Combat Camera

by Andrew Somerset

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “Sooner or later, all the little birdies fly the nest.”

  Zane thought of cats and window panes and falcons, and all the other perils that threaten small birds. Early snowfalls. DDT on your winter feeding grounds. You do your best but one day the kids have to go out on their own. From here, it could be Surrey or it could be the Downtown East Side, more human refuse circling a public toilet. Thinking he was better off being shut of her for good only made it worse.

  “You can stay until you find your feet, I mean.”

  “I found my feet. I have a place.”

  Clearly, she intended to leave no forwarding address. He pulled out his wallet and found a business card, with the numbers for his cell, his defunct answering service, and the agency. Soon, all three would be useless. It was futile. Still, one has to make a gesture. He held the card out to her.

  “If you ever need anything. Anything at all.”

  “Clean break, remember?”

  She made no move to uncross her arms. Zane stood in the parking lot with its fading puddles, his arm outstretched.

  “Don’t make me stand here like a fool, Melissa.”

  You can’t just write people off.

  “Melissa’s history. There is no Melissa.”

  Just when you get to know someone, she turns out not to exist. This is taking some getting used to.

  “Melissa was just a story to you, anyway.”

  “I’m making an effort here.”

  “Too little too late.”

  That she seemed intent on bitterness filled him with a futile sadness: regret for that which he could do nothing to reverse, sweetened with a bitter dollop of bewilderment. To deserve this, I did precisely what?

  “What was I to Melissa, then? A car and a credit card?”

  “That’s so fucking typical. She was your fucking friend, Zane.”

  She reached out and took the card and then held it up in the air for him to see before dropping it. It fell to the pavement and came to rest in a puddle, water darkening the paper.

  Gulls wheeled above the freight yard, above the wet freight cars jumbled with graffiti, above stone and steel and cold and wet. Zane dug his hands in his pockets and looked at the sky, ignored the card soaking in the puddle. He wanted to leave her there, to simply turn and walk back to his room and leave her alone in the parking lot. But it seemed essential that he see this thing through.

  “You don’t even know me,” she said. And you never will. “You never made an effort.” A gust blew her hair across her face and she reached up to tuck it behind her ear. “I’ll go my way and you can do whatever. Find your next windmill and go take pictures of it beating the shit out of people.”

  Zane felt again the pangs of worthless regret, the futile wish that things could be made different by the intervention of some higher power.

  “None of us can change anything,” he said.

  “You never made the effort.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “Whatever.”

  A white taxicab with blue doors nosed into the parking lot and prowled slowly among the parked cars. She waved to the driver. When the cab drew up the driver popped the trunk and climbed out in his Sikh turban and pointed to her bags with his eyebrows raised in a question. He seemed reluctant to speak.

  Zane opened the door for her and thought himself a gentleman for doing so. She climbed in and reached for the door and tried to pull it closed, but he held it open.

  “Take care of yourself.”

  Only after he said this did he realize what an oafish utterance it was.

  “Goodbye, Zane.”

  He let go of the door and she closed it and the cab rolled off along the row of parked cars. Zane watched as its brake lights glowed briefly, before it turned down the road and was lost in the traffic. He was still trying to make it out when the drizzle started again.

  After her cab disappeared into traffic, Zane went back to his room and turned on the television and went into the bathroom. A mirror ran the full length of the counter. He didn’t like what he saw.

  Shit, Zane, look at you: just like a lost puppy. So many things that we never will undo. Sorry is a guilt bomb, and regret an endless mud wallow. All this and he could still hear her voice.

  On the pillow of his bed he discovered a slip of paper torn from one of his notebooks. He picked it up and unfolded it.

  Dear Lucas,

  I never meant to let you down like that. I wish I knew what to say. All I ever do is make up stories. I don’t think you can change who you are. And I’m really sorry about the camera. I need the money bad.

  Love,

  Janet

  She had left him the one he smashed. This is what you get for disregarding Lapierre’s first law, trust your instincts.

  He stared at her note, unable to read the words: a generality, a piece of white notepaper with faint blue lines, words written in blue ballpoint pen. Her handwriting formed neat, girlish loops, as if she was stuck at age sixteen.

  You sure saw the elephant, all right. You are the yokel of fucking yokels, Zane, the original bumpkin. Hick meets huckster; step right up. Just seven thousand bucks to see her egress.

  He walked to the window and looked out over the freight yard. A steady drip fell outside the window and splashed on the aluminum sill, and he heard the small smacks of its impact and the hiss of wet tires on the road below. The smell of the rain through the open window and the cold air outside.

  Sometimes, you get that certain light. A mayfly rests on a window screen in the chill air of dawn as a diesel rig coughs into life and strains for the empty highway. Or cloud tops catch the light of the setting sun as their bases fall into evening shadow. You stand in the back of an armoured personnel carrier, legs bruised and aching as an armoured column rolls east into the sunrise, and the light paints the dust enveloping you orange, silhouettes the squat and violent shape of the tank ahead in glowing dust, and you forget for once to take a picture, all your senses now alive, alive within a flame.

  A gull soars over the flat, empty Pacific as a cold drizzle damps your cheeks and the girl sitting beside you on the car hood picks at her jeans with bitten fingernails and shares with you the final truth. This is how the story ends. And no one ever knows what happens outside the picture space, outside the frame.

  Zane stood at the window in the failing light and looked out over the freight yard, over gulls wheeling above steel and crushed stone, over wooden railway ties slick with rain, the river beyond sliding and eddying down to meet the sea. A lone man in a rain slicker walked between the rails. He carried a plain aluminum lunch box and a thermos, and with every step his feet slipped in the wet gravel. The man walked with his head down, plodding, and Zane watched him until he disappeared behind the graffiti-scarred freight cars that still stood patiently rusting in the endless rain, long after discharging their loads of mysterious freight.

  About the Author

  A.J. Somerset has been a soldier, a technical writer, a programmer, and a freelance photographer. His non-fiction has appeared in numerous outdoor magazines in Canada and the United States, and his articles have been translated into French and Japanese.