Combat Camera

by Andrew Somerset

  Zane was just old enough to have started his career in black and white. In San Salvador he ended his days standing by the window of his hotel room, watching the evening light turn soft and blue and fade as the sky turned purple, watching the city transform from a sprawling, ugly jumble of concrete and corrugated iron into a network of coloured lights splattered across the dark blanket of night: beauty distilled out of misery.

  When the light faded, he turned out the lights in his room. He went into the bathroom and ran the shower to cut the dust, then stuffed towels under the door to complete the darkness and loaded the film he had shot that day into developing tanks. He used a beer bottle opener to break open the film cans. His companions in the darkness were a battery-powered radio tuned to an English-language station, its glowing lights covered with duct tape, a glass of rum and ice, and a towel to dry his hands.

  Wet hands are murder for this job: wet film sticks in the grooves, refuses to behave. The job of threading the film onto the developing reels has to be perfect. If a loop of film jumps the groove and touches the next loop the result will be a half-dozen lost pictures. And each lost frame was of course a Pulitzer in the making. Still, Zane was not prepared to dispense with his Nicaraguan rum, which had a vague chemical aftertaste and sweated heavily in the tropical night.

  With the tanks loaded and sealed he could turn on the lights again, pull the towels out from under the door and replenish his rum. The hotel bathroom became an alchemist’s workshop.

  In school he had learned consistent, controlled darkroom procedures: temperature control, distilled water, the stop clock with its luminous dial. Developing in a hotel bathroom in San Salvador was more art than science. Tap water at room temperature replaced distilled water. His developing time changed with the weather, an estimate pulled from a grubby graph he kept tucked in the pocket of his camera bag, although he had long since committed the time-temperature curve to memory.

  On a cool night, the developer was in the tank for six minutes by his watch, transforming the events of the day into a permanent record through the action of light on photosensitive halide ions. Light into silver. When the time was up, he dumped the developer and hit the film with the stop bath, the pungent vinegar smell stabbing his nostrils. Then he exchanged the stop bath for the fixer, to dissolve the unexposed halides. Only silver then remained, suspended in a thin layer of gelatin. He estimated the fixing time by dropping a short piece of unexposed film in the fixer and keeping one eye on his watch as the film turned from opaque brown to clear.

  Three baths of tap water, and he had pictures. The film came off the spools in shining black ribbons, which held to the light revealed images. Shadows glowed. Lights appeared as small black points. The wet film shone and twisted, dripping on the bathroom floor. Zane hung the negatives from the shower rod to dry. When he found good pictures, he would print them wet. The pictures made a pittance but they paid his hotel bills and kept him in the game until his lucky break arrived, in the form of a dead girl from North Dakota, whose name was Christine. Then the weeklies started calling, and he moved up to colour. The march of progress never ceases.

  A loud and unceasing pounding on his door. It’s eight-thirty: unholy early. Zane pulled on a pair of jeans, the first shirt he found. The rent is paid. You didn’t leave anything in the hall, did you? The pounding continued.

  Melissa’s balloon head again in his peephole. He opened the door. She looked healthier than last he had seen her, but this was saying little. Under her left arm was a brown paper bag. Groceries.

  “And the dead arose, and appeared to many,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Something my grandmother used to say. From the Bible, I think. Were you planning to sleep to noon?”

  She brushed past him and put the paper bag on the kitchen counter. It was difficult to imagine Melissa having a grandmother. Still, certain things are immutable biological necessities. He had never asked about her family. He treated this as off limits, filed it under unwanted knowledge.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Aren’t you gracious. I came to make you breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “It’s the meal you eat in the morning.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you have to eat.”

  “What are you, Meals on Wheels?”

  “Someone has to feed the shut-ins.” She opened the fridge, found the margarine, hunted through cupboards, turned on him and made a shooing motion. “Go take a shower. You smell.”

  Zane left her in the kitchen and quickly showered. Unable to ponder his reflection, he was forced to shave by feel. Since Zane shaved only sporadically, this took somewhat longer than usual. On the positive side, he was unable to fret over his blotchy appearance. Presumably, he was a new man. All setbacks have their countervailing compensations.

  Cooking smells infiltrated the bathroom. As threatened, she was making breakfast. More to the point, she was cooking bacon. Probably, she was also cooking eggs. Diarrhea and dehydration, a day strapped to the toilet seat. These are the wages of sin, and of a bowel forcibly shortened by the transit of a machine gun bullet. She didn’t know. Zane finished shaving and rinsed his face and then opened the door. We must now face the music.

  He had guessed right: she was tipping scrambled eggs onto a plate. To his dismay, she added a sprig of fresh parsley, and held the plate out to him, beaming. She had made a lot of food.

  “I’m just going to get changed.”

  “Hurry up, before it gets cold.”

  He fled to the bedroom with a feeling of doom deep in his gut. Fathers’ Day: seven-year-old Lucas and five-year-old Connie cook breakfast, under minimal supervision. Zane’s father eats the resulting burnt bacon and leathery eggs without complaint, even winks at Zane’s mother and suggests the kids can teach her to cook. This girl, this fucked-up kid, she tries to be your friend. She gets stupid, busts your mirror, splits her knuckles, wants to make it up to you. She does what she can. You’re about to get the hell out of this, get rid of her, make a clean break. Now you’re going to turn down this kid’s peace offering?

