Tar Takes a Picture

The buildings downtown seemed as if they were hewn from one solid block of flawless glass, and the sunlight they reflected stung poor Tar's eyes. Some had ground floor windows covered in sheets of reflective film; they forced him to look at himself as he waddled down the street, and he saw a fat, shambolic triangle of a man. Tired of himself and his surroundings, he looked warily on the world. Woe walked with Tar, dragged behind him like an atrophied tail.

A whole bank of those glass monsters lined Crockett Street, waiting for undergrad shutterbugs to fix them in grand angular angles. Those types knew what they were doing; Tar, as it will become clear, did not. His method was to set the camera to "burst" mode -- ten photos in as many seconds -- and then wave it indiscriminately about his person until something good developed. This afternoon alone he'd captured 300 images, only three of which were useable: a blurry shot of a pigeon, a sliver of the Radon-Exrecon Corporate Towers, and the lower-fourth quadrant of a pretty girl's face. He knew he had a problem with photography, but he didn't know how to go about fixing it.

Off at a distance of maybe two square blocks of sidewalk, Tar saw a clique of photography students being lead out for an afternoon's lark-on-the-town. Despite feeling a wave of disdain crash on his stomach, he smiled and nodded as they flew past. It's just what's done when the young ones roll by. The nicety was wasted: not a one beanied head tipped down, nor did one argyled sleeve rise up for a "Hullo!" Tar muttered something obscene to himself and waddled to a bench. The photography students took to knees in unison to catch the shadows of skyscrapers (and their own grandiose conceptions of said shadows). A bearded professor, a cranky old pervert, pointed from his belly button to his eyes, then up to the tops of the skyscrapers. His students nodded, pointed to their own belly buttons and eyes, and then set back in to the task at hand.

The clique caught one final clack, then upped from their crouch and ambled on. Tar watched them walk, all bony hips and tattered blue jeans, and felt a pang of regret for the years he'd wasted doing things his own way. He looked at his camera, looked up at the buildings, and set his sights on shooting his first great photograph.

Tar stood from his bench and shuffled towards the spot the photography students had just vacated. The fat at the back of his neck bunched up into a fleshy accordion as he lifted his face to the sky. Finality closed her cold palms around his midsection. He felt a something coming, only he didn't know from where, or why.

The Cozy Spot Diner inside the Radon-Excrecon Corporate Towers was at full capacity. The patrons all looked sickly, because they ate at The Cozy Spot Diner for breakfast and lunch everyday. Tall seats lined a circular bar around which flowed a dirty canal. An endless armada of brightly colored deserts, cold sandwiches, and unappealing salads (potato, macaroni, pasta) bobbed past the patrons. They snatched them off the tides and shoveled the contents down. Eat too slowly and you might taste the stuff; no good, that. So the patrons ate quickly, and with remorse.

Even after one hundred or so meals, Zachary G. Xavier couldn't hew the line where this dining system was involved. It was a joke in the office that you could always tell when Zach was back from lunch because the sleeves of his suit were damp. His long fingers just could not negotiate the Caucus Race of plates floating down the canal, and his poor enfeebled brains failed to grasp the logical procession of sandwich ---> salad ---> dessert. Many a meal consisted of three gelatin cocktails, or two creampuffs and an egg salad sandwich, or three potato salads.

Today, we should say, was different, in its way. He'd actually managed to land a sandwich (tuna) and salad (macaroni) in order. Not wanting to try his luck, he stopped short of going for the tapioca pudding. No telling how that might end up. He secreted his winnings away to a booth near the window. The reflective film covering the glass cast a greenish hue on the fake marble countertop and made his food look plastic and inedible (which it most likely was). He dug in anyway, not wanting to waste the fourteen dollars he'd spent. As he dipped his spoon into the macaroni salad, a triangular shadow, somewhat shambolic -- if one can call a triangle, or a shadow for that matter, shambolic -- fell across the table. Zach chalked it up to a pigeon that'd swallowed a paperweight, and promptly filed it away.

