7

Zach

Eight months later: May 2018

At the end of the day, the auctioneer counts the cash and then removes a small stack from the pile. “That’s thirteen hundred ninety-five for me, leaving twelve thousand five hundred fifty-five for you.” She pauses, a you-can’t-put-anything-over-on-me glint in her eye. “You didn’t pay me the seven hundred fifty for the photography equipment in unit five fourteen, but you owe me my ten percent on it anyways.” She takes out three twenties, a ten, and a five, gives Zach the rest. “Leaving twelve thousand four hundred eighty for you.” She didn’t like it that, as she’d put it, he’d “spied on her” when he didn’t tell her until the auction was over that he owned the building.

The thick wad of cash in his hand floods him with memories he’d rather not contemplate, so instead he argues in his head with the auctioneer. In actuality, he’s paying himself the money for #514, or more accurately not paying any money at all, because the contents already belong to him and therefore she’s not entitled to her cut. If he’d known what was inside the unit, it wouldn’t have been put on the auction list. She has some nerve taking his seventy-five dollars.

“Not a bad haul for two hours’ work.” She stuffs her thinner wad of cash into her back pocket and whistles tunelessly as she goes out the door.

He can’t take the elevator behind the yellow tape, so he climbs the stairs to the fifth floor, still irrationally irked about the seventy-five dollars. He’s sure she assumes he’s some one-percenter with gobs of money—which is exactly what he is not—but it wouldn’t have killed her to let it go. People and their misplaced assumptions. But seeing that photograph of himself was totally unnerving, and he’s got more important things to worry about than some woman’s glee at ripping him off for a few bucks. Even if he needs every one.

Zach had no choice but to buy #514’s contents before anyone else did. From the shirt he’s wearing in that photo, it’s clear it was taken right after he purchased Metropolis, when half the drug dealers in Boston were storing their stashes in the building. Including Zach. Although this particular picture isn’t incriminating, there might be others that are. Incriminating for him and for the many people who wouldn’t be happy if photographs of them fell into the wrong hands. Like those of the police or the FBI or the IRS.

He enters the unit and lifts the photo off the table, studies it carefully. Yup, it’s him all right. No denying that. He has to destroy it along with all the others. The nights and days after “the elevator incident,” as he’s come to think of it, Metropolis was swarming with police. They questioned him, Liddy, Rose, and that lawyer named Jason ad nauseum, then crawled over every inch of the elevators and hallways. But as far as Zach knows, with the exception of Liddy’s and Jason’s, the cops didn’t go into any other tenant’s unit. He doesn’t want to think about what might have happened had they searched Serge’s.

As he stares at the younger version of himself, he starts to notice what an extraordinary shot it is, and he wonders if there are more of this quality. He walks along the desk and looks into the open cartons. Indeed, there are many more, along with what looks like hundreds of negatives and almost as many rolls of undeveloped film. He sits down on the wobbly chair in front of the enlarger, picks up the sheaf of prints next to it, and begins to flip through them.

Zach doesn’t immediately see another of him or anyone else from his early days at Metropolis, but there are many of the building, both inside and out. There are even more of Downtown Crossing and Methadone Mile, a stretch of cracked sidewalk near Boston Medical Center, where the victims of the opioid crisis live and get high and die. Like his friend Tony. More memories he doesn’t want to think about.

From his recent foray into photography, however limited, Zach has no doubt that the photographs are sensational. The play of light across the foreground and background, the clarity of the images, the asymmetrical composition in contrast to the square frames, the calm intensity and gravity of the subjects. The intimate glimpse into lives being lived. Like photos of the great street photographers Vivian Maier and Robert Frank and Diane Arbus. How could work of this caliber have been abandoned inside a self-storage unit?