camera lucida 3/5
::previous
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Meisa pounces on him when he makes it through the door; his mumbled "I'm home," is answered with a bright "Welcome home," and she's throwing her arms around his neck in a fond hug. He hears voices coming from beyond the entry way, and a moment later, his housemates are crowding around, with a ragged chorus of "Happy New Year." Everyone is buoyant and celebratory, and the house smells amazing; obviously, someone has been cooking.
Turns out they've all been cooking: bread and cake, curry and roasted meat, and the food is in varying states of completion. The kitchen is in a kind of barely-ordered chaos, no room for another body, so Meisa sends him away. Tito and Joseph help him haul in all his luggage and equipment.
"Go on," Tito, the Puerto Rican multimedia artist who also lives upstairs, says, one elbow braced high up on the outside of the door to Kame's room, his fingers lightly touching his corn-rowed hair. The edge of his snug t-shirt has ridden up, revealing a narrow strip of flesh and the cut of his caramel-colored hip where it descends into the top of tight, low-cut jeans. "Do whatever you need to do, 'kay? Take a bath, or a nap, or jerk off, whatever, man. We'll check on you later if you're up for dinner."
Kame nods with a smile. "Thanks."
He takes a shower first, slow, extra hot, stuporous, and he watches the grime of twenty hours of travel swirl down over his feet and into the drain. He slides open the shower door, steps out. The bathroom is hung with fog. He looks at the empty toothbrush holder before rummaging in his travel kit and he stares at his naked body in the mirror, for the first time in a while. He's thin, but that's not unusual. His cheeks, with the weight he put on a couple years ago, have retained their round fullness, but it's his hair, what there is of it, that he's caught on. It was the first sign, years ago, the confirmation he'd been waiting for. Now, he's sure it's worse, isn't it. He touches his head gingerly, presses fingertips delicately to his cheekbones, leans closer to the mirror, examines the whites of his eyes. He looks away, gaze sweeping down, down, over ribs and hollows, hips and shadows, angles and planes, feels exhaustion drag at him.
He doesn't pause in the hall outside the bathroom, or look across into the emptiness of Jin's room. Humidity follows him, clings to his skin, the scant wet locks that plaster to his skull. He looks around in faint distaste; he's been gone for nearly three weeks, dust seems to coat everything. He pulls the drop-cloth from his bed, plugs in the air cleaner in the corner, and peeling back the clean sheets he'd put on the bed before he left, he shrugs out of his heavy bath robe and crawls under the comforter.
He stares into darkness. Blackout cloth hangs from his windows and there are wires strung across his room, zigzagging from wall-to-wall, and they are empty. He'd pulled everything down before he left, dissatisfied. He needs to talk to Jin. He needs to try again.
Kame closes his eyes.
Kame opens his eyes.
He gasps, blinking into darkness, blind, heart racing, disoriented, terrified, his ears ringing with the sound of squealing tires, shrieking metal, his body tensed in every muscle from the wrenching jerk, a tight spin flattening him back and then crushing him forward, the long, endless roll, the bone-jarring, ear-splitting, shattering crash. He can't breathe, there's no air, there is a tremendous weight on his chest and he can't move.
It's a long time before Kame comes back to himself, that he understands he isn't hanging upside down, that he isn't blind or broken. That he is lying in his bed, in pitch darkness. He tries, and fails to unclench his locked muscles. Stiff and aching, Kame rolls onto his side, painfully curls into a ball, his knees hugged tightly to his chest.
This time when he wakes, there's only darkness, and deep quiet in his soundproofed room. He pushes himself out of bed and fumbles for the lights. He has to find his phone to see the time, there in the pocket of his discarded pants; there are no clocks in his room. He hasn't been out as long as he feels, only a few hours. A message icon is flashing, but he ignores it, tosses the phone on top of a stack of contact sheets. Still naked, he shivers, his hair rising up all over his entire body, so he dresses quickly. Finds a soft beanie cap in a drawer full of caps, and pulls it down over his head, pads out into the house.
It still smells amazing; better, even, than before. He rounds the corner, heading toward the sound of voices and music. Everyone looks up when he appears in the doorway, groggy, hooded sweatshirt and fleece pants hanging a little loose on his frame, a narrow slip of muscle and bone.
They're all smiling and beckoning him in; Joseph finds a place setting for him, while Tito stands and spoons what looks and smells like his Jamaican grandmother's famous goat curry into a bowl. There's more food than he can possibly finish; Meisa's char siu arranged in beautiful slices on a platter; Joseph's black-eyed peas with smoked ham hocks and fluffy southern biscuits; Maude's sweet finish of pecan pie and blueberry buttermilk cake. After dinner there are gifts; Kame hands around the chocolates he brought from Italy and mochi from Japan which Maude and Tito immediately break into. The five of them crash out on couches in the back lounge with a crackling fire and catch up with him over booze and sweets. By the time the evening ends and his housemates begin, one by one, to wander off to bed, Kame's warm and sleepy and more than a little drunk. As he makes his way back to his room, turning lights out as he goes, he pauses in front of Jin's empty room. He didn't spend the evening thinking about Jin, about the meal he was missing, about when he'd be back. The darkness of Jin's room seems to stretch back, receding before his eyes. Kame turns, stumbles into his room, and closes the door. By the time he's collapsed into his own bed, and pulled the comforter in close, his nightmare has finally receded.
When he looks at his phone later, there's a message from Jin, asking for a ride from the airport, with ONLY IF YOU'RE FREE!!1 in all caps. Kame replies: I'll be free.
