Of course, the first print he made that night was crap. The first print of the session always was, like the first pancake off the skillet, as his father used to note on Sunday mornings when Stephan was a child. But it was a starting point, a foundation upon which he could now build. That was how he worked when printing his photographs, through grinding trial and error over dozens of iterations. It wasn’t that he lacked the skill to do a decent job on the first or third attempt – after more than ten years and many thousands of prints, that wasn’t the issue. But to achieve real excellence – not perfection, which was impossible, but something completely thought through – you needed to test and retest every conceivable approach. And so he took this first, feeble effort and clipped it up on the wall in the lounge for inspection. He stood back a few feet and surveyed it in a detached way, noting the most obvious problems, before returning to the darkroom to try again.
The tangy odour of the developing chemicals filled the cave-like darkroom, inundating his clothing, as he continued his attempts. Soon he had a rhythm going, and his movements became a sort of dance, every action in time. An hour slid by, then another, as the recycling bin out in the lounge filled up with discarded prints, most of them not half bad, but none quite good enough to keep. Slowly and inexorably, he honed in on his object: a near-perfect tonal spectrum, from tarry black to the half-gloss white of the paper. Just one more try, he thought, and he’d have it nailed. He was in a flow state, focused and energized. Maybe it had something to do with the weather, the summer burgeoning, the city green and alive with sun and colour. Or perhaps this sudden burst of vitality was born of last night’s encounter with Jenny Wynne – and of his sense of anticipation of what might happen next.
Out in the lounge, he clipped up one last print and looked it over. It was good, he thought, a warm glow of satisfaction spreading across his chest. The slight change he’d made to the cropping of the image had improved the overall composition. And the dodging he’d done around the centre, holding his hand above the paper to stop some of the enlarger’s light from getting through, had lent a soft glow to the focal point of the composition. Yes, he’d finally gotten it. The night’s work had not been in vain.
As he stood there gazing upon his handiwork, smiling to himself in satisfaction, he heard a metallic thump from off down the hall. He thought at first that it must have come from outside, or been a figment of his tired mind. But it was followed by a metallic clatter, louder and unmistakably nearby. The noise seemed to be coming from one of the lab’s storage closets, the shelves of which were filled with broken tripods, plastic bleach bottles filled with expired chemicals, and ancient lenses unlikely to fit on any camera built after 1950. Since the lab was open all night to those with a key, it was possible that another photographer had come in – but the noise sounded too violent and careless for it to be that. Alarmed, Stephan looked around for some heavy piece of gear with which to defend himself in case there was a burglary in process. It was after 2 a.m. now, and it was unusual to see anyone else in the studio this late.
He found an old 35 millimetre camera body in the lounge, made of steel judging by the heft of it. Swung on its shoulder strap, it could do some damage, he figured, as he tiptoed out into the hall. Before he’d gone more than a foot or two, however, a heavy-set, rumpled figure in a ratty Guatemalan sweater appeared at the far end of the hall, lugging a cardboard box of old gear. Stephan saw that it was Bill, the owner, and immediately loosened his death-grip on the old camera.
“Bill – thank god. I thought you were a burglar.”
“A cat burglar, I presume.” Bill wheezed out a laugh as he lumbered nearer. “I can see why you might.”
Bill followed Stephan back into the lounge, where he dropped his box carelessly to the floor and flopped down on the couch. Bill subsisted on a diet of Big Macs, black coffee and Oh Henry bars, and he had a physique to match his appetite.
“You do have a sort of cat-like grace about you,” Stephan said, as the couch heaved beneath Bill’s weight.
Bill Plisskins was something of a legend in local photography circles. A camera nerd of the old school, he’d been a newspaper photojournalist in the 1960’s, when he was still in his twenties. He had covered the Vietnam War, as well as the protests against it, with the Monterey Pop Festival thrown in for seasoning. He’d won a couple of prestigious awards, done some compelling work, but eventually burned out, as he told it. (Stephan found it equally likely that Bill’s slothful side had simply put its foot down one day, calling a moratorium on globe-trotting to exotic locales where fast-food outlets were scarce.) That was when he had started running the lab, a vocation that seemed to suit him well. It allowed him to keep a hand in the world he loved without the bother of travel or daily deadlines.
“So what brings you in here at this hour?” Stephan asked. “Doesn’t seem like it’s your style to burn the candle at both ends, Bill.”
“Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d come down and sneak in a little work,” Bill said.
“Insomnia?” Stephan was surprised.
“I suppose so,” Bill admitted. “Never been an issue before. I don’t know. Business is down. Rents are up.”
“Maybe you should look into doing some, uh, advertising or something, track down some new customers,” Stephan offered. It was a vague and lame suggestion, he realized.
“Perhaps,” Bill said, with a sigh. “But I think the problem could be deeper than that. The industry is changing, my friend. Digital photography is taking over. I’m not sure there’s a market for this place anymore.”
“Oh come on, Bill,” Stephan said. “There will always be a huge contingent of serious photographers who prefer film.”
