The Silver Age (6 page)

“Give me a push, dammit!” she cried, her voice a
delighted squeal. He obeyed this directive, careful to put his hands on the
small of her back and not lower down, lest he bring the beautiful, shimmering
moment to a sudden, terrible end. Then he stepped back and snapped a couple of
shots in quick succession as she whizzed past him, narrowly missing a steel
garbage can with her foot.

“I want to go higher,” she shouted, pumping her legs for
altitude. “As high as it’ll fucking go!”

He continued snapping pictures, image after image,
killing off a roll and hastily loading another, laughing in unison with her as
she soared through the air right there in front of him.

It went without saying that most of the setups they
concocted wouldn’t make it anywhere near the pages of the
Telegraph
–
although one of them might pass muster as the author photo for her collection
of columns. But it didn’t much matter to him. He was having too much fun to
much care, and the photos were good: spontaneous and alive with energy, just as
he had hoped. That energy, it was clear, owed more than a little to the rapport
they had quickly established. They had clicked so easily at the magazine
awards, and the attraction he’d felt – which she seemed also to feel – was
still there, an electric crackle that rippled in the air between them.

In the lab, he was energized, more excited than he had
been about a project in months, which was a good thing, because the scope of
the work had swollen (by his choice, to be fair, not her demand). There were
black and white shots that would require hand developing, and colour images to
process and correct in order to get the effect he was looking for. They met a
couple of times in cafés to discuss the contact sheets, select the best shots
for printing. And once, ever so casually, she brought him over to her condo, a
steel and glass box on Harbourfront, appointed with modernist furniture and
colourful abstract prints, so that they could spread out a bunch of shots on
her oak dining table. Whatever the setting, their ideas and opinions always
seemed to gel, as if they’d been working together like this for years.

When the prints were finished, they met at another café
so that he could hand them off to her. He found her there waiting for him at a
table by the front window. He sat down and, with a proud smile, slid the folder
of prints across to her. She pulled it towards herself, opened it, and began to
leaf through the shots, impassive. He watched her face, surprised by how eager
he was for her approval. Slowly, her expression softened, the edges of her eyes
crinkling, the corners of her lips rising in their little curlicues. As a
photographer for hire, he’d learned how to read his clients’ body language for
signs of approval. This, he could see, was the real thing.

She looked up at him. “These are absolutely amazing,
Stephan – better than I had any right to hope.” She was grinning.

“Thanks.”

Preparing the final prints, he’d been more nervous than
he would have been for a regular job. But now it had all worked out just as
he’d hoped – another victory, as if preordained. He had accomplished the task,
completed the mission she’d set for him.

“We should celebrate,” she said. “I’ll take you out
somewhere fun next week, buy you a drink.”

“That really isn’t necessary, Jenny. I’m just happy you
like the work.”

“I’m sorry, but I must insist.”

He raised his hands in good-natured acquiescence as she
reached into her purse and wrote out a cheque on the spot for his fee.

At her suggestion, they met for their drinks at a lounge
in the Annex, a few blocks south and west of Stephan’s apartment. The feel of
the place was typical of the neighbourhood: all colourful rugs, plush sofas and
orange-shaded lamps – 90’s-style neo-bohemian chic. It was three-quarters full
when they arrived, far from dead, but not particularly lively either. A DJ was
spinning vinyl records near the back, low-key funk music with an eerie,
lolloping rhythm. Stephan’s recent interactions with Jenny Wynne had been
day-lit, business-focused – even when they’d met at her condo’s dining-room
table. Now the mood was shifting. Did that mean the terms of their relationship
were shifting, too?

Getting ready to go out at the beginning of the evening,
he’d sensed that this entire project they’d just completed had been, among
other things, a kind of test. She’d seen something in him at the magazine
awards, and had singled him out for further study. It was hard to say what that
something might have been. As a journalist, Jenny Wynne was a spotter of
trends, constantly on the lookout for the next new thing. Stephan was still
relatively new to the business, but he had already established himself as a
talent on the rise – perhaps she thought he was on his way to even grander
things. Or maybe it was simpler than that. He was a successful, eligible
straight guy in an industry dominated by women and gay men. That alone made him
a rare and, therefore, desirable commodity.

