Ben looks defeated.
Ramona checks her phone, then looks at me. “Anything?”
“Someone just tweeted at Cake Boss to ask if they’re in the Countdown movie. Where’s Cake Boss filmed?”
“At the actual bakery,” Ramona says. “Carlo’s Bake Shop. Over in New Jersey.” Ramona looks around. “We’ve got to get to the PATH system.” I look confused. “It’s like the subway but different, and it’ll take us right into Hoboken and then it’s just a short walk. Cab back into the city is probably easiest.” We start walking down the street, and Ramona runs ahead to the next corner, leaving Ben and me to walk side by side. Ben turns around and walks backward to check for cabs behind us, and I grab his arm just before he’s about to back into a lamppost.
“Guys!” Ramona calls after she flags down a cab. Ten minutes later we’re back in Manhattan, and the cabbie’s pulling over at the corner of Christopher and Hudson. Is Manhattan really this small that all these things happen at this intersection? We follow Ramona down into the station, taking the steps two at a time, find the machines, put in our money and get a two-way card, then follow the signs for the PATH trains down another flight of stairs to the track. The train is pulling into the station, and we get on. It feels exactly like being on the regular subway, only there are no stops and everything is really dark for a really long time outside the train. We sit in a row—Ben, me, Ramona. There’s a nervous energy between us. A total adventure, but none of us wants to jinx it, because it’s not just for fun.
When the doors open, Ramona jumps up and Ben and I follow suit, racing up the escalator and out the terminal. There’s less personality here and more plain function, I notice. Ben’s camera’s to his face, documenting it all, and Ramona’s figuring out which way to go. “Come on,” she leads us up a street I notice is also called Hudson, which is just plain confusing, like we’ve entered some sort of time warp and haven’t crossed out of Manhattan at all. We turn onto Newark Street and see this huge lineup before we even hit the next corner.
Ramona says that’s for Carlo’s Bakery. “Lineup’s that long all the time. It’s the only real bakery in town, so if you actually need a birthday cake or, like, cookies, you have to show your address to prove you live here and don’t just want a selfie to Instagram.”
We walk alongside the lineup of girls and their moms and then pass the doors to Carlo’s, where everyone’s snapping pics in front of the sign. One of the guys from the show—I’m guessing, he’s got dark hair, could be Italian and is wearing a white apron—is posing on the street with a bunch of girls our age, who are shamelessly flirting. No sign of a Countdown film crew anywhere.
The rest of Washington Street is quiet after that. It seems straight out of a movie, one of those made-for-TV ones that play on Sunday night. The whole street is little shops—a hardware store, a restaurant, a clothing boutique—most of their windows decorated for the holidays. We walk to the other end and back, checking side streets as we go, but there’s no clues at all. Eventually we head back to the city on the train.
“This is pointless,” Ben says, as we’re sitting on the orange vinyl seats. The doors open and we stand up.
“It’s not,” Ramona says.
I check my phone as soon as we come out of the station. There’s a new photo posted on the Instagram feed—yachts moored at a harbor.
“Where’s this?” I ask, holding my phone out to Ramona.
“Hard to tell, but maybe Chelsea Piers? Come on.”
And then we’re in another cab heading up 11th Avenue along the Hudson River, past Pier 26, zipping along the waterfront trail, past joggers and cyclists and rollerbladers, even in this weather, and then we’re hopping out at a huge bright blue complex and Ramona’s deciding where to go. “If we could see the yachts, then they have to be over here,” she says, leading us to the north side of the buildings. There’s a skate park, and green space and then, in the distance, past the tennis courts, I spot the line of white trucks, parked along the street. We race toward them, eye on the prize.
People with clipboards, headsets, walkie-talkies, cameras … there’s no doubt this is something, but is it the Countdown movie?
“How do we find out what’s going on here?” I say aloud. If it is a movie, is anyone involved actually going to tell us which movie?
Ramona points to a bunch of teens on the other side of the park. “That’s how.” She races over, and a second later, she’s back, nodding. “Countdown.”
