‘He’s a bum,’ said the other. He laughed languidly. ‘But hell, so am I.’
‘He’s fucking screwed.’
‘I didn’t hit fucking nobody.’
‘Me neither, man. Didn’t lay a hand.’
‘He’s a fucker.’
In the business district, figures in coats hurried across a windy corner below a looming pixelboard display, a loop of stock prices and headlines and weather reports. Suspicious fire of unknown origin. Security Council negotiations. The cold front stationary, hovering like a hawk above the city.
A man walked through a corridor, quickly, thinking of events set in motion. On the twenty-third floor of a half-empty office tower, a woman backed away from a wrinkled envelope that had been pushed beneath the door, a piece of paper marked with the type-written words THIS IS NOT ANTHRAX. Backed away, hands shaking, from the threat understood in the denial of threat. Reached for a phone.
When the fire trucks arrived the alarm system was activated, the building emptied. The workers from the twenty-third floor hosed down, their clothes dripping, inside a white tent in the icy chill. In the surrounding apartments, people came to the windows and saw them filing into the street, evacuees. A woman in a nearby church sat in the centre of a meeting room, huddled in a chair, hearing the sound of the alarms gliding up and down in the air.
A tall man stood under the freezing spray, his feet in a plastic pool, water cascading from his dark suit, and felt suddenly emptied of everything, staring along the winter buildings outside the door of the tent and into a clear blank freedom.
Some distance away, a rock smashed through the window of a shop at Coxwell and Gerrard, scattering glass across the display counter, the bright-coloured honey-and-milk array of sweets. A television over the counter played on to no one, the news crawl picking up the rumours of anthrax, the hazmat team on the screen with their purifying hoses.
‘You’ll probably hate this place when it’s finished,’ said Alex. ‘It’ll all be very expensive. But I thought you’d like it right now.’
He stood with Susie in a long channel of mud, under the heavy brown-brick walls of the abandoned Victorian factories, slabs of wood laid over the wet dirt where there would someday be cobbled walkways. The sun came over the high buildings in shards of cold brightness, breaking out from a soft dense sky. It was a good day for light, slightly diffused through cloud, not too harsh.
Here and there, new businesses had already opened – a coffee shop, a microbrewery, a small art gallery. But most of the space was still inchoate, forming itself out of the memories of fallen industry, sweat and dust and darkness. Susie looked around intently, and Alex supposed she had a theory, she always had a theory, but she only nodded, apparently pleased. They walked up a temporary wooden stairway to a metal door, set in a massive brick wall, and Alex took a set of keys out of his pocket.
‘Are you really supposed to be in here?’ she asked.
‘I know people.’ He turned the key and pushed the door open. ‘It’s going to be artists’ studios in this building. And if I say I need it for a photo shoot, they know I’m not really going to bring in twenty friends and a keg of beer.’ He motioned for Susie to come inside. ‘The thing is there’s no heat. And no artificial light, but I know where there’s a good exposure.’
The hall they entered was dark and wet, but the spiral stairway to the next level had already been built, and he led her down a corridor of drywall and metal spars, into a half-finished room where a large south-facing window filled most of one wall.
‘I think there’s a photographer going to rent this one,’ he said. ‘It’d be good. If you wanted to have a studio in a fashionable place, I mean.’
Out of the wind, it was not quite as cold, but the chill was damp and clinging. Susie put her red hat into her pocket but left her coat on, over a black sweater and jeans.
‘Do you think you could take your coat off?’ he asked. ‘It’s okay if not. It’s not exactly warm in here.’
She blew out a small puff of visible breath and smiled, but shrugged the coat off and left it in a corner. ‘Just don’t take forever, all right?’
‘I’ll try not to.’
He bent down and opened his camera bag, took out the Leica and selected a lens. It had to be the Leica, but he was glad that she didn’t understand how much that meant to him.
‘Let’s try near the window,’ he said. ‘You could just stand over there.’
He didn’t do a lot of portraits. A hand spot and an umbrella would have been useful, but he would have needed to rent them. He hung the Leica around his neck and got out his light meter.
‘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.