He looked again at the picture. Coca-Cola sign, trademark red and opalescent white, badged upon a sky of shocking, ozone blue. Edging the frame, canyon-coloured brick of a service station to which the sign was fixed. Beyond, a parched highway stretched unto desert, endless.
Restless want stirred in his chest, his heart.
The image was set in a thick, matte red frame. A fluro yellow dot was stuck to it. $15. He didn’t have the money. He collected it 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. The want stirred stronger. He would’ve been ten, maybe even nine. How old would she have been?
He looked at the photographer.
She lingered in the shade aways 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 part of the bazaar. Her table was a fair wander from the main hustle and bustle, up a sloping street, alongside booths advertising crystals and palm-reading and water therapies – he wasn’t convinced any of these were officially part of the market. He was the only one here and he was conscious of how long he’d been studying her photos. 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 unfazed, unlike her neighbouring stallholders; she appeared to care not for making conversations or sales; she allowed them to drift, and she continued to watch. As did he.
He believed she was considering him.
He didn't know why. Normally he would’ve been embarrassed by this kind of thought. Maybe even self-conscious at his obviousness. But there was something else keeping him here. And he wanted to know. The restlessness was stronger than his shame. Or his ego.
She drifted closer, suddenly, into the sunlight, opposite him, separated by her table of photographs. Her movements were awkward, as if she were unsure of herself, her intentions; as if puzzled by him. She asked, ‘This one you like, oui?’
She was slightly taller. He couldn’t tell her age – early twenties, maybe older? But. Older than him. That was evident. He tried to remember if he’d ever met anyone French. Even in her slight awkwardness, she was archetypal; the hat, the dress, the lithe, tanned limbs, the bone structure – it all motifed with what he knew from movies, books, pop-culture, and gave sudden, vivid definition to the term, chic. In response, he felt every bit his 17 years; bony, haphazardly organised in shorts and thongs and t-shirt and unbrushed hair and braces (braces!). At the same time, that was peripheral. Any other instant in his life where something like this might have happened: a suddenness of chemistry with a girl at school, the few scant requited crushes; those fumbling, awkward encounters of confused connection derailed by his youth, his moodiness, the self-consciousness of his ungainly body – all seemed so suddenly unimportant, inconsequential.
He looked at her. She met his gaze.
‘They’re all good,’ he stated, eyebrows drawn together in concentration. He looked at the Coca-Cola photo again, still held gently 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 why is it good? unanswered by the want.
She laughed, nervously, at ease with her nervousness. ‘Oui. Uh, this one, I like also.’
A brief stillness as they both contemplated.
And the thrum of the bazaar. People talking and cars purring and birds calling. And the heat of the day. The humidity of Queensland like chronic fatigue. Circling them like a whirlpool, drawing them deeper down in to.
‘When did you start taking photos?’ He asked, at last.
She puffed out her cheeks and blew as she considered. ‘Oh. Very young. This is what I’ve always wished,’ she laughed. ‘It is very French, non?’ Then she peered at him from beneath the darkness of her sunhat. Her eyes were green. Like his. ‘You are an artist also, oui?’
He nodded, ‘I write.’
‘You are good, I think.’
‘I am. Sometimes.’
‘You have travelled?’
He hesitated. Looked again at the distance stretching in the photo he held, at the many distant lands arranged across her table. Thought of the span of years between them.
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 the misstep, the reveal of his youth, his eagerness. She said nothing. Her smile grew warmer, kinder. 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, to fall deep inside the restlessness and at last close the circle on its yearning. He felt that he was walking a tightrope. He felt that every word must be carefully considered. He felt he could make no error. How long could he continue this version of himself?
‘There you are!’
His mother’s voice snapped the reverie like a twig beneath a boot, and now here she was alongside them both in a flurry of late-middle-aged anxiety, breathless from the hill as she said, ‘I’ve been waiting at the car, I thought you’d gotten– oh.’
A moment longer, the photographer's eyes lingered on his, then he saw the mask of detachment fix, the withdrawal of the tendrils that ever so briefly connected them; 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.
The photographer shifted her gaze to regard the new arrival. His mother smiled politely at the her, then peered at her son, at the image he held, blinking and frowning against the bright afternoon light as she attempted to piece together whatever subtext she'd stumbled into.
'Are you a photographer?'
'Mum.'
'What?'
He was still clutching the photo.
She pursed her lips, noticed the fluroscent dot. She lowered her voice. ‘Ask for a discount.’
‘Mum!’
‘Don’t be silly – she’s an entrepreneur. Like me. Well! Do you want it? Do you have enough?’
He felt the photographer observing.
‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘No.’
Satisfied, his mother dumped her overlarge handbag on table and began to rummage. 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.
Shame.
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.’