Combat Camera

by Andrew Somerset

“Check yourself in. I’ll go get us something to eat.”

  He left her at the triage desk and walked out into the street. So this challenge is now out of the way; looks like you just about got this thing nailed. This time, Zane felt he could get fully behind the sentiment. Hand me down my framing hammer and let’s nail this thing. A strange feeling, his shoulders back and his head erect, almost a spring in his step. Something foreign, a feeling he hadn’t experienced in years.

  Zane felt optimistic.

  Rain clouds have lifted into a high white overcast, a monotonous bright sheet under which puddles fade to damp patches on the pavement. A useless sky for photography. Over all this hangs the sweet, thick smell of the pulp mill west of town. Nevertheless, you work with what you’ve got. Dance with them what brung you. Zane left his car in the hospital lot and walked down Peninsula Road, overdressed for the weather in his rain jacket. The day was warming and the air grew humid. He took off the jacket and folded it around the weight of the Leica in the right-hand pocket.

  Food was a problem; Zane’s injury had complicated what was normally the simplest of matters. He bypassed pizza and burgers and found a sub shop, an outlet of a national chain. Problem solved: the magic of franchising guarantees a series of safe victuallers along the route. It remains only to decipher the menu, a bewildering array of choices. Zane looked over the options and realized that he hadn’t the slightest idea what Melissa wanted, or indeed what she liked. Everything’s a guessing game. The girl behind the counter, a gawky kid of about sixteen with mousy hair and a retainer, Katrina on her name tag, asked if she could help him.

  “Well, what’s good?”

  Apparently, this was an inappropriate question. Katrina, flustered, uttered a self-deprecating giggle, and seemed to shrink.

  “It’s all good.”

  Zane looked up at the lighted sign behind the counter on which his choices were arrayed. Under the pressure of the moment, all these options become an insurmountable challenge. What, for example, is southwest chicken? How does it differ from ordinary chicken, and what is it doing north of Lake Superior? He ordered a turkey sub for himself, assorted for Melissa. Something for everyone; you can’t go wrong.

  “Small?”

  “Please. Actually, no. Make them large.” Something for the road; you don’t know when you’ll stop again.

  “On?”

  Puzzlement.

  Katrina pointed at a display showing a half-dozen choices of bread. He dithered.

  “I like parmesan oregano,” said Katrina, having discovered new reserves of confidence.

  “Sounds good.”

  “Cheese?”

  “Sure.”

  “What kind?”

  She pointed into a tub containing three unnamed varieties of cheese. One had holes in it, which presumably made it Swiss. Of the remaining choices, one was orange and the other white.

  “Cheddar?” A shot in the dark.

  Katrina reached for the orange.

  “Lettuce tomato onions?”

  “On the assorted. Just lettuce on the turkey.”

  “Anything else?” Katrina waved her hand over an array of possible toppings.

  “Don’t think so. No, thanks.”

  “Mustard mayo sub sauce?”

  He frowned. Katrina paused with her hand extended toward the bottles. The entire exercise had become entirely too complicated.

  “Mayo on the assorted.”

  Zane straightened his spine, confident. My quest is now complete. Hail, the conquering hero; he is just about normal. Just put them in a bag and have done with it.

  “Salt and pepper?”

  “No thanks.”

  Katrina hesitated. “No salt or pepper?”

  Zane shook his head. She wrapped up the sandwiches and he grabbed two bottles of pop from the cooler. As he paid her he flashed his best smile and thanked her, and then walked back out into the street, clutching his bag of sandwiches to his chest like a trophy. Victory was his.

  In a parking lot, a small gaggle of teenaged boys with shaggy hair attempt pointless skateboard tricks, presumably for the benefit of a separate gaggle of girls, who pretend to ignore them completely. All this scene lacks is a curmudgeonly shop owner to chase them all off, and thus to demonstrate that all is right with the world. Clear off, you little punks; kids today, I don’t know, when I was your age we never etcetera. Get a goddamn haircut. And you, does your mother know you dress like that? Such poetry in the mouth of an aging barber, words of comfort that guarantee nothing ever changes in this town. Zane longed to live where nothing ever happens.

