There’s an attic entrance in the hallway, a trapdoor in the ceiling. I pull the leather strap and lower the ladder. A single bulb lights the attic, low wattage. Hot up here—stifling. Boxes, Christmas decorations. Windows bracket the room, one looking over the street out front and down to the torn shingles of the porch roof, the other looking over the fenced-in backyard, the coiled dog chain in the grass and the kiddie pool filled with an inch or two of rainwater. Beyond the backyard, the broad face of the Pulawski Inn rises over the neighboring rooftops. The mustard-yellow bricks darken to ochre in the rain. There’s a folding chair already set up near this window. I sit. I watch.
Three windows from the top, on the eastern corner—Room 1001. Auto zoom ×3, ×9—scanning the windows, looping fast-forward and reverse in time. Peyton Hannover was a student at Chatham University, studying literature, and a part-time model in local commercials: Pirates season tickets, Mattress World, Shop ’n Save. I’ve watched Peyton Hannover’s commercials and have watched her dine with friends, have watched her walk alone through Frick Park and have watched her die—waiting in line at a CVS in North Oakland to buy a bottle of chocolate milk, squinting at the blinding flash before her skin caught fire and turned to ash, blown apart in the same scouring wind that blew apart the CVS as easily as if it were made of newsprint.
I watch her now, on a Thursday evening in late July, as she prepares dinner in her kitchen—a dinner I’ve watched her prepare several times now: slicing strawberries for the salad and scooping chicken from the bag of marinade. I’m able to watch her now, as she lays out each chicken strip in a skillet and waves smoke away from the alarm, because for ten months before the end, Jayden Stanley ran a Canon HD webcam with 27× optical zoom pointed toward her windows. He’d filmed her from his attic, recording to a password-protected 10-terabyte pay account from JunkTrunk that the Right to Remember Act rendered accessible using my archival override codes. He had filmed Peyton Hannover as she undressed after classes and on weekend mornings as she ate grapefruit and drank coffee in her pajamas on her balcony. He filmed her in spandex, practicing yoga in her living room. He filmed her having wine with friends and filmed long hours of her empty apartment while she was out. He filmed her through the picture windows that must have been appealing to her at the time she signed her lease, affording sweeping vistas of Polish Hill and the downtown skyline beyond. The view from the Stanleys’ attic window to Peyton’s apartment is unobstructed: I can see her apartment’s exposed brick interior walls from here, a poster of polychrome Warhol flowers, everything. I can see it all clearly. I’ve reviewed all ten months of Stanley’s footage, most nights watching Peyton doing nothing more interesting than watching HGTV or America’s Next Top Model—but there is one evening that interests me, this Thursday in late July.
For most of the evening, Stanley’s filmed the wrong room—hours of useless footage of Peyton’s darkening bedroom, polygon shards of sunset receding from the wall above her bed. He must have checked his camera at 7:42 because the frame adjusts. Peyton in the kitchen cutting strawberries and rinsing lettuce. She’s wearing spandex shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt, one shoulder exposed. Plastic basins and metal tubs line the short hallway leading to the bathroom—but Stanley’s zoomed in too close, cutting off the view of the rest of the loft. I imagine Stanley hurrying here, maybe his wife calling him down from the attic, maybe Oscar moaning to be let outside, adjusting the video to capture Peyton in the kitchen, but keeping him from adjusting the shot the way he would have liked—but I’m guessing. Almost twenty minutes filming these washbasins. Albion steps into view nearing eight o’clock, carrying bolts of fabric. Her crimson hair’s lifted in a tight bun twisted together with pencils. Her skin is cameo white—I’d call her swanlike but that might sound like I’m falling in love with her. She’s not wearing much in Stanley’s video—a sports bra, spandex shorts, tennis shoes. She’s athletic despite her height, handling the bolts of fabric without goosey awkwardness. Maybe she’d once played volleyball. Or tennis. I watch as Albion measures and cuts the fabric and as she submerges lengths of cloth into each tub.
I imagine now they’re eating dinner together, but the table is out of view. I watch the basins. Peyton returns to the kitchen sink after nine. Albion returns to the frame nearing nine thirty. She kneels, pulls cloth from the tubs—it’s dyed a rich violet. She hangs the fabric dripping from a makeshift line, dye raining over painter’s plastic. Her hands and forearms are purple, like she’s been strangling grapes for wine. I watch her. Peyton crosses into view—briefly. Albion laughs. A few minutes later, Albion yawns and stretches, raising her arms above her head, cracking her shoulders. I finish out the view of her. This trace ends when the fabric is hung and she carries the basins into Peyton’s bathroom. That’s the last I see of her. I’ve looked forward in time, but Stanley misses filming when Albion takes down her fabric, misses the rest of the cleanup, or any other time Albion may have visited Peyton—or the footage may have already been deleted. I loop back. I sit in the folding chair in Stanley’s attic, watching out the attic window to the apartment building and wait for Albion. Peyton’s slicing strawberries and scooping chicken from the marinade. Albion enters the frame, carrying bolts of fabric. I watch her.
1, 8—
The graffiti on Albion’s apartment doesn’t stem from Pornokrates, like I’d first thought—but appropriates an image from an Agent Provocateur printbook called Manor House, one of those limited-run narrative catalogs fashion houses distribute to investors each season. I found a Manor House reproduction on kink.torrent: the copy’s shit quality, but I can tell what the image is—three women, two on leashes. The auteur of the printbook, a photographer named Coudescue, must have used Pornokrates as inspiration for his image—I pinged Gav with an attached thumbnail, wondering if he knew the work. He responded that I could see it in person whenever I could make it out to his place.
The printbook I’m hunting is several seasons old already, but Gavril collects this stuff: photography monographs, printbooks, catalogs, file folders stuffed with printouts of fashionporn editorials that have caught his eye over the years. Everything’s kept in a walk-in closet he calls his “reading room”—the only place Gavril separates from the ongoing party filling out the rest of his apartment. A cushioned folding chair’s crammed in there and an end table with a green-shaded lamp. A notebook. He’s nailed boards on every wall for shelves and has catalogs stacked three deep and in teetering stalagmite stacks on the floor. He’s excited to show off his collection, “the true art of our age,” he says, lighting a joint as he explains everything to me, running his palm over the stubble of his head like a baby discovering bristles, saying, “There’s no reason our age shouldn’t be defined by fashion imagists like La Havre, Coudescue, Smithson—”
He finds the printbook I came for, but says, “Look at this one, here—Gucci. This is Teenie Mizyuki’s breakout book—fucking political commentary, right here. He took the Gucci fall line and brought it into these bombed-out Palestinian villages following the civil war. Didn’t hire models, just used the girls he found. Brilliant, fucking brilliant stuff—”
“How long have you had this?” I ask him about the Agent Provocateur printbook I came to see—it’s thick, three hundred or so pages, all full color, glossy, promoting a line called Upstairs, Downstairs.