“I’m not so sure. The new generation of digital SLRs that are hitting the market? Sure, they’re expensive now, but the quality isn’t so bad, and the prices are coming down all the time. The professionals are already switching, doing their post-production on Macs. It’s just so much more efficient than...” He swept his hand in a wide arc, taking in the darkrooms and the suite of colour developing machines. “...all of this.”
Disgusted, Stephan considered wielding his camera as a weapon after all.
“Well, Bill, I don’t agree,” he said, after taking a moment to compose himself. “Digital is just... inferior. There’s no comparison.”
“Sure, it’s different, no question.”
“Look at this print,” Stephan went on, waving the evening’s crowning achievement under Bill’s nose. “Look at how the water here is almost luminous.”
“It’s a good photo, Stephie,” Bill said. “You’re a talented kid, no question.”
“Thanks, but that’s not the point at all.”
“Go ahead then,” Bill said, with a not unkindly sigh.
“What I’m saying is that digital will never even come close to that level of subtlety, and the serious photographers will need the real thing. You know, silver nitrate – that’s where the beauty comes from, not some… pixel.”
“Your confidence is reassuring,” Bill said, with a weary smile. “And I sincerely hope you’re right. Because otherwise... well, something will have to change around here is all I’m saying.”
* * * * *
He had decided to wait three days after the magazine awards before contacting Jenny Wynne. It was the traditional time buffer, neither so narrow as to make you seem needy nor so wide that she would have forgotten the intensity of their connection. But she preempted him on the second day with a text message:
Hv a bsness prop 4 u. Meet nxt thrs after wrk?
He spent several minutes analyzing the message for clues as to what she had in mind. The “4 u” was subtly flirtatious, wasn’t it? And the word “prop” could have any number of connotations. Then he caught himself, laughed it off, and thumbed out an affirmative reply.
He had a week and a half to kill before the appointed day. It seemed like an eternity under the circumstances, although fortunately he was busy with work, which wou
ld help pass the time. He had a new assignment for a local architecture magazine that was sure to consume him once he got started on it. There were also inquiries to deal with from three potential clients who’d taken note of him at the awards event. It had all worked out just as he’d hoped, and now June was shading into July, the air growing sultry.
The northern summers were short and hot. You had to take advantage of them while you could. Over the next couple of days, despite his workload, he got out in the afternoons to do some shooting outdoors, his own stuff. He was happy, as he usually was, to be busy.
But he soon grew restless, even with everything going on – especially with everything going on. Casting around for fresh diversions, he phoned up an old friend from university, Pete Dickerbee, and arranged to meet for drinks and dinner at their usual spot, Pete’s favourite pub, the Olde Trout. The two of them hadn’t gotten together in a couple of months and Stephan was eager to do some catching up. Pete had gotten married to his long-time girlfriend, Sally, back in the fall, and Stephan wanted an update, now that the honeymoon was a few months in the past.
Stephan and Pete had been in the same cohort at the smallish, nondescript university in the west of the province where they’d each earned a bachelor’s degree. They’d first encountered one another in their third year, when they’d both worked for the student newspaper. Pete had dabbled in music reviewing, while Stephan had been photo editor. Though that was about all there was to it – casual meet ups at rock shows they were both covering, a few rounds of Jaegermeister at the paper’s Christmas party – their friendship had endured while many others that Stephan had made during those years fell by the wayside. It was hard to say why. It didn’t seem to have much to do with shared goals, for example. Pete’s lifestyle was more mainstream than Stephan’s, a characterization that Pete himself would have supported.
After finishing his undergraduate degree, Pete had immediately gotten a job in IT at a television network back in the city, settled down. Pete had met Sally while they were still students. They wanted to live in an urban rather than suburban setting, but they made no apologies about seeking a cozy, conventional life together. Pete had always been clear that he had few ambitions besides holding down a job, raising a family, and eating at least three decent meals a day.
“Life is short – you might as well try to relax and enjoy some chop steak and a pint now and then,” he’d once said to Stephan. Slightly modified, the statement might fittingly be chiseled on his gravestone one day.
When Stephan arrived at the Olde Trout he found Pete already ensconced in his customary booth, nursing a pint of dark ale and gazing contentedly at a soccer game on the big-screen TV.
“Sir,” Stephan said as he came to the table, mock formally bowing to his friend, as if they were both 18th century aristocrats rather than 21st century middle class kids from the Canadian suburbs.
Pete looked up, grinned. “There you are!” he said. “I was beginning to think you’d stood me up, you old player.”
They shook hands, as per their custom, Pete breaking into a complex mason-like shake, full of intricate regrips and intermediary fist bumps. Stephan rolled his eyes at the childishness of it, but went along, even participating in the climactic high five.
“Hmmm... good sound,” Pete said, nodding. It was important to him that their high fives had a deep resonance to them. Back in their student days he’d insisted on redoing high fives over and over, until their hands were red and raw, in a quest for the perfect pop.
Pete poured Stephan a glass of beer from the pitcher he’d already ordered them, and the two friends sat facing each other, sizing one another up like scrawny, milquetoast gunslingers. Pete looked well, Stephan thought: pink cheeked and youthful, a slightly dazed expression of happiness on his face. Despite his considerable appetite for food and libation, he was thin as a board, aside from a barely perceptible beer belly.
