by Kilby Blades
But Levi needed Adam’s head in the game. Photographers didn’t merely snap pictures, they groomed their subjects, did things to manage their emotions and moods. At least Bax was there to keep Levi sane. She stood with her paws on each side of his lap, tongue lolled happily and her fur blowing in the breeze. Levi’s rhythmic petting almost found him dropping his guard.
“Did he take you to City Hall?” Javi’s question to Adam registered somewhere in Levi’s mind. Javi was busy interrogating Adam about all of the locations where Levi had shot him.
“San Francisco City Hall is gorgeous,” Javi went on after Adam answered in the negative. “You’d never guess it’s a municipal building. Anyway, I gotta show you the series Levi took of me. I was hungover as hell. Sweating like a pig. At one point I thought I was gonna throw up all over those pretty marble floors. Levi made me look like a million bucks.”
Adam took his eyes off the road long enough to cast a glance over his shoulder, toward Levi. “Lev shot your portrait, did he?”
Shit.
Levi cut in quickly. “Lev was a henchman in Javi’s dastardly plan. What Javi didn’t mention”—Levi drew out his words—“is that he makes it a habit of spying on his clients. A photo shoot was his cover, and I was his decoy. He was there on a tip that one of his clients was getting married.”
Even from his vantage point in the back seat, Levi could see confusion cross Adam’s face—confusion that was followed by a frown and a deep-voiced “Huh?”
Levi did relax when the topic changed from him shooting Javi to Javi’s crazy client stories. Soon he was even smiling a little. Javi did spin a good yarn.
“Take 37,” Levi called to Adam some minutes later when he saw the sign for the exit. Sonoma County was some of Levi’s favorite country. Its landscape alternated ranch and vineyard and farm. Peppered across these lands were towns with little main streets—some tiny, all quaint, and all with distinct character. California had only been settled for around 250 years.
“I thought we were going to the hotel,” Adam called back.
“Uh-uh.” Levi collected Bax in his arms. “We’re gonna take some shots at the ranch.”
Levi spent the next few minutes navigating: a few miles on 37, then a turn onto Lakeville Highway. From there they would turn off onto a private road.
“What’s the ranch?” Darius asked somewhere on 37.
“One of the sustainable farms that supplies the hotels,” Levi clarified. “They’ve got, what… forty now?… all over the world.”
Adam took his eyes off the road long enough to shoot Levi a surprised look in the rearview mirror. “We just opened our thirty-eighth.”
Ben Kerr had known how to build extraordinary hotels. What he hadn’t known was how to build in a way that didn’t reap destruction in the places they built. Ben had never given Adam the credit he deserved for making the hotels sustainable.
Levi hadn’t ever been to the ranch, but his memory for detail was long. He remembered seeing pictures from when the site had first opened. He’d dug on the Kerr Hospitality website’s social responsibility section and found more recent images. Before they even drove onto the property, there were at least twenty sites Levi knew he wanted to shoot.
Today, he had given Adam a dress code: cowboy boots and jeans. Levi had thought a cowboy hat would be a little much, but Adam had somehow procured one and packed it in the trunk. After driving beneath wrought iron gates and riding down the long dirt road, they arrived at a main building Levi had seen online. Hazel had prearranged the tour. They greeted Christian, the ranch manager. Adam put on his hat, which Levi had to admit really worked, and the group began to walk.
True to his warning to Darius and Javi, Levi put them to work. They followed along the whole time, holding equipment and helping Levi switch between cameras. Levi was sweating, because this was hard work, regardless of what people thought. Photography was physical and unrelenting.
It was then that Levi got into his zone—became halfway deaf to sounds—experienced the world only through his viewfinder. It was so precise—so crisp—the detail he could capture when he got the focus just right. Even in high afternoon light, something magical happened in Sonoma with the canopy of sky and cloud. Taking shot after shot, Levi’s brain saw much more than the simple images that his physical eye could see. His mind’s eye saw the finished products on the pages of a magazine.
