Free White Vespa by Kevin Oderman

on her, the walls over the built-in divan provided the perspective, a sense of depth, as if, looking at the photo, you were looking into a hole. Anne was curled into the too-small rectangle of the divan, all in profile, eyes closed. Everywhere you could see her bones, the shape of the skeleton beneath her fine skin. More than anything it reminded Myles of other photographs he had seen, photographs of prehistoric pit burials.
    He turned off the light, finding his way to the narrow bed where he slept in the dark. He set his drink on the floor, slipped out of his jeans, and lay
down on his back. Propping his head up on a pillow, he retrieved the oúzo. After awhile, he found he didn’t need the light to see the photos. In the dark he read Anne’s face, her body. Everything about her image said, Reach me, I am here . But it also said, You can’t reach me, I can’t be reached . What the images unveiled was the veil itself.
    Myles knew he would try to reach behind it. He hadn’t resisted, and now he couldn’t resist. He went on drinking in the dark until he could feel the world rushing round him.
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    In the morning, Myles pulled another set of prints, for Anne. In the red light of his makeshift darkroom he looked at the photographs again, picking them one at a time out of the developing trays and hanging them to dry.
    The darkroom was silent, but outside, it seemed a long way off, he could hear the insects tuning up, an occasional birdcall. For a moment, he was frightened of showing Anne the photographs, and frightened by the images themselves, by his attraction to them.
    He lifted the green apron over his head and hung it on a square nail someone had hammered into the back of the door a long time ago. He didn’t go out, but sat down on a rush chair, thinking. His pulse pounded in his ears. It struck him as suspicious that he’d been the one to suggest the cramped quarters of the divan, that the contortion of the photos sprang directly from that choice. Push yourself into the angles of the couch , he’d said. And she had. The power of the images started there, in the contortion of Anne’s body pressed into the walls, the containment. But he’d also said, Show me, and she had. Were the images hers or his, or was there already a kind of union there, both of them on view in the captured light?
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    He heard the door clatter in the other room and called out, “Anne, I’m in here,” but when he opened the door of the darkroom it wasn’t Anne. Jim, standing in front of the photos where they were taped to the wall, cast Myles a quizzical glance.
    â€œDoing portraits now?”
    â€œJust these.”
    â€œSpecial order?” Jim asked.
    Myles didn’t respond, but he could see that Jim wasn’t mocking, was just curious.

    â€œAnd this,” Jim gestured toward the photos, “is Anne?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œLooks like she might be long if you ever let her stretch out.”
    Myles laughed.
    Jim looked at the photos again. “And I think maybe you should buy her lunch sometime. Kinda thin.”
    â€œYes, very thin, too thin to be healthy,” Myles said, “and I already bought her lunch, yesterday. Problem is, she didn’t eat it.”
    â€œSometimes force-feeding is required.”
    â€œAha.”
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    They sat outside, in the deep shade, light bounding around them, a large round of figs on a plate between them. Occasionally, while they talked, one of them bent forward and tore a fig from the vine they were threaded on. When they got thirsty, they poured mineral water from a green bottle into Myles’ crazed mugs. At some point, they’d become friends. They talked without constraint. The silences were easy.
    â€œLook, Myles, I’m thinking of going over to Tílos.”
    Myles considered the news.
    â€œHave you been?” Jim asked.
    â€œTo Tílos?” He looked over at Jim. “No.”
    â€œWell,