Metropolis, p.13
Metropolis, page 13
24
Zach
Seven months later: June 2018
While he’s searching for drug-dealing photos, Zach takes an online course on darkroom procedures and techniques. He’s motivated, and he completes the class in a few days. Then he starts in on developing Laurent’s film. He’s almost finished with his fifth roll, and he refills the tank with a wetting agent, lets it sit for a minute, takes the reels from the tank, and uses clips to hang the negatives to dry on the clothesline he’s stretched across the bathtub. Soon he’ll start a class to learn how to print.
He proudly watches the filmstrips as they gently sway from the breeze of the fan. He hasn’t been this hyped about a project since he took up highpointing. His curiosity is at full wattage, and he wants to know everything about everything. He’s going to learn a new skill, make a shitload of money, and he’s going to give the world the gift of Serge Laurent.
Zach is fascinated by both the transformative nature of the process as well as the chemistry behind it—chemistry was his major in college, his parents hoping this meant he was headed for medical school—and he can’t wait to start printing. More transformation, more chemistry, and more magic. Developing is like taking anesthesia for a medical procedure: He’s gone for hours inside it, and when he comes back to reality it’s as if no time has passed. In the zone.
Nothing is better than the zone, which, as another ex-girlfriend, Suzanne, explained when she broke up with him, his love of the zone is why he’s addicted to the high-risk adventures that allow him to step away from commitments whenever they feel too constraining. But developing photographs carries no risk, so maybe he’s becoming more mature. Somehow he doesn’t think Suzanne would agree.
Another ex, Katrina, the photographer turned graphic designer, may not believe he’s any more mature than Suzanne does, but she does believe developing the photos and selling them is a great idea. Katrina stopped by last week to check out Serge’s work and was as impressed as Zach with their quality—and she actually knows what she’s talking about.
She suggested he try to find Laurent, pointing out that the pictures belong to him. When Zach corrected her, explaining that the photos were his as they were left in an abandoned storage unit that he owned, she looked at him skeptically. “They’re his intellectual property,” she said with some reprimand in her voice.
She’s right, of course, but Zach is not going to look for Laurent. What if Laurent demands the photos back? Although they legally belong to Zach, what if Laurent sues? And even if Zach did decide to reach out to the man, he can’t do it until he’s developed all the film, to make sure there isn’t anything that might further destroy his already destroyed life.
He closely examines the photos Laurent printed, searching for more of himself and of his early tenants’ illicit activities. He doesn’t see any of him, but he finds some of Nick and his cronies. Zach burns the first one, but it smells so bad that he cuts the rest into tiny pieces and further demolishes them in the garbage disposal. He’s sure there must be more.
This undertaking is particularly difficult because the pictures are out of chronological order and were haphazardly thrown into cartons or left in piles around the storage unit. Zach finds this sloppiness strange for a man who spent so much time methodically picking his shots and just as fastidiously developing and printing many of them. It seems likely that Serge has issues, possibly serious ones. But aren’t extremely talented people supposed to be a bit off?
Zach turns his full attention to his search-and-destroy mission. The negatives and photos taken at Metropolis right after he bought it in 2008 are his focus, and he starts by separating them by time, then location and subject. But he’s drawn to others that fall outside these parameters—particularly the ones of the storage units and those of the tenants themselves.
From the old cars in some of the shots, Zach guesses that the photos span at least twenty-five years. He remembers the messy cot in #514 and wonders if Laurent could have been living illegally in that unit all those years. Was he taking pictures the whole time? Developing and printing them by himself in that grim space? Where was he trained, and who else has seen his work? Where did he go? And, most mystifying, why did he leave it all behind?
As Zach makes his way through the photos, he sees that each one contains a remarkable amount of detail, partly because of the particularities of the Rolleiflex and its film, but mostly because of Laurent’s eye for composition. A half-dressed headless mannequin resting against a cluster of garbage cans, a ladder with a broken step rising above her head. A line of men climbing out of a prison van in front of a courthouse, all with heads bowed except for one, who points his middle finger at the camera.
