Safelight

by Shannon Burke

  “I admitted it in the first place.”

  “You gotta remember. The way you’re feeling now . . . the way I can tell you’re feeling. That ain’t gonna last. And when it’s done with you’ll think in a different way. You gotta be careful.”

  “I was careful.”

  “I wonder,” Hock said. “You even give a fuck?”

  I didn’t bother answering. Hock looked out at the snow. He seemed angry at first, but his expression softened gradually. The snow melted near the edge of the bays and there were puddles in the low points. Hock wasn’t anyone to give lectures. He just crossed his arms, motioned with his cigarette.

  “It’s almost pretty,” he said. “The station almost looks pretty.”

  A gray shape emerged from the station. It was Burnett again. He stood beneath the loading dock, stamping his feet. He bellowed across the empty concrete bay.

  “You ready, Frank?”

  “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  “They’re askin for you. Wanna know if you’re ready.”

  “I’ll be in,” I said. “In a minute.”

  Burnett put his hood back on and went into the snow. We saw the door to the station open, a momentary flash of warm light, and then it swung shut. Hock tossed his cigarette into a puddle. He talked without looking at me.

  “That other thing,” he said. “It’s coming.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  “You in?”

  I only hesitated a moment.

  “Sure.”

  “You understand what I’m asking?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Humor me. Tell me. What am I asking?”

  “You wanna know if I’m serious about it. I’m saying I am. I understand what you’re asking. I’m acknowledging that. I’m agreeing. I’m in.”

  Hock looked like he wanted to say something more, but didn’t know how. After a moment he said, “Is it that you need money? Is that why you’re in?”

  “No.”

  “You hoping . . . what? To take a vacation? Buy something?”

  “No.”

  “Why then?”

  I shrugged.

  “Why the fuck not?”

  I could see this answer bothered him. He wanted me to give him a real reason. He wanted to understand. It would make it easier for him to trust me.

  “Frank,” he said. “You’re a very strange person.”

  34

  Footsteps approached and then Emily stood in the doorway of her bedroom with Myra behind her. I waved from the futon where I was looking at contact sheets. Myra scanned the room slowly—clothes everywhere, tapes without cases, shoes, newspapers.

  “She cleaned up for you, I guess.”

  “Yeah yeah.”

  “Frank doesn’t care,” she said. “Right, Frank?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “You ready?” Myra asked.

  “I guess I better be.”

  The three of us walked to the street, got a cab, and rode to Coles Gymnasium. While Emily and Myra were in the locker room I studied the tournament draw. There were thirty-two entries, with the national rankings next to the names. Myra’s ranking was seventh. Emily’s was fifteenth.

  I sat up in the wooden stands and watched Myra fence in the first round. She came out, slid her mask on, saluted her opponent, and then systematically, seemingly without effort, dismantled her opponent’s game. When she attacked it was quickly. But most often she kept her distance, waiting. Patient, precise, and without overt emotion, she won easily. Afterward Myra sat next to me in the stands and we watched Emily’s first bout. On the first exchange Emily attacked, parried, and scored a touch.

  “She’s better than she was,” Myra said. “More in control of herself.”

  “More?”

  “Yes,” Myra said. “You should’ve seen her before, Frank.”

  Though she had a little difficulty at the beginning, Emily won her first round by two points. When she was finished she shook her opponent’s hand, then turned and waved to us. Myra seemed genuinely happy for her, which surprised me.

  Myra passed through three rounds easily, and so did Emily. Emily’s opponent for the semifinals was a lithe Russian woman who’d once been the Soviet Junior Champion. She did not seem very impressed with Emily, and I thought Emily looked nervous. Emily got into position against her and attacked immediately. She lost the first point. She lost the second. On the third Emily lunged desperately, and the Russian twisted, scoring. Emily swatted herself on the head. I could not see her face, but by her jerky movements, by her rigid posture, I could tell she was frightened. She attacked again, and lost another point. Myra ambled over, sat next to me, stretched her feet out placidly, and said, “She’s attacking too much. When she’s afraid, she gets angry, so she attacks.”

