Mioko entered the tenement foyer. Something was missing. She glanced at her note, but next to it only sticky remnants of tape remained stuck to the glass. Her guts did a somersault.
The picture of Rube was gone.
"Fuck me."
She unlocked the inner door and continued inside.
Mioko leaned over her darkroom sink, oscillating photo paper in developing liquid with a pair of tongs.
"The first time?" she'd told the young hispanic kid. "The first time, I was twenty,"
Rube's image slowly appeared in the chemical bath.
"Shit, twenty?" Rube had sat across from her, his hanging shirt tucked in his shorts beltline on the humid summer evening.
Standing on a stoop on Eldridge Street with her Mamiya RB67 balanced on her knee. The sun dissipating into a wash of thick red lentil soup above.
"It was everywhere back then."
Rube had studied her close.
"What'd you do? D'you slam that shit?"
"Not that first time. But eventually yeah."
"And?"
"It was fucking amazing," she'd admitted.
Rube had nodded his agreement, "A satanic rush like a sledge-hammer, am I right?"
Mioko remembered the pavement below his white sneakers. The feeling of his eyes on her.
"Till a few years later when I found myself pissing and shitting my pants and committing crimes to stop being constantly junk sick."
His eyes had penetrated her like a violation, a starry-eyed sexual assault. She should have known right then and there.
"OK." he had finally said. "You can take my picture."
She had opened her metallic viewfinder and looked down at an upside-down Rube on the focusing screen. His chest grew as he stared down the barrel, the ground glass dividing his physique into to two dichotomous parts. She pulled the trigger.
Snap.
Staring at the print now. Rube looked to her like child. Handsome. Innocent. Weeks later he had reached out and grabbed her as she passed by the L.E.S. 1 projects, his true nature slamming into her body like a prison shiv. Sticking his hand up under her skirt, entering her between the legs with three fingers in a wedge. She'd screamed and shoved him away, but that was just a start. Over a year since she'd snapped the photo, he'd been trailing her ever since. Just as nobody was ever more than six feet away from a rat in Manhattan, Mioko felt the young stalker's presence on every city block now.
“Mioko. Hey. You home?”
The faint sound of knocking startled her back. Could he have entered the building?
Clipping the print to the drying line, she climbed over her inflatable mattress and pushed back the black curtains. Cracking the door, she found Dorian.
"Hi there."
Dorian looked a little startled, not expecting Mioko to defy the laws of answering doors by materializing directly behind him. Crossing the tiny hall, she unlocked her apartment door.
Dorian followed her inside clearly still trying to figure out the strange mirrored discrepancy in space-time.
"You have two apartments?" he finally asked.
Mioko ignored the question.
"How much you want?"
She climbed onto her bathtub, and noticed that Dorian couldn’t help but stare at the tattoos wrapping around her inner thigh. She reached for the top shelf Tupperware and hopped back to Dorian's level.
"A quarter, or an eighth?"
She looked up at him from the Tupperware, which was filled with gleaming hydroponic. The inside soles of his All Stars lifted off her molten plastic floor, his nervous energy rippled like a dirty little puddle. He still had a youthful vitality, his dark hair as yet standing its ground amongst the growing shoots of grey that were beginning to swallow his scalp. She wondered how long it would take for Dorian to complete his metamorphosis to his final manifestation as just another tucked away troglodyte, winding away the days in a dingy apartment, with decades old newsprint covering the windows. She gave him five, maybe ten more years of jaded bohemian-hood before he was truly lost.
She popped the Tupperware, and pulled out a couple baggies.
"That's actually not why I'm here today."
"Oh yeah?"
She watched Dorian take in the charred edges of peeling paint, the crispy-fried floor.
"Isn't Axlerod gonna have this fixed?"
Mioko’s head dipped, looking at Dorian through her eyebrows.
"Are you sleeping in here with it… like this?"
"What are you, social services?"
"Couldn't I just be being neighborly?"
"Is that what this is?"
"Look, I came down here to ask you a question..." he hesitated.
