Chancers Read online

  Graham had bought Liam a kite, and later that day, Scott took a photo of me helping them put it together on the beach. The string was horribly tangled and I offered to straighten it out, suggesting that my female fingernails would slide more easily between the knots. But Liam quickly grew bored and Graham soon sided with him: It was a cheap kite, it wasn’t worth the effort, they’d find something else to do. Long after they gave up, I was still hunched over the tangled mess—I always thrived on having a challenge to complete.

  Eventually, my persistence paid off: The kite flew. There’s a photo of Graham with his head thrown back, his arms spread wide along the string, guiding the kite against the wind. It must’ve been late in the day because Graham is silhouetted against a cloudy sky, a dusky shadow as the sun struggled to announce its descent.

  And that’s it. Like clicking through the slides of my 1970s childhood, it feels like there must be more, that surely other images are buried in a box, waiting to summon memories that are missing.

  Graham insists that I wore a red bikini that summer, but I’ve never owned a red bikini; in the photos Scott took, I’m wearing a red hooded sweater with denim shorts, my legs tan after a summer in the sun. Graham remembers the party in East Hampton, the late nights with Tom, and swimming with Liam that stormy Labor Day weekend. But I barely made a dent in his consciousness—one admittedly clouded by liquor—and after September, I can’t say that I thought much about him. He had a girlfriend and I was interested in someone else by then.

  At some point that fall, Scott told me that Graham and Liz were getting married; Scott was invited to their wedding at Graham’s brownstone in Brooklyn. My initial reaction was, “How come you got invited and I didn’t?” But that sentiment was short-lived. Scott had been friendly with Liz, and with me she always kept a cool distance, although I did wonder if she was going to regret what she was getting herself into. Graham’s drinking was in that zone approaching problematic—maybe fun to be around when he was the life of the party, but not so pleasant to deal with day after day.

  Scott was not one to gossip or make catty comments about the odds of a marriage lasting, so his report on the wedding was characteristically succinct: It was a fun party, Graham’s parents and his brother flew over from Scotland, his sister and her family came from Ireland, a few friends from London made the trip. The closest he got to dishing was a comment about how much everyone drank.

  The only other contact I had with Graham was the cc list of a few group emails: messages to settle unpaid bills and a couple of invites to parties that Graham and Liz didn’t attend. There was some talk of organizing another rental for the following summer, but it never came together. Prices in Montauk were starting to creep up, a few housemates had moved away, and others had lost interest in the group dynamic—including me. After three summers of dealing with the personalities of different share houses, I’d had my fill of negotiating room assignments and dinner plans.

  As a freelance writer, I was shifting from covering technology to writing about travel—mostly for The New York Times—and the new beat meant I could expense the cost of some trips. That fall, I flew out to California to write an article about Point Reyes; toward the end of winter, I went to Brazil for a feature about Búzios, a resort town near Rio de Janeiro. My flight left New York at 10:20 P.M. on March 19, just minutes after George W. Bush announced that the United States was invading Iraq.

  By the time the plane landed the war had started, so it was an awkward time to be an American abroad. Years earlier, Ethan and I had spent six weeks traveling around Brazil, getting a warm welcome pretty much everywhere we went. But in 2003, with bombs raining down on Baghdad, the reception from the locals was chilly. Everyone kept asking what the hell the U.S. was doing—a taxi driver, a waitress, other travelers. It was the first time I felt deeply uncomfortable about where I was from.

  After I flew back to New York, I wrote an article about the beaches and nightlife in Búzios, describing the waves lapping against the seawall and the palm fronds rustling outside my hotel window. But what I remember most about that trip was an acute sense of shame. It left me with the nagging feeling that I was writing about the wrong things. I wanted to make a change, but I couldn’t afford to turn down the travel assignments that were coming my way.