They chatted over drinks in a quiet corner of the room,
bending towards each other across a coffee table strewn with vintage magazines:
ancient copies of Esquire featuring tweedy sportsmen in fly-fishing gear, a
Life magazine from the 1940s, its cover dominated by a blonde model’s head and
satin-clad shoulders, next to the caption “War and Fashions.” Now he was sure
of it – the way she was looking into his eyes and nowhere else, her own eyes
seeming not even to blink. The way she smiled when he spoke and then tossed her
hair, still smiling, her unblinking eyes wider than ever now. Then her phone
blooped, killing the moment with an incoming text message. She snatched the
device up off the coffee table, read it with an irritated sigh, shaking her
head, then thumbed out a curt response, pressed send.

“So where were we?” she asked, refocussing.

“You were just telling me about your new book of
photographs by Jacques Henri Lartigue.”

“Right, so the thing I found so amazing was…”

Her phone blooped again, the LCD screen lighting up in
the same instant, its colour a harsh, alien blue. This time, she gave the
message only a cursory look, her brow furrowing, then set the phone back down
without bothering to reply. But it blooped again, a few moments later, and then
again, before she’d even finished reading the third message.

“Everything okay?” Stephan asked, tamping down his
annoyance. “Did you forget to file this week’s column? Breaking news in the
lifestyle sector?”

She shook her head, looking down. “I wish,” she said,
turning off the phone and putting it away in her purse, her head bowed. Was she
upset? She seemed actually to be ruffled, he realized with surprise.

“Seriously, everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine.” She shook her head. “I was seeing
somebody, but we broke up. He doesn’t seem to have fully grasped that,
however.”

Stephan’s mind raced, calibrating the significance of
this fresh intelligence. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, finally.

“Don’t be. He had it coming.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t mean to be coy, but I’m not terribly keen to get
into the details of my unfortunate love life just now.”

“Fair enough.”

“Honestly, it was any number of things – his tiresome
railings about American politics, his overly practiced cunnilingus technique –
but I’ll tell you what. The last straw was that I was over at his place a few
nights ago and happened to discover his complete collection of Murphy Brown
DVDs, hidden away in a secret corner of his entertainment unit. You know Murphy
Brown, that early nineties TV sit-com starring Candice Bergen?”

“Murphy Brown, yeah, that’s… somehow vaguely disturbing.”
He paused, mulled. “On the other hand, it’s not as if he was a racist cop or
something. Are you sure you weren’t too hard on him?”

She fixed him with a stern look, and he saw that he’d
offended her. Then she cracked up.

“Let me explain,” she said, gasping.

“I’m all ears.”

“Okay, so this guy thought he was the ultimate
connoisseur of everything, right? If we went out for dinner, he’d insist on ordering
some very special bottle of French wine to go with the meal. If he bought a
messenger bag, it had to be a limited edition one crafted from the recycled
cowlings of Communist-era Slovakian produce trucks.”

“Wait a minute, I think I know that guy. Actually I know
five of that guy.”

“They’re everywhere these days, but here’s the thing –
when I saw those tapes something I’d half realized all along suddenly hit me
full on. Deep down he was just a simple fellow from the suburbs who’d built up
this whole fake persona for himself, because he wanted people to think he was
cool or whatever, and not because he actually liked any of the stuff he claimed
to be into. Finding those DVDs, it was like stumbling onto his secret
bestiality porn stash. It was… hideous, actually.”

“Maybe he was just afraid of what you’d think if you
found out who he really was.”

“Maybe he was. But he might have had more luck in the
long run if he’d been honest with me up front. I’ve been crazy about all kinds
of guys. I don’t care if someone is obsessed with bad sitcoms – we all need our
junk food. But I do care if someone’s pretending to be something they aren’t.
An imposter.”

She stared across the table at him, suddenly intent. He
met her gaze head on.

“So is that what you’re asking me, then? Am I an
imposter?”

“Not exactly,” she said, paused. Her face was thoughtful.
“I guess what I’m asking you is this: are you sincere about what you’re doing?”

Her phrasing of the question gave him confidence in the
answer.

“Yes,” he said. “I am. In fact, I think I might be one of
the most sincere people in the entire city, for whatever that’s worth. Maybe
not much.”

