As promised, here is an excerpt from my story “Tempting Fate.”
Enjoy!
Ines 🙂
Max let out a long sigh. He resolved to simply walk and look, something would have to catch his attention eventually. It was impossible that in a city as full of life, history, and culture as Paris that nothing would strike him as photo-worthy. Plus, he hated wasting his efforts and to spend hours running around only to return empty-handed. Unfortunately, such was life; not every effort yielded success. Still, he wasn’t ready to give up and call it a day. Not yet. Giving up wasn’t in him. Max combed the hair that fell onto his forehead back with his fingers, put the lens cap on his camera, and wandered on.
He probably just wasn’t looking in the right places; so far he’d visited only the typical sights. But really, who needed to see these things again? They’d been photographed to death already: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs ElysĂ©es— it’s been done over and over and over again. He needed something different, something off the path, something genuine and authentic. After all, he was neither a tourist nor a travel photographer, he was here for fine art.
After picking up a cappuccino and a pastry from a nearby cafe Max set out to walk the many narrow streets and alleyways that were squeezed between heavy stone buildings in search of inspiration and beauty. His efforts went unrewarded for a long while, but then he heard the faint notes of vaguely familiar music growing louder with each step. He paused to listen and as he did so he looked up to see a curtain streaming out of a window a few floors above him. It danced gracefully in the breeze, twisting one way and then the other.
Edith Piaf. That’s whose song this was. After listening long enough he finally recognized the voice. Why did it take him so long? His sister loved Piaf’s music and listened to her almost nonstop for an entire summer and fall. The notes of “Milord” brought Max back to his family home on a warm August evening a few years back. His sister had just returned from France and she brought with her a renewed appreciation for Edith Piaf’s work. Come to think of it, Max hadn’t spoken to his sister in a few weeks; he would have to call her this evening. She would surely appreciate his little anecdote about the music and she would be interested to hear about his trip.
Finally with a mood in mind and a subject by which to convey it, Max aimed his camera. He took bursts of photos and circled the base of the building to get different angles of the dancing curtain. After a few minutes he felt satisfied and moved on, leaving the melancholy voice of Edith Piaf to fade evermore into the background.
“Paris was a city of lovers.” Max heard this sentiment often, if not in films then from his younger sister. It only took a few more streets until he found proof of it himself. A young couple— they couldn’t have been older than eighteen— stood in a shallow doorway about halfway down a narrow walkway, just barely out of sight from the street where Max was walking. If it hadn’t been for his curiosity he could have easily walked past and missed them, but instead he took a couple steps down the otherwise deserted path to see where it led, paused when he saw them, and watched. He couldn’t help it. The way she wrapped her arms around his neck and grasped his hair, the way his hand slid up her thigh and pulled her skirt up in the process; it was a display of passion, of young lust pure and uncomplicated.
The boy leaned the girl back against the stone wall and pulled his mouth from hers to whisper something in her ear. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Her lips curved into a smile as he kissed his way from her ear to the exposed skin at the base of her neck. It was beautiful to watch and for several heartbeats Max debated whether or not it would be wrong to capture this on film. He had taken pictures of lovers before, though granted it was usually in situations and places less private than this. These two must have chosen this place deliberately to remain unseen. Still, he had to take a photo, he couldn’t let this scene go to waste. Besides, these two were so enthralled with each other that they’d never even notice Max. And on the off chance that an image of this pair did at some point make it into a museum and should Fate have it that they see it, it would be a compliment and honor rather than an embarrassment, surely. He would have to include some description to clarify why he did it, but he usually did that anyways.
Max had to move fast; he’d already wasted precious seconds with his internal debate and the last thing he wanted was for either of them to see him. There was no way of getting closer without getting caught so Max switched the lens he had on his camera for one with better zoom capabilities in order to capture small details that suggested the whole: the slight bend of her knee, the overlapping lines of her legs facing his, the small strip of exposed skin between her ankle boots and her leggings, his pale hand against her thigh, his fingertips hidden under the folds of her skirt, the necklace shining on her collarbone and visible only because her sweater hung off her shoulder, her fingers laced in his hair, the shine of her fingernails drawing attention to the dark red polish she wore. The small details captured the sensuality, the fragments implied the entire scene, the simple suggestion prompted the entire fantasy. Max shifted position and shot through the leaves of a plant that stood on a nearby windowsill to give a more voyeuristic feel and highlight the intimacy of what he was witnessing. For the final shots he zoomed out for a new perspective and positioned the couple along the right third of the frame so that the empty alleyway made up the rest of the image. There was a distinct sense of anticipation, of potential, of emptiness in the composition that Max quite liked; he tried a few vertical photos next to dwarf the couple in relation to the sturdy building and then framed them tightly within the doorway. He smiled as he worked, but despite the satisfaction he got from these photos he still felt like he was intruding— he was the voyeur he implied with the plant shots— and a handful of images later he called it quits.
Seeing the couple was beautiful and it resulted in some wonderful shots, but it unfortunately also highlighted a hole in Max’s life, a wound that he thought had healed. It’d been too long since he’d had someone to call his own, to hold, to love. Sure he met girls, went on a few dates, even took a couple home for a night, but it never went beyond that. Sometimes when he was alone in bed, staring up at the ceiling because he couldn’t sleep, his thoughts returned despite himself to memories of Kaylee.
InesBeatrice 