  In 2004, an agent approached me about writing a travel book; within a few months, I had signed a deal. It was a guide to planning, booking, and troubleshooting a trip in a do-it-yourself era—not the kind of book that makes a major impact or wins any awards, but it was a useful topic and it meant I didn’t have to constantly scramble for work. I just didn’t realize how much of my life it would consume. For the next year, pretty much all I did was write.

  CHAPTER TWO

  January 2005

  Upper West Side, Manhattan

  In January 2005, after having no contact with Graham for three and a half years, I dug up his email address and sent him a message. The subject line said: long time, no Montauk swims.

  “It’s Susan, formerly of the Montauk share house a few summers ago,” I wrote. “I’m attaching a photo to refresh your memory, which also serves a second purpose: I need to get a more professional photo taken because I’m writing a book.”

  In the picture I sent, I’m wearing a red turtleneck sweater with my curly hair piled up in a loose bun. Despite my slightly parted lips and weirdly come-hither look, I wasn’t trying to seduce Graham—it was the only close-up I could find on my computer. I sent it mostly because I wasn’t sure Graham would recognize my name.

  Without confirming that suspicion, he wrote back saying he was “just in from a shoot for the Guardian in London” and had been “away for a month over xmas all over the globe.” But he’d be happy to take my picture and would give me a call.

  That would be the first time Graham promised to call, and then didn’t.

  There wasn’t really a rush to get a photo taken, so I let it drop as I got consumed by writing the book. (Lesson learned: Get an author photo taken before you’ve got dark circles under your eyes from staring at a computer screen for a year, and don’t wait until your summer tan fades to a dull winter pallor.)

  By December, I was under the gun to submit a head shot to my publisher, so I decided to try Graham again—despite my sister’s unenthusiastic response when I asked what she thought of his photos. After looking at his website, she told me she didn’t think he made people look attractive, and that his lighting was a little harsh.

  Since she had met Graham at the share house in Montauk, I wondered if her opinion of his work was clouded by his boisterous behavior that summer. Still, I clicked through his online portfolio again—mostly portraits of authors and artists and musicians, along with photos from ad campaigns for clients like IBM and ESPN.

  In some sense, my sister was right: These were not glamorous images, highlighting perfect makeup and flawless skin. But I didn’t want to look like I was auditioning for a bit part on Broadway, or trying to get a date on Match.com. I wanted to look like the people in Graham’s pictures: self-assured and authentic, not trying to be somebody they weren’t. Besides, I was sort of curious to see him again.

  So as much as it was a practical decision to contact Graham—I couldn’t afford any of the photographers my friends recommended—I didn’t choose him entirely on a whim. There was even a fair amount of deliberation behind the breezy follow-up email I sent.

  “So I never did anything about a photo,” I wrote. “I don’t suppose you’re in town and have time in the next couple of weeks to shoot a writer who isn’t quite as famous as your usual subjects?”

  This time, Graham did call. At first, I had a hard time understanding his accent—the Scottish way he rolled the r in his name, and said “cannae” instead of “can’t.” He suggested I come by his house in Brooklyn, instructing me to exit the subway from “the ass end of the train.” When I asked about his rate, I was relieved to hear that he’d only charge me for his expenses.

  The day we’d
agreed on, two weeks before Christmas, he answered the door half-dressed, his brown hair a bit disheveled. Clearly, he had forgotten our plan.

  “Is this a bad time?” I asked.

  Graham was still buttoning his shirt, a vintage western pattern, and his wool pants were falling down—not a style statement so much as a size mismatch. He looked thinner than I remembered, but still had a rough-around-the-edges charm.

  “I couldn’t find a belt,” he said, abandoning the shirt buttons to hike up his trousers. “Sorry, I just woke up.”

  It was one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.

  “Did I get the time wrong?” I asked, knowing perfectly well that I hadn’t. “I can come back later—I’ll go get a coffee or something. Or we can do this another day if now isn’t a good time.”

  “No, it’s fine. I was up late, scanning some photos I had to send to London.”

