7
ELY
Dr. Zhu’s class, as it turns out, is just as good as advertised. Ava Zhu is a powerhouse, having come into photography from a totally different field—graphic design—before she discovered she liked editing her own pictures more than she liked creating logos for someone else. It’s not mixed media, but it is fascinating. Most of my work has been digital, so a part of me was worried I wouldn’t really learn anything new from a class like this. Turns out, hubris is a bitch. I have a lot more to learn than I thought. The point is to be open-minded.
That’s why I’m here, right?
(I try to ignore the voice in my head that snarkily replies, Yeah. Learn from Wyatt Cole.)
Wyatt Cole, who, it seems, has been content to ignore me ever since the welcome reception. To be fair, he isn’t ignoring just me. I’ve seen students wave at him in the hall and watched him curl into himself, his shoulders ratcheting up to his ears. I’d heard he was a bit of a hermit, but that was extra. Maybe it’s not that he hates me in particular so much as that he hates people, period.
Only that’s inconsistent with how charming and extroverted he’d seemed at Revel. He was effervescent, magnetic, as if he could be the center of any world he chose to be in.
The next time I spotted him was between classes, the two of us passing in the corridor, his gaze catching mine—at that moment, it felt like my heart had stopped in my chest from the sudden heat in his gaze. And then there was the color rising in his cheeks, the way he looked away so fast it felt like a slap. It’s not that he doesn’t see me.
It’s that he doesn’t want to.
Which doesn’t make any fucking sense. He was all smiles and snarky comments on Tuesday—so, what changed? It’s like he decides our boundaries based on some mystical kabbalah that is opaque to me.
Or maybe he’s just changed his mind.
My problem, obviously, is that I hate to lose. Because surely there’s nothing so special about Wyatt Cole that it justifies the way I’m obsessing over this man. He’s just…some dude, right?
Some dude who is the best photographer alive, who fucked me like a god and congratulated me on being sober for four years and gave me his phone number.
It doesn’t help that when I text my friend/sponsor Shannon from LA about the whole fucking-a-teacher situation, the only advice she can muster is a series of increasingly raunchy butt GIFs. As much as I hate to admit it, times like these, I miss Chaya. There was a lot about our friendship that was messed up, but also I know exactly what she’d say if she could see me right now.
Let it go. Move on. Get a life. Et cetera.
She’d ask me which is more important: my sex life or my art.
And to be honest, she’d be right. I only get one shot at making Parker work for me, and I’m not gonna miss it.
My instructors seem equally keen on making the most of every second we spend here. I’m inundated with projects and deadlines by the end of the first week, and by the time I’m packing up my materials after Zhu’s class finishes on Friday, my brain feels like I’ve pounded it into jelly. I’m rubbing at my temples when someone’s purple-skirted hip hitches itself onto the edge of my desk; I look up to find Michal smiling down at me, lips painted black matte.
“Hey,” she says. “Are you doing anything this weekend?”
“No plans. Just dissolving into stress goo. You?”
She lifts her brows. “It’s Shabbat, Ely. I’m doing Shabbat shit. Want to come?”
For a moment I’m frozen. It’s the same way I felt that time in LA when I stepped out of the grocery store and there was a guy in a black hat, black suit. Are you Jewish? he asked, and I didn’t know how to answer.
In the end I just mumbled something that I hoped sounded indistinct and hurried off, head ducked down. If I’d stayed, he would have offered me Shabbos candles. It’s a mitzvah—a good deed—for a woman to light them on Friday nights to welcome the Sabbath.
I kept thinking about it for the rest of the week, wondering if he knew people in New York. Wondering if his best friend’s cousin had been my friend. If his niece was my classmate at Bnos Menachem.
Chabad is big, but it’s not that big. He might have heard of me.
I wonder now if Michal has heard of me—if tales of my general fuckery have filtered out of Chabad and into…whatever type of Orthodox Jewish she’s supposed to be.
The type of Orthodox that wears headscarves and black lipstick.
Stop it. I’m not going to waste time making up some fantastical backstory for Michal Pereira. Her life is her life, and as long as she’s happy…well, good for her. But there’s a reason I left.
