Authors: Nicholson Gunn
Of the photography crowd, Penny, of course, was there,
wearing black eyeliner that matched that worn by her new beau, Clay. Bill
showed up wearing a tuxedo-print T-shirt that did a surprisingly good job of
covering his beer belly. He beamed like a proud father throughout the night,
thrilled that his darkrooms had played a part in Stephan’s success.
The fashion photographer’s models Eliotte Chalmers,
Martina Lubova and Adilene Watson also deigned to appear, but stood together in
a corner and furiously turned up their noses at any male who approached within
ten feet. And the war photographer Lucas Stull, though walking with a cane due
to a gunshot wound in the thigh he’d recently received in the Korangal Valley.
Helmut Stumpfl, though invited, did not attend, but sent his new assistant,
Stephanie, in his place, a haunted young woman who seemed to be constantly
looking over her shoulder, as if expecting Helmut to materialize out of thin
air and berate her over some tiny yet devastating photo processing error.
Of general people from the neighbourhood scene, the
artisanal brewmeister Vernon Shah was there. His thriving brewery and gastro
pub had supplied the event with the trio of artisanal beers that were fueling
Nathan’s stories – “Dirty Brunette,” “Yellow Flame” and Framboizzle. And Jenny
Wynne’s early publicist Sandra Gertz, who was in the midst rebuilding her
client base after a snafu involving an unfortunate email “reply all” error.
(She raved throughout the event about how she’d encouraged Stephan early on,
while single-handedly putting away a comprehensive selection of hors
d’oeuvres.)
Giselle Grice, proprietor of the local all-organic
children’s toy store, was in attendance. And Fraunchie Sausalito, the makeup
sales associate, who brought his boyfriend, whose name has been lost to
history. Former tech investor and collector of native South American curios Jay
Ramston, who was said to be dating Uma Thurman, was on hand, minus Uma Thurman.
And Jen Bryant, the literary agent, who would disappear from a Balinese beach
the following year in the Boxing Day tsunami.
Many guests lingered, others came and went. Neil Wilcox,
the bassist from the indie band Pooch Troop, stopped by with a couple of roadies
to make brief use of the open bar before roaring off to a gig. And at one point
Stephan thought he saw, standing alone in a quiet corner, the man from the
industrial area who’d asked for a cigarette the day he’d first stumbled on the
place, but it must have been some sort of trick of the light. Most fleetingly
of all, Zanta stopped in for a couple of minutes, but quickly became bored,
raised his arms and hollered
Tada!
a couple of times in a half-hearted
voice, then hurried out.
The night sped by. It was an official moment of triumph,
which was nice but also somehow disconcerting. Maybe it was just that he was
used to being behind the lens, rather than in the shot, but he felt a recurring
sense of disorientation. Pulled this way and that, he had no time to reflect on
any one thing as it happened, and there were moments, as the evening wore on,
when he experienced a sudden rush of doubt. He’d be fine one minute, and then
suddenly he’d feel as if he were teetering again over that hole in the factory
floor he’d almost fallen into.
Because what had it all been for, after all? He had not
found a cure for myeloma, or invented a superior wood-fired pizza oven.
Compared to him, even Janos the phone-spamming moving guy had a useful purpose
in life, assuming he wasn’t a crook (a dubious assumption, to be sure). And
even if Janos was, in fact, a crook, then at least he might be making out like
one, whereas Stephan’s take from this show, the product of months of
painstaking work, would inevitably be modest.
Would his feelings have been any different if Jenny Wynne
had come? Along with everyone else in Stephan’s Rolodex, she’d received an
invitation on a plain white card bearing an austere photo of a low brick
smokestack. But he had only spoken with her a handful of times that summer, and
had refrained from making any extra effort to reach out ahead of the show.
He scanned the room again, but there was no sign of her.
* * * * *
In the weeks that followed the opening, the show garnered
excellent foot traffic, and the gallery had soon rung up several sales,
including a few of the more expensive pieces. Meanwhile, the
Telegraph
printed its art critic’s glowing review. She praised the work as
ground-breaking and identified Stephan as a talented new voice with the potential
to enliven the local gallery scene. She also saw fit to describe him as “well
spoken” and “handsome.” Not bad at all, he thought. He would have to send her a
thank-you note, and maybe he could find a way to make it a little flirtatious.