  “Oh, I thought maybe you’d had a rough night,” I joked, thinking about the time Graham and Tom had kept half of the Montauk house awake.

  “I gave up drinking,” Graham said, quick to correct my assumption. He held open the door as I stepped over the mail scattered near the entrance, shoes climbing up the wall in a pile. “Do you want coffee? Actually, I might not have any coffee. I can make you a cup of tea.”

  “That would be great,” I said, hoping I hadn’t offended him with my comment. I wasn’t much of a tea drinker but the house felt chilly, like the heat hadn’t been turned on yet for the winter.

  Graham lived in a brownstone he bought back when taxi drivers wouldn’t take passengers to the outer boroughs, renovating the parlor floor so it was one big open room. It felt more like a loft than a nineteenth-century home—sort of an artist’s studio with a kitchen at one end. As we waited for the kettle to boil, I looked at the photographs on the walls: a nighttime view out an airplane window, a shot of two gas storage tanks just as one was exploding, and a picture of a tiny soccer field surrounded by tall buildings.

  “Did you take these?” I asked.

  “The big prints, not the black-and-white ones. That one of the row houses in Edinburgh I picked up at the Chelsea flea market. It’s an albumen print from the 1860s.”

  “I’ve never been to Scotland,” I said, feeling a bit awkward, wondering if Liz was still asleep downstairs. But it turned out she and Graham had split up.

  Before he snapped a single photo, while my tea was still warm, Graham summed up the previous three years of his life: He had gotten married, then divorced, fell into a funk, took time off from work. But he had quit drinking, he assured me—even went to rehab to get sober. I knew plenty of people in recovery, so this confession didn’t set off alarms. If anything, it seemed like a positive sign.

  Every time he disappeared to the basement to fetch more film or a different light, I perused all the collections on his shelves—photography books and record albums mixed with stoop sale and trash night finds: piles of sunglasses, punk band pins, Scottish trinkets, and little windup toys. It was the opposite of my sparsely decorated apartment, which didn’t give much away—except for shelves full of books. I was drawn to Graham’s world, full of personality and art and clutter.

  He teased me about the sweaters I’d brought for the photo shoot, rejecting my admittedly plain choices. “No turtlenecks—necks are sexy,” he said. “Not a cardigan—unless you want to look like a librarian….Do you have anything that’s not black or gray?” (The J.Crew V-neck we settled on was navy.)

  I gave him a hard time about his unconventional lighting methods: fluorescent tubes I thought would make my pale skin look purple, aluminum foil he rolled out on the table in front of me—to bounce light up under my eyes. Even though I expressed my reservations in a playful manner, my sister’s comment hovered like a cartoon thought bubble at the back of my mind.

  “I know I said I liked how natural people look in your pictures,” I told Graham. “But please don’t make me look too real.”

  “Well, I could smear some Vaseline on my lens and give you a nice soft-focus look, but I think you look pretty good. Just give me a smile that says, ‘Buy my book!’ ”

  After hours of flirtatious banter, and more photos than I suspect Graham really needed to take, he suggested we go get something to eat. That didn’t seem like a typical way to wrap up a photo shoot, but I was enjoying being with him so off we went to Smith Street—Graham narrating a monologue almost the entire way.

  He had settled in Brooklyn when he moved to New York in 1992, working at a photography gallery after getting his MFA from the Royal College of Art in London. He and his first wife, Anna, shared custody of Liam (who was now fifteen); she lived in their old brownstone a few blocks away.

  It was tough to break in once Graham got going on a topic, but I managed to squeeze in a few details about my life. After graduating from Stanford University, I taught English in Argentina for two years, then got hired by an Internet start-up in San Francisco. A job at The New York Times website brought me east, just before the dot-com boom went bust. Luckily, I’d cashed in my stock options for the down payment on an apartment in Manhattan, but I didn’t love where I lived—surrounded by chain stores on the Upper West Side.