So Kame is waiting when Jin comes through the double doors of the customs & immigration area at the airport with a small backpack and a hardshell guitar case, his winter coat draped over one arm, a dark blue knit hat pulled down to his eyebrows, dragging a huge suitcase. Kame waves his arms from where he's standing behind a barrier. Jin is just past the worst of the crowd when Kame reaches him.
Jin cocks his head. "You're smiling," he says.
"So are you," Kame answers, shoving his arm gently.
"Yeah," Jin says, not resisting when Kame reaches down to take the rolling suitcase from him, "but you look totally different when you smile."
"Good-different or bad-different," Kame asks, a step behind Jin as they make their way through streams of people.
Jin turns to look at him over his shoulder. "Oh, good-different, definitely," he says, "you look like, ten years younger."
Kame begins to splutter. "What."
Jin shrugs as Kame draws up beside him. They've stopped outside the restroom, and Jin's feet are shifting. "You're too serious. You need to lighten up, really. Listen, I'm gonna hit the head."
"Fine," Kame bites off, but he's grinning.
When he gets back, they walk down the long ramp to the exit. At the bottom, where it levels out before the exit doors, Kame pays for parking at a machine and walks them out to his SUV in the short-term parking lot. The two of them heave Jin's overweight suitcase into the back, placing the rest behind the front seats.
"So how was the flight," Kame asks.
"Long," Jin says, and when Kame looks over, he can see the exhaustion plainly writ across Jin's face. Jin turns to meet his gaze. "Thanks for coming."
Kame smiles. "Of course."
It's quiet in the car, traffic isn't too bad on the east-bound airport road, but the west-bound toll road is completely backed up. Kame's not looking forward to hooking back into the beltway.
Jin rolls his head over; Kame turns his head. "So we should talk," Jin says, quiet, "later on. I mean, I want to talk to you."
Kame has been trying not to think about it, not since he left Japan, not since he drifted away in a taxi and left Jin standing on a Tokyo sidewalk.
He says: "Okay." He tries to sound nonchalant, like he hasn't been second-guessing himself all along. "Yeah. I, uh. I need to talk to you, too." His gaze is steady on the road ahead now; he doesn't look back at Jin.
The next morning, Kame has his eye pressed to a loupe, hunched over a light box with a slide sheet when the lights flash in the room. He looks up from the loupe, pushing large headphones back to hang around his neck, and turns in his chair.
"Hey," he says, startled.
"Hope I didn't scare you," Jin says from where he's leaned into the doorway, in a pair of nice blue jeans and a pink Dolce & Gabbana t-shirt with swirly black and gold letters scrawled all over it. His feet are bare. His hair looks wet, like he's just had a bath, and sure enough, Kame can feel the humidity rolling in from the hall.
"It's okay," Kame says. "Nice shirt."
"You like it? Yamapi gave it to me. Is this a good time? I can come back later."
Kame doesn't need to ask for what. "It's fine."
"Great," Jin says and he tosses something at Kame; it flies through the air, and he catches it against his chest. Open-mouthed, he watches Jin crash land on his bed, stretch his arms out loosely over his head and sprawl his legs. Kame's mouth goes absolutely dry.
"Comfy?" he forces himself to ask, making it sarcastic, to which Jin snickers. Kame looks down, says, "what's this?"
"Oh, I just brought you something for your cap fetish. You know, I don't even know what color your hair is."
Kame stares at him. "My hair is brown," he says automatically, thinking of his eyebrows which he plucks on a schedule and checks regularly. "Here, I'll show you."
He rolls his chair over to a shelf on another section of his long desk that wraps around two corners of the room. Pulling out an album, he heaves it toward the bed where it bounces lightly.
"You can see in there," he explains when Jin sits up and draws the book nearer. Jin looks at him and frowns.
"Okay I know what color your hair is," Jin says, "from that other book-" and Kame's stomach flutters "-when were these done?"
Kame looks away, trying to remember. "I was...twenty? Something like that." Before, he thinks, before the accident, before here. When he looks back, Jin is still watching him. "What," he says, and tries not to sound peevish under Jin's scrutiny.
"Okay," Jin says slowly. He looks down at the album, and then back up at Kame. "So I read the book you gave me."
Should he acknowledge the statement? Should he say thank you?
"-and I didn't know," Jin continues, "any of that. I didn't look you up, so I didn't know."
"That's okay," Kame says.
"I'm really sorry about your mother," Jin says, and his voice is very kind.
Kame chews his lip; he should have remembered that. The book is a recent edition, so of course it would mention that she had died after its publication. "Yes, well." Kame isn't sure what to say. He doesn't look at Jin. "Thank you."
"I'm guessing you were close to her."
"Yes." He can feel himself slipping into a dull monotone.
"Kame," Jin says, and his voice sounds like it's coming from a distance, "can you. Do you mind coming over here? You're really fucking far away. This isn't. I want to. Can I just talk to you." There's a strange note in his voice.
Kame wants to say something snarky, but the words don't come. For a couple seconds, he considers rolling closer, but he knows that isn't what Jin wants; it's a stupid thing to be stubborn and cagey about. The room feels smaller with Jin in it, like the walls contracted the second he passed through the doorway. Kame's getting used to the way his chest feels when Jin is around, to the way each breath strikes against the wall of muscle covering his ribcage. Removing his headphones, Kame forces himself to stand up and leave his comfortable office chair and walk from the far end, four meters to Jin, twelve steps, the wires zigzagging just above his head, maybe brushing the top of his head.
Kame comes to a stop in front of the bed, unsure of what he should do. He doesn't want to sit next to Jin: too intimate. He can't stand: too awkward. Finally, he turns and sits on the floor, his back leaned against the foot of the bed, a meter between them, draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, occupying the least amount of space in a crowded room. The height difference puts him at a disadvantage; he'll have to look up to Jin, but he doesn't have to look if he doesn't want to.
