Blind Side Read online

  Blind Side

  William Bayer

  Blind Side

  William Bayer

  1

  The first time I saw her my lens was blurred-not surprising, since I was peering through a view camera. She stepped into my frame, then stood there out of focus. It was a while before I could make her out.

  But even when I did, when I thought I knew who she was and who she wasn't, my vision was still blurred. It took me a long time to discover that. And then it was too late.

  It had been a steaming hot July day, the kind of bad day of high humidity and noxious fumes you get in Manhattan in the summer months. Then it rained in the early evening-a hard, fast summer rain. A little after midnight, unable to sleep, I went out looking for something to photograph. The streets were wet and smelled of iron, and there was a scent of dead flowers in the air.

  I set up a couple of times in the lower reaches of Soho, executed two night scapes ("Urban Night scapes by Geoffrey Barnett"). But even as I was taking the exposures, and they were long, I knew pretty well I was wasting my time.

  I headed west then, into Tribeca, prowling a neighborhood near the river, dark lonely streets of old five-story warehouses, The buildings were dark, except for an occasional loft converted into a residence, and when I spotted one of those from down on the street, I could tell the people who lived up there had built themselves a little paradise-I saw lights hanging from ceiling tracks and the tops of huge paintings mounted on the walls.

  It was on Desbrosses Street, around 2:00 A.M., that I finally found something that I liked: a brick-building wall on which the silhouette of a man, ecstatic and spread-eagled, had been painted with some kind of tar.

  I recognized the style. It was the work of an anonymous environmental artist whose paintings had begun during the winter to appear on walls downtown. Arms flailing, torsos twisted, his figures seemed to be pinned against the bricks by fusillades of bullets.

  But there was more than the painting that drew my attention to that particular stretch of wall. A gleaming white stretch Cadillac limousine was parked just in front. There was a driver inside. I couldn't see his face; the glass was the kind that's black and opaque. But I knew he was there because I could see the smoke from his cigarette curling out of an open inch of window.

  I liked the vision: that long sleek white car, ghostlike beneath the streetlamp, set before that painting of the executed man. And as I stared I knew just how I wanted to shoot it too: straight on, from across the street, the car off-center, the harsh painting strong on the right. It was so good it could have been my trademark shot-a mysterious, menacing vision of an empty city street at night.

  I set up my tripod, put a 120mm. on my Deardorff, pulled my focusing cloth over my head, and began to frame and focus. I had everything composed about the way I wanted it, when I was confronted by the face of a young woman who had wandered into my frame. She stood there staring at my lens.

  "Are you an alien creature?" she asked.

  Since I was focused on the wall, I couldn't make her out.

  "Keep moving, please? You're blocking my shot."

  "You look pretty funny," she said.

  "You seem to have five legs."

  "You must be the local comedian?" I said. She moved closer, taking up most of the frame.

  "Thanks," I said.

  "Do you think you could get even more in the way?"

  Still she didn't move.

  "Car's great, isn't it? Belongs to the people I'm with. I've heard about the guy who does those wall paintings back there. they call him the Shadow Painter. Frankly I like the shadows better than the paint."

  "Please.

  "What? Oh! Sure." She finally moved.

  "You here on account of Lil's?"

  "What's Lil's?" I was checking my edges. "Thought everyone knew that."

  "Not me." I couldn't wait to get rid of her. When you're working on the street, curious civilians can be a real pain.

  "It's a club. See the door down the block? I just thought-you know, lots of famous people going in and out . . . Can I look?" She was standing beside me now. I smelled her perfume, dark and musky, as she crowded in to peer.

  "Don't touch the camera," I warned her, then stepped back and studied her as she bent forward. Her figure was good. Her skimpy black dress, damp from the exertions of dancing, clung tightly to her back. Her ringlets of light tawny hair were wet where they touched her neck.

  "It's upside down."

  "That's the way it looks through a lens."