  “You should move to Brooklyn,” Graham said. “Before it gets too expensive. All there used to be along this street was a dodgy bar, a diner, and a couple of delis, but now it’s becoming like Soho.”

  Bypassing a French bistro and other restaurants he deemed too trendy, Graham chose a tiny Spanish place with Formica tables and bright lights. He revealed that he was “sort of” a vegetarian and ordered a salad; I polished off a steak burrito. Since he wasn’t charging me for the photo, I insisted on paying for the meal.

  It was dark by the time he walked me to the subway, offering to wait with me until the train came. Before I passed through the turnstile, he surprised me with a kiss—an impulsive swoop toward my lips that I didn’t quite know how to interpret. It was more forward than an Italian cheek kiss, but too quick of a peck to be sure it was a romantic gesture.

  “Do you think that’s a Scottish thing?” I asked my friend Sara, calling her as soon as I got off the train. She told me I was being an idiot—of course he’d made a move—but I wasn’t entirely convinced. I wasn’t used to being hit on so quickly.

  The next day, I got my answer. “I had a nice time Saturday,” Graham emailed me. “We should jump on a plane to Vegas and hit the desert for a few days.” We had joked about using some of Graham’s frequent flier miles to fly somewhere sunny—I’d get a tan, then he’d retake my photo. But in case he thought I might actually take him up on that offer, I replied saying Vegas was a little too far to travel, so he invited me to a friend’s Christmas party instead. “I hate going to things like that alone and I’d really like to go w/you if that’s ok. Sort of like an uncomplicated date!!”

  That was a reference to a story he’d told me about a woman who had propositioned him, promising “uncomplicated” sex. I was a little surprised when he revealed that he wasn’t a one-night-stand type of guy; it didn’t track with his flirtatious behavior.

  “I think a transcript of Saturday’s conversation would confirm that your life is definitely not uncomplicated,” I wrote back. “Where/what time is the party?”

  Graham never followed up about the Christmas party, but after he got his film processed he invited me over to his house to choose a photo. Carefully scrutinizing the contact sheets, I had a hard time hiding my disappointment: His lighting tricks were no match for my raccoon eyes. Even though I looked young for my age, with freckles and reddish-brown curly hair, you could tell I’d spent too much time in front of a computer.

  “That’s what Photoshop is for,” Graham promised. “A little dodging to lighten the shadows under your eyes, some work with the healing brush to smooth out a few wrinkles.”

  “I hope you’re not planning on charging me extra for that,” I joked. “Remember—you already told me you’re still learning digital retouching.”

  Afte
r flipping through the contact sheets a second time, I marked a couple of photos with the yellow-arrowed stickers Graham gave me. It all felt very old school, with a loupe and the rolls of film scattered on the table. Graham hadn’t yet made the transition to the digital era—he’d taken my portrait with a 1970s Hasselblad, one of those cameras you hold at your waist, looking down into the lens. I wished I’d looked closer at the Polaroids he shot to test the lighting, telling him I should’ve at least tried to tame my wild hair.

  “Listen, I think you look brilliant,” he said. “But if you don’t like any of these, we can try again. You’re not gonna hurt my feelings if you tell me they’re all crap.”

  “No, they’re fine,” I insisted. “One of these will work. I just didn’t realize how tired I look. And my hair always seems so messy in pictures.”

  “I like your hair,” Graham said.

  We were sitting next to each other at a long pine table made by one of his friends. Our knees were touching; I wondered if he was going to kiss me, couldn’t decide if I wanted him to or not. I was attracted to him, but sitting for a portrait and then getting hit on by the photographer seemed like such a cliché, and I didn’t want to be one of those gullible girls if Graham was that kind of guy. But then his phone buzzed—it was always beeping or buzzing. He picked it up to read a text. With that momentary distraction, the charged moment between us passed.

  “I have something for you,” I said, reaching into my bag for the books I’d bought for him: The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion; The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri; and The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.