He listens to Jin breathe out a long audible sigh.
"Listen. If you don't want to talk about this, it's okay," Jin says after a long moment, "but you gave that book to me for a reason, so. You don't have to answer anything you don't want to."
Kame's throat is tight. "Of course," he manages.
"How old were you when she died?"
Which surprises Kame. "Ten."
"So...you guys were all really young when she took these," Jin says, "what was it like?"
Kame huffs a laugh, not expecting the question. "Hard," he says, the first thing that pops into his head. He thinks about that for a moment. "She was a perfectionist; many of them were arranged, posed, you know? They were hard. First the set up, the staging. It could take hours to get the shot she wanted, hours of standing still or lying still, trying to keep an expression, having to start over if something got messed up." Kame twists his neck, looks up at Jin, who's leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "But it was fun, too. She would tell us what she was going for, and sometimes it was like a game to help her get what she wanted, like a puzzle, or something."
Jin shifts forward, and the next thing he knows, Jin's sitting next to him on the floor, and Kame can feel Jin's warmth bleeding into him where their arms touch. He suppresses a shiver.
"Weren't you cold?"
"What?" Kame looks over at him, frowning.
"You were naked," Jin says, looking down at his empty hands, his voice neutral, "in a lot of those photographs. Were you cold?"
Kame shakes his head emphatically. "It was summer in the country. It was really fucking hot. We ran around naked a lot of the time. It wasn't anything we weren't used to. You know."
"Actually, I don't." Kame can hear the smile in Jin's voice. "Do you like the book?"
"Yes," Kame doesn't hesitate. "I think it's incredible."
"You mean, as what. As an objective piece of art?"
"Of course." Kame turns his head slightly. His gaze falls on Jin's mouth, parted for his next question.
"But...what about you. I mean, how do you feel about it as her son, as her subject. As a model." Jin asks carefully, feeling his way through the question.
Kame tilts his head, considering. "Well, those are three different things. And I think all four of us might tell you something different. We're all very different people, you know. As her son-" he pauses.
"As her son, I feel proud. Tremendously proud. She died so young, and yet in that time she created some important bodies of work. She's known for that book. People still talk about it. It's still in print."
"And the rest?"
Kame shrugs, feeling Jin's arm through the motion. "I'm a professional."
"What does that mean? You were a little kid. Was she paying you?"
"Actually, yes. We were paid one hundred yen for every print." His lips twitch as he looks over at Jin and sees his surprise. "What, you didn't think she would pay us?"
Jin's mouth falls open. Clearly, he didn't.
"Look, she wanted us to value what she did for her, so she gave our work a value, which is why we were paid. Sure, it was a nominal amount, but we weren't exploited, if that's what you're thinking."
"I think that's arguable," Jin says softly. "What about the book, though? How did you feel about the world seeing these photos? You're naked, you're banged up, sleeping, dirty, I don't know. Did you even understand what it meant then?"
"Well," Kame turns then, shifting so he can look Jin in the eye, "our parents talked to us about it for a long time. They made sure we knew what it would mean in terms of school, of people, of, of people possibly-" he swallows, because he doesn't like to think about this part "-trying to hurt us, you know. There are really shitty people out there, and of course our parents thought about that, about evil people looking at this book like it's kiddie porn and coming after us somehow. They definitely considered the kind of danger they might be exposing us to."
"How could you possibly understand all that. You were a little kid."
"Maybe we didn't understand everything," Kame says, "but we understood enough. We knew they wanted us to think about it very carefully. And we had the right to veto anything we didn't want published."
Jin is quiet, digesting that.
"Look," Kame says, "I've had this conversation before. I've given interviews. So many times that I can practically recite it in my sleep."
"That doesn't make me feel any better," Jin mutters.
"Why do you need to feel better," Kame asks, surprised.
"I don't know," Jin answers, "but I feel. I don't know. Like someone should have-"
Kame fills in the blank, he knows Jin's thinking what many other people have thought before. -protected you.
"If you want to know if any of it makes me uncomfortable, the answer is yes. Sometimes. Not all the time. When I have to listen to people like your friend Yamashita making jokes about porn, that's annoying. When I think about old guys wanking off to those pictures, I feel sick, especially for my brothers. When people talk about our parents abusing us, I get angry. If people don't like the photographs, that's fine, though. I don't expect everyone to think the way I do. I think my mother was a genius. But there are definitely people who think she was a selfish egomaniac who exploited her family." Kame closes his mouth with an abrupt clack.
"Why did you ask me," Jin says suddenly, "why did you ask me if I'd ever modeled."
Kame meets his eyes, and presses his lips together before answering. "I...was wondering if, if maybe you would model for me."
Jin nods, ducks his head, avoids Kame's eyes.
"I would never want you to do something you don't want to do, and, and if you were interested, I'd pay you, of course," Kame says quickly, "and just to make it very clear, I'm not talking about nude modeling." He shrugs, feeling unhappy, "I normally don't work with models. I mean, I have, on occasion. For my own work, I mean. When I do jobs for magazines or whatever, then I do whatever they need. Sometimes that means models. But my own work? Not so much."
"I suck," Jin says, looking up at last, "I haven't seen any of your work."
Kame shrugs, the corner of his mouth quirking up. "That's okay. It's not, like, a requirement to live in this house. And besides, you've only lived here a few months."
"But. What I mean is. Can I?"
"What," Kame says, frowning.
"You have books, right? I'm just guessing. You said you need to work on a book project. Your last book, you said. I assume that means there were others."
Kame is startled; he has only the vaguest recollection of telling Jin about the book project. "Y-yes. Several. You can look me up online and see some of my work. There are some galleries-"
"Anything around here?"
