“It’s a good start,” he says. “The way the metal looks against the skin. The softness of the cheek and that sharp line of the metal. Startling, I think.”
Lee is barely looking at the image now, has turned her gaze so that what she sees is Man looking at it, the small smile on his face and his hand holding the tongs over the fix bath.
“I like it,” she says, which sounds trivial. Embarrassed, she turns away.
He holds up a second image, similar to the first. “What do you think of this one?”
Lee comes over and they look at it together. It’s a more straightforward shot of Amélie with her head lying on top of the saber guard as if on a pillow. The composition is beautiful, but Lee knows Man wants something from her, a suggestion or small critique. The truth is she finds the image a bit boring, a bit expected, but she can’t say that to him—she knows already how defensive he becomes when someone critiques his eye. What she needs to do is suggest a darkroom fix, not comment on the artistry. But she does not feel she has the language for that yet.
She points with a pair of tongs. “It looks too light on this side, where the light from the window is coming in.”
“Yes,” he says, pleased. “What would you do to fix it?”
“Print it darker?”
“Hmm… but then the right-hand side would be too dark. Why don’t I show you dodging and burning?”
He rattles the darkroom door handle to make sure the door is fully closed. Then he lights the red lamp and turns off the white lamp, and everything is amber, as if lit by a campfire. He sets up the enlarger and Lee watches as he exposes the paper, using a small handmade tool, a stick with a round piece of cardboard taped to the end of it that casts a small shadow on the image. He takes the stick and moves it around quickly for twenty seconds or so, never letting it sit in the same place for very long.
“People always ask me, ‘How do you get your prints so even?’” he says. “It’s simple, really. Everyone thinks photography is like a magic trick, but there’s no magic involved. There are only two colors to mix together: black and white. Add more of one, take some of the other away. You want both in your picture. True black and true white. If you have those, you can have as many shades of gray as you want and the image will still look good. Most of the time, if you develop a print and it doesn’t have at least one part that is pure white, either the image is unusable or you’ve done a lousy job of printing. You want a white spark on someone’s mouth where the lipstick reflects light back to the camera, or in the whites of their eyes, or in something they are wearing. Not too much white—most of the time, just a little bit to put everything else in contrast to it.”
Man moves easily through the small space while he is talking, turning off the enlarger and then gently sliding the paper into the developing bath. The same image appears on the paper, first just the outlines, like a footprint in the sand, and then the rest of the image fills in. This time, the print is much more even, and Lee can tell just from looking at it that Man will be satisfied with it.
“Voilà!” He holds up the print for her inspection, waiting until she nods and smiles, indicating that she feels just as pleased as he does. “Now, you try,” Man says. He turns to the enlarger and hands her the dodging stick.
It is like the developing closet again, and her nervousness comes back in a rush. He stands behind her, closer, she thinks, than he needs to. They slide the paper into the frame and Man reaches around her to light the lamp. She grips the dodging stick and waits for him to instruct her. The lamp lit, the image glows on the paper, Amélie’s face black in the reversed image. Lee thinks of what he has just said, the need for a pop of pure white sparking on someone’s lips. She fumbles the stick and inexpertly begins to move it around above the paper. She feels suddenly dizzy, swallows and tastes old champagne on the back of her tongue and wonders if Man can smell it on her, the drinks and the cigarettes and even the stranger, George, whose scent she is worried must be lingering on her even though she’s bathed since she was with him. Man is so close behind her she can feel his breath against her cheek.
“Is this right?” she asks.
“You’re doing fine.” She glances back at him, but he has his eyes trained on the print and does not meet her gaze.
They work together in what seems to be a companionable silence for the next few hours. The room is only marginally larger than the closet where they developed the film. There is an enlarger with a mercury lamp, a large wooden sink for fixing and rinsing the images, and a developing basin that they have to share. The afternoon passes in a blur. Together they print dozens of images from the session, and if Lee were feeling more herself she would be thrilled at all that Man is teaching her. But instead she has to focus on keeping her mind on the task at hand, her wayward thoughts a heavy book she must repeatedly slam shut. The room is small, but does that explain how close to her Man seems to stay? The images are wonderful, but surely he doesn’t usually print so many from the same session? Everything seems to be sending her a message: the way he pulls off his rubber gloves and massages his hands, the way he doesn’t move out of her way when she brushes past him but instead seems to consciously fill up space so that she has no choice but to come in contact with him. She wills herself to focus.
Finally, after hours of printing, he gestures to her negatives still hanging on the line.
“Are those the ones we developed last week?”
“Yes—there’s probably not time to print them today, though.”
“Why not? We’ve gotten a lot done. Go ahead.”
Lee checks her watch and sees that it is not as late as she thought. She finishes what she is working on, then takes her strips of negatives and cuts them in thirds and arranges them on a sheet of paper. Man has started singing out loud as they work. “I’m longing to see you, dear Since you’ve been gone Longing to have you hold me / Hold me near.” His voice gets louder and louder, and with his Brooklyn accent the sad lyrics seem absurd. Lee clears her throat.
“What?” he says, turning toward her. “Oh—was I singing out loud? It’s a bad habit of mine.”
“It’s okay,” she says, and he starts up again, this time doing it even louder, and adding in some exaggerated dance moves until she is laughing.
“Do you sing, Miss Miller?” he asks, with mock formality.
“Only when I’m completely sure no one is listening to me.”
“Yes. We’ll see about that. A few months of lessons with me and you’ll be ready for the stage.”
“You’re going to teach me to sing? You do seem to be a true maestro.” As she says it, she thinks of Kiki. Would they sing together? Certainly Man has watched her, hundreds of times, probably. “Is that one Kiki sings? You… know her, don’t you?” Lee keeps her tone light and even.
He lifts his head from his work and glances over at her. “Kiki? Yes, I know her,” he says, “though I don’t think she’s ever sung that song.”
“I’ve never heard her… I went to Amélieeau Ivre last night and the bartender was talking about her.” Lee is on a dangerous path but the words keep coming. “I like it there. Nice bar. They make a good Lillet.”
A good Lillet? Yes, they are so adept at pouring one type of alcohol into a glass.
Man doesn’t seem to notice. “I like that bar. The spiral staircase and the view from the second floor.”
“But Kiki doesn’t sing there, does she?”
“At Amélieeau Ivre? No, Kiki’s usually at the Jockey.”