  “You should tell her that.”

  “I’ve told her. Everyone does.”

  The Russian took her glove off and tied up her hair, calmly disdainful. She got into position. She scored another touch. Systematically, point by point, the Russian tore apart Emily’s defenses. The bout was over in seven minutes, with Emily losing fifteen to six. Afterward, Emily stood near some barred windows, holding her mask. She looked frustrated. But, five minutes later, when she walked back, she was cheerful, offhand. The final bout started and we watched it together. Myra won handily, and, as we walked home, Emily said, “She’s a great fencer.”

  “I saw that.”

  “She always does well. She knows just what to do. Always does the right thing. Never panics. Never ruffled. Never an idiot. Not like me.” She said all this with admiration. “You were watching with her. Did she say anything about me?”

  “She said you were attacking too much in the last bout.”

  “She said that?”

  “Yes. She said you were scared. And when you get scared you attack.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s right about that. I make mistakes.” Emily tapped me on the side. “What else did she say?”

  “She said you were getting better.”

  “She said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Emily looked happier than she had all day.

  “I am getting better. I’m glad she said so.”

  I could see she wanted to think this. I wondered if it was true.

  35

  Hock placed his cup on the hood of the Buick.

  “So let’s see it, Frank.”

  “Aw shit,” Rogero said.

  Geroux raised his cup.

  “You better drink up.”

  There was a new stack of prints in my bag. Hock waited patiently while I selected photographs from the stack. He was my most discerning critic at the station and I wanted to show him the best. I took out a shot of a man with a mouthful of maggots. A close-up of the man’s face. A shot of Burnett hovering over the man. And a rookie cop with a hand over his mouth. I placed the four shots in a row on the hood of the Buick. Hock examined them one by one, holding them into the light. He looked at the shot of the cop with the hand over his mouth, eyes wide above it. I decided that was my favorite, too.

  Burnett said, “There’s your brother.”

  Norman was walking down 136th Street. It was midnight. I had no idea what he was doing at the hospital so late, but it wasn’t surprising. He worked about a hundred hours a week and was always on call. He even volunteered for call. He said it was because he was in debt from medical school and needed the money, but I did not remember him working so much before Dad died. We were deep in the loading bay. Norman would not have seen us if no one said anything.

  “Hey, Doc!” Burnett called.

  “Don’t bring him over here.”

  “He’s your brother,” Burnett said. He grinned, turning to the street, and called to him again. Norman changed directions and walked over.

  “Hey,” he said to Burnett. “Hey, Frank. Hey, guys,” he said to Hock, Rogero, and Geroux. No one said anything. They all just looked
at him. Hock toasted Norman with his cup.

  “Look what your brother did,” Burnett said, motioning to the photographs.

  “Go ahead,” Hock said. “Take a look. That’s the real deal.”

  I wanted Norman to take the shot of the policeman, but Burnett held the close-up of the head covered in maggots. Norman took the print, studied it.

  “Whattaya think?” Burnett said.

  “I think it’s one-note,” he said. “I think Frank’s got talent, but his pictures are all gratuitous. Purposefully ugly. One-note. I think he could do better.”

  “Have a fucken drink,” Rogero said. “Look at’m then.”

  Geroux poured a half cupful of 150-proof Jamaican rum and Burnett took the cup and held it out to Norman.

  “Drink some of this, Doc.”

  Everyone was looking at Norman. He took the cup and, without hesitating, downed it in one gulp. They were all impressed.

  “Jesus,” Geroux said.

  “That’s the doc I want,” Rogero said.

  Norman caught my eye.

  “I’ll see you later, Frank.”

  “Where you goin, Doc?” Rogero called.

  “Emergency surgery,” he said, and they all started laughing.