“Um…I’m good. Thanks, though.” I feel guilty for saying no, so I guess some things never change.
Her face falls slightly. “Oh. Okay. Just figured I’d ask.”
Well, now I feel like a terrible person. “Want to do something after Shabbos instead?” I offer, hoping it doesn’t sound too much like a consolation prize. “It’s just, I’m not really…I’m not shomer Shabbos anymore.”
“You don’t have to observe the laws of Shabbat to come to a dinner with me,” Michal points out. “We’d be happy to have you tonight, even if you spend the whole evening turning light switches on and off.”
I can’t help but smile a little. Lots of things are not allowed on the Sabbath—anything that might pass as work, which includes stuff like turning the lights on or off. Because something something do-not-kindle-a-flame something. It made sense to me once upon a time.
“I know,” I say. “But…it’s a long story, okay? It’s just not my scene right now. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hang out.”
Shabbos used to be my favorite holiday. Lucky for me, since it happened every week. But for the past— God, has it really been eight years? For the past eight years, it’s just been another Saturday.
“I get it,” Michal says. “No worries. We have a space for you if you ever change your mind.”
She smiles at me as she gets up and heads for the door, but a part of me can’t help feeling sad now, like I’ve disappointed her or something.
Maybe I should have said yes. She isn’t Chaya, no matter how much she reminds me of my former best friend. Chaya would have kept prodding until I surrendered. Chaya would have shown up on my doorstep right before sunset with a bottle of vodka and a bag of molly hidden in her school satchel.
I thought I was doing better. I wasn’t seeing Chaya around every corner anymore. But maybe that was an artifact of living in LA, where the sunlight could blot out every shadow. In perpetual summer, Chaya’s ghost had nowhere to hide.
The halls are half-empty by the time I finally make it out of the classroom, almost everyone in their next class or out to grab a bite with friends. A few still linger, crouched against the walls poring over their portfolios or gathered in small knots laughing and trading phone numbers.
It takes me a moment to spot him, but I do.
Wyatt leans against a doorframe halfway down the corridor, deep in conversation with another student. I hesitate, but he’s between me and the exit. My choices are either to walk past him or to turn around and hide in Zhu’s classroom for however long it takes before Wyatt fucks off.
I choose option A because I refuse to stoop to option B’s level.
He catches my eye as I go past, and my heart stammers, my skin prickly and hyperaware of the way my shirt fabric rubs against it, like every part of me has just been powered on.
There’s this thing your brain does when you’re super anxious where it shuts off for a little while to protect you. I read about it online. You stop encoding memories for a few minutes, and everything’s a sear of white noise, and then—once the moment’s passed—it all goes back to normal. The feeling reminds me a little of getting high: that moment right after you take the hit or push down the plunger of a needle. The way your mind fogs up like a cold window. My ears used to pop, even.
Well, that’s what it’s like for those five seconds as I walk by Wyatt. Once I’m at the other end of the hall, I don’t even remember how I got there. My brain simply did not record it.
I glance back at him, which would have been a mistake if he’d done the same thing—although something like that would be perfect in a romantic comedy. He’s still talking to the other student. All I can see is the back of his head and the way his starched white shirt strains between his shoulder blades.
I barely know the man. One fabulous night doesn’t really count. Nor does obsessing over his body of artistic work for like five years.
Stop. Being. Pathetic. Telling myself that doesn’t really make a difference. But at least I’m not indulging this nonsense.
■
I leave Wyatt and his sexy shoulders in the hall and head to the darkroom.
The darkroom is what I used to imagine the Christian hell looked like, informed by all the horror movies I binged on after leaving New York. Even the slightest amount of natural light will ruin film development, so the darkroom is illuminated in red. The few other students working in here are dark silhouettes moving from the wet side of the room to the dry, lovingly pinning their work on the clothesline that spans the length of the room.
It’s quiet, though, which I like. There’s no rule against speaking in the darkroom, but despite the hell similarities, something about it feels holy—meditative. People who do need to talk do it in murmurs, heads bent close together, like they’re whispering a prayer.