Kame levels Jin with long look. "Yes," he says slowly, "there are a few. But if you want, I can. I have a studio. I can show you."
Jin gaze darts around Kame's room, at the long desk lining two walls of the room, the zig-zagging wires across part of the room, the blackout cloth on the windows, the piles of contact and slide sheets and the light box. The two large monitors, the open MacBook. "You mean. You don't work out of here?"
Kame grins ruefully. "No. Well, not all the time. For some things, yes. But all the heavy equipment is at my loft. There are some things I can't do here. I don't have a dark room, for one. I can't do any printing here."
"Oh."
Kame laughs. "Yeah, it gets kind of complicated."
"I want to see it."
"Really?" Kame can't help the pleased smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth.
"Yeah, really."
"Does this mean-" Kame bites his lip.
Jin meets his eyes with a tiny, nervous smile. "Yeah," he says. "I'm thinking about it."
Kame only nods.
"You aren't worried about your car?" Jin asks skeptically as they pull up and park on the street in front of a building in the warehouse district.
"Maybe," Kame shrugs, "the neighborhood's gentrifying so it's not as bad as it used to be. Which isn't necessarily a good thing," Kame adds. "And besides, I did twenty years of judo. I'll protect you."
Jin throws him a startled look and Kame grins, feeling his eyes crinkle up behind his opaque black sunglasses. Jin's eyes are still visible behind his large rust-tinted lenses in their designer wire frames. Today he's wearing a chocolate wool stocking cap and he has a feather earring hanging from one lobe; his eyes are puffy, though; another late gig. Kame's fingers itch for a camera, but he can't, not yet.
"Twenty years?" Jin says as they climb out of Kame's SUV; he reaches into the back seat and pulls out a small backpack. Kame reaches for his messenger bag.
"Our parents wanted us to be able to take care of ourselves," Kame says simply.
"Good to know," Jin replies, looking impressed. "I'll make sure to never sneak up on you."
Kame grins again. "That would, uh. That would definitely be safer," he says.
Kame produces a giant keyring from his bag; there are all sorts of locks to undo on their way to his studio, and the alarms to disable and reset. Due to his schedule, he actually hasn't been here in a couple months; however, when they make it through the heavy door, Kame sees that Riisa must have been in recently, since the mail is neatly piled on a table nearby, and there are dropcloths to protect most of the furniture and equipment from dust. He needs to remember to thank her for always taking care of the things he can't be bothered to think about.
"Wow," Jin says, looking up and around. "I don't even know what to look at."
It's a huge, airy space, with large and small pieces mounted on both the outer walls and on floating walls or screens. Angled light pours in the windows all down the right side and concrete pillars recede back into the loft. Kame's spent the last seven years working here off and on, so it's partly studio and dark room, but there are also sections of storage cluttered with junk, equipment, props, furniture. There's heat and plumbing, he could live here if he wanted to, but he's never wanted to.
"Welcome to my office," Kame says. He pulls his messenger bag off, and drops it onto an old cracked leather couch he's occasionally used as a prop. "Let me give you the grand tour."
"And this is my mother's bellows camera," Kame explains, pulling the sheet off to pool on the floor. "Actually it was my grandfather's, and he gave it to her. It's over a hundred years old." It's a large machine sitting on top of an adjustable wooden platform with long legs.
"How does it work?" Jin asks, circling the device, his face scrunched up in puzzlement.
Kame laughs. "Let's just say that it's both complicated and really low-tech. This is as manual as it gets - there isn't even a shutter - I use my hand. But I'm fond of it. It's a piece of my family. My mother left it to me, and I learned how to use it, and I learned how to print from it, which is a whole other story. In a way, this camera has allowed me to travel along this whole line of history in camera technology."
"How so?"
Kame touches the accordioned old leather of the bellows carefully. "I started when I was really young and I only worked with this camera, and it's old so that also basically means nineteenth-century printing techniques. And then I sort of abandoned it and moved on to a newer camera, a nineteen fifty thirty-five millimeter model if I remember right. And then, for a while, I fell in love with Polaroids, man - I loved Polaroids. Lots of people still do. I went back to using a modern large format for a little while, but," he drops his hand from the bellows, and looks out the loft windows, sliding his hands into his pockets, "now I work with whatever I have around. A lot of digital. I shoot some slide film with an SLR. Sometimes I use this Holga toy camera. Or, or a camera phone. Whatever. Everything produces a different effect, and. I've been trying to be more flexible these days." Kame shrugs and flicks his gaze toward at Jin. Jin, who looks like he's trying and failing to understand all the words coming out of Kame's mouth.
"And that was way more than you ever wanted to know. Just stop me when your eyes start to glaze over," Kame says, feeling contrite, "I bet you're sorry you asked, huh. This all gets really technical and boring."
Jin tosses him a rueful glance. "It's okay, I'm sure you'd feel the same if I went all music-geek on you."
"You should bring your guitar next time," Kame says without thinking, "if you want to work." Kame replays the words and flushes, feels himself go hot at his presumption. As if.
Jin's nodding, however, light catching on the sunglasses that are now holding his hair back from his face. "That's a good idea," he says thoughtfully, "maybe I will."
Jin is quiet on the way home, staring out the window, drumming his fingers on his denim-clad thigh. The silence is so charged, Kame is glad he turned the radio on as he takes New York avenue all the way out to the beltway and hits the serious late afternoon traffic. At that point, driving requires most of his concentration, but he lets a little piece be distracted by pictures of the afternoon. The way Jin flipped through pieces of his portfolio, asking questions, actually sounding interested in Kame's answers. The way Jin's face occasionally closed up for reasons Kame doesn't want to pry, but ultimately, the way Jin relaxed around him and his work. He wants Jin to trust him, as a person and as a professional.
