Chapter 15: Canadian Mounted

MY DEAR CHRISTINE,

I genuinely wish you the best that life has to offer with eternal happiness and marital bliss. Yet it would be far too painful for me to witness you committing yourself to another man. I am at my summer home in Canada and cannot return to Tenbrook this weekend. I have selected items from your bridal registry with Ronda, Anna, and Patricia. We all sincerely pray for you to have all the love and honor God can grant in a marriage.

Blessings on you,

Nate

I’d waited to send the card until we got to Canada so it would have the postmark of our home in Stratford. Our Christine was getting married the twentieth of June.

I knew Kat would be at the wedding. I assumed Mom and Dad would go. The wedding was at the Lutheran Church, so there was no conflict of Mom returning to her former parish. But Julie had begged Kat to come and be with her after she stood as a bridesmaid for her sister. She didn’t know any of the others in the wedding party and felt they were all too old for her to spend time with.

I’d found out quite a bit more when I’d visited home after Ronda got out of her last final. We were packing up Anna and Patricia to head for Canada by mid-week. I went down to Sage to spend Saturday with Mom, Dad, and Kat.

Mom was super-busy. The church was twice the size of the Tenbrook church, having combined two congregations when they became United Methodist. They were already talking about adding an educational wing to the new church.

Dad said he’d had a lot of gastritis lately and had missed some work. Doctor said it was his commute that was causing him too much stress, so he was looking for work someplace closer to Sage. He excused himself to go take a nap and that left me face-to-face with my not so little sister. She’d be fifteen in August and she was definitely prettier than either Naomi or Deborah. I don’t know. Maybe Naomi and Deborah were that pretty when they were in high school. I didn’t remember. I’d seen Deborah and her family in February when I came to Tenbrook for Ronda’s birthday. Naomi, Lt. Hart, was in Germany, managing a helicopter maintenance crew at an airbase near Frankfurt. Living the life she wanted.

“So, what’s the deal?” I asked Kat when we went out for a walk.

“Ugh,” she responded. “Life sucks. I’d wish it was over if it wasn’t so much fun.”

“Um ... I’m not sure I parsed that.”

“Okay. The simple story is that stupid Brian couldn’t wait until I was sixteen to have a girlfriend, so he started dating my former best friend Vanessa.”

“Ouch. He’s only fifteen!”

“Yeah. So’s she. They just meet at school and go to the games and dances and stuff. You know what that was like. I go to games down here and I even go to dances and dance with boys. Sometimes. If they aren’t being too gross,” she said. “It’s my own damn fault.”

“Oh, no. Don’t go there. He knew the rule you set up three years ago. It’s not your fault,” I said.

“He caught me kissing Julie.”

Oh. Shit! My sister was ... Maybe it was her fault.

“You were kissing Julie?” I said.

“Yeah. I couldn’t help it. I really love her and she loves me. We’re only a year apart in school and she has her driver’s license. We were all out at the barn in Sally’s studio. We fixed it all up and actually each have a space where we can work with models. Sally’s really a good artist. We do a lot of swapping with each other if we need a model, too. Anyway, she had Brian in her half of the studio and I had Julie in my half. She was just so beautiful and sexy. We’d been talking all through the session about just little things. It was really so sweet. I quit painting and went over to her and just kissed her. And she kissed back. A whole lot better than the kisses I had with Brian. And then ... He just walked into my studio and caught me kissing his sister.”

“Didn’t he know better than to walk into the studio unannounced?” I asked. “Wasn’t Julie posing nude?”

“Of course. She can hardly keep her clothes on when she gets to the studio. We do a lot of looking at different poses in books together, and I work on getting her in position. Her skin is like silk. Brian has walked in on us before, even though I warned him not to. I think he just likes to catch Julie naked. He gets an eyeful and leaves,” Kat said. “This time I couldn’t chase him out because I was kissing her and ... and I kind of had my hand on her breast.”

“Oh, my. Is um ... Julie in love with you, too?”

“I think so. She was holding my hand to her breast. And I just wanted to stay like that for the next hour or two years or something,” Kat said.