  She turned to me then, and for the first time I saw her face: young, clean features as perfect as a model's, but more giving, more sultry, perhaps the face of a young actress, I thought. Her cheekbones were high, her eyes were almost feline, her mouth was slightly open and her lips were beautifully carved. I thought of the young Lauren Bacall; she had that same handsome smile.

  She didn't act wacky, though, not like the multitude of lost, stoned, punked-out girls who wander through the downtown clubs snorting coke and dancing until the dawn. So much free-floating powder in the clubs, I'd heard, you snort the stuff just breathing in the air.

  "What are you shooting?"

  "A chunk of time."

  "Hmmm. Enigmatic," she said.

  "How big a chunk?"

  Something about the way she phrased her question changed my feeling about her. Suddenly I didn't want her to go away.

  "About twenty-five minutes," I said.

  "I'll close down the aperture, then strobe the wall."

  "Too bad. The car'll be gone before you're finished. It's leaving as soon as my friends come out." She was telling me I was about to lose my picture.

  "A chunk of

  like that." She laughed, and I took another hit of intoxicating perfume.

  "And I like you, Mr. Enigmatic Photographer." She gazed at me, waiting for a response.

  "Well, that's nice," I said.

  "Maybe if I got to know you better, I might get to like you too."

  "Maybe you could get to know me better."

  "Maybe I could."

  "You're a photographer. I need some head shots. Would you shoot some for me?" What she was asking was impossible, of course, but I wasn't prepared to tell her so.

  "Maybe. I don't know…… I said.

  She nodded.

  "How do I get in touch?"

  I pulled out my wallet and handed her my card. She studied it. "Geoffrey Barnett. Sounds familiar. Have I heard of you?"

  I shrugged; she'd asked my least favorite question.

  "Hey! Kimberly!"

  She turned. Four young people were clustered by the Cadillac. She waved to them. A young man with a geometric haircut waved back. Two girls and a second boy climbed inside the limo.

  "Come on, Kimberly. Time to go."

  "Be there in a flash." She turned back to me, eyes focused, earnest.

  "I'll call you tomorrow." She gently waved my business card.

  "Know something? I have heard of you. Good night, Mr. Geoffrey Barnett. . . ."

  She gazed at me, smiled, and then, in a single flowing movement, turned, crossed the street and stepped into the car. Moments later the big white Cadillac pulled away from the curb leaving tiny ripples in the puddles on the street.

  I hung around for another quarter of an hour, trying to take some kind of photograph. But even with the shadow painting strong on the wall, the scene felt forlorn without the car. So I gave it up, packed up my stuff and headed back to Nassau Street.

  Walking home I gave some thought to the handsome girl I'd met, how she was young and bright and full of life and how nice it would be to get to know someone like that. She'd given me just the right entre too. Photographers are always approaching attractive girls on the street. Tonight a very attracti
ve girl had asked to pose for me, and I couldn't accept for reasons I didn't want to have to explain.

  So . . . another missed opportunity. I had no idea then that soon she would enter my life.

  She called the next afternoon. I was in a rush to go out, so I guess I was pretty abrupt.

  "Geoffrey, it's Kim. Kimberly Yates. We met last night. Remember? I'm calling about those head shots we talked about. You said you might do them for me." Damn! "I don't do head shots," I said.

  "Then why did you say-"

  "I didn't promise anything."

  "I didn't say you 'promised,' Geoffrey. But I thought you more or less agreed." I took a breath. There was only one way out of this. I'd have to be blunt.

  "I was busy. I wanted you to go away."

  "But why would you want me to do that?" She sounded hurt.

  "So I could concentrate on my work."

  There was a little pause then.

  "Funny. I don't remember it that way at all."

  "Well, that's the way it was. I'm sorry," I said.

  "I was serious."

  "I wasn't."

  She paused.

  "That's it, then?"

  "Pretty much," I said.

  "I see." She paused.

  "Well, maybe next time I'll catch you in a better mood. . . ."

