“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’ll wait.” I smiled weakly and took a seat near the elevator. A few minutes later, he returned with a dark gray plastic tote.
“Thought you said it was a box?”
“Uh, yeah, it was, but Lizzy took everything out of the box and put it in here for more efficient storage.”
“More efficient storage?”
He could barely make eye contact with me. “Yep.”
I was sure Elizabeth had gone through the entire box and thrown half of it away. I wasn’t surprised. “Thanks, Brad.”
“See ya, buddy.” He slapped me on the back as I turned to walk away.
Once I got back to my loft, I sat on my old leather couch, turned on U2’s “With or Without You,” kicked my feet up on the plastic tote, and closed my eyes. I imagined that I had built a life, not just a career. I imagined that my walls were covered with pictures of my family, not animals from the fucking Serengeti. Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward and opened the tote.
It was everything from that time, preserved in black-and-white photographs. Grace and me in Washington Square Park. At Tisch. In our dorm. In the lounge. Grace playing the cello. Grace naked on my bed, taking a photo of me, the camera masking her face. I ran my finger over it.Let me see your face, I remember saying. Grace and me in Los Angeles, playing Scrabble at my mom’s house. My mom teaching Grace how to throw pottery in the Louvre. Grace sleeping on my chest as I looked up into the camera.
Slowly, I took each photo out of the tote. The last photo I pulled out was taken on the day I left for South America. It was what they call a “selfie” now. Grace and I were lying in bed, looking up into the lens as I held the camera over us and clicked the shutter.
We looked so happy, so content, so in love.
What happened to us?
At the bottom of the bag, I found a cassette tape and an undeveloped roll of film. I removed it from the canister and held it up to the light. It was in color, something I rarely used back then; it wasn’t until I started working forNational Geographicthat I used color on a regular basis.
I got up, set the roll on the counter, popped the cassette into an old tape player, and drank until I passed out, listening to Grace and her friend, Tatiana, playing a violin-and-cello duet of “Eleanor Rigby.” They played it over and over, and each time, at the end, I could hear Grace giggling and Tatiana shushing her.
I fell asleep with a smile on my face, even though I felt like one of those lonely people they talk about in the song.
THERE WERE STILLa few film-processing stores around downtown. The PhotoHut was long gone, but I found a camera store on my way to work the next morning and dropped off the mysterious roll of film.
When I arrived at the office, I spotted Elizabeth in the office kitchen, near the coffeepot. “I thought you’re not supposed have caffeine when you’re pregnant?” I said.
“I’m allowed to have a cup,” she shot back as I brushed past her. I smirked and walked toward my cube. I could feel her walking behind me, her ballet flats shuffling against the carpet, kicking up electrical currents. She had a habit of dragging her feet.
I flipped on my computer and turned to see her standing behind me, waiting to acknowledge her. Her hair was sticking up, floating off her shoulders from the static electricity. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What?”
“Your hair.” I pointed, like a five-year-old.
She scowled and wrapped her hair in a bun, grabbing a pencil off my desk to hold it in place.
“Thanks for getting a drink with Brad and picking up the tote last night.”
“Thanks for organizing my personal shit for me. Did you toss anything from the original box?”
“No, I could barely look inside of it. It was like a shrine to Grace.”
“Why were you so determined that I get all that stuff back, then?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel bad, I guess.”
“What exactly do you feel bad about?” I leaned back in my chair.
“Just . . . you know. How . . . I don’t know.”