  She made him sit on the couch, insisted on serving him at the coffee table: bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast, with orange juice and coffee. The coffee was weak, watery. He drank it without comment. It had been a long time since he had tasted bacon and eggs. He had missed them.

  “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “It’s time you ate a real meal. It’s not healthy, how you live.”

  He shovelled his food around on his plate. If only she hadn’t served you, you could have gone light on the bacon and eggs, still made appreciative noises. Now you’re obliged to clean your plate. Maybe you can decently abandon a little of the food, not that it’ll make much difference to the outcome.

  “You really didn’t have to do this.”

  “I feel bad about your mirror.”

  “It was cracked anyway. Let’s see the damage.”

  She had made her own crude efforts at wound care, a mess of Band-Aids. He peeled them off, carefully folded the sticky ends against each other, laid them on the coffee table. The cuts looked fine, but the skin was pale and waterlogged.

  “Leave them open to the air,” he said. “They’ll heal faster.”

  “I feel bad about the rest of it, too.”

  “I’ve forgotten the rest of it.”

  The moment of ill grace approaches. The food will work fast. It’s time to get rid of the kid.

  “Look, I’m going to have to kick you out of here pretty soon. I have to go work on a story. A photo story.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I still have to come up with one.”

  “So you don’t have a story.”

  “A minor detail that may yet derail my plans.”

  “Your problem is, you spend too much time in your own head.”

  She stood up, coll
ected the plates, went into the kitchen. He heard the water running in the sink and followed. The pipes moaned as she started the hot water. She tested the temperature with her hand before putting the plug in the sink and adding soap.

  “Keep those knuckles out of that dishwater.” He took the dishtowel from the oven door and handed it to her. Time to say things that need to be said. “Anyway, if things work out with this story, I’m through with Barker.”

  “Lucky you. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I’m running out of acts.”

  Rich has plenty of new acts lined up for you. Nobody runs out of acts around here. None of us ever outruns himself.

  Zane slipped the plates into the water and worked at them. He finished the dishes and scrubbed the frying pan and then let the water run out of the sink, ran the tap to chase the last of the suds down the drain. Then he watched her drying the plates in the morning window light.

  “Thinking of taking my picture again, are ya?”

  “Not really.”

  “Still looking for that story?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’re a real dope, man. You ever think I could be your story?”

  Porno girl struggles to make good. The stripper with a heart of gold. All the elements are there. This, you can sell to Jack: porn is the story of our times. You are, in fact, a real dope.

  “That’s perfect.”

  “So what do I get paid?”

  “There’s the rub. You don’t.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a deal to me.”

  “You get your story told. Not many people get their stories told.”

  You get turned into silver. And you get to save my ass. It would be, he thought, a more substantial contribution to his well-being than her bacon and eggs, which were already announcing their presence in the remains of his intestines.

  “So you take pictures of me doing what?”

  “Doing whatever it is you do. Drying my dishes, for example.”

  She looked at him for a moment with her head tilted to one side, and then wiped her hands on the dishtowel, put the towel down on the counter, and shrugged.

  “Okay,” she said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Richard Barker, under the nom de guerre of Diamond Blue Enterprises, owned three establishments wherein patrons, having paid a nominal cover charge and a much less nominal charge for drinks, could proceed to view young women removing their clothes and dancing to music, and to enjoy certain other pleasures that at one time or another had been at or beyond the boundaries of the law. The least-known of these establishments lay in the hinterlands to the north of the city, a rundown building of pink-painted cinder block that drew bikers and farm boys to watch strippers long past their prime go through their well practised motions while absently wondering what, if anything, they might do in retirement. The second was close to the airport, and succoured weary travellers. The third was downtown, and it aimed to sucker everyone else.

  The club’s facade glittered in polished black faux granite with gold trim. White bulbs flashed in gold fixtures. No cheesy pink neon tubes here, no anatomically improbable silhouettes as seen on tractor-trailer mud flaps. The sign above the front door was lettered in gold, as at a law office: Gentlemen’s VIP. At the door, a brass plaque. No Live Nude Girls, no triple-X, no Girls Girls Girls. Just as a gentleman does not talk about money, here one is expected to understate and to understand.

  Zane had come for his pay. The bouncer looked him over, his face filled with doubt. Can this shambolic individual, with sunken eyes and unkempt hair, be a gentleman? What precisely is the standard? The bouncer possessed little actual experience of gentlemen, perhaps, on which to base his judgment. In the end he nodded and stepped aside to let Zane pass. A wordless exchange in which the message was clear: management reserves the right to kick the shit out of you at any time.

  In a UN observation post in Croatia, Zane spent three hours with a massive British infantry private, who complained that he could not stay in a bar until closing time without getting into a fight. This problem, a genetic defect of sorts, had prevented his promotion through the ranks, as shortly following each promotion and its ensuing celebration, he found himself marched before his commanding officer and again demoted. His military career was a trail of broken bar stools, shattered glass, and battered challengers, and he lamented the cruelty of his fate.