There was a pause, as she took this in. Then she smiled
at him, almost sweetly, that smirking attitude of hers replaced in a heartbeat
by something that could almost be called innocent.

Chapter 5

On a Saturday morning in early August, Pete called
Stephan to ask a favour: he wanted his friend’s opinion on a house he and Sally
were thinking of buying, and was hoping to drive out together to have a look.
Stephan had been planning to spend the day in the darkroom, catching up on some
printing he’d let slide, but he wanted to help Pete out. His friend didn’t ask
him for much, after all. Plus, the forecast was for a gorgeous day, sunny and fresh.
The summer of 2002 was not long for the world, and it made sense to get outside
while he could. He had plans that evening, with Jenny Wynne as it happened, and
felt his usual twinge of guilt for not working when deadlines loomed – but so
be it. The lab would still be there tomorrow, and nobody would die if he missed
a deadline by a day or two.

As they drove along Richmond Street in Pete’s black
Volkswagen Golf, Stephan reached his hand out the window and let it glide along
on the breeze, like a kite. Pete glanced over.

“Watch it, there, sonny,” he said. “Or that thing’ll get
lopped off on a signpost.”

“Come on, dad, get your head out of your ass.”

“That’s it – one more outburst from you and I’m pulling
this car over.”

They whizzed across the threshold of the Eastern Avenue
Bridge, giggling like children. As the car crested the structure, Stephan
turned to gaze down on the trusses of the Old Eastern Avenue Bridge, which had
been closed for decades but never demolished. Its entrances on either side of
the Don River were blocked off by chain link fences, but they looked as if they
could be scaled easily enough. He made a mental note to come back here some
time and shoot it, and then they were across the river and into a neighbourhood
of junk shops and ancient clothing stores, anchored by a strip club, Jilly’s,
that had been there so long it had acquired the status of a heritage site.

Block by block, the passing street-scape grew tidier and
more prosperous. And somewhere along the way the car crossed the invisible
frontier of the true inner city. They hadn’t entered the suburbs yet, but they
weren’t downtown anymore, either. A couple of minutes later, Pete pulled onto a
narrow side street lined with brick- and siding-clad semi-detached houses.
There was a black Lexus sedan parked half-way down the block, next to which
stood a thirty-something black guy, trim and fit. Dressed in a light-grey suit
that fitted him liked a suit of armor, he was talking on an aluminum-coloured
cell phone that glinted in the sunlight like jewellery.

“That’s my agent, Sherwin,” Pete said. “And that’s the
house!” He jabbed his finger towards a two-storey structure of white-painted
brick, its front yard a small rock garden.

“Looks... great,” Stephan said, groping for a supportive
response. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the place – it looked quite nice,
actually – but he seemed to lack the vocabulary for this sort of occasion. It
was outside his sphere of experience.

They parked and walked over to where Sherwin was
standing.

“Peter, how are you doing?” the agent said, his tone
affable, as they approached.

“Sherwin, good to see you. This is Stephan, an old friend
with a good eye.”

Sherwin’s handshake was firm, his gaze direct but not too
intense as he slid Stephan a business card (minimalist contemporary font,
matted card stock). In Stephan’s limited experience with agents, he’d often
been weirdly impressed by them. Their slickness, their cool and calculating
approach to beautiful objects, intrigued him.

Sherwin made a few initial remarks about the house as
they went in, then discreetly left them to their own devices – at which point
Pete, who had already been through a couple of times, took over the tour. In
each room, he pointed out details that he treasured – original cast-iron
heating registers, intricate crown mouldings. The house was late Victorian,
with high ceilings and hardwood floors throughout. Its kitchen had been redone
in the 1980s, as was obvious from its beige veneers and wood-strip handles. It
was ugly, Pete noted, but the ugliness was cosmetic. Kitchens could always be
redone, down the road, once there was a little more cash at hand.

There were three smallish bedrooms upstairs, and a
bathroom with cracked tile floors and blue walls, dominated by a massive old
claw-foot tub. The current owners had already moved out, and the place was
completely empty of furnishings, giving it an abandoned quality that Stephan
rather liked – he regretted not bringing along his camera. Light streamed into
the empty rooms through naked windows, tornados of dust aswirl in the bright
air. The house lacked the modern amenities and sheer square footage of the
suburban redoubts Stephan had known growing up, with their custom kitchens and
vast main-floor rec rooms. But it had character, an advantage that was not
trivial.

