Buildings Don’t Smile

Developer. Stop Bath. Fixer. Wash and Dry.
She’d done it so many times it hap­pened almost with­out think­ing. The egg timer was for the other stu­dents in Mr. Groban’s (Gro for short) class the ones who had other things on their mind in the dark room. But not Miranda. She loved the process. It was like magic tricks being done before her, and each time she wanted to try and fig­ure out the magician’s sleight of hand. If she stood at a dif­fer­ent angle at the next show, per­haps she could see the rab­bit hing­ing in a cage behind his hat, could see the sil­ver halide crys­tals flirt­ing with the DEKTOL devel­oper when (poof!), the vis­ceral liq­uid rejects the exposed paper by remov­ing half of it’s char­ac­ter­is­tics. The remain­der are put in the stop to end the tor­ture, put the organic mate­r­ial to rest in a watery grave until Miranda could exhume it, put the pic­ture on her wall with the other vic­tims. But the other stu­dents had other things on their mind, so they would set the egg timer.
* * *
“ Thanks for the ride home, Gro.”
“ Make no men­tion of it, Miranda.”
“ Why do you talk like that?”
The car made its way across the bypass out of the high school. Miranda’s house was ten min­utes away by car, but it might take her close to an hour by foot, at a saunter. Perhaps she could make it faster briskly, but not in today’s shoes. She needed a new pair of Jack Purcell’s as piece of rub­ber as thick as a clar­inet reed was all that sep­a­rated the ball of her foot from the ground. But they looked good with this skirt, so she endured. The only thing that could ruin her footwear com­pro­mise was miss­ing the bus after meet­ing with her chem tudor. Luckily, she spot­ted Gro unlock­ing his Altima.
“ Talk like what?”

“ Like, ‘make no men­tion of it’?”
“ Is that odd. how should I be speak­ing?”
“ I don’t know. Maybe, ‘don’t worry about it’ or ‘no prob­lem’.”
“ But it is a prob­lem.”
He had a dry sense of humor that was usu­ally a redeem­ing fac­tor. Every now and again it could cause con­fu­sion and sud­den bouts of ado­les­cent mis­trust. The pho­tog­ra­phy instruc­tor thrived on his unpre­dictabil­ity. “ Oh, I’m sorry, I can walk from here you know. It’s no big deal.
“ Relax, Miranda. I’m only kid­ding with you.”
“ So it’s no prob­lem?”
“ My dear, you live on the oppo­site side of town that requires tak­ing a one way bypass due to which, if I intend on get­ting home, I must drive an extra two miles before end­ing up back where I started, while in the mean­time, out tyran­ni­cal com­man­der in chief invades a nation across the globe so his tyran­ni­cal side­kick could get more petro­leum for him­self while the price in our tyranny shoots ever upward and my mileage hasn’t got­ten any bet­ter in fif­teen years. So in short, no, of course it’s no prob­lem.”
“ I don’t know much about pol­i­tics, Gro.”
“ You will.” Sigh.
He was tak­ing the short­cut through the park. The route was beau­ti­ful but dan­ger­ous. Speed limit there was on twenty-five, and the ground was state-owned, so it was troop­ers, not cops that would bust you. But Gro was old enough to know how to drive, not like Miranda and her friends who paid no mind to sig­nage.
“ Hey how come there’s so many pic­tures of archi­tec­ture in your class­room?”
“ Why? Would you rather I have some flow­ers? Perhaps por­trai­ture?”
“ I don’t know. What’s wrong with those things. I mean, you teach us that stuff.”
“ Yeah. You think Mrs. Wilcox likes teach­ing about can­cer­ous cells in anatomy or Mr. Boliner gets excited about the Holocaust? We teach what we must.”
Red light. They were out of the park.
“ Are you com­par­ing flow­ers to the Holocaust?”
“ Of course not. I’m com­par­ing pho­tographs of them. Take those flow­ers on your skirt as an exam­ple.”
He pointed but the light turned green so he put both hans back on the wheel at ten and two. Even with a good eleven inches between the tip of his index fin­ger and her kneecap, her left leg moved closer to her right, as though he had pushed her.
“ Those flow­ers are an artists ren­di­tion of some­thing he or should cold never do.”
“ Gro, I’m sorry, I don’t get it.”
“ Flowers are nature. God or what­ever other power there is out there cre­ated the flower not the artist.”
“ But what’s wrong with cap­tur­ing that.”
“ A flower should be found out in the wild, and plucked and smelled and expe­ri­enced. That’s how we must inter­act with nature. On a per­sonal level.”
“ And those build­ings?”
“ Man made those.”
“ And what about por­traits? What’s so can­cer­ous about them?”
“ This is hard for me to explain, Miranda. And these aren’t fact, remem­ber. This no les­son, just an old man’s opin­ion.”
“ Those facades. I rec­og­nize some of them from New York, but oth­ers. well, I just don’t see what’s so spe­cial about them.”
They had turned in to he devel­op­ment. Only three more streets and she was home to kick off the beaten up shoes and get on the com­puter.
“ I took those pic­tures.”
“ All of them?”
“ In twenty dif­fer­ent cities across America.”
” They’re really good. That’s why I ask. I want to take bet­ter pic­tures, like the ones you take Gro. But I don’t know what I’m miss­ing.”
“ You’re one of my best stu­dents.”
“ I want to be bet­ter.”
“ You know what’s great about a man-made struc­ture, I mean sky­scrap­ers, I mean the real kind that took the sweat and blood of, not con­struc­tion work­ers, but true arti­sans? You know what attracts me to them more than por­traits, more than flow­ers? They are per­ma­nently posed. All the work is on the pho­tog­ra­pher to find the right spot, the per­fect way to cap­ture their essence with­out any inter­ven­tion from the struc­ture. They can’t move. They can’t gain weight. They can’t smile. They’re the per­fect sub­ject.”
He parked in her dri­ve­way.
She stared out at her house con­sid­er­ing his state­ment. He was her hero, the rea­son she got into pho­tog­ra­phy. But she had an answer for him. Normally she would keep it to her­self. Not on this day.
“ Metal expands.”
“ I’m sorry?”
“ Well in dif­fer­ent weather con­di­tions some metal expands and con­tracts, some­times in build­ings, too. Like if you could com­press a year down to a minute, it would look like the build­ing is breath­ing.”
“ I don’t see how that–”
“ And really tall sky­scrap­ers actu­ally bend with the wind a lit­tle bit, unno­tice­able to most humans. In a short time lapse I bet it’d look like some build­ings were wob­bly…”
“ That doesn’t–”
“…So, tech­ni­cally, if a pho­tog­ra­pher found the right spot, as you said, and set the expo­sure just right, well, I bet you could get a build­ing to smile.”
“ I didn’t say that they couldn’t smile. Just that they don’t.”
“ Oh Gro. You’re so funny. Buildings can’t smile. In any case I’d rather shoot my friends pick­ing daisies than go chas­ing a wob­bling, con­tract­ing pile of steel. Thanks for the ride.”
And she was out of the car and in her house. The teacher was pleased with his work that after­noon, though he dared not crack a grin.

—

Listening to:

Aimee Mann

Lost in Space