Travel + Leisure, is blown up onto an enormous canvas. He took it from his campsite above the cloud line—orange tents blossom in white mist, as clouds fall away into a landscape of jade and royal blue, the dip of the valley dark and the sky bright.
“Alvaro’s,” Maura says. “He took that Nat Geo job to photograph the okapi living in the Ituri Rainforest, just got back yesterday.”
The photos come up on the screen—lush, jewel greens and deep black, a red mud road twists and disappears into a thick of forest; a girl, her eyes dark and staring, stands on a riverbank in a grass skirt, her expression innocently teasing. A blue-and-white truck travels precariously over a swaying wooden slat bridge.
Maura runs a manicured hand over her black hair, pulled tight into a ponytail at the base of her neck. She’s young, but her almond-shaped eyes reveal an old soul. Olive-skinned, almost birdlike in her delicacy, she’s a firebrand agent, fiercely protective of her clients. She worries over them like a mother hen.
“The colors, the movement, the energy,” I say. “They’re wonderful.”
The trunk of a tree, hollowed out and haunted, twisting, branches reaching up into deep green black. The shots of the okapi, an animal that is partially striped like a zebra, but related more closely to a giraffe, are stunning—a mother nursing her young, a young male hiding in tall grass, a small herd underneath a wide full moon.
“They are,” Maura agrees. Her smile is wide and proud. “He’s—amazing.”
I wonder, not for the first time, if something is going on between Maura and Alvaro. It’s not a good idea for an agent to fall in love with a photographer she represents. In fact, it’s not a good idea for anyone to fall in love with a photographer. The unfiltered world never quite measures up to whatever he sees through that lens. Alvaro Solare, Jack’s best friend and the firm’s first client, is the typical roving photographer, always in pursuit of the next perfect shot. Which means the rest of the world can go to hell. There are a string of heartbroken women in his wake. I’d prefer Maura not become one of them. But it’s not really my business.
The rest of my agents run down the status of their clients’ assignments. Our firm, Lang and Lang, mine and Jack’s, represents photographers. We are a boutique agency, small but successful, with some of the top names in fashion, feature and news photography on our roster.
What started as a small enterprise in our apartment, has grown into an agency with a suite of offices in the Flatiron Building. Jack, affable and mellow, was a natural mediator. When Alvaro was in a dispute with the New York Times travel section, Jack stepped in and resolved it over drinks with the photo editor, an old friend of his. Alvaro paid Jack 15 percent out of appreciation. One thing led to another, and after a year Jack was turning down photo assignments, and representing more of his friends, including me.
So, after years of hustling as travel photographers, scraping together a living, we traded in our life of adventure for a firm dedicated to protecting the rights of people who make a living with a camera in their hands. Alvaro thought it was a mistake, that we were wasting our talent and our lives. And he never lost an opportunity to tell us so. But we thought it was time to settle down, start a family. Except it didn’t work out that way.
I half listen as the other agents run down problems and successes. I comment, make suggestions, offer to make a call to a contact of mine at Departures. But mostly, I am still on that train, chasing after the man in the hood.
I wonder if anyone notices that I am a ghost in my life.
* * *
It’s another half hour before I am back in my office, scrolling through the blurry, useless photos I took on my smartphone. The light was poor, too much motion. That dark form is just a smudge, a black space between the grainy commuters all around him. I use my thumb and forefinger to enlarge the image on the screen, but it looks ever more amorphous as a low-quality image will.
I start to doubt myself, my grip on reality. What did I see really, after all? Just a man with a hood, who might or might not have been looking in my direction.
I don’t even notice Ben until he’s sitting across the desk from me. There’s a look I don’t like on his face, worry, something else.
“What?”
He leans back and crosses his legs. “When were you going to tell me?”
“Tell you?”
“That you’re dating again.”
I shake my head, not wanting to get into it. “I’m not.”
“So, who’s Rick, then?” He slides a message across my desk. There’s another one from him in the stack I’ve just barely started to sort through. I’m old-school; I still like paper messages to toss when calls are returned, write notes on, keep as reminders.
“He’s no one,” I say.
I wouldn’t say I’m exactly dating. There’s a snow globe on my desk, a little farmhouse surrounded by trees. Jack gave it to me one Christmas. This is what our house will look like, out in the country. Quiet. Away from all the chatter. I tip it and watch the snow swirl around the black branches.
“I saw your profile online,” says Ben. He peers over his glasses, a gesture he thinks makes him look wise, worldly. It really doesn’t. He’s far too young to be either of those things.
Putting the snow globe down, I lean back in my chair and frown at him.
“What are you doing on an online dating site, a young hottie like you? They must drop like flies.”
He shoots me a faux-smarmy eyebrow raise. “That’s what we do. The millennials? It’s how we roll. Tinder, OKCupid, Match.com. Love is just a swipe away.” He makes a wave motion with his hand.
“So, it’s not just for old people, then?” I sift through the tiny white sheets of paper. “The divorced, the forever single—the widowed.”
Widowed. I hate that word; it evokes black veils and wails of grief. It defines me by the loss of my husband, as though I’m less now that he’s gone. Of course—I am. I regret saying it as soon as it’s out of my mouth. The word hangs in the air between us. When I look up from my messages, Ben has me pinned in a thoughtful gaze. Another youngster with an old soul; it seems we have a type in our small firm.
“If you must know, it wasn’t my idea.”
“Let me guess.” He shifts forward, puts his elbows on his knees.
“Layla came over. Wine was consumed. The next thing I know, I’m back in the dating scene.”
I don’t think you can clinically call what I’m doing dating. In the olden days, we used to refer to it as sleeping around. A relationship? A boyfriend? No. I don’t want those things. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But, wow, does it ever feel good to be touched again. I don’t share this with Ben, who is studiously massaging that hipster beard he’s so proud of. I wish he’d cut it off. It’s borderline offensive, though I can’t say why precisely.
“It’s a good thing,” he says finally, rising. “And Rick sounds like kind of a nice guy. He’s hot, too. Looks like he could have money.”
“You checked him out?” I
