The Path Of All That Falls

by Franz Neumann

  Just outside the darkroom door, Emilia walked past, making the floorboards dip again. Chase wasn’t entirely sure what she saw in him, besides his being a younger man. After he’d taken her boudoir photos, she’d begun attending his photography classes at the center. She somehow entered his circle of friends, found herself with a key to his apartment, woke with him there once or twice a week. She was fun, true, and his friends seemed to like her, but he couldn’t help feel something like embarrassment for being with someone so much older, let alone having to adapt to her quirks and requests and double standards. Emilia had been the one to talk him out of pornography completely. She had recently returned to Catholicism in a roundabout not-entirely-sure manner which meant that old moral lines occasionally peppered her speech and thoughts in the kind of way that concerned, and admittedly excited, Chase. And it often seemed that, however estranged she had become from her husband, much of his right-wing ranting had taken hold in her. They almost never spoke of politics, therefore. Or religion. And though he didn’t hold anything against religion, her talk sometimes made him feel a little guilty about their affair. This, despite the fact that Emilia, in her quizzical nature, had referred her husband to him. Ostrich had mentioned his wife’s recommendation, saying that she had attended one of his photography classes. He did not mention the boudoir photographs, the buckets of spilled milk, the come-hither twinkle in his wife’s eyes.

  In the darkroom, Chase clicked the switch on the electrical cord which fed the enlarger’s internal lamp. On the stock holder below, fed with a plain white sheet of paper, lay a projected negative image. Although the surveillance photography he did for Ostrich wasn’t as lucrative as pornography, Chase still managed to get by in this strange middle ground that was somewhere between the voyeurism of the pornographer’s viewfinder and the open pursuit of paparazzi.

  Chase peered closely at the projected image of a city scene. In it, the bald pates of passing men caught the black reflection of the sun. White shadows glowed beneath dark trees and the windows of passing cars were a light blue showing white ghost drivers. Cranking the housing higher to increase the rectangle of illumination, Chase turned a knob to bring the enlargement into focus before snapping off the light. He reached into a slick black pouch of a4 photographic paper kept in a drawer beneath the enlarger, and feeling for the emulsion side with his fingers, locked the sheet into place in the stock holder where the light would reappear. The safety light made the paper red and caused a blood-like reflection from the three trays of liquid further down the work table: developer, stop bath, fixer. It was the stop bath solution that made the room smell of vinegar.

  The floorboards dipped. “If you don’t hurry, it’ll be time for dinner.” Emilia’s voice was thirsty and sounded older than he’d ever noticed before. Chase exposed the paper to stop himself from answering. A timer with big white numbers sat on a shelf, though he hadn’t used it in years. Instead, he let light pierce the negative and fall, spreading larger and larger, soaking into the paper, longer, longer, that immeasurable span of time that drew itself out infinitesimally and charged his hands with a faint electrical sense to act, to reach the moment of maximum exposure and halt it. Getting the perfectly developed photograph was all about knowing how long to expose, and when to stop before causing ruin. Not yet. Not yet. Now. He snapped off the light. The floorboards dipped and rose.

  Chase took the paper from the stock holder and slid it into the bath of developer, the chemical Lazarus. He submerged the paper with the rubber tips of a pair of bamboo tongs until all the dry islands of paper had sunk beneath the liquid. He tilted one edge of the tray up and set it down again, watching the narrow wave of liquid travel back and forth, quietly dying into stillness. The darkroom fumes made Chase tired and thirsty, especially with the fan no longer working. He’d long since stripped to the waist, his jeans disappearing in the murkiness but his white sneakers glowing. Chase scratched his face with the back of his wrist. It had been days since he’d shaved. He remembered that Emilia had remarked how she liked him better clean-shaven and this made him first regret that he’d walk out of the darkroom with possibly the worst stubble she’d ever seen, and then made him glad it still clung to his face. He was too eager to please her.

