Nolan Trilogy (5 page)

“Come?”  Leah questioned, not quite understanding, just knowing her thighs were so taut they were trembling, breath coming just as fast as Erica’s, hand working between her legs, aching for relief. 

“Oh, oh, oh!”  Erica cried, short little squeaks, and then a fast, whispered, “Come on, Leah! Come! Come! Ohhhhh I’m coming! I’m coming!” 

Leah heard her friend’s panting breath, the soft cries of her pleasure, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out, her own body beginning to quake.  What was happening to her?  It came out of nowhere.  A quiver began between her legs and radiated outward, through her belly and thighs, up to her breasts, puckering her nipples in response.  It was like an earthquake, a tidal wave, a volcano, some incredible force of nature that took her and shook her and left her limp and trembling in its wake.  She couldn’t stop it, and she didn’t want to.  It was beyond pleasure, beyond bliss, beyond ecstasy, beyond any feeling she’d ever had or known. 

“Did it happen for you?  Did you come?” 

“Yes,” Leah managed, but that was all.  Coming?  Is that what they called it?  It felt more like going—like running or dancing or flying.  She finally understood then what all the boys wanted when they tried to put their hands down her blouse or up her skirt, what it was they were searching for all along—this final, sweet, rapturous release. 

And it was worth it. 

Worth the risk, worth the sin, worth the shame.  It made her want to do it again—wondered if she
could
do it again—but she didn’t, holding still in the dark.  They didn’t talk as their breathing began to return to normal and their hearts stopped beating a mile a minute.  Leah felt the embarrassment begin to creep in and wondered if Erica did too.  Her trembling thighs finally relaxed.  Eventually, she heard Erica sleeping.  Years of sleepovers made her familiar with the sound.  Yet Leah couldn’t seem to drift off, and instead she rolled around in the sleeping bag, trying to get comfortable on the floor. 

Leah had never wondered before what Mr. Nolan did when she and Erica weren’t around.  He read the newspaper and watched television and kidded around with them when he was home, but he traveled a lot too, leaving Erica in Solie’s care when he was gone.  He fiddled with his camera, had people into the studio, and spent a lot of time in the darkroom. 

He also invented things.  He’d created a new kind of film he’d sold to Kodak that made some sort of instant photograph, and had developed a camera lens he claimed would revolutionize landscape photography some day.  He said he’d come up with the idea during the war—World War II—a time both Leah and Erica only vaguely remembered, as it had been around the time they’d had their first communion. 

Mr. Nolan had always been a constant in her life, but she’d never looked at him the way she was now.  She couldn’t keep her mind from wandering to those photographs.  No, not just wandering.  She was fixated on them, wrongfully, she knew, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.  When had those photographs been taken?  Where?  How?  They were illicit, shocking, probably even
illegal. 
She knew she should be dismayed and aghast, and part of her was—but another part of her was curious, intrigued. 

And there was something else, something beyond the existence of the “dirty pictures.”  The thing she kept coming back to was Mr. Nolan, the man behind the camera, the shutter clicking, the time he spent developing each photograph.  What had he been thinking, of the models, of the process?  He talked a lot about beauty and light and composition and art.  Did he consider those photographs artistic? 

If the question had been posed to her in a school essay—not that it ever would be, in Catholic school or college, subjects were restricted and censored, as Erica often lamented in her role as editor of the school paper—Leah didn’t know what her position might be on “obscene” material.  She’d never been exposed to any of it before her initial, surreptitious view of Playboy, and to jump from that to what they’d found under Mr. Nolan’s bed was like leaping from the Manhattan Project to full-scale Hiroshima.

She knew what her mother would say.  Oh the fall from grace Mr. Nolan would have, if her mother knew what he was hiding! Everyone knew he was eccentric, with his motorcycle and long hair.  He was given a lot of allowances, because he was an artist—and a famous, rich one at that.  Creative people were “eccentric.”  So he took photographs bordering on the obscene.  Did it make Mr. Nolan a bad man? 