Later that evening, after dinner with Joseph and Tito, Kame wanders out to the back terrace where Jin's got a bottle of beer tipped up to his mouth, looking out into the darkness backing onto Rock Creek Park. It's cold and still, with that dampness that feels like a hint of snow, even if the sky is clear, faintly lit by stars. They're still a little too close in to see very much starlight, but Kame loves even the little pinpricks that glimmer through.
Feeling bold, Kame walks up to him, making sure Jin can hear his footsteps, and he bumps him gently with one shoulder.
"You all right?"
Jin's head turns, but the lights from the house behind cast his face in shadow. There's only the barest hint of shine on his eyes.
"Just thinking," Jin says.
Kame waits for him to continue. "About?" he prompts when nothing further comes.
"So what if I do it," and Jin's voice is hoarse, just above a whisper. He looks away.
Kame doesn't need to ask what he's talking about. "Maybe," he licks his lips nervously, "you should tell me what happened."
Kame has the sense that Jin's holding his breath, until finally he hears the exhale, and Jin's shoulders sag.
"Okay," Jin says. "But." He turns his head back toward Kame. "I. I need something stronger than this."
"Sure," Kame nods, feeling lightheaded, "I know just the thing."
When Kame hears Jin's story, he feels sick. They've retreated into the warmth of the house where Kame had followed Jin back into Jin's room. Now Jin is tucked into an armchair in the corner next to an acoustic guitar stand, and he looks both uncomfortable and ashamed. Kame straddles Jin's desk chair, the bottle in easy reaching distance; he offers it to Jin who quickly leans forward to provide his glass. Understandable, Kame thinks, watching Jin gulp it down.
No fifteen year old kid - no kid at all - should have some stranger pawing and petting and panting over them. Kame is furious just thinking about it. Jin's voice had been quiet and remarkably steady when he described his shithead manager in Japan bringing him to an even bigger shithead photographer and leaving them alone for several sessions.
Jin laughs now, a thin, brittle sound. "Oh, he didn't do anything too terrible, all things considered. I try to remind myself that it could have been worse."
"Jin," Kame says, aghast, "that is so not the point."
"Yeah, well. Thanks. When I think about it, it seems like nothing, like what, this guy touched me-"
"-which is not 'nothing.' He had no right to do that. And you were a kid!"
"Yeah, but other people have gone through much worse, have been violated in much worse ways. But it really. It messed me up. Most of the time I don't think about it, but. I can still remember what it felt like, you know? It sucked. It still sucks."
"I don't think it's nothing," Kame says, "it's awful. Jin, listen to me. It's not like, it's not like there's some kind of meter, where your sense of violation is allowed to be X only if it's above a certain level."
Jin sighs and rubs one hand over his face. "I know, you're right. But it still feels that way. Like what am I upset about when it could have been worse, you know?"
Kame just stares at him, feeling an ache in his gut, admiration at Jin's strength and sorrow at his experience mingled together. No one ever tried to take advantage of him while he was a kid. And as an adult, he's very good about giving off don't fuck with me vibes. Sure a few people have tried to lay a hand on him, usually when there's alcohol to loosen inhibitions, but Kame has never felt powerless or hurt the way Jin sounds.
Considering it, he's a thousand times grateful for all the tools his parents gave him to take care of himself. His mother worried about how her choices would affect her children, and together, his parents took steps to mitigate those effects. Maybe his parents were more aware of evil, maybe they were willing to sacrifice their children's innocence, to make sure they understood the possible dangers the world held for them, all the ways they could be hurt.
Even now, Kame thinks, his father is still looking out for him.
"That doesn't matter, Jin. It doesn't matter if it could have been worse. No one has the right to do that to you."
Jin nods and he's quiet. Kame rests his chin on his forearms crossed over the back of Jin's desk chair and watches him, the rise and fall of his chest, Jin's lowered eyelashes fanning against his cheek.
"Thanks for telling me," Kame says softly into the lengthening silence. "I'm so sorry it happened to you, and-and I'm sorry I made you talk about it."
Jin looks up and when he meets Kame's eyes, his gaze is tired. He gives a helpless shrug. "It's sort of like letting the poison out, you know? There are things you keep close to you. I don't know, maybe you give them more power over you because they're a secret. Because they're uncomfortable, or, or, painful. And I fucking hate it. I hate having this on me."
"Are you okay?" Kame asks hesitantly, after Jin lapses into silence again. "It's all right if you're not. It's just. I wish there was something I could do-" Kame falters to a stop. Watches as Jin slowly pulls his knees into his chest, and he wraps his arms around his legs.
"I know you're not like that," Jin says, and Kame is startled. He'd completely forgotten that this conversation had something to do with him. He's not sure what to say. He opens his mouth to reassure Jin, but Jin continues: "I know that you're not that guy. I'm really sorry for what happened before. It's just, you touched me and you said something that reminded me. I reacted without thinking. I should have explained all this before."
Kame's shaking his head, horrified that Jin's still blaming himself for that. "No - no. Oh, god, please don't apologize. You had every right to react that way. It's not something you have control over. And I never, ever should have done that. I, I don't know what I was thinking. Shit. Jin, I don't think I should ever ask you for something like this."
"What? No," Jin says, his eyes flashing. "No," he says, and his voice is firm, "I think it's time. If you think you'd like me to - to - model for you, whatever that means, I think I'd like to do it."
"But-" Kame protests.
"The way I see it, it might actually help. Make me feel better? I don't know. I don't know what you need from me yet. But I'm willing to give it a shot if you are. I trust you."
He says it like that, matter-of-fact. Kame stares at him, holds his breath, and he flushes. He doesn't know what to say, or if Jin realizes what his confidence means to him.
