My cheeks go Santa red and I stare at the ground, but when I look up again he’s extending a paper bag. “Try these,” he says, his face softening. “First time in New York?”
“Yeah,” I say, hating that it’s so obvious, but I take the bag. It has three little toasty-looking balls, one of which I take out. He mimes putting it in his mouth, and I shrug, hearing Dace telling me to live a little and resisting the urge to snap a Food Alert to send to Dylan. I take a bite. The exterior is crunchy. Inside is warm, no, steamy and the crunch mixes with the spice. It might just be that I’m famished, but it tastes Food Alert–level good.
“It’s falafel,” the vendor says as I push the other half in my mouth. I’ve had falafel before, but I guess the frozen Costco version isn’t exactly authentic.
“You’re here for the school?” He inclines his head toward the Tisch building.
Mouth full, I nod. “Photography camp,” I manage, pulling my film Nikon out of my bag for effect.
“You checked out the Walker Evans exhibit yet? At MoMA?” When I shake my head, he adds, “Great series of American cultural artifacts. Been to the PS1 yet?”
I shake my head again.
“Offshoot of MoMA. In Long Island. Great showing from Edward Burtynsky right now.”
“Oh! I know Burtynsky,” I say, excitedly. Recycling yards, quarries, oil spills—his specialty is industrial landscapes, but displayed on massive canvases. “He’s wonderful.” Except wonderful isn’t the right word. “Or wonderful and disturbing at once?” I can’t believe I’m having a discussion about photography with a falafel dude.
“Attraction and repulsion,” he says, as a voice behind me says, “Mukhtar Abboud.”
The vendor points and grins. “David Westerly.” I turn.
“Pippa, I see you’ve met the go-to guy for the best falafel in the city.”
“The young lady’s experienced them,” Mukhtar says, nodding at me. I reach into my bag to pull out my wallet, but he holds up a hand. “On me.”
“All right, you ready?” David says, as though he’s not 25 minutes late. He’s carrying a white paper coffee cup and looks completely relaxed.
He downs the rest of his coffee and throws the cup in the garbage at the side of Mukhtar’s stand. “Greene, let’s see this,” David says, grabbing my camera.
“It was my dad’s.”
“I know. This thing is ancient. Wow, it brings back memories.” He turns it over in his hand. “What this camera’s seen …” He hands it back. I slip the strap around my neck. “So, first things first. Coffee.” He points us down Mercer. “Tell me you drink coffee.”
“Of course,” I say, not very convincingly. Didn’t he just finish a coffee?
“Ah, you don’t. I’ll change that,” he says. “I was the same way at your age. Don’t worry, I’m going to tell you the two secret ingredients. First, think.”
“OK …”
“No, Think. That’s the name of the coffee house.” He points to a sign a few feet away. “A lot of Tisch kids hang out here,” he says as we walk up the steps. He holds open the door and I walk in. Alt-J’s playing on the speakers and the place is packed with students at small, rough wood tables. We walk to the counter and he turns to me. “And the second ingredient. Chocolate. A beginner like you needs to order the mocha. Basically like having hot chocolate. Good intro to coffee. Right, Jaz?” He winks at the girl behind the counter. I look away, embarrassed for him—is he flirting? And isn’t he a little old to be flirting with a girl who looks like she’s only a few years older than me? He pulls out his wallet, and I reach into my bag, but he shakes his head. “I got it. You want to grab us lids?” He nods to a counter behind us.
“All right,” he says a minute later, handing me my cup, then stirring more sugar into his coffee. There’s a heart on top of mine, in the foam. “Take a sip. You don’t like it, you can get something else.” I snap a pic, then taste it.
“You’re right—it’s kind of like hot chocolate.” I don’t say that regular hot chocolate tastes better.
“See, you can trust me,” he says once we’re back outside. “OK, so now, we backtrack slightly and then you’ll see the route to get from school to my studio is basically a straight line, straight through Washington Square Park.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Let’s talk cafeterias. You know the rundown?”
“There’s a rundown?”
