Allegories of the Tarot Read Free Page B

wrinkled
hands, so steady on the shutter release just hours before, shook like the
palsied bingo lady’s had. “They waited in big packs, tribes almost, in the dark
corners outside the casinos, attracted to all the fortunes being won and lost,
but repelled by all the noise and neon.”
    He pointed the projector at the wall and turned it on. I
said nothing. “Get the lights.”
    I stood there blinking in confusion and dismay for a
split-second, then swiped my hand over the light switch.
    Hansom waited til I was looking directly into his rheumy
eyes. “When you first see them, you have to allow your eyes to commit
immediately, or your brain never will. If you don’t see them on the very first
glance—if you blink instead—then you never will. Understand?”
    I nodded, but it was a lie.
    Hansom slid the film into the projector and hurriedly
focused the image on the wall. He grunted. “None in this one.”
    He went through three more then stopped.
    A man wearing a “Disco is Dead” t-shirt who’d won
$200.00 for a Cover-All materialized on the wall in all his magnified,
negative-image, toothy glory. The shutter had caught him in mid-jump. Hansom
jerked a finger at the projected image. “See there! Just
behind his right shoulder?”
    I’d become pretty good at converting negative images to
positives in my mind. Most photographers get the hang of it eventually. Even
so, I couldn’t be sure what I saw. It might have been a tiny face, dragonfly
eyes and slits for a nose. There might have been some out-of-focus bit of
background there that resembled a scaly wing and limber little arm.
    There might have been, but I didn’t have time to decide.
It could have just as easily been water spots from not letting the film dry.
    Hansom advanced the strip of film quickly through
several more frames until coming to a stop on the image of a thoroughly
depressed-looking woman who had missed a big pot by one number. Cigarette smoke
wreathed around her face like a surreal picture frame. He scanned the blown up
negative and shouted, “There!”
    I looked where he was pointing. It could have been a
black butterfly wing by her earlobe, but it could have just as easily been part
of her earring, too.
    The old man moved the film again and again, grunting
mostly, but occasionally pointing at things too fast for me to really keep up
with him. When he reached the last image, he rushed up to the wall and pounded
on it with one angry, shaking fist. “Do you see them? Five in one shot! Five!”
    It was a picture of me, coming back from the rest room
near the end of the night. I had talked to someone in there, the older black
man in the patched jeans and pressed shirt.
    “You with the photographer.” It
was more an accusation than a question.
    I nodded.
    “Seems kind of sad, a man such as himself wasting time
snapping pictures at Hoot ‘n’ Holler.”
    “It makes him happy,” I replied, wondering if the man
had recognized Hansom out there at the camera.
    “What do you think makes him happier? Taking pictures of
people gambling money they ain’t got—or being taken seriously by a young man
such as yourself?”
    By the time I found my words he had already zipped up
and walked out.
    I peered at the enlarged negative of myself on the wall.
Hansom stood at the edge, his knees pressed into the cheap mattress and
bedspread. He waved a frantic finger at something blurred into the foreground.
Specks of dust spun in the projector’s beam like tiny angels in search of a
pinhead to dance on.
    In that negative, I had just decided to try my best to
learn what I could from Hansom. No matter how senile he might be, the master
photographer still had plenty he could teach me. It wouldn’t hurt to humor him
about the fairies, would it? It’s not like anyone would ever have to know.
Maybe there was an explanation besides the one involving straightjackets and
rubber rooms. Dust or water spots on the film or something.
    “Do you see them?” Hansom