Peter Liu - Watering Heaven

“…”

“I’m going to commit suicide tomorrow. I’m going to die. And do you know what?”

“What?”

“I’m not going to do anything different. I’m going to come into work. I’m going to surf the net and send out some emails. I’m gonna go home at six and grab myself some cheap sushi on the way home. I’m gonna watch television for a few hours. Then I’m going to go to sleep. In the morning, I’m going to get a shotgun and blow my head off. It was nice meeting you. Good luck with the job.”

He left the room.

Gena from HR arrived.

“Everyone loved you and they’re eager to get you in. Let’s talk a little about pay. How much are we looking at?”

It took me a minute before I realized she was asking me something.

“Can you repeat the question?”

Two weeks later, I received a call from Gena.

“I’m sorry, but our company is closing. We’re sending our office overseas to India. Cheaper labor, you know the deal.”

I nodded, then asked, “Did any of the managers lose his entire family last week?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”

Later that night, as I was eating alone, my wife came in dressed in a leather skirt, reeking of perfume. She didn’t say anything as she got her orange juice. She was about to go to the bedroom when I called out her name.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“I have a question for you,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“What’s the meaning of life?”

I.

As a photographer of urban legends, my job was to authenticate a fabricated reality. I’d always lived in a world of fantasy gone awry. Death was a semblance of life; truth, a façade for illusion. My projects revolved around the lies people believed in: the hitchhiker who vanished in the backseat of the car, the baby crocodile flushed down the young boy’s toilet, the ridiculously cheap car possessing the stench of a corpse. I was in love with horror and wanted to capture it through the lens. Joy seemed dull; bliss a masquerade for the inevitability of solitude. I’d been dating a girl named Jane who lived with someone I’d mistaken as her twin — except they weren’t related at all. They just looked alike, dressed alike, worked at the same company, and had rhyming names: Jane and Lane.

I suggested we do a photo-shoot together. The theme would be the twins who weren’t twins: identity mimicked, in a mimicry of distinction. She was intrigued. I rented out a studio and attired them in similar outfits, their colors melding together as a study on the origins of hatred and bitterness.

“How would you describe the mood you’re going for?” Jane asked.

“I… I don’t know how to explain. It’s like everything’s dissolving into something else.”

“What?”

I tried thinking of an analogy. “Think about murder. It’s a magnification of narcissism. Jealousy is an extension of desire. Love is lust amplified, and greed is self-loathing.”

“What are you talking about?” Jane asked.

I shook my head. “Let me try to think of a better example…”

“Do you want to see some skin?” Jane asked, giggling along with Lane.

“You know I don’t do nudes.”

“But you can make an exception for me, right?” she asked, unbuttoning her shirt.

“No nudes, Jane,” I said.

“Aww, c’mon. You’ve never wanted to make a porno?”

I’d never photographed anyone in the nude, seeing nothing artistic about it at all. Tits and ass were tits and ass. “I left one of my lights in the car. I’ll be back.”

Eight minutes later, I returned with a photoflood and startled to find Jane and Lane kissing.

The two burst into laughter, blushing. “Sorry, we were just practicing for the shoot.”

“That’s not the kind of thing I shoot,” I said.

They laughed even more.

I flipped to sepias and the loneliness of desaturation. We went through five hours of shooting, an angling modification and perusal of the visual madness one conveniently referred to as ‘art.’ I was studying Jane, every pore, every scar. How many times had I seen her, how many times had I photographed her? And yet, every click felt like the last.

They both had glasses of wine and were getting frolicsome. I thought back to how we first met, a stroll near the beach as we visited the arcade, laughing about religion and the ineptitudes of life. All my shared moments seemed like separate rolls of film, developed in my mind as I flushed out the colors, boosting contrast and cropping out parts I didn’t like. I’d never understood what the difference between love and an addiction to familiarity was. I loved Jane, didn’t I? I’d been with her for more than two years. But how come I didn’t feel anything special about our commercially branded destiny?

After I finished, I felt an unexpected dread. The prospect of scanning her pictures, touching them up in Photoshop, then adding post-effects to make her more beautiful seemed burdensome. Why was I always working so hard to make people more beautiful than they really were?

A few days passed. She asked to see some of the photos. When I asked for more time, she became insistent. “Why are you being so stubborn? Let me just see a few of the pics.”

“Not till they’re ready.”

A week and fifty-seven arguments later, she said it was ‘over.’

“Me and Lane are going to start seeing each other. I just have so much more fun with her and I’m tired of your depressing mood swings.”

Strangely, I didn’t feel a thing. I plunged myself into the tedium of headshots, proceeding to photos glorifying violence and crime, all the dark seedlings of society dramatized for people to look over in modern art museums and say, ‘Can you believe people actually do that to each other?’

My usual partner in crime, Rick, went to New York for a day to shoot Tupperware. I picked him up at LAX, noticed a massive line.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Lady Gaga skipping the line with the paparazzi after her.”

“You get any?”

“Aww man, you know I don’t do that bullshit.”

As we curved around to the 405, he said, “There’s a party tonight. It’s supposed to be a networking thing for this alternative agency. Interested?”

“What’s an alternative agency?” I asked.

“They do Goth stuff, vampires… you know, weird shit.”

I laughed. “I’m a little tired tonight.”

“Dude, you’ve been avoiding going out, but not this time. This is a professional responsibility.”

I nodded, forcing a grin. “All right.”

Rick was in the army when he picked up photography. He was fit with a staunch posture, and usually had a determined glint in his gaze. We met at a fashion show a few months back. The lead designer reserved a spot in a club that didn’t have a catwalk or lights. The doormen hadn’t heard about a fashion show and stared at us askance. “Is there really a show, or are you guys trying to get in for free?” We were scuttled into a back room to wait. Three hours later, the designer rushed in, not in the least apologetic. “The show will continue,” she assured us. But the models stumbled around because none of them had modeled before, there was scant lighting, and the clothes were barely functional, one model having her top pop off, exposing her tiny breasts for a jubilant throng. I met Rick because the other photographers were too snobby to talk to us. From the beginning, we were making fun of their bad attitudes, Rick saying to one girl, “Sorry, you don’t got the looks to be treating me the way you are.”

This particular day, he was telling me about his friend who’d fallen in love with a stripper. “He was a successful guy, had a lot of money saved away. Lost five years of his life chasing her. He quit his job since she’d been banging other guys when he was at work. He calls me two nights ago, crying that she went back to the clubs. I told him, look man, don’t be stupid. Let it go. But he couldn’t.”