1/1 PATRICIA GETS AN ASSIGNMENT By Vik Chapter 1 – A New Assignment Patty heard the phone ring and cursed. She had just laid out a print to dry on the fiberglass screen and her hands were still wet. She switched on the white light, pulled a paper towel from the roll holder on the wall, wiped her hands, opened the door and strode to the phone in the living room. “Yes?” she asked in a disgruntled tone. “Miss Brewster, this is Andrew Stelling at Adventure Travel. You don’t know me but we’ve had excellent references of you as a photographer. My agency has some original plans for some very special ecological tours. We’ll be having a special ad campaign and I thought that if we could come to a mutually agreeable arrangement perhaps you’d like to take the pho- tographs for us.” Patty’s mind started racing. She remarked on the emphasis he had placed on “very.” As a free-lancer she needed any job she could get; on the other hand that bit about “…a mutu- ally agreeable arrangement…” sounded like Mr. Stelling’s travel agency was not willing to pay too much. She decided to play hard to get. “Thank you very much, Mr. Stelling, but right now I was working in the darkroom. I only have five prints finished and I have to deliver those plus another twenty tomorrow morning at 8 AM. I can’t take the time now to discuss your project but if you’d be good enough to give me your phone number I’d be glad to call you back tomorrow afternoon.” “That’ll be fine, Miss Brewster, my number is 555-4936. I’ll be expecting your call. Bye.” “Goodbye, Mr. Stelling.” Patty hung up and went back to the darkroom. What she had said was true but it was only nine in the morning and she knew she could print the remaining negatives in not more than ten hours. She was glad that she had work to deliver and that it had given her a chance to put Mr. Stelling in his place. She went back to the darkroom and worked straight until she had finished. At seven in the evening she started cleaning up the lab wishing she could afford an assistant to do the job for her. An hour later she ordered a pizza by phone. When it arrived she ate half of it, had a glass of milk and putting the dishes in the kitchen sink she filled it with water and went to bed. “I’m too tired,” she thought. “The dishes can wait until tomorrow.” The following morning Patty ate breakfast, did the dishes and got dressed. Picking up the portfolio she had prepared the previous day she got into her car and drove to Nancy ’s of- fice. She had always thought it odd that not only had Nancy lost her right hand but that her secretary was one-handed as well. Patty and Nancy had been good friends since high school. When they graduated they went their separate ways. Patty chose life as a photographer and one day they ran across each other in an elevator. Patty couldn’t help noticing Nancy’s stump but she did not think it proper to ask. Nancy told her that she was running a photographer’s agency and the two girls resumed their friendship. Patty was on her way to meet with a client at Nancy’s office. As Patty entered Nancy’s office Sylvia, her secretary, greeted her. “Good morning, Patty. You’re just in time. The client will be here in a couple of minutes. Nancy’s waiting for you.” C:\PATTY.doc 2/2 Patty always did her business through Nancy; she had never met a client. As a rare conces- sion to Nancy she had agreed to meet this one. “What sort of a person is he? Nice? A grouch? One of those people who are willing to accept differences of opinion or one who wants to impose his will on everyone?” Sylvia smiled but said nothing. “Come on, at least you can tell me if he is young or old, handsome or ugly.” At that moment the doorbell buzzed. Sylvia pushed a button under her desk and the door behind Patty opened. “See for yourself,” Sylvia said with a grin. Patty turned around and gasped. Standing before her was a beautiful woman with long straight hair wearing a mid-thigh dress that showed her long, slim legs to great advantage. What really surprised Patty was that from the sleeves of the woman’s dress there protruded two orthopedic hooks. She had no hands. The woman smiled and said, “Hi, Sylvia. You ready to lose your other hand yet?” “Not yet, Anne. I like my stump very much but I’m not sure I want another one.” “You’ll come around some day. Just give it time.” “By the way, Anne, I’d like you to meet Patricia. She’s the photographer who did the job for you.” “How do you do, Patricia,” Anne said, extending her right hook. As she did so she shrugged her left shoulder and the inner half of the hook opened. “How do you do, Anne,” replied Patty whilst taking Anne’s hook in her own hand. It slid be- tween the two halves and Anne relaxed her shoulder; the two halves closed clamping Patty’s hand between them. “Neat trick,” said Patty. “I remember once, before I lost my hands, that I had to shake hands with a girl that had a hook for her right hand. She simply stretched out her right arm and the hook just lay there in my hand. I couldn’t feel any pressure and that hook felt like a dead fish. I swore then that if I ever lost my right hand I wouldn’t shake hands, hooks or whatever the way she did; it felt dreadful.” Patty replied, “I shook hands once with a woman who had lost all four fingers above the knuckles – there was nothing but the palm of the hand and a thumb. It felt so odd not to feel the pressure of the fingers! “You seem to be quite at home with your hooks. Did you lose your hands a long time ago?” “Not too long. Actually I lost my right hand four and my left one two months ago.” “You’ve adapted remarkably well.” “Well, you know what they say, ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way.’” Patty couldn’t help noticing the sly smile on Anne’s face. She looked puzzled. “What I mean is that once I had lost my hands I didn’t have much choice, did I? Have you ever tried to do anything without using your hands? Like eating, or going to the toilet? I had to learn how to use these hooks; there was no choice. C:\PATTY.doc 3/3 “Anyway, we’re wasting time. Let’s go into Nancy’s office and see your work. Nancy tells me you’re a great artist with the camera.” Sylvia talked into the intercom and pointed to Nancy’s door with her stump indicating they should enter. Patty picked up her portfolio and gestured for Anne to precede her. The two women entered Nancy’s office. She was seated at her desk. Unlike Sylvia she wore a hook on the stump of her right arm. Nancy said, “Hi, Patty! I see you and Anne have already met. Come in, both of you.” She got up and with her hook pushed a second chair to the front of the desk so that both of her visitors could sit down; then she sat down behind the desk. “All right, show us,” she said looking at Patty. Patty laid her portfolio on the desk and opened it. The prints were sixteen by twenties and of the highest quality. Patty took pride in her workmanship. Patty’s assignment had been to photograph a documentary on a bayou in Louisiana. She had done herself proud; everything was there. The Spanish moss on the trees emerging from the water, the fishermen’s pirogues, the trotlines with a rag tied to them to identify their owners, the wooden shacks on the shore with their weather beaten inhabitants, the sackcloth bags full of crawfish in the water by the shore. There were also pictures of the people dancing to zideco music and communal parties with huge pots of gumbo and jamba- laya in the village square. Patty’s sense of empathy with the Acadians and with nature was evident. Patty had taken abundant notes and she pulled the notebook out. Anne took it with her hooks and putting it on the desk she started perusing it. She noticed a description of a sunrise on the bayou and asked, “You were really impressed by this sunrise, weren’t you?” “It was unbelievable. It was like something out of a Disney movie only better - and this was for real. The mist was lifting gently from the water and the sunlight filtered through the Spanish moss and the leaves of the cypress trees. Everything was quiet except for the birds beginning to chirp. Alexander, the Acadian who was my guide, was gently punting the pi- rogue; he sensed my awe and kept quiet. “Then he meekly asked, ‘Aren’t you going to take a picture of this?’ “I was so overcome by the scene that I had forgotten that I had a camera slung from my neck.