If I Lose Her

by Greg Joseph Daily

  We ordered sandwiches with extra fries, hot drinks with cups full of whipped cream and laughed the evening away.

  When the night was done I dropped her off at home. It was all I could do to let go of her as she got out of the car.

  As I watched her walk up the driveway I thought about how desperately I did not want to go home by myself, but we both knew that for right now, sleeping alone was our only option, so I drove home with only the taste of her on my lips and the smell of her in my clothes to take with me.

  Twenty

  November came. My mother was already preparing for Thanksgiving by stocking the cupboards with potatoes and beans. Things between her and I were back to normal, which meant I didn’t ask about Peter and she didn’t talk about him. However, I knew from the messages I found on the answering machine once in a while that he was a regular piece of her story again.

  Jo had spent the better part of the last two months printing photographs and thinking about how her images would view together as a single body of work, and now it was time to hang her show.

  Opening night was always a Friday night, so I went with her on Thursday to see that everything had been framed and was ready. This was the first time I had actually been to the Camera Obscura.

  As I walked in, I was first greeted with a tinkling of a bell attached to the door, then an elderly gentleman with thin grey hair and cowboy boots walked down the steep steps from upstairs.

  “Hello, can I help you?”

  “Yes, my girlfriend is Jolene Daniels.”

  He just looked at me with wide-open eyes.

  “She has a solo show here tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, JOLENE Daniels.”

  “Yes, JOLENE Daniels. She’s just outside bringing in some more photos.”

  “Fine,” he said nodding. “I’m Hal Gould,” and he held out his hand.

  “I’m Alex Douglas.”

  “What?” He asked turning his ear to me.

  I could see now that he had a hearing aid so I spoke up.

  “ALEX. DOUGLAS.”

  “Fine.”

  Photographs of Marilyn Monroe lined the staircase, and I could see some black and white prints by artists unfamiliar to me hanging at the top of the stairs. As I turned to the right, I entered a large room, taking up the entire bottom floor, with off-white painted walls and rows of little brass hooks. Four of Jo’s photographs were already hung while several more sat wrapped in plastic on the floor.

  “You should put your name down on our mailing list,” Hal said pointing to a book laying open on an old fireplace mantel.

  I walked over and added my name to the column of scribbled marks.

  “It looks like it’s coming along,” I told Hal.

  “What?”

  “I SAID, it LOOKS like it’s COMING ALONG.”

  He stood there again with eyes wide, slightly bobbing his head. I wasn’t sure if he was thinking or if he hadn’t heard me.

  “Sure. The show’s tomorra. We need to get it hung,” he replied.

  Then the doorbell tinkled, and I turned. It was Jo, carrying one of her most recent pieces.

  “Hey Hal,” she said walking over and giving him a hug. “How does it look?”

  “It’s good work,” he said walking over to one of the hung images. “The colors are good, and the composition really says something.”

  “I brought you one more piece,” she said pulling plastic off of my favorite print. We had stopped by my house on the way down to get it so she could hang it in the show with the others.

  Hal walked over, picked it up and held it underneath one of the track lights.

  He looked at it for about five minutes without saying anything. Then he took down a print hanging over the fireplace mantel and hung Jo’s in its place.

  “Fine.”

  Loretta was off for the night, so Jo and I helped Hal hang the rest of Jo’s pieces.

  Once we were done, we stepped back, and I wrapped my arm around Jo’s waist.

  “I think it looks like a show,” I told her. “Let me get a shot of you with all of your work hung, so that I can say that I knew you when.”

  She rolled her eyes and slapped my shoulder. Then she walked over and stood next to the fireplace. I lined up the shot and took the picture of Jo with her arms raised in a gallery of walls lined with her art.

  “Have you been upstairs?” She asked.

  “No.”

  “Oh, you’ve gotta see this.”

  Then she took my hand and led me up the creaking steps.

  Every bit of wall space on the second floor was filled with vintage prints. Edward S. Curtis hung over the stairs, Nick Ut and W. Eugene Smith led me into a room where the William Corey prints Jo had told me about hung over a threadbare couch the color of pea soup.

  “Those are really beautiful,” I said pointing to the William Corey, Japanese garden, prints that Jo had gone on and on about. Then I turned to see Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl hanging between two columns. “Oh wow. You weren’t kidding,” I said walking up to it. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to touch her–to run my hand across her cheek–to ask her why she looked so sad.

  I walked into the next room and gently ran my fingers over the dusty edges of prints wrapped in plastic and filed in racks according to their subject matter. Western. Architecture. Floral. Nature. On the back wall hung two black and white prints that I recognized but couldn’t place. One was of two workers dressed in overalls and hardhats standing next to a black, oil pipe as wide as one of them, and they were both covered from head to foot in dripping oil. Oil also covered the rocky ground around them. The contrast to the photo next to it was so stark, their placement had to be intentional. The second image was of a boy, maybe eight-years-old, standing naked with sinuous legs and a swollen belly on a background of snow-white sand. Next to him was a slender, dead tree that mirrored the gentle staff the boy carried in his hand.