It’s almost as if each photograph is telling a story, or is bringing the viewer into a story in progress, a still life hinting at secrets. Zach thinks of his own nature photos and laughs out loud. Anyone can take a picture of a landscape, but taking one that makes the viewer want to understand an unknown person’s life, now that’s a rare talent.
Zach finds himself obsessively researching the work of the best street photographers. He goes online to study them. He scours the Boston Public Library for art books and biographies. He uses money he shouldn’t to fly to LA to see a Vivian Maier retrospective. The more he learns, the more convinced he becomes that Laurent is as good, if not better, than many of these masters. Although his current endeavor was originally about saving his ass and making some money, he now finds himself intrigued by the photographer himself.
He googles Serge Laurent, combs the internet and Facebook and Instagram for similar pictures. He shows a few to a friend of a friend, who’s a photography professor at BU. He even posts some on photography message boards, asking if anyone is familiar with the images. There are many compliments but nothing more. It’s as if the man never existed, although his photos are testimony that he most certainly did. It strikes Zach that Serge might not be alive. What else but death would cause an artist to abandon his life’s work?
But Laurent could also be in a hospital. He could be in jail. He could be lost. He could be mentally ill or an undocumented immigrant picked up by ICE. Zach realizes that postponing his search for Serge is a mistake. If he can determine that the man is dead or not cognizant, or was arrested or deported, then it will be unlikely he would contest ownership of the photos. No worries of possible lawsuits, which means all the proceeds would be his.
The last thing Zach needs right now is another suit, as he just signed off on the last one a week ago: Metropolis is no longer his. He knew this was coming in January, as soon as he discovered what Rose had done, and she cemented it with her deposition in March. Still, the finality of it is a bitter pill. He puts his developing aside and starts seriously trying to find out what happened to Serge.
He strikes out at the hospitals, police stations, homeless shelters, morgues, and ICE offices in and around Boston. He considers giving up, but he’s consumed by the desire to put himself in the clear. Serge clearly hung out at Downtown Crossing, so maybe there’s someone there who might know his fate. This would be far easier if Zach could find a self-portrait, but there don’t seem to be any, although there are plenty of pictures that appear to be Serge’s shadow.
He looks tall and thin, which might be the case or just be the nature of shadows. Slightly hunched, always wearing a long, shapeless coat. Zach thinks about asking Rose, who might know what the man looks like, but his anger at her still burns out of control. He can’t speak to her, not even text. It’s been over five months, and he hasn’t been able to let go of what she did to him, of the lives her error destroyed
25
Serge
Serge dreams of his brother and sister, but in the dream they’re dogs. Big dogs who fight each other, wrestling and nipping and growling on the floor. But the dogs never fight with him. He sits in his chair and each dog places its heavy head on one of his thighs. He rubs Anton and Anastasia between their eyes with his thumbs. They purr like cats. Then they are cats. Cats that grow into tigers and begin to roar.
Their sound fills the shadowy space of his dream. Coming at him like the howling ocean. He tries to make himself as small as possible so the tigers won’t get him. Then he looks down. His legs have been chewed off.
He bolts awake. There are no tigers. His legs are attached to his body. But the dream doesn’t leave him. It keeps sneaking up on him all that day. And the next day and the next and the next. The tigers’ roars follow him to Brick & Trowel, louder than the thunder of the dishwasher or the shouts of the chef. When he photographs a storage stage set filled with doghouses, there are hundreds of great cats living inside or on top of them. Growling at him, ready to pounce.
He’s afraid he’ll go crazy. That he’s already crazy. That he’ll be ripped apart by the sharp teeth of the sound before he has the chance to take pictures of all the storage sets. There isn’t much time left. He pays Rose to let him into one or two or sometimes three units in a single day. Click. Click.
