The Photographer
The first indication that something had gone wrong was that his suitcase was already open on the bed closest to the window.
The second was that he walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs and stopped dead when he saw me standing inside his hotel room.
We stared at each other.
He looked down at himself.
Then back at me.
“This feels like a complaint for the front desk,” I said.
He grabbed the T-shirt lying on the other bed and pulled it over his head.
“You’re in my room.”
“My key worked.”
“So did mine.”
“Maybe you’re in my room.”
He glanced around as if the beige walls, generic landscape print and two identical queen beds might reveal which of us belonged there.
The road trip had already been a disaster.
Our team’s flight had left three hours late because of thunderstorms. The players’ luggage had arrived on a different carousel than the staff’s, sending half the traveling party through the airport in opposite directions.
By the time the bus reached the hotel, it was after midnight, everyone was tired and the lobby was packed with people wearing lanyards from some enormous pharmaceutical conference.
I had collected my room key from the team services manager, dragged my camera cases through the hallway and let myself into 1417.
Now one of the team’s veterans was standing beside the window in his underwear.
Not the strangest thing I had seen on the job.
Close, though.
I set my suitcase upright.
“What room number are you supposed to have?”
He picked up the paper sleeve from the dresser.
“Fourteen seventeen.”
I held up mine.
“Same.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Did you request me?”
“Obviously. Nothing improves a road trip like sharing a bathroom with a man who leaves wet towels on the floor.”
“I don’t do that.”
“I photograph the locker room. I’ve seen your stall.”
“That’s equipment.”
“You leave your equipment in a damp pile.”
“We have people for that.”
“Exactly the response I expected.”
He reached for the room phone.
The front desk answered after six rings.
I watched his expression move from confidence to confusion, then irritation.
“You’re sure?”
A pause.
“No, I understand what sold out means.”
Another pause.
He looked at me.
My stomach sank.
“No. A conference room is not going to help us.”
He hung up.
“Well?”
“The hotel is full.”
“I gathered that.”
“The travel coordinator submitted two rooming lists. Apparently, you were left off the revised one, then added manually to my reservation instead of being assigned a separate room.”
“Why yours?”
“Maybe you requested me.”
I gave him a look.
He smiled.
It was the same smile I had photographed hundreds of times. Usually after a goal, a win or a teammate saying something inappropriate from the next stall.
He knew exactly what it did to people.
I was not people.
“The front desk can’t move either of us,” he continued. “The hotel across the street is full too.”
I looked at the two beds.
At least there were two.
“This is fine,” I said.
He studied me.
“Is it?”
“I mean, we work together every day.”
I lifted my camera case onto the desk.
I had traveled with the team for four seasons. I had seen him in every possible condition: bleeding, furious, exhausted, half-dressed, fully dressed and once wrapped in nothing but a towel after a teammate stole his clothes while he showered.
He had seen me kneeling beside the bench to photograph line rushes, crouched behind the net during morning skate and sprinting through arena tunnels carrying twenty pounds of gear.
There was no mystery between us.
We knew each other too well for this to be strange.
He sat on the edge of the bed nearest the window.
“You snore?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Do you?”
“Only after wins.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I sleep better.”
I laughed.
The tension loosened.
He pointed toward the bed closest to the door.
“That one’s yours.”
“Why?”
“I got here first.”
“I’m closer to the bathroom.”
“You take longer.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve watched you pack up after games.”
“That includes six cameras, four lenses and two laptops.”
“So you admit you’re slow.”
I set my backpack on the bed he had assigned me.
“You touch my thermostat, I’ll kill you.”
“What temperature?”
“Sixty-seven.”
He looked offended.
“That’s a refrigerator.”
“You sleep under blankets.”
“I’m an athlete. Recovery matters.”
“So does not waking up in a puddle of your sweat.”
His eyes held mine for half a second too long.
I turned toward my equipment before I could examine why.
“This will be fine,” I said again.
He leaned back on his hands.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it will.”
“Right.”
He sounded unconvinced.
I was beginning to agree with him.
We established rules.
No calls on speakerphone.
No changing with the bathroom door open.
No using the other person’s phone charger without asking.
No touching my camera equipment.
He stretched out on his bed while I transferred memory cards from that afternoon’s practice.
The room had settled into a comfortable quiet, or something close to it. He watched television with the volume low. I sat at the desk with my laptop, sorting through several hundred images of men skating in circles and pretending not to notice how often he glanced in my direction.
