Read Online Mermaids on the Golf Course by Patricia Highsmith - Free Book Online

described the way the girl’s face would brighten, if her boyfriend only wore good clothes. Then an instant later, Lizzie’s glum expression was back, as if it were a garment she wore for the public. Craig moistened his lips. “And—your fiancé? I mean—I know you broke it off a few months back. I was thinking maybe you’d both get together again.”
    Lizzie’s sadness deepened. “No. No, indeed. I felt as if—I’d never want to live with a man as long as I live. Still do feel that way.”
    But Lizzie was hardly nineteen as yet, Craig was thinking, though he kept silent. The funny idea came just then: he didn’t believe Lizzie. What if she were faking this whole thing? Lying even about having been raped? What if she hadn’t liked her boyfriend much anyway, and hadn’t minded breaking off their engagement? “I’m sure your fiancé is sad too,” Craig said solemnly.
    “Oh, seems to be. That’s true,” Lizzie replied. “But I can’t help that.” She sighed.
    “Would you mind if I took a couple of shots of you now?”
    Lizzie lifted her eyes to his again. Her eyes were alert, wary, yet interested. “Whatever for?—Well, not while I’m in these shoes, I hope,” she added with a quick smile. She was in house shoes, but otherwise very smartly dressed in a hand-knitted beige sweater and dark blue skirt, with a gold chain around her neck.
    “Don’t have to take the feet,” Craig said, standing now, aiming his camera. He could sell three or four photos to New York and Philadelphia newspapers, he was sure, if he suggested that a staff writer write a few lines about her quiet life five months after the rape. Click! A rape that Craig was more and more sure never took place. Click!—Click! “Look a bit to your left.—That’s good! Hold it!” Click!
    Five minutes later, as he was taking his leave, Craig said, “I sure appreciate your letting me snap you again, Lizzie. And would you mind if I found a writer to do a little piece on you? N-not for the local paper,” Craig hastened to add. “For the big papers east. Maybe west too. Might help your fashion model work, mightn’t it?”
    “That’s true.” She was plainly reflecting on this, blinking her sad eyes. “It’s funny, you know, that day bringing you all that success and prizes and everything, and me —just ruining my life. Nearly.”
    Craig nodded. “That’s a great angle for the writer.” He smiled. “’Bye, Lizzie. I’ll be in touch soon.”
    “Let me see the photos first, would you? I want to make the choice.”
    That very evening, Craig telephoned Richard Prescott, a journalist of the Monitor, and gave him his ideas, which had developed a bit since he had seen Lizzie. He would be the puzzled, guilt-ridden, small town photographer who had contributed to, even caused the upset of a young woman’s life.
    “She really was raped?” asked Prescott. “I remember the story and your photo, of course, but I thought she’d just been scared. The boy they caught always denied it, you know.”
    Never mind, Craig started to say, but instead he replied, “She certainly implied she was. Girls never want to say it flat out, y’know. But you get my angle, that I’m the one upset now, because I—” Craig squeezed his eyes shut, thinking hard. “Because I captured in a split second that expression of a girl who’s just been—assaulted. You know?”
    “Assaulted. Yeah, might work fine.”
    “In fact, the article should be as much about me as her.”
    Prescott said he would get in touch soon, because he had another assignment on the West Coast, and might be able to squeeze Wyoming in.
    Craig then rang up Tom Buckley, who agreed at once to take some pictures of Craig. Craig reminded Tom that Tom would get credit lines in some big newspapers, if he did the job. Tom was still friendly with Craig, and had never shown the least jealousy of Craig’s success.
    Tom Buckley came over the next morning to photograph Craig in his modest darkroom at