fascination.
He came home drunk one night and stumbled out of the elevator right into Mona.
“David the photographer,” she said with a grin. Her lips were matte red. She had a silver loop through the center of her bottom lip.
“I’ve been looking for you, actually,” she said, and in his half drunk state he couldn’t do anything but blink, wide eyed at that, stuttering as he tried to figure out a response.
“I’ve been wanting some pictures. I’m an actress...” She said, looking down for the first time. The little break in her confidence speaking volumes.
“Headshots?” His mind raced with ideas, with lust, with memories of the sounds he had heard through the wall. “I... I might be able to do some headshots for you. Maybe a trade. I’d love to shoot some of your tattoos. I’m working on a collection of tattoo photos,” he made up on the spot. He also decided it was a great idea.
“Okay,” she said, thinking about it. “So headshots for pictures of my tattoos. I can do that. Though... I think I might want something... risqué. Would that be okay?”
David swallowed and pushed the desire out of his voice. “I think I’m comfortable shooting whatever you’d like.”
He realized he looked her in the eye when he was bullshitting and she looked down when she was lying.
She smiled, looking a bit sheepish suddenly. “When I say I’m an actress, that’s really sort of aspirational. I think, maybe, I just want some photos for my boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend.” The word seemed to cause a short circuit somewhere in his head. He shrugged and then forced a smile.
“Listen Mona, you live next door to me. All my equipment is here. I think you have a really interesting look and I’d love to shoot some photos of you. You can do whatever you want with them, it’s really none of my business. In return, I’ll get some photos for my own work. That kind of trade is pretty common in my business.”
Talking business helped. David knew how to communicate in that mode a lot more than any other mode. Mona’s eyebrows raised as she seemed to notice the shift in him.
“Right. Okay. Cool. So, let’s do that sometime.”
Days later he saw her in the hall again. She looked a bit tipsy and she smiled wide when she saw him.
Her body moved differently drunk, somehow more youthful and dangerous. Her grin was a crooked, daring thing. “David the photographer. Is it time for our photoshoot?” She asked, leaning against the wall.
She was dressed in denim shorts with black fishnets under them. A white t-shirt. Her black bra was visible through the thin cotton, as were the shadows of her tattoos.
He was exhausted, his back hurt from hauling his stuff from the taxi, and he had to be up early. “Yeah, let’s do it,” he said, opening his door.
Mona was suddenly in his apartment, in his space. She looked around with that same crooked grin. She walked to the white backdrop he had out against one wall and she put her hands on her hips. “So what do I do?”
David swallowed, putting down his gear and getting his Leica out with a 50mm lens. He slipped in a roll of film and brought over a softbox. He shined the defused light on her and angled a reflector. It was all muscle memory. It was all his body moving while his mind reeled. She was in his apartment. She was in his sights.
“Just loosen up. Shake the day off,” he said. His directorial voice was detached, sort of generically positive. “Why don’t you... slip your thumbs in your belt loops and look down, like you’re waiting for a date to show up,” he said with a performative chuckle.
She laughed at the specificity of the instructions. She made a comic frown and kicked an imaginary rock.
He focused on the snarl of her matte red lips. The anchor tattoo on her forearm. The sliver of belly exposed by her cropped t-shirt.
“Head up, looking at the ceiling, thinking, ‘what have I gotten myself into?’” David said with another chuckle.
She snorted, but then got serious. She put her hands in her pockets and looked up. Her eyes went sad and far away. “What have I gotten myself into?” She asked the ceiling in a whisper.
She bit her lip and looked right into his lens. Through it, right at him. He swallowed and backed up a little. Snap, snap, went the shutter. She suddenly pulled at her shirt and pulled it off in one motion, tossing it away and standing in a black bra.
Without a shirt, she looked far more serious and stunning. Her tattoos were all black or red. Nautical stars, little pin up girls, birds, and knives. She tilted her head to the side and walked a little closer. He backed up. Her crooked grin came back.
“You keep backing up,” she said, her eyes narrowing.
“Gotta keep you in frame,” he said back, trying to keep the fear and lust out of his voice. Failing.
She turned around and he saw two thick jet black marks, like the f-stops on a cello. Like the Man Ray’s Le Violon d’Ingres only bigger. He let out a little groan he hoped she didn’t hear.
She peeled off her shorts next, kicking them. Somewhere in the corner of his apartment he heard something crash, but he didn’t look away. Like a sniper, he reloaded. He wound the film, popped it out, and put in a new roll.
She was bent over, holding her ankles. He captured the seams of her fishnets. Red panties under them. Her wide hips and round ass stretching net and silk taut. As taut as his nerves.
She turned to him and her eyes were startling. Narrowed, predatory, focused. She stopped and took a deep breath. “Now what?”
“Unhook your bra, but hold it there,” he said without really thinking. She paused and tilted her head again, studying him. Then she reached back and did it.
It was a classic burlesque move, which suited her. He wondered if she’d ever been on stage. She certainly belonged on one. He saw her breath had become shallow, a little shaking in her hands as she closed her eyes.
After a moment, she dropped her bra. She reached up and touched her lips, eyes still closed. It was vulnerable and surreal. The silver hoop in her lip glittering along with the silver loop in one nipple. A bruise on her other breast, the side of a thumb print.
The room felt hot, suddenly stifling. Her hands went down to her fishnets. Thumbs in the waistband. Suddenly there was a sound from the wall between their apartments. Her phone. She turned and looked at the spot he had listened to her so many times.
“Thin walls,” she laughed.
She grabbed her shirt and slipped it back on. She picked up her bra. She hunted for her shorts.
“When can I get prints?” She asked, flustered and red faced.
“It will take a while, I develop them myself. Maybe... next Wednesday?” He said. Her face snapped up at that. “Wednesdays are... no good for me. I need them soon. I thought, like tomorrow!”
David wound the film. Three rolls. He’d have to make contact sheets, then pick the best shots, then touch them up, print them. “I... I can probably get you a few tomorrow, but the whole thing will take time.”
She calmed and nodded. “Okay, try and get a few tomorrow. You can just slip them under my door. I won’t be home until late,” she said.
The power of the shoot had died and left them both awkward and uncomfortable. She eyed the door. David put down his camera and looked around. “Okay, I will. Um, thanks.”
She nodded and left.
It wasn’t really for her that he rushed. He wanted to see what he had. He pulled an all nighter, the way he did back at art school.
At dawn, she dangled on that line across his living room. He fell asleep under her, looking up as she danced in the cool autumn breeze.
He slipped the dozen prints under her door on his way to that day’s job. He groggily did a catalog shoot on autopilot, wondering what would happen when he got home.
The answer was nothing. No Wednesday sounds. No thanks or even awkward conversation. He didn’t see Mona that week and then he was off to Miami for a few days.
When he returned, the door to her apartment was open and a man was painting it. The furniture, if she had any, was gone. The old Polish landlord glared at him.
“She didn’t pay rent, four months. Just left in the middle of the night.”
David went back to his apartment and sat down in front of his collection of photos of her, wondering if that was the last he would ever see of Mona.
It only took three weeks for him to see her again, although it was only her picture, one of the ones he’d taken, held in the well manicured hand of the Collector.