“Whatever suits you,” Eddie recommended.
Upon hearing this, Reeves broke into a grin. “This is me, buddy. Happy go lucky. Arthur’s the one who’s glum.”
From the kitchen where she was helping Maureen with the fried dough, Coralie overheard a murmur of conversation, then bright laughter. When there was a round of applause, she was compelled to go to the back door to peer through the screen. She could hardly believe the sight before her. There was Malia, perched on the porch railing as if ready for flight, a beautiful half butterfly. And, far more distracting, there he was, the man from the woods, right in Coralie’s own yard, as if he’d been magicked to Brooklyn. He had beautiful hands, long and pale, like a musician’s. When his jacket constricted his movements, he shrugged it off and continued working in his white shirt and suspenders. He had a brooding expression, so concentrated on his subject he seemed not to take in a single breath
of air.
Coralie gazed through the meshing of the door, entranced as she watched him adjust the lens of his camera.
“Stay exactly as you are,” the photographer called to Malia. “This is perfect.”
The next batch of fritters sizzled in a pot on the stove, ready to be scooped out of the bubbling hot oil, but Coralie ignored her kitchen duties. This was the hand of fate. She was certain of it.
The photographer thanked Malia, then quickly began to set up his camera for another shot, removing one plate and inserting the next. The Durante brothers readied themselves for their turn, bending around each other in a fluid circle so perfectly round it seemed to defy the capabilities of the human spine.
Maureen had been pulled into the kitchen by the scent of fritters burning. She gasped when she saw the pot of oil, singed and turning black. “Here’s a waste,” she said mournfully as she quickly lifted the pot from the flame. She noticed Coralie at the door, a strange expression crossing her face. “I’d like to know what all the ruckus is about.” Maureen approached the back door, narrowing her eyes when she took note of the man with the camera. The brothers were cheerfully posing for him. “What does he think he’s doing? He’ll get a thrashing if he’s caught. We’ll all be in the shit.”
Maureen pushed open the door before Coralie could prevent her. “Stop what you’re doing this minute,” the housekeeper called sharply to Eddie. “This yard is private property and there are private lives being lived here.”
Eddie gazed up to see a beautiful red-haired woman whose extreme disfigurement was evident even across the distance between them. He felt humbled by the strength and authority in her tone. “Miss,” he said earnestly. “Forgive me for not asking your permission.”
Hidden behind Maureen, Coralie again felt the hook of her attraction to him. The pulse at the base of her throat was pounding. As for Eddie, he spied a shadow and nothing more. Though he placed one hand over his eyes to block out the streaming sunlight, he could see no farther than the threshold of the kitchen.
“I have no permission to grant,” Maureen told him, “so you’d better hightail it out of here, before the owner finds you trespassing. Then you’ll see what trouble is.”
“He’s only a photographer,” William Reeves explained to the housekeeper. “There’s no harm done.”
“I don’t care if he’s the King of Brooklyn,” Maureen said smartly to Reeves, before turning her attention back to Eddie. “Sir, I’m asking you to leave. Take my advice if you’ve got half a brain in your head.”
Eddie put a hand over his heart and pleaded, “Don’t send me away before I take your portrait.”
Maureen laughed dismissively, though she clearly found something charming in his actions. He appeared as a scarecrow might, with his baggy pants and long arms and legs and dark, handsome features. “Like that will happen,” she called to him.
“Let him do it,” Coralie urged the housekeeper from the shadows. “You’ve never had one taken before, and it will cause no harm.”
Maureen was puzzled, but when she turned to see Coralie’s look of fierce insistence, she understood the fellow in the yard was the very man her charge had spoken of, the one she couldn’t forget.
“If that’s him, he doesn’t look like much,” Maureen said thoughtfully. “Too skinny by far.”
“Go on.” Coralie gave the housekeeper a little push. “Go!”
“Are you mad? What if your father sees?”
“I don’t care,” Coralie told Maureen. The kindness with which Eddie had treated his subjects in the yard had uplifted her. Here was an ordinary man who did not flee from what he could not explain but rather was drawn to what was different, not lewdly out of some sinister inquisitiveness, but due to sheer wonder. “I trust him,” Coralie said.