“I’m Damien,” he told her, waiting patiently, hand extended.
Jude considered snubbing him. Some part of her wanted to. Anyone that handsome deserved a little rejection now and then, but the way he looked at her caused something to stir. She was curious.
“Jude,” she told him.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he began when she didn’t say more. “I was having a coffee over there and saw you setting up the picture. I need to hire a photographer, so I thought…”
“For what? A portrait?” she sneered.
“No,” he grinned. “I’m terribly un-photogenic so that’s the last thing I’m looking for. Actually, I’m a doctoral student of psychiatry and writing my thesis on the motivations of people who become homeless.”
“The motivations?” she asked wryly. “Probably not to starve or freeze to death.”
“I’m studying a different motivation, actually. I didn’t mean to bother you though. I’m sure I can find someone else.” He didn’t sound offended, but he turned and began to walk away.
“Wait,” Jude called, cursing his good looks. “I’ll be done with this set of shots in a half hour. If you’re still at the coffee shop, we can talk about it.”
He smiled, two rows of straight white teeth, and his face lit with apparent joy, and perhaps relief.
“I’ll be there.”
“I’m still not sure why you need a photographer,” Jude admitted after Damien explained his thesis in more detail.
He cocked his head and looked out the window, thoughtful.
“I guess it helps me to study them better. I work with patients face to face and want to pull up a photograph each time I’m reading an interview and put a face to a name,” he said, pouring more sugar into his coffee.
She looked at his cup and grimaced.
“Are you drinking coffee or a milkshake?”
He widened his eyes and then looked at the sugar canister in his hand as if he didn’t know how it had gotten there.
“I don’t like coffee,” he admitted, grinning. “But it’s become a necessary evil. This is how I force it down.”
“Seems you’re taking a spoonful of sugar to an unhealthy level,” she said, pushing the sugar across the table.
Damien’s lips were heart-shaped with a tiny divot in his upper lip. His eyelashes were long and blond, his hands large and fine-boned. Jude had never been drawn to photographing men for the sake of their beauty, but found herself wanting to take shots of his body in parts, a single flexed forearm, the spirals of his ear, the tapering of his lower back.
“It’s an interesting project,” Jude admitted. “But if you want photos for your personal use, you can use an instant camera. I’m a photographer, Damien. You’d be throwing away money if I took your pictures.”
“I appreciate your honesty.” he said. “But I’d prefer a professional take them. Maybe I’ll publish my findings someday, even put them in a book.”
She cocked an eyebrow considering whether she’d want her name attached to those photos. She thought yes, an existential examination of homeless people was interesting if nothing else.
“Okay, sure,” she said. “Listen, I’m done for the day. Do you want to get a drink?”
Damien smiled and sat back in his booth. They stared at each other for a long moment, long enough for Jude to know the attraction was mutual.
“Yes,” he said. “I’d love to.”
Hattie
Hattie found a hammer in the shoe-box she had taken from Peter’s old room at Gram Ruth’s. It contained the hammer, two screwdrivers, a pack of nails, duct tape, batteries and a flashlight. She tugged a bit of colored plastic from the bottom, recognizing an old key chain that used to hang from Peter’s bike handlebars. It showed an orange Detroit Tigers logo. Hattie traced her fingers over the plastic, rough on the edges likely from a few scrapes on the road.
They had deployed Peter to Vietnam seven months before. Hattie had cried when she hugged him goodbye, Jude told him he better watch his ass, and Gram Ruth had given him a crisp twenty-dollar bill and said not to blow it on alcohol. He sent Hattie a letter, once a month, describing the glossy ferns and endless rains of the jungle. He didn’t tell her about death and dying though she saw the newspapers and knew he faced it daily. Jude was his twin. If he told anyone the harsh realities of his life as a soldier it was her. Jude could hear those stories and not cry a tear. Hattie, on the other hand, cried if she saw a squirrel dead in the road.
She slipped the key chain into her pocket. Using a screwdriver, she pried the lid off the musty crate she’d retrieved from Gram Ruth’s loft. A billow of dust blew into her face and she sneezed, waving at the air until it settled. Hattie pulled out a wad of tissue paper sprinkled with mouse poop and tossed it into a paper garbage bag. Beneath the tissue, she found the albums and lifted the first one out, smoothing her fingers along the yellowing fabric. She had not looked at the photo albums in years.
In the months after her mother died, followed by her father only weeks later, Hattie slept with the albums every night. Many of the photos were dull, their images worn away by Hattie’s needy fingers. One picture of her mama and daddy holding their family’s cat Turkey Legs on the porch of their farmhouse had been so tattered after Hattie’s touching, Gram Ruth had thrown it away without even asking. Hattie still remembered the picture, the way her mama looked to the left gazing at Daddy while he grinned holding a wriggling Turkey Legs in place as Jude, even then loving photography, snapped the shot.
Jude would laugh if she saw the stack of albums Hattie brought into her new home. She pulled each one out, wiped a layer of silt from their covers and stacked them neatly to the side. She wanted the wedding photograph of her mama that had been displayed at her memorial, but found the bottom of the crate filled with straw and no more photos.
She’d have to return to Gram Ruth’s.
Jude
“Psychiatry?” Jude said, eying Damien through increasingly drunk eyes. “What compelled you to become a head-shrinker?”
Damien took a shot and laughed, grimacing at the bitter taste. His blond hair settled over his eyes and he swiped it away.
“I like to help people.”
“Oh come off it,” she badgered. “Don’t go one-dimensional on me now. We just spent twenty minutes talking about why you’re conflicted about living in the suburbs. You can do better than, ‘I like to help people.’”
“Another round?” he asked, waving at their empty glasses.
Jude gauged her level of drunkenness and knew she should say no. “Yeah, but first an honest answer.”
He squinted and puckered his lips.
“I’m curious about people and why they do what they do.” He waved to the bartender to refill their drinks. “My father’s a religious man and he believes the devil is behind the dark things in this world. I tend to think the opposite. Perfectly good people do terrible things. Case in point.” He pointed at the line of empty shot glasses.
Jude rubbed the back of her neck, the familiar urges of her body imagining unbuttoning Damien’s shirt.
“I don’t think the devil’s behind this,” she laughed. “What saint doesn’t love a little holy wine?”
He grinned.
“Nor do I, but it’s against my better judgment. I have to work tomorrow. You too, I bet. Yet here we are.” He winked at her and held his shot glass high after the bartender refilled it.