Ordinary Bodies

The camera was still recording when I fell in love with her.

Not the first time. I want to be clear about that. The first time I saw her, she was sitting on the edge of a hotel bed in Koreatown, wearing a black slip dress and nothing else, and I was behind a tripod, adjusting the focus, and she said, "You're nervous." She said it like it was a fact, not a question. Like she'd already decided it didn't matter.

I was nervous. I'd been doing this for three years and I was still nervous every time. That's not something you admit in my line of work. The guys I know, the ones who shoot the stuff you find on the front page of those sites, they talk about it like it's plumbing. Show up, set up, get the shot, go home. No big deal. But I never figured out how to make it not a big deal. Every time I pointed a camera at two people fucking, I felt like I was holding something that didn't belong to me.

Her name was Mira. Still is. She was twenty-six then, which made her two years younger than me, though she carried it like she was older. She had this way of looking at the lens like she could see through it, past the glass and the sensor and the little red light, right into the part of me I kept hidden. I didn't like it. I also couldn't stop thinking about it.

The gig was simple. A couple, a hotel room, forty minutes of footage, a thousand dollars cash. The production company was called Velvet Room. I'd worked with them maybe a dozen times. They paid on time, they didn't ask questions, and they let me light the scenes however I wanted, which was more than most. I liked the way they let me work. I told myself that was the only reason I kept coming back.

Mira was the one who answered the door. She was wearing a robe, hotel issue, white terry cloth, and her hair was wet. She'd just showered. I could smell the soap on her, something with eucalyptus in it, and underneath that, the warm animal smell of her skin. She looked at me for a second longer than she needed to.

"You're the camera guy," she said.

"That's me."

"I thought you'd be older."

"I get that a lot."

She stepped back and let me in. The room was nothing special. Beige walls, a king bed with a duvet the color of oatmeal, a window that looked out onto Wilshire Boulevard and the oil stain of late afternoon traffic. The other guy was already there, sitting in an armchair by the window, scrolling through his phone. He looked up when I came in, nodded, went back to his screen. His name was Derek. I'd worked with him twice before. He was reliable. He had a good body and a face that photographed well, and he never tried to direct the scene, which was the most important thing.

I set up in the corner by the bathroom, where the light was softest. The window gave me a nice key, and I had a small LED panel I could bounce off the ceiling if I needed fill. I tested the exposure on the empty bed, adjusted the white balance, and tried not to look at Mira, who had taken off her robe and was standing in front of the mirror, running her fingers through her wet hair.

She caught my eye in the reflection. "You can look," she said. "That's kind of the point."

I laughed, but it came out wrong. Too loud. I busied myself with the tripod.

The thing you have to understand about shooting a scene like this is that it's not sexy. Not while you're doing it. You're thinking about focus, about frame rates, about whether the mic is picking up the breathing or just the air conditioner. You're watching for the moment when the performers forget the camera is there, because that's when the footage gets good. But they almost never forget. They're performing. That's the job. The trick is to make the performance look like it isn't one.

Mira didn't perform.

From the first frame, she was just there. Present. She kissed Derek like she meant it, and maybe she did, or maybe she was just better at pretending than anyone I'd ever filmed. Her hands moved over his chest, his shoulders, the back of his neck. She made a sound low in her throat when he touched her, and I felt it in my stomach, a small electric pull that I tried to ignore.

I've shot a lot of sex. I've watched people come on camera more times than I can count. It's work. It's a job. But watching Mira was different. She wasn't trying to be sexy. She was just letting herself feel whatever she was feeling, and the camera caught it, and I caught it, and I couldn't look away.

At some point, Derek shifted position and the light changed. I moved the camera to follow, and my elbow knocked the LED panel. It clattered to the floor. Mira looked up, and for a second, she wasn't performing at all. She was just a woman on a bed, looking at a man with a camera, and she smiled.

" You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah. Sorry. Keep going."

She didn't keep going. She sat up, pulled the sheet over her lap, and reached for the glass of water on the nightstand. Derek looked at her, confused. She ignored him.

"You want to take a break?" she asked me.

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You're sweating."

I touched my forehead. She was right. I was sweating.

"It's hot in here," I said.

"It's not hot."

She was right about that too. The air conditioning was on, humming quietly in the corner. I was sweating because I was nervous, and I was nervous because I was watching her, and I was watching her because I couldn't stop.

She got up and walked over to me. Naked, unselfconscious, the sheet trailing from her hand like an afterthought. She stood close enough that I could smell the eucalyptus soap again, and something else underneath it, something darker.

"You don't have to pretend," she said. "Not with me."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do."

She reached out and touched my wrist. Just her fingertips, light, almost nothing. But my whole body went still.

"We can stop," she said. "If you want. We can call it. I'll tell them the footage didn't work."

"And then what?"

"And then we go get a drink. You and me. Somewhere with bad lighting and good whiskey."

I looked at Derek, who was still sitting on the bed, looking at his phone again, completely unbothered.

"He doesn't care," Mira said. "He's just here for the check."

"I can't just walk out. I have a job."

"You have a job right now. And you're not doing it. You're standing there looking at me like you've never seen a naked woman before."

"I've seen plenty of naked women."

"Not like this."

She was right. I hated that she was right.

I looked at the camera. The red light was still on. Somewhere in that little black box was forty minutes of footage that would end up on a website I'd never visit, watched by men I'd never meet, and none of them would see what I was seeing. None of them would notice the way she paused before she touched him, the way she breathed, the way she looked at the lens like she was looking at me.

I reached down and turned the camera off.

"Okay," I said. "Let's get a drink."