A great white processing machine eats the film. In a space as dark as death, the film slides into its emulsions. The silver halides reduce; the first trace of the girl’s image makes its shadow self. Then the film is fixed and washed and dried, all inside the belly of the machine. A worker supervises the mass production of image after image, but the day the girl’s image emerges out of the mouth of the machine the worker is eating a sandwich and absentmindedly stroking himself in the back room and misses it. Thinking mostly about his semi-boner and wishing he had another sandwich or ten, he packs it up with the negatives after his break and shoves it all into a prepaid FedEx envelope.
The FedEx guy on the sending end is on speed. His eyes are darts.
The FedEx dude on the receiving end is stoned. He chuckles a little stoner laugh as he heads out in his magical white truck.
In America, the editorial assistant in charge of going through the daily photo deliveries every four hours moves a pile of black-and-white photos around on a desk, and the picture of the girl emerges. The editorial assistant pulls her hand back. The girl is farther in the foreground than she should be. It is because she has been blown forward, away from the explosion and toward the camera. She looks as if she is coming out of fire, her eyes bullets headed for the lens. Behind her, fire and smoke, and an arm and hand reaching out. At first, the editorial assistant doesn’t want to touch the photo. She notices that she’s holding her breath. Then she snaps out of it and carries it quickly to the editors. It feels weirdly hot in her hands. She thinks she maybe feels the warmth of blood between her legs. On the desk of the editors, the photo glows with potential. Men eye it and analyze it and judge its merits relative to other pictures. The curation happens quickly, however. There is only one image that matters.
All of this happens without the photographer. The photo, after all, is out of her hands. Later, it will be professionally and lovingly developed again — this time by hand, not machine.
Calling from a crackling phone in some hole-in-the-wall, she does give the editorial assistant one direction: Make sure the writer gets a copy of the photo. Send it right away. Write “this is the girl” on a scrap piece of paper. Then she hangs up, smiling, thinking of the writer. Hoping for her intimacy.
And so, the first time the girl comes to the house, the writer is at work on her novel.
She takes the package into her living room.
She pulls the cardboard strip that slits the belly of the package open.
Briefly she pictures the photographer’s hands.
She reaches inside and pulls the framed photo out.
It is wrapped in brown paper.
Scrawled across the front of the paper in some stranger’s hand: This is the girl.
A whisper of star-cluster emotions move briefly through her heart. She stares at the handwriting.
She unwraps the photo.
She looks.
Her pupils dilate, as they do in the dark, or when we shift focus from something far to something near, or when we are very much attracted to something, or when we enter an altered state.
Yes. This is the girl.
The Hands of a Boy
Once, when her husband was out of town at a film festival where his work was appearing, the writer took their son on a photo shoot. She bought two Kodak Instamatic cameras. She drove to the edge of the big river running through their city. It was a gray day — the kind of gray sky where the clouds look like they are holding the rain in their arms. They ran alongside the river along the river rocks, brushed their bodies inside patches of river reeds, examined a dead seagull drawn inland, collected little shells and stones. She showed him how to use the Kodak camera. His hands more adept at making things than he had language for. His cheeks two blooms.
They took photos for hours.
When she had the film developed, she took joy in his images — barely focused close-ups of rocks and sand and detritus. Odd-angled images of water and broken glass. The big gray of the sky that day. The eye of the dead seagull. And then she saw an image of herself that he’d taken. Her blond hair blowing across her face, her too-red winter wool coat, her arms so outstretched for him that they look as if they are about to pull off and away. It may be the truest image of herself she’s ever seen.
She makes a promise to herself: Remember to let go. When the time comes. Remember that you must.
Part Two
The Widow’s Watch
The widow hears the girl make noises in her sleep. One night, when she hears the girl moaning, she pulls a blanket around her own shoulders and pads her way to the girl’s bed to rub her back, to take her from nightmare to otherwhere, but when she arrives at the body of the girl she realizes she is not moaning.
She is laughing.
Another night, the widow is again pulled from sleep by the sound of the girl — she is walking toward the front door. Is she sleepwalking? The widow believes it: Whatever this girl has been through, it must have lodged in her subconscious forever. Likely this girl will be haunted the rest of her life. But again, when she reaches the girl, when she extends her arm out to wake her or stop her from leaving the house, she sees that the girl is not opening the door.
She is instead placing her cheek against it. She is kissing the door. She is smiling. Then the girl curls up on the floor at the base of the door and sleeps deeper.
Then there is the night the widow hears singing. Is it singing? Again she rises from her bed and moves toward the girl’s bed, but the girl is not there. The widow moves silently toward the front door, but the girl is not there either. The widow’s heart makes a small tightening fist in her chest. But then she looks toward the kitchen window and there the girl stands, looking up and out, the moon lighting up her face. Eased by the sight of her, the widow listens.
The girl is not singing. In her hands is a tiny brown owl. The owl chirps and trills in small rhythms between the girl’s palms.
The Photographer
The night the photographer won the prize, she called the writer. From the bar where her colleagues took her to celebrate. A very prestigious bar in the country of the war zone, in a city big enough to be untouched by the violence, at least not visibly. One of those cities of money and bars and galleries and governments and five-star hotels, all over the world, that sit next to human atrocity. Later, she would send each of their friends their own framed print of the black-and-white photo. But that night the writer was the only person she wanted to tell. In a phone booth inside the bar. A phone booth with strange faux gold paneling all over the door and walls. A little golden box. And she was drunk as a monkey. Little bleating voice of an operator. Little buzzings and ringings. Crackling. Then, hello from America, voice mail.
Later, they would argue, the photographer and the writer, about the girl in the photo. What about her? the writer demanded. What became of her? How could you leave her to fate? The words would sting the photographer’s eyes and throat.