My Funny Valentine

Last night, I worked in the studio with a "traveler" that I shot with about a year ago.  She was passing through town and wrote to me such a sweet message that I couldn't resist.  Besides, I wanted an update on things.

She showed up with a puppy and a carful of clothes.  She'd driven up from her ancestral home in Palm Beach.  I take it that she grew up well, rebelled after graduating from high school, and took to the road.  She is twenty-three now and has been traveling for five years.

"Did you have a good trip from Palm Beach," I asked?

"Yea, it took a while."

"It's about three hours, isn't it?"

"I take it slow.  Gas is expensive so I stop a lot."

"How does that help your gas mileage?"

"I have a gas can," she said.  I looked at her, eyes pinched, brow furrowed.  "I tell people I ran out of gas and they fill up my gas can," she said matter of factly as if I were a dolt.

"I guess that could slow you down."

"I've got time."

She had more tattoos than when we last shot, one now on her face.  At five foot five and ninety-eight pounds, there isn't a lot of skin to ink up.

"You've put on weight since I saw you.  Looks good."

"I'm trying to eat more.  I put on weight when we were out in California.  Smoking makes me hungry."

In California, they'd been hired to pick pot for one of the State sanctioned growers.

"Your hair has grown quite a bit, too."

She'd gotten lice and had shaved her head a few months before we shot last.

She started pulling things out of her boxes.

"Look at this."  She held up a crazy red skirt with pleats and trimming.  "My mother gave it to me when I was leaving for this shoot.  She rides horses and wore this for a show.  I don't even know what this part is."  She held up something with ribbons for tying.  It was beautiful, all of it.  Then she opened an old leather case and pulled out an accordion.

"Wow," I said.

"It was made in the '20s." It was bone white and silver pearl and smallish.

"Can you play it," I asked.

"Here's a song I'm writing."

She began playing a sailor's jig.  She could really play.

"Did you teach yourself?"

"Yes.  It came with some books and old music.  I've been using the kids book for now."  She was playing smoothly with both hands.

I had thought to shoot quickly and get home.  She had other ideas.  The evening stretched out before us as she began pulling out more costumes.

"Do you have anything to drink?"  I didn't have much because I remembered that she and her boyfriend were trying to get sober last time they were here.  "That was him, not me," she said.  I had two half bottles of wine and a half pint of tequila.  I hoped she wouldn't spot the bottle of absinthe.

She was on her way to Mardi Gras.  Her boyfriend was playing with a bluegrass group.  They would be busking on the streets.

"I just drove up here to shoot with you," she said.  "We had so much fun last time we were here.  I've been getting paid for shooting, but you and me, we are alike.  That's why I don't charge you.  That's why I came."

O.K.  O.K.  I poured a glass of old wine and settled in.  It was going to be a long night.  I played with the puppy and took him out to pee while she mucked around with makeup.  The artist in the studio across the lot was packing up and going home.  He had a wife.  It was Valentine's Day. I had no reason to hurry, I thought just as the dog sunk his puppy teeth into my toe.  I'd be home by midnight.