“It sounds like it might all be for the better then,” I said.

“Yeah, of course. I mean, Julie comes to pick me up and we go somewhere else to paint. Sometimes she brings Brian and drops him off for Sally. But as soon as Brian saw us, he ran back into Sally’s part of the studio and told her we were lezzing out and Sally got all upset.”

“Why?”

“Oh, like I said, we sometimes trade back and forth and pose for each other if we don’t have someone else. So, she was upset because she thought I was a lesbian and I’d seen her naked. She told me I had to take my things out of her barn and not come back there to fool around with my models. It was the only time I’d ever done that. Then.”

“Oh? The only time then?”

“Um ... Julie’s my girlfriend now. She said she’d wait until I was sixteen before she told anyone we were girlfriends, but she comes down here about every other weekend and we go someplace where we can paint and then we kind of make out for a while. I really like kissing her. That’s why I’m going up to Chris’s wedding. Julie asked if I would please come and be her date to the reception. I mean, she said her date! I’ll ride up with Mom and Dad, but you know Mom will want to get right back home so she can practice her sermon. She said it was okay if Julie drove me home after the reception if it wasn’t too late and if we stayed away from the alcohol. And she said Julie could spend the night.”

I had a feeling Mom didn’t know my little sister had been kissing and... Oh wow! She’d been feeling up my former girlfriend’s little sister. Well, not so little anymore. Julie and Kat were only a year apart in school because of the way the rules are written about when your birthday has to be in order to start school. But they were a year and ten months apart in age. Julie would be seventeen in September. Kat would be fifteen in August. I had no idea how to deal with this whole thing.

“Well?” Kat said after I’d been quiet too long.

“Kat, you know I’ve got more than one girlfriend, right?” I said. She nodded. “Well, most of those girlfriends are girlfriends with each other, too. In fact, that started way back when Ronda and Christine and I were together. Christine was Ronda’s girlfriend the same way she was mine.”

“I thought so,” Kat said. “It’s the only way it made sense. I mean, what are they supposed to do when they’re just waiting around for their turn with you? Julie and I talked about it, too. She said that if we’d stayed together with Brian, she’d have ended up in an intimate relationship with him and even though she loves her brother, she really doesn’t love him like that.”

“Well, I’m glad of that,” I said. “That would be pretty weird. What I’m trying to tell you is that if you have a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend, I’m okay with that. Or if you have a girlfriend and a boyfriend. You don’t need my approval, but I thought you’d like to know you have my support.”

“Oh, Nate,” she said hugging me. “You’re the best big brother. I want you to know that I love you. But not like that!”

“Good! We’re on the same page. Now what do you want for your birthday?”

“I want to come visit you in Stratford. And Mom says that if it’s okay with you, she didn’t see a problem with us all coming up for a week’s vacation. Is it okay, Nate?” she asked.

“Yes! It’s so okay. I tell you what, we’ll go talk to Mom and I’ll make a reservation for her and Dad in a local inn Patricia and I stayed in once. If you’re okay with it, you can have our guest room that week.”

“Coool!”

Sometimes I’m a good big brother.

My sister and Julie Evans. Wow!

We were eager to hit the road on Tuesday. Patricia and Anna had been in Tenbrook over a week and even Toni wanted to ‘go vacay.’ We stopped overnight in Chicago to pick up Patricia’s car. Being without wheels and dependent on her parents the past week had contributed to their desire to get out of town fast.

Wednesday morning, we headed for Stratford. It’s a long enough trip—especially in the packed microbus—that we stopped at the Holiday Inn in Windsor again. Patricia and Toni had been in one car with Ronda. Anna rode with me. The next day, Ronda and Anna would switch.

We found out the nice top floor suite we’d had on previous occasions had been taken by some radio broadcaster who was living the high life. Fortunately, there was another nice suite on the end of the floor. The guy behind the registration counter carried on a long and involved conversation with Toni, welcoming her back to Canada. He gave her a lollipop and gave the rest of us a voucher for dinner in the restaurant. I was thinking they automatically gave those out to whoever rented the top floor suites.