  “That’s Sebastiao Salgado,” Hal said walking over and taking the print of the boy off of the wall. “He is the most important photographer alive today.”

  Hal gently reached out and stopped just short of touching the boy’s face. Then he hung the photo back on the wall.

  “Hal, do you have a restroom?”

  “Just around the corner,” he said pointing to the back.

  I went into the small bathroom and flipped on the light. I was surrounded on all sides by fine-art nudes. This was the first time I had felt self-conscious in a bathroom by myself.

  Jo found me when I came out.

  “Have you seen Hal’s office?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “He keeps the best stuff in there.”

  I followed her around the corner and into a small room with a desk piled to overflowing with papers, books and prints. On the walls were pieces that I would expect to find in a museum rather than someone’s office. There were three Edward Westons, including his famous pepper, a Man Ray and two Ansel Adams as well as several others.

  “Hal was the first person to show Adams in Colorado. They couldn’t sell his prints for twenty-five dollars at the time,” Jo told me. “The pepper is appraised at around thirty-five thousand.”

  “Wow,” I said leaning forward and looking more closely at it. The shape was interesting and the contrast was amazing, but I couldn’t imagine myself ever spending that much on a photograph of a pepper.

  I explored the gallery for about another hour before it was time for Hal to lock up for the night.

  “See you tomorrow Hal,” Jo said as we followed him out the front door.

  “Fine,” he replied.

  By Friday afternoon, Jo was more excited than I had ever seen her before.

  She had straightened her hair, pulled it up into a bow and wore a new pair of shoes that Susan had her buy for the show.

  We arrived early and people were already showing up to see her work. Loretta poured Champagne and set out cheese and cracker-boards while Jo began answering questions about her work. What did you do
to age them? How did you get the colors so vivid even though you were shooting underwater? What kind of work are you planning on doing next? The quiet girl with thick-rimmed glasses I had fallen in love with truly came out of her shell when talking about her work, and I loved watching it.

  Two pieces sold in the first hour. Then things died down from about 8 till 9. Hal was off talking to someone upstairs and Loretta was pouring more Champagne when a short older woman came in with grey curly hair and a pair of glasses held around her neck by a thin gold chain. A middle-aged gentleman in a neat grey suit accompanied her. There weren’t many others in the gallery so Jo introduced herself and said that if the woman had any questions she would be glad to help.

  For about ten minutes I watched the woman walk from piece to piece without saying a word. This wasn’t that unusual. The peculiar bit was that the man with her didn’t look that interested in the art at all, he just followed next to her carrying her coat.

  “Are you Jolene Douglas?” She finally asked.

  “Yes ma’am I am.”

  “Tell me. Why did you capture these images the way you did?”

  “Well, I wanted to challenge myself. I had seen the work of some underwater photographers and decided that I wanted to try it myself.”

  “But why not fish?”

  “I’ve seen some beautiful photographs of fish, but I really wanted to say something with these images. The place where I took most of these is in a pond up near Evergreen that has a kind of loneliness to it, but it doesn’t feel dead. It feels so alive, so I wanted the images to express a kind of loneliness without the extreme sorrow that often comes with it so I contrasted the loneliness of the compositions with the strong colors. The rich colors also remind me of the richness of the forest we were shooting in.”

  “That’s very good,” she said with a gentle smile of approval.

  “Margaret,” Loretta said reappearing from the backroom with a fresh tray of Champagne flutes. “I see you’ve met the star of the night.”

  Jo blushed a little but tried to maintain her composure.

  “I have indeed.”

  Just then Hal came down from upstairs.

  “Hello young lady,” he said smiling at her as he came.

  “Hello Hal. I was just speaking with your young attraction.”

  “She does good work,” and he walked up to the piece above the mantle. “This is probably the most important one.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes,” he replied bobbing his head.

  “Tell me. What has sold.”

  “Well, the two in the corner went immediately, and these two went just before you arrived.” He was pointing to one of Amy in royal blue and the one of her with the flowers over her head.

  “That’s a shame,” Margaret said reaching into her purse and removing a small pad.

  “I can make another print of that piece if you are interested,” Jo added.

  Margaret looked at her and smiled. Then Jo stepped back.

  Margaret scribbled something down on her pad, tore it off and handed it to Loretta.

  Loretta did not read it. She just smiled. “It was good to see you Margaret.”

  Margaret walked over to Hal, they hugged each other and I heard her whisper, “Take care of yourself Hal.” Then she walked over to Jo shook her hand and said that she thought that Jo’s work was beautiful. Then she and her man left.

  After Margaret was gone, Loretta looked at the paper and smirked. She handed the paper to Hal who read it, folded it in half and put it in his shirt pocket.

  “Fine.” Then he went back upstairs.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  “THAT was Margaret Alpert. She happens to be a widow of one of the most prominent lawyers in Denver, and she collects photography. She just bought four of your prints!”

  “What? Are you serious?” Jo asked laughing. “Which ones?”

  “ ‘The Sleeping Lily’, ‘Transcendence’, she does want a print of ‘The Blue Dress’, and she bought the one over the fireplace. What was that one called again?”

