two doors attached to either side of the wall had two separate sets of hinges. I swung one outward and the other inward. We entered and Lukas drew back a thick black curtain that ran across the length of the room, separating us from the inside.
I made an appreciative noise in my throat. “A darkroom. I assume the second set of doors and curtains are so no one can walk inside and accidentally expose your film to the light. But who would come in here anyway?”
“My parents, the cleaning lady. You.” He tossed a key chain at me. I caught it on reflex—the keys to the main house and to his place. “My spare set.”
“I would not want to disturb your privacy.”
He rolled his eyes. “Right. Who was it who never knocked when she came to my room? Who would not even let me go to the toilet without chatting away about something?” He mimicked in a high falsetto, “‘Pee later! This is important!’”
I punched him in the arm. “I never did that. I am a very respectful person.”
Lukas flicked on the red lightbulb attached to the ceiling. It turned him into a long ruby sculpture. The glow reminded me of the red light district in Amsterdam, where the lingerie-clad prostitutes stood lit up in windows. Suddenly, I was aware that the boy I had known had turned into a man and we were alone. I coughed, mortified by my thoughts. For goodness’ sake, he was my cousin. I could barely get out the words. “Could—could you please turn on the regular light?”
He turned on the main lighting and then fanned his face. “Sorry, it stinks an hour in the wind here, heh?” Even though the windowless room was spotless, it still smelled of the strange and exotic chemicals stored inside the canisters and jugs that lined the shelves.
I recovered quickly and moved away from him. “No, I sense invention and possibility.” How to change the subject? I gestured toward his long workbench and the three deep sinks. “I did not think anyone did darkroom work anymore. Is it not all digital these days?”
Now a glow lit up his eyes. He ran his hand through his rumpled hair. “I am in love with imperfection. Some of my mistakes wind up being the most interesting work I have ever done. Come upstairs, I will show you.”
We entered his living room and kitchen, which only consisted of a combination oven/microwave, a mini fridge, and a stovetop. A low coffee table that had lost one leg was propped up by thick art and photography books—Basquiat, Dorothea Lange, Mondrian, Jerry Uelsmann, Vermeer. There was a door at the other end of the room. I assumed it led to his bedroom and bathroom. Everything was as neat as Lukas’s room used to be. I was the one who had always rebelled against Helena by living as messily as possible.
I snickered. “It is so bare here, a blind horse could do no damage.”
Lukas barked out a laugh. “I do not have time to collect thingies.”
I scanned his apartment again. “It feels more like a train station than a home. Like a stopping point before you arrive at your destination.”
He sat cross-legged on the floor, pulled out a thick black portfolio, and started flipping through the photos. They were mostly in black and white. I plopped down beside him, looked over his shoulder, and stopped him at a page: the hands of a workingman, crusted with dirt, callused, cradling a tulip bulb. “I love this one.”
He grimaced, rueful. “The client rejected it.” He tapped on the sheet beside it, which held a color photo of the farmer, cleaned and shaven, complete with a fake smile. “This is what they bought in the end. I keep this here to remind myself not to get too carried away when I am being paid by the client. I am a photojournalist. I should document, not dominate.”
We paged through the warm-toned photos. They were almost three-dimensional with the depth of the developing he had done on them. I felt I could reach in and touch the images: a bat the size of a small dog hanging upside down with gleaming red eyes, a flamingo poised at sunrise, a child in rags peddling rice wrapped in leaves—and then his more commercial work: pouting models, tropical flowers and landscapes, all lush, colorful, filled with brilliance.
“I do not know, Lukas,” I said. “You, the camera, the subject. They all become one in the photo.