  I glanced at my watch as I put down the phone. I was running late. I didn't wait for the elevator, just grabbed my portfolio and tore down the stairs. I had an appointment with Jim Lynch, photo editor of Life. When you're summoned by a guy like that, it's not good practice to be late.

  In the taxi on the way uptown I thought about Kimberly again. I was forty, I didn't have a girlfriend, and she had the aura of a girl who was available. Shooting her portrait, getting to know her-that could be a lot of fun.

  Maybe if I just picked up my camera, casually pointed it at her, and tripped the shutter sort of by accident…. But I'd tried that before and it hadn't worked. I had a hunch it also wouldn't work with her.

  It was too depressing to think about what might have been, so I turned my attention back to Jim Lynch. I'd known him well in Vietnam but it had been a long time since we'd talked. He'd risen mightily since we'd been photojournalists together. I, meantime, had sunk out of the profession.

  Seeing former colleagues wasn't easy for me. The encounters had a way of turning awkward. Photojournalists, packing Leicas, just back from the latest war, don't have a hell of a lot in common with a guy who trudges lower Manhattan at night, hauling a tripod on his back.

  I gathered I didn't rate very high with Jim either; he hadn't asked me to lunch.

  "Got a proposition," he'd said when he'd called. "Come on up. Bring your portfolio. Want to see your latest stuff." Would he really consider running my night scapes? The fantasy was exhilarating perhaps too good to believe.

  Standing in front of the Time-Life Building, I started feeling the old anxiety. That glass concrete slab had once been the high temple of photojournalism. In the old days to be a Life photographer was to be a member of a special caste. You earned big bucks, traveled the world, and when you said "I shoot for Life," all doors opened fast. You also ate a lot of shit: you laid out your story they ran their story; you shot-they cropped; you were an employee-they were gods. So what am I doing here? I asked myself. Haven't I given this up?

  Now all the excitement was gone; Life had become a boring monthly. Yet I still felt the stress, bred out of memories of impossible deadlines, peer competition, struggles to get pouches of film onto planes, and the heat of battles with the layout editors, battles you could only lose, losses that filled you with scorn and self-contempt.

  And so I entered the portals with a wishful thought: Jim wouldn't have called me here unless he amp;d want to run some of my recent work.

  It had been a decade since I'd last seen him, but he looked pretty much the same. His hair was grayer and he sported a brush mustache, instead of the bushy beard he'd worn in Vietnam. He sported a pair of horn-rimmed glasses too, and a pair of snazzy striped suspenders over his form-fitting Italian shirt. He looked lean and fit, like a guy who worked out. Probably had a corporate membership in a gym, along with the sterling-silver health plan, and the solid-gold retirement deal.

  He looked through my portfolio, attentive to every shot, gazing, squinting sometimes, as if using his eyes to photograph my photographs. The process didn't take long.

  "Nice, nice. . . ." he muttered, moving quickly from sheet to sheet. Jim knew how to look at pictures-it was all he did, all day every day, and he did it very well.

  "Outstanding," he said when he finished.

  "Got a real look. Not derivative like a lot of stuff I see. Congratulations, Geof-you've forged yourself a style."

  He glanced at me over the tops of his horn-rims.

  "Especially like the black-and-whites. Clean. Hard-edge. Nice, very nice. And the color work's lush. Those night scapes: haunting quality there. The absence of people-interesting. Considering what you used to do. It's what's not there that makes them work for me. Like what they say about music-it's not just the notes, it's the silences in between. Here it's the voids." He did his horn-rim number again. "What do you think?"

  "I think you're making me feel great," I said.

  "You must be softening me up."

  He laughed.

  "Making money? I know selling prints is rough. "

  "I eat. Sometimes pretty good. I also pay the rent."

  "Still got that great studio? Nassau Street, isn't it?"

  "I live there now."

  "Sure. Figures. Sleep in the same room as your cameras. Yeah, I can relate to that." He leaned back in his swivel chair.

  "You're wondering why I called?"

  "I was," I said. "Like I told you on the phone, I've got a proposition."

