“Tell her I miss her,” I said, glad for some time to think. I replayed how Quattro had raced to me after the mudslide. He had looked for me. He had carried Stesha in air so thin, drawing a deep breath was hard work. He had literally given the shirt off his back to a kid. He had kissed me.…
Unable to dwell in those memories without feeling heartsick, I returned to people watching while Stesha texted a few messages in reply. Here in this heated airport, where a few women tottered around in five-inch heels and businesspeople were stuck to their phones, trekking on a half-millennium-old trail seemed as far-fetched as hoping that things would work out with Quattro. I didn’t even know what working out meant where it concerned him.
“Grace wanted you to know that she was thinking of you,” Stesha said as she placed the phone in her lap. A divot of concern lay between her eyebrows again.
“What’s wrong? Is she okay?” We had met Grace last night for dessert, all of us sighing over the dense chocolate cake. “Her leg, is it okay after all that walking?”
“No, no, she’s fine. Well, actually, she’s upset. Have you been following the news?”
“Not closely, no.”
“Well, you’re not missing much. No one’s talking about the flood in Peru, not here. And according to Grace, not in the States. She did a little digging, and none of the big three relief agencies have collected much in the way of donations.”
“That’s exactly what Quattro said would happen.” I flushed as Stesha’s eyebrows lifted. Quattro again. Hastily, I asked, “What’s that about?”
“Yesterday, it was a mudslide in Peru. Tomorrow, it’s an earthquake in Bali. Or a hurricane in Louisiana.” She pursed her lips. “People are fatigued.”
“But all these villagers that we just left… they lost everything.”
“Well, what can anyone do?” Stesha asked, more curious than philosophical.
The exact question echoed in my mind. What good could any of my photographs do if they only stayed on the SD card? If I was the only one who viewed them? “If you want to make a difference,” Dom had lectured me, sounding like he’d come straight out of one of his MBA classes, “you need to make a video. With all the magazines folding and the ubiquity of camera phones, anyone can be a photographer these days. There’s nothing special about what you do.”
But he was wrong. I had spent a lifetime literally framing my view of the world on photo safaris, first with Dad, then on my own. I had watched my mom create visual narratives for countless executives. And in my hand, I held a camera loaded with still photos and video footage of the mudslide.
Make a video.
Slowly, I said, “I think I might have an idea.”
“I thought you would.”
“What if we produced a video about the mudslide?” I asked, mulling out loud. In my mind, I could already envision the opening sequence: a black screen. The ominous sound of the river. “Short, maybe two minutes, and we put it on your website? And distributed it to all of your clients? And we can put it on my blog. It’s such a puny effort, but—”
“But that’s how you start a revolution,” Stesha said, already jotting notes in the notebook she’d bought yesterday. “I like it. How much work is this going to take?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never made one.… Well, other than a couple of little movies for physics and history,” I said, already doubting myself. What was I offering? I knew less about making a video than I did about chemistry. “I’m just a photographer, and not even that, really. I take pictures of street fashion.”
Stesha snapped her notebook closed. “The so-called man who told you that was threatened by you.”
My breath caught. Protest all she wanted about her divination skills, but of course, Stesha would know the truth. And more surprisingly, I actually heard it ring pitch-perfect inside me. She was right. For whatever reason, Dom was threatened by me: that I had told him no, I wasn’t going to sleep with him on our first date or our seventh, words he may never have heard from any woman. That I had exciting plans for my own life that didn’t revolve around his. That I had opinions of my own that didn’t center on flattering him. That I showed promise and talent. And that I thrummed with passion for life and adventure.
The way Stesha tightened her lips and rapped the phone with an agitated fingertip, I knew she was fighting hard not to say anything she might regret. Finally, she asked, “Did it ever occur to you that he was diminishing you as a way to control you?”
I shook my head, even as strobe lights were lighting my brain. “But he was so successful.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“I thought he knew what he was talking about. He had awesome ideas about building my senior portrait business.”
“I’m sure he did.” Stesha continued, “But, honey, of course, you don’t know how to make a video. You’ll learn on the job the way all of us do. I don’t think we’re supposed to spring out of the womb fully formed like Athena with every bit of knowledge embedded in us.”