Free A Photographic Death by Judi Culbertson

film be?
    As my father used to say with a chuckle, “Fools rush in and don’t know what to do when they get there.”
    I entered the reception room and smiled at a young Japanese student who had papers spread out on the desk behind the counter. He jumped up and came over to me.
    “Is Annalisa inside?” I asked.
    “Ms. Merck? No, not yet.”
    “I’m developing some sensitive film with her. Very old.” I showed him, and his eyes widened at the dented yellow canisters. “Is it okay if I go in and get started?”
    He hesitated. “You should wait for her.”
    “I’m in kind of a hurry. I’d like to get things started.”
    Come on, come on, come on.
    “Are you in her class?”
    “No. Just a colleague.”
    Perhaps because I looked old enough for that to be true, perhaps because he couldn’t imagine any other reason for me to be there, he asked if I needed take-up reels.
    “Yes. Three, please.”
    “Sign here.” He pushed a clipboard with a lined page toward me. Mine would be the first name.
    I wrote “Delhi Laine” as illegibly as I could and dated it.
    He handed me the black plastic reels and then I was standing in front of a life-sized tube, the type you stepped into to be X-rayed.
    “A gift from the medical school,” he said with some pride. “Total darkness so you can extract the film. I guess.”
    Holding the empty reels, I stepped inside the cylinder. I knew I wouldn’t like the narrow tube, but it was worse than I expected—as bad as waking up in a coffin and realizing there were several tons of dirt on top of you. No wonder George Washington had left instructions not to bury him for three days after he died.
    I fumbled around for the end of the film in the first canister and couldn’t find it. I couldn’t see my hands or the reel either. Pushing everything else into my jacket pocket, I concentrated on bringing one hand to the other. With shaking fingers, I managed to find the piece I needed and wound the first roll of film onto the empty spool.
    You won’t die. Just do the other two.
    I finally threaded two more rolls of film onto the reels, then was shaken by a new fear. How did I get out of here? I ran my hands along the smooth surface but could not feel a handle. Eventually Annalisa Merck and her class would come to use the darkroom and find my crumpled, oxygen-depleted body. Frantically I started trying to slide the partition in front of me to one side and finally created an opening. Breathing hard, I half-fell into the darkroom. It was blessedly familiar. No lights except for the usual red bulb that glowed as dimly as a signal at the end of a runway. In its glow I could see nine or ten enlargers, several sinks, and other apparatus.
    Moving to the center of the lab, I felt exhilarated. I was back in a darkroom, the place I belonged, the place where I hoped today to discover something crucial. If only we had all come safely back from England and I had gone on with my own photographic visions  . . .
    No time for regrets now. I had to work fast.
    I raced mentally through the steps. Pour developer into a tank, agitate the unrolled film, swish it around with plastic-coated tongs. Lay the film in the first bath for ten minutes, then into the stop, the fix, and a final rinse in the sink. The acrid smell of the chemicals calmed me. I can do this.
    Before I put the strips of film in the drying cabinet, I craned my neck to look at the tiny negatives. I could tell there were photos, real images, though I didn’t know how clear they would be. Several seemed to be of the little girls, their faces inverted dark as coal miners with eerily lighter eyes, and I realized the pictures would show what Caitlin was wearing that last day. I braced myself the way I had when we’d opened the cartons at Thanksgiving, but at least now I had hope.
    It was hard to see if any of the strips showed a woman dressed as a nanny.
    When I was sure the film was dry, I took the negatives out and brought them to the light table.