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Nina sippedher coffee and flipped through the photographs on the desk. Some of them were weather-worn, curling at the edges from heat or moisture. She paused at one of her favorites — a picture of a woman sitting on a bench in Washington Square. The shot had been taken from behind, the woman’s coiffed silver head centered in the frame. Beyond her Nina could make out the blur of moving bodies traversing the park’s pathways, the fountain a smudge of movement in onecorner.
It wasn’t unusual for the face of the subject to be somehow obscure, a fact Nina had immediately appreciated about the images, which had clearly been taken without permission. The identity of the subjects wasn’t thepoint.
The point was theirsolitude.
Nina had come across them one night after having dinner with Karen in the West Village. It had been unseasonably warm for January, the breeze unusually gentle. It had felt like a mid-winter gift, and Nina had put off heading for the subway to walk through the park alone, enjoying the quiet and thinking about Liam andJack.
She’d thought time would make everything that had happened between them clearer, but after eight months alone, she was still as conflicted as ever, the two men intertwined in her mind whenever she thought about her first few months in thecity.
Liam had been traveling overseas for the past four months, working on a series for a travel magazine, something Nina only knew thanks to Moni’s strategic and transparently casual leaking ofinformation.
And Jack… well, Jack was being Jack, attending black-tie events and keeping everyone speculating about his latest romantic exploits, a pastime that had grown more frenzied since he began showing up alone to galas and fundraisers and awardshows.
Nina had been drawn to news of the two men like a moth to a flame in the beginning, but over the past few months she’d been content to focus on the present. There were endless things to beat herself up for in the past. The way she’d handled everything with Jack and Liam was definitely a contender for number one, but there was nothing she could do but learn from it and moveon.
She was learning to forgive herself the crime of beinghuman.
Taking long walks through the city had become a kind of therapy, and she’d felt surprisingly happy walking through Washington Square after dinner withKaren.
The first photograph had been taped to a light post. She’d thought it was a flyer at first, but when she got closer she’d realized it was a photograph of a young woman leaning against a tree, a book in her hand, the titled obscured by her bent knee. Her face was bowed, her features unclear. Nina had felt the solitude in the image. Had seen her own mirroredthere.
A sense of peace had immediately descended over her, and she’d continued walking, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She’d still been smiling when she saw the next picture taped to a parkbench.
This one had been taken while in motion. The back of a woman was at the center of the frame, her brilliant red hair spilling over a navy coat. Whoever had taken the photograph had done it while walking behind the subject, and while the photograph didn’t show the woman’s face, it felt intimate in a way Nina couldn’texplain.
There had been more pictures scattered throughout the park, all of them featuring women alone. In every case, the people around the subject were slightly out of focus, as if they were only bit players in the women’splay.
Nina walked the park for nearly an hour that first night looking for the pictures. It was only later that she wondered why she hadn’t felt creeped out by the whole thing. It hadn’t taken long to find the answer: the pictures had the glow of innocent fondness. Nina could feel the care with which the photographer had chosen his or her subjects, the caution taken to insure their identities couldn’t bedetermined.
They felt like love letters from one woman to another, and Nina had left them that night, not wanting to disrupt whatever message was beingconveyed.
But she’d been drawn back to the park again and again, not entirely surprised to find more pictures. After the first couple times, she’d taken one every now and then, studying it for clues, dreaming of finding the photographer and offering them a show at the gallery. She was a manager now, and while she hadn’t ever held her own show, she had a feeling Moni was just waiting for her toask.
The pictures in front of her had been squirreled away over a period of weeks, each one increasing Nina’s desire to find the secretive photographer, each one adding to her list ofquestions.
Why thepark?
Why leave them out where they could be rained on? Where they might blow away? Where someone might take them? Were the photos a celebration of solitude as Nina suspected? Or did the photographer have something else inmind?
“You’re going to make yourselfcrazy.”
Nina looked up as Moni dropped her bag behind the desk they shared at the back of thegallery.
“Did the bell ring?” Nina asked. “I didn’t hear you comein.”
“It rang.” Moni smiled. “See what Imean?”
Nina laughed. “Pointtaken.”
“I’m just giving you a hard time,” Moni said. “This isn’t crazy — this is professionalobsession.”
Nina looked up at her. “Something you recognize, I takeit?”
“The understatement of the year. Want a coffee?” Moni headed for the coffeemachine.
“No,thanks.”