  Zane’s good mood was not marred even when one of the boys lost control as he passed, stumbled, and bumped into him. The boy blurted a hasty apology, to the laughter of his friends, and the girls looked over. Zane said, watch where you’re going, you young whippersnapper, but the kid didn’t get the joke. He waited until he was safely back on his skateboard and twenty feet distant, and then told Zane to go fuck himself. Zane’s laughter seemed to confuse him: this was not in the script.

  Halfway back to the hospital, Zane’s cellphone rang, an event sufficiently rare that at first he couldn’t locate the source of the ring tone. Just when you think you’ve burned all your bridges, someone calls to talk to you. They never do learn.

  Of all the voices in the world, Richard Barker’s was the one voice Zane was least disposed to hear. You would think you could escape it, but omnipresence is exactly that. It was tempting to simply hang up, to turn the phone off and see how many times Barker called before taking the hint. But Zane felt it was probably best to formalize the break, to get it over with, like ripping off a bandage. No sense in dragging out the pain any longer than absolutely necessary.

  “You were supposed to call me today, and you didn’t,” said Barker.

  “I forgot.”

  “You have something of mine. I want it back.”

  “I don’t think anything here belongs to you.”

  The day now seemed colder, less filled with possibility; the smell from the pulp mill increased in weight.

  “Don’t play coy with me, Zane. It distresses me. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Nothing here belongs to you.” Zane took the phone from his ear and stabbed the red button and put it back in his pocket.

  The phone rang again, an insistent electrical chirping.

  “You’re wasting your time, and mine.”

  “That was rude of you, hanging up like that.”

  “I can’t really hear you. You’re breaking up. I think I’m losing the signal.”

  “Don’t fuck with me. You’re not funny. I never took you for a thief, but you and Melissa, maybe there was something there I didn’t anticipate.” Barker paused, moderated his tone. “What’s done is done. I know things got crazy there. I only want you to return what’s mine.”

  “Why don’t you call the cops, then, Rich? Tell them you’ve been robbed. Give them my description.”

  “I had hoped that we could talk like adults.”

  “Nobody here but us kids,” said Zane.

  He stabbed the red button again, looked at the phone briefly, and then switched it off. No point in having the thing ring at random intervals. He put it back in his pocket and put his jacket back on. The light was going and a cold wind was coming off the lake. So much for optimism.

  Melissa was not in the waiting room. Zane stopped just inside the door and pondered the possibilities: either she’s in with the doctor now, or she’s decamped. A symptom of declining optimism, thoughts such as these. The triage nurse passed the desk and smiled at him, a victim of Melissa’s charm, told him to take a seat while she checked on his daughter.

  Zane sat in one of the chairs and picked up a National Geographic and looked idly through it. Despite the departure of so many of the greats the Geographic always finds a new eye to surprise you. A desert caravan, in this case, reflected in the eye of a camel; a new eye for a new eye. You wonder how many times the doctor tried to
convince Melissa to call the police, and how long it took her to convince him of whatever story she’d told. No matter how good the pictures are you still get distracted by questions like these.

  “Mr. Collins?”

  A hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see the triage nurse, realizing as he did that she had called for him several times. Melissa Collins. You live, you learn.

  “Sorry. I’m really tired.”

  He put down the magazine and followed the nurse back through a set of swinging doors to a room where Melissa sat on a hospital bed, propped on a pillow. A fresh set of stitches held her cut closed, dark ends bristling from her eyebrow.

  The doctor displayed a confident smile and barely glanced at the chart.

  “You’re Mr. Collins?”

  Zane nodded, quicker on the uptake than the last time.

  “Well, it’s not as bad as it looks.” Competent smile, professional bedside manner; he did this a hundred times a day. “No broken nose, no fractures to the orbital bones. That was a nifty first aid job on the cut, the improvised butterfly sutures. Where’d you learn to do that?”