At the booth behind him, a slack-jawed girl of no more than thirteen stared vacantly into some small black thing. Nestled against her thenar and palmar digital, the black thing let loose a jackdaw chirp and then burst into raucous, bass-heavy song. She rolled her eyes, mashed some buttons, and then resumed staring.

"Mom," the girl muttered to the middle-aged beauty sitting across from her, "Gas is down three cents in Minneapolis."

"Mmmhmm?"

"And…" she jabbed her thumb on the box's surface, then let loose a wholly adult groan. "It looks like Adlecreutz is gonna take the nomination in Sweden…Sheesh! Whatever they think is best, I guess…"

"Is that so?"

"Mmmhmm." The girl tilted the thing to the side. "Urngh! Cal again. What do I do? I don't like him. He's got severe acne."

"Whatever you think is best, honey."

"Yeah, well…Oh, wow! I can't believe what the yen is doing…"

Zachary pulled his rather outmoded phone from his pocket, and wondered why he couldn't find out what the yen was doing, or who was winning the nomination and where, or why zitty Cal hadn't called him for a date. One can't fall too far behind in these things. Sooner or later he wouldn't even be able to take calls, let alone meetings. He looked at the scarred silver casing of his phone -- so new and pretty out of the store, lo those five months ago -- and made a mournful little sound. If a thirteen-year -- if a thirteen-year old girl, for Christ's sake, can have it! The idea. He looked at his wedding ring and then shook his head. He'd have to talk to Christine about this. Frugalness is one thing, but being beat in the tech race by a thirteen-year old girl! The idea of it! The very idea!

The little girl's tiny device jackdaw twittered again, and the girl uuuuunghcaaaaaaaaaal'd(!), and Zachary felt worse than ever. Disconsolate, he gazed out the window. Across the wide avenue, some young punks with cameras peeled off in a sort of flying-V towards the train stop. The big clock outside Macy's landed all on the twelves and let loose a quiet digital "chirp!" He fixed his attention on a fat little man in a dirty brown raincoat, a cheap-looking digital camera slung at his side. He watched with something like a meditative fixation as the old man shuffled to the spot the young punks had just occupied and began to snap photos of the structures that loomed above him. Apparently dissatisfied, the poor old bastard looked from side to side, brushed off his bottom with one frenetic hand, and then set himself down on the sidewalk. He then proceeded to snap photos with the intense regularity of a finely tuned automaton, quite oblivious to the cellular of gabbing blacksuits pouring out of the Radon-Excrecon lobby and straight towards his resting place.

Knowing precisely what must happen next, panicky Zachary began to bang on the window separating him from the street. As the cellular of blacksuits gabbed their way closer and closer to the unsuspecting photographer, Zachary's banging and pointing reached a fever pitch.

"GET OUT OF THE WAY! GET UP! OH GOD, GET UP!" he cried. Particulates of macaroni flew from his mouth, struck the window, and slinky'd their way to the ground. The patrons angrily shushed him; after all, how dare he interrupt their meal? The teenager with the futurebox took notice, and joined Zachary in crying out.

"Don't worry," she shouted, "I'll text for an ambulance!" She glanced down at her phone and made a face that seemed to condense a lifetime's frustration in one flip of the eyebrow. "What's the number for the…Mom? What's the number for the…"

Zachary's veins constricted, and a sort of awful finality sink into the pit of his stomach. He felt something coming, only he didn't know from where, or for why, or for what. His perception of time seemed to slow as the glass repaid his banging with low-frequency waves that reverberated through his skeleton. The fat under his arms -- Christine called them "Yenta Bags" -- wobbled slower and slower. He stopped hitting the window. Outside, the little fat man got stomped by a cellular of businessmen, marching in lockstep to their shiny black cars. Poor little fat man.

Rob Rabiee was born in Kentucky, educated in New York, and lives in Los Angeles.