by Mira Jacob
“Of course. How many times have you been out?”
“Three last week.”
Jane raised an eyebrow. “Nervous?”
“I’m not, I just—”
“Of course you are. Lesley is a legendary bitch. But please her and we become the go-to for the lot of them, and that will please me.” Jane slapped her hands on the desk, signaling the end of the conversation, and Amina stood. “Let me know if you can’t get Earl.”
Coming to work for Jane Wiley hadn’t been Amina’s idea. It was Dimple who had known Jane through mutual friends, Dimple who had gotten Amina the interview at Wiley Studios after her career at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer had derailed, Dimple who had hustled her out of bed and into the shower five years earlier, claiming she had told her about the job interview the week before.
“Who cares if it’s events? You’ve just got to get out there again. Is this black thing your only suit?” her cousin had said while Amina stood under the pounding water, hungover, hating her.
“Out there” was Wiley Studios in Belltown, where Amina arrived that morning with a tightening forehead, her portfolio and résumé in hand. After a ten-minute wait, she was shuffled down the long hallway into Jane’s airy office, where a black notebook lay open in the center of a steel desk with a to-do list that numbered into the fifties. Amina’s name was number 14.
Jane had held out a pale hand. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Amina handed over her portfolio and looked away as Jane opened it, feeling, as she always did, that it was a little like watching a needle go into her own arm. Jane’s head bobbed over the pictures.
“What’s this?”
Amina glanced over. A smiling young boy’s face leaned so close, his features were almost blurry. In the background, his older brother sat in a cement stairwell, wearing a Knicks shirt and smoking a cigarette.
“That’s in Brooklyn. For an article on New York’s homeless youth.”
“Is that where you met Dimple? NYU?”
“Yes. I mean, no. Or, well, we met in New Mexico, but then we also went to NYU.”
“And then you followed her here?”
“She followed me here,” Amina said, bristling a little, and Jane looked up at her briefly before moving on. The next was an old woman with a puff of white hair, slumping into her lawn chair.
“Record heat in Queens,” Amina offered.
In the next, a young Asian man in a stained shirt clutched his stomach, his eyes rolled back.
“Bellingham hot-dog-eating champion dethroned.”
“Did I see this in the P-I?”
“Yes.”
The next photo was of a police officer, a mother, and her son. The officer and the young woman faced each other, while the small boy leaned back against his mother, his hands cupping her knees. A dark look hung in the air between the adults, but the boy smiled, gleefully unaware, his mother’s hands slammed over his ears. His T-shirt had chocolate ice cream stains down the front.
“This?” Jane’s voice was pinched.
“The family of the firefighter who died last year.”
“One of the four in the warehouse accident?”
“Yeah.”
Jane lay the portfolio down. “Well, all we need now is a picture of someone actually killing themselves, and we’ll have a real party.”
Amina sat still, her face prickling with heat.
“Why didn’t you include that one?”
“I thought it wouldn’t be … applicable. To this job. Appropriate.”
“And you’d have been right.” Jane set the portfolio on the desk between them, folding it closed. “But then, none of these are really appropriate, are they? For the job?”
“You haven’t seen them all.”
“I don’t need to. They’re not what I’m looking for.”
“But there might be something—”
Jane held up her hand. “Do you have any weddings in here?”
Amina shook her head.
“Birthdays? Anniversaries? Baptisms? Bar mitzvahs?”
“No.”
“Of course not. Because that’s not really what you do, is it?” It didn’t seem like a question she wanted answered as much as said out loud, and Amina shifted as Jane smiled coldly at her. “What you do is get the stuff that people watch despite themselves. Meanwhile, I need someone who can take good portraits, who knows how to find the smiling moment and capture it. Someone who can replace me at the events.” Amina jumped a little as Jane slapped her hand down on the desk in dismissal. “Thanks for coming. And please tell Dimple I send my best.”
Amina did not move. She knew she should get up, say thank you, and head with quiet composure to the nearest bar, but she couldn’t. Moving would lead to home, to the bed she was never far enough from anymore. It would mean she didn’t have anything else to do in her week. And it was better in Jane’s office, better than it had been anywhere else for a long time. She looked at the files and the memos and the calendar separating days into pristine units of time, aware of Jane’s growing irritation the longer she sat.
“I understand your hesitation,” Amina said at last, her voice coming out softer than she wanted. She cleared her throat. “The thing is that I really can do this.”
Jane frowned. “I’m not sure you’re hearing—”
“No, I can do it well.” Her cheeks blazed. “I can. I have great references from the New York Post, and the photo editor at the P-I can vouch for me.”
“Listen.” Jane’s voice dropped an octave. “Your cousin told me you were having a hard time after all the hubbub, and I agreed to meet with you, but I can’t go giving out jobs to people just because they’re having a hard—”
“I wouldn’t expect you to pay me,” Amina blurted out.
Jane blinked. “What?”
“I …” Amina licked her lips and felt the words come out rapidly, hitting her tongue and brain at the same time. “Not until you knew I could do it, of course. Until I proved myself. By shooting a wedding. Or weddings. A month of weddings.”
Jane’s mouth puckered.
