Trick of Light Read online

  Tonight I call, ask if I may visit and, receiving his consent, let myself in. The grinning satyr is waiting for me, reclining in his living room on what he calls his "love seat," the only light issuing from embers smoldering in the fireplace a few feet away.

  Coolly, without rising, he offers me a drink. Just as coolly I decline. Our eyes meet; then I rush to him, pull open his heavy silk brocade robe, press my face against his dusky skin and breathe in his inimitable scent.

  "Sasha!"

  "Kay! Kay! Kay!"

  He wraps me in his arms, kisses my hair.

  Moments later we're making love on the carpet before the fire—violent, thrashing love. I want him to take me passionately, even harshly, and so he does, but with the underlying sweetness that is his gift. Reveling in our sensuality, I lose myself, forget who I am, forget everything except that I am a woman rutting like a teen, crying out, gasping, grasping at the flesh of this marvelous man with deep liquid eyes who knows so well how to pleasure me.

  Later, in Sasha's bed, we fit together like spoons, enveloped in the aroma of our lovemaking. He lies behind me, strong arms wrapping me, palms cupping my breasts. I press my face down against his dusky hand, breathe in the scent of his skin, a scent composed of sandalwood, wind, sand and ancient stone temples. I feel his breath against my ear, the occasional brush of his closely shaven cheeks. When I lie very still I can feel the beating of his heart as he presses his chest against my spine.

  I adjust myself slightly against him, wishing to strengthen the moist bond by which we're fused. I want to create a seal through which our shared heat will flow, mine warming him, his warming me.

  He whispers into my ear: "You make me so happy." He kisses the hollow at the back of my neck.

  I smile; I am happy too.

  At dawn I slip away, quietly so as not to awaken him. But when I turn for a final look from the bedroom door, I spot him watching me. "I love you, Kay," he murmurs.

  I throw him a kiss. Then, walking down the stairs, I try not to wonder why he must always remind me of what he feels and I, sadly, do not.

  At seven in the morning the telephone rings. I'm sipping coffee. It's Joel, excited.

  "Have you seen the News?" he asks. When I tell him I haven't: "Rush out to your local newsstand, kiddo. Go! Go now!"

  Seems one of my photographs of the illegals adorns the front page full bleed, with a double page of photos inside.

  "You're the toast of San Francisco," he tells me. "You own this town today."

  "Ergo the world?" I ask. "Funny, Joel, I don't feel any different, just like my old self—if you want to know."

  "You'll get over it. You'll be flying high and mighty pretty soon. It always happens. First they play humble, then the pride starts to build. Success breeds arrogance. Huge success breeds huge arrogance. Glickman's Law. It never fails."

  Soon as we hang up, I pull on clothes, rush down to the corner of Union and Hyde. The News box is filled with freshly delivered copies. I pull out one, gaze at my work.

  I'm enormously pleased. My pictures look terrific, my byline's as large as Joel's, and his text, written in his special style (not bleeding heart, just coolly told so the story truly rends), makes a perfect complement.

  Walking home, I practice holding my head higher than usual, cultivating a prideful tilt. Maddy, I know, would be proud, and since she's no longer here, I must feel the pride myself.

  Nine A.M., I'm back in the darkroom, Maddy's strips of negative neatly laid out on my light box, fresh chemistry in my trays. Today, I'm determined, I will crack the secret of the roll I found inside her Leica.

  Right away I spot images which escaped me yesterday. Perhaps it's because I'm looking with a fresh eye, or having decoded frame 9, I now know what I'm looking for. Also, using a magnifying glass to inspect the negatives, I eliminate the pervasive grain that appeared in my enlargements.

  Quickly I make a decision: I'll print out each frame in a uniform four-by-five size, and rather than trying to reveal content via complicated dodging and burning, I'll print straight exposing for bare flesh.

  It takes me little more than an hour to do this. Once I achieve a rhythm, the prints come fast. When I'm finished I pin them up wet to the cork wall.