  “Beirut,” said Zane, without thinking. The problem was finding bandages without too much stretch.

  “Beirut?”

  “I was a journalist.”

  “Well,” said the doctor. This you don’t hear a hundred times a day. “Anyway, there’s going to be some scarring. And you need to think about getting the police involved.”

  “I don’t want to bother with the cops,” said Melissa.

  “You won’t be the last that guy goes after.”

  This is no doubt an excerpt from a speech made dozens of times each week, to little effect. Melissa simply rolled her one good eye.

  “Her mind’s made up. You can’t tell your kids anything.”

  “No kidding,” said the doctor. We’re all good people here. Kids today, you know how they are. But you’re far too young to know that, doc. And furthermore, what the hell do I know about kids? All of us, making ourselves up as we go along.

  Melissa drove the next leg, by dint of losing the coin toss. Somehow, although the chances are fifty-fifty, it always seems to come up heads. Zane called it heads and won. You’ve got a lot to learn about coin tosses, he said.

  As they pulled out of Marathon Zane thought to call Jack. Jack answered on the third ring and asked, acidically, why he was calling.

  “The game’s afoot.”

  “Speak English.”

  “I’m on the road.”

  “So your porno project is toast. I told you there was nothing there.”

  “Wrong. It’s all coming together now.”

  “It has nowhere to go but up.”

  “I have all the drama you could ever require.” And I intend to rub it in your face, you smug, self-satisfied rat-fucker. When I tell you there’s a story, there’s a story.

  “Do tell.”

  “The subject got beat up.”

  “The subject,” said Melissa. “Now I’m the subject?”

  Zane waved a hand at her: shut up.

  “Is that her?”

  “That’s her. So now she’s heading off home to make a fresh start.”

  “Home?”

  “Vancouver. And we’re in the middle of nowhere now, I’m going to lose coverage.”

  “And my name’s Melissa, not The Subject.”

  Zane waved his hand at her again, glared.

  “Stripper with a heart of gold,” said Jack.

  “If you like. I’m thinking some kind of redemption.”

  “Same thing. Working girl makes good.”

  “The Little Engine That Could. Whatever. You wanted a hook, I got a hook. It’s a story.”

  “So now I’m the little engine that could?”

  A pause followed, during which the phone emitted a strange sound that Zane identified as Jack sucking his teeth.

  “How long?” said Jack.

  “How long does it take to drive to Vancouver?”

  “How long is a piece of string? How the fuck would I know? How long ’til you have a story?”

  “Days, anyway. We have to get there, I have to shoot the tearful homecoming, develop the film. I’m doing it on film, everything takes longer.”

  “Time, you’ve got.”

  “I’m doing it on Tri-X Pan.”

  Silence from Jack. You know he gets the point, even if you yourself can’t quite explain it. Somehow, this time, how you make the pictures matters more than what they say.

  “She’s driving to Vancouver now?”

  “Technically speaking, I’m driving her to Vancouver.”

  Another pause.

  “Just how close are you to this story?”

  “I’m maintaining a professional distance.”

  “Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth,” said Melissa.

  He waved his hand at her again and she rolled her good eye in return.

  “You need to keep that dispassionate eye.”

  “Trust me.”

  “I’m not even going to touch that one.”

  “You need to wait until you see the film.”

  “We’re talking a week?”

  Something like that, he said. The car nosed up an incline and Melissa began to chant I think I can I think I can I think I can. Now is not the time to start inexplicably laughing, now when Jack seems finally convinced you’re back in the game. Melissa now making train noises. It suddenly seemed imperative to hang up. Quit while you’re ahead. There never was a sequel to The Little Engine That Could.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  At the edge of the road the neon sign proclaiming a vacancy flickers. The wooden frame of the office window bears a fresh coat of forest-green paint, and carefully tended geraniums flower in the window box. Crickets chirp unseen in the darkness, surprisingly loud; after some twenty-four hours of tires on pavement and engine sounds, of incessant hum and that worrisome valve clatter, the silence that the chirping penetrates seems unnatural. You fold yourself into the car seat and then set in that position like a gel hardening. At the end of the day it’s difficult to move, to adapt to the change when you stand upright.

