The City When It Rains

by Thomas H. Cook

  “Just a picture I printed last night,” Corman said.

  “A doll,” she said, almost to herself. Two small creases spread across her forehead as she continued to stare at the picture. It was as if she were studying it from separate angles, tasting, smelling, feeling it, all her senses sending out their wires. “It makes you feel funny,” Lucy said as she handed it back to him.

  Corman nodded, got up and headed toward the bathroom. “I’ll be ready in a minute.”

  They were on the street a short time later. Lucy walked beside him, her bookbag strapped to her back like a camper. She tucked her hand beneath his arm, as if he were escorting her. It was a gesture she’d developed not long after Lexie’s departure, and Corman saw it as a way she’d devised to give him the feel of having a woman in his life, someone on his arm, rather than clinging, however sweetly, to his hand.

  “Maybe we’ll go to the movies this weekend,” he said. “What do you want to see?”

  The idea didn’t seem to excite her.

  “I’d rather go ice skating,” she said.

  “I don’t skate.”

  “You never do anything like that.”

  She was still complaining about it, mumbling darkly under her breath, as they continued toward the tall wrought-iron gate of the school.

  “I’ll try to be home by six or so,” Corman told her. “Mrs. Donaldson will be with you until then.”

  “Are you going out with Joanna tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you doing today?”

  “I’m supposed to see Julian.”

  “About your pictures?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lucy smiled quietly. “Maybe he’ll like them.”

  “Maybe.”

  They walked on in silence for a time, huddling closely beneath the black umbrella.

  “You want to go for another walk tonight?” Lucy asked after a moment.

  “If you want to.”

  “Maybe,” Lucy said hesitantly. “But not back to that church.”

  “Okay,” Corman said.

  At the school, he bent forward, kissed her lightly. “See you tonight,” he said.

  She darted away almost instantly, her body merging with the stream of students that moved through the gate and up the wide cement stairs. They were talking loudly, scuffling about, and as he watched them, Corman remembered how his brother Victor had talked about his days in the Mississippi Delta, working in the Freedom Schools that had dotted the state in those days, small wooden shacks manned by northern kids who’d come down to teach the southerners how to treat one another. He’d come back with lots of stories. Some were edged in threats and violence, but even Victor’s darkest tales had always ended on a hopeful note. Kids were all potential, according to him, they were the future of mankind.

  But as Corman watched the kids of PS 51, he didn’t think they looked like the future at all, only the most recent expression of the past. It was in their accents, clothing, what they went through, talked about. The past was a fat man sitting on their chests. A little shake wouldn’t budge him. Potential didn’t raise a sweat. Hope was no more than a buzzing in his ear. Victor could have talked all night, but to Corman it all came down to just one notion: if you wanted to change the world, you really had to change it.

  “You waiting for somebody?”

  Corman looked away from the gate and confronted a fresh-faced young policeman on foot patrol, the type the old cops called “Portables” and ridiculed. His eyes were utterly youthful and unshadowed. There were sights he hadn’t seen, but they were on the way. “I just dropped off my daughter,” Corman told him.

  The Portable looked relieved. He shifted slightly, jiggling the required nine pounds of equipment which hung from his belt: the two-way radio handset, handcuffs, flashlight, nightstick, citation booklet, regulation .38 special, holster, ammunition belt and accompanying cartridges.

  “The thing is,” he said, “we’ve had some suspicious characters hanging around the schools. We’re supposed to keep a close eye out for guys like that.”

  Corman nodded.

  The Portable smiled brightly, and Corman thought that the first cops of the old city must have looked like him, young men who’d nervously patrolled the streets at night for $1.87 a tour. A fireman’s leather helmet with the frontpiece removed was all they’d taken with them to meet the droves of thugs who nightly swarmed from behind Rosanna Peers’ vegetable stand at the northern edge of Foley Square.

  “You work around here?” the Portable asked.

  “All over,” Corman said. “I’m a photographer.”

  “For the papers, something like that?”

  “Sometimes,” Corman told him. Instantly he thought of all the pictures that were for no one but himself and wondered if the shooters of the old city had also stored them up by the hundreds, until they bulged from every room, poured from every drawer, swept out in curling waves from beneath their beds and chairs, endlessly extending the history of their eyes.

  Julian took his hand and shook it affectionately. “Good to see you, David. Come on in.”

  Corman stepped into the office and reflexively positioned himself for a shot that could take in the whole room.

  Julian sat down behind his desk and smiled cheerily. “So, how you doing?”

  “Okay.”

  “Have a seat.”

  Corman sat down, glanced out at the rain-swept city behind the window, the clouded spires and flat gray walls. Julian’s body seemed pressed against it, holding it back.

  “How’s Lucy?” Julian asked.

  “Fine, Julian,” Corman said a little impatiently. “I guess you looked at the pictures.”

  Julian’s face shifted slightly, turned just a shade grayer. “Yes, I did.”

  Corman waited while Julian searched for the right words, then gave up without finding them.

  “It’s not that they’re not good,” Julian said. “Technically, I mean.” He waited for Corman to react and continued when he didn’t. “It’s more the subject. What you shoot.” He shrugged. “These things have to go through several editors. It’s not up to me.”