They stepped through a sliding door into a modest strip
of backyard. It was situated on the crest of a low hillside that sloped off to
the west, where the downtown skyline loomed on the horizon. The towers were
close enough to look large and domineering, but the property was far enough
away from them – and from most of the more fashionable parts of town – that it
was still relatively affordable, at least for the time being.

“So what do you think?” Pete asked. “You like, you like?”

“Yes, I do,” Stephan said. “I like it a lot. And if you
guys are still thinking of having kids and all that, then you’re going to need
the space, right?”

“You sure it’s not too... sleepy out here?”

“Not at all.”

Pete eyed him. “Is that really what you think?” he asked.

“It is. In fact, I have to say I’m feeling a little
jealous right now.”

“Jealous, you say?” Pete grinned. “Well, okay, then.
Jealous works.”

“So are you two are going to, uh, put in an offer?”

“We’re thinking yes. But I wanted a second opinion.”

“Well then, I’d say go for it.”

After they’d finished up at the house, and said their
goodbyes to Sherwin, Pete insisted on taking Stephan out to a family restaurant
on nearby Queen Street East for coconut-cream pie. Coming from Pete, this was
about as heartfelt a thanks as you could get, and Stephan was glad he’d skipped
work for his friend.

They arrived a little after lunch time. Mid-day sunlight
was slanting into the main dining room through floor-to-ceiling front windows,
imparting a warm yellow glow to the scene – well-fed tradesmen in coveralls
silently devouring plates of spaghetti and meatballs, blue-haired grannies
trading stories of their salad days over pots of strong tea, young married
couples, apple-cheeked kids in tow. A duo of twenty-something male waiters, one
white and one Asian, hurried to and from the open grill at the back of the
room, where steaks the size of LP records sizzled under a stern-faced chef’s
watchful eye.

“So thanks again for your help with that,” Pete said as
they slid into a brown vinyl booth, patched here and there with silver-grey
duct tape. He grinned. “I’m so glad you liked the place.”

“Me too,” Stephan said. “But really, it’s not a whole lot
to ask. If you wanted me to kick in on the down-payment, that might be
something to make a big deal about.”

“I’m serious, though. It sounds cheesy, but there aren’t
too many people you can really trust for that.”

“If you say so, Pete, but honestly I’m just in it for the
free coconut cream pie. So it’d better be as good as you say.” He shook his
fist in mock warning.

“Reasonable,” Pete said, nodding, as their waiter came to
take their orders.

As it turned out, the pie was indeed a handsome reward
for Stephan’s services. The cream was sweet and rich, the crust light and
flaky. Even the coconut shavings on top tasted as if they had just been
harvested from a grove of palm trees out back.

“This pie is just incredible,” Stephan mumbled,
wide-eyed, as he prepared to cram his mouth with another forkful.

“You should know me well enough by now to understand that
I would never express my gratitude to a close friend in the form of substandard
pie,” Pete said.

“Well, sure, but this is better than good. It’s like what
a piece of coconut cream pie in a Norman Rockwell painting would taste like.”

Mid-way through his second helping, which he had been
savouring thoughtfully, Pete suddenly paused, swallowed in a deliberate manner,
and looked Stephan in the eye, a stern expression on his face.

“Out with it, then,” he said.

“Sorry?” Stephan asked, his fork dangling another helping
in front of his face.

“Come on, man. Wasn’t I just saying how we’ve known each
other forever? You think I can’t tell when something’s changed? Took me a while
to catch on, I admit – guess I’ve been distracted with this house-purchase
stuff – but I’m not totally oblivious.”

“Well, Pete, I...” He paused, and then broke into a
rueful laugh.

“Well?” Pete said, giving him an impatient stare.

“Okay, fine. You’re right. Something has changed. I’m
seeing someone.”

“Aha – I knew it!” Pete said, grinning ear to ear. Is it
that person you mentioned – or actually didn’t mention, the other night at the
pub?”

Stephan nodded. “How did you know something was up?”

