Imperfect Pictures: Part One: Episode One

Episode Two

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Imperfect Pictures: Part One: Episode One

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Imperfect Pictures:
Part One:
Episode One

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There was a heatwave hitting New York City. Despite being a week away from autumn, temperatures were reaching just over ninety degrees, and New Yorkers were not handling it well. Every window was open in Josie’s poorly air-conditioned office. The building was old, and it seemed to be a problem for anyone who wasn’t the owner or editor of the paper housed inside. But Vaudevillian Magazine had been there since the early 1920s, and they weren’t about to change anything. Four different fans were going in all directions at full blast, and her desk was littered with a collection of paperweights. Outside, there had been a minor car accident that caused a traffic jam, and every driver within a mile was lying on their horn as if it was their job. There was also shouting in several languages.  

Ah, Manhattan. 

Patiently, I waited for Josie to arrive. She was an extremely busy woman, or at least it appeared that way whenever I saw her. I had shot for the magazine a dozen times, and I always got my work assignments from her. She was the photography department’s assistant director, and she and her boss selected and arranged all the images. It wasn’t the only publication I worked for occasionally, but I had with them the most. But mainly, I was taking photos of lipstick or high heels, which was fine. I was good at it. And it was easy. But it was hard to break into the business, especially when it was dying. 

She burst in with a stack of folders in her arms. “Sorry to keep you waiting!” She was wearing a short navy skirt and a silky cream-colored sleeveless top. Sadly, it was sweat-stained and sticking to her body. Her mousy brown hair was pulled up into an ultra slicked-back bun with loads of hairspray, but her perspiration was making it frazzled at the edges.

“Not a problem. Do you need some help with those?”

It seemed as if she was going to say no, but I stood just as half slid towards the floor. I caught them easily, then put them on her desk in a neat pile. According to the papers, they were already getting ready for their big Christmas year-in-review. 

“Thanks. Can I get you anything? Water?” 

Once again, I sat. “No, I’m good.”

“Okay. So, I’ve got a job for you.” She placed the rest of the folders onto the desktop before fetching something from the filing cabinet. Her heels clicked loudly against the linoleum. 

“Terrific.” I wondered if it was holiday-related. That would be fun.

“It’s different from anything you’ve done for us before,” she explained as she let the air from the fan on top of the drawer hit her face. Her makeup was melting off in literal beads. There was no amount of setting spray for the humidity.

“How so?”

“We’d like you to go to Los Angeles. It’s for our ‘Week in the Life’ photo series. Have you seen it?” Josie sat behind her desk. “We do it a few times a year, usually for our big issues.”

For a moment, I was stunned. “Yeah, I have. You follow celebrities around twenty-four-seven to get intimate pictures of their day-to-day lives, right? Wow. Um, I’m flattered, but can I ask… Why me? I’m not saying no. Just curious?”

In the middle of a long drink of water, she held up a single, perfectly manicured finger, then dabbed her face with a tissue to capture the droplets that slid down her chin. “Actually, he asked for you.” 

“Talk about the pronoun game, Jo. Who- Mr. Jones?” I questioned impatiently, referring to her boss, who I only met once in passing. He barely glanced at me, but he was an even busier person.

“No, the personality you’ll be following.”

“What?” In shock, I sat back in the vinyl plastic chair, and it squeaked. 

She looked through a file as she spoke, “He’s very specific about who he does interviews with. Very particular. He’s all about controlling his own image, so he asked to look at the photographers we have working for us, and he chose you.” 

I was baffled. “Are you sure?” What did they even show him? Lip gloss? A bowl of popcorn I took a picture of once?  

“According to his manager, he was very insistent,” she explained. “He said you were the only one he liked, so he’d only do it if it were you. So, here we are.” 

“That’s crazy,” I laughed, feeling half-mad myself. I brought my fingertip up to chew before realizing what I was doing and quickly put it down. “Who is it?”

“Jules Williams.”

The name faintly rang a bell. Maybe. Kind of? I wasn’t sure. Sighing, I tried to think of how I knew him, but nothing sprang to mind. But my brain was Swiss cheese when it came to names, people, and faces. “I don’t know. I’m old. Who is he?” 

“He’s an Australian actor on the fast track in Hollywood. He started on YouTube, of all places. Now, he’s been in half a dozen triple-A video games and in several award-winning animated movies and television shows. Last year, he won a Grammy, and he recently signed a multi-million dollar contract with Disney.” 

I couldn’t imagine his face. “What did he win it for? Is he a singer, too?”

“I don’t think so. It was for an audiobook. Some teen thing I haven’t read. I don’t remember the name.” Rearranging a couple of folders on her desk, she looked for the information but gave up after a moment with a shake of her head. “Not important right now.”

“So, is he primarily a voice actor?”

