Instructions for a Heatwave (12 page)

The truth was that she had given herself a time span of five years. She didn’t know what she wanted so she set about sampling all the things she thought she might like. She began an evening class in pottery but left after a term. She helped a friend who ran a gardening firm (the bearded man Michael Francis had spied from the squat’s back windows). She worked at the tearooms in the British Museum. She slept with some men, then some more, then with a couple of women. She tried grass, then acid, but decided, like sleeping with women, that, while pleasant, it wasn’t for her. She knew what she was searching for: something to set a flame under her life, to heat it into activity, into transformation, into a momentum all of its own. But nothing had, so far. She had liked the pottery; she liked the mornings in the museum tearooms, before they got too busy, when it was just the academics, thinking their abstruse thoughts while chewing yesterday’s scones; she hadn’t liked the gardening—just outdoor housework, she thought—or the acid or the moldy walls of the squat. She found work as a set designer at the BBC and for a while she thought this might be what she’d been looking for. She could do it, she was good at it; she had the right kind of photographic
memory, the right kind of devotion to detail. She could construct a set in her mind, then go out and reproduce it in a studio. But after she was briefed to create a Regency drawing room for the fifth time, she felt her attention begin to loosen and wander.

During her sixth Regency drawing room there had come the split—for this is how Aoife thinks of it, of the two of them cleaved apart, like a tree hit by lightning—with Monica, starting with the hospital, then Joe leaving like that and then Peter closing the door on her, so fast she’d had to shuffle backwards. The humiliation, the shock of it. The man almost a stranger, after all. Her sister somewhere in the house behind him; the knowing Monica was there. Going down the path, Aoife had been seized by an urge to throw back her head like a wolf and call her name—Monica, Monica—the way she used to when she was little and Monica was minding her, their mother out somewhere, and she couldn’t find Monica, had lost her in the house. Aoife would stand in the hall and shout her name, terror building in her chest. Shapes were passing and passing outside the sunburst-patterned glass in the front door: what if one of them were to turn, come up the path and loom large and faceless through the striated pane? The space under the sofa was beginning to bother her, the way the stuffing hung down limp in places, like the bodies of rodents. And the hole in the skirting where the old boiler used to be—a horrible mouth into the dark, cluttered intestines of the house. She made it into the hall and no farther because she couldn’t climb the stairs and run the risk that there would be no one upstairs and she’d be alone up there, the light switches too far up the wall to reach, the curtains not yet closed over the dark, and she shouted her sister’s name, over and over. Monica would always come. Always. And she’d always be running. Running down the stairs to her. Running to catch her up in her arms, to hold her face against the soft wool of what she called her sweater set. I wasn’t far away, she’d say, not far at all. And she’d make Aoife cinnamon toast to help her feel better.

On the path outside the farmhouse, Aoife had nearly tripped over a cat with a tufty black coat and she had wanted to call her sister like that, wanted her to come running and to say, not far at all. But instead she sidestepped the cat, even though it was coming at her with its tail held vertical and questioning, and made it away down the leaf-crammed lane.

In Evelyn’s darkroom, Aoife flicks the switch on the developer and, in its cone of white light, arranges the films in strips of ten, lining up the frames the way Evelyn likes: each one trapping a moment in life, a glass placed over a bee.

She is just lining up the last one when the phone startles into life. She leaps across the room and lifts it to her ear. “Nemetov Studio, Aoife speaking.”

“Hey.”

She drops to the floor, almost with relief, pulling the phone into her lap. “You’re back,” she says.

“I am. I got in this morning. I took a train. Several trains, in fact. You wouldn’t believe how long I’ve been traveling.”

“You can tell me later.”

“I can?” She hears the smile in his voice. “You can get away?”

“Sure. Evelyn’s gone off for a lunch and I’ve been officially set free for the day.”

“Your place? In half an hour? Forty minutes?”

“I’ll see you then.”

She shuffles the contact sheets into a rough heap, empties the developing trays and rinses them under the tap. When she emerges from the darkroom, she is surprised by the blaze of afternoon sun, taken aback not to find an answering dark in the apartment, as if she’s lost track of the day, the season. Aoife darts about the apartment, in search of her scattered jacket, sunglasses, keys, bag. She makes her way downstairs, out of the building and down the steps into the subway.

