the homework for the week. I’m nervous for the class to end, knowing Hendrix will surely approach me, but I’m excited too.
Which is why I’m crushed when he doesn’t stay after to talk. He lingers to gather his things, letting everyone else leave ahead of him, but then he slings his camera bag over his shoulder and starts for the door, a door that will lock as soon as it swings shut behind him, and he won’t be able to come back in, and I’m so scared by that metaphor that I call out after him. “Hendrix!”
He turns without hesitation, his brown eyes warm like melted chocolate. “Yes?” he says, and he doesn’t sound at all annoyed. Rather he sounds as desperate and anxious as I am, and the pressure to say the right thing is there, pressing against my trachea as if to block the possibility of words in case they are the wrong ones.
“I…” God, what are the right ones? I know how to seduce a man, but I don’t know what this is, and I sure as hell don’t know how to do it.
But Hendrix does, and like I coached the class today, he coaches me. “Say it, Camilla. Say what you want, whatever it is. Big or small.”
I close one eye, like I do when I’m behind the camera, and zero in on the shot, barely breathing in case I lose it. Then I shoot. “I find you the most fascinating thing in the vicinity too.”
He smiles and nods, as though he already knew, before I even did, and maybe he really did because I said it, and I mean it, and he isn’t surprised. His smile fades now, and he grows somber, and I brace myself for the seriousness of what he’s about to say. “Dinner tonight?”
I laugh, the tension relieved by his simple request. Or not so simple since it’s not the easiest thing for me to agree to on most occasions, but it’s so much easier than whatever else I thought he might say, which is silly because what could he say that would be so frightening?
Actually, a lot.
But all he’s asked for is this, and wanting to live my life, I tell him yes.
Chapter Five
Concentric: Two or more things having a common center. - MoMA Glossary of Art Terms
The perfect photo creates a memory.
It’s the same the other way around. The most important moments, the ones that feel crafted and composed and perfect, those are the ones that stick with you. A lifetime is a collection of those moments, collected like snapshots in the scrapbook of your mind.
There are a lot of photos in my past that I don’t like to look at, entire albums of memories that I’ve stored away on shelves. They’re dusty and faded now, and even when I do pull them out to look at, I’m not sure anymore that what I’m looking at is accurate. They’re too yellowed, like photos from the past, the kind taken on Kodak paper that wasn’t meant to endure through time.
The evening with Hendrix, seven incredible hours, fills a memory book all on its own. Like so many others, I try not to look at that one very often. I sneak it out on occasion, usually in the dark when Freddie’s asleep and the house is quiet, when the presence of the album flashes like a neon sign in the dark. I regret it every time, tucking it back on its shelf in the morning, promising not to touch it again. Sometimes that promise lasts a week or two. Sometimes I don’t make it more than a day.
The problem with looking at this particular album is how happy it makes me feel. Sunshine peeking through the trees on Tarr Steps kind of happy, which, in my opinion, is the ultimate pinnacle of happiness. That’s what the night was like last autumn.
It’s funny how sometimes joy can hurt as much as pain. Because it’s fleeting, perhaps. Because even when you’re in the middle of it, you’re aware that it won’t last. It’s a bubble of a feeling, buoyant and light and free. The kind of feeling you want to chase after, even knowing that once it’s caught it will pop.
And, oh, that pop is always such a surprise. Where once there was something and now it’s completely gone.
In the space of time between class and my date with Hendrix—no, not date, I refuse to call it that when it’s merely a meal we’ll