Photographie Noire (Retrocity #24)

(for Velocity)

The black lace curtains barely filtered the intrusion of hard blue light from the indifferent wintry afternoon. It was a forgotten neighborhood, an embarrassment only romanticized in post-modern, suburban graphic novels. To look but not live.

She had come, not to celebrate in its death, but to embrace its timeless beauty.

The mechanical elevator whirring on its cables while aged sleeping security guards were grateful not to be disturbed. Whirring as it sweat grease in a proud display of almost perfect arrival.

She waited for the dust to drift through the last tangents of sunlight, waited for the moment, waited for the shot.

Little girl, Veronika Lake dress up in the cross currents of a culture adrift in the abundance of the pixilated points of its compass. So many adventures to follow and no where to go.

But she was here, now, centered in the lens, digitally defining her piece of the portrait.

She casually picked at the flaking paint chips as the spectrums of artificial luminosity adjusted the angles of shadow, wondered where the sclerotic grey pipes emptied their buried exhaustion, wondered at what depth they travelled “under the floorboards”.

Clicks and encouragement and her pale skin continued in its transformation of the space between chaotic lace and hard and ordered metal, the lushness of her movements lending a palpable and scented reality to the static and unforgiving functionality that framed her art.

But she was here, now, centered in the lens, digitally defining her piece of the portrait.

Her gloved hands unconsciously rose to her throat in a subtle and protective gesture reminiscent of the best noir divas, her eyes a blend of personal joke and femme fatale suspicion.

Her gloved hands covered her faced in perfumed lace, inhaling the vague memories of an outdoor market and the impulse purchase of an extravagant, luxurious and extraneous accessory. An accessory that had now found perfection in time and place as it caressed her powdered skin.

Here, now, centered in the lens, digitally defining her piece of the portrait.