Adam standing in a meadow, patting a dairy cow. Adam in a barn letting a goat eat out of his hand. Adam walking down a dirt road next to a fence with Baxter trotting along at his side. Adam laughing with tiny piglets tucked under each arm. And those were just the animals. Levi had captured Adam in a fallow field, on bent knee, testing the texture of the soil. He’d gotten him sitting on a tractor. He’d gotten him with a piece of honeycomb, licking a thick, errant trail of the elixir off the heel of his hand, and with his arm around ranch manager Christian.
And none of it looked staged. Adam didn’t pose and Levi didn’t give him a single word of direction. Nothing about Adam was fake or put-on. Levi knew, even now, weeks before he’d even had time to process and view the photos, that his portfolio of Adam would be his pièce de résistance.
Before Levi knew it, the sun was falling low in the sky. In an hour—maybe an hour and fifteen—the sun would set. They had to get to the hotel, because sunset offered a different kind of shooting, and because Levi had arranged to have certain spaces be available at certain times, to be clear of guests.
On their way back to the car, Adam fell into step with Levi, slid an arm behind his back, and held Levi’s waist as they walked. No longer behind the camera, Levi was once again able to appreciate the smells and sounds of the farm.
“This was your idea, wasn’t it?” Adam threw him a little smile.
Levi nodded. “It was.”
“I can’t believe you remembered all that shit about the farm. We haven’t talked about it in, like, a thousand years.”
“You talk a lot. I’m forced to listen,” Levi deadpanned.
Adam chuckled. “Seriously, I needed this. I couldn’t have thought of a better way to spend the afternoon.”
Me neither, Levi thought but didn’t respond, thinking again of why he’d never shot Adam. Photographing someone was an intimate experience. It had only been four days and Levi was already sucked in.
“You get the shots you needed?” Adam asked as an early-evening breeze stirred the grass on the fields and tickled Levi’s hair.
Levi slid his own arm around Adam’s waist. “Yeah.”
Chapter Thirteen: The Vineyards
FIVE o’clock in the morning was too early for Darius and Javi, a fact for which Levi was grateful. Sunrise was the very best time to take any kind of photos that involved vineyards and vines. The day before had required stamina. They hadn’t wrapped outdoor shooting until eight forty-five the night before.
Adam had graciously insisted that Darius and Javi go off duty and enjoy the facilities. In addition to the family apartments, there was a secret VIP suite that regular people couldn’t book. It was a sort of emergency suite—a way for the hotel to accommodate top-tier guests, even if other rooms were sold out.
When Darius and Javi had seen the suite, both of them had been speechless—which took the wide-eyed and openmouthed they’d been just from walking into the lobby up a notch. Hours earlier they’d been greeted with fragrant steamed towels the moment they’d stepped out of the car, and welcome cocktails as they’d walked into the lobby.
The thing about wine country hotels was that few were set up as resorts. Most tourists came for the tasting. Hotels offered few amenities, figuring that guests would spend their time out tasting wine. The Kerr resorts operated under a different philosophy: no matter where in the world you were, they treated the resort as if it were the main attraction. They made it so that no matter what was outside their walls, you never wanted to leave.
This one was built in the style of a Tuscan villa—all stonework and terra cotta bricks
and hipped roofs. Behind the main building, an elaborate series of pools led to a stunning landmark: aboveground wine caves built into a hill.
By nine thirty the night before, Darius and Javi had been long gone—were probably in a Jacuzzi somewhere or getting a massage. Levi and Adam hadn’t finished until eleven. They’d had food delivered to the family apartment, and had fallen asleep watching a movie on Adam’s bed.
“Your friends are nice,” Adam commented from the passenger seat in the predawn darkness, a little loudly, because so was the car.
This time Levi drove—he knew the area better than Adam, who nursed coffee from a paper cup in the passenger seat. Baxter stood in quiet, wakeful attention in the back.