On a Tuesday afternoon in mid-August, towards the end of
his exhibition’s scheduled run, Stephan stopped by the gallery to check in on
how things had been going. It was a cool, overcast day, and on his way over to
the gallery from his studio he had caught the scent of another autumn,
indescribable yet unmistakable, on the air. Upon his arrival, he had a brief
word with the proprietor, then stepped back out into the main gallery to give
the space his usual once over.
The place was empty except for a couple of solitary walk-ins.
A man in a long black coat, his face hidden by a wide-brimmed hat, was
shuffling through with a cane in his hand, pausing now and then to give a piece
an extra second or two of his time before moving on. And off in a corner at the
back of the space, a young woman dressed in pale colours – whites and soft
beiges – lingered over a couple of panoramic exterior shots. He watched in
silence as she leaned in for a closer view of one of the images, her back to
him. Her clothes were simple, cottony, and her hair was gathered in a loose
bun.
His eyes widened just a little as he recognized her, but
otherwise his face remained impassive. He considered going over, but wound up
staying where he was, watching. A minute passed. Then, sensing that she was
being watched, she turned suddenly around, saw him. Her face registered
surprise for a moment, then broke into a wide grin. She rushed over and gave
him a hug, pulling him in tight to her. It felt good, as it always had, the
firmness of her embrace.
“So you decided to come to my show after all,” he said,
intentionally bland.
She laughed. “Of course I came. I was out of town for
your opening, but it worked out in the end because I wanted to see everything
for the first time without the distractions of a party. Trust me, Stephan. I
was never going to miss this.”
He was dumbfounded. After months of growing distance
between them, her failure to appear at the opening of his show had seemed like
a quasi-official ending to their story. Yes, he had been disappointed when she
didn’t come, but afterwards he’d put the snub out of his mind with relative
ease, ready to move on. Now, here she was, behaving as if they’d been close all
along.
She asked him to show her around, talk her through a few
of the key pieces, and, half in a daze, he obeyed.
“I’m blown away, Steph,” she was telling him. “Honestly,
I had tears in my eyes after I first came in, it was so good.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
“It’s true! Do you know Milan Kundera’s distinction
between ‘kitsch’ and ‘shit’? Kitsch is cheesy pop culture, packaged and
commodified, with any hint of death edited out, lest it interfere with the
consumer’s buying mood. This is the opposite – you’re looking at death and
decay and darkness head on.”
“Well, thanks, I guess,” he said, flattered, amused and
vaguely irritated all at once. “I can honestly say I’ve never been so happy to
hear my work referred to as ‘shit’ before.”
He walked her through the show, filling her in on the
backstory of the project, and talking through a few of the cornerstone images,
along the way. She listened thoughtfully, asked all the right questions, and at
the end of his tour, which he kept short and on-point, she announced that she
wanted to buy something.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he protested. “I’m sure I could find
something to give you for free – or at least at a discount.” He’d always
disliked selling to his friends, especially at full price. It seemed like
cheating, somehow, like charity.
But she was insistent, pointing out that it would be
unfair to the gallery if she were to do a deal with him on the side for less
than full price.
In the end, he conceded. “If you want to give me money, I
guess I’ll be okay with that,” he said with a shrug.
Afterwards, he wondered if Jenny had orchestrated the
purchase for effect. She may have wanted to acknowledge, at least implicitly,
that she had let him down in recent months. The notion bothered him a little.
After all, wasn’t it patronizing of her to presume that his good will could be
bought back so easily? Although in that case it might also be a sign that she
had realized she needed to treat him better. There was something else: the
print she wound up purchasing was one he had taken in that strange little inner
courtyard, the one he’d almost broken his neck getting to. Stacks of rubber
tubing, shot from below, framed against rising brick walls and a square of sky
streaked with wispy clouds. He hadn’t mentioned the fact to anyone, but it was
secretly his favourite piece in the entire show.
