In Between Frames Read Online Free Page B

trying to see if I’m flirting , Sam realized, keeping her face carefully neutral.   Her grief was still too raw to consider dating again, and she knew that, if she started, everything would be tainted by David’s memory.   It was not how she wanted to start a relationship.   If he was even interested in one, with her.  
     
    “That depends on the price,” Stephan said.    “For you and your daughter, I teach for good food and a bottle of wine.”
     
    “Be serious,” she said, laughing in spite of herself.  
     
    “I am serious,” he said.   “You know what it’s like, having a degree but can’t find work?   In this shithole country, in this shithole town, it drives a man crazy.”
     
    “Ten euros an hour,” she said.  
     
    “Twenty.”
     
    “Twelve, and dinners.”
     
    “Done.”
     
    The handshake between them was the first time they touched.   She did notice that he held her hand a little too long.   He must have noticed, too, that she did not pull her hand out right away.   When she did, she felt no longing, no thrill of the first contact.   I am not in love with him.   She knew this, even as she knew that he had mistaken a simple exploration for desire.   A few years was not long enough for the grief of David’s loss to lose its sting, and she could not bear the thought of inflicting the pain of her rejection on him, even though she knew it would be kinder.
     
    “I must warn you,” she said, as they kept walking.   They were on the beach, where a few tourists (Americans, probably, she thought) lay like beached whales, their skin so red it glowed.   She winced—these were not the people she wanted to be associated with, classless and crude in how they lolled about, letting their flesh broil.    “I only make salads in the summer.”
     
    “I will teach you then to barbeque—for free,” he said.  
     
    Mabel kicked off her sandals and ran into the ocean, until the lazy waves kissed the edges of her dress.   Sam realized, suddenly, that she and Stephan were holding hands.   She had to admit it was nice to be wanted.   But she still didn’t want to be wanted by him.
     
    ~~~
     
    Miles tried the Leica one more time, with a fresh roll of film, one that he specifically hauled his ass all the way to Amherst for.   He set up the tripod on the rotting pier and clicked away, a whole roll of identical, lakeside shots in black-and-white.   Then he developed the film—and there were twenty-four shots of the lake, in black-and-white.   He swore softly, but decided that somehow, the film he’d shot the day before had been exposed once, and that was that.   It still didn’t explain how the exposure was so precisely in the middle of the roll, or how it fit so neatly between shots, but it was a more logical explanation than the other one, which was that his camera was haunted.
     
    He was packed for the European leg of his trip for exploring expatriate food, the shutters of his cabin all locked and closed, arrangements made for Gary to come by and get his mail twice a week made.   His refrigerator was empty, his trash gone (lessons learned the hard way).   His gear weighed almost as much as he did—he was a light packer, but even so, an eight-week trip was a long one, and in accordance with the conditions of his advance, he carried his camera equipment himself.   “The reason photographer vests have so many pockets isn’t because the photographer needs them to carry his camera gear,” he once explained to Gary.   “It’s because he’s already got a carry-on.”  
     
    The addition of the Leica to his gear bag was an afterthought.   He hadn’t wanted to bring it—he never shot film on these projects, anyway—but he justified it as “making sure the thing didn’t misbehave”.   It was ridiculous, and he knew it was ridiculous, but he still felt better when it was with him, than when it wasn’t.  
     
    He left France almost before he fully processed that