Maggie Helwig - Girls Fall Down

‘Could you lean against there, by the window?’ he suggested. ‘Yeah. That’s good.’

He loved the way this camera felt in his hands, the gentle action of it. The planes of her face, her hair loose around her neck, the sharp corners of the window frame.

Part of the trick was shooting around the eyes, those dark-chocolate eyes, not letting them dominate her face entirely. Get light on the cheekbones, the rather thin pale lips, the slight emerging grooves from her nose to the edges of her mouth.

‘So what’s up with the dissertation?’ He was forcing conversation, he knew; if he didn’t get her to talk, she’d end up with that awful rigid portait face you so often saw. He took in the rough texture of her sweater, almost feeling the thick knots of black wool, synaesthetic. ‘Arms down a bit? Thanks.’

‘Oh. Um, working on a chapter about homeless youth.’ She looked out the window, moving her face into three-quarter profile, and licked her lips once, nervously. ‘No one makes things these days, do they?’

‘How’s that?’

‘I’m just thinking about this place. The city used to be about manual labour, didn’t it? Making things, tangible things. Now it’s all service industries. It’s all, do you want fries with that?’

‘Well, they made whiskey. It’s not exactly, I don’t know, like hammering stone.’

Light spreading, honey-yellow, across her body, her left breast edged with shadow, outlining the soft shape. A rectangle of sunlight on her right hip, against the broken plaster wall.

‘Nevertheless,’ she said. ‘It’s as if there’s no such thing as primary production here anymore.’

‘The terminal stage of capitalism?’

She smiled a bit, self-conscious but not as much so, the tension in her arms beginning to release. ‘You’ve been talking to Vojcek, haven’t you? He’s a bright guy, but I think his theoretical framework’s kind of outdated.’

He adjusted the focus. The strong line at the side of her cheek, a wedge of shadow between her face and the window frame. She was quite objectively beautiful. It probably hadn’t made her life any easier.

‘Sit down now?’ he suggested, gesturing towards a wooden spool with insulated wire curled around it. He was concentrating too hard, he was making her nervous. ‘Or you could just do whatever. Pretend I’m not here.’

‘Oh, sure,’ said Susie, and this finally got her to laugh, he took a series of shots quickly, didn’t want to lose this chance. ‘This is such a natural location.’ She sat down on the spool, good, her movements were less constrained now, she was adjusting to the camera.

‘Could you turn your head that way? Yes. Thanks.’ Loose strands of fine hair along her neck, the inch of exposed skin pale with cold. He sat back on his heels, reaching into the camera bag for a second roll of film.

‘You’re not digital?’

‘I’m digital at work. I’m kind of a luddite personally.’ He checked the light meter again. His shirt was damp at the armpits. ‘I don’t know where that puts me in terms of, ah, types of production.’ Susie shifted on the spool. Folded up her legs, her hands around one ankle, her thighs a complex swell like a pool of water. He checked his light meter and moved further to one side. The action of the Leica under his fingers.

‘This is kind of weird,’ she said. ‘I’m not used to, I don’t know, I’m not used to this.’

‘Yeah, I know. Photo sessions, they’re a funny thing, they’re…’ he ran out of words. She smiled, and pushed at her hair as it slid back over her ear.

‘I trust you, though,’ she said. Pale hand resting on her knee, the pattern of wear in the fabric of her jeans, the sun-filled hollows in the curves of her legs. He picked up the light meter and walked around the room, his eyes off her for a moment, half dizzy.

‘Could you stand over here?’

She stood up from the spool and crossed the room again, stood awkwardly against the unfinished wall.

‘It’s okay. Relax. Just stand normally.’ She bent one leg and put her hands behind her back, leaning her head against a spill of light, a good accident.

‘This isn’t really normal.’

‘It’ll do.’ He went down on one knee and held the camera upwards. She tipped her head slightly to the side, suggestion of tendon along her neck, a shadow on the opposite cheekbone.

‘I hope you’re not thinking of exhibiting these.’

‘They’re yours.’ He leaned back. ‘They’re completely yours. I’ll give you the negatives if you want.’

‘I was kind of kidding, actually.’

She swept her hair over her ears with both hands, letting it down in front of her shoulders. Folded her hands loosely in front of her, cupped low on her stomach, her wrists resting above the small protrusions of her hipbones. The inevitable upwards tension of her legs, the bowl of her hands.

‘The police are going to come and accuse you of making nerve gas in here,’ she said.

He adjusted focus, still kneeling in front of her, and moved the shot in tight to her face. The fine crinkling of the skin around her eyes, the maple-syrup fall of hair, indirect light on the golden strands within the soft brown. The small space of floor between them, the lens of the camera. The way the Leica felt, like a human response.

‘Okay.’ He put the camera down, staring at the floor and feeling the pulse of blood in his head. ‘I think that’s enough.’ He looked up at her, and tried to smile casually. ‘You’re free to go.’

This was the strangest moment for the person being photographed, he knew, suddenly released from the control of the lens and unsure how to move. There was always that second of forced informality, a small nervous laugh. He took a deep breath and wiped his forehead. Susie shook out her hands, more shy now than when he was photographing her, and then walked across the room for her coat, pulled her hat down over her ears, and sat down not far from him.

At that moment he was prepared to give in completely, to let her eat him alive if that was what she wanted. He blinked at the skittering hint of a floater in one eye, and swallowed.

They sat on the floor, across from each other, in the frozen half-built room.

‘I’m not really a terminal case,’ he said. ‘I’m not really going to end up blind tomorrow.’

‘Of course not.’

‘It’s a thing I have to do. It’s not anyone’s good scenario.’

Outside the window the sun broke through cloud, a broad slab of light suddenly detailing the flawed uneven plaster of the wall, the unsanded wood floor. She stood quickly and walked from the room, and it seemed to Alex as if her image in the doorway froze in a hanging moment of time, her head in profile. Susie leaving.

She must have expected that he would follow, shivering with the bright cold and the need of her; and in the dark hallway at the bottom of the spiral stair she reached out for him, the chill of her hands like needles on his skin, the rough grain of the brick wall scraping the fabric of his coat as his body rose to hers, her heat pouring into him. But the image was as fixed in his mind as any picture, the sequel to every photograph he had ever taken of her. Susie turning away.

A woman fell down at Glencairn, the long sweep of her coat spreading over the tiles of the floor. A few hours later, the police entered the back room of a pizza restaurant on Ossington and arrested a Nigerian man who had been seen near the warehouse before the fire, taking a picture with a disposable camera.

At the Healthcare Divisional Operations Centre, men and women sat around the table in an emergency meeting. Two paramedics who had attended at the College Street restaurant were off work, collapsing suddenly, their symptoms unclear. A flipchart by the table was scribbled with handwritten notes. Under the heading A) Unknown/fainting , written in blue ink, were the words Contact CUPE asap. Working quarantine possible?