“If you let me shoot with one of your other photographers, you’ll see,” Amina continued, breathless, terrified. “I wouldn’t get in the way, and I would show you the finished product. If you like any of my shots, they can be made available to your clients. And if I’m not what you’re looking for, you haven’t lost anything.” She pitched back against her chair.
“That’s ridiculous,” Jane said.
“It’s free.”
Jane looked her over warily.
“Fine,” she said at last. “Get to St. Joe’s on Capitol Hill on Saturday morning. A nice big Irish Catholic wedding.”
Amina rose quietly, quickly putting her portfolio away before Jane could change her mind.
“Thanks,” she whispered on the way out the door.
“Ten o’clock sharp,” Jane replied.
That weekend, when Amina showed up at the Murphy-Patrick wedding, she saw someone she barely recognized. Gone were Jane’s terse manner and the dark suit, replaced by a bubbly woman who gave everyone nicknames and winked like she had a nerve condition.
“Thanks, honeys!” she had shouted, waving a hand to dismiss the bridesmaids. “Now I want one with Snow White and Elvis and the Backup Singers! Yup, in a line, just like that.”
The following Thursday had found Amina back in Jane’s office, contact sheets spread across the light box in the corner. She listened to the silence of Jane’s scrutiny—the woman was unnervingly quiet until she didn’t want to be.
“Oh,” Jane said finally, with some surprise. “This one is good.”
“Which?”
“Bride-fixing-hair-before-ceremony.” She glanced up. “Good angle.”
She moved on to the next sheet. “Not bad. Most of these with the bridesmaids are decent. You need to watch your shadows a little, though, make sure you always cheat to make the bride look better than anyone else.”
“Okay.”
; Jane paused again over the shots taken during the ceremony.
“Mother of the bride crying works,” she said. “She’ll think she looks noble.”
Amina squeezed her hands together behind her back in a kind of inverted prayer, surprised by how much she cared. Jane moved quickly through the next sheet and the next. She came to the portraits outside the church.
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “Your portraits are off.”
Amina’s stomach fluttered a little. “What?”
“They look uncomfortable.” Jane pushed the loupe toward her. “Look. See how your group look like they’d rather be somewhere else? My guess is you’re coming in late, when the smile gets a little tighter and the shine in the eyes fades. You’ve got to talk between shots to keep them with you.” Amina heard Jane rummaging around next to her. “Look at mine.”
The contact sheet Jane placed down on the light box showed bright-eyed, shiny-cheeked, smiling groomsmen, the Irish Catholic version of the Pips.
“Backup singers,” Amina said.
“Exactly.” Jane took the loupe back, skimming. “Your dance shots are good, but you need to get closer during the toasts.”
“I didn’t want to get in the way.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just be quick.”
She moved on, nodding at several pictures, circling others with a red grease pencil. On the last sheet, her head stopped abruptly.
“What’s this?” she asked.
It was the best picture Amina had taken all night.
“A bridesmaid.”
“Obviously. I can tell by the bouquet and the shoes.”
The shot was a side view of a bathroom stall. The bouquet lay at the base of the toilet bowl like an offering at an altar. Behind it, two taffeta-covered knees pressed to the ground, followed by calves and feet in scuffed satin pumps. And while Amina had known that the bride herself wouldn’t want to see the picture, something—vanity?—had convinced her that Jane would appreciate it compositionally, suddenly understanding the talent she had in her midst.
“What is she doing?” Jane asked.
“Vomiting.”
Jane straightened up and looked at her, the skin on her cheeks mottling. “You clicked a puker.”
“It happened very fast,” Amina said. “She didn’t know I was there.”
“At a wedding. You clicked a wedding puker.”
“It was just a few shots.”
“A bridesmaid, no less. Not someone anonymous enough not to care about.”
“Well, but—”
“Stop talking!” Jane clapped loudly in front of Amina’s face, shutting her up. “Do you have any idea how much trouble that could get us into?”
“I would never have shown those to anyone.”
“Damn right you—those? Are there more?”
There were two more. One of the girl washing off her face, taken from the stall Amina had locked herself into, and another of her hanging over the hand dryer as it blew up at her face.
“She didn’t see you?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she didn’t. Sometimes people just don’t.”
Jane squinted. “I noticed that about you.”
Amina blushed.
“You realize how disturbing these would be to the client?” Jane asked.
“I do. I mean, I do now.”
“You didn’t then?”
“No, I just didn’t think … it just seemed like another part of the wedding until I saw the contact sheet yesterday, and—”
“It’s unprofessional and asinine.”
Amina waited for a scolding, some kind of advice, but when the silence grew until all she could hear was the sound of her own heart slapping in her chest, she understood that she needed to leave quickly. She packed her things with trembling fingers, sliding all the negatives off the light box and into her portfolio, shamed by the sight of the few pictures she’d gone so far as to print. Jane said nothing, sitting heavily behind her desk.
“Thanks,” Amina said when she was done, not knowing what else to say. She made her way to the door.
“You can never take those pictures again,” Jane said.
Amina stopped, turned around.