Racks of women’s clothing. Thousands of bottles of wine. Rows of locked file cabinets. Collections of elephant statues and CDs and campaign buttons and baseball caps and children’s toys. Toilet seats, rotted wood planks, broken chairs, moldy books, battered suitcases, stained mattresses, shoes. So many shoes.
He doesn’t question what he’s seeing, doesn’t wonder why these particular things or this particular place. Click. Click. It’s only about dark and light. Composition. Angles. Contrasts. Connections. The three-dimensional turned two-dimensional to reveal the secrets stored inside.
Serge doesn’t have time to do any developing because the most important thing is to take all the pictures before he’s gone. Which is going to be soon. He has hundreds of other rolls of film that he hasn’t developed from before he started on the storage stage sets. He’s pretty sure he has a rule that he can only develop the pictures in the order that he took them. Except he thinks that he might remember breaking it. Maybe the one with those poor dead children.
Then everything changes. The roaring of the cats goes quiet when he’s at Metropolis but starts up even louder than before as soon as he steps outside. Like it’s making up for all the noise it can’t get rid of when he’s inside. When he comes home from his shift, he rushes into the quiet of his unit. But he’s nauseous from the hours of noise and then even more sickened by the weight of the quiet.
Sometimes Rose can’t let him into any units. So he has to take pictures of the people in the corridors. Anything so he doesn’t have to leave Metropolis. This feels wrong, like an animal spoiling its den, but he has no choice because the roaring outside in the world is eating him alive. People moving in. Moving out. Talking on cell phones. Talking to each other. Replacing light bulbs. Mopping floors. Fixing elevators. Click. Click.
The night comes when he can’t go to Brick & Trowel. He can’t bear to hear the roaring. Or to be eaten by the roaring. Or to be eaten by the tigers. Or the terrible cold outside. He huddles under his cot and presses his cheek to the dusty floor so he can’t hear anything. He loves the silence and loves the safety of the silence. He doesn’t want to move. And then he can’t.
He sleeps underneath the cot that night and stays there during the next day, stays there the next night and day and the next. He’s hiding from the tigers. Even though they can’t get at him right now, this is the spot where they began. And like salmon, they could return to the place of their birth to spawn. Then there will be so many more of them. And they will make so much noise. If that happens, he’ll put his head into a howling mouth to kill the noise for good.
26
Liddy
One morning, there’s a white envelope in the hallway outside Liddy’s door. She guesses it’s from Rose, and she’s filled with self-reproach because Rose felt she had to resort to leaving a note. Liddy promises herself she’ll go down for a cup of tea this afternoon.
But the note isn’t from Rose. It’s from Marta. I would very much like to speak with you, it reads. May I come by at ten o’clock tomorrow morning? If this is not something you would like to do, please leave me a message at #503 and I will honor that wish.
Liddy doesn’t leave a message, but she does drive herself into a frenzy. It’s been two weeks since the morning Rose introduced them, so if Marta had feelings for her, wouldn’t she have reached out sooner? What does she want to talk about? Rose? Their shared situation? Fears about the building? Or maybe, just maybe, could she have been hit by that thunderbolt too?
The next morning, Liddy wakes early, although she isn’t sure she actually slept. She has her usual breakfast of toast with cottage cheese and two cups of tea, heads downstairs to wash up. Then she goes to #454. She sits down at Robin’s desk, touches her books and soccer trophies, switches to Scott’s and picks up a notebook full of pencil drawings of little men climbing into and out of fantastical and complicated structures in both two and three dimensions. She pushes her nose into a drawer full of Robin’s pajamas, imagines she can still catch her daughter’s scent.
Liddy has been using Rose’s phone to call the twins, but they’re always in a hurry to get off and do whatever it is they’re doing, which is a good thing. Sometimes Robin asks how her writing is going, but most of the time Liddy can almost see their eyes roll when she tries to prolong the conversations. Neither of them mentions Garrett, but she can tell it weighs on them.