“We did it!” I say excitedly. But Ben’s not himself. His face is pale, and he’s fidgeting.
“What do we do now?” I ask, and then I realize that’s exactly what he must be thinking.
“Do you know what his assistant looks like?” I say. He shakes his head. “What if you try calling your dad again?”
He scrolls through his phone and dials.
“Straight to voicemail,” he says.
“Well, let’s just start asking people. Come on,” says Ramona, looking around, and I’m glad she’s here to lead the charge. She nods at a cluster of women with headsets. “Let’s split up. Someone’s got to tell us at least if your dad’s even here. Marv, right?”
Ben nods. Ramona heads to the right. I go for a guy who’s winding an extension cord around his arm. I turn back—Ben’s watching me. Not moving.
“Do you know where Marv Robertson is?”
The guy looks me up and down, shakes his head. I move on to the next, a girl carrying a tray of coffees.
She shrugs.
A dozen more people at least, before I get to a woman coming out of a trailer. Headset on, clipboard in hand. She doesn’t look up before replying.
“In a meeting.”
“Where?”
“The usual.”
“Can you remind me …” Luck runs out as she looks up.
“Who are you?”
I point back to Ben, who’s somehow escaped to sit on a bench. “Me? Nobody, really. But that’s Marv’s son. He needs to talk to him. It’s important.”
“His son? Nice try.”
I walk back to Ben. He looks up, a mix of hope and discouragement in his eyes.
“He’s in a meeting. We just have to wait for him to get out,” I say.
“What if …” Ben starts.
I shake my head. “No what-ifs.”
Ramona comes back a second later. “Wow, his assistant’s a total jerk.”
“You found his assistant?”
She nods. “Marv should be out any minute.”
But any minute turns into many minutes with no action. Into hours. We keep our eye on the trailer that Ramona says he’s in, but there’s a nervous silence among us. We’re just sitting there on the bench: Ramona, then Ben, then me. Ramona starts playing Candy Crush on her phone, and I take a deep interest in photographing the individual bits of gravel at my feet, and Ben gets up and starts walking around, snapping pics here and there—it’s not clear what his focus is, and he’s gone awhile. Eventually when he returns to sit down with us, Ramona is the one to say what we’re all thinking. Should Ben go to the trailer? Knock on the door? After a beat, he nods and stands, like a boxer in the corner of his ring. I stand behind him, like the coach, and Ramona nods that I should go with him. I don’t want him to have to go through it alone. I follow him over to the other side of the park and wait at the end of the trailer as he climbs the three steps up to the door. He knocks tentatively.
Nothing.
He knocks again, then tries the handle. It’s locked. The lights are out in the trailer. He turns, looks at me and makes his way down the steps till he’s standing beside me.
“He must’ve left.”
“Maybe he didn’t get the message,” I offer immediately, but we both know that’s probably not the case at all. Ben takes a deep breath, then starts walking in the direction we came. Ramona looks at me questioningly, and I shrug.
“It sucks,” I say to Ben as we follow Ramona back to 11th. He doesn’t say anything, just stands solem
nly as Ramona hails a cab, and we all get into the backseat.
“Where to?” the cabbie asks in a total announcer voice.
“West 3rd and Thompson,” Ramona tells him, just as a rainbow of lights flash on the ceiling of the cab.
“Oh my god! Cash Cab!” I scream, pointing.
“That’s right! You’re in the Cash Cab!” the guy proclaims.
“What’s going on?” Ben asks, totally confused.
“Cash Cab!” I slap his leg. “We have to answer trivia questions to win money!”
“That’s right,” the cabbie says, explaining the rules. “You’ve got 13 blocks to go. I’ll ask you questions. For each question you correctly answer, you’ll win $50, but as the questions increase in difficulty, so does the cash you could win. Are yooooooooou ready?”
I have never been more ready for anything in my life.
“What do you call the unpopped kernel at the bottom of a bowl?” he asks a second later.
“Old Maid,” Ben announces without hesitation.
