Anouk removed the bandeau herself, and handed it to Cecilia, who was the closest. Cecilia tucked it into the pocket of her overalls. She was used to models handing her random items.
Santiago moved in then to drape Anouk’s hair across her arms and chest. When satisfied, he stepped away, returning to his stool up on dry sand. And his crossword puzzle.
“Yes, this is nice,” Didier said. “You can do one arm across your chest, and the other one up, with your hand by your neck. Yes, this. Perfect. Beautiful.”
Didier completed a full roll and stepped down from the ladder to hand off his camera to Marc to switch for the other.
“You okay, Anouk? Everything okay?” Didier asked, removing his glasses, and rubbing the corner of his eye.
Anouk nodded, holding herself tightly. The tide was coming in. The surf coming up to her feet and then receding. Cecilia could see goose bumps on her arms and thighs and knew she was getting cold. So she ran up to where Beatriz had left a tote beside Santiago and grabbed a beach towel.
“Thank you.” Anouk smiled as Cecilia draped it over her.
“Cecilia is doing two jobs at once. I’m going to have to start paying her more,” Didier said, fanning his hand in front of Anouk’s face, gauging the light. “The angle is better here. I want to lose the ladder. Marc, when you finish reloading, you can take it back up to camp and start labeling the film. Push these last two to 800.”
Marc cocked an eyebrow. Film labeling was clearly beneath him.
“Cecilia can’t write with her left hand,” Didier said, rolling up the legs of his pants, before turning to Cecilia. “N’est-ce pas?”
Marc gave Cecilia an indecipherable look before handing over a camera and light meter and breaking down the ladder. She was still trying to figure out what it meant when Didier positioned himself over Anouk. His legs straddling her hips. The camera hovering over her face. “Quick, before we lose the light,” he said.
Anouk handed Cecilia the towel and then went about repositioning herself. In that moment, with her flawless breasts exposed, Cecilia remembered that Anouk was French and that she likely did not harbor all the shame and insecurity about nudity that Cecilia had. She’d read something somewhere once (a men’s magazine, was it?) that Frenchbreasts were used to greeting the sun, to being worshipped. And in comparison, American breasts looked like they weren’t comfortable being seen. They looked reticent, shy. It said nothing about Jamaican breasts.
The article had been written by a man. Naturally.
“Do you need me?” Santiago called down from his perch a few meters away.
“We are fine.” Didier waved a dismissive hand. And then leaned in to fan Anouk’s hair over her shoulders, the back of his hand grazing her flesh. He did not bother testing with a Polaroid, which would have stolen precious minutes. Cecilia leaned in to do a quick reading with the light meter, and he adjusted his aperture accordingly. He shot off a dozen or so frames before rearranging Anouk’s hair again, moving it away from her body, exposing more skin. “Yes, I like this,” he said.
“You can move your arms above your head. Like before. If you don’t like it, we don’t use it… Yes. This. It’s more open. More vulnerable. Beautiful. Like a mermaid.”
Cecilia was playing with the position of the reflector, angling it to get the best light on Anouk’s face. She was trying not to drink in every inch of her, the gooseflesh on her taut belly, her raised nipples in the cold—but all of it, all ofher, was distracting.
“I want you to lower the bottom,” Didier said. “Don’t take it off, just down over your hips, so we can see your hip bones, and it’s not in the frame.Juste un peu. A little more. You trust me, yes?Bon. Lower. Yes, this is good. Okay, I want you to go back to the thought you had earlier. When we were shooting with Bas. That same look. Whatever it was you were thinking about. Or whoever it was. Like madly in love.Yesssss.” He smiled. “This. This. Yes.”
He was quiet for a moment, the sound of the shutter cutting the air, the waves washing up beneath them. And then, “Cecilia, there is some sand in my eye. Can you go up to the canopy for me and get my eye drops? It’s in my backpack. In the side pocket.”
Cecilia hesitated. She did not want to leave Anouk alone, in so vulnerable a position. The girl was naked. Her top in Cecilia’s overalls. Her bottoms well below her hips, at the start of her thighs. Her pubic area completely exposed.
For a moment their eyes met, and Cecilia detected something there. A disorientation, confusion. Perhaps, resignation. Or was it fear?
Cecilia turned her gaze to Didier, but he was looking at his camera, adjusting the aperture once again. “Maintenant?”
“Oui, maintenant. Now.”
And so she set the reflector down, out of reach of the water, handed off the second camera to Santiago, and jogged up to the canopies on the other side of the beach.
Leaving Anouk behind.
The backpack was not there. Jean-Luc, Rafaella, and a couple of the Italians were deep in conversation about scuba diving in Malta. None of them claimed to have seen it. And so Cecilia ran as quickly as she could across the beach and up the incline to base camp. The sun slipping in a lilac sky. She found Didier’s bag tucked away in the production trailer. The eye drops in the pocket he’d indicated. Cecilia grabbed them and headed back to the beach.
By the time she returned to the set, breathless and sweating, several minutes had passed. Didier was sitting in the sand beside Santiago looking out toward the horizon. Neither of the men were speaking. And Anouk was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is she? What happened?”
“We lost the light.”
Cecilia looked at him for a moment, staring out at the setting sun. His gray tee, his bandana. His eyes seemingly fine.