“Last year, he starred in his first major live-action role. Overall, he was praised for his performance. It got like an eighty-nine on Rotten Tomatoes. He has several projects coming out over the next few months. The crazy thing is that he’s still doing his YouTube videos.” 

“I’m surprised he has the time,” I commented. “He must be very into himself.”

She pulled out her phone and brought up the app, then reached over her desk, so I could see the screen. “This is his most-watched one. Check out the view count.” 

It had five-hundred-million views. I had seen it on Facebook or some other social media site. That was where I knew him. To be honest, I thought he was a part of BuzzFeed, but I never paid any attention because it was just something to watch on the train.

But hell- even if I posted a million pictures, I would never get one-hundred-million views on all of them combined. I couldn’t imagine the ad revenue he was pulling in. That was why he had the time to make them.

“So, are you interested?”

I didn’t even have to think about it for a hot second. “Yes. How does it work? Money-wise.”

Josie beamed because I agreed so quickly. “So, this is a time-plus-space contract. You’ll get a flat rate per day, and we cover your flight, then we pay per page your pictures are featured.”

“How much?”

“Five-hundred per shooting day, plus two-hundred on your two travel days. Also, we give you a hundred per day for food and expenses in cash so you can keep what you don’t spend. If you’re comfortable with it, Mr. Williams has offered lodging at his home. If not, we can arrange a hotel, but I don’t think it’ll be as nice, and you’ll have to pay for your taxi or rental car.” 

A little star-struck by the amount, I answered, “I don’t mind staying at his place.” Barely scraping by, I needed all the cash I could get.

“Great! So, it’s our standard five-hundred per page. Oh, and if they put your photo on the cover, it’s a fifteen-hundred dollar bonus. The spread is usually between seven to twelve pages if we use yours. But we decide after we get your edits, of course,” she clarified quickly. 

I wondered how often she explained such things. “So, even if you don’t use them, I get almost four-thousand for a week’s worth of work?” I quietly inquired. “And I get to go to L.A. on your dime?”

“Um... Yeah, basically.”

I smiled so widely I felt as if my face would crack open. “Sign me up, boss!”

“Fantastic! It’s going to be mid-October. Sorry for such short notice, by the way. We had some negotiation issues with his people. I’ve got all the paperwork ready for you, but I’ll need you to come in sometime the week before you fly out to pick up your tickets and the cash. Is that a problem?”

Too overwhelmed, I hollowly responded, “Not at all.”

“Great,” she repeated with a grin. “Asa, I’m glad he picked you. I really enjoy working with you, and I hope this leads to more projects soon. I had to convince Mr. Jones to let me offer it to you.” 

Surprised, I gazed at her. She was such a kind woman. “Thank you so much for sticking your neck out for me. When I get paid, I’ll definitely buy you a drink and a full-priced appetizer somewhere.” 

Warmly, Josie giggled. “I look forward to it!” 

I liked her. We were on the edge of going from work buddies to in-real-life friends. 

Thankfully, the crashed cars were gone when I eventually left the office. Pulling out my cell, I did something I typically never did... I placed a call instead of texting.

“Hello?” My best friend answered on the second ring, instantly concerned. She hated telephones as much as I did, and it had probably been a year since we called each other.

“Jack!” I yelled into the microphone. “I got an insane job offer. You’re not going to fucking believe it. Holy shit, I’m so jazzed right now!”

“Oh, my god! What?” Immediately, she was excited for me. She was always the greatest person to tell any good news. She was so incredible at being happy for others. Most people didn’t realize it was a skill. 

“I’m flying to L.A. to stay at an actor’s house to take pictures of him for a week. And I’m getting around four grand to do it. Four-fucking-thousand. In Hollywood, baby!”

“Holy shit! That’s amazing!”

“And that’s not even if they purchase the images after. Conservatively, I could sell them another four-thousand in photos. They could buy up to twelve full pages for five-hundred a pop. And there’s the possibility of a cover photo, and that’s an extra fifteen-hundred dollars on top of everything. But I won’t think about that because I can’t count on it. But can you imagine? Oh, Jackie, I’m so excited!” 

“What?! You’re going to get so ahead on your bills.”

Feeling flushed, I sucked in a deep breath. “We need to celebrate tonight.”

She laughed, “Well, no shit we do! By the way, who’s the actor?” My bus arrived. She let me borrow her all-you-can-ride MetroCard to get to Manhattan, taking an Uber instead of dealing with the heat and smelly people on the subway.

“Uh...” I drew out as I tried to remember his name, but I was too keyed up. “Some guy called Jules Williams. He’s young and from YouTube.”

“I don’t know him,” she instantly replied.

Shaking my head, I sat down by one of the yellow poles so I could hang onto it. “I know you don’t. You don’t know anyone.” It was pretty much empty, so I spoke freely. “He does a lot of different stuff. Food videos. Games. Apparently, he does life experience pieces, too. You’ve probably seen him and not known it. Like I said, he’s a YouTuber.”

