“Yes. For theTimes-Picayune.” I felt so proud, saying it.
“A newspaper woman? Like Katharine Hepburn inWoman of the Year?”
“Oh, exactly like that.” I gave a dry smile. “Minus the wardrobe, the salary, the hairstylists, and the ability to dance in and out of the newsroom at will.”
“Still, that’s really something.”
I was pleased that he thought so. “I love it, although right now I spend most of my time in the darkroom developing photos shot by more experienced photographers.”
“You’re far too pretty to be kept in a darkroom.”
“No,” I said, tilting my head up at him. “I’m far too good a photographer to be kept in a darkroom.”
He laughed. “Maybe so, but you’re also awfully pretty.”
I felt my face heat.
“So what makes a good photographer?” he asked.
The music swelled around us. “Timing. Getting the moment right. Framing things. Lighting. Trying to see just what the camera will capture—although you never entirely do. It always surprises me how the lens can see things differently.”
“It’s like people.” The music swelled. He guided me around the edge of the dance floor. “You can never be really sure that whatyou mean is what someone else understands. Everyone frames things in the context of their experience and according to their mood.”
I looked up at him. It was not the kind of conversation I expected. I’d just met this man, and yet we’d jumped from getting-acquainted chitchat to really talking.
“It’s interesting how we all move around in the same space, yet live in our own interior worlds,” he said.
My interior universe seemed to have just collided with his. Our exterior universes were connecting pretty well, too. I was keenly aware of the warmth of his hand on my waist, the warmth of his fingers gripping my hand.
I tried to put the conversation back on familiar ground. “So what about you? What do you do?”
“I’m a pilot.”
There must be a thousand different jobs in the Army Air Force, and most of them were on the ground—but somehow I’d known from the moment I first saw him that he was a pilot. “I’ve always wanted to fly. Is it as marvelous as I imagine?”
“What do you imagine?”
“Well—a sense of boundlessness, I suppose. Not freedom, exactly, because, after all, you’re in the military and you’re not able to steer wherever you want—but a sense of not being fettered by gravity.”
I was afraid I’d gone too far—that I’d waxed too eloquent and that he’d laugh at me. But he didn’t. He swung me about. “That’s pretty much exactly it.”
“The perspective of everything from the air—well, it must be amazing to look down and see the world so far below.”
He nodded. “I never lose my sense of awe about it. You can see patterns in things—the farm fields, the roads, the forests cut by streams and rivers. It’s beautiful. Even a junkyard is beautiful if you’re high enough above it.”
“It’s like the plane is your camera lens.”
“Never thought of it that way, but yeah.” His thigh pushedagainst mine, causing a wave of heat to radiate up my leg. “Problem is, my camera drops bombs and gets shot at.”
I was immediately chagrined. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you’re up there joyriding.”
“You didn’t. I just can’t wait to fly under other circumstances.”
“You plan to be a pilot after the war is over?”
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Commercial aviation will grow by leaps and bounds after the war.”
“Oh, I can’t wait! I’m dying to fly.”
