Hard Focus (BAE Book 1)

by Vic Tyler

“Great,” Grant said enthusiastically, pulling another photo — an identical one — out of his wallet and handing it to me. “I made a lot of authentic looking copies since I knew you were going to be difficult.”

  Benji looked even more irritated.

  “I should’ve fucking known,” he grumbled.

  Benji reached out, grabbing onto the edge of the photo I was holding. I held on firmly.

  “Can I keep this one?”

  There was a story. A tenderness in the way the photograph was taken. Even though it said ‘BA’ in the corner, it was definitely Benji’s work. I kept my eyes on his. It was a mental tug-o’-war, with Benji visibly struggling, debating whether he wanted to let me keep it or not.

  “Fine,” he finally said, letting go.

  Benji turned away and disappeared around the corner.

  Immediately, guilt started pushing against my gut. I thought it was a beautiful photograph, but he seemed to hold some mixed feelings about it. Maybe it wasn’t right of me to ask to keep that remnant of his memories if he didn’t want to be reminded of it.

  But as I started to follow him, Grant grabbed my wrist with a firm grip.

  “He let you keep it.”

  Grant was no longer smiling. He was dead serious. It was the first time I felt like Grant and I were looking at each other on level ground.

  “I don’t want it if he doesn’t want it around,” I said, annoyed. “It feels like I forced him to let me keep it, and if it makes him uncomfortable, I don’t want it.”

  Grant opened his hand, and I rubbed the spot he shackled.

  “If Benji didn’t want you to have it, he would’ve burned the building down to keep you from it.”

  He tilted his head again, and his smile returned, mechanical as ever. “Well, whatever. Do as you like.”

  Grant waved his hand and slipped out into the budding morning.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ho Hey - The Lumineers

  From: Nicolas Avedon

  To: Benji Reed

  Subject: Re: Re: How’s it going?

  It’s good to hear from you, Benj. Glad to hear business is doing well and Grant isn’t giving you too much trouble (laugh)

  Sarah and the kids are great. Thx for asking. My youngest finally started school, so the house is quieter during the days. Hallelujah!

  An opportunity for some work covering cultural exploration came up and I wanted to see if you’d be interested.

  My new assignment is to cover one of two hostile tribes in the Amazon for 4 months. My colleague was originally covering the other one but due to a last minute emergency, he can’t make it. So the assignment is on standby while we’re finding someone on short notice.

  It’s a little unusual, but if you’re still interested I can pitch your name to my editor. Travel expenses and a small stipend will be covered, but you’ll be making nothing compared to what you’re doing now.

  Fashion in NY is no joke, eh? Sometimes I think about going back to something steady. But there’s nothing that can replace the thrill of what I’m doing now.

  It’ll be a tough and unforgiving trip, but that’s what makes it glorious in the end, eh?

  Let me know.

  Nick

  “Did you kill someone?”

  “First call I’ve gotten from you all year, and it’s to accuse me of murder?” Grant chuckled on the other line.

  “Your methods are questionable.”

  “Not as much as yours. Guessing you talked to Nick.”

  “You heard about it?”

  “How do you think he got your email?”

  “It’s on the studio website.”

  “Breed [at] bayre [dot] com sounds like porn spam,” Grant said, obviously amused.

  I gritted my teeth.

  “You’re the one who fucking made it, asshole.”

  “We should get you a new one.”

  “I’ve been telling you that for two years.”

  “Eh, it grew on me. Actually, we’ll keep it.”

  I groaned. I didn’t understand how this infuriating man got anything done. Grant hummed.

  “So when are you going to accept?”

  “Who said I was going to do it?”

  “Do you have any reason not to?”

  I paused. “Like what?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t. Being cryptic doesn’t suit you.”

  “A certain lovely assistant,” he drawled with extra emphasis.

  “She’s an employee.”

  “You let her keep the picture.”

  I resisted sighing. It had made the rest of the day awkward with Maria. And even though I was pissed at Grant, I knew he had his own reasons for keeping the picture with him and I couldn’t fault him for that. And of course he’d fucking make copies. For his whole don’t-give-a-shit act, he was a lying, anal motherfucker who couldn’t keep his nose out of anything. I just never expected he’d give one to Maria.

  “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Grant tutted in disapproval. I knew what he was thinking, but I didn’t want to hear it because I didn’t want to hear my own thoughts said aloud. Didn’t want to think about what I was feeling. But Grant didn’t push it.

  “So are you going to take the Nat Geo assignment?”

  “I don’t know. I need to think about it.”

  I heard a few clicks. Grant tapped his pen against his chin when he was thinking.