A week later they met for lunch at a run-down sushi joint
on Baldwin Street, in an area of quiet cafés with dusty chalkboard menus and
hardwood floors so worn they looked as if they had been sandblasted.
“I used to come here back when I was at the university,”
Jenny said, sliding in across from him in a booth near the back of the room.
“You could get a bento box for four bucks. It was their Thursday special.”
The place was still quite inexpensive, which was a
relief. Stephan was just getting back into financial shape in the aftermath of
his big project. All the money spent and billable time lost.
She was dressed casually again, as she had been in the
gallery, in jeans and a light jacket to ward off the chill that had crept into
the air in the last couple of days.
“Thanks for doing this with me,” she said. “I know it’s
silly, but I wanted to tell you again how much I love my new photograph, how
much it means to me that you let me have that one in particular. It’s hanging
in my living room, over the couch. It looks absolutely gorgeous.”
“Thanks,” he said, his eyes on the laminated menu. The
praise stressed him out, as it had always done. “So you found a frame for it,
then?”
“It’s black, austere. You’ll approve.”
He hadn’t been over to her place in months, but she said
it like he dropped by all the time.
“Are you calling me boring?” he joked.
“Never, Steph. More like solid, manly, ha ha ha.”
Of course she had chosen a tasteful, minimalist frame. He
could visualize how it looked on her wall, opposite the neo-modernist sideboard
from Crate and Barrel.
“Manly. That works.”
The restaurant might have been nondescript, but the food
was delicious. The fish was fresh, the tempura crisp and light, the broth alive
with complex flavours. Sushi was comfort food – simple and reliable. Like bacon
and eggs, or fish and chips, except more-or-less good for you. The dishes,
quality aside, were the same dishes he’d had at dozens of other places he’d
been to since he first came to the city. Even if he couldn’t remember
individual meals he felt a sense of wellbeing as he refilled their cups with
hot green tea.
He asked her how work was treating her, so they wouldn’t
have to talk about his show again – he was officially sick of it.
“Same old, same old,” she said. “This week’s column was
on genital plastic surgery as an exciting new form of self expression.”
“How’d that go over?”
“It was a big hit!” Her smile was full of mischief. “Tons
of comments on the on-line version – most of them from people ridiculing my
prose. The outrage. You’d think I’d published false intelligence on weapons of
mass destruction or something. My dad was most bemused, but the managing editor
was over the moon. There’s nothing like a little controversy to sell a few
newspapers.”
“Another feather in your cap, then. Congratulations.”
“Was that a dis?” she asked, pretending to be hurt.
“Not really. Well, maybe a little. But you were just
teasing me a minute ago, now, weren’t you?”
“Fair enough, but I still want to say that not all of us
can be artistic geniuses.”
He rolled his eyes. “You could be whatever you wanted to
be. That’s why you’re not actually offended right now. You’re totally at peace
with what you’re doing. You love it.”
She looked at him coolly for a moment before breaking
into giggles. “There may be a grain or two of truth in that.”
After lunch they strolled up to the university campus. It
was a crisp, clear afternoon, and there was a breeze rolling in off the lake,
rustling the canopies of the young maples lining Beverley. In a week’s time a
deluge of undergraduates would pour forth across the campus, but for now all
was quiet. They had the inner courtyard of University College entirely to
themselves, a wooded garden cradled by mock-medieval stone walls.
They sat together on an ornate iron bench bearing the
name of some wealthy donor on a bronze plaque.
“So what now?” she asked. “Any other projects in the
works, now that your show’s finished?”
“God, no. That show almost killed me – literally and
figuratively.”
“What are you going to do, then?”
“Get back to some paying work, for starters, I guess.
Time to replenish the coffers.”
“I thought you sold a bunch of stuff from your show. That
must’ve brought in some cash.”
“Sure, but I had bills to pay. So many bills.” (He’d also
purchased a couple of rather pricy new lenses as a reward for his success, a
move he was already regretting.)
She grabbed his arm. “Hang on, I’ve got it. This is
perfect, Stephan. I’ve a freelance assignment for
This City
on this
trendy little tourist village out in wine country. You could come with me,
shoot the photos. September, uh, 5th to the 7th, or somewhere in there.”