She couldn’t wrap her head around it.  Leah rolled around on the floor, listening to her friend’s deep, even breathing, too restless to sleep herself.  It wasn’t just her racing thoughts keeping her awake, but her body as well.  The latter was her barometer, always had been, and her inability to sit still tonight was telling.  She couldn’t stop thinking, not just about the naughty photos, but about Mr. Nolan.

In her mind, she saw him, the way he’d knelt in front of her to put a Band-Aid on her knee.  There was something different, and while she hadn’t been able to put her finger on it before, she thought she understood it now.  He wasn’t just Mr. Nolan, or Erica’s dad anymore.  He was a man.  That was a leap her head had never taken before, and it was scarier and more disconcerting to her, somehow, than the pictures they’d found. 

Leah climbed out of her sleeping bag, quietly making her way to the door.  She opened it a crack and listened for the sound of the television or the radio, but there was just silence. 
Mr. Nolan must be asleep,
she thought, heading down the hall to her right.  After Mrs. Nolan had passed, when Leah got serious about dance, Mr. Nolan had installed a barre on the wall for her to practice.

Back when they were little—when her mom had played euchre with the Nolans and their friends on Saturday nights—the Nolans had lived in a great big house right on the river, but after the death of his wife, Mr. Nolan had sold the house and had bought the warehouse, having it redesigned by a well-renowned architect as a dwelling.  He always claimed it was for work, but Leah figured it was because of the memories in the old house.  Too many ghosts. 

The warehouse had so much room and Leah spent so much time there, installing a barre had seemed practical.  Mr. Nolan kidded perhaps Erica might take up dancing again someday, but the truth was, she had always been hopelessly clumsy.  It was Leah who had taken to it immediately, and Mr. Nolan had recognized and encouraged her talent even back then, when she was hardly tall enough to reach a barre.

Now she had her own studio in the warehouse complete with mirror, and a small collection of leotards and toe shoes for practicing.  Leah went behind the divider in the corner to change, divesting herself of Erica’s nightgown, stripping down to nothing and pulling on a black leotard.  The warehouse was always a little cold in the winter and the early February rain-turned-to-sleet beating a staccato on the skylights above made her shiver.  There was a lamp still on in the living room, but the circle of light only reached so far across the warehouse.  Here in her little corner, it was dim and quiet. 

She didn’t bother with toe shoes or even music, although there was a record player in the corner.  There was no point in waking anyone, because the music was in her head, a hot, pounding beat, moving her limbs.  This was no prim, light dance of the sugarplum fairy, but the Latin heat of Don Quixote, the coquettish dance of a woman seducing a man.  Leah threw herself into it, dancing the passionate pas de deux with an invisible partner, a man who usually stayed in the shadows, even in her imagination, but tonight he stepped forward in her mind for the first time. 

Tonight she was dancing with Mr. Nolan, dancing
for
him, putting herself on display for his pleasure.  It made her feel beautiful and wanted, like those women in the photographs, teasing a man with the long, sinewy stretch of her body, even if the man was still caught in her imagination.  He had a face tonight, and in her mind, Mr. Nolan was transfixed, captivated by the flash of her thigh, the curve of her neck, the sheen of sweat on her skin as she twirled across the smooth, hardwood floor in her bare feet. 

Without toe shoes, the dance was no less graceful but somehow more physical, her lines less clean, her landing not quite as soft.  Today’s revelations moved through her, dark secrets burning her skin, unlocking an expression in her body she had never understood before.  She still couldn’t quite wrap her head around it, but her body followed its longing, a passionate, frenzied dance of a woman with a ravenous appetite.  She felt as if she could swallow the whole world. 

Her memory of those photographs, those titillating pictures, and the rush of feeling it created in her, made her chest burn and her limbs sing.  She danced with the memories, she danced the sin and shame of her own lust, the final acquiescence to her body’s need, and the sweet triumph of reaching that peak.  The dance was hers now, no longer anything she had learned.  It was the pure expression of her essence, every feeling and thought that had been running through her head on some endless loop. 

When she finally collapsed in a heap in the middle of the floor, breathless and panting, she felt like crying, as if her body had been filled to bursting and it must now have some sort of deliverance.  The dance she had hoped would exhaust and deplete her had simply served to energize her further.  Leah lifted her head, opening her eyes slowly, and saw him standing there in the shadows, like a dream. 