  Corman nodded.

  “Several people,” Julian continued. “Several people have to comment, and a couple of them thought the pictures were more or less the sort of thing Weegee used to shoot, crime scenes, the underworld, that sort of thing.” He glanced away, then back. “Diane Arbus was also mentioned. The grotesque, a fascination with that.” He put his hands up quickly, as if parrying a blow. “Not that they don’t have their place, pictures like that. They do. Absolutely. But not for us … this house … not right now.” He leaned forward. “Photography books are very expensive to produce. And the market … well.”

  Corman smiled quietly, tried to let him off the hook. “Yes,” he said then started to get up.

  Julian stopped him. “One thing, though,” he said quickly.

  Corman eased himself back into the seat.

  “One of the editors came up with an idea that might interest you,” Julian said. “Take one case, follow it all the way through to the end.”

  “Case?”

  “Like a murderer, something like that.”

  Corman stared at him expressionlessly.

  “Do a study of this person,” Julian explained. “A photographic study.” He laughed. “From the cradle to the electric chair, you might say.”

  “A murderer?”

  “Or a victim,” Julian said. “It wouldn’t matter. A full record, though. Carefully edited. Only the later pictures would be yours.”

  “Later pictures?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t have been there for the early years,” Julian told him. “I mean, you would also be working on the edit. You’d be more than a photographer. You’d help compose the whole thing.”

  “Pick somebody and do his whole life?” Corman asked.

  “Yes,” Julian said. “And the more infamous the better. Some well-known killer, someone in the news. Or a
t least some twist, something to hang the tale on. You know what I mean, an angle that would give the pictures some resonance.”

  Corman thought a moment, shook his head. “I don’t know, Julian, I don’t see …”

  “Slow decline, that would be the hook,” Julian said. “Incremental fall. Movement, you know, downward. As they say, toward the abyss.” He sat back in his chair. “You’d be perfect for something like that,” he said. “All the people who looked at your pictures, they agreed on that. No one is questioning your eye.”

  Corman got to his feet. “I’ll think about it.”

  Julian looked at him pointedly. “For a really good proposal, we’d be ready to give you an advance.”

  Corman could feel the landlord’s crumpled note like a small bomb ticking in his jacket pocket. “I’ll think about it,” he said again.

  “Good,” Julian said happily. “I thought it might interest you.” He smiled. “It’d be good to work with you again. Like the old days, when we were at Columbia together.”

  Corman nodded.

  “Remember that?” Julian said. “You, me, Lexie? The Wild Bunch.”

  The “old days” came back to him in a series of pictures, Lexie alone in front of St. Paul’s Chapel, then he and Lexie posed comically beside the high black gate, then all of them together in the snow, Lexie lifted high on his and Julian’s shoulders while some anonymous passerby shot the picture from a few feet away.

  “I often think of those days,” Julian said wistfully as he got to his feet. Then he snapped out of it. “Anyway, think about it. The proposal, I mean.”

  “Slow decline,” Corman said musingly.

  “Toward the abyss.”

  Corman stood up. “I’ll think about it,” he said, then turned and headed for the elevator. By the time he got there, he had completely dismissed it from his mind.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  THE CITY ROOM of the News was on the fourth floor. Hugo Pike was the paper’s picture editor, and he played the part exactly, everything from the half-lens reading glasses perched on top of his head, to the smoke-filled betting parlor where he gulped his egg salad sandwich.

  “What you got for me, bub?” he asked, as Corman walked into his office.

  Corman draped his camera bag over the metal peg beside the door, took out an eight-by-eleven manila envelope and sat down in a chair opposite Pike’s desk. “I took some pictures of that woman who jumped out of a window in Hell’s Kitchen last night,” he said, as he drew out his contact sheets and offered them to Pike.

  Pike waved them away. “We had our own people over there, but there was nothing we wanted to use.”

  “There may be an angle,” Corman said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Pike said dully. “She took her Barbie doll with her.”

  Corman pulled out the picture he’d taken of the doll, playing it like a trump card. “She was feeding it,” he said.

  Pike was not impressed. “So, she was a nut case, so what?”

  “She was starving herself to buy the baby formula.”

  Pike shook his head. “I don’t think that’s enough,” he said. He returned everything to the envelope and then handed it back to Corman. “Better luck next time.”

  Corman remained in his chair, the envelope dangling from his hand.

  Pike looked at him closely. “What’s the matter, you coming up short this month?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “You need to work the nights more,” Pike advised him. “We don’t even have a staff shooter after two in the morning.”

  “I can’t do that,” Corman said. “I have a daughter.”

  “So what does that mean, you don’t have a life?”

  “It means I have two lives,” Corman told him.

  Pike shrugged. “What can I say, Corman? All the great shooters were loners. In your racket, other people just smudge the lens.”

  Corman nodded, said nothing.

  Pike studied him carefully. “Ever think about a steady job?” he asked tentatively.

  “Doing what?”

  “Well, this is not for publication, you understand,” Pike said. “But Harry Groton’s got a serious condition.”

  Corman looked at Pike questioningly.

