The Photographer's Truth by Ralph Josiah Bardsley

Author:Ralph Josiah Bardsley [Bardsley, Ralph Josiah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626396388
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2016-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen—The First Paparazzi

The next day, I arrived at work to find a print out on my desk. It was from the Runway Confidential blog. Someone had taken the liberty of translating it into English for me. It read:

“Spotted: Luca Sparks snacking at Café DeTra—with a new friend. The famous photog, who hasn’t taken a photo since he abandoned the business years ago, has been laying low for a little while. But tonight, he was out on the town in what looked to be painter’s overalls. A new fashion statement? Come on Luca, why are you teasing us? Pretty soon, all the princes of Paris will be out and about in carpenter’s smocks.”

I re-read the post two or three times trying to figure out how someone would know I was the one out with him. I finally figured that someone from Môti must have been at the café and seen us there together. Alfonse, perhaps. I folded the print out several times and set it in the trash.

After that evening, I saw Luca more and more often. We started to go out almost every night. During the middle of the work day, I’d find myself looking at a photograph or digging through a shelf of garments in the Môti attic, and some color or smell would set off a memory. I’d start replaying a conversation from the night before in my head. Most days, by the middle of the afternoon I found myself wondering about what might be in store for that evening. What wild bar or nightclub, what insanely beautiful view of the city, what intense conversation would consume us that night? At those points, I was almost unable to concentrate on my work. But then I would reel myself back in and force myself to focus.

Four thirty or five o’clock would roll around, and I would feel so confined in that attic space that I just had to get out. I’d grab my phone and my wallet and head over to the construction site at pretty much the same time. He sometimes brought his play clothes, as he liked to call them, and he would change in the back hall of his work place. And we would go sit in one of those casually elegant sidewalk cafes along the small side streets of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés, or we might occasionally wander off to the Marais or maybe the 11th arrondissement, where there were several cheaper, rowdier bars.

On those nights, we were younger than our years. We would consume huge amounts of cheap liquor, and we would move away from the safety of wine and drink cognac and whiskey and sometimes even martinis if we were feeling particularly extroverted. We also moved away from the safety of wine conversation to the depth of whiskey and martini talk, subjects like life and death and love.

At first I was surprised with how young I had become in so short a time. Night after night of outlandish adventure can be an aphrodisiac, even in the most platonic way.

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