“Who are you?” Gabriel wondered softly. The red-tinged Judas light of dark room bled across the drying prints, colouring his thoughts.
Looking down at the girl in the developing tray, he drew on the unfiltered nicotine of his roll-up. A wisp of smoke coiled around her, lingering, like the languid arms of a lazy lover. He felt a long way from the usual cast of runaways and wife-beaters, lost in a rabbit-warren of dirty streets and dirtier lives.
Carefully, he used a pair of plastic pinchers to rescue the contact sheet from the shallow tray of developing fluid and a peg to hang it from the roped-up washing line. He felt cold looking at her like this, reduced to the size of a thumbnail gazing through five of the ten squares. The definition wasn’t particularly sharp in any of them, but it was recognisably her.
As Gabriel ran his eyes over the contacts, one stood out. One where her sad eyes were aware. Looked out through the wet paper and saw deep into his own.
Turning his back on her, he turned off the overhead red and went through to the luncheonette to grab a Pepsi from the cooler. It was a serious case of Old Mother Hubbard syndrome in there. A pitta bread growing its own penicillin cultures, half a green bell pepper and a clutch of carrots, otherwise, the cupboard was bare.
Gabriel popped the can’s tab. His neck was stiff, ached from hours in the rain and not enough sleep.
In the bathroom, he set the shower running, opened the cabinet and rescued a half-popped foil of Tylenol, swallowed, stripped and stepped in, savouring the delicious sting of the water on his skin, tiny burns that ran like scalpel blades down the length of his back. Gabriel planted his hands against the wall tiles and simply soaked, thinking about sleep, thinking about the girl with the flower, thinking about the transvestite preacher’s labyrinth of bloody tattoos. Thinking about the boy who wouldn’t die, even in his dreams…