Pause. Ramona and I stare at him, then she squeals and I clap my hands and the cabbie says, “You’re riiiiight! That’s $50. Next question.”
“What is the only state whose name is a single syllable?”
“Maine,” Ben says immediately.
“You’re riiiiight! That’s another $50.”
“How did you know that?” I ask, shocked.
“I like geography?” he says, looking a little sheepish.
The cabbie watches us in the rearview mirror. “What’s the only fruit that has seeds on the outside?”
“Strawberry,” Ben says again, before Ramona or I can even think of anything. Not that I’m complaining. Ben’s surprise trivia expertise may be the best secret he’s ever kept.
One more question, which Ben answers without pause, and we’re on to the $100 round.
“In what season do the most burglaries take place?”
We all look at each other. Ben shrugs. Ramona looks at me, wide-eyed.
“Winter?” I guess, then hold my breath. The lights flash.
“You’re right!”
Ramona reaches across Ben to hug me, squeezing us all together.
And the questions keep coming. And we keep getting every single one right. Somehow our combined knowledge is unbeatable. And then the cabbie says the next question is our final one. I bite my nail.
“In what year was the first successful photograph taken—1808, 1827 or 1832?”
The three of us look at each other. Blankly.
“This is embarrassing,” I whisper.
“Why didn’t we learn this yet?” Ramona whispers frantically.
“Should we just guess?” I say. “The middle number?”
Ramona and Ben both nod. “1827,” I say, not at all confidently.
Silence. Then the lights flash, all different colors, and the cabbie starts beeping his horn and cheering. He pulls over in front of our dorm. Then turns and hands us a wad of $100 bills.
Ramona grabs them and we all get out of the cab. Ramona practically clobbers us with excitement. “Guys! We just won Cash Cab!” She waves the money in the air. I’m too stunned to really register it. Dace is going to die.
“What should we do with the money?” Ramona asks as she doles it out—$500 for each of us, one $100 bill left over.
“Celebrate?” Ben suggests. “Let’s go out. Let’s do New York.” I nod, Ramona nods and then we agree to meet back in the dorm lobby in an hour, ready for our night out together.
CHAPTER 12
“I understand you wanted to document the things your dad did or liked while he was here, but it just didn’t work for me,” Gabrielle says during our one-on-one on Monday. “It’s not really a day in the life, and it’s not a progression of any sort, really. It’s just a bunch of shots of store signs, bright lights, an old movie theater. An apartment. There’s no focus.”
I sit in stunned silence, registering her comments, before pulling myself together, sitting up a little taller in my uncomfortable wooden chair and responding. I did not expect this. Not after the great weekend we had—going out Saturday night, meeting up with everyone else from the dorm to go to Brad’s, which was throwing a study-break dance party, and then Sunday going to the famous brunch with everyone at Palladium Hall.
“But these are the places he’d go to 16 years ago, and they’re still around,” I explain now, to Gabrielle. “So it’s like Time Standing Still,” I say, feeling proud of myself for coming up with that theme on the spot. “My dad died,” I reiterate. Maybe she’s forgotten. “You know, I didn’t know about any of this, because I’d never been to New York. But my aunt, she lives in my dad’s old place, and David Westerly’s my mentor and he was my dad’s best friend, and he showed me all the places they used to hang out. It’s, like, getting to be with my dad, even when he’s not here.”
“That must’ve been really nice. Getting to see those places. I just … I don’t think it’s really telling a story. What you just told me isn’t present in the images. Do you know what I mean?”
I start to nod, just to agree with her, just because I feel so uncomfortable and want to get out of the room. But then I stop myself. The way Dr. Judy’s taught me. Not to panic-attack my way out of an uncomfortable situation to avoid it. I have to confront it. If being here is important to me. If photography is important to me. I sit up straighter in my seat. “I don’t think you understand what I was going for. For my Vantage Point theme I shot things that reminded me of my dad and that was good enough to get me here …”
“Good enough.” Gabrielle looks like she’s eaten something terrible. “That’s not really a term I like to hear. And as I recall you didn’t just take a bunch of pictures of things that reminded you of your dad, you had a theme … what was it?”