“Why don’t we order dinner and watch his shit tonight?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

It was eight in the evening when she finally got out of the office. Already in my pajamas, I was waiting for her on my couch. In the previous hours, I worked on edits for an event I did the day before. It was a gender reveal party for some hipster parents in Williamsburg. They seemed nice enough. It was a boy, and the father ugly cried. It was fun, but I had nothing else planned for the year, and it worried me before my meeting.

“I come bearing gifts.” She showed me the six-pack of hard cider she picked up at the bodega at the corner of our building. Jack opened one and brought it to me, placing a greeting kiss on my forehead, then went to put the rest in the fridge. When she returned, she was more comfortably dressed with her own drink of red wine mixed with ice-cold Coke. “I asked a bunch of kids at work if they knew the guy, and they did.”

“Do they like him?”

She was thoughtful for a moment. “They said he’s funny but tame. Like, an ordinary person you could show a cool aunt, such as myself.” Resting her head on my shoulder, she took control of my mouse so she could go to one of the half-dozen food ordering sites we used regularly. “Their words, not mine. Someone called him white bread.”

“I hope he’s normal,” I muttered. “I’m staying at his house.”

“I miss couchsurfing,” she complained, thinking about her time in Europe in her twenties. Living with strangers always frightened her less than me. 

We ordered from our favorite diner. She purchased her typical breakfast foods- waffles with bananas, Nutella, and strawberries, a side of country ham, and coffee despite it being so late. I got a chopped steak with mashed potatoes. It came with green beans, a salad, and a roll, which was enough for two people. So, of course, as always, I ate it all.

When we finished ordering, Jack clicked on YouTube. I typed in his name, and it brought up his page before I could finish Williams. He had twenty-million subscribers and counting. All of his videos combined had literally billions of views. Jules had hundreds of them, going back half a decade or more. In the early ones, he practically looked like a child and still had a squeaky baby voice and a chubby face. Even those had at least a million. 

In the most recent, he had grown into a tall and well-built man with a head full of thick, neatly groomed, almost black hair and a glass-sharp jaw and nose. He had a very nice profile. Also, it appeared as if he had never seen the sun, despite evidence proving otherwise. There were several videos of him surfing. Either he bathed daily in sunscreen, or he was exceptionally pale. 

We watched two solid hours of taste testing videos and interesting restaurants before we switched to him trying on terrible Halloween costumes with his friends. We saw all of those. There were at least fifteen of them, in some embarrassing form or fashion. Then we moved to his gamer playlist. Jackie fell asleep on the couch around three in the morning, but I continued to watch until I nodded off around sunrise. 

That night, I had one of my nightmares where I lost my camera in some horrible crazy way that could never happen. It woke me up, gasping and grasping at my blankets. I had them a couple of times a week, and they always bothered me.  

Over the next three weeks, I watched as many of his videos as I could stand and all of his movies. There were four, but two of them were only brief cameos. I saw a few of his television shows too. The ones on Netflix, anyway. I even listened to the audiobook he earned a Grammy for, ‘The Immortal Dusk.’ It was a supernatural young adult novel, and it was unsurprisingly better than I expected. Generally, I enjoyed his work and could see why he was on the rise. His voice was phenomenal. He could do so many weird things and accents with it. But when he was just speaking naturally, it was soothing, both very rich and deep.  

As time ticked closer, my stomach twisted in knots, and I had a nightmare every day for a week leading up to the job. I tried to keep my mind busy with work, but it didn’t seem to help. I didn’t sleep at all the night before my flight. Lying across my sofa in the darkness, I stared at the Manhattan skyline as I had done a thousand times before when I couldn’t relax. But at least it was better than having the dream again. 

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Jack's drink is called a Kalimotxo. 

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Preview for Episode Two at the bottom!

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Episode Two

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Want to check out bonus content for this episode, including music. Check out EXTRAS!

Imperfect Extras

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Imperfect Pictures: Part One
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Part One: Episode Two

It took almost eight hours to travel from Los Angeles to New York. I was flying out of LaGuardia into LAX with a layover in Houston. It was the first time I was stepping foot into my birthplace in a couple of years, but it was only for an hour and a half. That was just long enough to get Whataburger from the restaurant in the terminal. I got a barbecue bacon patty melt with a large onion ring. They didn’t have milkshakes in the airport eateries for some cruel reason, so I settled for a sweet tea and a cinnamon roll to substitute the sugar I was missing and saved them for the flight.  

I tried to feel a connection to my old home. It had been so long since I lived there. Was there a yearning to go back to what once was? No. Especially not after I watched a loud, big-haired airline employee yell at an Indian couple that she didn’t speak Spanish. They spoke perfect English with a British accent. 

They did have good sweet tea in Texas, though. 

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See y'all July 5th at 3pm central time!

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