He studied the picture which so transfixed him. Coca-Cola sign - trademark red and opalescent white - badged upon a sky of shocking, ozone blue. Edging the frame, the canyon-coloured brick of a service station to which the sign was fixed and beyond: a parched highway stretching unto endless desert.
Restlessness stirred.
The image was set in a thick, matte red frame with a fluro yellow dot stuck to it. $15. He didn’t have the money.
He lifted the photo from the table in both hands, delighting in its weight and heft. He turned it over. On the back, in looping, elegant pen: Montana, USA, 1994. He would’ve been ten, maybe even nine. How old would she have been?
He looked again at the photographer.
She lingered in the shade back from the stall, face partially obscured by a floppy, wide-brimmed hat. She wore a light dress, for the day was hot. He couldn’t tell if she returned his look, or if her gaze was turned upon the trickle of folk who’d somehow stumbled to this cranny of the bazaar. He was the only one here and he was conscious of how long he’d been studying her photos without offering to buy any. Others had come and gone. She’d smiled nicely and made some brief hellos in French-accented-English. But nobody had stopped long. She seemed not to care for making conversations or sales. She allowed them to drift and she continued to observe, cat-like.
He believed she was considering him. He didn't know why he thought that. Normally, this would have embarrassed him. But there was something else keeping him here. And he needed to know. The restlessness was stronger than his shame.
Abruptly, she moved closer, into the sunlight, until they were separated only by her display. Her movements were awkward, as if unsure of her intentions. She met his gaze.
‘This one you like, oui?’ She questioned, uncertainly.
‘They’re all good,’ he stated, eyebrows drawn together in concentration. He looked at the Coca-Cola photo again, still held in his hands. ‘This one is very good.’ He heard the truth and the confusion in his voice, the restlessness pooled and resonant in his chest, stretching out to the photo, to the photographer - the unasked question of, why is it good?
She laughed, nervously. ‘Oui. Uh, this one, I like also.’
From beneath the darkness of her sunhat she peered at him. ‘You are an artist also, oui?’
He paused, then nodded, ‘I write.’
‘You have travelled?’
He looked at the distance stretching in the photo he held, at the many distant lands arranged across her table. He shook his head.
‘You must,’ she asserted. ‘For artists, travel is essential.’
‘I want to go to England. To Europe. Next year - when I’m- I’m half-English. I can get a Visa.’
He heard his youth, his eagerness. Her smile did not change. He wanted to keep speaking, to say everything, anything, to ask a million questions about her art, how she knew – if it was the same as how he did, sometimes – he wanted to talk about the want. He felt that he was walking a tightrope. He felt that every word must be carefully considered. He felt he could make no error.
‘There you are!’
His mother’s voice broke the reverie like a twig beneath a boot, breathless from the hill as she said, ‘I’ve been waiting at the car, I thought you’d gotten– oh.’
He saw the photographer's mask fix, saw her shrink into the shadows of her hat. Felt his bony limbs in his t-shirt, his braces pressing against the inside of his lips, the too-hot sun on his skin.
His mother smiled at them both, then peered at her son, at the image he held.
'Oh that's lovely. Do you want it? Do you have enough?’
He felt the photographer observing.
‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘No.’
His mother began searching through her handbag. Without looking up she asked, ‘Do you have change for a twenty?’
The photographer politely smiled. ‘Oui.’
Others had drifted to the stall now and were browsing. The photographer floated to her moneybox in the shade. She bade hellos at the new arrivals. A neighbouring stallholder made a comment. The photographer laughed.
His mother pulled out a twenty, gave it to him. ‘You pay for it,’ she whispered.
The photographer returned, face hidden in the shadows of her sunhat. She held out her hands. He passed her the photo. She slipped it into a brown paper package, sealed it with translucent tape. He passed her the twenty. She returned him a five dollar note.
‘Did he tell you that he writes?’ Brightly asked his mother.
The photographer handed back the photo, looking at her other customers.
‘Oui.’