In high school, Larkin had taken a photography class for his required art credit, his thought process being he couldn’t draw and he couldn’t sculpt and he couldn’t paint, but how difficult was it to point and click? But then the instructor had assigned the task of constructing a pinhole camera and developing their own snapshots. Larkin had taken the course with Patrick, when they’d still beenjust friends. They’d gone to the school’s green roof with their cameras. The memory was from before the attack, before the HSAM, and it didn’t resonate like his associations did now. In fact, Larkin wasn’t even able to recall what Patrick had taken a picture of. But afterward, the other boy had stretched out on the grass and closed his eyes and looked a bit like a work of art himself, so Larkin had sat cross-legged beside him, opened the shutter on his camera, and waited as the photo paper was exposed to light.
When he’d developed the picture, it’d come out completely black.
His instructor had explained the camera likely suffered from light seepage.
Larkin had gotten a C– on the project.
So no, he wasn’t surprised that someone who had two art degrees from renowned institutions, whose sketches could find missing people, whose sculptures could identify the nameless, whose paintings, Larkin had come to realize, were the very ones mounted to the walls of the apartment—the cityscapes he lost himself in, trying to count each and every pinprick of light illuminating the towers at night—he wasn’t surprised at all that someone like Doyle could develop cheap camera film too.
It was 6:49 p.m. when Larkin unlocked 4A and stepped inside the dark, stuffy apartment. He shut the door, flipped the lock, and leaned back, closing his eyes. The walkup seemed to sigh around him, settling in for the evening as its tenants returned home, and Larkin wondered what kind of day Doyle’s neighbors had lived. Had it been a day worth remembering—drinks at the neighborhood bar with friends to celebrate a raise, a promotion, an engagement—or had it been the kind of day that made you stand alone in the dark, following the calendar backward day-by-day as you tried to pin down that exact moment where your life went sideways?
Chaos theory stated that among the apparent randomness of surrounding chaos and complexity was a pattern, interconnectedness, repetition. So where in Larkin’s timeline had a butterfly flapped its wings too hard and disturbed the sensitive conditions that made up his life? And what outcome was he even questioning? His HSAM? His career choice? His failed marriage? His sleeplessness—the alarm clock numbers glowing 3:21 a.m. and Larkin acknowledging how easily, how quietly, he could slip away young, leave behind a handsome face, and people would politely remark: it’s justso tragic.
Except when Larkin found himself standing in the bathroom, medicine cabinet open, tearing the contents out as he searched for the confiscated Xanax, craving the pills because the chemical high was better than feeling like the walking dead, a very small voice asked, Do you really want tobedead?
—Larkin vomiting on the bathroom floor, and when he sat up on his knees, Doyle stood before him in the same brown tweed suit he’d worn when they first met, offering a hand and glowing smile as he introduced himself: “Ira Doyle. It’s a pleasure.”—
Larkin slammed the cabinet shut on the still-jumbled associations. He stared at his reflection in the dark, illuminated only by light pollution filtering in through the small window to his left.
Do you really want to be dead?
“No….”
Larkin wasn’t a religious man, he didn’t subscribe to the concepts of a higher being, that he was a pawn in a game of fate—his story already predetermined and his self-will a concept in name only. But he also refused to believe that every misfortune, every injustice, every heartache was the product of unpredictability—that he was nothing more than meat meant to eat, fuck, and die. The answer was something in between, something nuanced, a sort of interconnectedness that lacked proper language.
Everett Larkin was a nobody.
But maybe everyone was a nobody.
And it was only in the exploration of one’s self, the discovery of where one’s heart lay beyond the veil, that we becamesomebody.
“Somebody,” Larkin repeated aloud. He reached into his pocket, retrieved his cell, and placed a call. He remained in the dark bathroom as the line rang.
“Hey,” Doyle answered, and he sounded very much like the man who’d nearly broken in two that afternoon.
“Hi.”
“Everything okay?”
Larkin smiled. He absently shook his head, rubbed his temples, because of course Doyle, with so many arrows in his own back, tended to the well-being of another over himself. It was a common trait among those whose hearts were most bruised—to never want someone to hurt like they did. “No,” Larkin answered simply. “Are you okay?”
The pause was profound.
Doyle echoed, “No.”
A ghost of a laugh escaped Larkin. “I wish American social norms allowed for more honesty like this. Are you leaving soon.”
“Yeah. I’m cleaning up the darkroom a little so it’s actually usable tomorrow. You know what I just found in here?”
“What.”
“A fruitcake. A whole fruitcake. I think it’s from last year’s holiday party.”
Larkin smiled again. “I’m going to cook dinner.”
“You are?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
