Chapter 5 #2
“Safety first. We talked about that.”
“What if I told you we could go up there and try to get a good shot of the town?” He looked past me at the clock tower, sizing it up as if trying to imagine his next shot. “Would that be safe enough?”
I turned around too, taking in the stone building that had stood its ground against heavier storms for more than a century. “If we had a key, I suppose that would be an option.”
“Well, luckily, someone has connections.” He rummaged through his jacket pockets and pulled out a keychain. “You know, I’ve been itching to go up there for a while now. Interested?”
“Guess that’s safe enough. No objections.”
Theo pulled the wooden door to the tower shut behind him.
The small windows on the left and right of the entrance let in just enough light to outline the circular staircase, yet not enough to see each step clearly.
I rummaged through the inside pockets of my dripping jacket, pulled out the small flashlight I had brought for situations like this, and turned it on.
“You are really prepared for anything, aren’t you?”
“You’re probably tired of hearing it, but safety—”
“—safety first,” he said simultaneously. “Did you also bring condoms for our safety?”
“Uh…” His words sent a tingle up my neck. “No.”
“Outrageous,” Theo teased in an exaggeratedly playful voice. “So much for safety first.”
For a moment, we just stood there, listening to the rain patter against the building.
“You know I’m just messing with you, right?” he added. “You’d have to treat me to dinner first, anyway, before I let you have me like that again.”
“That’s… good to know,” I replied, staring a hole into the air between us.
The ease with which he said it made me forget for a moment why we were standing in a dark tower during a storm in the first place.
The sound of the rain pattering against the walls grounded me again.
Photography. That’s why we were here. “Shall we head upstairs before we miss our chance to take some good pictures?”
Without waiting for his reply, I set my left foot on the first step. I expected a snarky comment doubling down on everything being a joke, but Theo just silently followed me.
Our footsteps competed to see whose echo could reverberate the loudest through the clock tower. Walking in a circle for two minutes made me feel like I was becoming part of the ticking time itself. It left me breathless.
At the end of the staircase, we found another wooden door. I shone my flashlight against it and released the metal handle from its lock. The door swung open with a squeak louder than the rumbling outside.
The room behind it housed the clock, one of the features that defined our town’s skyline.
Each wall contained a massive clock face, all four doubling as windows.
The heavy rain pounded against them, suggesting that it might be difficult to get a clear shot from up here.
A metal apparatus stretched from the ceiling to the floor in the middle of the room.
Rods connected all four clock faces to ensure they showed the same time, but despite its impressive build, there was enough space around the apparatus to move freely.
Even a small bench in the far corner offered some comfort to those who survived all the steps it took to get up here.
I propped the flashlight against the wall and aimed it up into the dome above us.
Reflections off the metal up there amplified the effect, giving us something resembling a ceiling light.
I took off my backpack, set it on the ground, and shed my jacket, hanging it on a nail in the wall that likely wasn’t meant as a hook but served well enough as one.
Theo followed my example, throwing his jacket over the railing that shielded the apparatus from technically uneducated peasants like us.
He lifted his arms, the hem of his dark blue wool sweater sliding up and pulling the black shirt he wore underneath with it, accidentally revealing his bare stomach and chest to me.
His defined muscles and the faint dark hairs spreading across his skin, all leading toward a line in the middle that drew my eyes to his belly button, captured my attention entirely until his shirt slipped back down.
I turned away, pretending I hadn’t seen anything.
“Now that I’m seeing the windows up close, I’m not sure we’ll get lucky,” I said, trying to shake off the image of what I had just seen as I wandered toward the clock face on my right. The water clung to the glass, as if it were trying to mimic an aquarium on the outside.
“Apparently…” Theo said, stopping his sentence right there without any further explanation.
He scanned the clock face on the far side of me, moving his head up and down as he took in every single number as if they harbored some secret.
After ten seconds, he let out a winning cheer.
He pushed against the number six, and as if by magic, a panel clicked open, revealing a small hole directly below.
It was just big enough to fit a lens through—exactly what we needed.
“Preparation is key, isn’t it?” He chuckled. “There should be one in each of them.” He jumped to the clock face on his right, searching for it, while I turned to the window behind me.
Lo and behold, there was a small handle in the same spot that allowed me to create a small opening. I leaned down and glanced through it. Despite the heavy rain, I could see surprisingly far without the glass in the way.
“Let’s get cooking before the storm passes,” I said, rushing to my backpack.
Two minutes later, we had set up our cameras, mine facing north and his facing south, to make the most of the situation.
“Would you mind if I took a look at how you framed yours?” Theo asked without taking his eyes off his viewfinder.
“Not at all.” I knelt on the floor and checked my frame again. I had positioned the town in the lower half with the lights of the streetlamps and houses glowing like stars. The upper half was filled with the nearly pitch-black sky.
Theo rushed over. I shifted to the side, keeping my finger on the shutter button.
Before I could fully move out of his way, he came close, brushing his chest against my back as he brought his eye to the viewfinder.
His legs fenced me in, offering some innocent warmth between friends while he checked the frame.
“It’s a good idea to split the picture in half,” Theo uttered, his breath creating a warm breeze compared to the cool air coming in through the small opening. “Do you think I could get away with zooming in on a detail? Or would that ruin my chances of getting a good shot of a lightning bolt?”
I raised my head to look at him, and in that moment, he lifted his head from the viewfinder and glanced down at me.
