Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes

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The Girl with the Hungry Eyes

FRITZ LEIBER

==========

“The Girl With the Hungry Eyes,”published in 1949, is a classic and will probably never become dated.

The advertising industry is still searching for “The Look” to sell products to the great American maw.

And with new technology continually being developed, the industry becomes more and more adept at

insinuating itself into our lives.

==========

All right, I’ll tell you why the Girl gives me the creeps. Why I can’t stand to go downtown and see the

mob slavering up at her on the tower, with that pop bottle or pack of cigarettes or whatever it is beside

her. Why I hate to look at magazines any more because I know she’ll turn up somewhere in a brassiere

or a bubble bath. Why I don’t like to think of millions of Americans drinking in that poisonous half-

smile. It’s quite a story—more story than you’re expecting.

No, I haven’t suddenly developed any long-haired indignation at the evils of advertising and the national

glamour-girl complex. That’d be a laugh for a man in my racket, wouldn’t it? Though I think you’ll

agree there’s something a little perverted about trying to capitalize on sex that way. But it’s okay with

me. And I know we’ve had the Face and the Body and the Look and what not else, so why shouldn’t

someone come along who sums it all up so completely, that we have to call her the Girl and blazon her

on all the billboards from Times Square to Telegraph Hill?

But the Girl isn’t like any of the others. She’s unnatural. She’s morbid. She’s unholy.

Oh it’s 1948, is it, and the sort of thing I’m hinting at went out with witchcraft? But you see I’m not

altogether sure myself what I’m hinting at, beyond a certain point. There are vampires and vampires, and

not all of them suck blood.

And there were the murders, if they were murders.

Besides, let me ask you this. Why, when America is obsessed with the Girl, don’t we find out more

about her? Why doesn’t she rate a Time cover with a droll biography inside? Why hasn’t there been a

feature in Life or the Post? A Profile in The New Yorker? Why hasn’t Charm or Mademoiselle done her

career saga? Not ready for it? Nuts!

Why haven’t the movies snapped her up? Why hasn’t she been on Information, Please? Why don’t we

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Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes

see her kissing candidates at political rallies? Why isn’t she chosen queen of some sort of junk or other

at a convention?

Why don’t we read about her tastes and hobbies, her views of the Russian situation? Why haven’t the

columnists interviewed her in a kimono on the top floor of the tallest hotel in Manhattan and told us who

her boyfriends are?

Finally—and this is the real killer—why hasn’t she ever been drawn or painted?

Oh, no she hasn’t. If you knew anything about commercial art you’d know that. Every blessed one of

those pictures was worked up from a photograph. Expertly? Of course. They’ve got the top artists on it.

But that’s how it’s done.

And now I’ll tell you the why of all that. It’s because from the top to the bottom of the whole world of

advertising, news, and business, there isn’t a solitary soul who knows where the Girl came from, where

she lives, what she does, who she is, even what her name is.

You heard me. What’s more, not a single solitary soul ever sees her— except one poor damned

photographer, who’s making more money off her than he ever hoped to in his life and who’s scared and

miserable as hell every minute of the day.

No, I haven’t the faintest idea who he is or where he has his studio. But I know there has to be such a

man and I’m morally certain he feels just like I said.

Yes, I might be able to find her, if I tried. I’m not sure though—by now she probably has other

safeguards. Besides, I don’t want to.

Oh, I’m off my rocker, am I? That sort of thing can’t happen in this

Year of our Atom 1948? People can’t keep out of sight that way, not even Garbo?

Well I happen to know they can, because last year I was that poor damned photographer I was telling

you about. Yes, last year, in 1947, when the Girl made her first poisonous splash right here in this big

little city of ours.

Yes, I knew you weren’t here last year and you don’t know about it. Even the Girl had to start small. But

if you hunted through the files of the local newspapers, you’d find some ads, and I might be able to

locate you some of the old displays—I think Lovelybelt is still using one of them. I used to have a

mountain of photos myself, until I burned them.

Yes, I made my cut off her. Nothing like what that other photographer must be making, but enough so it

still bought this whisky. She was funny about money. I’ll tell you about that.

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Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes

But first picture me in 1947. I had a fourth-floor studio in that rathole the Hauser Building, catty-corner

from Ardleigh Park.

I’d been working at the Marsh-Mason studios until I’d got my bellyful of it and decided to start in for

myself. The Hauser Building was crummy—I’ll never forget how the stairs creaked—but it was cheap

and there was a skylight.

Business was lousy. I kept making the rounds of all the advertisers and agencies, and some of them

didn’t object to me too much personally, but my stuff never clicked. I was pretty near broke. I was

behind on my rent. Hell, I didn’t even have enough money to have a girl.

It was one of those dark gray afternoons. The building was awfully quiet—even with the shortage they

can’t half rent the Hauser. I’d just finished developing some pix I was doing on speculation for

Lovelybelt Girdles and Buford’s Pool and Playground—the last a faked-up beach scene. My model had

left. A Miss Leon. She was a civics teacher at one of the high schools and modeled for me on the side,

just lately on speculation too. After one look at the prints, I decided that Miss Leon probably wasn’t just

what Lovelybelt was looking for—or my photography either. I was about to call it a day.