  Someone threw a beer can at his back, but in good nature.

  “Never seen a doc drink like that,” Rogero said after he left.

  “Is he a complete asshole or is he the coolest doc in the hospital?” Geroux asked.

  “He was a bully growing up,” I said.

  “A bully. That’s too bad,” Burnett said. “He pick on you?”

  Everyone was laughing. I started laughing, too.

  “That just makes me like him,” Burnett said. “I was a bully.”

  “Yeah, I was a bully, too,” Rogero said.

  Everyone was making jokes. We all kept on drinking. I took the prints and straightened them on the hood. Hock watched me.

  “They’re good shots,” Hock said.

  “Ah,” I waved a hand, dismissively.

  “He may be right about other things. But he’s wrong about that.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just put the prints in my pack and zipped it up.

  36

  There was a view of antennas, pipe chimneys, black water towers, and the East River. The tar on the roof was covered with pebbles. I placed my hand on the little wall and peered over the edge. Six stories down, Emily stepped around the courtyard in her white fencing outfit. She’d strapped one of the heavy pads to a tree trunk and very, very slowly was going through the motions of fencing. Step, knee bending inward, foil moving through the air and catching the white pad, then pulling back. From above, her white figure moving slowly against the dark bricks was beautiful to me. Once she paused in her solitary workout, one hand resting on the trunk of a tree. Some thought passing. Then she started up again. I raised my camera. I watched her for a long time through the viewfinder. I let it fall without taking a picture.

  37

  A windy January afternoon, that whistling sound at windows, and in the darkroom Emily went through old photographs while I worked on some new ones, explaining what everything was—the enlarger, the photographic paper, the fixer, the wash, the safelight. I explained why I’d crop the prints one way or another, or over- or underexpose, what effect I was going for. Behind me, the whole time, I heard the regular slip slip slip as she went through my old photographs—a three-week-old hanging, a starved baby, a jumper impaled on a fence, the Lenox Avenue speed bump. Once, when I looked back, she was lying with her head propped up on a folded blanket, watching me.

  “Why doesn’t the red light hurt the paper?” she asked.

  “Because of the wavelength. It’s weak light. It doesn’t cause a reaction.”

  She nodded. Went back to the photographs. She came across a Polaroid of Hock, Burnett, and me in the loading bay.

  “I see your partner,” she said.

  “Burnett.”

  “Who’s the other?”

  “Hock.”

  “Who?”

  “Gil Hock. He’s my best friend at the station.”

  Curly hair, unshaven, wrinkled uniform. He was drunk in the photo.

  “I wouldn’t think you’d be friends with him. He looks like a thug.”

  “That’s practically a recommendation.”

  I told her how he solved disputes. Knew how to get around rules. Always had some scheme.

  “He’s made it easy for me,” I said. “He protects me a little.”

  “Protects?”

  “College boy. You know. The others accept me because he does. He likes the pictures. He appreciates them.”

  I went on with my work. Time passed. Maybe an hour. With no clock, no phone, and sheltered from everything, it was easy to lose track. Occasionally the distant sound of the wind whistled outside. Emily found a Polaroid of Norman and me. He wore a Texas Rangers baseball cap and cowboy boots. I stood beside him, frowning, my hair in my eyes, wearing a thrift-store button-down, ratty jeans, and old, waffle-bottom black shoes. An uncle had taken the photograph. It was from two years before.

  “That’s your brother?”

  “That’s him.”

  She looked closely. His expression was serious, even severe.

  “Did you tell him about me?” she asked.

  “Not yet.”

  She dropped her head. I could see she thought this meant something.

  “It’s not that I’m embarrassed, Emily. I don’t tell him anything. We don’t get along.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s kind of bossy. You can see that in the picture. When he was a kid he’d gather everyone together and then do twenty chin-ups or something. Show off for the crowd. Want everyone to clap for him. And when people didn’t like him, he’d get pissed off. Now he’s the bossy surgeon. Yells at the nurses. They all think he’s an asshole. And he hates my pictures.”