The end suite didn’t have a jacuzzi hot tub like the other one did. It still had two bedrooms and a huge bed, though, so we were plenty comfortable. And Thursday, after breakfast, we drove on into Stratford and parked behind our new home. It was the first time we’d all been here at once since we bought the place.

Anna and I had focused all our energy on getting the studio ready when we were here in the spring. Ronda and Patricia approved and said they thought it looked great. Then we headed upstairs to the apartment. We hadn’t done nearly the work up there, other than clear the shipping boxes out so we could get to the bed, and make the bed in another bedroom so Kathleen had a place to sleep when we put her up overnight.

Toni would spend the night in what we decided was the guest room. We promised her that the next day, we’d get her a special big girl bed and she’d have her very own bedroom. She was fully potty trained now and we anticipated needing to have a big girl bed for the sun room in our Chicago apartment.

We did a thorough clean and scrub of the whole apartment. We were going to have to supply it, much as we had the apartment in Chicago. That meant shopping trips and we headed in two directions with the two vehicles to get little things like three new beds, pots and pans, a vacuum cleaner, and groceries. You just never think of all the stuff you need in a new apartment until you move in.

When we could, we supplied the apartment with things we found in our own store downstairs. Melinda kept track of what we took out of stock so she could record the inventory of antiques. I was really amazed at how organized she was with the store and Anna asked her to work part time all summer and help us learn the business. She happily agreed. So, we got dishes, silverware, cups, and a comfy chair from the store. I spotted one of those double-decker coffee pots like Adrienne had that made such good strong coffee and grabbed that, too.

We were too exhausted to cook that night, so we went to the little pub up the street for dinner. When we got home, Toni was disappointed that we didn’t have records to dance to, so we put that on the shopping list for the next day. Instead, I held her in my arms and made up nonsense songs that I sang as we danced around the sparsely furnished living room.

Once Toni was down for the night, we all celebrated our new home for the summer with a glass of champagne. The drinking age in Ontario was eighteen, so we had no trouble buying a bottle of bubbly. Then we crowded into the one bed we had in the bedroom so far and slept in layers after we made love. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but the matching beds that would go in this room would be delivered on Friday.

The big thing was that we were home. This wasn’t just an apartment we rented for the school year. This belonged to us and it made me kind of weepy to think about having my family in our own home. I lay awake for a long time that night, with Patricia asleep partly on me and her soft skin beneath my fingers. Anna and Ronda were in a similar position next to us and I could hear the soft breathing of my lovers as I thought about my life.

It was pretty damned wonderful.

Friday morning, I went to the newspaper office to see about running an ad for the studio. The paper came out Monday through Saturday and I could get an ad in for the next day. I took out a fairly large ad, but it didn’t cost all that much. It was two columns wide and four inches tall and I stressed that we were a perfect place for a souvenir of visits to Stratford.

It was really the first time I’d done any advertising for a general clientele and I was unsure how it would go. All my business had come from referrals. After an initial run of customers from my patrons in Chicago, most of my business had come from Levi talking to people in the store. The entire run in Las Vegas had been promoted and driven by the movie production company. I had no patrons and no prior business in Stratford. It would be interesting to see what came in.

Anna got busy at the same time and went to a local print shop to have a brochure made up. She had samples of our catalog for the gallery in Chicago, but we wanted something that focused more on the studio business than the art photos currently available. We’d brought a good selection of those to display as well.

Patricia and Ronda focused on the store. Melinda came in and they all got busy right away. She loved having Toni around and tried to teach her to use the old fashioned cash register at the front of the store. Toni didn’t have the strength to push the buttons down, but she loved it when Melinda rang up a sale. We actually had a few customers wander into the store Friday and a couple bought something.

It happened that there was a photo lab just a few blocks from us. I stopped in and introduced myself to the owner and told him I was new in town and looking for some services. I had a letter of introduction from Levi, telling about our relationship in Chicago and asking for assistance with my photo needs here in Stratford.

“Ah, yes. Attic Allure. I actually filled some of your orders for your studio earlier in the year. Top of the line equipment,” Dave Allen, the owner of Pro Photo Source said when we met. “Are you open for business now?”