His eyes widen. “Hell yes, there is.” We start walking as he gives me the scoop. “Palladium Hall Caf: East 14th between Irving Place and 3rd. In the Athletics Center, meaning it’s one floor above the pool. So everything smells like chlorine—it’s like the secret ingredient. So I’d say you want to avoid that place at all cost. However, you can’t actually avoid the place because you’re going to have to line up there on the weekend—brunch is epic despite the chlorine taste. Starts at 11 a.m. and is one of the best places in the city to get bagels and lox.” He stops walking to ask me, totally seriously, “Please tell me you like bagels?”
I laugh, he’s so earnest. “Yeah, actually. My dad—” I start and then stop. I thought I could just talk about Dad, just bring him up, but suddenly my eyes are stinging. I squeeze them tight to stop the black blotches that are starting to appear.
“Hey, you OK?” David asks, and I nod. I cannot have a panic attack in front of him. But a moment later, that panicky feeling is replaced by an overwhelming sense of sadness. I sort of nod-shake my head at once. Then take a deep breath, cold air making my nose hairs tingle.
“My dad was crazy for bagels. He discovered a factory that made wood-oven bagels for bakeries in Spalding and he pitched this whole photo feature to the paper just so he could get inside, and then he convinced them to sell him bagels. Every Sunday, he’d ride his bike there and they’d hand him a bag of fresh bagels out of the oven, and he’d bring them home and we’d have bagels for breakfast. He used to say, ‘A life without bagels—’” My voice catches in my throat and I feel my eyes welling up.
“—is a life not worth living,” David finishes my sentence. I take a deep breath and he looks over at me. “Shit. Sorry,” he says. “Why did I even bring up bagels?”
“It’s OK.” I blink hard before any tears can escape. David nods his head toward a bench. We sit, and he pulls out a pack of cigarettes, takes one and then holds the pack out to me.
“No, thanks.” I don’t point out the obvious—that Dad died of cancer. So, smoking? Not really my thing.
“Yeah, I quit last year—after I broke up with this girl who smoked. It was our thing. I had to quit.” He sticks the cigarette in his mouth.
“The smoking or the girl?”
He pulls the cigarette out. “It was kind of one and the same thing. Bad for me. I mostly carry these around out of habit. It probably takes me a week to smoke the entire pack.” Then instead of lighting it, he tosses the cigarette on the gravel and grinds it with the toe of his sneaker. I snap a pic.
“You should try just carrying around the empty package,” I suggest, staring at the ground. “I read that in a book.”
“Did it work?”
I shrug. “It was a novel.”
“Hmm.” He places the package on the bench beside him as a guy with a beard down to his chest passes by. He’s pushing a cart full of clothes, yet he’s shirtless in December. He stares at the cigarettes, eyes wide. “All yours, buddy,” David says, holding the pack out to him. “I’m gonna keep the package though.” He empties the remaining white sticks into the guy’s rough hands, then puts the pack back in his jacket pocket.
“So, kind of crazy we ended up together, huh? That kid who swapped with you, what’s his deal? Boyfriend?”
“So it was Ben’s idea?”
“Yeah, said he wanted to do something nice for you.”
He pauses as a woman passes by, pushing one of those four-seater strollers. “So I was your first choice, huh? I have to say, I’m sort of surprised in light of what a shitty friend I was to Evan. Not even showing up to his funeral.”
“Y
ou sent flowers.” Why am I defending him?
Funny thing about funerals: you don’t forget who did what. I think back to how Dylan came to Dad’s funeral, even though he didn’t know me. Even though we’d never even talked, not really. How that made me fall in love with him. How this other girl, Jesslyn, that Dace and I used to hang out with, sent me a text telling me she couldn’t come because funeral homes freaked her out. Which OK I get, but still, you think I wanted to be there?
He guffaws. “Yeah. I sent flowers. Big shitty deal. Still, I should be apologizing that you won this great contest and then came all the way to New York and got stuck with me.”
