"Maybe I don't want to be an asshole anymore."
"Damnit, Geof. You shot that fucking Piet."
I'd known, even when I came in, that sooner or later he'd bring that picture up. you, Eddie Adams, Nick Ut… master images… made history… changed our perceptions of the war." He glanced at my portfolio box.
"Forget this arty crap. Sleeping with your cameras, squeaking by-that's no kind f life. Stick to what you know, what you do better than most anybody else. Like it or not, Geof, you're a photojournalist." He peered at me shrewdly.
"If it's the money Look-I'll try to get you twenty-five."
"It's not the money "What is it, then?"
"I'm no longer a photojournalist."
I must have been convincing; from the way he looked at me I could tell my message was finally sinking in. He sat back, shrugged, and then he whispered, "Then you don't really belong here, do you, Geof? You probably shouldn't come in here anymore."
I smiled. For a moment he seemed confused. Then he smiled too.
"Yeah! I called you. You didn't come up to sell me. Shit, I'm so used to guys trying to hustle me for jobs…" He stood up.
"Come on, let's get the hell out of here, go get ourselves a drink." He slipped on his jacket.
"they got this phony English pub downstairs."
On the way to the elevator he slapped me on the back.
"Respect you, Geof. Really do. Wish I had your guts. Hundred guys I know'd give their left ball to do what you did-say to hell with it, give it up."
Downstairs in the bar he continued in the same vein. By the third drink his eyes began to mist.
"Boy, you really did it right. Got off the old treadmill while you still had something to say. Became an artist. Confronted photography.
Used it to discover who you are. Your work's solid, Geof. Better than that. It's damn fuckin' good. I you. And you were right to turn me down. But it pay-isn't that the trick?"
It was past midnight when I finally stumbled home, full of rare steak and expensive Scotch, and in an awful self-pitying mood. That's always the problem when you drink with guys like Jim; they spread it around like a disease.
There wasn't anyone to come home to either, just a couple of disconnects on the answering machine, and my big view camera parked in the middle of the room. I stared at the lens opening and it stared back, one big reproachful eye. I splashed cold water on my face, then turned the camera to the wall. I didn't want it to see the way I felt. Jim didn't know it, but it hadn't been on principle that I'd turned him down. Three weeks' work for twenty grand-I'd have done almost anything for that. The truth was I had lost my nerve, though not the way he thought. It wasn't the madmen's bullets that scared me off Beirut, or the danger in the streets, or the possibility of being kidnapped, though all that was real enough. It was the certain knowledge that I couldn't carry out the assignment, because the assignment involved photographing people.
You see: it had been three years since I'd shot a human face.
The next morning I was still in bed, hung over, feeling bad, when the phone rang hard against my ear.
"Hi! It's me-Kimberly. Getting you at a bad time?" And then, before I could answer: "I'm just downstairs and around the corner. I was wondering… could I pop up?"
"What time is it?"
"Quarter past ten. Didn't wake you, did I, Geoffrey?"
"Where are you?"
"Corner of Nassau and Ann."
I wrapped a sheet around my waist, then carried the phone to the window.
She was standing in the booth on the corner in front of the bronze plaque embedded in the building wall that says Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Raven" on that very spot. what are you doing downtown so early?"
"Early audition," she said.
"Get the part?"
"they turned me down. I didn't want it anyway."
I didn't believe a word. There are no auditions, early or otherwise-not in my part of town. But she was looking pretty good down there in her New York actress model garb, chest straining against the fabric of her T-shirt, rear stretching the bottom of her tight and beltless jeans. She was sexy and she knew it, and it seemed she'd worked up some kind of crush on me too. Why else come around after the way I'd talked to her the day before? he actually seemed to be panting as she waited for me to speak. Yeah, she was looking good, full of life, and I needed something good just then. Something fresh, warm and alive. Maybe, I thought, somehow, there might be a way…
"Tell you what, Kimberly-why don't you go around the corner, get yourself some coffee. Give me about twenty-five minutes. Then come back and ring the bell."
I recall my first thought when she came through the door, that she was even better-looking than I remembered. A little older to closer to twenty-five than twenty-one. There was an appealing sultry eagerness about her that made me sorry I'd been rude. to anyone. Ever. That's how attractive she was.
"Hi!"
"So this is where you live?"
"Live and work," I said.
She glanced at the walls.
"Nice. Mind if I look around?"
I shrugged.
"Help yourself."
I watched her then as she began to scan my pictures. She stopped before a print.
"This one isn't yours."
"No, it's by a friend. He shot it in New Mexico."
"Nice," she said.
"And this?"
"That's by Edward Weston," I said.
" 'Pepper No. 30,' isn't it? The print by Cole." I nodded. She knew her stuff.
"You must like it. Tell me why?"
"It reminds me of something," I said.
"What?"
"That it took Weston thirty tries before he was satisfied he'd seen a pepper right."
She smiled.
"Good reason." She pointed at my Piet@. "And this-?"
"That one's mine," I said,
She turned toward me.
"You're kidding!" I shook my head. She looked confused.
"You shot this! You have no idea! As a little girl… God! I was haunted by this." I stood silent. People had said things like that to me before, and I'd never figured out how to respond. The Vietnamese mother, face in torment, staring at my lens while embracing the bloodied naked body of her son-it touched some chord, spoke of love, despair and the total agony of war. And the men standing around her, the men who'd killed her boy, smiles twisted by shame at what they'd done-they too were victims. That was what the picture said.
"Can't believe I'm standing here with a person who made something that.
.. that changed my life. Course, I was only ten years old."
"Changed mine too," I said.
"And I was only twenty-five."
"Didn't you win a prize or something?"
"That was the good part," I said.
She studied me, nodded and turned back to my wall.
"What you're doing now-it's completely different. Like you're another person altogether."
"Well, I hope I am."
"I definitely think so. You're in a completely different place. But there're still times you'd like to become the person you were back then.
Trouble is, you don't think you can." She nodded, as if to herself.
"Actually, I think it's possible-if you really wanted to do it, you could. But you don't. Not really. You just tell yourself you do. And less and less as time goes on.
"What are you?" I asked. "Some kind of witch?" She smiled.
"Do I read you right?"
"A lot better than some therapists I've been to see."
"Maybe they tried too hard. See, I think the trick is not to try, just to feel and understand." She gazed again at my Piet.
"You don't like to talk about it, but still I'd like to hear. -."
We sat down, and she began to talk. She told me about a friend of hers, a girl in her fourth-grade class, whose older brother had been killed in Vietnam. On account of that the girl hated all Vietnamese, and, Kim, being her friend, hated them too. Except one day her homeroom teacher showed the class my picture, and after that Kim changed her mind.