We had spent hours alone together before.
Photo shoots. Sponsor events. Long waits at airports. He knew which lens I used for warmups. I knew he called his mother after every road win.
None of that had ever felt intimate.
Now he was six feet away from me, barefoot and stretched across a hotel bed, and every ordinary thing about him seemed suddenly too personal.
The sound of his breathing.
The way he rubbed one foot against the other while he watched television.
The fact that he had changed from gym shorts into gray sweatpants without my seeing exactly when it happened.
I stared at an image on my screen.
It was him during practice, head tilted back as he drank from a water bottle. One gloved hand rested on his hip. The other held his helmet against his thigh.
I had taken hundreds of similar photographs.
This one looked different tonight.
“What are you working on?”
I minimized the window too quickly.
He noticed.
“Nothing.”
“You just hid something.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“I was closing a bad frame.”
“Of me?”
“Maybe.”
He sat up.
“Let me see.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not part of the editing process.”
“I’m the subject.”
“You’re one of thirty subjects.”
“But the best-looking.”
“You are barely the best-looking person in this room.”
He stared at me.
I stared back.
The words registered for both of us at the same time.
“Barely?”
“I included myself.”
“Of course.”
“Which means you lost.”
He got up from the bed.
I lowered the laptop screen.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not touching the camera equipment.”
“You’re about to touch the computer.”
“Different rule.”
“It’s implied.”
He stopped behind my chair.
I felt his presence before he leaned down, one hand braced on the desk beside me.
His body radiated warmth.
He smelled like the hotel soap and the clean laundry detergent the equipment staff used on the players’ practice gear.
I should have moved.
Instead, I stayed still while he reached past me and lifted the laptop screen.
The photograph filled it again.
He studied it.
Then he looked down at me.
“This is the bad frame?”
“It’s fine.”
“You hid it.”
“I minimized it.”
“Why?”
“Because you were being annoying.”
His eyes returned to the screen.
“You took this today?”
“Yes.”
“You were watching me.”
“I was working.”
“Looks like watching.”
“That is literally the job.”
He remained bent over me.
His arm brushed my shoulder.
“You zoomed in.”
“I crop every photograph.”
“You cropped out everyone else.”
“You were the subject.”
His gaze moved from the image to my face again.
Something had changed in it.
Not much.
Enough.
“You take a lot of pictures of me,” he said.
“I take a lot of pictures of everyone.”
“Not like this.”
I turned the chair toward him.
The television played quietly behind him.
The air conditioner hummed near the window.
His hand still rested on the desk beside mine.
Then his phone rang.
He blinked and stepped back.
The screen showed a teammate’s name.
He answered.
I turned toward my computer and pretended my pulse had not changed.
Sharing a bathroom was less difficult than expected.
He showered first after morning skate because he had a team meeting. I showered afterward because I had an hour before editing photos from practice.
He lined his toiletries neatly along one side of the sink.
I had expected chaos.
Instead, everything was arranged by size. Toothbrush, razor, deodorant, travel-sized bottles.
By the second night, the strange arrangement had almost become normal.
We ordered room service after the game because every restaurant nearby was closed. He sat cross-legged on his bed eating pasta while I edited from mine, both of us criticizing the late local broadcast playing on television.
“You missed the shot,” he said.
“I did not.”
“The goalie covered it.”
“I got it from behind the net.”
“You got the back of his helmet.”
“I got the puck crossing the line.”
“Show me.”
I turned the laptop.
He leaned across the gap between the beds.
The frame showed the puck just beneath the crossbar, the goaltender’s glove arriving a fraction too late.
He whistled.
“That’s good.”
“I know.”
“You want praise or not?”
“Not from you.”
“Everyone wants praise from me.”
“You are exhausting.”
He stretched farther to inspect the next image.
His forearm pressed into the comforter beside my thigh.
I suddenly became aware that his face was only inches from mine.
He looked up.
His eyes dropped briefly to my mouth.
Then he sat back.
“Good picture,” he said.
His voice had gone quieter.
“Thanks.”
Neither of us mentioned it.
That was how we handled the entire trip.
We did not mention the glances.
We did not mention the fact that he stopped walking around shirtless after the first night, then started again on the third.
The mistake happened on the final night of the trip.
We returned to the hotel after a win, both of us exhausted.