Chapter 2

The potential solution to Andrew’s investment ideas had soothed his karmic balance but the revelations as a result of the conversation with Leslie impacted his emotional balance even more. He thought about what she said on and off over the next couple of weeks. But he was also a teenage boy, with too much time, way too much money and knew a typist who liked to pose for naked pictures.

“Yes?”

Andrew knew Maggie’s parents weren’t the chattiest of souls.

“Can I speak to Maggie, it’s Andy.”

Andrew had coarsened his voice and heard the phone being put down and a shout from her father.

“Hello?”

“Hi, don’t say anything at your end, just yes or no. Are you busy after work tomorrow?”

Andrew could hear the initial confusion give way to barely hidden mirth.

“No.”

“Could I prevail upon you to show me your beautiful body and let me photograph it?”

She was full on stifling laughter now.

“Yes.”

“Tony’s at 6.00?”

“Yes.”

“Fantastic. See you tomorrow.”

Andrew had checked with Tony and the studio was not being used. When Maggie turned up she just stood laughing at him.

“You just phone on a random Monday night to see if I will come in here the next day. You sure know how to woo a lady. I thought we were doing an outdoor shoot?”

“First of all thank you for agreeing to this. I would have talked it through with you and asked slightly nicer, or more pleadingly, but you always tell me that you can’t talk at home. And yes the plan is still for an outdoor shoot. I am sitting my driving test in 10 days and if I pass then we can start to really plan that.”

“It is perfect timing. It was my week out of commission last week so this is ideal. Why did you suddenly decide to do another shoot?”

“I need some of your common sense. I am not having trouble with women but I am thinking about them and trying to understand what I feel, how I feel, what I want from a woman. What I find is that you have a perspective that I don’t hear from anyone else. You have talked about the mistakes you made, how you wished you could have done things differently. And you are blunt. I love your attitude of ‘what’s the big deal?’.”

The line between Monica and Maggie was getting ever more blurred. It was Maggie speaking to Andrew while Monica took her clothes off. Maggie called Andrew on it as they started and her skirt fell to the floor.

“Why are we here Andrew and not at the café?”

Andrew flushed but took the camera from his eye to look at her.

“I am 17, perpetually horny and I wanted to see you naked. I could dress it up any way you want but it is the truth.”

Rather than be offended Monica laughed.

“An honest answer. We are very alike. You know I like posing as a model and to know that you are enjoying this, that you have made the conscious choice to chat here rather than at the café excites me. I have been thinking about this a lot and want to talk to you about it later but let’s deal with you first. Why do you think you I will be able to give you an answer?”

In response Andrew explained about Ara, Suzanne and June, he didn’t give any names and omitted some of the details but he talked to Maggie about each of them. Understandably she worked backwards, focusing on June first.

“So you think this third woman is just like me?”

That was how Andrew had described her.

“I do. She has talked openly to me about loving the spotlight, being the centre of attention. And she has been equally candid about considering doing topless and maybe even fully nude shoots soon. And she wants me to be the photographer.”

“Interesting. She is in your year?”

“Yes, she will be 18 in January.”

Maggie was silent for a moment, both of them going through the poses almost like dance moves, intuitively knowing how to pose and when to take the shot.

“I am guessing she is bright, that she could go to university?”

It was an interesting angle that Maggie approached this from.

“Yes. She was in most of my classes.”

“So she has more choices, and potentially more to lose, than I did for example.”

Oh. Andrew caught up to where Maggie was going.

“That is the thing I have learned from talking to you. I am of the opinion that it is no big deal, and she is determined. But we both know that there is this obsessive prudish streak in Britain.”

Maggie nodded.

“It goes back to what I want to chat to you about. Okay, so this young woman is excited about being a model and wants you to photograph her. I doubt there is a more qualified guy your age in the city. You will take good photos, you know how to pose the model and you can see how far she wants to go.”

Maggie shrugged, an action that Andrew used all the time.

“The other two are just teenage hormones. Most people’s first attraction is physical, you see someone that you think is attractive or handsome, you like their face or body. Not always but a lot of the time. It is the whole basis of the Friday and Saturday night out ritual. The main part of my answer is don’t overthink what it means. You are just 17, you are going to university in a year and things in your life are going to change. I remember one of my first steady boyfriends, I was 16 and he was 18, and I was in love. Ready to marry the little shit and start spitting out babies. He joins up, full of promises to stay true, we were still a couple, all that crap, in fact at the start he was pushing for me to follow him. Yet I was dumped within weeks. That was the start of the year where I finally learned about men. Fell head over heels, three times, no four times, in a year maybe a year and a half. Dumped by all of them. Once they had fucked me, seen me naked then it was see yah later. It wised me up to what they were after. So I spent the next year being a right bitch and doing the same to a bunch of guys, fucked them and dumped them. Dumped a guy for his brother, and it wasn’t like his brother had to think about it. He was all over me like wallpaper. Dumped another guy for his best mate. Same thing, most men think with their dicks. They had the chance to see the girls and it was ‘what brother, I don’t have a brother’. Now you are not like that and I don’t expect you to treat either of these two the same way. But teenagers are idiots, I was, you are, these two women are. I look back on how I acted and I cringe. So maintain a friendship with both of them, don’t lie but do like you did today. Be honest with them. You wanted to chat to me but also wanted to see me naked. You want to be friends with them but you also want to fuck them. Maybe it is true love, more likely both of you will move on.”