And then the street door slammed four storeys down and there were steps on the stairs and she came in.

She was wearing a cheap, shiny black dress. Black pumps. No stockings. And except that she had a gray

cloth coat over one of them, those skinny arms of hers were bare. Her arms are pretty skinny, you know,

or can you see things like that any more?

And then the thin neck, the slightly gaunt, almost prim face, the tumbling mass of dark hair, and looking

out from under it the hungriest eyes in the world.

That’s the real reason she’s plastered all over the country today, you know—those eyes. Nothing vulgar,

but just the same they’re looking at you with a hunger that’s all sex and something more than sex. That’s

what everybody’s been looking for since the Year One—something a little more than sex.

Well, boys, there I was, along with the Girl, in an office that was getting shadowy, in a nearly empty

building. A situation that a million male Americans have undoubtedly pictured to themselves with

various lush details. How was I feeling? Scared.

I know sex can be frightening. That cold, heart-thumping when you’re alone with a girl and feel you’re

going to touch her. But if it was sex this time, it was overlaid with something else.

At least I wasn’t thinking about sex.

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Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes

I remember that I took a backward step and that my hand jerked so that the photos I was looking at

sailed to the floor.

There was the faintest dizzy feeling like something was being drawn out of me. Just a little bit.

That was all. Then she opened her mouth and everything was back to normal for a while.

“I see you’re a photographer, mister,” she said. “Could you use a model?”

Her voice wasn’t very cultivated.

“I doubt it,” I told her, picking up the pix. You see, I wasn’t impressed. The commercial possibilities of

her eyes hadn’t registered on me yet, by a long shot. “What have you done?”

Well she gave me a vague sort of story and I began to check her knowledge of model agencies and

studios and rates and what not and pretty soon I said to her, “Look here, you never modeled for a

photographer in your life. You just walked in here cold.”

Well, she admitted that was more or less so.

All along through our talk I got the idea she was feeling her way, like someone in a strange place. Not

that she was uncertain of herself, or of me, but just of the general situation.

“And you think anyone can model?” I asked her pityingly.

“Sure,” she said.

“Look,” I said, “a photographer can waste a dozen negatives trying to get one halfway human photo of

an average woman. How many do you think he’d have to waste before he got a real catchy, glamorous

pix of her?”

“I think I could do it,” she said.

Well, I should have kicked her out right then. Maybe I admired the cool way she stuck to her dumb little

guns. Maybe I was touched by her underfed look. More likely I was feeling mean on account of the way

my pix had been snubbed by everybody and I wanted to take it out on her by showing her up.

“Okay, I’m going to put you on the spot,” I told her. “I’m going to try a couple of shots of you.

Understand, it’s strictly on spec. If somebody should ever want to use a photo of you, which is about one

chance in two million, I’ll pay you regular rates for your time. Not otherwise.”

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Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes

She gave me a smile. The first. “That’s swell by me,” she said.

Well, I took three or four shots, close-ups of her face since I didn’t fancy her cheap dress, and at least

she stood up to my sarcasm. Then I remembered I still had the Lovelybelt stuff and I guess the meanness

was still working in me because I handed her a girdle and told her to go behind the screen and get into it

and she did, without getting flustered as I’d expected, and since we’d gone that far I figured we might as

well shoot the beach scene to round it out, and that was that.

All this time I wasn’t feeling anything particular in one way or the other except every once in a while I’d

get one of those faint dizzy flashes and wonder if there was something wrong with my stomach or if I

could have been a bit careless with my chemicals.

Still, you know, I think the uneasiness was in me all the while.

I tossed her a card and pencil. “Write your name and address and phone,” I told her and made for the

darkroom.

A little later she walked out. I didn’t call any good-byes. I was irked because she hadn’t fussed around or

seemed anxious about her poses, or even thanked me, except for that one smile.

I finished developing the negatives, made some prints, glanced at them, decided they weren’t a great

deal worse than Miss Leon. On an impulse I slipped them in with the pix I was going to take on the

rounds next morning.

By now I’d worked long enough so I was a bit fagged and nervous, but I didn’t dare waste enough

money on liquor to help that. I wasn’t very hungry. I think I went to a cheap movie.

I didn’t think of the Girl at all, except maybe to wonder faintly why in my present womanless state I

hadn’t made a pass at her. She had seemed to belong to a, well, distinctly more approachable social

stratum than Miss Leon. But then of course there were all sorts of arguable reasons for my not doing that.

Next morning I made the rounds. My first step was Munsch’s Brewery. They were looking for a

“Munsch Girl.” Papa Munsch had a sort of affection for me, though he razzed my photography. He had a

good natural judgment about that, too. Fifty years ago he might have been one of the shoestring boys

who made Hollywood.

Right now he was out in the plant pursuing his favorite occupation. He put down the beaded can,

smacked his lips, gabbled something technical to someone about hops, wiped his fat hands on the big

apron he was wearing, and grabbed my thin stack of pix.

He was about halfway through, making noises with his tongue and teeth, when he came to her. I kicked

myself for even having stuck her in.

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