“You think they’d let me walk into that?”
“Sure, the assigning editor’s an old friend. I’ll swing
it with her. A couple of nights’ free accommodation, complementary gourmet
dinners. Plus, a cheque at the end for all your hard work.”
“A cheque, you say.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“I see.”
It was an enticing offer, but he was wary.
“What did you say the dates were again?”
“The 4th to the 7th - we’ll head up Thursday night. It’s
the weekend after Labour Day, so it will be nice and quiet, kids just back in
school.”
“That does sound kind of nice,” he admitted.
“Check your calendar and let me know.”
* * * * *
She pulled the rental car – a Miata-like roadster of some
sort, in a forest-green convertible model – over into the middle lane, zipping
around a clot of slow-moving vehicles. A moment later she rolled the wheel
back, hard to the left, nearly grazing the front bumper of an eighteen-wheeler
as she slid the car back into the passing lane.
“I miss driving,” she shouted – the top was down, so it
was a little noisy, and he had to strain to make out what she was saying.
“Living downtown, there’s so little opportunity to get out on the open road.”
“That might be for the best,” Stephan mumbled.
“Pardon?”
“I didn’t know you could even rent these things,” he
shouted back.
“Of course you can, Steph. You can get anything you want
nowadays.”
She had picked him up at his apartment an hour or so
earlier, and they’d since made their way, through moderate traffic, to the
outskirts of the city.
It was easy for Stephan to feel good about the trip.
True, he’d had misgivings since agreeing to participate. The assignment was
frivolous, and since the magazine only needed a couple of quick shots, the
money wasn’t great either. But he had been unable to turn her down. A beautiful
destination, a free trip, a cheque, even a modest one – what did he have to
lose, after all? And besides, he deserved a holiday. He’d been working
relentlessly all summer, hadn’t left the city in months. It was time for a
change of scene.
After an hour or so of driving, the Niagara Escarpment
loomed up in front of them, a jagged, cliff-lined frontier between the lakeside
low country and the highlands of the Ontario shield. The highway carried them
over an arcing suspension bridge that spanned a large shallow bay at the lake’s
western terminus – they had turned a corner now and were heading east on the
far shore, towards New York state. For another half-hour, they skirted the base
of the Escarpment, the lake on their left shoulder, before exiting onto a
smaller, single-lane highway that wended its way up and away from the lake.
The land rose before them in a series of gentle benches,
ornamented with rolling vineyards, airy woods and villages clustered on stone
churches, where homesteading farmers had once gone with their families to pray
for a good crop. Periodically they passed the chateau-like main buildings of
the area’s larger wineries, their ornate facades incongruous amid the low-key
prettiness of the surrounding landscape, as if they’d been Photoshopped in.
The roads up here were tangled and snaking, and he began
to wonder if they were lost. But Jenny seemed so intent that he was reluctant
to say anything, and after a while they came to a crossroads where a green sign
pointed the way to their village. A few minutes later, they were driving down
the village’s main street, tidy rows of touristy shops enfolding it on either
side. It was a bit like a stage set, and he half expected as they came around a
corner that the buildings would be revealed as plywood cut-outs propped up with
two-by-fours from behind. Then he heard the low roar of the river, and a moment
later they were glimpsing the white peaks of rapids between buildings.
The inn itself was housed in an old mill located on the
river’s edge overlooking the rapids. Just downstream there was a waterfall that
fed into a deep gorge, surrounded by woods on either side. There was a tiny
island, maybe ten feet in diameter, at the crest of the waterfall. Its base was
a column of solid stone, topped with a crown of tall grasses out of which rose
a single, gnarled tree, like a giant bonsai. The mill’s walls were made of big,
rough-hewn stones framed with heavy timbers, a method of construction that
would once have been thought of as merely practical. Durable, cheap,
no-nonsense. Now the mill seemed picturesque, exotic, a rustic contrast to the
in-house chef’s delicate creations and the high-thread-count linens on the
guests’ beds.