“And don’t let me get a call from anyone telling me I sent a goddamn voyeur their way. Weddings are about fantasies—you understand? Your job is to photograph the fantasy, not the reality. Never the reality. If I ever see another picture like that, you’re fired.”
She opened her notebook.
“Does that mean that I’m hired?” Amina asked quietly.
“No. Not until I know you can do good portraits.” Jane moved her finger down the page, scanning the schedule. “I’ve got another wedding coming up the day after tomorrow at the United Lutheran Church up in Queen Anne.”
It was a crash course, a month of weddings, two per weekend. Jane and Amina wound their way through teary parents and tense couples, using a half hour during the week to review Amina’s work. Jane could move through hundreds of shots quickly, critiquing some, dismissing some, scanning for anything out of line. At the last June wedding they worked together, she sneaked two flutes of champagne out behind the garden tent and told Amina she was hired.
“I’ve set you up with six weddings for July, and after those, you’ll need to drum up your own clients quickly if you want to survive,” she had said.
Amina had wanted to thank her but was afraid she’d do something stupid, like cry, or hug her too hard. Jane hadn’t been looking at her anyway.
“Five messages?” Outside Jane’s office with Post-it in hand, Amina stared at the pink slips the receptionist handed her. “I was only in there ten minutes.”
“Four are from the same woman. And Jose came by looking for you, too. He said something about the Lorber print being ready, but didn’t I send those out last week?”
Amina ignored the question and the look that came with it, walking down the hallway and frowning at the tight script that dotted the slips. Lesley Beale, Lesley Beale, Lesley Beale. “He’s in the darkroom?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks.”
Amina continued down the hallway to the darkroom, stepping into the cylindrical door and coming face-to-face with Jose’s rules. Posted on the drum, they specified that there should be no knocking any time, that no one should come in unannounced, or call on the phone between ten and six. While some in the office questioned Jose’s definition of “being at work,” all of the photographers were far too enamored of his prints to ever tell him so.
Amina knocked softly. The metal boomed around her, and she heard something drop on the other side of it, along with a long curl of something mean and Spanish.
“Jose, it’s Amina. I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Well, don’t fucking whisper now you made me fuck up!” Jose yelled through the door. “What do the rules say? Fuck Jose up, or leave him alone?”
“I know, I know, it’s just I’m going to be leaving in half an hour, so if you have anything for me, I should get it now.”
“Puta! In your office in ten.”
Amina eased out the door and tiptoed into her office down the hall, carefully shutting the door behind her.
Unlike in Jane’s office, where the sorted piles and color-coded Post-its gave the impression of a sort of collective organization, the piles in Amina’s office left no such impression. She had never managed to make good use of the filing cabinet, preferring to leave her paperwork on top of it, while excess napkins and packs of ketchup lined her desk drawer. A single lamp hung over her desk, and she turned it on.
Lesley Beale. The pile of messages joined several others that lived in a heap at the corner of Amina’s desk, and when the phone rang again, she took a deep breath before picking it up.
“Amina!” Kamala shouted. “You’ll never guess what just happened!”
“Ma?”
A tumbling sounded on the other end of the line, and Amina he
ard her mother screeching, “Give me the phone, Thomas! Let me tell your daughter what the genius surgeon did this morning!”
There were more muffled noises and the sound of Thomas’s footsteps thundering up what could only be the stairs. He breathed hard into the phone. A door slammed.
“Amina-Amina-Amina, I stole the phone!” he shouted, voice echoing like he was in a bat cave. “I’m in the bathroom! Here she comes!”
“Thomas!” Kamala pounded on the door. “Let me talk to her!”
“No!”
“Coward! Tell her!”
“No!”
“Tell me what?” Amina asked.
“Nothing,” Thomas’s voice chimed in with false innocence. “Nothing at all. And how are you this fine summer morning?”
“He lost the car!” Kamala yelled. More pounding. “His own car!”
“You what?”
“Nothing doing!” Thomas yelled. “Don’t fill your daughter’s head with such lies!”
There was a pause as he waited for Kamala’s comeback, which did not come.
“She must be planning a sneak attack,” Thomas whispered into the phone.
“You lost the car?” Amina whispered back.
“Oh, she’s buzzing like one hornet’s nest today, I tell you.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing much, really. Your mother likes to make up stories, what else is new?”
“IN THE SHOPPING MALL!” Kamala yelled into the phone, having found another receiver, and Amina almost dropped hers.
“Bad thing, get off!” Thomas yelled back.
“And guess who had to save him?”
“Oh boy, here it comes. She’s a saint! She’s a saint!”
“Lost it lost it? Like you really didn’t know where it was?” Amina asked.
“And it wasn’t even at Sears like he said, it was at Dillard’s!” Kamala snorted. “And then the best part! Tell her what you were doing there.”
“I was shopping,” Thomas said.
“Bullshits! He was at the hardware store getting keys made because he lost them! First the keys, then the car!”
“Edi, penay.” Thomas cut her off, slipping into Malayalam, in which Amina could only pick out a few words. Something about a goat. Something else about idiots. Amina pulled the receiver away from her ear. After a silence, a squeaky “Amina!” came from the phone.
