15. Thursday #2
Sarah smiled. “She can give me a call next time you’re in Toronto.” She realized that she meant it.
An idea for Grisha’s portrait came as she watched him talking to Kyle about the position of the stars.
“Hold on,” she said. “Grisha. Point to Polaris again.”
Grisha gave her a quick, dry smile, then turned and pointed to the star with one finger, and she took a quick picture of him in the last light of ‘blue hour,’ pointing towards the North Star so that it was right at the tip of his finger.
Then she let him walk away and left her camera there on its tripod, pointing it at Polaris, for a thirty-minute-long exposure.
Later, she could combine the shots so that it looked like the star trails were circling around the point of Grisha’s finger.
The Milky Way sharpened into clarity as darkness fell, and Sarah went to find Tanjul and Binita.
They had chatted with her about doing a portrait that included both of them, and it was time to put it into action.
It was a trick shot, one that Sarah would create as a photo montage stitched together from multiple shots, but it would make Tanjul look like he was raising a hand at one end of the Milky Way and Binita look like she was reaching out to touch the other end.
Both of them stood by the water, raising one arm towards the arc in the sky, and Sarah put her camera on her tripod and created a panorama of shots of the water and sky that she could stitch together later.
She used a soft light on the two of them so their faces were visible.
The final version would be a photo with the Milky Way arcing between them as they raised hands on either end of it: a cosmic connection between two souls.
Jack was nearby as she finished the shot. Sarah called to him.
“It’s time, Jack,” she said. “Your portrait.”
He sighed. The whole week he had been so pessimistic that she had begun to feel for him. Nobody could learn photography in a week, but he had perhaps forgotten how hard it was to learn something new. All he saw was his own limits.
“Come on,” she said. “We’re going to light paint you so you look like a dangerous bad boy.”
Jack barked out a laugh and glanced down at his fleece vest. “Not likely.”
“Get him to take his shirt off!” Selassie called. “I did!”
“No,” Jack said with a frown.
He eventually agreed to lean against one of the small conifer trees next to the water. Sarah grazed him and the tree with side light to set him off from the dark background, the stars reflecting on the water behind him. She thought it made him look mysterious and cool.
He walked forward to look at the photo on Sarah’s camera screen.
“See?” Sarah said, thinking of all the times she had reassured nervous actors that they looked good in her headshot days. “You look a dark prince from a fairy tale.”
He considered the image for a long moment. “Yeah, okay,” he said at last, and turned to walk away. But he was smiling a little.
“It’s time, Rita,” Sarah said at last, approaching the two friends.
“Can’t we just do my head? I don’t want my whole body. Maybe if I was wearing something nicer.”
Sarah sighed, but she agreed. She took a shot of Rita’s face with her chin tilted up, the stars behind her.
“You look great, babe!” Selassie called out, holding up a soft fill light. “You look…”
Her words were cut off by the sharp sound of rock sliding against rock; Sarah turned to see Selassie on the ground clutching her leg.
“That was stupid,” Selassie said weakly. “I don’t even know what happened…”
By the light of their headlamps, Sarah looked over the woman’s ankle.
She didn’t seem badly hurt enough to need serious medical attention—but she was injured enough so that Rita had to support her as they made their slow, careful path back to their sleeping bags.
Sarah ran ahead to find Binita, who agreed to examine Selassie’s ankle.
“You will not die,” Binita pronounced. “That is my professional opinion. No long hikes, though.”
“If you insist,” Selassie joked, though her voice was strained enough that it was clear she was in pain.
Binita borrowed some of Ren’s first aid tape to wrap the ankle while Selassie continued to insist that there was no need to call the boat back. Instead, the two friends turned in for the night, chatting quietly with each other in the darkness.
Grisha turned in soon after them, saying that he had to get back on an early schedule before his return flight to Europe on Saturday.
He had some kind of jetlag plan mapped out that involved him waking up at four in the morning for the dawn shoot.
Then Jack returned to the sleeping area, asking to be woken at dawn as well.
Fred, Binita, and Tanjul turned in as the night cooled off at close to two a.m.
Sarah, for the first time, wasn’t tired yet.
She felt restless, knowing the workshop was almost over, knowing there was a major conversation she ought to have and no Ren around to have it with her.