  “Weightless,” I replied.

  Jo turned to me. “Oh, Alex.”

  I smiled, walked up to her, hugged her hard and lifted her off the ground.

  “Don’t even worry about it. I am so proud of you.”

  “What’s wrong?” Loretta asked.

  I set Jo back down.

  It’s just that that wasn’t really for sale. I had given it to Alex as a gift and we just brought it down to show with the rest of the pieces. “Could I make her another print of it?”

  “I wouldn’t advise it. Buyers are pretty particular about what they want. I’m surprised she bought one of The Blue Dress without seeing the print first.”

  “No, no. Don’t worry about it. You can make me another print. Give that one to Margaret.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course.”

  The door-chime rang again and five people trickled in, helped themselves to Champagne and started mulling around. Loretta introduced herself and offered to help anyone who needed it.

  By the end of the night Jo had sold all but two of her pieces.

  Twenty-One

  Jo and I saw as much as we could of each other the last few months of high school then graduation came and went.

  Jo had won a Boetcher scholarship and was accepted to Regis University where, thanks to pressure from her parents, she would be studying history. I wanted her to go hard after her art, but neither of us were really sure what good an art degree would do, so they finally agreed that if she majored in something “stable” then she could spend the rest of her time pursuing whatever she liked. She would also be able to apply her Oxford credits to her degree. So, we both made our peace with it, and I watched her get on the plane for the United Kingdom.

  With Jo gone and school finished, I spent my energy moving out of my mother’s house and into a studio apartment.

  The apartment was downtown in a renovated warehouse off 8th & Market, just blocks from the legendary Tattered Cover bookstore giving me more than a healthy amount of access to their books, delicious coffee and warm pastries. I spent nearly a month living off of savings, and a little help from my mom, while I looked for work when, one day, I saw a guy with long, straight-black hair hanging a Help Wanted sign on the bulletin board in the Tattered Cover coffee shop. The word ‘photography’ jumped right off the page at me.

  “Hey,” I said walking up to him.

  “Hey.”

  “You’re looking for a photography assistant?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve actually been looking for work for the past few weeks, and I’m a photographer.”

  “Really? What kind of work do you do?”

  “Mostly journalism.”

  “I’m looking for a fashion assistant.” I could tell by his tone that he was starting to dismiss me.

  “Well, I’ve done portraits, I know my way around a camera and I’m a hard worker!” I said a little over enthusiastically.

  “I tell you what. Why don’t you come by my studio on Friday, at 4:30, with a portfolio and we can take it from there.”

  “Great.”

  He gave me a business card and left. Michael Baxter Studios, the card read.

  I waited a few minutes then went up to the Help Wanted sign and carefully changed a three to an eight on his phone number.

  I only had two days to put a portfolio together, and I wasn’t thrilled with the work I had to show. A few sports photos, some portraits and maybe one or two events, but it was the best I had so it would have to do. Thankfully, being downtown gave me access to what I needed to put something together quickly.

  Friday afternoon I drove up to his studio, parked the cougar and rang the bell.

  No answer.

  I rang again.

  No answer.

  I looked at my watch. It was 4:38.

  I went back to the car, found the business card. Then the door opened.r />
  “Hey, come on in. I was just finishing a test shoot.”

  I followed him into what looked like an old loading bay for semi trucks with what had to be thirty-foot-high ceilings and skylights that filled the huge room with natural light. A couch, coffee machine and table sat on one side of the studio, on the other were several studio-lights on rolling tripods, a seamless-white background and rolls of other background colors standing on their sides. Michael’s desk, with cluttered piles of camera equipment, a computer monitor and a laptop, sat in the middle of the room like an island of technology. Above what looked like a makeshift kitchen was a loft where I could see a couch and some living room furniture.

  A Latino woman in her late twenties walked out from the bathroom in the back corner.

  “Thank you Mikey,” she said picking her purse and coat up from off the couch. Then she winked at me as we passed each other and she left. I sat down at the table across from Michael and looked back at the door.

  “She’s pretty hot isn’t she,” he asked with a small grin and raised eyebrows.

  “Yeah!”

  “Well, she’s a guy.”

  That wiped the smile right off my face.

  “Really?”

  “Did you bring your portfolio?”

  I looked back at the door one more time, trying to digest what I had just heard. Then I handed him my book.

  He flipped from page to page, not spending any particular length of time on any one photo. He closed it and handed it back to me.

  “I thought I was going to have a lot of calls about the job, but you’re the only one, which puts you at the top of the list. What do you know about studio lights?”

  “I used one with a soft box at school for senior portraits.”

  “Do you know anything about Photoshop?”

  “Yes, that I know. I was the Editor of my yearbook at school last year, and I got pretty good at changing color and adjusting exposures.” He didn’t look too impressed by any of this.

  “I need someone for a shoot Tuesday. I’m doing a casting call to hire some models for a shoot next month. The art director will be here with some of her staff, and I just need an extra pair of hands to help with coffee and whatever else might come up; just a gofer really.”