I shrug. “Actually, maybe you could help me with something?” I say, then pause. “We need some sort of theme for this week’s project, and I was thinking maybe the theme could be my dad. All the stuff he liked to do, where he’d go, that sort of stuff.” I wonder if this is a mistake. I think back to the first day, when Gabrielle totally brushed off my reason for wanting to be a photographer. But I have to believe she just didn’t get the importance of Dad to my photography. This is more than a tribute to him, it’s a connection, it’s special. I can show her that, with another chance. I clear my throat. “I mean, if you have time. I know you’ve got your own stuff to do, and I’m interested in that, of course. You know, Dad and I saw your exhibit at the Train Station in Spalding.”
“Oh yeah? In the spring? I meant to actually show up at that, I was thinking I would’ve liked to have seen your mom and dad, you, but I had a conflict. That was … wow. That must’ve been pretty close to when …”
“Yeah, actually that was the night Dad discovered the cancer. The beginning of the end.”
He shakes his head. I take a sip of my mocha and study the dimple in his chin to avoid making eye contact. Neither of us says anything for a moment. And then David slaps his knee. “You ready?” We stand and continue through the park. “The rest of the way is just as simple. Out the park, continue through on Washington Place till you get to West 4th.” He nods at the lights up ahead. “It hits Christopher and you take it until you get to Hudson. My place is on the corner.”
Christopher Street. Where Dad lived. I shiver and pull my hat down over my ears, but it’s not the December weather that’s giving me chills.
“Here we are, Greene,” he says, pointing to an old warehouse with lengths of grid windows on each of the five floors. But no door? “We go around the back to get in,” he says, as if sensing my confusion. I follow him around, through a gate to an industrial-looking metal door.
“I’ve been in this place longer than you’ve been alive.” He enters a code, and then the door clicks and he pulls it open. “It’s 1-2-3-4 in case you ever need to get in when I’m not here,” he says, which feels really trusting and I wonder how many people he gives the code to and why I’d ever need to get into his building when he’s not here, but I don’t say anything. I just nod. “We all used to live right in our studios, until they turned them into work-only but some of us are still living here. Getting away with it. Late night shoots give you an excuse for sleeping in your studio.”
I’m really here. I’m about to see how a real photographer lives and works. Not that Dad wasn’t a “real” photographer, and I guess technically he did what David does—worked out of the house—but it wasn’t the same. It was small-town. This is big time.
David leads me through another set of doors into a bare-bones hallway and a freight elevator—one of those ones where you have to pull the big metal door down with a big rope. I snap a few pics as the elevator rises in jerks and shudders to the top floor.
David pushes the door up, and I follow him down the cement-floored hallways to 505. He pushes open the door into a large rectangular space. An open kitchen off to the right, a big farmhouse-style table in the middle with benches on either side, and then a seating area off to the left—a couple of couches facing each other and one of those retro flying saucer-type chairs that are super comfy and super impossible to get out of once you’re in. Beyond that is the shooting space: a few huge light stands with umbrellas, a tripod, ladder, stool, and metal table with a laptop set up on it. “Wow, this view,” I say, walking over to the floor-to-ceiling windows that line the far wall. Even though we’re not that high up, there’s this unobstructed view of the city. I notice the sliding door to the balcony is open, and I stick my camera through and snap a few photos. If only we’d met our mentors in the morning before the bird’s-eye-view assignment, I think, then push the thought aside. Everything will get better now that I’m with David.
I pull my camera up to my face and focus down on the corner. Christopher Street, right there. There’s no escaping it. My heart pounds, and I lower my camera and back away from the window. I turn to see if David’s noticed but he’s in the kitchen, his back to me, putting a kettle on the stove. The door to the studio opens and a girl comes through the door. She’s wearing a big gray parka with a fur-lined hood. She pulls her coat off, and underneath, she’s tall and thin, in dark skinny jeans, over-the-knee black boots, a long caramel-colored cable-knit sweater that hangs to just past her hips. A beaded headband sits on top of her cropped platinum hair.
“Talia!” David calls, scooping coffee grinds into a metallic French press. He puts the scoop down and walks over to her, kisses her on the cheek, then slaps her lightly on the butt. She jumps playfully and makes an exasperated face at me, then shoves her coat at his chest. I do my best to keep a straight face. I don’t know what to think.
“It’s about time,” the girl says. “I got here half an hour ago, but you weren’t here, or answering your phone, so I went to run an errand. Didn’t we say 1?”