  “I think it’d be good for you. It’s about time for you to graduate from this line of work.”

  “What are you on about?”

  “I know you’ve been sticking around to pay me back, even though I told you not to. But this sort of opportunity isn’t going to come up again easily. So take it.”

  I leaned back into my chair, exhaling. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Well, think about it. If you really like working at BAYRE, you’re welcome to stay on. If you want to trapeze through rainforests and eat bugs, then I’ll just find another you to keep BAYRE going. Hopefully more handsome and less of an asshole this time.”

  “Impossible,” I told him. “I’m the best you’re going to get.”

  “Now that’s a truly sad thing to hear first thing in the morning.”

  “It’s 3 in the afternoon.”

  “Whoops.”

  Click. The line went dead. Idiot.

  Aperture. Shutter speed. Focus.

  Maria’s slight frame sharpened in the viewfinder. She was looking up.

  “We’ll need better lights,” she said. “The fluorescent light isn’t going to look good for the shoot.”

  “Look this way,” I ordered.

  Maria’s face turned towards me, her features dark and sharp, illuminated poorly by overhanging yellow light.

  Click. I scrolled through the photos we took, dissatisfied.

  We were in a large house that we were location scouting for a small, indie magazine that reached out. Even though the decor was pretty close to what we envisioned, there were some major elements lacking.

  First, we’d need to get rid of these goddamn flickering lights. Then, somehow cover the atrocious wallpaper. But the furniture and the general color scheme of the place was spot-on. This was going to be a hassle.

  Maria, Maria, Maria. There were a lot of pictures of her. She was fun to photograph even though she rarely agreed to it outside of work. Not that I ever asked.

  But there was only one photo that popped in my head when I thought of her. Her playing the cello, dressed shoddily in her wilting bedsheets, her long hair swaying in her passionate playing, the morning light highlighting her focused face, eyes closed, as though she was imagining she was somewhere else.

  I had cursed myself for not bringing a camera out, although I rarely took one when I went to Grant’s, and the bastard had tricked me into going to a bar. So my shitty phone camera it was. It was grainier than I’d like, but somehow it turned out perfectly.

  I looked at it
more than I would’ve liked to admit, even to myself. But I couldn’t bring myself to delete it, even though I knew it was wrong.

  “Whoa, look at the garden,” Maria breathed.

  She opened the balcony door and ran outside, looking bright-eyed at all the blooming flowers and plants. She plopped onto the lush green grass, lying down.

  “I forgot what it felt like to be surrounded by green.”

  “There’s always Central Park,” I said, sitting down next to her.

  “Too many people.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “Too many tourists.”

  A slight wind tickled our faces, and we sat, listening to the birds chirping and the distant traffic.

  “You can have your own backyard if you live in the suburbs,” I suggested. “Or the countryside.”

  “I love the city,” she said, staring at the sky. “Well, actually it’s all I’ve ever known. My parents didn’t really like being surrounded by nature, so I’ve never been.”

  It sounded like a pretty sad life to me. The city was alright, but it was packed full of buildings, cars, and people. It was too silver and shiny. I didn’t particularly care for it.

  “What were your parents like?” I asked.

  Maria hummed. “Music was their life. I guess that’s why they were perfect for each other. My mom was a bit of a diva. She liked the glamorous life — champagne, limos, endless jewelry, stuff like that. My dad was more grounded. He loved British rock and stargazing — kind of an old romantic. But they somehow got along. They were the only person that the other one would listen to.”

  She halted.

  “I don’t know if they’d be able to live without each other. I’m sure they’re happy that they got to go together.”

  The more I learned about Maria, the more she was taking up a space in the people I cared about. The people I wanted to care about. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to know. From wanting to see all of her expressions, her emotions. And as we sat and watched the clouds pass by, the thought materialized in my head, as though it had always been there, invisibly floating.

  I want her. Not just her body. Her laughs, her tears, her smiles, her blushes, her anger. What did she fear the most? How did she look when she woke up in the mornings? What were her favorite foods and places to be? I wanted to memorize each strand of her hair with my caresses, her delicate ivory hands, her big chocolate eyes.

  What did it even mean to ‘want her?’ Did I just want to possess her? A toy? A tool? A passing trifle?

  But something had changed. I didn’t know what, but at some point, I somehow passed the point of no return. And I was afraid to find out what boundary I crossed.

  “What about you?” Maria asked, turning to look at me.

  I watched a white cloud shaped like a hamburger disperse slowly into something more reminiscent of a pancake.

  “Don’t know my parents,” I said. “I grew up fostered.”

