Guy With A Camera

You don’t trust the guy with the camera.  The angle of his head.  The way he leers.  The way he holds his camera like a pet vulture.

He’s tall, thin, long-armed, and all in black.  The camera, not a new-fangled digital thing, has too long a lens, the glass of it like a compound eye, all-seeing, through cloth and brick and into the bones and breath of you.

You don’t trust him, and you’re not alone.  It’s a busy city street, crowded, anxious, fast-paced and high-tension, while the people walking it are a mix of working men, schoolteachers, overweight middle management exiles, fashion models, rock stars, athletes, artists, freaks, madmen, femme fatales, entrepreneurs, poets, bakers, bookkeepers, thugs, politicians, landlords, thieves, young mothers, lost souls, patrons, mistresses, clock-watchers, and students.  Not a single one of them stops to speak with the guy with the camera.  He parts the pedestrian flow like a rock in the river.  They look away.  They hush their conversations.  They hold their breath.

You, and you alone, stand in the café doorway across the street, sipping your chocolate, comfortable in the shade an oversized red awning provides, and you watch.  Your mobile phone is ready, just in case.  You’ve got a quick knife, too, tucked away, something you’d never thought might be necessary.  That’s the problem with precaution, sometimes; they become important, even integral.

So you watch, pretending you’re thinking wistful thoughts, all the while wondering which of these marvelous citizens around you will play victim for the guy with the camera.  Obviously, no one will stop.  The guys says nothing, approaches no one, makes no suggestions or proposals.

But quite suddenly, while no one but you is aware, the guy lifts his camera, the eye focuses on some poor soul twenty yards away.  It’s like a gun.  Pointed.  Exact.  He hesitates briefly, adjusts the focus ring, or the aperture, and then triggers the shutter.

It’s quiet.  It’s old, sounds like cameras used to sound, like it’s real, like it’s a 1980s runway or red carpet.  Here, this way, could you pose just a moment?

She can’t.  She’s gone.  Whoever she was, whatever her intention, she’s no longer on the street.  Whisked away.  Captured, trapped, bagged and tagged.  The guy with the camera grins as he advances the film.  You sip your chocolate and wonder, quiet briefly, if there’s anything you can do about it.

You sip your chocolate, and soon you doubt the evidence of your eyes.  Tricksy little things, those eyes.  A shift of shadow, an errant blink, a lack of precision.

You don’t trust the guy with the camera.  You’re not alone.  And you almost don’t believe he’s done anything.  So the next day, sipping your chocolate, this time sitting at the café and reading a magazine, one of the many with which you’ve fallen behind, you look up when the guy with the camera steps between you and the sun.  The sudden shade is cool.

Up close, the guy with the camera is roughly shaved, a day or two out.  There’s no color in his narrow eyes.  He doesn’t stink, but you feel like he should.  He’s got a manila envelope.  He’s already reaching in, fishing out three black and white prints.  He lays them each on the table before you.

One is the girl.

The other two are also women, both older, one matronly and exquisite and expensive, the other harried and just on the edgy side of sloppy.  The guy with the camera taps his fingernail at the top of the prints.  Says, “Which do you want?”  His voice is a lot softer than you expect, but still gruff, still tinted by something inhuman or inhumane.

Do you buy?  Is it the print, or the soul, that you’d get for your money?  He’s asking an exorbitant price, even for the city, and he expects you to pay.  He expects you to take one of these women home, put them in a frame, hang them on a wall.  You can’t trust the guy with the camera.  You can’t buy his prints.  You don’t know how long she’ll stay in there, or what will be left when she finally climbs out.  She might be something other than human, less than whole, indiscreet, indistinct.  Fractured by the negatives, by the processing chemicals.

You also know, should you not pay for one of the prints, he’ll catch you unawares one afternoon, that too-long lens aimed, poised, and he’ll pull the trigger.  How much will he charge the next person for your photograph?