  “I’d like to meet him.”

  “I’m closer to the people at the station than I am to him. You can meet them.”

  She frowned and turned away.

  “It’d be nice to meet your brother,” she said.

  38

  A cop met us out front. He turned his flashlight on the concrete where four dots of dark blood made the corners of an uneven parallelogram.

  “He’s gone round back,” the cop said.

  Burnett and I ducked into a low concrete passageway, following a trail of blood, a penny-sized drop every three feet or so, some of the drops stepped on and smeared with lines across them from the ridged soles of city-issue police shoes.

  “Is it a stabbing?” I asked.

  “Shooting,” he said.

  “How is he?”

  The cop shrugged.

  “Is he breathing?”

  “Oh, he’s breathing all right,” the cop said.

  The passageway opened onto a concrete courtyard. There were two cops along a wood fence grown over with some kind of ivy. One of the cops held a small, flat-edged handgun near his waist, and was playing with the safety, pointing it at a square of weedy dirt, the one saying, “You do it like this. No! Like this. And don’t pull the fucking trigger.” Another cop held his flashlight with a raised shoulder, looking into a wallet. Four other cops stood over a scrawny fifteenyear-old Puerto Rican kid wearing only blue jeans and sneakers, crouched against the building, holding his shirt around his left forearm. One of the cops was saying, “You don’t remember who did it? No fucking recollection?”

  I set my bag down.

  “What happened?”

  “He’s shot.”

  “Where?”

  The cop shrugged.

  “How the fuck am I supposed to know? Pretends he don’t speak English. Don’t understand a word I’m saying, right?” The kid looked at him blankly. The cop turned away and I bent to the kid. “What’s wrong?” I asked, and he glanced at the cop before he spoke. “I shot I fucking shot man I shot.”

  “Where?” I asked.
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  He held his left arm up to show where his shirt was wound round the forearm, his right hand gripping the shirt in place.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  “I shot I shot.”

  “I understand. Is that the only one? Are you just shot once?”

  “I fucking shot.”

  “Just that once. No others?”

  “No no.”

  Burnett stepped up.

  “Well, let’s see it,” he said.

  Burnett unwound the makeshift bandage and held it in his thumb and forefinger, away from his body. There was a small entrance wound on the top of the kid’s left forearm. On the underside was a nickel-sized exit wound. The kid held his arm out to show us, terrified.

  “Yeah yeah,” Burnett said. “So what?”

  He tossed the shirt against the building and gave the kid a five-by-ten dressing for his arm. Burnett took a pulse, then stepped back to the cop and said, “What happened?”

  “He says he don’t know who did it. Don’t know nothing. Just standing minding his own business.” The cop opened his hand to reveal seven or eight small plastic bags. “How is he?” the cop asked.

  Burnett rolled his eyes. “Nothing wrong with him.” The cop went on writing. Burnett bent to the kid and said, “Let’s go.”

  “No man no.”

  “Yeah man yeah. You can walk.”

  Burnett touched his left shoulder, and the kid screamed in a high-pitched, hysterical voice. A yelp. Everyone turned.

  “Jesus,” Burnett said. All the others laughed. Burnett gripped the kid beneath his right arm. “You ain’t shot in the leg. Come on . . .”

  We walked the kid out and sat him in the stretcher and as soon as he was back there, among the hanging IV bags, and the heart monitor, and the oxygen tanks, he started bawling. A sergeant with a silver-flecked mustache came over.

  “How is he?” he asked Burnett.

  “That’s the cleanest, most inconsequential gunshot I’ve seen in months. Didn’t hit nothin. The kid’s a fucking twig and it didn’t even hit bone.”

  “What’s he crying about?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Burnett stuck his head back in the ambulance where the kid held his arm up to show a bloodstain, not large, in the white trauma dressing.