Photo Finish (9781101537510) Read Free

well, but at the other end, and, no, she didn’t know Mildred more than to recognize her. The kids kept her running all day, and Mildred never left her own apartment, except on Mondays, when someone from the senior center came to take her to the store or the doctor.
    â€œDo you know if her son is staying with her?”
    â€œIs that who that man is? I don’t like the way he looks at Tania. I told my husband it wouldn’t surprise me if he was a molester, out of prison, and they won’t tell us who’s in the building. We could be murdered here or our children abducted, and would the management care? Not any more than they did the time the people in 5A were keeping goldfish in the bathtub and let it overflow into our place. And then the cats, yowling to get out. I have complained a thousand times— Tania, stop pinching—”
    I was thankful when we reached her door. I dumped the bags on the floor, in the middle of a litter of LEGOs, Beanie Babies and half-empty cereal bowls, and fled as the children’s whines rose to howls.
    Before leaving my office this morning, I had written a short letter to Mildred Davenport, giving her the same story I had tried shouting through the intercom: I was a freelance journalist writing a book on Africa through American eyes and very much wanted to get hold of some of her son’s photographs from the eighties.
    At the far end of the corridor, I knocked loudly on her door. After a long wait, I heard a shuffling on the other side and then movement at the peephole. I smiled in a cheery, unthreatening way.
    She opened the door the width of a chain bolt. “What do you want?”
    I kept smiling. “I put it in writing—I thought that might be easier than me trying to explain it through the door.”
    She grudgingly took the envelope from me and shut the door again. The television was turned up so loud, I could hear it through the closed door. After about ten minutes, she came back.
    â€œI guess you can talk to him, but he says he doesn’t know what you mean. He never was in Africa.”
    I followed her into her living room, where a fan stirred air so heavy, it fell back like soup onto my hair and blouse. A television tuned to Oprah provided the only light. Stacks of newspaper and pieces of furniture were crammed so close together that it was hard to find a place to stand.
    â€œHunter! This here’s the lady,” she shouted over Oprah in a flat nasal.
    A figure stirred in one of the overstuffed armchairs. In the flashes from the screen, I’d mistaken him for a heap of towels or blankets. Mrs. Davenport muted the sound.
    â€œWho you work for?” he said. “They have money for prints?”
    â€œGaudy Press. They have some money, but they don’t throw it around.” I looked around for a place to sit and finally perched on the arm of another chair. “They’re especially interested in your work in the eighties. When you were in Africa.”
    â€œNever was in Africa.” Hunter shot a look at his mother.
    â€œIf they want to pay you for your work—” Mrs. Davenport began, but he cut her off.
    â€œI said I never was in Africa. You don’t know anything about my life away from here.”
    â€œI’m only deaf, not crazy,” his mother snapped. “Why don’t you see if you can make some money? Show this lady your photographs. Even if you don’t have Africa, you’ve got plenty of others.”
    â€œYou go back to Oprah, and the lady can go back to her publisher and tell them no sale.” He took the control from his mother and restored the sound; a woman whose car had broken down on the Santa Ana Freeway had been rescued by an angel.
    I moved close enough to him that I could see his frayed T-shirt and the stubble of graying hair on his chin. “Your son says you were in South Africa in 1986.”
    He curled his lip at me. “I don’t have a son. That I know