Page 42 of Goode Vibrations
I reached for it. “Been a while since I’ve run a roll into a manual. Let me. It’ll be fun.” I took the camera from her and a new roll of black and white, fed the end of the celluloid in, settled the canister in place, closed the back. “My first camera was a cheapo Mom got me thirdhand when I was…oh god, eight? Nine? I used that till I was fourteen, and that’s when Dad got me my first good one. A vintage Leica. I still have that one, actually, carry it around in my gear, but I think the shutter is stuck and haven’t gotten around to getting it fixed.”
“What was your first digital camera?” she asked, playing with the Nikon to familiarize herself with it.
“That one,” I answered. “My portfolio was all black and white from actual film, but when Jerry got me this job, I used my entire savings to buy that D6 and a handful of lenses. I didn’t get my first pro-quality telephoto zoom lens till after my first paycheck, though, because those cost a mint.”
I watched her for a few minutes, fascinated by the way she chose her subjects. A lot of her work was fairly close up, which gave me an idea. I shouldered her Minolta and jogged back to the van, came back with my macro lens.
“Here. Ever shoot macro?”
She smiled, nodded, but it was bittersweet. “I had a bunch of lenses for my Canon. Zoom, a macro lens as well as macro filters, a portrait prime. I fell asleep on the train with the camera bag under my feet, and when I woke up, it was gone.”
“People suck,” I answered.
A shrug. “Yeah, but there’s as many good people in the world as there are shitty ones. You just gotta focus on looking for the good.”
She switched my prime for the macro and immediately knelt in the dirt to get a series of shots of a big fluffy caterpillar inching along the side of the road. I returned to the corn rows after watching her for another minute or two, worked the solar flare angle again in black and white, and then tried some avant-garde, almost abstract views of the stalks and rows as geometric patterns of vertical lines and shadows.
We spent more than an hour before we’d gotten everything we wanted. The sun had fully set by that time, and the chilly awkwardness between Poppy and me seemed to have gone.
“You want to get to Dubuque and find somewhere to crash for the night?” I asked.
She nodded, and her eyes betrayed renewed lust. “Yeah,” she murmured. “Sounds good.”
It was another hour into Dubuque itself, and it took us twenty minutes to find a decent motel. We parked outside the office and went in together. The clerk behind the low counter was reading an Agatha Christie paperback, smoking a cigarette despite the “no smoking” placard above his head, feet propped on the desk, half-moon readers low on his nose. He was older, bald with a long gray beard, thin but with a round belly.
“Single king is seventy-five,” he said, without looking up from his book. “Pay now. Check out at noon or stop in to extend a night.”
I glanced at Poppy. “Uh.”
She smirked, snorted. “Don’t get weird on me now, Errol. One room.”
I shrugged. “Didn’t want to presume.”
She snorted again. “Well, I can’t say I don’t appreciate the sentiment, because I do, but I think at this point one room and one bed is a foregone conclusion.”
The clerk wasn’t amused by our banter. “Seventy-nine-fifty.”
I handed him my card, and he took it, swiped it, handed me the receipt to sign, took it, shoved it into a slot in the cash register drawer, handed me the customer copy…all one-handed, without even looking up from his book. He reached over his head, glanced up, pulled down an actual key on a ring attached to a large white plastic card with a red number 12 on it, tossed it onto the counter. Went back to his book. “Room twelve. Halfway down on the left.”
“Thanks,” I said, stuffing my card back into my wallet.
He just grunted, and ignored us.
Bemused, I led the way back out the van. Twelve was nearer the end than the middle, so I moved the van in front of the room. Poppy had the key, so she unlocked it and went in, immediately turned on the ancient air-con unit while I grabbed my suitcase and toiletries. Poppy grabbed her bag and went back into the room.
It was small, with fake wood beadboard paneling, popcorn ceiling, a ten-year-old TV with a cable box beside it, a single king bed covered in a scratchy-looking white comforter with four thin pillows. A decent bathroom with a bathtub and a showerhead I’d have to bend backward to fit under, a pedestal sink, and a rust-pitted mirror.
I saw Poppy glancing at the shower as she sat down on the bed and began unlacing her boots. “Go ahead and take the first shower,” I said.
“That would be amazing,” she said, sounding breathlessly grateful. “I smell awful. Haven’t had a shower in a few days.”
I smirked at her. “I didn’t notice any smell.”
She grinned, snorting. “You weren’t licking my armpits.”
“Yeah nah, not my kink, but if that’s what you like, I’ll give it a go.” I leaned into her, touched my nose to her arm near her armpit, and gave a sniff. “But, I will say, a shower wouldn’t go amiss first.”
She cackled, shoving me away. “Ew. Jerk.”