The Best American Noir of the Century

The lateness of the hour might have given her the idea that no one would notice if she didn’t close her shades. Or maybe she was tired and forgot. Or maybe she was afraid to make any unnecessary noise in the house that would wake her parents. She lit a candle, and I saw more that night than I ever had before. To say it was a revelation, a small personal apocalypse, would be to diminish what happened to me as I watched her thin limbs naked in the anemic yellow, hidden only by the long hair she brushed before climbing into bed. How much I would have given to stretch that moment out forever. Though the camera shutter resounded in the dead calm with crisp brief explosions, I unloaded my roll. After she blew out the candle, I retreated in a panicked ecstasy, dazed as a drunk. When I woke up late the next morning, I didn’t know where I was, or who.

The film came out better than I hoped — the blessing that would prove a curse, as they might have written in one of those old novels I used to read. The pimply kid who handed me my finished exposures over the counter at the camera shop, and took my crumple of dollars, asked me to wait for a minute.

“How come?” I asked.

Not looking up, he said, “The manager’s in the darkroom. He wanted to have a few words with whoever picked up this roll. You got a minute?”

I smiled. “No problem.”

When he disappeared into the back of the shop, I slipped out as nonchalant as possible and walked around the corner before breaking into a run, until I reached the highway and, beyond, the golf park.

Gallagher mentioned I was even earlier than usual, not looking up from his morning paper in the office. I explained I wanted to do some work on Calypso’s Cave if he didn’t mind. He said nothing one way or the other. Toolbox in hand, I hurried instead to the windmill, wondering what kind of imbecile Gallagher thought I was. Nothing mattered once I spread the images in a fan before me in the half-light of my refuge. Other than having to pay for them to be developed, these new trophies were just as virtuous, as pure and irreproachable, as any bird nest or seashell I’d ever collected — perhaps more innocent yet, I told myself, since nothing had been disturbed or in any way hurt by my recent activities. The camera shop had a fake name and wrong phone number. Everything was fine. To describe the photographs of Penny further would be to sully things, so I won’t. She was only beautiful in her unobservance, in her not-quite-absolute aloneness.

* * *

Spring came and with it all kinds of migratory birds. This would normally be the season when our family meeting — which the old man called, as we might have expected, one Sunday morning — meant the usual song and dance about moving. Out of habit, if nothing else, we gathered around the kitchen table, Tom thoughtfully drumming his fingers and Molly with downcast eyes, not wanting to leave her new friends. Whatever the big guy had to say, I knew I was staying, no matter what. I was old enough to make ends meet, and meet them I would without the help of some pathetic Ojai roofer. I could live in the windmill or the castle for a while, and Gallagher would never know the difference. Eventually I’d get my own apartment. Besides, where was there left to go?

He came into the room with a grim look on his heavy brown face. “Two things,” he said, sitting.

“Want some coffee, Dad?” Molly tried.

“First is that Tom is in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” my brother asked, genuinely upset.

Our father didn’t look at him when he said, “I might have thought you’d make better use of your birthday present, son.”

Tom was bewildered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He looked at me and Molly for support. Neither of us had, for different reasons, anything to offer. Surely it must have occurred to my dear brother that his having misplaced his fancy birthday present and kept it a secret would come back to haunt him. On a lark, I’d started using his name when I went to different stores to have the film developed. Seemed they caught up with their culprit.

“Much more important is the second problem.”

We were hushed.

“Your mother has passed away.”

No words. A deep silence. Tom stared at him. Molly began to cry. I stared at my hands folded numb in my lap and tried without success to remember what she’d looked like. I had come to think of myself as having no mother, and now I truly didn’t. What difference did it make? I wanted to say, but kept quiet.

“I’m going back for a couple weeks to take care of everything, make sure she’s — taken care of, best as possible.”