Hotel Photographer Pt. 34

Part 34

Eric held forth at the party in the wood-paneled room where people were playing a video game projected large on a screen.

Someone asked if anyone had seen a good movie later, and Eric talked about one he had both liked and disliked, classic about gambling addiction. A man's life took a wrong turn when he won at a lottery in the office where he worked. Next scene he's at a casino playing the slots.

"Once you saw the beginning, you pretty much knew where it was going," Eric said to the audience of his report on the film.

Friends tried to save the protagonist from himself, but their best efforts failed. One observed, "Some people, they win a few times they think they'll never lose. It's tragic." He wasn't a close friend, just a concerned acquaintance, all the more reason the addict wouldn't listen. Eric the photographer knew something about film. "A lesser-known classic," he said, "starring a really good actor, Burt Lancaster or someone."

He went on, talked of coming home after the movie with a new girlfriend (was she Akemi?), so excited by the love affair that he'd become disoriented, also was re-adjusting to reality after the film ("You know how that is. You get in that other world") and his apartment was new, so that when he entered (the front door happened to be open on his return), he found a different scene than expected. The furniture wasn't right. He looked around the living room and then through an opened carved wood double door to a front room and saw a woman there, a man standing near her, her husband probably.

"Sorry, I walked into the wrong apartment," Eric said.

The layout of the two was similar. That partly explained his error. The residents of the place took it well, came through the threshold from front room to living room to greet him, were curious about the intruder/neighbor.

Eric introduced himself before returning to his girlfriend. Maybe sensing something off, she hadn't joined him in the apartment, lingered by the open door on the staircase landing.

"'What's your name?' she asked me," Eric apprised the party guests of the surprising welcome he'd received.

"I told them, and then the guy started talking about its etymology, what he imagined the two parts of the name meant."

"I said, 'Anyway, you pronounced it correctly. A lot of people don't. They say Labray with a short 'a,' as if it's a French noun with an article in front, 'La Bray."

He went on, enjoying the audience, who responded avidly. I remembered from the Caribbean he could be something of a raconteur. Once started talking, he didn't want to stop.

He spoke of how new Akemi was in the city, a Japanese woman in the American capital of finance and culture. They were by the river once and a wind blew her hat into the murky water and she dove in after it.

"And I thought: What? She didn't realize how dirty the water was in New York. And then it occurred to me, you know, maybe the pollution has been cleaned up since I was living here.

"She's a strong swimmer. I had no doubt of that."

He'd seen her in the ocean during her tropical vacation with her husband. "But that river is treacherous. There must be all sorts of junk on the bottom. She might get snagged on something. I thought of diving in after her, but what good would that do? I wished she'd just let the hat go. It couldn't be so important, not enough to put her life at risk.

"All I could do was wait and hope. Pretty long time passed and she still hadn't surfaced. I got- you know, pretty concerned!"

Eric looked around for the reaction, then jumped to the next anecdote, this one personal.

His old high school friend and soon-to-be-business partner Mick commented on his fooling around with his girlfriend he'd seen. The three were in the same room. (Was Eric talking about Akemi here? It sure sounded like it).

"'Isn't that dangerous?' Mick asked. 'No condom.'

"He was talking about the position where she lay on top of me, grooving on my cock. It hadn't gone in yet but almost.

"'We only did that a little,' I said."

"'Looked to me like you were doing it most of the time.'

"'Really?'

"'Anyway, you've given me ideas for my own sex life.'

"'That's good.'''

Eric looked like he expected the assembled guests to be delighted by his story and they looked like they were (just two or three remained focused on the video game; he had the full attention of the rest.

Encouraged, he continued.

"A guy in my building must have been distracted, had his thoughts on something else. He kept walking, past the floor where his apartment was, realized his mistake when he saw the door to the roof. No one was supposed to go out there. He came down in a hurry, feeling he was in the wrong, not wanting his behavior misunderstood.

"As it happened, I was going up at the same time, on my way to get something, a ladder stored in the area no one used. Seeing me, he acted like someone caught in a misdemeanor, then confused. We knew each other from around the building, but he greeted me only in a delayed reaction.

"'I didn't recognize you,' he said. Then: 'You look like Obama.' As if that explained his oversight. He immediately saw that sounded bad.

"'I mean, of course you look nothing like Obama. But he has that little mustache now and so do you.'

"To cover his embarrassment, I guess, he kept talking. 'Have you even heard that saying: you all look the same? Black people, I mean.' He tried to make a joke out of it but was getting himself deeper in trouble. I said I had hear that. But I didn't give him the belly laugh he'd hoped for, wasn't going to let him off the hook so easily. Ha ha."

The group listening approved.

The final anecdote involved a crime. He said a girlfriend of his was abducted on a street corner right before his eyes. The man was going to take her away in his car and rape her.

"He had a weapon. I couldn't stop him. I tried to negotiate but it didn't help. I said finally, 'At least let her put on a jacket. It's cold.' He allowed that much. Blue jacket. I was saying: 'Treat her like a human being.' Then they took off.

"I couldn't go help her, didn't know where they were, only the vague area, not the specific block, and from the street I'd have no idea what building they were in. What could I do, shout and hope I'd be heard inside, disrupt him?

"Anyway, I didn't have a car to get there. All I could do was wait. It was horrific, knowing what had to be happening at that moment as I sat in my apartment at my dining table."

Oh yeah, he held forth, all right.

rn"

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