  “Cancer,” Pike added reluctantly. “It could be chemotherapy for a long time. We would need a quick replacement if that happened.”

  “When will you know?”

  “He’s supposed to tell us how he is by Monday,” Pike said. “It could be a six-month thing, or, if he goes down …”

  “Permanent,” Corman said.

  Pike nodded. “Interested?”

  “I’d be shooting the same stuff Groton does?”

  “Light stuff, you know that,” Pike told him. “Society shit, but it’s day work, all of it, just the kind you say you need. And it’s steady.”

  Corman continued to think about it.

  “Used to, Groton hung around your neighborhood,” Pike added. “If you see him, you could have a word. Just don’t let on you know anything.”

  Corman nodded.

  “What are you, Corman? Thirty-nine? Forty?”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “In the ballpark,” Pike said. “Anyway, you’re not getting any younger. Maybe you’re getting tired of sleeping next to a police radio.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “How about being poor, then?” Pike asked. “Are you getting tired of that?”

  Corman drew in a long, slow breath. “Maybe something else will break.”

  Pike laughed. “Like what? Lotto?” He shook his head. “All the free-lance shooters end up the same, Corman, looking for something steady. In the end, they all want to come in from the rain.”

  Corman said nothing.

  “They all figure it out, believe me,” Pike added. “That they can’t keep it up, that life has a downward pull.”

  Downward pull, Corman thought as he returned the envelope to his bag, incremental fall, toward the abyss. The whole world was beginning to sound like Julian Carr.

  There was an old Automat not far from the newspaper. Corman found himself going through its revolving glass doors a few minutes after his meeting with Pike. It was his favorite place on the east side of the city. He liked the furious speed with which the attendant scooped up exactly twenty nickels when he gave her a dollar bill. No matter how empty the place was, she jerked up the coins with the same flashing speed, her whole attention narrowed to the green bill, then the tray of faded gray coins. It was a focus Corman could understand. Since going free-lance, he’d come to realize that watching money was a way of seeing. Suddenly the price of a magazine loomed larger than the cover story. Lately he’d even begun to compare the prices of various brands of laundry detergent and tuna. Edgar didn’t have such worries. He was kept by a big law firm, and because of that there were times when Corman envied him, not because he was rich, but because his security gave him an aura of dignity, competence, even mastery. Hustling for a dollar made you look like a kid, froze you in an adolescent pose. If you didn’t own property, had no broker, figured your taxes on the short form, your voice never changed and your shoes squeaked when you walked.

  Corman dropped the coins in the slot, pressed the lever and watched as the coffee cascaded into the plain white mug. When it was full, he walked to a table by the window and sat down.

  Outside, the rain had started again. The street looked dark and slick. Traffic moved slowly back and forth, while people darted through it, their umbrellas flapping in the wind off the river.

  He turned from the window, took a quick sip of coffee, then riffled through his camera bag again and took out a stack of pictures, searching for one he could sell. Slowly, meticulously, he went through them one by one, staring closely, combing his mind for some way to place each one. He was still doing it when Eddie LaPlace came through the door a few minutes later.

  “Yo, Corman,” Eddie called from across the room.

  Corman waved to him.<
br />
  Eddie bounced energetically up to the table, pulled out a chair and sat down. “Been up to the City Room?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sell anything?”

  “No.”

  Eddie shook his head. “Hey, it’s a tough life, am I right?”

  “For the last few weeks, anyway,” Corman admitted.

  Eddie looked at the pictures Corman had spread haphazardly over the table.

  “Some of this stuff looks pretty good,” he said.

  “Only to you, Eddie.”

  Eddie looked surprised. “Oh, yeah? Really?” He picked up a long shot of the old man on the balcony. “Holy shit,” he said with a chuckle. “Where’d this go down?”

  “Brooklyn,” Corman said. “He’d just shot his wife.”

  “No shit,” Eddie said. The photograph slipped from his fingers, fell back down on the table. “You don’t sell pictures with dicks in them, my man. Pussy hair, that may get by, and tits and ass, they’re just fine for everything but the dailies. But dicks? Forget it.” He smiled. “You know why?”

  Corman shook his head.

  “Because editors are usually men,” Eddie said, “and they feel embarrassed for the guy. For a fox, no problem. They’ll spread woolly pink cover to cover. But for a guy, they’re embarrassed.”

  “You may be right,” Corman said dryly.

  “I’m absolutely right,” Eddie said. “That’s why I if I get a dick, I airbrush it right out. I cover it with leaves.”

  Corman said nothing. It was good advice, and Eddie was no moron when it came to human motives, either. He was probably right about everything. And yet?

  Eddie snapped up another photograph. It showed the body of a teenage boy lying faceup on the sidewalk. He was clothed in blue jeans, running shoes and a dark peacoat. “What’s the story with this one?” he asked.

  “Cops figure it for a drug burn.”

  Eddie nodded thoughtfully. “Couldn’t sell it?”

  Corman shook his head. “It’s a common sight, Eddie. Nobody needs a stringer for a shot like that.”

  Eddie continued to stare at the picture. “Looks like the East Side.”

  “That’s right.”