  Nude females interacting with dressed males—now, suddenly, I see them everywhere. Not whole, of course, but bits and pieces here and there. Something odd too, I notice—though it's sometimes difficult to tell, the women all seem to be Asian while the men all seem to be white. What, if anything, I ask myself, does that mean?

  Maddy, I note from the databank information, shot in short bursts, with ten- or fifteen-minute intervals between. Since she was shooting with a long lens through a window from a position higher than her subject, her angle of vision was extremely limited.

  I close my eyes, try to imagine the physical situation: Maddy, standing in a darkened room, peering through her camera locked into position on a tripod. Her lens is pointed through the window aimed at still another lower window that's unwashed and closed. The action she's trying to record takes place in the room on the other side of that second window, where there's also a dim source of light. Every once in a while, when the people in that room drift into sight, she starts taking pictures. As soon as they leave frame, she stops, poised to resume when they reappear.

  Two rooms, two windows in between, surreptitious photographs taken in one of action taking place in the other. For all I know, the window in the room from which Maddy shoots is also closed so as not to reveal her presence. These, I realize, are the kind of pictures a blackmailer might take, or a cop on a stakeout: surveillance photos of people who have no inkling they can be seen; photos which document illicit activity; photos which, if they were known to exist, might put the photographer in jeopardy; photos, moreover, which the photographer has gone to great pains to take—locating the site, finding a surveillance position, setting up, patiently waiting for something to shoot. Difficult to imagine a sixty-eight-year-old woman in poor health doing all this, unless the content was enormously important to her.

  So what is going on? An orgy? I stifle a yawn. Hard to imagine anyone getting excited about one of those these days . . . certainly not here in San Francisco. The lounge of a house of prostitution catering to Caucasian men who like Asian women? No, it's got to be more than that, something that justified her effort.

  I think a moment, pick up the phone, dial David Yamada.

  "Hi, it's Kay. I've been looking over the cameras. Did you box them, or were they already packed?"

  "No," he says, "they were all over the place. I gathered them, then packed them up in cartons."

  "Remember one that looked fairly new?"

  "The Leica?"

  "Where'd you find it?"

  "Gee, I don't remember. It was just sitting out somewhere, maybe in the bedroom." A pause. "Something wrong?"

  "Uh-uh, just curious, David. Listen, if you want to go over her darkroom stuff, I'm free this afternoon."

  I spend the rest of the morning designing a flyer. I choose a photo I took of Maddy three years back, before she became ill, one in which she smiles broadly and her powerful eyes flash merriment. I center this picture at the top of an ordinary sheet of paper, then rough out a text:

  DID YOU SEE THIS WOMAN?

  On April 15, at approximately 1:30 A.M., the woman pictured above was killed near the corner of Capp and 24th by a hit-and-run motorcyclist. Her name was Amanda Yamada, "Maddy" to her friends. She lived in the Marina, was 68 years old, not in good health, yet in full command of her faculties.

  We, her family and friends, are confused about her presence so far from home at such an hour of the night. We are asking anyone who might have seen her to please let us know. Nothing, of course, can bring our loved one back, but it would help those of us who mourn her if we could understand what she was doing that night, whether visiting friends, wandering the streets, perhaps even taking photographs.

  Any assistance will be greatly appreciated. Please
be assured your privacy will be respected. Thank you.

  Friends and Family

  of Maddy Yamada

  Arriving at Maddy's building at three P.M., I spot David's Saab parked in front. I ring, he buzzes back, not the quick short response I'm used to, but one unfamiliarly long. On the second floor I find the door to the flat wide open.

  "I'm in back. Be right out," David calls.

  I enter. Inside, the blinds are up, the living and dining rooms flooded with dazzling San Francisco light. For a moment I'm snow-blinded, the rods in my eyes saturated by the brilliance. I shut down, put on my dark red wrap-around shades, wait until I regain my vision, then peer about.

  Already the flat looks different. The numerous framed photographs which used to cover the walls have all been taken down. The Persian rug in the living room has been rolled, and the couch where Maddy and I used to sit has been pushed against the wall.

