Got to like it. Started carrying it everywhere. After a while his mother even paid for the photos to get developed. She’d never seen him so caught up before. A Minolta SR-T 102. He liked the way it fit in his hands. When he got embarrassed — by Irwin, say, or by his mother, or just coming out into the schoolyard — he could shade his face with the camera, hide behind it.
If only he could stay down here all day, in the dark, in the heat, riding back and forth between the cars, taking shots, getting famous. He heard of a girl, last year, who got the front page of The Village Voice. A picture of a bombed-out car heading into the tunnel at the Concourse. She caught it in the right light, half sun, half dark. The spray of headlights came straight at her and all the tags stretched behind. Right place, right time. He heard she made some serious money, fifteen dollars or more. He was sure at first it was a rumor, but he went to the library and found the back issue and there it was, with a double spread on the inside too, and her name in the bottom corner of the photos. And he heard there were two kids from Brooklyn out riding the rails, one of them with a Nikon, another with something called a Leica.
He tried it once himself. Brought a picture to The New York Times at the start of summer. A shot of a writer high on the Van Wyck overpass, spraying. A beautiful thing, all caught in shadow, the spray man hanging from ropes, and a couple of puffy clouds in the background. Front-page stuff, he was sure. He took a half-day from the barbershop, even wore a shirt and tie. He walked into the building on Forty-third and said he wanted to see the photo editor, he had a surefire photo, a master shot. He’d learned the lingo from a book. The security guard, a big tall moreno, made a phone call and leaned across the desk and said: “Just drop the envelope there, bro.”
“But I want to see the photo editor.”
“He’s busy right now.”
“Well, when’s he unbusy? Come on, Pepe, please?”
The security guard laughed and turned away, once, then twice, then stared at him: “Pepe?”
“Sir.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Come on, kid. How old?”
“Fourteen,” he said, eyes downcast.
“Horatio José Alger!” said the security guard, his face open with laughter. He made a couple of phone calls but then looked up, eyes hooded, as if he already knew: “Sit right there, man. I’ll tell you when he passes.”
The lobby of the building was all glass and suits and nice smooth calf muscles. He sat for two straight hours until the guard gave him a wink. Up he went to the photo editor and thrust the envelope in his hand. The guy was eating half a Reuben sandwich. Had a piece of lettuce on his teeth. Would have been a photograph himself. Grunted a thanks and walked out of the building, off down Seventh Avenue, past the peep shows and the homeless vets, with the photo tucked under his arm. He followed him for five blocks, then lost him in the crush. And then he never heard a thing about it after that, not a thing at all. Waited for the phone call but it didn’t come. He even went back to the lobby at the end of three shifts, but the security guard said he could do nothing more. “Sorry, my man.” Maybe the editor lost it. Or was going to steal it. Or was going to call him any minute. Or had left a message at the barbershop and Irwin forgot. But nothing happened.
He tried a Bronx circular after that, a shitty little neighborhood rag, and even they flat-out said no: he heard someone chuckling on the other end of the telephone. Someday they’d come crawling up to him. Someday they’d lick his sneakers clean. Someday they’d be clambering over themselves to get at him. Fernando Yunqué Marcano. Imagist. A word he liked, even in Spanish. Made no sense but had a nice ring to it. If he had a card, that’s what he would put on it. FERNANDO Y. MARCANO. IMAGIST. THE BRONX. U.S.A.
There was a guy he saw once on television who made his money knocking bricks out of buildings. It was funny, but he understood it in a way. The way the building looked different afterward. The way the light came through. Making people see differently. Making them think twice. You have to look on the world with a shine like no one else has. It’s the sort of thing he thinks about while sweeping the floor, dunking the scissors, stacking the shave bottles. All the hotshot brokers coming in for a short back and sides. Irwin said there was art in a haircut. “Biggest gallery you’re ever going to get. The whole of New York City at your fingertips.” And he would think, Ah, just shut up, Irwin. You ain’t my old man. Shut up and sweep. Clean the comb bottles yourself. But he was never quite able to say it. The disconnect between his mouth and his mind. That’s where the camera came in. It was the unspoken thing between him and the others, the brush-off.
The train shudders and he presses nonchalantly with the palm of his hands on each car to keep himself steady, and the engine gets going, but then stops again with a quick halt, a screech of brakes, and he is shunted sideways, his shoulder taking the brunt of the whack and his leg presses hard against the chains. He quickly checks the camera. Perfect. No problem. His favorite moment, this. Stopped dead. In the tunnel, near the mouth. But still in the dark. He catches the metal lip of the door with his fingers. Rights himself and leans once more against the door.
Nonchalance. Ease. In the dark of tunnel now. Between Fulton and Wall Street. All the suits and haircuts getting ready to pile out.
There is no new rumble from the train and he likes these silences, gives him time to scope out the walls. He takes a quick look down the car to make sure there’re no cops, places one foot on the chains and shunts himself up, grabs the lip of the car, one-arms himself high. If he stood on the roof he could touch the curve of the tunnel — good place for a tag — but he holds on to the lip of the car and peers out over the edge. Some red and white markings on the walls where they curve. A few yellow lights sulfurous in the distance.
He waits for his eyes to adjust, for the little retina stars to leave. Along the rear distance of the train, small bars of color bleed out from the edge of each car and spray outward. Nothing on the walls, though. A tagging Antarctica. What did he expect? Hardly going to be any writers downtown. But you never know. That would be the genius. That would be the point. Buff this, maricón.
He feels the chain jiggle beneath his feet, the first warning of movement, and he holds a little tighter to the rim of the car. None of the bombers ever get the ceiling. Virgin territory. He should start a movement himself, a brand-new space. He looks out along the length of the train, then goes a little higher on his toes. At the far end of the tunnel, he spies a patch of what could be paint on the east wall, a tag he hasn’t seen before, something quick and oblong, with what looks like a tinge of red around silver, a P or an R or an 8, maybe. Clouds and flames. He should make his way back through the cars — among the dead and dreaming — and get closer to the wall, decipher the tag, but just then the train jolts a second time and it’s a warning signal — he knows it — he hops back down, braces himself. As the wheels grind, he trills the sighting through his mind, matches it up against all the old tags in other parts of the tunnel, and he figures it’s brand new, it must be, yes, and he gives a quiet fist pump — someone’s come and tagged downtown.