bucket and started toward the back of the room. He turned a corner and disappeared into the stacks, his voice trailing behind him like a limp, lifeless tail: “But that was outside, back when it mattered.”
I glanced over at Sabine, and she just shrugged. Then I hitched my backpack against my shoulder and followed Cob Gilles into the maze of bookcases.
Sabine stayed behind. The last I saw, she was walking the perimeter of the room, running her hand along the wall as she slowly surveyed the photographer’s loft.
There was no order to the shelving, at least none that I could see. Just books and folders, filling up every inch of space on the shelves and piled into tall stacks on the floor. There were photography books mixed in with the unlabeled notebook spines, and I recognized a couple from my collection back home.
I pulled a folder from a shelf at random. Inside, I found a six-by-eight-inch print pasted to the first page. It was a black-and-white portrait, framed so that the subject’s face was missing; there was an ear and the nape of a neck in the center of the frame, but the picture ended midcheekbone. A square of flower-print wallpaper was visible behind the subject, taking up the entire left half of the photograph. Somebody had taken a red pen and drawn a circle around the wallpaper. An arrow extended beyond the frame to the empty space beneath the image. The word
The last page had a head-on view of the anonymous model positioned in front of that same swatch of flower-print wallpaper. The subject’s entire face had been scribbled out, lost beneath the tip of a permanent marker. And the pen had been thorough; there was absolutely nothing visible beneath the thick wash of red ink. I couldn’t even tell if the subject was male or female.
I slid the book back into place and started looking for the photographer.
After the first line of bookcases, I turned right and found myself confronted with three more pathways. The way out wasn’t obvious—down each path I could see nothing but row after row of cluttered shelving—and the photographer was nowhere to be seen.
“Mr. Gilles?” I called out hesitantly.
“This way.” His words drifted back into the maze, a distant grunt muffled by wood and paper. I followed his voice down the left-hand path and, after one more turn, emerged from the far side of the makeshift library.
I found the photographer seated at a mahogany desk with his back against a line of boarded-up windows. What once must have been a spectacular view of the city had been fitted with precisely cut pieces of plywood, blocking out every hint of the outside world. Day or night, I’m sure the apartment would have looked exactly the same: lit from inside, completely divorced from the weather and the sun, from the city and the world.
There was an array of camera equipment spread across the desk before him. And between his hands, Mama Cass’s football had been ripped open to reveal batteries and a cracked-open bottle of pills.
“I saw your camera,” Cob Gilles said. “You’re a photographer, right? You’re here on assignment?”
“I’m here on my own,” I said. “I want to report on what’s happening.”
The photographer smiled and nodded, and his eyes explored my face. I got the impression that he was judging me as I stood there in front of his desk, that he was looking for something in my expression. Something important. A sign, maybe. A twitch. A subtle hint of understanding.
He was trying to figure out if I was worthy. He was trying to figure out if he should take me seriously.
Finally, he leaned back in his chair and shook his head, passing judgment. “You’re just a kid. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
I took a step closer. “Fuck that,” I said. I could feel my face growing flush with blood, and this time it wasn’t just a fever making me hot. “I’m doing just fine. I’m getting my shots. I’m holding it together.” I cast an accusing look around his apartment; the place was a sty, an absolute pit. Then I looked pointedly at the constellation of pills spread out across his desk.
Who was he to judge?
He nodded and sighed. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Fuck it. Whatever. No lectures.”
He reached beneath his desk and produced a can of Budweiser. He popped the top, then spent a couple of seconds staring blankly at his desk, like he was waiting for something to happen, like he was waiting for his eyes to come into focus or for one of his photographic subjects to settle into a pose. Then he swept some pills into his hand and downed them quickly with half the can of beer.
“I guess Sharon wanted us to meet,” the photographer said. “Mama Cass, playing the motherfucking matchmaker. I wonder what she was expecting. Did she think I’d choose you as an apprentice? Or … or …
“No,” I said, and I offered him a sympathetic smile. “I’m Dean. I’m not a message. I’m not ‘photography boy.’ Just Dean.” Despite his abrupt dismissal—of me, of my talent—I couldn’t stay mad at him. The man was quite obviously damaged. He was somebody to be pitied, not hated.
The photographer laughed and shook his head. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Dean. It’s a real motherfucking pleasure.”
Cob Gilles again offered me a beer, and this time I accepted. I sat down in front of his desk and raised my can in a wordless salute.
Then we settled into a thick silence.
The photographer’s eyes roamed about the room for nearly a minute before finally settling on an unremarkable spot halfway up the nearest wall. I studied him closely as he fixated on that spot. I watched as he slumped bonelessly into his chair. I watched as his eyes lost focus, going dull like clouded glass. He didn’t seem to mind my scrutiny.
“Which of your photos would I know?” I asked, breaking the silence. “What made you famous?”
His eyes snapped into focus. “I was—” He cleared his throat. “I was embedded with the army during the first Iraq war. Desert Storm. I was there for the start of the ground assault, and I got photographs of Iraqis surrendering. People liked those pictures. They liked them a lot.” He stood up unsteadily and made his way over to a stack of framed pictures propped up against the boarded-over windows. After shuffling through a half dozen, he came up with a three-foot-by-three-foot frame. “Here. It’s the fucking pinnacle of my career.”
The left half of the frame was taken up with a single photo: an Iraqi soldier walking toward the camera. The soldier’s arms were raised, and a white scarf fluttered from his left hand. There was an automatic rifle lying in the sand at his feet. The soldier was smiling, and there were tears running down his face. He looked positively jubilant. The entire scene was bathed in warm, golden sunlight, a slice of the world dipped in amber.
Next to the picture, mounted on the right side of the frame, was an oversized gold medallion.
“This … this is a Pulitzer Prize,” I said. I wasn’t asking a question or voicing surprise. The words just fell out of my mouth, without emotion or real understanding.
Cob Gilles grunted. “Yeah, well, the photo’s a fucking joke. The guy pretty much collapsed right after I took that shot. He had a fever of 103 and a wound on his leg that was going gangrenous. He was mewling in pain as he walked—just, just fucking mewling, like a pistol-whipped kitten. And that expression in the picture? I swear to God, it was never there. It must have been a freak twist of the mouth in between sobs of pain.”
He grabbed the photo from my hands and tossed it to the floor, spinning it back toward the other framed photographs. There was a loud
“I was so proud of that shot. So fucking proud! And it wasn’t even real.” He gestured toward the shattered frame. “That’s not what was going on over there, in the desert. It was a fluke. Nothing more.”
“Does it matter?” I asked. “You got the shot. You were in the right place at the right time. The soldier’s expression was there, and you caught it. And the emotion … it resonates. So what if it was a fluke?”
“You