"I just have a couple conditions."
"Whatever you want," Kame says fervently, barely breathing, sucker-punched by Jin's faith.
"One is kind of important. I'm really not supposed to be gigging while I'm here. I'm supposed to be on, like, sabbatical, but I haven't been good about saying no. I think now I'm going to just make a clean break and cancel everything. I need to be composing, writing music. My own stuff. I've been gigging for, like, about fifteen years straight, literally, and I am fucking burned out. I really need this time off."
"Okay," Kame says cautiously, "so you're worried about time?"
Jin nods. "Exactly. If I'm working for you, I'm not working for me."
"Well, that's something we can figure out. It's possible we can both do what we need at the same time."
Jin frowns, looking confused. Kame tries to explain.
"I just mean - you might be my subject, but it doesn't mean that you can't do what you would normally do or what you want to do. Unless I become a distraction, of course. I don't want to interfere with your process. But...maybe we can work something mutually beneficial out."
"Hmm." Jin considers this. "Okay. Well number two is. I get to photograph you, too."
Kame lifts an eyebrow. "What?"
"You heard me," Jin doesn't bother to hide his smile. "What do you think?"
Kame considers the proposition or condition or whatever it is, and realizes he's going to say yes. Of course he's going to say yes. It can't hurt. Might even be interesting.
Maybe this is how it's supposed to end, he thinks. He's been looking for truth in old photos, trying to recover something, some truth in memory, or some invention. Trying to. Kame isn't even sure anymore what he's been trying to do. What he's been looking for. He looks at Jin and thinks, okay, with the time he has left, maybe it's time to try something new.
--
There are red circles on the new house calendar in the kitchen; Kame stares at them in the morning as he drinks his coffee. Red circles marking birthdays, house meetings, house dinners, parties, events significant to someone living in Meisa's house. His birthday, next month. The days ticking down, fewer today than yesterday, and tomorrow-
It's not restlessness that's making him jittery, although there is that, too. He calls Riisa after breakfast and asks her to look into clearing his schedule for a while. There's an email from Nakamaru about the book; Steidl has assigned Miki Maya to edit and he should expect to hear from her soon. Kame closes his laptop and stares at its closed lid for a few minutes. He stands, twitches aside the blackout cloth covering his window and looks out on the west lawn, the bare black-gnarled arms of cherry and plum.
That afternoon, he takes Jin back out to the loft.
"So what should I do?" Jin asks as he bends down to deposit his guitar case and backpack on the floor.
The leather of his jacket creaks as Kame loosens the collar and folds his arms over his chest. "What would you do, if I weren't here?"
Jin thinks about that for a minute after he straightens. He faces the bank of windows, looking out at the street, at the building across the way. The sky is grey, overcast, but Kame likes the light on Jin's profile. It's really fucking cold outside, and it's not particularly warm in the loft, which Kame realizes is no good for Jin if his fingers are too cold. He drags a space heater over to Jin's vicinity, plugs it in, switches on. Jin has bent again to open the guitar case and lifts the guitar out, hooking the strap over his shoulder, and he perches against the back of a vintage button-back maroon leather chesterfield while he tunes. His hair's in his eyes, and the tip of his tongue pokes between his teeth. Kame wants to frame this, to freeze the moment, with the light soft and bright behind him, falling over his left shoulder. After a couple moments watching, Kame begins to back away. Jin looks up immediately.
"Where are you going?"
"Nowhere," Kame answers, feeling caught, "I'll just be here," he gestures vaguely, "around. You know. Pretend I'm not here."
Jin frowns, his eyes narrowing. "How am I supposed to do that?" His tone is flat.
Kame shrugs. "Just. I don't know. Play something, right. Or don't. You can do whatever you want. Just pretend I'm not here."
Jin throws him a look of disbelief which Kame doesn't really know what to do with, so he nods and moves away while Jin mutters something just under his breath.
"You aren't trying to lull me into a false sense of security?" Jin asks, his chin coming up. He almost sounds belligerent.
Kame blinks. "Of course not," he says, fast.
"So then what? You aren't going to ambush me later when I'm not expecting it?" Jin has his head cocked to one side, one hand clutching the neck of the guitar, light gleaming off its polished surfaces.
Kame's eyes track the movement when Jin's hand comes up and begins strumming gently; it makes him think of a light breeze on water. Kame tries to think of what his mother would have done, if faced with a recalcitrant subject, but that's not a productive line of thought; Kame's mother knew what she wanted and she almost always managed to convince the people around her to do whatever she needed. Bullied them, sometimes. Which is why Kame rarely works with human models. He's not like that, he doesn't just expect people to do whatever he asks. It's not Jin's fault if he feels hesitant or self-conscious. It's Kame's job to put his subject at ease, to make them feel comfortable and relaxed and he's clearly failing. He has no idea what he can do to make Jin forget he's there.
"Hey," Jin says, and his hands, which Kame has been watching, still.
"Should I go?" Kame says uncertainly, backing away again, "let you work."
"Hey, no. Wait," Jin says. Something passes over Jin's face; he pushes off the back of the chesterfield and begins walking toward Kame.
"Don't leave," Jin says. He comes closer. "Isn't there - Kame, what do you need to do?"
Kame casts his eyes around and says the first thing that comes to mind. "Lights," he says, "I can maybe. I can build lights."
Jin throws him a quizzical expression and tilts his head. "All right," he says slowly, "Sure. Why don't you do that. And don't sneak up on me. Not today anyway. Not yet. Just let me get used to this. Is that okay?"
Kame nods, perhaps too vigorously. "Fine, no sneaking up on you. Today."
Jin lifts an eyebrow. "You promise."