  "So propose." I settled back myself.

  He nodded.

  "First I want a promise. You'll give what I say a little thought. Think before you react."

  "I always think." "No flying off the handle?"

  "Promise. Now what do I think about?"

  "Beirut.

  "Hey! You can stop right there!"

  "Hear me out, Geof. I'm talking three, four weeks. Twenty grand plus expenses. Pretty good bread."

  "Sure, it is. If I don't get killed." "You're not the type who gets himself killed."

  "That's what everyone who died there said before he went.

  "You're different. Know how to operate. You'll stay safe and bring back the goods."

  "Why Beirut? Nobody gives a shit. The place has looked the same for years."

  "You can make it look different." He tapped the top of my portfolio case.

  "Expect me to take a view camera?, You must be nuts!"

  "Don't get it, do you? I don't care what camera you take. I'm talking about your eyes. You'll see it differently. That's why I want you. When you shoot it, it won't look the same."

  "No way."

  ,:You said you'd think about it."

  , Forget it, Jim. I'm not going to Beirut."

  He stared at me. Up to then he'd been coaxing; now I could see a little glimmer of meanness in his eyes.

  "Turned yellow, huh?"

  "If it makes you feel better, think that, go ahead." I stood, ready to leave.

  He looked at me curiously.

  "Why? Tell me. Why the fuck not? What makes you think you're so goddamd special?"

  I started to turn but he grabbed my arm.

  "I know you're not yellow. That was a cheap shot. I'm sorry." We stared at each other. He looked sincere, I sat down again.

  "Tell me what's bothering you, Geof, I really want to know,"

  "It's simple, Jim. It's a lousy assignment."

  "Funny, I think it's the best assignment in the world."

  "Lunatics firing at one another. Bodies in the streets. I'm not interested in that."

  "You were plenty interested in that in 'Nam."

  He was right. I'd been intensely interested. Fascin
ated. Nothing on earth had intrigued me more.

  "I was an asshole in 'Nam," I said.

  "So who wasn't?"

  "Maybe I don't want to be an asshole anymore."

  "Damnit, Geof. You shot that fucking Piet."

  I'd known, even when I came in, that sooner or later he'd bring that picture up.

  you, Eddie Adams, Nick Ut … master images … made history … changed our perceptions of the war." He glanced at my portfolio box.

  "Forget this arty crap. Sleeping with your cameras, squeaking by-that's no kind f life. Stick to what you know, what you do better than most anybody else. Like it or not, Geof, you're a photojournalist." He peered at me shrewdly.

  "If it's the money Look-I'll try to get you twenty-five."

  "It's not the money "What is it, then?"

  "I'm no longer a photojournalist."

  I must have been convincing; from the way he looked at me I could tell my message was finally sinking in. He sat back, shrugged, and then he whispered, "Then you don't really belong here, do you, Geof? You probably shouldn't come in here anymore."

  I smiled. For a moment he seemed confused. Then he smiled too.

  "Yeah! I called you. You didn't come up to sell me. Shit, I'm so used to guys trying to hustle me for jobs . . ." He stood up.

  "Come on, let's get the hell out of here, go get ourselves a drink." He slipped on his jacket.

  "they got this phony English pub downstairs."

  On the way to the elevator he slapped me on the back.

  "Respect you, Geof. Really do. Wish I had your guts. Hundred guys I know'd give their left ball to do what you did-say to hell with it, give it up."

  Downstairs in the bar he continued in the same vein. By the third drink his eyes began to mist.

  "Boy, you really did it right. Got off the old treadmill while you still had something to say. Became an artist. Confronted photography. Used it to discover who you are. Your work's solid, Geof. Better than that. It's damn fuckin' good. I

  you. And you were right to turn me down. But it pay-isn't that the trick?"

  It was past midnight when I finally stumbled home, full of rare steak and expensive Scotch, and in an awful self-pitying mood. That's always the problem when you drink with guys like Jim; they spread it around like a disease.