Andrew considered everything Maggie had said. She was sufficiently removed and had just the right amount of cynicism and common sense for what she said to make sense.

“Does it not focus on just the physical?”

“Sure, that is what we have talked about. But there has to be more. I think that is your big issue with the English woman, you haven’t had a chance to get to know her better. You said you first saw her at the Commie, so you’ve seen her in a swimsuit. It is no different for me at a club or disco on a Saturday night. A decent looking bloke in a nice shirt comes over and asks for a dance. Everything after that is how the two of you get on.”

Andrew thought about the absurdity of getting advice about being a teenage boy from a model standing naked in front of him.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, I feel like a bit of a pig. As you said we could have done this at the café.”

Monica stopped posing and came over to him.

“Stop worrying about that. Come with me a second.”

Andrew followed her to stand in front of a tall mirror. It was one of the props that was used frequently in the studio. Monica pulled Andrew beside her, completely naked.

“Just because you are confused about some of the women in your life doesn’t mean that you don’t understand others. You understand me for instance. I love modelling, it gives me a kick, to do it. So yes we could have chatted in the café over a coffee but honestly I prefer this. I have grown to love my body. All through school I alternated between hating it and loving it but at the same time also using it. It got me a lot of attention, most of which I didn’t want or like, then I did like it, then I didn’t like it. I was all over the place. Now I love it, I love the effect it has on men. You didn’t ask one of your other friends to come here, you asked me. Because you know that I love coming here. But look at it from my point of view. The door to the café is always opening and closing, it is drafty and we are bundled up, 10 months of the year at least. But here with the lights on, the studio gets hot and you take the layers off, your sweatshirt off. Look at yourself.”

Andrew barely ever stood in front of a mirror, he never worried about his hair so he wasn’t Narcissus.

“When I first met you, even before your cancer scare, you were this tiny kid. But now look at you. You are this enormous, toned monster of a man. And I love how your tee-shirts are always tight on you. You are busy taking photos of me with no clothes on but I am staring right back at you, watching that body ripple inside your tee-shirt. I’ll show you my arse every day of the week and twice on Sundays for that.”

Andrew had to laugh at her words but the sentiment was unarguable. Andrew would never even consider asking Leslie or Suzanne to come to the studio and strip while he chatted to them. But he was okay asking Maggie because she enjoyed it. And he had been told enough times about how women viewed his body. This was just one more instance.

“You see my point?”

Andrew nodded. They returned to the set but Andrew only had three more shots on the roll and they were soon done. Monica grabbed a robe and came and sat beside him.

“It is a good time to chat about what I was thinking about. You asked about the outdoor shoot and I was initially skeptical. Worried about being seen. But then I was thinking about it. It plays into what we just talked about. You asked me here today because you knew I was happy to pose for you. But you have also never pushed my limits, you have accepted them. So sure you can ask me to pose for you and I will happily do it. But you don’t ask me to do more. You don’t try and persuade me to pose with my legs apart, you don’t ‘accidently’ touch me or move me when I am posing. You accept that this is who I am, but also this is as far as I want to take my modelling. But I have chatted to, or heard about, a lot of models who have different limits. Everybody does.”

“Do you not want to pose outdoors? Are you worried about being seen?”

“No it is the exact opposite Andrew. If we were shooting somewhere remote and a man walking his dog saw me then why should I be bothered. If he was a friend of Malc or Angus or Tony and came along to the studio one Friday then I wouldn’t even be bothered, one more camera to photograph me. It comes back to knowing a person, and in my case knowing myself. This is my secret life, this is the part that no one else knows about. Now I have been photographed by most of the serious amateur photographers in Edinburgh so something like 100 men have seen me naked but I can go to work, go out with my friends and nothing is known about it. That is what I mean with everyone being different. Most of the models want to be recognised, want to be known, they would love nothing better than seeing themselves on Page 3. But I don’t want that. Well deep down I think I do but I don’t want to be just Monica. I like being Maggie too much and my life would change. It took me a long time to make the distinction between the two of them and I realise that I like my life the way it is. Sure I could make more money modelling if I did things differently, posed differently, but I am okay with what I am earning and what I am doing. So when you asked about posing outdoors it was as much the fact it was different that gave me pause. But now I am really excited about it. I don’t want an audience but I realised that if someone saw my arse or saw me in the distance it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Frankly I kind of hope it happens.”

Maggie went to get dressed as Andrew packed up his gear and tidied the studio. As usual they walked to the bus stop.