Her heart felt like the needle of a compass, searching for him, but he was nowhere nearby, from what she could tell.
He must have gone off with Kyle on some mission…
farther along the water or up on some forbidden ledge of the cliffs above.
That seemed likely from Kyle: the desire to push against any limits they’d been given for safety reasons.
Sitting alone, waiting for Ren to return, she saw the faintest light of an aurora near the remote horizon, green in hue. It looked a bit like light pollution, too subtle for her to wake people up for, but it might show up on longer exposure shots.
She stepped a little closer to the water and set up her tripod for a ten-minute shot filled with star trails, catching the cliffs in the distance.
As she sat in silence, she heard people speaking behind her, but as she was about to get up and greet them, she realized it was Elka and Ren having an intense discussion.
Her camera was in the middle of the shot so that she couldn’t easily move away to give them privacy, so she hunched low and hoped she would not be noticed.
“No,” he said. “I don’t regret it. That’s not that I’m saying. But Elka—”
“I’m in love with you, Ren.”
Regret what? So he had slept with her, it seemed? Sarah was frozen.
She saw the faint outline of Ren as he sighed. Then he gave Elka a warm, affectionate look and leaned over to say something in her ear.
A warm, affectionate look. Like he had given her when she threw herself at him.
Sarah watched, immobile, as Elka regarded Ren for a long moment before turning to walk away.
When her shot was done, Sarah quietly moved to a rock by the water’s edge, hoping that neither Elka nor Ren would spot her and put together that she might have overheard them.
Her face felt flushed in the cool air. Her long exposure shot of the star trails had caught the faint aurora, making the sky look touched with both violet and green.
When she heard slow, careful footsteps picking their way across the rocks behind her, she knew without turning that it was him.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “Are you in the middle of a shot?”
“Just finished.”
“Can I see?”
She showed him. He nodded. “Nice capture.”
“You can just call it a shot.”
Ren smiled as he sat down next to her and looked out at the water and the sky. A breeze came fluttering across the water and raced up Sarah’s arms. She shivered. He peeled off his fleece jacket and held it out to her.
“Take it.”
“No,” she said.
“You can give it back when you go to bed.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Please put on the jacket, Sarah.”
She shook her head, not looking at him. She could feel him watching her. He took a long, slow breath.
“So I wanted to ask you a favor,” Ren said quietly. “You know how you offered to pretend to date me?”
Her eyes finally went to his, trying to read his expression. “Yes?”
“I wanted to ask the reverse. Elka just expressed feelings for me, so I was thinking it might be kinder to her if we don’t admit that anything is going on between us during the workshop. Just for another day or so.”
“Is there something going on between us?” she asked pointedly.
He frowned at her for a moment, then spoke slowly. “Do you want there to be?”
She took a breath. “I…” It was a long moment before she could answer. “I want to work with you.”
Something drained from his face. “Okay,” he said.
She shook her head. She tried to find her courage, whatever was left of it.
“It’s just,” she went on, “you just went through a break-up, right? And everyone has been talking about Freya and how great she was. And I don’t…
I can’t be that. For you. A replacement.
I can’t be the person you date after the woman you were in love with. ”
Ren stared at her for a moment, then huffed out a laugh. “Sarah, you infuriate me sometimes.”
A corresponding anger rose in her chest. “I infuriate you.”
“Have I said anything about missing Freya?”
“No, but—”
“Freya and I had a nice time. But she was twenty-five. She listened to trap music. She was never going to move somewhere to be closer to me. And I was sure as hell not moving away from my son to be with her.”
“Did you sleep with Elka?”
“No. We kissed once. Two years ago. And I decided it was a bad idea and stopped things. Why does that even…where is this coming from?”
Sarah shook her head. She was not going to let him wave away her fears.
“You know, you were the one who stopped things when we kissed. Both times. Last night and back in Las Vegas. So you can’t blame me for not being sure whether you’re interested when every time we kiss, you tell me that we need to stop. ”
He spoke very quietly. “I stopped things because I didn’t want to offer you a job and then turn around and start sleeping with you.
I wanted you to know that you could take your time to decide things, because you’re too important to rush things with.
But you seem determined not to trust me no matter what I do. ”