The City When It Rains Read Free Page A

you later,” he said as he walked away.
    Corrnan turned his attention to the bottom edge of the blue blanket. He knew that his second picture had caught the tip of it in the frame. It would be a distraction in the final print, drawing the viewer’s eyes away from the woman, its real subject. It would confuse the composition, throw the frame off balance. He squatted close to the ground, edging the camera up just enough to take it out. The narrow wedge of blue sank beneath the bottom line of the frame like a small boat.
    From that angle, he took several more pictures, drawing the camera down slightly, then to the right, up the woman’s arm. A line of needle marks ran from the upper arm to the elbow, where they gathered in a cluster of pitted purple dots. Several tan scars, raised and pointed, crisscrossed the same area like tiny mountain ranges. He moved the camera on down along the nearly smooth lower arm until he reached her fingers. Her nails had once been painted bright green, but most of the polish had chipped away. He shot one of her hands, centering the frame around a single jaggedly outstretched finger.
    It was pointing toward the blue blanket and the small doll that lay wrapped inside it. For a few seconds, Corman concentrated on the doll’s face, the glittering plastic eyes that stared up at the overhanging building, the dirty white stain gathered in its mouth.
    Inside the blanket, the doll was naked, with rounded arms and large, bulging stomach. The head was scrunched down into the fleshy folds of its neck so that from a certain angle, it looked like a miniature sumo wrestler.
    But that wasn’t the angle Corman liked. He circled the body slowly, as he had the woman’s, staring at it through the lens, trying to find an appropriate frame. Every picture has a heart, Lazar had once told him, it’s the shooter’s job to find it.
    Corman finally decided to shoot the doll from the left side, with most of the body covered by the blanket, then straight down, with the face just enough off center to pick up the glistening pavement.
    After he’d taken several shots, he straightened himself, let his eyes drift back and forth from the woman to the doll, as if following a length of rope which stretched from one to the other.
    â€œSome fucking night,” Lang said as he stepped up beside him.“Raining like hell, and I get a jumper.”
    Corman nodded.
    â€œYou get all the pictures you need?”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œGood,” Lang said. He headed toward the tenement.
    â€œIf you’re going in, I’d like to take a look,” Corman said.
    Lang studied him for a moment. “Okay,” he said finally.
    Corman walked a few paces behind him, watching Lang’s back. He thought about snapping a quick picture, concentrating on the dripping hat, the fall of his shoulders, the way the tenement walls drew in around him so that he looked like a man walking into a dark concrete trap. But it was a picture he’d seen a thousand times. No matter what the angle, it always came out on the side of hopelessness. Give up the fight was its advice.
    A narrow alley led along the southern wall of the building. Lang trudged down it listlessly, his feet scraping through the usual debris, cans, bottles, bits of paper, until he got to a rectangular flap of unpainted plywood that leaned against the side of the building. Then he jerked it down and let it crash into the alley.
    The hole behind it was barely large enough to crawl through. Lang took a flashlight from his raincoat, stooped down with a low groan, and crawled on his hands and knees through the opening.
    Corman came in behind him, feeling the ground carefully for nails, broken glass, old hypodermic needles. Inside, it was dark, the windows completely covered over, and as he rose to his feet, Corman could see nothing but the single yellow beam from Lang’s flashlight as it glided smoothly along the floor of the building.