He pulled the camera from his neck and set it on the table. He opened the back of it and removed a roll of film.
“The red bulbs are called safelights. They give off just enough light so I can see while working but not so much that it damages the negatives. Then you have the enlarger, the timer, and three trays with developing chemicals.” He pointed to each one as he named them.
“And of course, funnels and tongs. The kind you’d find in a kitchen. If this were a more professional office, I might have other gadgets, like a thermometer or a scale or different sizes of enlargers.”
“You seem to print in just one size, like all the photos in the other room,” she said, making it sound like a question.
“Yes. I like the eight by ten. Anyone can see the details without having to squint. It helps my photographs stand out when I submit them to publications. Most people turn in four by sixes. Costs a bit more, but it’s worth it, if you ask me.”
He picked up a funnel and a gallon-size glass container. He poured some of the clear liquid into the first bin. “Okay. This is the developer step. The next two are the stop and the fixer. But we’ll get to those.”
He put the cap back on the bottle and reached for a fan on a shelf. The room cooled, and Alice shivered. It was more difficult to hear, but not impossible.
“That’s quite cold,” she noted.
“The superintendent controls the temperature throughout the building, but it needs to be cool in here. Twenty degrees Celsius is ideal. I mean, sixty-eight Fahrenheit.”
It struck Alice as odd that he would name the European measurement of temperature. The only people she knew who did that were her paternal grandmother and some of her other Italian relatives, who always commented on weather as if it were much colder than it was. A sweltering New York summer day would find her grandmother complaining about the thirty-two-degree weather.
As Emmett poured different chemicals into the remaining two bins, Alice looked around the rest of the room, her eyes adjusting to the red illumination. A thick, dark blanket hung on the wall, covering, she assumed, a window, so as not to let in any light. A water basin stood on another table.
“Now we’re ready,” he said.
He opened the film and unrolled a long strand of negatives. Using scissors, he cut them into five-frame pieces. He held them up one at a time against the red light until he’d chosen the image he wanted. He put the others down and then returned the lone one to the light.
“Come closer,” he said, as if there were more than a hairbreadth of space between them. She stepped in, and he put an arm around her shoulder. She shivered once again, but not from the airflow of the fan. His touch was something she’d dreamed of at night for all the weeks since she’d first met him. But again, his movement seemed perfunctory, not intimate. It merely allowed him to control how she looked at the negative.
Up close to the bulb, she saw a tiny image from Coney Island. One of those taken from the Ferris wheel. She could count six microscopic ships taking their turn in the bay and imagined that the picture would look stunning once enlarged.
“Now,” he said, releasing her just as abruptly as he’d drawn her in. He pursed his lips and blew onto the negative. Tiny specks of dust flew off.
He slid it into the enlarger and adjusted it so that the correct frame was in the middle. Then he switched off the red bulbs and returned to the overhanging one. Alice rubbed her eyes at the sudden change.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “We really don’t need to turn off the bright light until we start the developing. I just wanted to show you what it all looked like.”
She nodded in understanding.
He turned on the enlarger and adjusted it through different sizes and focuses until an eight-by-ten image of the ships appeared on its white base. She could now see more details—the small people in the foreground, the striped awnings of the food stands. It was beautiful.
He changed to the red light once again.
“I’m exposing it now,” he explained. He pulled paper from a plastic sheath and laid it over the projected image. He made more tweaks to the enhancer, keeping silent as he concentrated. Then he selected one set of tongs from the table, and she noticed that he’d affixed rubber pieces to its tips.
“Want to try the next step?” he offered.
Alice shook her head. “I’d rather watch once and then do it. Do you have more negatives that need to be developed?”
He smiled knowingly in a way that she could not interpret.
“Yes. You’ll see,” he said.
He lifted the paper with the tongs and leaned over to the bin with the developing liquid. He rocked it gently so that the entire page could be covered and then set a timer for two minutes.
“And now we wait,” he told her.
They stood side by side in the tiny space. She had no more questions other than those for herself.
Who is this man, and why am I here with him?
And she’d come up with her own answers.
Emmett Adler. You don’t know why, but you love him.
It was odd that that word would present itself, for she knew that there was nothing on which to base it. Her own parents, Vera and Angelo, shared a love that had been built through adversity and experience. It grew over the years and carried with it the traits that one might associate with that kind of commitment—honesty, trust, loyalty. Did Emmett possess any of these traits? She had no idea. He had not been dishonest as far as she knew, but his omissions were common.
So did she actually love him, or did he simply fascinate her?
And yet, there he stood next to her, the hairs on her arms rising in an expectation of something that she didn’t even know to describe. He’d brought her back to this crimson hideaway, and she was going to believe that it was because he wanted to share this piece of himself with her. What he didn’t say with words.
