Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

I moved fast. I set the negs on the enlarger’s easel, covered them with the glass plate, and exposed them for eight seconds. I slid the sheet into the stop bath, shook it and counted to thirty, then transferred it to the rapid fixer and did the same thing again.

Even with the rubber gloves, my fingers were numb when I finally rinsed the sheet under running water. I didn’t care. I’d already seen the ghostly images bleeding through, each one an eye opening slowly, irrevocably, onto another world. When I turned the water off my hands shook with cold and excitement. The safelight was so dim I could barely see what I’d just printed on the contact sheet. I needed a loupe.

I found one in the rusted cabinet. The round eyepiece was badly scratched. It was like looking through a submarine porthole, but I needed to see if any of the images warranted an enlargement. If so, I might have something to bring back to Phil, or just keep for myself—my own little souvenir of Bad Vacationland. I squinted at the contacts, and swore in exasperation.

This wasn’t Blow-Up . There was no body; no dead body, anyway. The nude pictures were lousy, not to mention overexposed and out of focus. A dick is a dick is a dick, and no one was going to be interested in this one.

But three images were different. They showed a young woman, also nude, with light brown hair, head tipped to smile at the camera. She had a hand cupped over each breast, and her hands were holding something, coconuts maybe, or balloons.

Technically, these images were slightly better than the others. They were in focus, and the exposure seemed right. But there was something about the girl’s expression that held my eye. She looked innocent and sexy and slightly daft, Betty Boop recast as a long-haired hippie chick.

I spent another minute trying to decide which of the three was best. Finally I chose one, found the matching neg, and made a hasty 8x10 enlargement. Then, just for the hell of it, I picked one of the other negs at random and pulled a print of it too.

Both were sloppy. My buzz was wearing off. I was exhausted. My initial excitement now turned to fear of getting caught. I hung the contact sheet and the two prints on the line to dry, dumped the processing chemicals down the sink, and did my best to clean the place up. The negs went back into the canister in my pocket. I peeled off the gloves and flung them onto the cabinet, grabbed the still-damp prints and contact sheet, switched off the enlarger and safelight. I split, locking the door behind me.

The basement was cold and empty. I waved the prints back and forth for a few seconds. When they seemed dry, I rolled them into three narrow tubes and stuck them down the front of my jacket. I made sure I still had the loupe and went upstairs.

After the basement, the kitchen felt like a sauna. The only sounds were the crackle of wood in the stove and the slap of waves on the shingle outside. I pulled a chair in front of the woodstove, looked around for any sign of Aphrodite or her dogs. All seemed down for the count.

I was starting to feel the same way. I yawned. When my stomach growled, I decided against another shot of bourbon and stumbled over to the fridge.

The pickings, as noted, were slim. I grabbed two eggs and the V-8 juice. I rinsed out a coffee mug and cracked the eggs into it, filled the mug with V-8 and downed it in one long swallow. Then I dragged myself to my room and collapsed into bed.

I woke from a dream of a cold finger touching my forehead, pressing until it felt as though someone were driving a nail into my skull. I groaned and opened my eyes, recoiling when I saw an enormous brown eye staring at me.

I shot upright as the eye resolved into a grizzled head and cursed as the deerhound backed away. Pale light flooded through the window. The dog sat and cocked its head, staring at me. I stared back then started to get up.

My stomach churned; I doubled over and was sick on the floor. I sat shivering on the edge of the bed until I summoned the strength to stagger to the bathroom. By the time I’d showered and stumbled back, the dog had cleaned up for me.

“Nice work.” I pushed it from the room.

I dressed, opened the window, and leaned out so the icy wind could scour my cheeks. I shut my eyes and remained there until I felt my hair freeze.

I had no idea what time it was. Mid-morning, maybe. I felt lightheaded, with that deceptive lucidity you get from a world-class hangover, the feeling that you’ve finally purged yourself of everything that made you drink in the first place.

Another spasm of nausea cured me of that. I stayed on the bed until it passed then remembered the prints I’d made yesterday.

They were still tucked into my jacket. I took them out and smoothed them on my knees: the contact sheet and two 8x10s.

In the darkroom, I’d assumed all the photos had been taken by Aphrodite. The first picture—that closeup of a cock surrounded by waving hands, as though it were a Theremin—it definitely had the hallmarks of Aphrodite’s work. The uneasy juxtaposition of the familiar and the strange had been reduced to a banal attempt at 1960s hardcore, but the same eye had been behind the camera. I recognized it the way you recognize someone in a bad Halloween costume.

Like I said, it was out of focus and the lighting was all wrong. The depth of field was off. But even if it could have been improved by more time in the darkroom, what would be the point? It was crude and banal.

What a waste.

I examined the other photo. This one should have been cheesy, with its wide-eyed subject mugging for the camera, long hair tossed back from her face, hands covering bare breasts.

Yet this photo worked. It wasn’t just that the girl was cute and had nice tits, what I could see of them, anyway. It was that the photographer had trusted his instincts, and the girl had trusted them too. Even more, she’d trusted him .

And, just as I knew the first photo was by Aphrodite, I knew this one had been taken by a man. Phil used to make fun of me for claiming I could identify a photographer, no matter how obscure, by his or her images. He ranked on me even worse when I once drunkenly announced I could identify the gender of a bunch of unknowns whose pictures hung at a small gallery in DUMBO.

But I did it. I nailed every single one.

“That’s amazing, Cass,” Phil said. “Another remarkable if totally useless skill.”

Even now, I couldn’t tell you how it works. It’s like me picking up damage, like there’s a smell there, or a subliminal taste. And you’d think that would be an easy call to make with this picture, because it sure looked like it would taste like cheesecake.

But this photo was weirder than that. When I’d first glimpsed the contact sheets under the safelight, I’d noticed the girl was holding something over each breast. I thought they were coconuts, which would fit in with the whole kitschy vibe this little hippie chick projected.

Now that I looked more closely, I wasn’t so sure. Even when I got out the loupe and peered at them, I still couldn’t tell. She was holding something, and from the shit-eating grin on her face, it was something funny. But what?

I had no clue. Whatever it was, though, it made me queasy. The girl trusted whoever was behind the camera. That came through, in her smile and the way she’d tilted her pelvis toward him, which seemed less of a come-on than a welcome. She looked about nineteen or twenty. There were tiny furrows to either side of her mouth, and tinier lines around her eyes.

And the photographer had done a sharp thing there too. You couldn’t see it in the frame, but he’d set a lit candle in front of her then positioned her so that the flame was reflected in each eye, making them sparkle. A simple effect, but a good one.