“Darkness in Light.”
She nods. “Right. So, sure, you took inspiration from your dad, but you built a theme. That’s what I want you to do. Explore a photography technique or an artistic idea. Take inspiration but then take an inspiring photo. Move us. See here?” She holds up the photo I took of Aunt Emmy’s apartment. “A wide shot inside the apartment.”
“I employed the rule of thirds,” I say, pointing out how I positioned the couch in the frame so that it runs up the right third of the photo.
She nods. “Sure, but your depth of field is all off.”
“Oh,” I say, when what I really mean is, “Huh?” Because David mentioned that when we were in the theater too, but I was more interested in his past with Mom and Dad than I was with his photography advice.
“Where’s the focal point here? You’ve got the couch in focus, but what about this,” she points to the white envelope—the piece of mail Emmy had brought inside and stuck on the ledge inside the door, the ledge that separated the front entrance from the kitchen. “Who’s it addressed to? I’m more curious about that. Who lives here? Give me something to be nosy about, show me something I couldn’t otherwise see.” She flips to the photo of Phil E. Cheesesteaks. “OK, so it’s a sandwich shop. You’ve shot the sign. Have you ever looked up anything on Google Earth?”
I nod, remembering how last summer Dace and I were obsessed with Google Earth when we heard the car was coming to Spalding. We were practically on 24-hour watch for an entire week, and we had this whole plan to run outside with, like, all our clothes on—winter coats, three pairs of pants, hats, mitts, scarves, ski goggles—in the middle of one of the hottest days of the year. We thought it would be so hilarious. Only we never saw the car and, probably, only we would’ve thought it was funny.
“Well you could see this on Google Earth. But what about this guy,” she says, pointing to the guy who was entering the shop as I was taking the photo. He’s out of focus, but as she points closer, I see he’s not wearing shoes. I didn’t even notice that. “There’s a story there. He’s not wearing shoes in December—and he’s in a sandwich shop?”
“Anyway.” She checks her watch. “I’ve got to move on
to the next student. But I will say this, Pippa. You have raw talent, for sure. But it feels like you’re stuck in the past. You’re seeing photography through the memory of your father, rather than through your own eyes, your own experiences. It’s holding you back. I want to see what you see, I want to see you in your work. Otherwise, I’m not interested.”
“Pippa!” Ben calls for the third time. I turn to see him dodge a car as he crosses Broadway to catch up to me. I wait at the curb.
“Hey,” he says, out of breath. “Didn’t you hear me calling your name?”
I shake my head even though that’s not true. The snow is starting to fall, the sky dark even though it’s only midday, and I pull the hood of my coat up around my face.
“Where are you going anyway?” he asks, as we walk under the scaffolding, past the American Apparel, down Broadway. I’m purposely heading away from everything I know—the dorms, Brad’s, David’s loft. I don’t have a plan, only to get away from it all. We’re only on a lunch break, supposed to return to class in an hour, but I’m not going back.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he says, seeing my tears. I swipe at them with the back of my mitten, the fluff sticking to my lipgloss. Why did Dr. Judy have to be so damn good at her job?
“Gabrielle hated my assignment. She was going on and on about what I’ve done wrong, what I could do better, but I actually just … don’t get it. I don’t think I belong here.”
“Hey.” He tosses an arm around my shoulder, like we’re friends or something, and gives me a squeeze. “Don’t be ridiculous. Whose photos got me here? You have what it takes. You definitely belong here.”
“I don’t think I do. I don’t …” I sniff. “I don’t have the same skill level as everyone else.”
He grabs my arm, and sort of twists me toward him, looking me in the eye. It feels too intimate, and I look away, but he touches my cheek with his bare hand and turns my head back to look at him. “You have the most passion for photography of anyone I’ve ever met. It’s your thing. Don’t let one assignment, or one teacher, get you down. You know a hell of a lot more about taking photos than I do. You know, aside from taking other people’s.” He smiles. “Come on, even that deserves a smile, no?”
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