For some time Alice had been restless to go places outside her neighborhood. See people who weren’t familiar to her. Dream big things and actually make them happen. Her age and gender and working status confined her to certain boundaries. Then again, what had the Pearl Pilkingtons of the world died for if not to forge ways for Alice’s generation to break barriers?
The fact that Emmett seemed to live according to his own agenda and that he was inviting her into it filled the void that had been growing in her.
He embodied what she wanted to be.
He stood there moving the paper now and then and humming a song under his breath that sounded both familiar and distant. Like something her mother might have sung to her.
Before she could identify it, he spoke.
“Next step is the stop liquid.”
She left her daydreams aside and looked down. The image had appeared once again, this time permeating the paper instead of receiving the projection. The black-and-white tones were rich in their lines and shadows, and she thought that this was another one of his pieces that was worthy of a magazine.
He said nothing of the wonder of the picture appearing on the white page, but then again, he did this all the time.
He picked up a new set of tongs and placed the paper in the second bin.
“No need for a timer for this one. Just thirty seconds. Would you like to count with me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“One, two, three, four,” they said in unison. As they did, was it her imagination, or did they both step just a bit closer to each other, face-to-face?
“Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two . . .”
They were nearly touching by now, their breathing slowing until she was sure they’d lost the rhythm of the count. She felt his warm breath on her cheek, and just when he’d leaned in, they both said, “Thirty.” He inhaled sharply and turned around.
“The last one is the fixer solution.” Yet a new set of tongs was selected, and he placed the paper in the final bin and set the timer for ninety seconds.
Ninety seconds. It could fly. Or it could be the lon
gest time of her life.
When he turned again, he raised his hand and traced it down her cheek, down her jawline, and to her chin.
“Red becomes you,” he said in the dim light. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
“How could they?” she whispered. “I’ve never been in a place like this before.”
His hand moved to her hair, which he stroked so lightly that she barely felt it.
“A darkroom is a magical place, isn’t it?” His eyes were on hers. They were softer than she’d ever seen them, not because of the trick of the light but because of the tenderness they conveyed. In this moment she wanted to submerge herself in them as the paper into chemicals, getting lost until she came out a new version of herself.
He spoke again. “I love this room. When New York and all its bustle becomes too much for me, this is my haven. The little place that’s all mine, where I can close out everything else that happens. And that’s why I wanted to show it to you.”
His hand moved down to hers, which was captive at her side, unknowing what to do. He looped a finger around one of hers, and she felt him pull her in just a bit closer.
Ding!
The timer went off, and Alice no longer gave a whit about the photograph and saw it as an intruder upon this moment, although it was the very thing that had drawn them here together in the first place.
He turned as if the fireworks launching inside her were not even a flicker in himself.
“Can you hand me the basin and pitcher, please?” he asked, and she complied. It was porcelain, painted with delicate flowers, and so out of place in this room that she wondered if he’d bought it at a thrift store merely for its function or if it was possibly sentimental. She wished he would tell her something about his past.
He poured some water into the bowl and placed the photograph in it. By this time the image had fully set in. He reached up for the string, and the room was flooded with light that caused Alice to put her hands over her face.
“I’m so sorry,” he apologized, and those eyes that had already seemed gentle just minutes ago seemed even more so.
Could a man playact such a thing, or could she trust that his words and actions were that of a man who hid much but had begun to let her in through the cracks?
“I’m all right,” she answered, and placed her hand on his forearm to reassure him.
“What do you think?” He held up the photograph, now complete.
“It’s exquisite. How clever of you to shoot this from the Ferris wheel.”
“Not any more clever than you to think that I might be there and come find me.”
She smiled. It was true. They’d thought so similarly on that point, artist to artist, as if they understood each other through that language.
“Are you going to submit it anyplace?”
“I am!” he said. “Now that I can put the Life magazine credit in my portfolio, I’m hoping something like this might sell well in these patriotic times.”
He raised his arms and pinned the picture to the clothesline.
“Your turn?” he asked.
“Only on something that you don’t plan to try to sell.”
He grinned again in that way that told her he wasn’t saying something. “No, this one is for my eyes—our eyes—only.”
She held in a breath at the way he’d said that, as if he’d thought of them as a plural as much as she had.
She thought he would continue with more of the Coney Island negatives, but instead, he pulled open a drawer under the table and selected another can of film.
He pulled it out but held it away from her, and she was unable to see what it contained. Like before, he cut the negatives at every fifth image and then held them up to the light until he found the one he wanted.
“May I see?” she asked, feeling emboldened.
“Not yet. It’s a surprise.”
He placed it into the enlarger and put a new piece of paper on it, switching the lights from white to red.
“Close your eyes,” he said. “It’s not ready for you yet.”
