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