“So?” Stephan said.
“So?” replied his friend.
This was another of their rituals, dipping their toes daintily into the conversation, as if diving right in would somehow be overly hasty.
“I don’t know... how’s the wife? Hang on, is that what I say now that you’re a married man?”
“Sure, has a nice ring to it, in a 1950’s, lunch box sort of way.”
“Okay, good. So then, I’ll proceed: how’s the wife?”
“Sally’s great, thank you for asking,” Pete said brightly. He always lit up at the mention of his wife’s name. It was actually kind of sweet. “She says hello, and she also wanted me to tell you that she saw some photo story you’d done, in a magazine at the dentist’s office, and loved it. Something about show dogs?”
“That’s so thoughtful of her,” Stephan said, ignoring the context – there was nothing less sexy than picturing one’s work as a prelude to a good tooth buffing. “Have I ever told you that you have fantastic taste in wives?”
“Mmm, once or twice.”
Sally’s parents were Korean Presbyterians, and in a nod to their faith, the wedding ceremony had been held in a downtown church. Stephan, in lieu of a gift, had volunteered to do the photos. He shot them in black and white, and had painstakingly hand-printed each image, so that the memories of the day would be flawlessly documented. Stephan had been happy for his friend, of course, and Sally was smart and lovely, but he had worried that things would change now that Pete had tied the knot. It hadn’t happened. Pete was still the same guy he’d always been, a lover of long sessions of armchair philosophizing over plates of old-fashioned comfort food and pints of beer or carafes of cheap wine. He was in fact even more himself now, if that was possible.
“So tell me about the married life,” Stephan said. “Do you feel any different?”
Pete thought for a moment. “In most ways no, not at all. But in a few, yeah, I guess I do. It was more for her parents that we did it, but now that it’s official, there’s something about looking at her and knowing she’s my wife.... it’s hard to explain.”
“So you’re still glad you did it, then. No six-month itch or anything like that.”
“No regrets. I mean, we fight every once in a while, of course, and there are days when I miss my time alone,” Pete said. “But you know, she was away for a conference the other week – it was nice to have my freedom at first, but after a day or two, it was like life had gone from colour to black and white.”
“Black and white can be beautiful, too, though,” Stephan said. His tone was a touch defensive. He couldn’t help it.
“Well, you of all people would say that, wouldn’t you?”
Stephan laughed. “Yes, I would,” he admitted.
They had another drink and then ordered some food from the gravel-voiced server. Pete seemed to be well acquainted with her – he called her by her first name, Phyllis, and she called him Sonny. Stephan ordered a sandwich, while Pete had the chop steak. It arrived a few minutes later, a gravy-coated mess of ground beef with home fries on the side. Pete bent low over his plate and inhaled deeply.
“Ahhhh, chop steak,” he said. “Chooooopschteak. Mmmmmmm. Yeeessss.”
“Does your wife have any suspicions about this action you’re getting on the side?” Stephan asked, smirking.
Pete just grunted, his mouth already stuffed with food.
They ate in silence for a few minutes, amid the Trout’s hubbub. It was a terrible place, if you thought about it – the food greasy, the clientele verging on boorish. But Stephan also understood the appeal. You could let your guard down, have a few drinks, tell an off-colour story or two. The comfort food was, well, comfort food. It was the antithesis of the Stem.
“So what about you?” Pete asked, after he’d finally come up for air. “Any... activities I should know about?”
“Aside from late nights at the photo lab?” Stephan asked. It was too soon to go blabbing about Jenny Wynne, even to Pete. He didn’t want to jinx anything. “Not so much.”
“You’re sure you’re not holdin
g out on me? Handsome young media figure like yourself?”
“Sorry to shatter your rosy picture, but it’s not all ‘hot chicks’ and sexy one-night stands. Or unsexy one-night stands, for that matter.”
“Nah, I remember what being solo could be like... for me, at least.”
“I remember your pain in that department as well,” Stephan said, chuckling. Pete had never had much luck with women – until he did.
“I’m glad my sad history amuses you, but seriously, there’s nothing going on?” Pete had always been more perceptive than he looked. “You seem up to me. I thought maybe some misguided female had taken pity on you.”
Stephan couldn’t stop himself from smiling.
“Ah, interesting,” his friend said, grinning back at him. “Well? Out with it.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Fine, then. Be mysterious. But you should consider going for it, if it’s anything real. We could go out for dinner together, all four of us – that is if Sally and I aren’t too dull for you.”
“If anything actually happens, you’ll be the first to know.”
Phyllis brought out dessert. Stephan had chosen a dish labeled, unconvincingly it turned out, as “Tiramisu.” Afterwards they ordered some liqueurs, just for the hell of it. They had a round of Frangelico, straight, then some Pernod before finishing up with scotch on the rocks, which they sipped at like bankers. The evening moved into its montage phase, a procession of quick-cut little moments to be savoured and almost instantly forgotten. On his way to the bathroom, Stephan had the idea of bringing a notebook with him next time, or a tape recorder, and secretly capturing a few fragments for posterity. A minute later, the thought had vanished, too, with the moment that contained it.
The Silver Age Page 4