The platform is crowded, the heat overwhelming, but the passing and passing of trains bring a sudden, relieving movement
of air. Aoife takes her place among all the other people waiting. To her left two men are arguing in Italian, one smacking his forehead for emphasis; to her right is an elderly woman in a fox fur and lace gloves. For some reason, Aoife’s mother surfaces in her mind. Gretta had told her once that her aunt had a fox fur and that she’d loved the way its mouth had a spring that would clip over its tail.

Aoife stands on the platform, subway breeze stirring the hem of her dress, thinking of her mother as a child, the head of a fox in her hands. Then her train arrives and she moves forward. In the crush to get through the doors, she allows the tendrils of the fox to brush against her arm.

When she emerges at Delancey Street, Aoife knows she ought to go to the store. She needs milk, she needs cereal, a loaf of bread: basic food items that most people have in their apartments. She hovers outside a store, she contemplates a display of oranges, she picks up a peach and stands there with it in her hand, feeling its solidity, its mouselike skin. A woman with a child balanced on her hip reaches across her for a bunch of bananas and says, as if to Aoife herself, You’ll get what’s coming to you. In the doorway an old man is laboriously counting coins from one hand to the other. Impatience seems to envelop Aoife like a cloak; she finds she cannot face going in, cannot face waiting in line to pay. She puts down the peach, carefully, so that it nestles among others of its kind. As she walks away, the child is refusing the proffered banana with a high-pitched wail.

She lets herself into her apartment with a feeling of such relief it’s as if she hasn’t seen it for weeks. She leans against the door to close it, lets her bag fall to the ground; she chucks her keys onto the board that covers the tub, straightens the sheets and starts to kick things under the bed—loose clothes, used mugs, odd shoes. She is just pushing a bundle of scattered clothes into the bottom of the closet when there is a knock at the door,
and suddenly Gabe is there, and he is lifting her off her feet and his hair is shorter and his jacket is wet and he is saying something about what a shithole of a neighborhood this is and how can anyone in their right mind live here?

·  ·  ·

Aoife met Gabe on a shoot, three months previously. Evelyn was doing portraits of people in their workplaces. She’d done a tattooist, brandishing a needle in his parlor, a dog groomer beside her array of brushes, a costumer in a back room at the Met, her mouth bristling with pins. The last in the series was to be a chef famous for his temper, his exacting secrecy over recipes and the snaking queues of Manhattanites eager to get a table at his restaurant.

Evelyn wanted Arnault, the chef, leaning against a counter in his kitchen. She liked the kitchen, Aoife could tell, a place of steam and gleaming steel, the racks of knives, the stacks of plates, the burners roaring like dragons. Arnault, however, had other ideas. He wanted to be photographed in his tailored suit, among the mirrors, candles and gilt chairs of his restaurant.

Aoife had said nothing during the debate. She unpacked the bags. She opened the tripods. She set up the lights, taping the leads to the floor so that no one would trip. She loaded the cameras with film, set out an array of lenses she thought Evelyn might need. She unfolded the reflector, propped it against the wall. She did all of this in the kitchen: she knew Evelyn would get her way. And, sure enough, just as she was taking Polaroids from various angles, Arnault came back into the kitchen wearing his chef’s whites. Aoife didn’t meet his eye but busied herself laying out the drying snaps for Evelyn to see.

But Evelyn didn’t look at them. She rarely did. She drifted into the room; she moved towards the window, then away from it. She stood for a moment, watching the junior chefs slicing and dicing vegetables into cubes and discs.

Then she moved quickly but imperceptibly, with a minimum of words. She got Arnault to sit on the gleaming chrome counter. He held a knife in each hand. His white top was half undone, his hair combed smooth under his pushed-back cap. Aoife looked through the lens as Evelyn directed her subject. His bearlike frame seemed diminished in the distorted, aquatic, convex world of the camera but Aoife could see that in the finished product he would appear huge, looming, dominating.

At this point, Evelyn appeared at her elbow. She had a peculiar way of moving so that you hardly noticed her. Evelyn looked at Arnault, or through him or around him, as he turned, ranting at one of his assistants about some past misdemeanor.