“Yeah, well….” Levi trailed off. “We transplants gotta stick together. They’ve only been here for, like, six months longer than me. Darius is from Philly and Javi’s from—”
“—Puerto Rico. I know,” Adam finished.
Of course Adam knew where Levi’s friends were from. It wouldn’t have taken Adam long to draw out their whole life stories. It could have been worse—there could have been friction among his friends.
“You know Javi’s gonna try to set you up, right? And you won’t even see it coming.”
“I already told him. I’m taking a break.”
What else did you tell him? Levi wanted to know, but he bit his tongue from asking, still thinking about how freely Adam had shared things about himself the day before. But mentioning it out loud would reveal his every insecurity. Adam would hear it and call him out.
“You guys seem close,” Adam prodded. “Why didn’t you invite them to come out? I’ve been here for, like, a week.”
“Because we’re working?” When Levi said it, it sounded more like a question than an answer. “Besides, you know the art thing really isn’t your scene.”
“What do you mean?” Adam defended. “I’m cultured.”
Levi took his eyes off the empty road long enough to give his friend a look. “You don’t even like art. If you did, you wouldn’t make me pick all of yours out for you.”
“I ask you,” Adam came back with emphasis, “because you understand me and you have good taste. I get calls from a dozen art shoppers a year. I could just hire someone if all I wanted was to fill my walls.”
“So what’s your favorite piece?” Levi quizzed.
“Carnival of Mirrors,” Adam answered easily, his voice back to its normal calm. “It’s the only reason I ever go into my living room. Sometimes I just sit there looking at it, you know… cracking open a bottle of wine….”
Levi was astonished that Adam knew the name and downright floored that he ever took the time to stop and look at it. It was Levi’s favorite too—a shadow portrait of two people with their backs to one another, with depictions of their inner selves inside their bodies facing one another. Levi still thought about that one sometimes.
“I didn’t know you spent any nights at home,” Levi quipped halfheartedly instead of telling Adam any of that.
They were silent again until they reached their destination. The Kerr Group owned acres surrounding the hotel, and they leased the lands to winemakers. The fields were all planted with vines.
On this end of the property, Levi would get eastern exposure—he could get shots of Adam in the vineyards as the sun rose behind him. The Kerr Group didn’t produce wine from these vineyards. Other Kerr properties around the world did. Photos taken there would be emblematic of other parts of the business.
“Look at me,” Levi commanded gently after he’d done some test shots for light—or, at least, for the light of the next five minutes. It was hard to take candid shots in vineyards unless your subject had a real task. That meant he had to shoot head-on—with Adam looking at the camera. Head-on shots could go one of two ways: self-conscious types never looked completely comfortable, and the photos missed the mark. The killer shots were reserved for the raw and unashamed.
This was it. This was why Levi had never let himself openly shoot Adam. Because of the inevitability of moments like this—moments when it was just him and Adam. There was a way Adam looked at him when they were alone—a way that Levi had once captured—that would make for shots so raw, Adam would see them and know Levi’s secret.
Even before there’d been a need to hide folders full of stolen photographs of Adam that concealed this very secret, there had been just one. It had been taken in Central Park on an afternoon so warm, the carpet of orange leaves had forgotten it was fall. Adam sat on a park bench sidesaddle and angled toward Levi. For an hour Levi had been messing with the settings on his camera and taking random pictures as he and Adam talked.
Then it happened, for the very first time: Adam turned and looked straight at Levi with a softness that he’d never seen before. At the very same moment, the sun peeking through the trees to shadow the leaves beyond shone off them just so. At the very same time, no one else was walking or running in the background. There were no cyclists or picnickers or trash cans or dogs. At the exact same time, the tree canopy resembled a tunnel, the sunfall in the distance giving the end of the tunnel a glow.
That’s the shot, something in Levi’s mind had said. It was the first time he’d heard that voice—the voice that told him he had only an instant to take the picture. Without pausing or checking his settings, Levi raised his camera and captured an image that would be forever seared into his mind: Adam, utterly beautiful, utterly trusting, and utterly his. That was how the photo had felt.