  David comes in. "She had so much stuff," he says. "You wouldn't believe it, Kay—boxes and boxes of photos, diaries, letters. Organized too. The other night I found a file of letters from my dad. I was here till two in the morning reading them. Fascinating stuff. She led such a rich, full life. That's what strikes me—how rich it was."'

  He tells me the Museum of Modern Art people are coming on Monday to pack up and cart out her archive: negative and proof sheet files, plus most of the paperwork with the exception of a few personal items David's decided to hold back.

  "That way it'll be available to scholars and biographers. It's what she wanted. I hope I'm doing the right thing."

  I assure him that he is. I ask if I can take a look around before we start.

  "Sure, take your time. I'll be down in her storeroom. Come find me when you're ready."

  I'm thrilled to be alone, able to do certain things without having to explain what I'm up to. As soon as he leaves I start my search, moving from room to room, methodically checking the windows, looking for possible camera positions and views of windows in buildings nearby. I don't believe Maddy took those pictures from her flat, but I want to make sure before searching elsewhere.

  The front rooms and kitchen are familiar to me. From these the views of surrounding buildings are incompatible with the shots, much too far away. Judging by the images and the lens Maddy used, I've estimated the space between the two windows at no greater than twenty-five feet.

  The back rooms tell a different story. The two bedrooms look across a shallow garden into the back rooms of the building just behind. It's an apartment house much like Maddy's—four stories, Deco period, typical of Marina district architecture. I raise my Contax, study each window across the way. All are clean, the frames neatly outlined, the distances and angle of vision incorrect.

  No, Maddy—you didn't shoot from here.

  I find David in the basement storeroom surrounded by cartons of darkroom gear. We go through it—used trays, beakers, drying racks, thermometers, most of it fairly worthless. The easels and scopes have value, as does the big enlarger, a Beseler 4x5 with motor control. The best items are the Leica Focomat enlarger and the superb Leitz and Rodenstock enlarger lenses. All together, as used goods, they may be worth two thousand dollars.

  I turn to David, make a suggestion. "Why not do what I'm doing with the cameras, give it all to the Art Institute? I went there. So did Kevin Wang. They'd love to have this stuff and I know the kids there would use it well."

  While he mulls this over, I note that one of Maddy's Rodenstocks is a 75mm, more appropriate for medium-format work than for enlarging 35mm film. That and the big Beseler enlarger suggest Maddy worked at least occasionally with medium-format film. This is something I didn't know, and I recall there were no medium-format models among her cameras.

  "Okay," David says, "it goes to the Art Institute." He asks me to transmit the gift and arrange the pickup.

  Before I leave I show him the mock-up of my flyer. He inspects it carefully.

  "I don't want to hand these out without your blessing," I explain.

  "Nothing here about IDing the driver," he points out.

  I explain I don't want to get into that, believing the matter is best left to the police. The issue, I tell him, is what Maddy was doing there that night and whether she'd been seen around the neighborhood before.

  He looks at me, nods. "Sure," he says, "go ahead."

  I meet his eyes. There's something subdued about his approval, telling me it's barely meant.

  Saturday afternoon: I pick up my flyers from the 24-Hour Printer, take the Van Ness bus to the Mission, get off at Twenty-fourth, walk over to Capp, start distribution.

  As I go about my work, I imagine how I appear to today's lookout on the block: a small dark-haired woman in her thirties, wrap-arounds concealing her eyes, camera around her neck, methodically working her way house to house leaving flyers under every door.

  When I finish the block, I work my way east, then west on Twenty-fourth, then paper the Capp Street blocks north and south of where Maddy was hit. After a brief timeout for Cuban coffee on Valencia, I return to the original block on Capp to place flyers beneath the windshield wipers of parked cars.

  Walking back to Mission to catch my bus, I spot the same middle-aged Mexican woman who showed me the accident site. She's dressed in a nurse's uniform, walking toward Capp on the other side of the street. I cross, then run to overtake her. Evidently she hears me, for she abruptly turns around.