Kame huffs and rolls his eyes.
"Kame."
"What. Yes, fine. I promise. Whatever."
Jin's face splits into a grin. "Aw, now that wasn't so hard, now was it."
"You're a pain the in ass."
Jin shrugs happily. "And you're buying me lunch," he says, turning away, pulling the guitar back in close and plucking at the strings.
Kame shoots him a dark look. "Don't push your luck," is all he says, to which Jin replies, "I'm made of luck."
So Kame doesn't go too far. He hauls out pieces of plywood and metal tracking he's stored away, and sets up a sawhorse table in a wide clear space where he starts sawing and hammering, drilling holes, cutting open wires, twisting filaments together, bandaging the surgery with black swaths of electrical tape and keeping an eye on Jin at the same time. Jin, who's now spread out over the old leather chesterfield, head leaned back against the arm rest, one knee propped up against the button-back, his other foot flat on the floor, and Kame's mouth goes dry again. It's like the kind of perfect natural-light picture - it's exactly the kind of centerfold Vanity Fair glamour shot Kame would never take, the kind of posed portraiture he doesn't do - but just for a second, he wishes he did.
Jin's fingers are moving fast, the air filling up with some jaunty blues tune that goes on and on until Jin opens his eyes and catches Kame watching. He ends with a cheeky flourish. Jin's face is flushed-pink, and he's grinning.
"Is it yours?" Kame asks into the lull that follows. His raised voice has a slight echo.
Jin nods, pushing himself up. He crosses his legs, cradling the guitar against his chest lover-like, and he begins something more sultry, with a latin flavor. Kame tucks his head back down, and listens as he tightens screws, eventually giving up on the meaningless construction, getting lost in the music. He doesn't actually need the rig for anything; maybe he'll suspend it from some exposed overhead piping, screw in colored bulbs and call it mood lighting. Mood lighting for what, he doesn't know. When he looks up again, the last notes are hanging in the air and Jin's standing nearby, aiming a little point-and-shoot in his direction. The flash goes off in his face. Kame grimaces, squeezes his eyes shut at the bright light.
"Goddamnit," he mutters.
Jin's laughing at him, and Kame guesses he must look pretty stupid.
"What," Jin says, feigning innocence, "you never said I couldn't sneak up on you."
Mid-January, when the temperature plummets to several degrees below freezing, the ice and bitter cold give Kame the idea.
"Wanna come," he asks, trying to sound off-hand, "I'm thinking a week, maybe."
Jin only blinks a few times at Kame's proposal. "What - you mean just pack up and start driving? A roadtrip?"
Off Kame's nod, Jin's brow furrows. "Where?"
"Somewhere warm," Kame says, dangling the bait.
Jin's eyebrows rise only a little, and then he's grinning. "Oh. You - oh, hell yes."
The third week of January they fly clear across the country, and Kame has to adjust to what he's rarely had, a traveling companion. He turns to someone who pokes him in the ribs while he's listening to Robert Johnson through a pair of headphones, camera cradled in his hands, eye to the viewfinder, geometric patterns of snowy-white rectangular fields and dark lines stretching out below; Kame looks over his shoulder to where Jin is half-bent over, his fluffy hair nearly touching the seat in front of him, laughing at something on his iPhone, and off Jin's grin, Kame finds himself startled into a surprised smile.
They arrive to almost seventy degrees in sunny San Diego and rent something roomy with four wheel drive; Kame climbs into the driver's seat. There is both a map and a GPS, but they don't bother, getting lost is the point. Kame confesses his desire to find abandoned places, ruins, scavenged bones. Jin doesn't seem to care. Kame looks over at Jin in the passenger seat beside him, lost in thought, eyes closed behind tinted lenses as he plucks guitar strings, trying to work something out that isn't anything yet. Kame almost feels - light. Lighter.
The sky is clear, the road is straight, and once they leave the urban areas behind, they're driving through miles of warmth and sunshine. Jin rolls his window down and pushes his face into the rushing air. Lets the wind catch the music from his guitar strings. When Kame pulls over at random intervals, they climb out and wade into lots grown over with knee-high grass and weeds or scrub brush littered with empty beer bottles, plastic bags caught in a tangle around the base of low bushes.
Survivor's Inn - from $35 a sign proclaims above a derelict roadside motel, windows boarded shut all along the single-story horseshoe. Jin sits in a triangle of shade on the old cement walkway lining the motel, legs folded, surrounded by tufts of grass and crab-legged weeds bursting through cracks in the concrete and asphalted parking lot like a creeping march of fuzzy green spiders. Kame joins him and they spread lunch out across their laps, barely-warm gas station mini-mart hot dogs and giant coke slushies. Kame leans back against the shingled side of the building, small DV camera held in front of him, something new he thought he'd try, aimed at the road. Next time, he decides, he'll use the tripod, set it up and let it go.
He stays quiet as he films, but Jin pushes the foil wrappers off his lap and wipes his hands with the stack of paper napkins sitting on Kame's knee. Kame doesn't turn his head when he hears the case open. The rental is off in a departing patch of shade, its sides streaked with dust. Cars scream along the road, mostly pick-up trucks; drivers occasionally looking over at them as they zip past. Beneath Jin's fingers, strings move and nothing yet is becoming something.
"What is it," Kame asks, without turning. Jin is faced slightly away from him, his right side leaned against Kame's shoulder, a streak of warmth all up and down his left arm, Jin's arm brushing against him with its occasional strumming motion, with small shifts, gentle rocking as he plays, his fingers on the strings sending shivers into the air, and Jin's singing just under his breath, even so close, barely heard.
He feels Jin's shrug. "Not sure yet. Let you know when I find out."