I spent Tuesday developing the negatives I’d shot on Monday for my Printing Techniques class. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with analog film. But I like the ritual of it: Clipping the negatives. The circulation of fluids through the tank—developer, stop bath, fixer. Rinse. Dry—the strips of negatives hanging like ribbons in open air. I left them here and retrieved them this morning to examine on the light table, hunched over a loupe and drowning in shifting color.
That leaves me with five photos that I actually want to print. Sometimes what looks good in negative doesn’t hold up in full size, but I can always go back to the negatives if I change my mind.
Working with film is one of my all-time favorite things. It’s so…physical, so profane. I like the way the negatives feel between my fingers, delicate as glass. The smell of chemicals. Maybe it’s the ex-Orthodox in me, still addicted to the art of ritual.
I slide the first negative into the carrier and adjust the height of the enlarger, refocusing the image bit by bit until it takes clear and bright shape on the baseboard. The assignment is to work with still life; I took photos of some of Diego’s cooking process as he made a truly glorious quiche for us Monday night. The assignment doubled as a symbiotic favor because Diego was in the market for a new food photographer for his hobby recipe blog, and I was in need of both food and subject matter.
Most of the shots I wanted were way more abstract than the kinds of things Diego would want on his blog. I ended up taking process and finished product photos on my DSLR so I could edit them in Lightroom more easily. The film photos were first, when the raw ingredients were still loose on the butcher-block counter, me hunched over Diego’s work space snapping pictures as he ran a constant commentary behind me: Why are you taking a picture of that? Why would anyone be interested in that? It’s called tarragon and it tastes like God’s backyard grass clippings.
The first image is zoomed in close: scattered herbs and spices, the swollen yellow belly of a lemon. The blade of Diego’s chef’s knife is visible at the very edge of the frame, a patient threat. I turn down the brightness until it’s slightly too dim and run my test strips. This is the step I’m always tempted to skip—after so many years, I have a pretty good sense of what exposure time will work best for a given picture. But I’ve been wrong before, and I like to have good habits. So I do it anyway.
Once the test strips for all five negatives are dry, I evaluate them in actual light again, five strips per photo, all in varying degrees of brightness. When I find the exposure I want, I mark it with a Sharpie.
Technically I should have taken these photos in a light box, where I could have controlled every variable down to the color of the background, and I’m pretty sure that’s what the professor expected us to do when he gave us this assignment. I might end up having to do just that if he makes me start over. But for now, I prefer this kind of photography. It feels raw. Real. It’s a moment of actual time, frozen and preserved. This is why I’m so drawn to narrative photography—I like to be able to tell a story with my images. A true story, through a snapshot of someone’s life, not a sterile constructed scene.
I’m so absorbed in studying my test strips that I’ve blocked out the rest of the room, the other students out of focus and blurry, which is why I don’t notice someone standing just over my shoulder until they speak.
“I like this one,” Wyatt says, and I drop my Sharpie.
“What?” I say as I fumble around on the floor to find my pen. Which puts me on my knees, of course. Shit.
Once I’m back on my feet, he steps forward to stand next to me properly and taps below one of my negatives. “Hard to say for sure without a loupe, of course, but from what I can tell, it has great composition. Good balance of tonalities—unique. Is this for Héctor’s class?”
My brain is still catching up to the reality that Wyatt Cole is right next to me, his shoulder very nearly brushing mine, and he’s commenting on my art. My mouth keeps trying to say something in response, but the single neuron in my mind keeps firing at the same fucking frequency over and over: Holy shit it’s him it’s him it’s him. Not exactly the paragon of maturity here.
Of course, on the other hand, he still hasn’t written me about looking at my portfolio. Maybe I should be less concerned about the famous Wyatt Cole and more concerned about the dude Wyatt Cole, who can’t figure out how to send a freaking GCal invite.
My brain, however, can’t tolerate that level of bitterness at this precise moment.
“Yes,” I manage, maybe a second too late, maybe three—hard to say. Definitely late, though. “Printing Techniques. We’re supposed to do a still life.”
“Not exactly a classic still life, though, is it?” murmurs Wyatt, who has tilted forward and stolen my loupe already, peering at my negatives like my uncle Chaim the jeweler used to look at diamonds—no doubt searching for a flaw. And I’m sure there are plenty.