David doesn’t seem frazzled, not in the least. He shrugs. “Did we?”
She shuts the door. “Hi, I’m Talia,” she says to me, pushing up the sleeves on her sweater and sticking her hand out to shake mine. I take it and am about to respond when David interjects.
“This is my protégé, Philadelphia Greene. She’s going to be the next big thing. Just you watch,” David says, hanging her coat on a hook. Talia sits down on the bench beside the door to pull off her boots. “Talia’s my assistant.”
“Your assistant, huh?” Talia says, an edge to her tone.
David doesn’t seem to notice, and he turns to me. “Number one rule: slippers.” He points and I turn to see a basket by the door I hadn’t noticed when we walked in.
“David’s huge on slippers,” Talia says. I look down at his feet to see he’s already changed out of his shoes and into brown slippers. Tufts of sheepskin poke out around his ankles. “Make fun, but you try a pair and tell me it’s not the most comfortable way to start work.” I pull a pair out of the basket. They’re white fun fur and kind of ridiculous but I slip them on anyway.
The kettle whistles in the kitchen.
“Next, I drink coffee all day so don’t make any comments,” he says, going to the kitchen and shutting off the burner on the stove, pouring the hot water into the French press. “You might call it an addiction but I call it necessary. As the day goes on I put more and more milk in it until it’s essentially light brown milk.”
“Otherwise he can’t sleep,” Talia interjects.
Dad was the same, I think, remembering the hospital. They didn’t want to give him coffee, but he’d charm one cup out of them, except they’d only give him one sugar and one milk. He’d try to bribe the nurses for more. “You’d think I was asking for painkillers or something,” he whispered to me one time.
“Did my dad ever shoot here?” I ask, hopping up on a stool at the counter.
“Yeah, constantly—we shared the studio. He had his apartment, but half the time he’d be here late shooting and then just crash here. God, that seems like yesterday.”
I try to picture Dad here, the two of us, instead of David and me.
“Your dad was way more dedicated than me. Kept me in line.”
Talia’s phone rings and she answers it, walking over to the studio area of th
e loft.
“Yeah but you’re treating photography like the art it is. He barely ever did the kind of photography he was passionate about. I wish he would’ve stuck to photography as an art, not a paycheck,” I say, then feel guilty, like I’m bad-mouthing Dad to idolize David or something. Why? But it’s true. Weddings, corporate headshots … that’s not why Dad became a photographer, but in the end it’s what he spent 90% of his time shooting.
“Well, that’s partly to do with living in New York versus a small town,” David says frankly. “Artists aren’t revered in the same way as they tend to be here—you’ve got to make a living.” There’s the slightest air of affectedness to his voice. But he’s justified, I suppose. David pours a cup of coffee then holds the French press up to me. I shake my head.
“I wish he would’ve stayed in New York.” I imagine my life in New York with a cool model mom and photographer dad. They’d take me to parties, and Jay-Z would probably be there. Jay-Z’s at every cool New York party, isn’t he? Of course, then I wouldn’t have met Dylan or Dace.
“Yeah well, we all make choices. He did it for your mom. For you,” David says, then claps his hands together. “All right, let’s get going. Everyone should be here any minute right, Tal?”
Talia waves me over. “You can help me set up,” she says, leading me into a storage closet with about a dozen massive rolls of colorful paper that can be used as backdrops. “David wants a gray seamless,” she says maneuvering the gray roll of paper out from the back of the pack.
“What’s the shoot?” I ask, and Talia says it’s just tests for a new model that Silver Models has signed on.
I’m surprised. “I thought David just did candids,” I say, remembering his exhibit. How he shoots real people, real life. In real settings.
“Yeah, well, you gotta pay the bills, right?” Talia says, tipping the seamless. I grab the end and we carry it carpet-thief-style over our shoulders and set it up against the far wall. The door opens and a petite girl with blunt blonde bangs and dark cat-eye glasses comes in. She’s laden with multiple garment bags and dumps them onto the nearby chair. “Ugh. I hate winter.” She blows on her hands and rubs them together.
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