  In the tray of developer, the red-cast paper began to reveal a positive image. From the corner of his eye, which more easily spotted contrast, Chase watched the image grow gray, then dark gray, then black. Experience told him that if he removed the paper now the richness of true black and white would still be lacking. Knowing the liberty to give to shadows was as important as knowing the power of light to burn. When the photo appeared at the cusp of ruin, he plucked it out with tongs and dipped it into the tray of stop bath. The photo was like most of the others from this roll, the same city, the same man, the same actions and gestures. The black pates of bald men were now white and sunlit. He moved the print into the fixer, then bent down to a refrigerator he kept below the workbench. He opened the door, revealing a row of beers lit by a red refrigerator light. He popped the cap on a bottle using the edge of the metal table. Beyond the darkroom door he heard the light trickle of liquid, and the sound of glass on glass. He tried to conjure up an inventory of his wares, wondering what he owned that could make that sound. Did he possess a decanter? It seemed possible. The beer went down cold as Chase transferred the photo to the large porcelain sink running with water. A pile of fresh photos floated on the surface. He heard the phone ring from beyond the door and it made him restless to get back into the lit portion of his apartment. The largest space was the darkroom, followed by the good-sized serve-all room with a Murphy bed. There was a bathroom which the previous owners had remodeled, doing away with the bathtub, the caulking still showing along the wall where Chase could only dream of a bath. Finally, a kitchen with a butcher block counter fraying soft splinters of wood along the edge. The apartment was shabby, but Chase knew about lighting, and somehow managed to make it seem like a desirable place to live.

  Chase gave one quick glance around the darkroom to make sure there was nothing exposed that light could ruin, then opened the door. In one simultaneous instant, he was greeted with bleaching lamplight, the sweet inrush of air, and a loud shout of Bon Anniversaire! His eyes were greeted with the sight of more than a dozen people in his apartment.

  “All together,” Emilia shouted, and they all began singing to him. The insistent rings of the phone disappeared.

  “You!” he said, as they sang. “You! You! You!”

  At the close of their song, a friend shouted triumphantly, “We got him!” Another laughed as at least four hands slapped Chase’s back. He walked through the crowded room and shook hands with old friends from the paper where he’d once worked. He greeted his neighbor, his cousin and her husband, and more friends who emerged from the kitchen holding empty champagne glasses and cheeks waiting for kisses. He kept apologizing about his appearance. The uncombed hair, the three-day beard, his body shirtless and smelling of chemicals. No one seemed to notice. There were so many recognizable faces, he began to wonder who wasn’t here. At the sound of a pop, he smelled champagne and felt a smile pull up the corners of his mouth. He felt like pulling it down with his fingers. Because the thing was this: all week he’d been afraid of hitting thirty. He didn’t want to provide a testament to the three decade passage by marking the date in any special way. He didn’t want to have to pretend turning older meant nothing to him, or accept that a whole decade removed him from the flippant open-ended rabble of youth. His own father died just shy of turning thirty, one night in the wreckage of an automobile accident caused by Flemish fog. Chase had been seven years old at the time. Now he was older than his father had ever been. For the past month, this had been on his mind and made his father seem less of a person, more shell-like, unknowable, young and naive.

  “Give him a chair to stand on,” someone said.

  “He doesn’t have any sturdy enough!”

  “Give him a glass first,” Emilia said.
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  What surprised Chase now, as he climbed up on his couch, was that he didn’t care. He was turning and that didn’t feel half-bad. This, right now, felt great. “I don’t know what to say.” He smiled at Emilia as she filled people’s glasses. He wondered how she’d managed to orchestrate the gathering. Someone knocked on the door and new guests arrived, a friend from the university days, and his girlfriend. “Too late,” someone said to them. They seemed disappointed, but that made them seem all the more desirable, the way they had stepped from the turbulence of their lives to be here to surprise him.

  The phone rang again. “Excuse me,” Chase said, stepping down to make his way into the bedroom. He was never good at speeches anyway. Along the way to the phone, Chase noticed that Emilia had straightened his apartment. The motherly image that came to mind made him again realize their age difference. He found the cell phone under his shirt.