Her heart fluttered to her throat like a trapped butterfly and her hand leapt there, as if she could catch it.  He was watching her, just outside of the circle of lamplight, leaning against one of the tall supports she and Erica used to dance around that ran floor to ceiling throughout the warehouse. 

“Mr. Nolan?” 

She heard the click of his throat as he swallowed dryly.  “You’re so beautiful.” 

The look on his face was the one straight from her imagination, like he worshipped her, and at the same time, like the big bad wolf accosting an innocent red riding hood, like he wanted to eat her all up.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”  Her voice was barely a whisper.  “I just… couldn’t sleep...” 

“So fucking beautiful.” 

She was stunned to silence, lips parted with words she couldn’t speak, staring at him as he took a step toward her, the light on his face now, a wolfish look in his eyes making her skin bristle all over.  She had never heard Mr. Nolan swear before.  Ever.

“Leah...”  Her name on his lips was like a caress.  His gaze moved over her, no tights, no leg warmers, no toe shoes.  He’d seen her like this a hundred times of course, but she had never felt so naked.  The look on his face changed when he met her wide eyes.  She saw the emotions cross his features, from horror and shame to something like anger.  “Jesus.  Go to bed.” 

He turned and waved her toward Erica’s room, and she went, grabbing her nightgown and bolting down the hallway.  Erica was still asleep and Leah stripped down quietly, pulling her chaste, white nightgown over her head and slipping into her sleeping bag.  She shut her eyes as tightly as she could, until she saw stars, and tried to forget.  She tried to forget the images she’d seen that afternoon, the look on Mr. Nolan’s face when she was dancing, the feelings she’d had coursing through her all night. 

She tried to forget, but she couldn’t. 

Finally, Leah got up to use the bathroom.  The house was completely dark now, even the living room light turned off, and she listened for the familiar sound of Mr. Nolan snoring up in the loft, but didn’t hear anything.  The bathroom was past his bed, on the other side of the kitchen, near the darkroom—the real one, where he developed photos of people like Elvis and Agatha Christie and Mickey Mantle.  Not the other darkroom, the one hidden behind the tapestry under his bed. 

She stopped at his loft, still listening for the sound of his breathing.  It had stopped raining and the moonlight from the skylights above threw just enough silvery light for her to see the outline of his desk, the oriental pattern of the tapestry hiding the door behind. 

Curiosity drew her forward, although she knew she shouldn’t.  Seeing those photos had changed her somehow.  She moved toward the door in the darkness, breath held, knowing if she woke Mr. Nolan, she’d have to find some sort of excuse.  But something in her wanted to see.  She wanted more of those titillating images.  Her body craved them. 

Leah saw the tapestry was already drawn aside, the padlock open, the bolt too, the door slightly ajar.  Curiosity overwhelmed her and she crept forward, inching the door wider, wider still, confused at the darkness.  If Mr. Nolan was in the darkroom, why wasn’t the light on? 

Holding her breath, she fumbled for the switch, the red glow illuminating the photos hanging on the line, the sight of them making her belly kindle with excitement.  So wrong.  So sinful.  So wicked.  So very provocative. 

But Mr. Nolan wasn’t there. 

Had he left the door open? 

She touched the first picture—a woman wearing a bikini top, but no bottoms, on a beach.  Right out there in broad daylight!
Where was this taken? 
she wondered, staring at the woman’s sex.  It was completely hairless, a sight that shocked her to the core.  All the hair had somehow been removed, the woman on her knees, leaning back in the sand, hips lifted in an arch, as if showing off her shock of naked flesh. 

The next photo was astonishing, a full close-up of the woman’s mound.  She was dark-haired, and up-close you could see some of her hair growing back at her cleft—shaved, Leah realized—but the most surprising thing was the way she spread herself open for the camera, her long fingernails parting her own flesh for the exposure.  Leah had never seen anything like it, a labyrinth of flesh.  She’d certainly never taken a mirror down there to look at her own!