“As always,” I answered his question, “that depends on what you want to achieve.”
“Can you take a look at my image?”
“Sure, rookie,” I said, mimicking the way he had spoken to me at the wedding.
“Now we’re talking.” He got up and made his way over to his camera, adjusting the frame again with the knowledge he had gathered from looking through my lens.
I followed him, waiting patiently until he was done. The parts of my back that had just pressed into him suddenly felt much colder.
“Have a look,” he said, scooting to the side an inch, not enough for me to look through his viewfinder without pressing myself against him.
If I didn’t know any better—and I did; the way he positioned himself allowed him to keep his view close to what the camera was seeing—I would think he did this on purpose to get close to me.
A little hesitant, I scooted close, but once my left eye neared the camera, it was clear that I had no other choice but to brush up against him like we had a minute before.
Leaning into the warmth he offered, I looked through the viewfinder and took in the scene he had framed.
He had zoomed in on the rooftops on the other side of downtown, neatly aligning a row of windows in the lower third of the frame.
The yellow light behind them created a warm contrast to the dark, cold outside.
Mountains in the distance filled the middle, though they blurred into an uncanny blob in the darkness of the storm.
“It’s not going to work, is it?” Theo asked, breathing into my neck.
“You can try. I like the way the windows look against the night sky, but the mountains probably won’t look impressive, even with a lightning bolt.”
“That’s what I thought too.”
I took my eyes off the viewfinder. Even though I wanted to linger for a few seconds because I didn’t want to part with his warmth, I still got up.
“Well, I guess I have to copy you then,” he added, rushing his hands to the camera body.
I traipsed back to my camera, wishing a little more than I should have that we didn’t have to stay on opposite sides of the room, and crouched down before my camera again, my hand automatically reaching for the shutter button.
For the next half hour, rain fell, thunder rumbled in the distance, and lightning struck close by every now and then, making our shutters click in unison as we waited for that perfect image we had come up here to capture.
“Can I ask you something?” Theo’s voice broke the focused silence.
I glanced over my shoulder and found him still looking relentlessly through his viewfinder. “Sure.”
“Did you mean what you said in the interview about only turning to photography because drawing and painting were too easy?”
“That’s what’s bugging you?” I grumble-laughed, unsure how I felt about him bringing it up.
Everyone—from the people at The Aspect Ratio to the curator of my exhibition—asked me about that. This was one of those things that sounded sensational in a headline but wasn’t the full truth.
“I always loved art. All of it,” I went on.
“It was a nice outlet for everything that went through my head. I started with drawing, then went on to painting. I don’t know why, but I’ve been fascinated by the might of nature since I was a kid.
All I wanted to draw were storm clouds and tornadoes.
I think my pictures were decent for a kid, but something felt off.
Drawing a lightning bolt honestly felt too easy.
Maybe even a little fake, if that makes sense?
I could just bend reality to fit my skill, and…
that didn’t do it for me. Dad then suggested photography, and that was the moment I got hooked.
Even though it was hard as fuck. It took me almost two years to get a proper photo of a storm behind our house.
But I can still feel the euphoria of achieving that because the image finally felt real.
” My skin tingled. I leaned my forehead against the camera, letting my eyes focus on nothing for a moment. “How about you?”
His camera shutter clicked once, the echo hovering through the room for a second.
“More or less the same, although I have to admit, it was always photography for me,” he said, keeping his voice low.
“When I was in college, I felt so… disconnected. Everyone around me seemed to see the world in an entirely different light than I did. Where they saw weeds in the asphalt, I saw a flower trying to survive. When they called someone ugly, I saw a person fighting to make it through the day. I started taking pictures with my crappy flip phone without really thinking about it. Then a friend of mine saw them and was amazed. That was when I learned that my view of the world could be shared by others once they saw it through my eyes. She suggested I join her for a photography class, and I did… I liked it so much that it made me change my whole plan for the future.”
I adjusted my grip on the camera, unsure what to say to something that honest. “Your reasoning is certainly more poetic than mine.”
“I wouldn’t say that. In the end, it’s the art itself that matters, isn’t it?”
“Theo, I know I haven’t said it properly yet, but… I really liked the portrait you took of me. The way you let me see myself through your eyes really did something to me.”
“You see, it was the same for me with your picture. The first time I saw it, I was just blown away. My own pictures seemed like child’s play in comparison.”
“But they’re not. You saw how I struggled to do something that comes easy to you.”
“And vice versa.”
I peeked over my shoulder again, this time finding him glancing at me too.
We shared a smile that made me feel close to him even though we were on opposite sides of the room.
This was exactly what I had always wanted to find: someone to share this with.
But Theo was even more than that; he was someone who also challenged me to try new things I thought I was already too old for.
“I’m glad you joined me,” I said. “And that you let me join you last week.”
“Me too.”
Another thunderbolt shattered through the night, making both our cameras’ shutters click at the same time, although the conversation had probably let us press the buttons too late.
“Maybe we should focus a little more,” I said in an attempt to change the subject before we became too sentimental.
My eyes wandered past the camera, taking in the scenery, until they landed on the creek flowing next to the park—although “creek” was no longer an appropriate word for it.
It had become a raging river, overflowing its banks and flooding the meadow surrounding the clock tower.
“Theo?” I muttered, my voice breaking away at the sight of the looming danger I had completely missed before. “We need to leave. Now.”