Aoife handed Evelyn a Polaroid. “I wasn’t sure you’d want—”

“Lights,” Evelyn filled in.

“So I didn’t put them on. I could, if you wanted—”

“No. No need. I like the …” Evelyn trailed off, gesturing at something she believed Aoife could see. “But I’m not sure about the …”

They both considered Arnault, in profile, still ranting, their heads on one side.

“We could move him,” Aoife suggested.

“Hmm.” Evelyn turned and they both considered the empty space by the window. “But the sous chefs …”

“The sous …?”

“Kitchen porters. Sous chefs. Whatever they are. I like them.”

“Ah. Maybe behind him?”

“Yes. Two on …”

“Each side.”

Aoife arranged them, getting them into frame. When she peered down the lens again, she smiled. The angle made the sous chefs appear small, slight pygmies behind their master.

Evelyn held out her hand for the Polaroid. She glanced at it, she pushed her hair back off her face, she stepped up to the
camera, and Aoife found that she, as she always did at this point, exhaled, a long, outgoing breath and she waited for the reassuring
click-sclurr-click
of the camera’s intricate inner machinery.

But there was just silence. Evelyn straightened up. She frowned. She said, “Oh.”

Aoife darted forward. “What?” She glanced over the camera, she examined the light in the room. “What’s the matter?” She looked back at Arnault and saw that something was wrong. What was it? Arnault was there, crouched threateningly on his counter, the sous chefs huddled behind him; the knives were flashing pleasingly in the sun. But something was missing. Then she saw that one of the sous chefs wasn’t there. He’d gone. Instead of four, there were now three.

Aoife found him out the back, by the garbage cans, smoking a cigarette.

“Hi,” Aoife began, resisting the urge to seize his sleeve and drag him back in. “When you’ve finished, do you think you could—”

“That’s Evelyn Nemetov, isn’t it?” he cut across her.

Aoife raised her eyebrows. “Yes.”

“I thought so.” He took a drag. “That’s quite something, though I doubt he”—the sous chef tipped his head towards the kitchen—“has the faintest idea who she is.”

“Right. Listen, I really need—”

“I saw her last show at MoMA. Incredible. Those shots of families living on the streets. Were you working with her then?”

“Um, yes.” Aoife nodded her head and then shook it, confused about where the conversation was leading them. “I was. Do you think—”

“Must be amazing, assisting her.”

“It is. So, it would be great if you could come back into the kitchen because—”

“I can’t be in your photograph.”

Aoife stared at him. He was about her age, perhaps a little older. He had the milk-pale skin of someone who spends too long indoors, a lanky frame, wild black hair that fought for release from its kitchen cap and eyes so dark they concealed their pupils. He stood with his arms folded, leaning against a garbage can, looking at her with a frown on his face.

“It’ll be published, won’t it? In a magazine, a newspaper. I’d love to be in it. But I can’t.”

Aoife shifted from one leg to the other. “I don’t understand. What could possibly—”

He gave a short laugh and threw his cigarette butt to the ground. “You’re English, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“You sound English.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“What are you, then?”

Aoife sighed. “Busy is what I am. Look, we need four people behind him. The shot won’t work if there are three. I need you to come back into the—”

“How about”—Evelyn was suddenly there, stepping between them—“if you wore sunglasses? And we pulled your hat down low? Would that work?”

The man looked at her. He rubbed at his stubble with a palm. “For you, Evelyn Nemetov,” he said solemnly, “I would do that.”

Evelyn inclined her head. She fished in her pocket and brought out a pair of sunglasses, small blue discs suspended in wire frames. “You can wear mine.” And she patted him on the arm as she gave them to him.

“I don’t get it,” Aoife burst out. “Why on earth …”

Evelyn looked from the sous chef to Aoife and back again, or at the stretch of air between them, as if finding some text there that was interesting to her. A shadow of a frown passed over her
face and then was gone. “I believe our friend here to be a man of principle. Am I right?”

He put on the sunglasses and gave Evelyn a smile.

Evelyn turned to her. “He’s a draft dodger, Aoife,” she muttered. “Don’t you ever read the papers?”