Rooftop Secrets and Midnight Lies

Midnight in July in Port Cressida is a lie. The sun's been down for hours and the brick still gives off heat like a toaster nobody unplugged. I was sweating through my shirt before I got three rungs up the fire escape.

Odessa Hampton, twenty-three, professional climber of other people's buildings. That's the job description my landlord would write if he asked. Mostly I photograph strangers on rooftops. They pay me because they want pictures that look like they live somewhere more interesting than they do. Fair. I want to live somewhere more interesting than I do too.

This rooftop I knew. My own building, old brick walk-up on Delmar Street, four stories, a water tower rusting in the corner like a dead robot. I'd shot a couple on it in June. The fire escape groans on the third landing but it holds. Probably.

My new client had booked through the site. Name of Jameson. Paid the deposit same day, which never happens. Most people hem and haw for a week and then ask if I do weddings. I do not do weddings. Weddings are rooftops without the rooftop.

I came up over the parapet with my bag on my shoulder and he was already there. Leaning against the water tower with his sleeves rolled up, city lights behind him, and I'll admit it, my first thought was unprofessional. My first thought was, oh, that's not fair.

"Jameson?" I said.

"That's me." He pushed off the tower and came over. Late twenties, tall, dark hair like he'd cut it for someone else's benefit. "You're Odessa?"

"Guilty." I set the bag down. "You found the place okay."

"You gave good directions. Very specific. Third landing groans, keep left, don't trust the ladder on the far side."

"That's not paranoia. That's experience."

"What happened on the far side?"

"A tripod. One second of silence. Gone." I shrugged. "I don't trust ladders that quiet anymore."

He laughed. Real laugh, not a client laugh. That was my first warning sign, honestly. Clients don't laugh like that on a first shoot.

"So," I said, getting the camera out. "You booked the four-session package. That's unusual for a first-timer."

"Is it?"

"Most people want to test me out first. See if I'm a weirdo."

"Are you?"

"Absolutely. But the pictures come out great anyway."

He smiled and turned his face toward the skyline. And there it was. The light off the harbor towers hits that corner of the roof around midnight, orange and low, and it was sitting on his jaw like it had been hired to do it. I lifted the camera before I'd decided to.

"Give me that again," I said. "The looking-out thing."

"This?" He did it again, slower, like he was trying it on.

"That. Exactly that. Don't move."

Shutter. Shutter. There's a moment in every shoot, if I'm lucky, where the person stops performing and just exists. Usually takes an hour. He gave it to me in ninety seconds. I didn't say that out loud. Saying it out loud makes people perform harder.

"Can I see?"

"You can see at the end. Nobody gets to check every frame. It kills the take."

"That seems superstitious."

"Everything about this job is superstitious. I have a lucky lens cap. It's a lens cap. It does nothing. I'd cancel a shoot without it."

He laughed again and I felt it in my chest, which was annoying. I had a rule. No crushes on clients. It's right there next to no shooting in the rain and no trusting quiet ladders.

"So what's the angle here," I said, circling him for a low shot. "Headshots? Dating profile? You want to look mysterious for the internet?"

"None of that."

"Revenge on an ex? Very popular. Half my business is revenge on an ex."

"No." He paused. "I want pictures that feel like somewhere I could disappear."

I lowered the camera. That's not what people usually say. People say make me look thinner, make me look taller, make me look like the version of me my mother would like.

"Disappear," I repeated.

"Like these aren't pictures of me. Like they're pictures of a guy who lives up here. Some guy nobody's looking for."

"That's a weirdly specific ask."

"Is it a problem?"

"No. It's just not usually the ask." I looked at him over the top of the camera. "Most people are trying to be found. That is the entire purpose of photos, mostly. Look at me, remember me."

"Yeah, well." He shrugged, and the shrug was doing a lot of work. "Not everybody."

Okay. Fine. I crouched and shot him against the sky instead, water tower on one side, antenna on the other, him small in the frame like the city was about to swallow him. That's the shot that ended up mattering, though I didn't know it yet.

"Tell me if this is too personal," I said, "but why?"

"Why what?"

"Why disappear? Most people pay me to feel seen. You're paying me to feel unseen. That's backwards."

He was quiet a second. Somewhere below us a cab door slammed and some drunk guy yelled something joyful and unintelligible.

"I've got a," he said, then stopped. "I've got a situation where everything I do is already decided for me. What I do. Who I'm supposed to be. It's all mapped out. Someone drew the map before I was born."

"And the photos?"

"The photos are the part of the map nobody drew."

I stood there with my camera hanging off my neck and thought, don't ask. It's none of your business. He's a client. Clients are weather. They come through, they pay, they go.

"Whose map?" I asked. Because apparently I have no discipline.

"Family," he said. "It's boring. You'd be bored."

"I photograph strangers on rooftops at midnight. My baseline for boring is not low."

That got the laugh again. He sat down on the parapet, which I do not recommend, legs hanging over four stories of nothing, and I nearly had a heart attack and told him so.

"Sorry," he said, sliding back. "Habit. I used to sit up on things all the time as a kid. Any high place I could find."

"Looking for the exit?"

"Something like that."

I sat down a few feet away from him, not on the edge, because I'm not insane, and took a drink of the water I'd hauled up. The sweat had made the label peel off. Small unglamorous detail, my life in a bottle.

"Okay," I said. "New deal. The disappear-guy. I can shoot that. But he needs a little more shape. Where does he live? What does he do? Give me three details and I'll build him."

He looked at me like I'd asked him a serious question.

"Details like?"

"Like. He works nights. He drinks cheap beer on fire escapes. He's got one friend who knows where he is and doesn't ask questions. That's a guy. Build me yours."

He thought about it. Actually thought, which nobody does, they just say the first thing.