Levi had run home to develop the film, certain even without seeing it that it had bisected his life. Holding it in his hand made it real. Before that shot, photography had only been a hobby and Adam had only been a friend.
“Look at me,” Levi said again. Adam had heeded him the first time. Levi had gotten some shots, then Adam had looked away. Adam was silent but not still—he moved; he thought; he imagined; he was in the moment of being there. Adam understood this inherently, better than some professional models: how to give the moment he was experiencing away.
Now it was Levi who moved to circumnavigate Adam. He wanted the rising light to create a glow on Adam’s skin. He wanted the dimensions of gold in Adam’s eyes. He wanted to get down low so he could play with contrast and light—Adam’s hulking form against the sky.
“Look at me,” Levi said again, and each time Adam did. Then Levi stopped having to say it because Adam stopped looking away. Then it was both of them—Levi circling Adam and Adam circling him and all of it happening without any direction at all. And it was just like it had been that first time, with that voice ringing through his head.
That’s the shot.
That’s the shot.
That’s the shot.
LEVI’S noontime nap did a bit to chase away his fatigue but precious little to undo his sense of irritation and overwhelm, especially after he’d spent the late morning catching up on other things. Their schedule was punishing, with Hazel still behind on logistics. A house he really wanted to see had a first-call showing he couldn’t make. And he’d awakened to an empty suite and what felt like hours of work in front of him, only to walk out onto the balcony to see Adam by the pool, laughing it up with his friends.
And he really couldn’t let himself think about that morning’s shoot, or about the way Adam had been afterward, in the vineyard. Adam had stopped him from packing his camera bag, taken his hand, turned him around, and hugged him from behind, murmuring in his ear that his equipment could wait—but what couldn’t wait was watching the sunrise. Levi hated himself for how pliant he’d been—how high he’d still been from getting his shots and how easily he’d melted into Adam.
The contrast forced Levi to admit he was letting Adam get under his skin—skin that already prickled from a dozen other irritants. Levi had learned from Hazel that afternoon that Kerr Hospitality had sent a wire transfer of a six-figure sum to cover his nonexistent fee. He couldn’t reconcile the Adam who was magic and love and kindness and fun and everything good in th
e world with the Adam who charmed his friends and infuriated him.
Levi’s foul mood carried him all the way to dinner. He did, indeed, spend the time after his nap working. While his friends looked relaxed and sun-kissed from sitting by the pool, Levi remained tightly wound. It grated on Levi to play the part of the common link—to pretend he was having a good time.
To add insult to injury, he sat next to Adam, who was as convivial as ever and who did his flattery thing again. Levi had gritted his teeth through half an hour of Adam’s wild exaggerations: claims that Levi’s sharp artistic eye had a major influence on many of the newer hotel’s designs—laughable claims, because Levi was a portrait photographer. From there Adam launched into a story about how, that year, he’d named a drink after Levi—called the Levi—that was on every menu of resort destinations worldwide. It was the other reason why Levi preferred to hang out with Adam one-on-one. Levi didn’t like when Adam’s big talk extended to him.
The conversation was neutral until it wasn’t. Javi and Darius were trying to explain San Francisco to Adam—giving color around the neighborhoods and how everything was laid out. From one second to the next, it went from where to get the best street food to more dangerous territory—things that Levi hadn’t revealed to Adam.
“Have you been to Levi’s space yet?” an innocent Javi asked.
“What space?”
“On Sixteenth,” Javi said around a mouthful of sushi. “Where his gallery will go.”
Adam swung his gaze from Javi, his smile fading just a little as he settled on Levi, awaiting an explanation.
“Well… technically the address is Sixteenth,” Javi continued on, “but it’s on the corner, so it feels like it’s really on Castro.”
Adam looked back at Javi again and smiled one of his charming smiles. “We’ve been busy shooting for my media tour. I’m sure that’s why I haven’t seen it. Tell me about it.”