She did as he told her, her heartbeat quickening with anticipation at yet a new mystery that was Emmett. She heard him fiddle with the device and imagined what he was doing based on having just watched him with the previous photo.
“Perfect,” he said to himself, but it pleased her to hear it. “Now, open.”
She opened her eyes. The paper was still white, but she understood now that whatever the image was had been exposed from the negative and was just waiting for its triple baths.
“I want you to do this one,” he said. He pulled out one of the two chairs for her and then sat in the other. “Do you remember what to do?”
She nodded. “Two minutes in the developing solution.”
“Exactly. You’re a good pupil.”
“You’re a good teacher.” Alice grinned. She liked talking to him like this.
She picked up the tongs and placed the paper in the bin, stirring it gently as she’d seen him do.
Lines of black and gray started to emerge until they began to reveal the image that they were hiding.
It was a picture of her. She was looking up, wistfully, it might be said, as if the answers to all the things she wanted to know were written on the ceiling. There was little background, and what there was of that was blurred so as to be unrecognizable.
She felt breathless.
“When did you take this?”
“Weeks ago. The first day I talked to you.”
“Why didn’t I see you?”
“It was my first day photographing the soldiers. I was walking around taking pictures of the train station before getting to the platform. If you look at my whole roll, you’ll see the café, the concourse, the flower seller. And—the newsstand.”
“This was taken at the newsstand?”
He nodded. “I wasn’t intending to take a picture of you, necessarily, but as I held the camera to my eye, I noticed this beautiful woman daydreaming. And I wanted to know what she was dreaming about.” He paused. “Or even become the one she dreamed of.”
This last piece he said quietly. She took his hand in hers, a gesture she felt comfortable enough to make. “You have no idea,” she said.
That might have been the ideal moment for her first kiss. But once again, the timer interrupted them, and she was beginning to think that maybe photography was more of a hindrance to romance than a help.
“What’s next?” he asked. He had an uncanny ability to switch his emotions on and off, like the string from the bulb.
“Thirty seconds in the stopping solution.”
“Excellent.”
She removed the image from the first bin, marveling at how beautiful it indeed was. Not because it was herself but because of the girl it represented—the dreamer, as he’d said. Alice in Wonderland, who found her way to adventure by following a white rabbit. Emmett in a second had caught her, so real and so vulnerable, and she appreciated that he didn’t plan to show it to anyone else.
It was his. Hers. Theirs.
“One, two, three,” she started. But on four, his lips were on hers and the tentative dance they’d been playing at ended and this—this—her first kiss, was so enveloping, so much better than the girl in the picture could have expected that she wanted it to go on forever, damn the timer.
His kiss was not a gentle one. It was eager. Hungry, perhaps, if the word could describe such an action. It was as if his need for her—and hers that matched it—was bigger than both of them, and she responded with equal want.
He pulled back, breathing heavily, and said, “Thirty.”
“I forgot to count,” she managed to say.
She pulled the paper from the bin and laid it in the next one, not even looking at it, and setting the timer for ninety seconds.
Ninety seconds.
They didn’t waste one of them. Emmett leaned in, pulling her into his arms, their knees interlocking as if they knew what to do all on their own. He kissed
not only her lips but also moved to her cheek, her neck, her ear—oh, her ear—and she’d had no idea that the earthquake that it created in her even existed as a feeling. It inspired her to respond in kind, and she pulled away to re-create the pattern he’d left on her—lips, cheeks, neck, ear. And when she got to his ear, that innocent little place that apparently screamed with feeling, she heard him groan, and his grip on her arms tightened.
“Alice,” he said eagerly.
“Emmett.”
He made a raspy sound that was more eager than a sigh.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling away as if it were the most excruciating thing he’d ever had to do.
“For what?”
His eyes looked at hers with such melancholy, but he seemed to brush it off and said, “Because the timer is about to go off.”
And just like that it did, but she felt something unsettling in her stomach. That feeling that he was hiding something. Again.
Still, that language of their souls was undeniable. Something told her to believe in it.
The cold room moderated the heat they’d created, and they returned to the task at hand. She lifted the photo from the fixer solution and rinsed it with water before hanging it to dry.
“It’s a marvel,” she said, “that you were able to shoot this so close to me without my knowing it.”
“Oh, I wasn’t very close. Do you want to see how I did that?”
“Yes.”
He turned toward the enlarger, and the negative image revealed itself again. But this time he turned some dials, and the girl in the photograph became smaller and her surroundings became more identifiable. Indeed, she was at the newsstand, and she could see the totality of the displays of magazines.
“How did you do that?”
“This is the full image. The picture I took. But, see?” And he turned the dials so that they closed in on her. “With this, I can focus on any part of the whole thing. And then cut it where I choose.”
The Way of Beauty Page 25