There's a bit in Kame's teeth, he needs to run. They sleep in whatever motels they find along the way, sometimes having to drive longer than Kame would like as the emptiness stretches on. Jin tells road stories into the rhythm of their tires slipping over jointed and grooved pavement, ca-thunk, ca-thunk, ca-thunk, his fifteen years of always moving on, a million miles into day and night, hotels and motels and buses and tail lights. Kame wakes Jin in the morning with a hand on the shoulder, and he'll come up with a start. They run two miles every day, take turns under low-pressure shower heads in stained bathtubs before checking out and looking for breakfast. Kame won't drive after dark; he makes Jin take over as soon as dusk begins to fall. Jin never asks why.
At lunch in some diner, they sit side by side on wobbly stools, and they lean together, flipping through the photos they've taken on their digital cameras. Jin's are all of Kame, a lot of driving profiles, backdropped by flat land, a dark line of far-off mountains down near the horizon, sunglasses on, mouth occasionally curved in a smile. There's a photo of Kame sleeping on the one day Jin had managed to wake up first. Kame feels a strange flutter in his stomach when he looks at it, and he pauses on it for so long that Jin bumps his shoulder, asks, "What."
Kame's throat tightens. In the photo, the tight skullcap he wears to bed makes him look bald, and his face is pale and slack, mouth fallen open where he's sprawled on his back, one arm dangling over the side of the bed. It looks like an omen, a premonition, even.
"Nothing," he says, his guts churning, and he presses the forward button.
That evening, they walk to the bar near their motel for dinner because there's nowhere else to eat, and they wolf down dubious meat patties of unknown origin and cheese singles on white toast, their elbows on the bar-top, nearly facing each other over a corner. A small tv is showing some kind of old black-and-white movie with scratchy sound, the voices high-pitched and insistent. The beer is cheap and Jin matches him bottle for bottle as the evening wears on. When Kame wants shots, he manages to convince the old lady to sell him a partially-full liquor bottle of something golden-brown with an uncertain label, and they wander out, climb the bluff overlooking the railroad tracks and trade the bottle between them, shivering and huddling together as a midnight-starry blanket draws down tight. It's warm enough during the day, but night gets cold; the bottle and Jin against his side keep Kame warm. They hear the far off rumble of an approaching train, and then its whistle, and its headlight precedes three roaring engines; a long string of freight rail cars vibrates the ground beneath them. Jin's fingers tangle with his when they exchange the bottle, and Kame blushes when he tips it to his mouth, swallows the burn without tasting a thing. He goes hot and then cold, shivers hard enough to clack teeth.
The next morning, they don't wake early, they don't run, they sleep until past check-out and Kame wakes to the smell of coffee coming from the coffee maker in the room.
"Hey," Jin says, when Kame finally pushes himself up and slowly perches himself on the edge of the bed. "Coffee?"
Kame presses one hand to his right eye. "What the fuck happened," he manages at last, his voice coming out a croak.
"Booze," Jin says, and Kame doesn't need to see Jin's head shake; he can hear it in the raspy half-laugh of Jin's voice. "A lot of fucking booze."
"What the fuck did we do that for."
"I don't know, Kame," and there's a really odd note in Jin's voice, "what the fuck did we do that for."
Kame makes himself look at Jin, who's sprawled in a chair at the corner table by the window where a thin sliver of light from between the nailed-down ugly curtains slices across him. Jin's head is tipped back against the ugly wallpaper, and he's watching Kame with a strange expression.
"What," Kame says, feeling his skin prickle. He tries to remember what happened, but all he remembers is talking and shivering, and drinking until his head spun.
Jin's eyes glitter. He shakes his head at last, and looks away. "Nothing."
Things are a little strained afterward, just a bit. Kame feels like some thread got snagged, pulled loose, only he can't figure out where, or how. Jin's subdued as the trip winds down, shooting indecipherable glances at him when he thinks Kame's not paying attention. It's nothing bad, there's nothing negative in the air, but it's weird. Electric. Hair-raising. Like a storm coming on.
When the road winds down, the song seems complete to Kame's ears, the thing Jin's been picking at for most of ten days across southern California, and into Arizona, and then back.
"Sounds good," he tells Jin on their way to the rental car drop-off at the airport.
Jin looks up from where he's been staring at his fingers on the strings. His mouth is a tense line, concentration furrowing his brow, but it's as if he's been far away, thinking about something else. He shakes his head, says: "Not yet."
Okay, Kame thinks, hearing the ticking clock thunder in his head, anticipation twisting his stomach. Soon.
For every strand of him that's being drawn out, unraveling, Kame's getting deeper into his own head. Jin, too, he thinks. When they get back from the west coast, it's not that they break apart after too much time spent together in small spaces, the confines of four wheels and four walls, hurtling through space and taking refuge under a sunset sky. But the intimacy, which had felt powerful in the car, is different now, diffused, and even a bit uneasy.
Back in Meisa's house, however, there is no avoidance. There are still meals and runs, and, as the days pass, Jin's getting better at having a lens trained on him while he works, looking up only once in a while. Kame, too. He'll glance away from staring at the waffle iron in time to see Jin lower his camera with a satisfied smile; it always takes Kame several seconds to come back from wherever he went, mind drifting ahead, tracing out all the different ways this could go. He's trying to be careful, Kame is, he won't let this go too far. He can't, for Jin's sake. He won't put this on him.
And yet, during the early weeks of February, Kame goes back and forth on what he should tell Jin, how much. Jin's preoccupied, however, spending hours at a time fiddling around with an electric guitar in his room with big headphones on. Jin hasn't played jazz in ages. These days, it's always the blues. It's almost like, Kame thinks when he's feeling particularly morbid, Jin has a direct line into Kame's head.
::next