  “Chase,” he answered.

  “Chase. Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s someone I want you to see.”

  “Is that you, Ostrich?” he asked.

  “Listen,” the voice on the phone said. “You’ve heard what’s happened?”

  Chase went through his closet to find fresh clothes. His friends were calling his name. “Heard what?”

  “Regi fell from a bridge.”

  Chase pulled on a clean black pair of trousers. “When did this happen?”

  “Last night. Except he says he didn’t fall.”

  The belt slid easily around Chase’s waist. He checked himself out in the mirror. He’d been working out. One hundred sit-ups every morning, one hundred push-ups every evening. He grabbed a shirt, then noticed some new clothes that Emilia must have bought for him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He thinks he was pushed,” Ostrich said.

  “Is he okay?” Chase asked, taking the phone and a new shirt with him from the bedroom. He smiled at his friends as he crossed his apartment and opened the door to the darkroom. “Get off the phone,” a friend said.

  “He’s conscious,” Ostrich said.

  “Hang up. We’re taking you someplace. Where are we taking him?” asked another friend.

  “And you think he was pushed?” Chase asked, momentarily ignoring his friends.

  “I don’t think so.”

  In the darkroom, Chase waded through the rinsed photos with one hand as he buttoned his shirt with the other. By the time he was three buttons from his collar he found what he was searching for. He hung the prints in chronological order on a clothesline.

  “Were you perhaps following him?” Ostrich asked.

  Chase examined his photos of the bridge. “No. You said he was going to be at the auto show.”

  “That’s where he told me he would be. Shows how little I know my own son.” Ostrich sighed. “I’ve managed to keep this out of the paper, but I’ve gone ahead and hired someone to look into all this. I’d like you to meet him and give him the photos you’ve taken so far.”

  “Of course,” Chase said. “Anything.”

  “You know the cafe across the street from Regi’s apartment? Le Coin. You know where it is?”

  “Hmm.” An arm came into the darkroom and handed him a glass of champagne. He drank it down at once.

  “He’ll be there tomorrow at noon.”

  Chase swallowed. “Who is he?”

  “His name is Gaudin.”

  Ostrich sounded like he was drawing on a cigar, or ready to go into an emphysema attack. “I’d like you to assist him in anything he might need. Gaudin is not a photographer. He’s a facilitator.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Emilia whispered.

  “The zoo,” Chase said, handing back the glass and closing the door. “Why don’t you think your son was pushed?” he asked Ostrich.

  “Why don’t you leave that to Gaudin.”

  “But if I might ask?”

  “My son doesn’t always have the most competent sense of balance.”

  Chase snorted and tacked on a cough to mask it. “Okay,” Chase said. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  “Enjoy your evening,” Ostrich said, and hung up.

  Chase hung the rinsed photos up to dry. In various folders scattered around the darkroom were pictures of Regi at his translating job, traveling about the city aiding in business deals. Regi’s favorite tool was the cell phone. Any meeting could transpire, regardless of language, if the call was placed through him. For a fee, he’d translate as members of a party spoke via a conference call, or even by handing a phone back and forth between themselves. Chase had seen Regi sitting about in cafes engaged in this manner of work. Chase would take a beer or coffee in an adjoining cafe, or better yet, one across the street from which he could watch Regi, unnoticed.

  “Sind diese Abweichungen in unserem nächsten Finanzquartal reflekteirt?”

  “Vous verrez la différence.”

  “Und das schliesst alle zurückgebrachten Waren ein?”

  “Il faut examiner cela.”