  The images of them peppered in my thoughts, small like a pixel. I pushed them out of my mind. No.

  “Oh,” Maria said softly. “What was your foster family like?”

  The pixels grew, spreading like cancer. I took a deep breath.

  “Not great,” I said, shoving the thoughts back. “I ran away when I was 17. Joined a logging company in Michigan. Grant found me and offered me a job, so I took it.”

  I shrugged. Long story short.

  Maria didn’t ask anymore questions about it. I tried to think of something else, feeling a certain desperation to fill the silence, to change the subject.

  “So what’s wrong with Michele?” I asked.

  Maria turned to her side, leaning on her arm. “Are you stalking me, Benji Reed?” she teased.

  I shrugged. “It was on your paperwork.”

  She laughed. “I told you my mom was a diva. She named me after herself. Well, my dad insisted, but it probably didn’t take long for her to agree. Michele Ariadne. I’ve always thought about officially changing it to Maria. I hated the name, but I guess I was bullied into using it. After all, it didn’t interfere with my mom’s stage name — Michele Deveraux — so whatever.”

  “Your mom is Michele Deveraux?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yeah,” Maria said, raising her eyebrow. She leaned back in mock disgust. “Oh no, are you one of those MILFele Shove-her-hole fanboys?”

  “God, no.” Disgusting. “I heard about her from Grant. Her music was... interesting. It was good.”

  I had never heard about her until a couple years ago. All the news outlets reported on a brutal car accident that killed Michele Deveraux and Peter Lennox — the famous singer-conductor couple, iconic pillars in the classical music world.

  It was the darkest I’d ever seen Grant look, in his full black suit and a grim look that he couldn’t replace with his trademark smile. He didn’t talk about it, and I didn’t ask, although I remembered wondering how the fuck he knew classical music celebrities well enough to attend their funeral.

  I ended up listening to Michele Deveraux’s music nonstop for the next few weeks, occasionally going back to it. Her voice was strong but comforting. She was an attractive woman, but there was a full-bodied womanly quality to her voice, at times crooning, other times maternal. Not that I knew what maternal felt like, but if I had to guess, I imagined it would be like Michele Deveraux.

  Well, Maria didn’t need to know any of this.

  “She really was something,” Maria smiled softly. She plopped back down in the grass. “What about you?”

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “What does ‘BA’ stand for?”

  Goddammit. I scowled. Grant always butt his head into my life wherever and whenever he wanted. My efforts to divert him nearly always failed. He was a wily motherfucker.

  “It was the name I was born with — Benjamin Andrews. I hated it. Didn’t want to be associated with it, and I refused to sign most of my work. So Grant told me to change it. And I did.”

  “I like it,” Maria said slowly, nodding. “Benji Reed.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Maria Lennox.”

  We smiled at each other, almost shyly. It was an alien feeling, being shy. The suffocating, anxious hope that I’d be liked. But it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a foreign state of mind.

  Maria stood up, dusting the grass and dirt off her pants. She stretched and spun around, inhaling deeply. She started running around the large area.

  “I feel like a kid again,” she laughed.

  I brought my camera to my eye and took a few shots. She cocked her head at me.

  “Did you want pictures of the garden too?”

  Huh. I looked up at the sky, thoughtfully.

  “No.”

  We got into the Uber and rode in silence as we headed back to the city. The manicured greens slowly started disappearing into gray cemented highways. It was dreary to watch. The sky looked a muted blue, veiled by a coat of smog, smoke, clouds, or all of the above.

  I sighed. I missed the mountains and the forests. Sure as hell didn’t see myself living in the city or the suburbs in the long run. But I also sure as hell didn’t know where I did see myself. Where I wanted to be in the future. It wasn’t that long ago when I didn’t think I had one.

  And I laid down no roots. There was no home for me. There was nowhere to return to. The years went by so quickly, and the thought still crept into the forefront of my mind some days, whispering, ‘What kind of future do you think you deserve?’

  A warmth tickled my fingers. I glanced over to see Maria’s hand casually lying on the seat, like mine was. She was also looking out the window, leaning back and lost in her own thoughts. Our fingers were centimeters away as we shared the small backseat together. Me sprawled out more in the cramped area than Maria’s small body. I turned back to the window.

  I don’t know who moved first or if our warmth drew our touch to each other like magnets. Our fingertips brushed against each other lightly. The feeling of her soft skin jolted e
lectricity through my spine. But she didn’t move away.

  Would it be too bold to touch her hand? I grazed my fingers a little farther, against the ends of her fingers, and her finger brushed against mine.