William Bayer - Blind Side

"She's a real live wire, this girl of yours."

"You told me, 'Don't let her go,' " I reminded him.

By noon we were excited; we felt we had a viable plan. We'd war-gamed the thing every which way, and though there were several points of danger, we couldn't find any major flaws.

Mai called us to lunch. The three of us ate at a picnic table in the back garden. Then Frank offered me his second car, a beat-up Volvo, to use while he went up to Santa Fe to tend his gallery. He gave me a map, marked some places he thought I might find interesting. When I was in the driver's seat ready to leave, he propped his arms against the door, leaned forward and spoke.

"You know you're going to have to pack iron."

I shook my head.

"You have to, Geof."

"I didn't carry a gun in 'Nam. I'm not starting now."

"Yeah, right-you only carry a camera. Well, we'll have to think about that," he said.

I drove to Lami, checked out the railroad station, then followed the Pecos River into the Sangre de Cristo range. There was a Benedictine monastery up there. I looked at it. But when I came to a settlement called El Macho, I did a U-turn and drove back to Galisteo.

I found Mai in her studio, an open-walled building set behind the house. She was wearing a welder's mask, cutting steel with an oxyacetylene blowpipe. She had an old stereo going full blast back there, Maria Callas as Norma, barely audible above the roar of her torch.

When she saw me she signaled me to stand back. For a while I watched her work. It was a strange scene, Callas singing her heart out while that lean little Vietnamese woman in the huge mask created showers of sparks.

Finally she turned off the torch and raised her visor.

"Want to talk, Geof-Frey?"

I nodded. She pulled off her asbestos gloves, tossed them onto her worktable. Then she led me around the side of the house.

We walked out into the front field, where her sculptures were set amid the weeds. Again I saw, in the strong abstract forms, images of skeletons.

"Oh, yes, Geof-Frey," she said, "they are the icons of this country. New Mexico is crucifixes and bleached old skulls. Crosses, swastikas and bones."

She led me to her largest piece, took my hand, pressed it to the metal. "Caress, Geof-Frey. Feel the texture. The sun and the rain, how they mark the steel. Old wood, iron….. they change here. Age. Adapt. In time they become….. part of the land." I looked at her. She had aged in the years since I had met her, but there was still something youthful in her face, her eyes. There was a moment there when I felt a surge of love for her, as intense as the love I'd felt so long ago in Saigon.

"Mai ."

She brought her finger to her lips.

"Don't say it, Geof-Frey. "

"You know wat I'm going to say.

"What you're doing here. I don't want to know. Frank doesn't tell me. Better you don't tell me. Best keep it secret. Okay?"

"Okay," I said.

"Frank has changed. Do you see it?"

I nodded.

"He's more bitter now. Kids don't see it yet. He's so kind with them. But I worry. One day they will see. He needs luck, Geof-Frey. Before too long. Life is good here. I am happy. But Frank not happy. He wants more. We have everything. But for Frank She shook her head.

"Not enough."

"He's an American, Mai. You know us, we're never content.

She smiled. We walked farther into the field. Some of her sculptures had rust on them, an effect, she told me, that she liked.

"You're sorry I came, aren't you?" I asked her.

"Always love to see you, Geof-Frey,"

"You think I'm bringing trouble here. Trouble for Frank.

"Better not talk about this," she said.

"Now I go back to work."

I watched her as she walked urgently back across the field, then around the side of the house to her studio.

Ali and Jessie cooked the dinner that night, a melange of dishes that Frank called "Viet-Mex." Afterwards we retired to his shop to further refine the plan. I called Kim to coordinate our trip to New York, and then, though it was only ten o'clock, I went to bed.

In the morning, I said good-bye to Jude and Mai, thanking her for everything. At the bus stop in lose Carillos I kissed the girls.

"So long, Geof-Frey," they said in unison. they broke up-they had rehearsed Mai's pronunciation of my name.

When we reached Albuquerque, Frank pulled off the Interstate, then into the empty corner of a parking lot at a shopping mall.

"Something I want to show you,' he said, reaching to the rear seat, picking up a flight bag. He opened it, removed a camera. It was a Leica R-4, the model I use.

"This is your gun," he said.

"Hey, Frank!"

"Hear me out, okay? You don't carry guns, you carry cameras, right?" I nodded.

"So here's a camera. The fact that it contains a gun-well, so what? It's still a camera, . 't it?"

isn "Does it take pictures?"

"No. 11 "Then it isn't a camera."

"Okay, it's a gun in the shape of a camera. Satisfied?"

"Not quite."

"What's the matter?"

"It's a gun."

"Jesus, Geof. Going to sit here and split hairs?"

I started to laugh.

"What's the matter?"

"A gun-camera!"

"A gun concealed in a camera," he corrected me.

"Yeah. The point is-"

"What?"

"It's still a friggin' gun."

"Okay, it's a gun. It really shoots. Two shots. Twentytwo caliber. But this is not an offensive weapon."

"It's such a cliche, Frank. I mean, Jesus! the gun hidden in the camera, It's like a cheap spy novel or something. "

"You think this is like a cheap spy novel-is that what you think?" "Don't act insulted."

"I am insulted. I was up half the night putting this together, to accommodate your delicate sensibilities."

I shook my head.

"Yeah, yeah, I know-no weapons. You only carry a camera. So when you went to see Rakoubian, planning to clobber him, you took along your old Nikon to do it with. Tell me something: What's the difference between using a camera as brass knuckles and using a camera as a gun?"

"You're shaming me, Frank."

"Good. That's what I want to do."

I looked at him and then I remembered Kim's advice, to let danger and the possibility of violence excite me, to go with it rather than resist.

"Okay, Frank," I said, "why don't you show me how it works.

He opened the back and showed me the mechanism. He'd chopped down the handle of a single-action Beretta semi so it could only take a two-bullet magazine. He'd installed the gun in the shaft of a 90mm. Leitz Elmarit lens, whose diaphragm closed to the very edges of the barrel opening. A piece of molded plastic, easily pierced by a fired bullet, acted as the concealing front "lens" element.

It was a clever little toy, especially the way the depth of field lever acted as the cocking mechanism and "trigger." I hung it around my neck beside my own Leica. The two camera bodies were indistinguishable. "You start carrying this as a second camera. You're an old photojournalist-nothing odd about that. You usually use a @5mm. lens, so carrying a second camera with a 90 is only logical."

"I wouldn't want to get the two mixed up."

"You won't," he assured me.

"When you raise the gun-camera you can't see anything through the finder. But notice the little notch at the front of the accessory shoe. That's your sight. When you fire, don't hold the camera too close-it'll kick a little and you don't want to damage that million-dollar eye."

I tried out the sight.

"See-ms simple enough."

"It is. Just aim and fire. There won't be much recoil. The gun's fixed inside the body with a small version of a Ransom rest. That holds it in place and allows for recoil and muzzle lift. The springing's set so the barrel's brought back into alignment for the second shot."

"Is it loaded?"