Their room was located on the building’s fourth and
highest floor. It was a sort of garret, with a high, sloping ceiling a little
like the one in Stephan’s studio. The walls were a creamy yellow, and the
furnishings consisted largely of antiques, or replicas anyway – a heavy iron
bed, an old steamer trunk, a roll-top desk. A single window on the room’s outer
wall, with a sill so wide you could sit on it like a bench, looked out over the
rapids, with a glimpse of a waterfall off to the right.
The room’s outer wall was unfinished, and after dropping
his suitcase at the foot of the bed Stephan went over to it and placed his hand
on one of the stones. Cool to the touch, it was so solid that it made him
nervous – there was a subtle suggestion of violence in a thing so hard and
unyielding. He wondered how much that single stone weighed, how much energy and
industry it had taken, a hundred and fifty years ago – before modern
construction cranes, before backhoes – to dig it from the earth and raise it up
to this height.
“It’s weird to think that this place used to be a kind of
factory,” he said.
“There’s something sexy about it.” She came up beside him
and placed her hand on the stone, then slid it over until it touched his.
“Don’t you think?”
He pulled his hand away and then turned her in his arms
and kissed her up against the stone wall, careful not to press her too
forcefully into its rough surface.
As he lay back on the soft, white sheets a few moments
later, he could feel the remaining tension flowing out of his limbs. Her
flawless body moved above him, her skin as white as marble against the dark
caramel of the wooden ceiling. She leaned down to kiss him and her hair
cascaded onto his face, tickling his cheeks. It smelled of the outdoors from
the drive, and her kisses tasted of salty sweat. The drone of the rushing water
nearby, muffled by the stone walls, gave him a sense of privacy and security. He
felt as if they would be safe from the chaos and idiocy of the outside world
for as long as they remained here.
The next morning they woke late, mid-morning sunlight
already beaming in through flower-patterned curtains. They showered and
dressed, then wandered down to the hotel restaurant, where, sneaking in just
before the kitchen closed for breakfast, they lingered over crepes (Jenny) Eggs
Benedict (Stephan).
“How’d you sleep?” he asked, between mouthfuls.
“Divinely,” she said, giving him a wink. “The sleep of
the dead. A good workout always does that for me.”
“Me too.”
“Not to mention that it’s so peaceful and quiet out here
compared to the city.”
“Let’s go for a hike today, climb a mountain or
something,” he said. He felt like beating his chest, or yodeling.
“We do have work to do, I’m sorry to say.” Her tone was
mournful. “Not quite as interesting as mountain climbing, I know. Though there
aren’t any mountains to speak of around here anyway, if that’s any
consolation.”
“Work? You mean now?”
He wished they could put it off until later, or find some
way of avoiding it altogether. Play hooky.
“Let’s just get out there and do it. Once we’re finished
we can have the rest of the weekend to ourselves, to enjoy as we please.”
“Sounds good to me.” Come to think of it, he was glad to
have a mission – whatever came afterwards would feel like a reward.
Sure enough, they were able to take care of much of the
work they’d been assigned that same day. It was easy. Visiting a few shops on
the village’s main street, she did quick interviews with owners and staff
members, scribbling notes in a spiral-bound reporter’s notepad. Then Stephan
would step in for the photos. He took shots in an antique market, a wine store,
an artisanal cheese shop, a small gallery specializing in delicate
watercolours. Later in the afternoon, when the light was fine and diffuse, he
did some outdoor shooting. A panoramic streetscape of stone storefronts
foregrounded by iron lamp-posts. A shot of the mill from the far side of the
river, whitewater churning in the foreground.
It was strange how much easier the work you were paid for
was than the work you weren’t. By the next morning they had already settled
into a vacation-style rhythm. After waking, they lingered over breakfast in a
booth overlooking the river. They wandered through the shops one more time,
their eyes glossing a landfill’s worth of pretty knickknacks. They sat in a
café, drinking coffee and flipping through whatever lifestyle magazine,
newspaper or book was at hand. For lunch, they drove out to a winery in the
countryside outside town and ate dinner in a dining room that overlooked the
estate’s vineyards, which rolled away towards the lake lying blue and
inscrutable on the horizon. The fields echoed at intervals to the crack of bird
bangers – propane-powered noise-cannons designed to scare birds away from the
near-ripe grapes.