"Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

“I see you’re a photographer, mister,” she said. “Could you use a model?”

Her voice wasn’t very cultivated.

“I doubt it,” I told her, picking up the pix. You see, I wasn’t impressed. The commercial possibilities of
her eyes hadn’t registered on me yet, by a long shot. “What have you done?”

Well she gave me a vague sort of story and I began to check her knowledge of model agencies and
studios and rates and what not and pretty soon I said to her, “Look here, you never modeled for a
photographer in your life. You just walked in here cold.”

Well, she admitted that was more or less so.

All along through our talk I got the idea she was feeling her way, like someone in a strange place. Not
that she was uncertain of herself, or of me, but just of the general situation.

“And you think anyone can model?” I asked her pityingly.

“Sure,” she said.

“Look,” I said, “a photographer can waste a dozen negatives trying to get one halfway human photo of
an average woman. How many do you think he’d have to waste before he got a real catchy, glamorous
pix of her?”

“I think I could do it,” she said.

Well, I should have kicked her out right then. Maybe I admired the cool way she stuck to her dumb little
guns. Maybe I was touched by her underfed look. More likely I was feeling mean on account of the way
my pix had been snubbed by everybody and I wanted to take it out on her by showing her up.

“Okay, I’m going to put you on the spot,” I told her. “I’m going to try a couple of shots of you.
Understand, it’s strictly on spec. If somebody should ever want to use a photo of you, which is about one
chance in two million, I’ll pay you regular rates for your time. Not otherwise.”



file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Leiber,%20Fritz%20-%2...not%20Enough]%20-%20The%20Girl%20with%20the%20H.html (4 of 15)16-2-2006 15:43:21
 Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes

She gave me a smile. The first. “That’s swell by me,” she said.

Well, I took three or four shots, close-ups of her face since I didn’t fancy her cheap dress, and at least
she stood up to my sarcasm. Then I remembered I still had the Lovelybelt stuff and I guess the meanness
was still working in me because I handed her a girdle and told her to go behind the screen and get into it
and she did, without getting flustered as I’d expected, and since we’d gone that far I figured we might as
well shoot the beach scene to round it out, and that was that.

All this time I wasn’t feeling anything particular in one way or the other except every once in a while I’d
get one of those faint dizzy flashes and wonder if there was something wrong with my stomach or if I
could have been a bit careless with my chemicals.