  Melissa stopped Zane in the parking lot, hand on his arm.

  “Let me do the talking.”

  A flicker across the background, perhaps a scratch in the film. Melissa in soft focus. What you need here, friend, is a trench coat and a fedora to go with the motel’s flickering neon sign. Never trust a dame. Especially not a hard-luck dame in cheap sunglasses who speaks in B-movie clichés. Not as long as your film is noir – and at present, everything is monochrome. It gives everything that dramatic look. Also there are technical reasons, to do with lighting. We’re doing the whole shebang on Tri-X Pan.

  “I’m Mr. Collins again?”

  “You got it.”

  “You don’t think you’re going a little far with all this?”

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Apparently not.”

  She glanced quickly toward the motel office as if checking for eavesdroppers; then it occurred to him that she was doing exactly that.

  “You think we blend in? Shit, Zane, we’re the talk of the town everywhere we go.”

  “I don’t see that it matters.”

  “Rich knows where we’re going.”

  “So what.”

  “So we stand out like a sore thumb. How long you think he’ll take to find us?”

  “Rich has better things to do.”

  “You don’t know Rich.”

  You don’t know anything, least of all the source of this paranoia.

  “Point is, if some guy comes up the road looking for us, and we been telling everyone I’m bailing on my jerk boyfriend, he’s gonna spend more time talking to the cops than following us.”

  “Jesus, Melissa. Nobody’s following us.”

  “Like I said, you don’t know Rich.”

  This is your brain on cocaine: full of cholesterol, crispy round the edges, gooey in the middle and
more than a little wrapped up in itself. Paranoid, anyway. Zane let it drop.

  Inside the motel office, a middle-aged woman sat reading a celebrity magazine while the television muttered softly in the background. An old, worn carpet, but no dust on the windowsills. Behind the counter, a bulletin board carried scattered community announcements, jokes, and photos of smiling men holding big fish. A large, mounted fish graced the wall over the window. Zane thought it was a pike.

  “I need a room for the night,” said Melissa, without removing her sunglasses.

  “Oh, goodness me.”

  Eyes opening in shock on seeing Melissa’s face. The phrase took Zane by surprise. Does anyone in the world still speak this way? The woman looked at Zane as the sun regards an ant through a magnifier. It was the same look he’d received in the hospital waiting room. You can only wither so much.

  The woman turned her attention back to Melissa.

  “The two of you?”

  You don’t want to be accused of robbing the cradle, on top of the rest. You have to draw the line someplace.

  “We’ll take separate rooms.”

  “I need the company, Dad,” said Melissa. “You got one with twin beds?”

  The woman rolled doubtful eyes over Zane and then, having evidently decided his innocence and confirmed the overall uselessness of men at solving anything more emotionally complex than clogged plumbing, turned her motherly attention to Melissa.

  “I left the bastard.” Melissa took off her sunglasses. “I’m going home.”

  “Oh, dear. Good for you.”

  The woman reached out and patted Melissa’s hand, and began nattering about something that had happened to someone she had known, a mother hen clucking after her chicks. Zane wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were on the television, on the evening news: hellfire in Baghdad, a car flattened like a fire-blackened beer can. Bloodstains in the street.

  “Dad!”

  Melissa squeezed his arm, fingernails sharp in his triceps.

  “You look like you just seen a ghost,” said the woman.

  “On the news,” he said. The desk, the stuffed fish, the television: you are in Dryden. “The war.”

  Nobody had an answer to that. Zane pulled out a credit card and laid it on the counter. When in doubt, pay. Grease liberally; keep the wheels moving at all costs.