could get the right software. I had already planned to drop the camera off at Marks Camera Repair to make sure everything was working before I took full possession. Deiter Marks was one the best camera gurus in the country. His shop wasnât even open to the general public. He catered almost exclusively to professional photographers, numbering the top pros among his select clientele.
I shut down my computer, took a quick shower, checked the door and climbed into bed. I always slept commando. It was only a little after midnightâan early night for me. I lay in bed and watched the lights play across the ceiling and the brick wall, getting the feel of the place. It was my first night there.
My apartment was the largest of six in an old converted bakery on Summer Avenue, west of Highland. All the apartments were on the second floor, with four shop bays fronting the street below, including a launderette and a tae kwon do school. My place was above a mercado on the corner. It came furnished, two rooms plus a bathroom. A Formica dinette table with four cheap wooden chairs for a kitchen, a sagging couch divided the room into a den. Avocado-green electric stove, equally ancient fridge, a drawer full of old silverware and knives, including one butcher knife sharp enough to split a hare, wood-frame bed and a dresser. Bathroom not much bigger than a linen closet. There was a big bay window in the bedroom that faced the traffic light and the Methodist church across the street.
The industrial gothic interior of the apartment begged to be photographed, but what it really needed was a model to bring out its character. It needed someone sitting at the cheap dinette table or staring out the bedroom window, dressed in panties with a white tube top and her hair wrapped in a towel, cigarette smoke curling like a rough hand across her cheek as she listened to the sinoidal honking of some distant lovesick saxophone and the tearing silk sound of wet tires on wet pavement, while George Clooney narrated the depths of her loneliness and the hard ugly carapace of horn into which she retreated, nightly, to keep from tying a rope around the closet rod and kicking over the chair.
Sure.
The Leica sat on the dresser, its dark round camera eye pointed at me as I lay in bed. I remembered lying on another bed in another town and another time while my college photography professor took roll after roll of black-and-white nudes with his Leica MP. Only 402 MPs were ever made. Being photographed by an MP was like being painted by Raphael.
Raphael had lied about his divorce.
I couldnât sleep in a room with the door open. I got up and locked the door, then wished Iâd remembered to buy cigarettes. It would have been nice to lie in bed and watch the smoke hang lazily in the Christmas greens and reds of the traffic light outside my window. I liked to smoke in bed. When I was in high school and my parents were out of town, I used to smoke in their bed and watch The Tonight Show and fall asleep with the television on because I didnât like being alone in our old house on Schoonover Street. I didnât like being alone pretty much anywhere.
But I was tired and I had gone two nights now without a fix and no withdrawals. It was a good sign. I rolled over and pulled the covers up to my chin and tried not to think about the dead.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
I woke up about oh-dark-thirty with a woman sitting on the end of my bed. She had short, straight dark hair and no face above the lips. Her mouth was moving as though she was trying to say something but couldnât get the words out. I rolled over and sat up and there was nobody there.
I grabbed my brotherâs baseball bat from under the bed. The weather had changed again and it had stopped raining. The bedroom was cold and the window panes fogged over, tinted a solid sheet of red from the traffic light. The bedroom door was still locked and there was no closet for anybody to hide in,
I shut down my computer, took a quick shower, checked the door and climbed into bed. I always slept commando. It was only a little after midnightâan early night for me. I lay in bed and watched the lights play across the ceiling and the brick wall, getting the feel of the place. It was my first night there.
My apartment was the largest of six in an old converted bakery on Summer Avenue, west of Highland. All the apartments were on the second floor, with four shop bays fronting the street below, including a launderette and a tae kwon do school. My place was above a mercado on the corner. It came furnished, two rooms plus a bathroom. A Formica dinette table with four cheap wooden chairs for a kitchen, a sagging couch divided the room into a den. Avocado-green electric stove, equally ancient fridge, a drawer full of old silverware and knives, including one butcher knife sharp enough to split a hare, wood-frame bed and a dresser. Bathroom not much bigger than a linen closet. There was a big bay window in the bedroom that faced the traffic light and the Methodist church across the street.
The industrial gothic interior of the apartment begged to be photographed, but what it really needed was a model to bring out its character. It needed someone sitting at the cheap dinette table or staring out the bedroom window, dressed in panties with a white tube top and her hair wrapped in a towel, cigarette smoke curling like a rough hand across her cheek as she listened to the sinoidal honking of some distant lovesick saxophone and the tearing silk sound of wet tires on wet pavement, while George Clooney narrated the depths of her loneliness and the hard ugly carapace of horn into which she retreated, nightly, to keep from tying a rope around the closet rod and kicking over the chair.
Sure.
The Leica sat on the dresser, its dark round camera eye pointed at me as I lay in bed. I remembered lying on another bed in another town and another time while my college photography professor took roll after roll of black-and-white nudes with his Leica MP. Only 402 MPs were ever made. Being photographed by an MP was like being painted by Raphael.
Raphael had lied about his divorce.
I couldnât sleep in a room with the door open. I got up and locked the door, then wished Iâd remembered to buy cigarettes. It would have been nice to lie in bed and watch the smoke hang lazily in the Christmas greens and reds of the traffic light outside my window. I liked to smoke in bed. When I was in high school and my parents were out of town, I used to smoke in their bed and watch The Tonight Show and fall asleep with the television on because I didnât like being alone in our old house on Schoonover Street. I didnât like being alone pretty much anywhere.
But I was tired and I had gone two nights now without a fix and no withdrawals. It was a good sign. I rolled over and pulled the covers up to my chin and tried not to think about the dead.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
I woke up about oh-dark-thirty with a woman sitting on the end of my bed. She had short, straight dark hair and no face above the lips. Her mouth was moving as though she was trying to say something but couldnât get the words out. I rolled over and sat up and there was nobody there.
I grabbed my brotherâs baseball bat from under the bed. The weather had changed again and it had stopped raining. The bedroom was cold and the window panes fogged over, tinted a solid sheet of red from the traffic light. The bedroom door was still locked and there was no closet for anybody to hide in,
Similar Books
