After Images [3]
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t remember.”
I had the photograph in my hand. From the second we saw it in the envelope she got from the photo lab, I’d been drawn to it.
The remainder of the photographs were the standard short trip away shots. Dancing. Drinks. Dinners. Cigarettes hanging from hands as they shouted something towards the camera. The countryside, wine country. Shots of Rebecca, head down on the bar of a winery when she’d had too many glasses of a heavy red.
It looked like a fun trip. They talked about it as if it was a fun trip.
In the middle of the shots was the photograph.
Vacant stares. An action about to take place that was difficult to interpret.
Then she says that she doesn’t remember. Has no idea when it was taken or who.
The obvious solution could be that there’s some sort of table. A timer on the camera. They’re drunk and the shot is ruined because they don’t move fast enough and are in motion when the camera beeps.
Drunk enough and you’d miss that you stuffed up the shot.
She doesn’t remember.
“Well, did you have anyone else in the room at any point?” I ask, feeling something beginning to rise in me but not sure which way it might break.
“I don’t remember. I don’t think so. I don’t remember this photo.”
She calls Sarah and fills her in. Says Sarah doesn’t remember anything either.
“Well, what the fuck is this photograph, Bec?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
I can partially hear Sarah telling her to tell me to calm down. That its just a photograph.
“Did you…” I leave it hanging. She’d cheated on me before. She knows the question from my look. I don’t want to pick at the scab too much, I know where that leads us.
She was drinker. Not far off a drunk.
We’d go out and she’d not spend a cent on drinks all night, and end up talking to some guy that was too friendly. We’d end up fighting on the way home. Me being one or two drinks past where I should be at the wheel, her mostly gone. She’d cry. I’d yell.
One time she cheated on me.
Come the morning, she wouldn’t remember. I’d usually wait until we’d made a run for fast food and then I’d raise it. She wouldn’t remember.
I thought she was gorgeous.
She thought I was funny and clever.
We could have fun.
Sarah remembered. She wasn’t a black out drinker. I didn’t trust Sarah.
My blood was starting to pump harder.
Rebecca looked like she could turn at any minute.
For the time, I left it.