The Photographer's Niece

The suit was Dottie's husband's. So was the wedding invitation, honestly. Dottie called me in September and said, "Oscar, you're coming to Noel Hartford's thing or I'm driving to your apartment and dragging you there by the ear."

"You wouldn't," I said.

"Try me."

She would have, too. Dottie's been nudging me toward the light for two years now, ever since the funeral. Gently, mostly. This time not gently.

So there I was, last Saturday, in a borrowed charcoal suit that hung a little loose at the shoulders, standing in a rented barn full of fairy lights and mason jars and people who all seemed to know each other. Autumn night outside the big windows. Somebody had floodlit the garden below, all those burnt-orange mums glowing like coals.

The barn was nice, I'll give Noel that. Floor-to-ceiling windows along one whole wall. A spiral staircase in the corner climbing up to a balcony that ran the length of the room. Candles everywhere. It smelled like apples and woodsmoke.

I got a beer I didn't want and stood near the wall like furniture.

And that's when I saw her.

I knew her face before I knew I knew it. Third floor of the building across the courtyard from mine. We'd been nodding at each other at the shared gate for two years. Never a whole word exchanged. I'd learned her name off a package someone left by the mailboxes. Florence. She was standing across the room with a camera, taking pictures of the cake table, and she was wearing a deep green dress that made my brain go quiet for a second.

I didn't know Noel was her uncle. She was introduced at the toasts as "our photographer, Florence," and I nearly dropped my beer.

She caught me staring. She did that little nod. I nodded back. Then Dottie appeared out of nowhere like a woman with a mission, because she is one.

"You've been standing here for twenty minutes," she said. "I counted."

"I was people watching."

"You were wall watching. Come dance with me."

"Dottie, no. My dancing could be classified as a crime."

"Oscar Wyatt." She planted herself in front of me, arms crossed. She's my late wife's cousin, thirty-four, and she has never once lost an argument to me. "You are thirty-eight years old and you are going to stand in the middle of that floor and move your feet for one song. One. Then I'll leave you alone."

"Define leave me alone."

"For a whole hour."

I sighed and let her drag me out there. It was as bad as I warned her. She laughed at me the entire song, which was the point, probably. By the end of it a couple other people had joined us and I got jostled and spun and elbowed, and honestly it wasn't the worst three minutes I'd had in two years.

But then a slow song came on and Dottie got claimed by her husband and I saw my exit.

The balcony. Air. Escape.

The spiral staircase was old iron, cold under my hand. Up top it was empty, thank god, just a railing and the dark woods beyond and the garden lights below throwing a faint orange glow over everything. Except it wasn't empty.

Florence was there, leaning on the railing, cigarette going.

"Oh," she said. "The wall watcher."

"The wall watcher," I agreed. "That's me."

"Thought you'd be trapped out there till midnight."

"Dottie's husband rescued me. Sort of a hostage exchange."

She laughed. She had a good laugh, quick and low. She took a drag and looked out at the trees. "God, this thing. Noel's sweet but I've been shooting weddings since I was twenty-one and this one has a dollar dance. A dollar dance. I'm hiding."

"Bored at your own uncle's party."

"Deeply, cosmically bored." She flicked ash over the rail. "You too, though. I saw you. You had the face."

"What face?"

"The face of a man doing time." She turned to look at me properly. She was twenty-seven and had one of those faces that looked good without trying, dark hair pinned up with a pencil stuck through it. "Two years I've been nodding at you across that courtyard, Oscar. I don't even know what you do."

"Receptionist. Medical office."

"Huh. You don't seem like a receptionist."

"What do receptionists seem like?"

"Nicer. More organized." She grinned. "No, I mean you've got that quiet thing. Like you're watching everything and saying nothing."

I didn't have a comeback for that. It was too accurate.

She stubbed out the cigarette in a jar somebody had left up there as an ashtray. Then she went quiet a second, looking down at the garden. And when she spoke again her voice had changed. Lower. Careful.

"Okay. This is going to sound weird. Tell me no and we never speak of it."

"Okay," I said, already braced.

"You see that stretch of window at the end? Third one from the stairs. From inside, it's black. All the guests see is darkness and their own reflection. But from out in the garden, with the floodlights..." She shrugged. "You can see in. Clear as day."

I looked. She was right. The glass was a mirror from in here.

"So here's the game," she said. "I go down. I stand in that window. Nobody inside sees a thing. But you go out there, take your drink, and you watch me."

I must have made some kind of face because she held up a hand.

"Not like, anything wild. Or maybe wild. I haven't decided. Point is, I want to do it and I want it to be for one person, one person I actually know, and I've been nodding at you for two years so congratulations, you're the winner." She smiled, but her eyes were serious. "You in or not? Either answer is fine. Say no and I'll tell you about my uncle's dollar dance instead."

My heart was doing something unprofessional. Two years of nothing, of being careful and gray and polite, and here was my neighbor offering me the strangest, most alive thing anyone had offered me since.

"Why me?" I managed.

"Because you're quiet. Quiet men keep their mouths shut and their eyes kind." She tilted her head. "And you looked at me across that room like you were trying to remember where you knew me from, and it was sweet."

"What if somebody else wanders into the garden?"

"They're inside dancing to a dollar dance. Trust me." She pushed off the railing. "So? Yes or no?"

"Yes," I heard myself say.

"Good." She was already at the stairs, green dress swinging. "Give me five minutes, then come out. And Oscar? Don't look away."

Then she was gone down the spiral, and I stood there like an idiot with my beer, breathing.

I gave it five minutes. Six, honestly. I finished the beer and got a fresh one at the bar because my hands needed something to do. Then I went down the stairs, out the side door, and into the cold