Page 2 of My Darling Girls

“All right,” the Beard says and nods at the dead man on the settee. “He doesn’t care who takes his pictures.”

Jo walks over to the body and studies the old man’s face—his receding hair carefully brushed away from his forehead, his pronounced wrinkles, the ashen hue of his skin, the blue of his thin lips, and the tiny brown spots of rot that are spreading over his face like constellations. She touches his face and flinches instinctively at the icy coldness. The man’s head dips forward as if he’s agreeing with her intentions. Jo pushes his face up, stiff bones cracking, and turns it slightly to the right. She removes a small pillow from the corner of the settee and tucks it under his head to hold him in place. After some contemplation, she walks over to the mahogany desk by the window and picks up the small cleaning rag she uses to swipe over her camera lens.

She walks to her camera.

The men wordlessly watch her clean the lens with the cloth, adjust its angle, check the shutters.

The younger one drops his hands into his pockets. “How long will this take?”

“Not long.” She glances at the old man, the awkward bulge of the rope under his coat to hold him in place, and an unpleasant feeling stirs in the pit of her stomach. “Gentlemen, do you mind waiting in the kitchen? It’s down the hallway.” She turns to the men. “I prefer to work alone. Easier to focus.” In the corners of the room, shadows yawn.

Grunting, the brothers stumble to the hallway, and she listens to their heavy footsteps echoing through the apartment. A scrape of chairs on the wooden floor tells her they’re settling in her kitchen. Maybe she should’ve offered them a drink. They’re paying good money, after all.

The old man remains motionless. The stench of decay is heavier than a minute ago.

“I’ll try to capture the light on your face, sir. Hopefully, the gray of your skin won’t show on the picture,” she says, fully aware of how crazy she must sound, talking to the dead man. She steps behind the Knickerbocker stand and places her hands on the camera. The metal is smooth and cool. Grounding. “Let’s see.”

The old man seems to listen.

The white wall behind him, now dark in the light of the oil lamp, adds depth to the composition. She turns the camera at a slight angle. As always when she’s working, her breathing slows, her mind stills. Nothing matters anymore but her subject on the settee, her camera, and the flickering shadows. She focuses the lens on the man’s face. A shadow seeps from behind the settee and cowers on his right shoulder. Breath held, Jo slowly steps to the side of her camera, her knees going soft. Perhaps the lighting is all wrong. The composition needs more shade, lighter colors, and a different focus.

The dead man opens his eyes.

She’s in free fall, but her wail gets stuck in her throat. What’s happening? She blinks, and when she looks again, the man’s eyes are closed. It must be in her head. It must be the opium she took last night. The drug is well known for unleashing unearthly sights on its users. But usually it happens in the drug-induced slumber and never in the real world. She shakes her head, ignoring an almost imperceptible shift in the air, and lights another lamp. She places the lamp on the side of the settee, to the left, and steps back a few feet.

Much better now.

The shadows gather in the corners of the old man’s temples while the rest of his face remains in the spotlight. There is something about his stillness, his unnatural composure, that makes her core tighten. What if she tries to acknowledge his presence? So she tilts her head and gives him a half smile. Studies his face. The taut set of his lips. Eyebrows slightly drawn together, as if in death he’s thinking about his sons.

The old man’s nostrils flare.

Ice moves inside her chest, and the ground beneath her feet suddenly slopes.

Focus, she says to herself. Do the work.

She turns away and goes to her camera, inspects her lens. Perhaps if she can blur the intensity of the dead features, it will smooth the stiff angles and soften the unnaturalness of his skin. Make him look less dead. But this manipulation will make the photograph more like a painting. It’s a new technique she hasn’t tried, but now might be as good a time as ever. In her desk drawer she finds a petroleum jelly jar, opens it, and sprinkles it with water from the teapot she brought down from her bedroom this morning, intending to have her tea in the sunlight.

She goes back to her camera and smears the lens with the petroleum jelly. A thin layer, just enough to blur the image.

“I’ll make it work,” she says. Her voice is too high, too forced. She looks down at her hands. Still shaking.

“Let’s try it again,” she says, pushing a strand of hair from her forehead. She keeps her gaze steady and her hands gently placed on the camera. She looks through the lens.

The old man lifts his head off the pillow and sits up straight.

Jo screams.

A flash is followed by a loud snap. Shutters click.

The Courtyard

A week later

Chewing on a piece of black bread, Jo stares into a bowl of bean soup. She feels full even though she doesn’t remember if she had breakfast. The void in her mind is absolute. She must do something about it. She must purge the darkness.

Jo sets her spoon by the bowl and gets to her feet. The pull of opium is a vortex. She’s been fighting it for a few days now, stretching her supply, trying to preserve every drop. Since photographing the old man, sleep has evaded her. Today is different. Today the familiar invisible needles of craving are poking at her pores, prickling her skin, setting her nerves on fire. If she ignores the needles, they’ll burrow into her joints, deeper and deeper with each passing hour. It will get only worse from there.

As Jo thinks about it, her heart flutters in her chest like a trapped animal. A wounded creature.