He takes her by the arm and she lets him guide her through the center of a wide lobby and up a curving staircase that opens to a balcony. They break left down a corridor and finally turn through a set of double doors and into a large, airy, brick-walled room where he deposits her on a black leather couch.
She leans forward, tilts her head down near her knees, focuses on her feet. She tries to ignore the growing pain in her eye and concentrate on her breathing. After a minute she’s able to look up and ask, “Is there a phone?”
The man is at the front window, hands clasped behind him. Without looking back he says, “The phones are out of service,” and for the first time Sylvia realizes there’s an accent, possibly German.
She puts her head in her hands and says, “I should have listened to Perry.”
With this the bald man turns to face her.
“Your husband? He warned you against traveling to the Canal Zone? Yes?”
“Not my husband. But yes, he warned me.”
He walks to the couch. “And you argued that it was part of your job. That you owed the risk to your paper.”
“My paper?”
“Who will be more angry? he asks. “The boyfriend or the editor?”
“I don’t work for the newspaper,” Sylvia says.
He sits down on the couch next to her.
“You’re not the photographer for the Spy?”
She shakes her head no and the nausea surges. She lowers her head again. The man gets up without a word and walks back to the window.
“The foolish bastards,” he says, rubbing a large hand over the crest of his skull. “I called them a half hour ago.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she says. “But thank you for pulling me out of there.”
He turns and stares at her, his face expressionless. Then he crosses the room again and says, “Trust me, Miss. You are far from disappointing.”
He bows modestly and adds. “I am Hugo Schick. Welcome to me theatre.”
“You own this place?”
“For quite some time now. Have you ever been inside before?” he leans down toward her and squints his eyes a bit. “Feel free to lie.”
It’s a second before she realizes he’s joking.
“Just once,” she says. “About two years ago. My boyfriend and I came. You know, just to see what it was like.”
He straightens up and frowns. “And you didn’t care for it? You didn’t like the film?”
“No, it was fine,” she says, too defensively. “It’s just, you know, you see one of those … I mean, it was funny. It was all right.”
He stares at her and then shrugs and starts to walk back to the window, saying over his shoulder, “I think we may be stranded here for some time. The police are having quite a time restoring order down there.”
He moves to a cabinet behind his desk and Sylvia hears a clink of glass. He returns to the couch and hands her a miniature crystal champagne glass filled with a green-colored liquid.
“Absinthe,” he says softly. “I get it from some dear friends in New Orleans. They keep a close eye on the wormwood content. Drink. It will calm you.”
She swallows it down and for the first time sits back on the couch and breathes normally. He sits down in a matching chair and crosses his legs.
“I’ll do everything in my power,” he says, “to retrieve your camera.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Schick.”
“Please, Hugo. And I can call you?”
“Sylvia,” she says, somehow embarrassed by the sound of her own name. “Sylvia Krafft.”
“A wonderful name. A very dramatic name. Yes. I will say it suits you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“As it was intended,” he says. “Now tell me, Sylvia. If you are not from the paper, what are you doing down here, pointing a camera around in the middle of this tumult? Is this a hobby for you, finding war zones and recording them?”
“I was just walking through here,” she says. “I was just heading home after an errand. This thing just broke out around me. I stopped for a second to hear Boetell speak—”
“Boetell?” he asks, straightening in his seat.
“The preacher. The guy on top of the Cadillac with the microphone.”
“Of course,” he says. “Of course. Go on.”
“That was it. I stopped for a second and all hell broke loose. It was like someone put a match to a gas tank. One minute the crowd is all mumbles and sneers, the next they’re tearing each other apart. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He looks at her doubtfully. “Please, Sylvia. Who is so innocent today?”
“I mean up close,” she says. “It’s different than TV. It’s different from seeing pictures in the paper. I mean, to feel it on your body. It’s a completely different thing.”
He nods agreement. “But the camera—”
“I usually have a camera on me.”
“So you are a photographer?” he says, slightly excited.
She takes another sip of absinthe, finishes the glass. “That depends,” she says, “on who you ask. Do I take a lot of pictures? Yes. Do I make a living at it? Absolutely not.”
“Do you wish to make a living at it?”
The question hits her, but somewhat differently than when Perry asks it. “I really don’t know. It’s a strange thing. I feel kind of like once you start doing it for money … Jesus, listen to what this sounds like.”
“Yes?” he says, barely repressing a smile.
“It’s just … It’s a little hard to explain. I feel a little like if I started to sell my pictures, I’d start taking different pictures. Like I couldn’t help it, you know? Like it would happen subconsciouly. I don’t know. It’s difficult to explain. It sounds so …”
“Mystical?” he offers.
She laughs. “I was going to say pretentious.”
He dismisses the word. “Not at all. I have to tell you, I have a very clear idea of what you’re saying here. I’ve struggled with this myself. The prostituting of the muse. The schizophrenia of commerce and art.”
“Well, that’s not exactly—” she starts, but he continues.
“It’s the nature of the time and the place we work in. The breach is symptomatic of something much darker. I know exactly what you are saying here, Sylvia.”
She doesn’t say anything. She wishes he’d offer another drink.
“I think,” he says, “that it’s fortuitous we met today. In the way we did. I promise you neither of us will forget it, yes?”
“You really saved me out there,” she nods. “I owe you one.”
“Think nothing of it,” he says, a hand flat on his chest. “All things in good time.”
He reaches over and takes the glass from her hand, gets up and moves to the window. “They’re turning fire hoses on the crowd,” he says.
Sylvia gets up from the couch to look, then decides she doesn’t want to. Instead, she glances around the office. On the wall behind Schick’s desk are seven framed movie posters. They look like every other movie poster except that all of them show semi-naked people wrapped into various lewd poses. The titles are El Jefe & the Whip, Night of the Amateur, Wynona’s Tree Duck, My Solitary Diamond, Flo’s Happy Ending, The Wolf Inside Sharon and Don Juan Triumphant.
“I’ve made hundreds of films,” Hugo says, now sitting on the window ledge and watching her study the posters, “but these are the ones which will last. These are the works I will be remembered by.”
He seems lost in thought for a second, then walks over and says, “It occurs to me, Sylvia, while you’re here waiting, perhaps, if you’re feeling up to it, of course …”