“We got the studio set up at the end of March and actually had our first customer that week. We’ve just arrived this week for the summer season, though. I have an ad running tomorrow, but I’m not sure we’ve really established our niche yet.”

“What is your niche?” Dave asked.

I brought a portfolio with me specifically to answer that question. I laid it on the table and as he sorted through the images, I told him about the Attic Allure style.

“Interesting. Turning anyone into a star with a glamour photo. That could be a niche that works here. I don’t know that you’d get many models who would pose nude for you up here, but maybe some of the actors. A tourist getting a glamour photo as a souvenir, though, might work well. Especially if you can tie them into the shows in some way. How can I help?”

“You’ve already been a big help in working to get our studio set up. I’ll continue to need supplies, but I’m stocked at the moment. What I’m looking for right now is someone who can turn around Kodachrome or Ektachrome transparencies pretty quickly so I can make Cibachrome prints. Most of my work has been black and white up to this point, but it’s obvious that I’ll have to extend that to color. The color images I have so far have been pretty successful.”

He looked at the pictures of Leslie, Fran, and Missy and nodded his agreement.

“I can take care of fast turnaround on 35mm transparencies but there’s a premium. I have to send them over to London for processing at a bigger lab. We can get overnight service for $20 on a roll. Of course, if you send more than one roll, the price usually drops per roll. We’re paying for a fellow on a motorcycle to ride into London in the evening and then again the next morning. He’s a teen, but he’s dependable. Truth is, he’d probably make the trip for fun, eh? But he appreciates the gas money.”

“I think that will work. I don’t know that the work will always need to be overnight, but I’ll plan on that for now. I got spoiled with black and white photography by taking a roll of film and having a proof sheet an hour later.”

“You’ve got some fine photos in your portfolio. I’d advise you to separate out the nudes to a second portfolio so you can show it only to those you deem to be interested. You don’t want teens coming in just to look at your pretty girls.”

“That’s good advice. I haven’t had a storefront before. Some of this is new to me.”

I shook hands with Dave and told him I’d probably have a test roll of transparencies after the weekend.

I bought half a dozen copies of the newspaper on Saturday and clipped out our ad to send to Mom and Dad, Uncle Nate, and Levi. I sent a copy to Jordan, too. He wasn’t a patron who just provided money or equipment for me, but he’d become quite a mentor in my business and was still a frequent customer when I had new prints to sell.

I didn’t want to do nothing but wait all day, so I got Patricia and Toni to pose for me in the studio. That way, I had some work to do and Toni was definitely due for some new pictures. Of course, I’d take pictures of Patricia all day if I could. I kept them dressed for this day, though. I wanted people who came into the store to see into the studio and inquire.

Anna made up a little sign that said, “Photographer at work. Please do not enter.” There was a signpost thing that we could slide the notice into and set in the middle of the door. Several people did stop and look through the door. They took cards or brochures. Maybe we’d get some business.

I took photos in all three formats and didn’t rush any of them. There were a couple of really special shots of Toni, though. I thought the one of her sitting in a little red wagon was especially precious.

We took Sunday off with the store and studio closed and just wandered around town. We stopped to feed the black swans on the lake and I took some pictures of the theatre and the town. And my girlfriends. I wanted to call them my wives because I felt so married to all three of them.

I got a roll of film down to Dave Monday morning and told him it wasn’t an overnight rush. He told me it would be back Thursday morning. I realized how spoiled I’d been in LA. I didn’t even have any idea how much the processing or the prints had cost. Adrienne had billed it all to Photosensitive Productions.

We opened shop at ten o’clock, not knowing what the day would bring. We were completely new to this whole idea of running a store. Thankfully, Anna understood the entire inventory system and had set up the books with Melinda, so at least one of us knew what was going on.

I was surprised to hear the bells on the door about ten-thirty and a couple of people chatting as they toured the store. I was back in the studio, so I only peeked out to see if they bought anything. They were at the cash register with some little trinket when one asked a question and Patricia looked blankly at her. I didn’t understand the question either.