When she leaves #454, she tries to work on Leaving and is unsurprised when the effort goes nowhere. Seven thirty. It occurs to her that she could just go up to #503 now, but that would be rude. Marta initiated this encounter, and it needs to progress on her terms. So Liddy putters around, shuffles the papers on her desk, thinks about which scarf to wear. Eight fifteen.
There’s a knock on the door, stronger than Liddy would have expected, and she jumps from the chair where she’s been pretending to read. She pushes the heavy door open and smiles at Marta, motions for her to enter. She doesn’t look at Marta directly, doesn’t trust her voice not to tremble. “Please, please,” she finally says, her voice steady, if an octave lower than usual. “Please come in. Sit down. Please make yourself comfortable,” she adds, like some robotic servant programed to be polite.
Marta takes in the room. “It is as if I am standing in an apartment in a magazine. I cannot believe you were able to make it look like this.”
“I had a lot of decorating experience in my previous life,” Liddy says dryly.
“You are an interior designer?”
Liddy laughs. “No, nothing like that, but please, please come join me on the couch.” She groans inwardly. Again, robotic. And idiotic.
“Thank you.” Marta sits but keeps looking around. “I am sorry if I am staring, but I am finding this so extraordinary, and I do not know how to stop myself. It is as if I have been transported to another world.”
The praise makes Liddy uneasy, as does Marta’s close proximity. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, tea, water?”
“I would love some tea, thank you,” Marta says, and their eyes lock.
Liddy forgets about the tea, drops to the couch, and lightly places her hand on Marta’s arm. “Do we know each other from somewhere? You seem so, so . . . so familiar.”
“I sense this also, but I do not think we know each other from Boston. And I doubt we met in Venezuela.”
“So where is this coming from?”
Marta’s smile is full, lighting every plane of her face. “Perhaps it is coming from the future.”
Over the next month, they become lovers. Although Liddy wants this desperately, she’s also nervous, having never been with a woman. She’s fantasized about it, sure, watched that lesbian soft porn, but actually making love to a woman is a whole other being. Marta is gentle, and knowledgeable, waits to make sure Liddy wants what she has to offer, and Liddy’s apprehensions are quickly erased.
Marta’s body is soft and full, her runner’s tautness stretching just beneath her incredibly smooth mocha skin. Far different from Garrett, from any man—more welcoming, more exciting, exquisite. Then there’s Marta’s tongue, finding places no man has ever found, turning her inside out with pleasure. And there’s Liddy’s own tongue, searching Marta’s body and learning to bring her the same.
Marta is older than Liddy thought, but there are still twelve years between them, and at first this troubled her. But Marta brushed her concern aside, claiming that their connection is far more powerful than time. “I have a sense about such things,” Marta told her. “This is how we are supposed to be.”
They tell each other their secrets, both striving to evade those who stalk them, both hoping to someday walk free. The speed at which they’ve come together amazes Liddy, but Marta just smiled when she mentioned it. “I have found this is often the way with women,” Marta said. “We do not have the same fear of commitment as some men do.”
They laugh uproariously when they discover they have both hidden bundles of cash in their respective units, and encourage each other to move forward in pursuit of her dreams. During the day they write in their own spaces, but at night they come together in Liddy’s.
“Maybe you should think about telling that lawyer you want to keep going,” Liddy suggests to Marta one evening. “You shouldn’t stop because you’re afraid the worst will happen. What if it doesn’t and there’s a way to make it all go away?”
“Maybe you should think about meeting with him also,” Marta suggests to Liddy. “Jason Franklin is a good man, and perhaps he will have ideas about how you can get away from Garrett for good.”
One night as they lay coiled together in Liddy’s bed, Liddy says, “I don’t think our initial connection came from the future at all. I think it was more straightforward than that: pure, unadulterated chemistry. It struck us, and we knew there was no choice but to be together.”
