Empire of Light by Gregory Earls Page B

leaving the Cinematographer alone.
    He had synchronized his watch to the cinematographer’s timer so that he would know the very moment the light would be released.
    5, 4, 3, 2…
    Click!
    A soft explosion of light streamed quickly from ground zero, pouring through the windows, cracks and the undercarriage of the motor home like the very fingers of God.
    The light shrouded the assistant, lifted him into the air and rocked him gently like a baby before resting him back on the ground. The assistant felt as if all the joy that had ever been experienced by man had just passed through his body. It tingled his skin and made his hair stand up straight. He dropped to his knees, where he was hidden by the tall wheat, and cried like a newborn baby deep into the night.
    When morning arrived, he had finally recovered from the blast. He stood weakly, gazed in the direction of the motor home and discovered that it and all the contents, including the Cinematographer, had mysteriously disappeared. He was gone without a trace.
    The assistant brushed himself off and decided it was time for him to go home. He walked through the golden wheat field with the old Brownie camera tucked under his arm. He packed it safely in the backseat of his car and drove home to California where he had a brilliant career of his own as a cinematographer.
    As for the photo he had taken at the moment of the Cinematographer’s disappearance, no one is quite sure what the actual photo looks like. Legend has it that the assistant donated the picture to the cameraman’s old orphanage, where it magically glows and never dims with the passage of time.
    It illuminates every darkened corner of the orphanage with a cozy radiance; and it mysteriously gives the children the feeling of security, happiness, and most importantly, the warmth of family.

9 
    A Clevelander in Paris
     
    MY FOOTING AIN’T SO  solid right now, lit with a potent mixture of Ambien, champagne, jet lag and Edgerton mind-fucking me 36,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean.
    Okay. I figure that Edge was the apprentice and that the Brownie camera underneath my arm is the very one in the story. It’s probably all bullshit, but I still catch myself cradling the Brownie a bit more gingerly than before.
    I spend the entire train ride from the airport in to Paris studying the camera’s housing. For what, I don’t know. It’s killing me to not just crack open the back and peer inside, but if I ruin the film I’ll be crushed, and Edge will crush me. My mind drifts back to Andy at the museum, trying to tie that encounter, the camera and the article all into some sort of neat knot.
    The thought of this camera being enchanted somehow…
    If it is, why the hell would Edgerton give this to me , of all people? There were twenty-nine more deserving Cinematography Fellows to gift this thing to other than me.
    My train screeches to a stop. This is where I get off, so it’s time to release the strings of this giant goddamn Salvador Dali balloon and let it float the hell away. I crawl up from the underground depot and my first sight of Paris is at dusk on a chilly winter day.
    Let’s say you digitized a record collection onto your computer—I mean a cool collection of vintage warm vinyl, Django Reinhardt, Edith Piaf and Miles Davis—then say you ran some software that designed a city based on the rhythms and tones of that music. The result would give you something damn close to modern Paris. It is a cool city, in every sense of the Jack Kerouac definition of the word. And it’s a place where everybody seems to be aware of the collective decorative scheme. From the architect who designed the church on the corner to the bureaucrat who selected the design of the street dumpsters, everyone seems to be aware that their choices must fit within the civic template.
    This apparently includes the wardrobe.
    Everybody here, at least in the winter, is wearing nothing but black or brown. It looks like a goddamn Anne Rice