She didn't like where this was going.
"Would you sit for me?"
She shot a quizzical glance at a nearby chair.
"I want to paint you," he clarified. "Your portrait."
This was the last thing she needed.
"Look, no disrespect. I've already got one stalker."
Dorian laughed, pulling out a chair.
"Mind if I?"
"Sort of."
Dorian ignored her, taking a seat at her blackened table.
"Here's the thing. I've been thinking about this a lot. Back when this city had a soul, when kids were squatting all over downtown, making real art."
"That was a while ago, wasn’t it?"
"Yeah, but the whole city was a found object then. The birth of graffiti, dances and plays on factory rooftops. Ephemeral, on site: there one day, gone the next."
Mioko interjected, "But now the whole scene is just glossy marketing? Elitist spoils for the uber-rich??"
"Yes!"
His motives were completely transparent, like a chunky kid chasing the Mister Softee truck.
"You want to get back to something real?"
"Exactly."
"And you think I'm real?"
"Yeah. I think you're amazing."
The earnestness of his compliment made Mioko laugh. Dorian visibly perked in the chair. She knew she'd better rip the band aid quickly.
"I don't think so."
Dorian's expression crumpled. A tiny part of her regretted the bubble bursting.
Mioko reached forward and fingered one of the baggies on the table in front of him.
"Do you still wanna buy some pot?"
He looked at the little green booby prize.
"Umm. Yeah, sure," he finally managed. "I'll take an eighth."
She hoped her deflection would stick, and yet she allowed herself a flavor of the unfamiliar sensation--the simple sweetness of being admired. After all, starting a collection of unwanted admirers was not a problem she'd ever imagined facing. As she took his money, she wondered for a split second what it would have been like to have his eyes darting over her body while he rubbed oils at his canvas.
Then she shut the door and threw the bolt.
CHAPTER 02
CHAPTER 03
CHAPTER 04
CHAPTER 05
CHAPTER 06
CHAPTER 07
CHAPTER 08
CHAPTER 09
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
UPDATE: LOOKING FORWARD - CHAPTER 15
BEHIND THE KEYBOARD
I’ve worked in darkrooms since I was a kid, my father was the same way, and my grandfather on my mother’s side had a great passion for photography. So it’s in my blood. I had the hardest time giving up celluloid as a “film” director. It pained me. I shot many films on Kadak Super16mm and two shorts on Super35mm. Moving to digital was hearbraking, but slowly over time I’ve come to embrace the amazing attributes of RED camera and ARRI Alexa and even my comparatively cheopo BlackMagic Ursa Mini. I still shoot still film. But I’ve let go of some of the attachment. Sometimes being a holdout is good. And sometimes you’re creating undo suffering for yourself. Which do you think Mioko is doing?
“Sunstroke” - 35mm, 2014
Yours In The Chain,
Doug Karr
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife @zenmommas for years of support during the writing process, @ericvancewalton for his trailblazing, inspired collaboration and incredible guidance, @andrarchy for his mind blowing insight and friendship, @bakerchristopher for being an inspiration as a human artist and bro, @complexring for his brilliance and enthusiasm, Masie Cochran, Taylor Rankin and @elenamoore for their skillful help in editing the manuscript, and to @opheliafu for the fantastic illustrations she created exclusively for the novel's launch on Steemit and to Elena Megalos for her wonderful character illustrations. I’d also like to thank Eddie Boyce, Jamie Proctor, Katie Mustard, Alan Cumming, Danai Gurira, Stephan Nowecki, Ron Simons, Dave Scott, Alden Karr, Missy Chimovitz, my dad Andy Karr and late mother Wendy, and everyone else who helped lead me to this moment.
I am a Brooklyn based writer, film & commercial director, and crypto-enthusiast, my projects include @HardFork-series an upcoming narrative crypto-noir and my novel Dwelling will soon be premiering exclusively on Steemit, and you can check out more of my work at dougkarr.com, piefacepictures.com, and www.imdb.com/name/nm1512347
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