“You have a glow.”

“A glow.”

“Yep,” Pete said. “So tell me the story, then. And don’t
go leaving out any of the juicy bits.”

Recognizing that resistance at this point would get him
nowhere, Stephan gave in, put down his fork and proceeded to fill his friend in
on all of the recent developments on the Jenny Wynne front, from his first meeting
with her at the magazine awards to their night together a few weeks later and
through the last couple of weeks.

He was not a person who gushed, but he found it difficult
to hide how pleased he was as he told the story – the memories were simply too
satisfying and fresh for that to be possible. They had dined at a French bistro
in Kensington market, an Italian café on College Street and a curry joint in
Little India. They had gone drinking together in student dives, rooftop martini
bars and a hotel lounge at which she was on a first-name basis with the
bartender (a certain Pedro). There had been an opening at a gallery on Scollard
Street, a Truffaut retrospective at the cinematheque, and the launch of a new
line of scarves at the Hermès store on Bloor (where he felt more than a little
out of place, but stood patiently at Jenny’s side listening to quasi-academic
debates about accessories).

Regardless of their evening plans, things inevitably
concluded in the same way, with activities of a more intimate nature. There was
something almost frightening about Jenny Wynne when they were together.
Wordless, sleek, she was unabashed yet in complete control. Sometimes her hands
pushed into him with surprising strength, and he had a bruise on his upper
thigh from where her hip bone had caught him one night as she rolled him on top
of her.

Stephan glazed over such details in his account to Pete,
and also refrained from mentioning his recent daydreams about their future
together. In one version, they would elope to the Caribbean for an impromptu
marriage in some idyllic yet charmingly rustic eco-lodge. Next, they would move
to New York, renting an apartment in Brooklyn, from which they would launch
their careers on the international stage. Stephan would become a world-renowned
photojournalist, shooting for all the big players on the New York Scene –
Rolling
Stone
,
Vanity Fair, Vogue
– while selling his uncompromising art
photos for tidy sums on the side. Jenny would achieve fame as a powerhouse
columnist at the
Times
, branching out from her current lifestyle fare
into hard-hitting political commentary, eviscerating the Bush administration
with devastating verbal salvos.

“Well, she must be quite a catch,” Pete said. “I haven’t
seen you this misty-eyed in years.”

“You know what? It’s true. She’s that awesome.”

“And here I was, thinking you were married to the sea.
But I guess you were just biding your time, you old dog.”

“Maybe so. Speaking of time, I’d better run.”

“I was just going to ask you if you wanted another slice
for your troubles.”

“Another time, no question. But right now I need to get
going.”

*  *  *  *  *

And so, after sneaking in a brief obligatory session in
the darkroom, Stephan made his way out to the city’s west end for the launch of
the latest issue of Grampus magazine, at the newly renovated Balfour Hotel, a
rambling brick castle of similar age to, and just up the street from, Stephan’s
studio. It had once been known as a haven for drifters and small-time crooks,
but the recent arrival in this part of the city of a new wave of gallery
owners, vintage clothing purveyors, young chefs and the people they
collectively catered to had remade the Balfour, too.

Fitfully at first, the neighbourhood’s new inhabitants
had begun patronizing the hotel’s bar and infiltrating its hallowed karaoke
nights. Then, about a year ago, the place had been purchased by one of the
newcomers, the daughter of a pioneering developer of shopping malls who’d made
a fortune in the sixties and seventies. The new owner had commenced wholesale
renovations, restoring hardwood floors, exposing brick, and decorating rooms
with outsider art. But the transformation remained a work in progress, and
large sections of the building were yet to be remade.

The event that night was being held in a smallish café
space across from the Balfour’s main bar. Stephan arrived, alone, a half-hour
after the advertised start time. At the front doors, copies of the new issue
were fanned out on a low table, a black and white shot of the Prime Minister’s
face on the cover, his shrewd eyes sizing up the blank ceiling. The general
consensus was that the publication was dull and condescending, but Stephan
actually kind of liked it. As it happened, it sometimes ran photo essays that
were up his alley, paying rates that were generous by local standards. He’d had
the idea of pitching a couple, and so, thanks to the connections and good
graces of his new girlfriend, here he was.