19

Zach

Seven months later: May 2018

After leaving Metropolis with Serge Laurent’s photos and equipment, Zach pulls up to the Court Square Press building in South Boston, where he’s lived in an industrial loft for the last thirteen years. It suits him: big and open, with polished concrete floors, high ceilings, and tons of exposed brick, beams, and ductwork. Perfect for the large parties he likes to throw and the friends who crash with him afterward.

A few months after he moved in, his parents discovered he’d bought the condo—he suspects his cousin Ian—and insisted on visiting. They hadn’t completely forgiven him for leaving college halfway through his senior year, and he was pretty sure if they saw the place, the little absolution they had recently begun to grant him would disappear.

Just as he’d figured, when they did eventually show up, they were more than a little suspicious about how their twenty-four-year-old dropout could afford such grand digs. But they didn’t ask. And he didn’t tell. They haven’t returned, and when he goes to Lexington to visit, they never mention it.

Aside from its other highlights, right now the apartment’s best feature is that he doesn’t have a mortgage. That and the oversize bathroom off the third bedroom. As Zach takes the cartons from the Prius, which he also owns free and clear, he supposes that if things get really bad he could sell both the car and the condo. But he’s got a gold mine to unearth before he even considers such a thing.

It turns out that the bathroom is going to make an even better darkroom than he thought. There’s a long vanity that looks as if it were originally designed for two sinks but only holds one. Plenty of room for the enlarger and the trays, and the soaking tub is more than big enough for all the chemicals. He can store the photos, negatives, and undeveloped film in the empty linen closet. Best of all, no windows.

Zach has no idea what else he’ll need, but that’s what the internet is for. And he’s sure Katrina, an ex-girlfriend he’s remained friends with, will be happy to help. She worked as a photographer before she “got a real job,” as she puts it, and now is a graphic designer for a multinational advertising firm.

He empties about half the cartons and then gets distracted by the photos. He’s sitting on the edge of the tub leafing through piles of them when he hears Lori calling for him. Lori is his current girlfriend. They’ve been together for ten months, which is a record for him, although he’s thinking they’re probably not going to make it to the year mark. She owns a house in Cambridge, but as she sells real estate in both Boston and Cambridge, she sleeps at Court Square almost as often as she sleeps at her own place.

“I’m in here!” Zach calls back.

When she enters the bathroom, her high heels clicking on the floor, he takes note of how hot she looks in her short realtor skirt and jean jacket. Lori kisses him, then looks around at the equipment and piles of photos. “Another new hobby?” she asks with a sarcastic smile. Sarcasm is her strong suit.

“Funny,” Zach says. “And, no, it’s not a new hobby, just an extension of an old one.” He sweeps his arm around the room. “It’s going to be a darkroom. Looks almost as if someone planned it for this purpose.”

“You know how to develop film?”

“I can learn.” He hands her the Rolleiflex. “Look at this cool camera. It’s a really good one, a classic. And check out all this great stuff. I found it all in an abandoned unit at Metropolis.”

Lori weighs the camera in her hand and, obviously unimpressed, puts it down. She walks along the vanity, eyes the tub. She’s a scion of early British and German settlers who came to America in the seventeenth century, a handsome woman, tall and lean, with shiny dark hair.

“What got you into this?”

Zach riffles through his pile of photographs and hands her the one of himself. “This started it.”

She stares at the picture, then at him, then back to the picture. “You look so young.”

“I was.”

“You didn’t know it was being taken?” When he shakes his head, she adds, “Or who took it?”

“Not at the time.”

“That’s creepy. Someone you didn’t know taking pictures of you when you had no idea he was doing it?” She gives an exaggerated shiver. “But I still don’t get the developing part.”

“The photo is from when I first bought Metropolis.”

“Ah.” Lori knows the story of Metropolis’s sordid past, as well as its current circumstances. “Are there pictures of anyone else? Anything illegal?”

“Not so far, but I haven’t been through all the photos—and then there’s the contact sheets and negatives.” Zach points to the cartons full of film canisters. “And these are all undeveloped.”

She furrows her brow. “So you’re going to develop them all to make sure there’s nothing incriminating in them?”

“Yup.”

She contemplates this, then asks, “So who took them?”

“According to the records, his name is Serge Laurent, but there’s no other info. No address, no phone number. All I know is that he seems to have walked away from what appears to be a lifetime of work. Really good work.”

“Weird.”

“These are amazing pictures. He’s got a real talent.” Zach thrusts a few photos at her: a grimy man in a jacket two sizes too small, reading a newspaper, shot from above; a queue of overworked women of color waiting for a bus, shot from behind; a man cleaning his son’s shoe as the boy glares straight into the camera; the retreating back of a striding businessman, his Rolex flashing in the sun, shot from below.

Lori glances through them, hands the photos back, shrugs. “They’re interesting, I guess, but they don’t do much for me.” This is one of the things about Lori that Zach isn’t particularly fond of: her lack of curiosity.

“Look at how he’s captured the essence of the city through the people who live there,” he tries anyway. “The contrast between this rich guy and these people on the margins. The detail, the camera angles, the shadows, the asymmetry. It’s the revelation of the private moment that’s so spectacular.” He struggles to express how the photos touch him, how good they are. “It’s the truth of it.”

“But I thought you just wanted to make sure there’s no proof of the criminal doings that went on at Metropolis back in the day? Why don’t you throw them all away?”

Zach flips open two of the cartons filled with film canisters. “I want to see what else this guy’s done.”

“Then wouldn’t it be a lot easier to get them developed at a drugstore?”

“If there are incriminating photos, someone might see them.”

“I still don’t get why you don’t just junk them. Wouldn’t that be the safest thing?”

He hesitates, wonders whether to tell her about his plan, as she probably won’t get that either, then says, “It might be a way to get my hands on some cash. To recoup some of my losses.”

“You mean, like sell them to make money?” Lori asks, clearly incredulous. “You think people will want to buy these old black-and-whites?”

Zach figures he’ll call Katrina when he finishes unpacking. Katrina will get it.