  Less innocent were the photos of Regi tracking his clients, watching them from corners and shadows as he did the translating. But there was yet a darker side to Regi. Some photos were taken outside sex clubs, showing packet-filled hands that joined beneath counterfeit smiles. Regi loitered in the shadows of illegality, a waltz, Chase suspected, of pilled and powdered merchandise and cash—go under, go under, form a bridge with your hands and go under. All realities that were hard to detect in the stills. But the movements Chase witnessed first-hand betrayed the crimes. The smile, the flick of the wrist, the physical carry of a laugh over the street. Or the complete absence of all words, business conducted with practiced automation. A father’s sorrow, a politician’s nightmare. Chase, though, had yet to play the narc. He’d sent some photos to Ostrich, but few explanations. The photos appeared to portray innocent meetings of long lost acquaintances stopping to catch up on old times, oblivious to the unsavory neighborhood of their reunion. Photographs that were no more incriminating than the ones Emilia claimed showed her husband’s faults.

  Though Chase was hardly comfortable with Ostrich as a client, there was something deceitful about his call yesterday afternoon telling him he didn’t need to follow Regi that day. For his own part, Chase hadn’t phoned Ostrich after Regi’s fall from the bridge, nor had he told him about the photos he’d taken that afternoon. So far he’d only told Ostrich that his son followed his clients as both a voyeur and participant, his eyes watching while his voice slipped quietly through the ether of noise to speak the words into a waiting ear in the language of choice, the lie of a mother tongue.

  Emilia stepped into the darkroom again. She buttoned up the remainder of his open shirt in the near dark.

  “That was your husband. Regi had an accident.”

  “What?”

  “He’s in the hospital.”

  “Oh God. What? Another car?”

  “He fell from a bridge.”

  “A bridge?”

  “Late yesterday afternoon.”

  “He jumped?”

  “No. He fell. He’s okay, though. Nothing too serious.” He didn’t know if this was true, but it seemed the thing to say.

  “A bridge?”

  Chase nodded. “I’ll go with you to the hospital.”

  “No,” she said.

  He spied her through the slit in the door, out in the bright column of light in which friends passed in and out, milling about and laughing. He really didn’t want to go to a hospital right now.

  “No,” Emilia said. “Go out to dinner. Enjoy your evening. My problems are my problems.”

  “Are you sure? I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Go.” She stepped out of the room and he stayed there in the darkroom until he heard the front door open, then close, and knew that she was gone.

  Chapter 6

  Bianca couldn’t bring herself to leave the city. The date on her return ticket passed. Her family and friends called daily, wanting to know when
she’d be coming home. But she couldn’t yet envision any place as home, unless she could be allowed to return to the past. She knew she couldn’t work out on the sand for the rest of the summer, life guarding again, scanning the miserably empty horizon for arms in panic, for boats in peril, for fins. Everyone drowned. Everybody. She’d begun to see sorrow as a liquid. When Jade, her neighbor and friend, told her she was flying out and wouldn’t be stopped, Bianca didn’t refuse. She knew she shouldn’t be alone.

  Unable to sleep in the apartment, especially where a phone call had shattered everything, Bianca took a room in an inexpensive hotel. On the writing desk in her room, she placed the small cardboard box that contained a plastic bag of ashes. David’s full name was printed on a label on the outside of the box in capital letters, black, indelible, misspelled. ferrisheel. She imagined names punched letter by letter out of the coroner’s labeling machine, a stock ticker of lives sunk so low as to become unrecoverable. With his ashes an arm’s reach from her, and his clothes still in the suitcase at the foot of the bed, sleep seemed an extraneous task, something she had difficulty believing she’d been able to do naturally, on her own. She hated taking the pills, but she had done so all week. They helped her sleep, but it was sleep from which she woke exhausted. And it was the waking that frightened her more than the inability to sleep.

  The first night she spent with David’s ashes in her room, Bianca’s mind flew in strange directions. She had a sick tick of a wonder: where had she been and what had she been doing at the exact moment the body of a Frenchman fell from a bridge and took her husband’s life? She had been drinking wine with a late lunch that day while David met with his translator. She had returned to the Louvre to see some of what they’d missed when they’d rushed through a week earlier. She’d then taken the metro back to the apartment and taken a nap. It had happened sometime then, between taking off her shoes and falling asleep. She’d taken off her sandals and placed them out on the balcony to air. And then she moved the covers aside, lay down and slept.