  "Oh, it's you," she says, when I take off my wraps.

  "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

  She studies me. "Why are you blinking?"

  "Photophobia," I tell her. "My eyes are sensitive to bright light."

  I replace my shades, we stare at one another, then I hand her a flyer.

  "I just finished leaving these," I say.

  She looks at me, then the flyer. I watch her as she reads it.

  When she's finished she hands it back.

  "You'll find one under your door," I tell her.

  "Thank you," she says.

  "I hope you can help me. Please think about it."

  She looks searchingly at me, then turns and continues on her way.

  Tonight, feeling lonely at nine o'clock, I decide to walk in the city. I grab my Contax and descend Russian Hill to North Beach. Quickly I lose myself in the crowds on Columbus, moving past coffeehouses, hair salons, pizza parlors and boutiques.

  Around Broadway there's a tame little commercial sex district, a dozen or so strip joints where sexy young women stand beneath bawdy marquees hawking the shows and assorted iniquitous wares to passersby.

  I stop at a newsstand. Nothing sinister about this area, rather something almost sweet. The girls, leashed to their doorways by short lengths of velvet rope, act as human gateposts.

  "Hey! Sailors!" The leggy blonde in front of the True Love Saloon beckons to a threesome of uniformed youths.

  "Will we really find 'true love'?" one of them asks.

  The woman grins. "Maybe not true love," she says, "but for sure . . . naughty girls for naughty boys!"

  The sailors decline, but a balding middle-aged man in a business suit slinks inside. Just as he passes the gatepost girl, she pats him sweetly on his pate.

  I browse in City Lights Bookstore, scan memoirs of the Beat period, finally purchase a French photography magazine. I carry it next door to the Vesuvio Cafe, order an espresso, then study a glossy fetishistic photo taken in an ornate dining room. A slick-haired muscular female in off-the-shoulder gown and glistening boots inspects a table set luxuriously for dinner while a submissive uniformed maid awaits her approval.

  Back on the street, I turn up Broadway to Chinatown. As I walk up the block the scent in the air changes—from espresso and pizza to tea and roasting pork. On Stockton the crowds carry me along, past seafood restaurants, dim sum parlors, all-night trinket shops. Suddenly my pager beeps. I check the tiny screen, recognize Joel's cell phone number.

  I call him back from the corner of Stockton and Clay. He tells me he
's on Market in his car heading for the waterfront. He's just received another tip. Do I want to join him and photograph the fun?

  "Of course! But I've only got one camera with me and no strobe."

  "That'll have to do," Joel says. "Meet you at Clay and Kearny in say . . . six minutes."

  Suddenly I'm hyped, can feel the adrenaline coursing. I toss the French magazine into a trash barrel, stop at a novelty store, purchase half a dozen rolls of film. Seconds after I reach the designated corner, Joel shows up in his VW. He pulls to the curb and I jump in.

  "Fasten your seat belt, kiddo," he says, goosing the gas. We take off fast, tires squealing. A minute later we're on the Embarcadero, the girders of the Bay Bridge looming above.

  "Where're we going?"

  "China Basin."

  "What's over there?"

  "That's what we're going to find out."

  As we follow the Embarcadero south, he explains.

  "Tip came maybe fifteen minutes ago. Same guy as the other night, same phony Chinese accent. 'Velly goody stolly, Mista Glickman. You do goody job, so here another goody stolly for you.' The guy says go to the end of El Dorado Alley near Pier sixty-four, wait there, 'maybe sometin' interestin' gonna happen.' Then click! He's off the line. I punch in call-return, but no ring. Like he's got that feature blocked."

  "So we're going on this guy's say-so?"

  "His last tip panned out pretty well."

  "Suppose that was bait. Be a good way to sucker you in."

  "Me? Why bother?"

  "You don't have enemies, Joel?"

  "I've got tons."

  "So?"

  "So someone wants to get me, all he's gotta do is wait in front of my house. Every morning six A.M. I step out on my porch to get my newspapers. I stretch, then bend, making a perfect target. That's his time to take his shot."