“It’s just a start,” I tell him. “I might reshoot in a light box. Haven’t decided yet.”
And now that my neural circuits have figured out how to function again, they skip directly from close proximity to hot man I fucked once and make a beeline to the safer ground of asshole who never emailed me like he said he would.
Wyatt is still looking at the negatives, a small smile lingering around his mouth. Probably laughing at me for thinking I can get away with submitting this bullshit to Pérez-Wahid when I know damn well it isn’t the actual assignment.
“You never emailed me,” I say.
It comes out forcefully. Maybe too forcefully…but you know what? I’ve waited all week for this guy to make good on his promise. But nope, he clearly planned to ghost me and get away with it. No doubt relying on my insecurity to stop me from ever chasing him down. Which just goes to show how little he knows me, even if he is an expert in my seltzer taste. (And, a little voice tries to remind me, other tastes. But I’m not thinking about that right now.)
Wyatt finally lifts his head. I don’t wait for him to look me in the eye before I keep going—no point in giving him a chance to derail the conversation before I’ve said my piece. “I dropped your class, like you wanted. All nice and ethical. So, what happened to all those promises about looking at my portfolio and teaching me one-on-one? And don’t say that’s what you’re doing right now, because it isn’t. You can’t waltz in here and drop a couple stale comments about my negatives and think that passes for a fair trade.”
I have to stop myself from going on. Once I start ranting, it can be hard to hold myself back. (You’re too intense, Chaya whispers again in the back of my mind.) The last thing I need is to look even more unhinged than I actually am.
In lieu of saying anything else, I cross my arms over my chest and lift a brow in Wyatt’s direction. He makes the same expression back at me—although it fails to have the desired impact since it’s physically impossible for him to look angry with those big sad cow eyes.
“I’m sorry if it seems I’ve been ignoring you,” Wyatt says after a long moment, long enough that my pulse has started to slow down a little. “To be entirely honest, I’ve been putting it off. I’m sorry.”
He’s being too nice, and he can’t quite look me straight in the eye. And I don’t think I’m imagining the faint flush of color lighting up his cheeks. It’s harder than it should be to keep from yielding. “And?” I manage.
“I’ve been looking at your materials, and I was meaning to email you…. Listen. How about Tuesday at five? I can reserve a room for us. And if there’s other work you’d like feedback on, send it to me. Let me make it up to you.”
Cool. So, I’ve officially humiliated myself twice in front of Wyatt Cole, which has got to be some kind of photography-student record. He freaking owes me…but now I feel like I’ve kicked a puppy. I can’t hold his gaze. The big sad cow eyes have become too much.
I pretend to pick a loose thread out of the bottom button on my shirt. “Right. Wow. Okay.” Be the bigger person, Ely Cohen. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat like that.”
“It’s all right,” Wyatt says, showing me the exact kind of quick and easy mercy that I would never have given him. “You’re right. I’ve been avoiding you. It’s just…I mean, you know. I don’t have to tell you what it’s like…between us. It’s hard to keep things…”
He trails off and I steal a glance up. Wyatt has one hand braced against the light table, his slim hip jutting out slightly to graze his tattooed thumb. His face, when I dare to look that far north, is tipped away from mine as Wyatt stares fiercely at some point on the far table.
He likes me, he likes me not. And he likes me!
Okay. He wants to play professionals? I’ll be professional.
This is the problem with being around genuinely good people. They never fail to make me feel about as charming as a nugget of dog poo on Mark Zuckerberg’s flip-flops. I feel like a perv for fantasizing about that tattooed thumb digging into my thigh when Wyatt is over here trying to be an adult and shit.
“It’s fine,” I say at last, stuffing both hands into my jean pockets. “So I guess…Tuesday, then.”
“Tuesday,” Wyatt agrees. He finally looks back at me and smiles, the same smile I remember from the club, with white and slightly crooked teeth. A dumb, golden retriever–type smile.
Well, I think as he finally walks away, my heart still pounding between my ears and my hands clenched into unseen fists. Well.
I’m fucked.