  “When you’re the biggest bloke in the room, everyone wants to try you on. It’s a pain in the arse is what it is.”

  “You can’t escape who you are,” said Zane.

  “The fuckin’ truth, that is.”

  All the soldier really wanted to do in life was to breed and raise his delicate and beautiful South American discus fish. But there was no money in that, so he was overseas in Croatia while his fish glowed aimlessly in their luminous aquarium, under the care of his girlfriend, Sophie. Discus, he explained, were expensive, delicate and difficult to care for. This guaranteed he would do right by Sophie.

  “But I’m not complaining,” he said. “It’s a good life. The fish can wait.”

  O cruel fate, laments the bouncer, that has placed me at this door and charged me with the cracking of heads. No wonder he looks grumpy. Perhaps a sunny greeting, some cheerful comment will brighten his day, deflate his carefully cultivated aggression. Perhaps not. Perhaps another time. Today, Zane wants his pay-cheque. One must avoid mishaps. Also, getting one’s nose flattened.

  Zane remained mired in his job. Jack still had not read the script, and had dismissed his story pitch. The telephone call was cut short by the action of Melissa’s cooking on his innards, and this had somewhat undermined his argument. Jack said he had a premise, not a story, told him not to call back until he had the story worked out.

  This is the age of porn, Jack. This is the story of our time. Hardcore goes mainstream. A generation gets its sex ed from the Internet. Teenaged girls photograph themselves in the mirror and post the pictures online, call it empowerment, go wild with empowerment at Fort Lauderdale, demonstrate empowerment at Mardi Gras for cheap strings of beads, email their empowerment to boys they like. They’re drunk with empowerment. Drunken starlets forget their panties, do Marilyn Monroe on the ventilation shaft, and it makes the papers. Every day, a new email promises to grow your dick one more inch. Now the thing is two and a half feet long, gets mistaken for a torpedo at airport security. A serious inconvenience to the air traveller, but it breaks the ice at parties, and in major shipping lanes. It seems to have forgotten its place.

  Jack said, are you done? None of that shit is for real. Your average coed is still a virgin.

  Zane didn’t ask him how he knew. Doesn’t matter, he said. We’re still in the age of hardcore gone mainstream.

  Hardcore goes mainstream is not a story. Stories have goals and complications. Stories have a plot. Cover your own expenses, then show me the pictures.

  So a day in the life of Melissa is not a story. This escape is going to take longer than planned. We have goals, and complications: actually producing the story Jack demands means shooting Melissa at work, here, among the gentlemen. This is a delicate matter; it requires the cooperation of Richard Barker. The proposal itself will arouse suspicion, and you have nothing to add to Barker’s bank account. Here at the entrance to Barker’s lair, Zane still had no idea how to broach the subject.

  Beyond the bouncer, appearances declined. If one expected to find gentlemen within Gentlemen’s VIP, one would quickly be disabused of the notion. The entrance hallway turned sharply to the right, to block the view from the street. Artwork for the walls had evidently presented the decorators with something of a challenge. Gentlemen might be expected to favour oily, smoke-tarred landscapes of nineteenth-century vintage, scenes of antique nautical mayhem, and portraits of horses with improbably long noses. The decorators had settled on portraiture, but instead of horses had opted for pastels of women with similarly exaggerated anatomy. Several bore unidentifiable stains, and none hung straight. Today�
�s gentleman, it seemed, had no appreciation for art.

  Onstage, a skinny girl flexed herself awkwardly around the pole for the benefit of a sparse gathering of men who had either left work early or never made it there in the first place. She wore black heels and a matching G-string, had apparently forgotten how to smile, and stared vacantly into the middle distance, somewhere halfway up the wall. Her audience looked equally bored.

  Bill leaned on the bar, his day job, idly watching her and chewing gum. His acting career didn’t pay the bills; besides, he had recently been on hiatus. Jade had suggested some time off, some time to work out a problem with his fists. He nodded at Zane by way of acknowledgment and then pointed his chin at the girl.

  “She ain’t gonna last.”

  Zane didn’t bother to consider Bill’s opinion. He was about to ask after Barker when he remembered that he had a story to do. You want to investigate the culture, or something like that.

  “You think so?”

  “You think she’s earning any tips like that? You gotta make an effort.” He lifted his elbows off the bar and wiped it with a cloth, apparently more for something to do than out of any need to clean. “Chicks like that, think they’re above it all, they drive me nuts. Look around you, understand your fuckin’ situation. You ain’t above shit.”

  “You gotta get over yourself.” Zane adopted Bill’s idiom. Look around, understand your situation. Do your story, get back in the game. Sayonara, Richard Barker.

  “Fuckin’ right. You think I want to tend bar for a living? You do what you gotta do.”

  Bill put the cloth away and returned to leaning on the bar.

  “Rich around?”

  “Gone out,” said Bill, and snapped his gum again. “Jade’s upstairs, though.”

  “Know when he’ll be back? I wanted to ask him something.”

  “Ask Jade.”