"He reads a lot," he said. "He never finished anything he started but he reads like he's going to. He doesn't own a suit."

"No suit. Big detail."

"None of his money is his own," he said, and then a look crossed his face like he'd said too much, and he covered it with, "which is a fancy way of saying he's broke."

"Sure it is."

"Odessa."

"What?"

"Nothing. Shoot."

So I shot him for another hour and it was the easiest hour of work I'd had all summer. He didn't pose. He just was, and I kept finding pictures in it. Between frames he asked me questions like a person instead of a client. How long I'd been doing it. Whether I got scared up here. Whether my roommate knew where I was at midnight on a rooftop with a strange man.

"Roxy knows exactly where I am," I said. "She made me text her the address and a photo of you."

"Smart."

"She said if you're a serial killer, avenge me."

"I'll do my best."

By three in the morning the heat had finally given up a little and we were packing up. He handed me the rest of the fee in cash, counted out, exact. Nobody pays exact. People pay approximate and say keep the change.

"Same time Thursday?" I said.

"Thursday." He paused at the parapet. "Odessa. Thanks. For not asking more questions."

"I asked plenty."

"You stopped when it counted."

Then he went down the fire escape ahead of me, steady, no hesitation, and I watched him hit the alley and walk off toward downtown without looking back. The third landing groaned under both of us.

Roxy was still up when I let myself in one floor down, because Roxy is always up, sitting on the couch in a giant t-shirt with a bowl of cereal at an hour that should be illegal.

"Well?" she said. "Serial killer?"

"No."

"Cute?"

"Roxy."

"That's a yes."

"He paid in exact cash and wants to disappear," I said, dropping my bag. "That's all I know. He gave a fake-sounding name, paid too fast, and wants pictures of a guy who doesn't exist."

Roxy pointed her spoon at me. "Honey, that's not a red flag, that's a whole parade. And you booked him four more sessions."

"Four," I said. "Thursdays."

She grinned at me over the cereal. "You're going to fall in love with him."

"I'm going to fall asleep, is what I'm going to do."

But I lay in bed afterward looking at the shots on my laptop, all hundred-something of them, and every single one came out. That never happens. And in the best one, the one against the sky, he looked like exactly what he'd asked for. A guy nobody was looking for.

The problem, I'd find out soon enough, is that people were looking for him. People with money and letterhead. But that Thursday I didn't know it yet. That Thursday I just checked my lens cap twice and climbed.

Thursday came and the second shoot went like the first. Easy. He sat where I told him, I found pictures in him like loose change in a couch. By one in the morning we were done and instead of packing up right away he sat on the fire escape landing, third one, the groany one, and patted the metal next to him.

"You want a beer?" he said. "I brought beer. I feel weird calling it a shoot and leaving."

"You brought beer to a photo session."

"I brought beer to a fire escape. The photo session just happens up here."

So we drank cheap beer on the third landing with the whole city sweating below us, and it was ninety degrees at midnight and neither of us cared. His knee was maybe four inches from mine. I was aware of every one of those inches.

"Odessa," he said.

"What."

"Nothing. I just like saying it. Odessa. It tastes like a place."

"That's because it is a place. In Russia. My mom got it off a map."

"It's a good map."

And then he kissed me. No, wait. That's not how it happened. That's how it feels like it happened, in my head, but the truth is he asked.

"Can I kiss you?" he said. Just like that, plain, like asking to borrow a lighter.

"Yeah," I said. "Okay."

And then he did, and I felt this jolt go through me, breathless and a little scared, like standing too close to the parapet. I had a rule about clients. I broke it with my beer hand still holding the beer. The bottle clinked against the railing and neither of us moved to fix it.

"Okay," I said when it ended. "That's a thing that happened."

"Regrets?"

"Ask me Thursday."

He laughed and walked me down and I lay in bed that night not looking at the photos, looking at the ceiling, and Roxy, who has radar for this, knocked on my door and said, "You kissed him."

"How do you know?"

"Your face. Your face is doing it right now."

"Go eat cereal."

---

The third Thursday it was so hot the tar on the roof went soft under my sneakers. We lasted maybe forty minutes of actual work. Then he was off the wall and standing too close and I was letting him.

"I have a question," I said, camera still in my hand, which tells you something about where my head was.

"Ask."

"Would you like to keep doing that, but somewhere with a bed?"

He went still. "Yes," he said. "Very much yes. Whose bed?"

"Mine. It's one floor down and it's small and Roxy's home."

"Roxy's home," he repeated, like he was weighing it.

"I have a fire escape. There's a landing outside my window."

"Odessa Hampton, are you suggesting we climb down a fire escape into your bedroom at one in the morning."

"I'm not suggesting. I'm telling you. Keep up."

So we climbed down the rusted thing together, slowly, both of us sweating, and I have never been so grateful to live on the top floor of a building with an illegal landing outside my window. He came through my window after me and knocked his head on the frame and swore and I laughed so hard I had to sit on the bed.

"Very romantic," he said, rubbing his head.

"It's what I offer."

But then he knelt in front of me on the bed and took my face in both hands and stopped laughing, and so did I. He kissed me again, slower this time, and my hands found the bottom of his shirt and pulled it up and off, and he was lean and damp with the heat and I ran my palms up his back and felt him shiver.

"Okay?" he said into my neck.

"God, yes."

We got my shirt off somewhere in there. His mouth went to my nipples and I made a noise I'd usually charge for, and he took that as an instruction, which it was. It was hot, too hot, both of us slick, the window open and the city humming below, buses and somebody's radio and a drunk guy yelling about a taxi. My little fan did nothing. I didn't care. He got my shorts off and his fingers found me, worked my clit slow until I was gripping his shoulder and saying his name in a voice I didn't recognize.

"Jameson. Come on. Please."