Page 222 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

before. When we walked up to the counter, Mr. Roussos peered at Thalia over

his spectacles and said, Is this a robbery? Thalia pointed an index finger at him
and cocked her thumb like pulling back the hammer.
Thalia closed the lid on the shoe box, covered the pinhole with the shutter. In
the dark she said, “Tomorrow, you shoot the first photo of your career.” I
couldn’t tell if she was making fun or not.

We chose the beach. We set the shoe box on a flat rock and secured it
firmly with rope—Thalia said we couldn’t have any movement at all when we
opened the shutter. She moved in next to me and took a peek over the box as if
through a viewfinder.
“It’s a perfect shot,” she said.
“Almost. We need a subject.”

She looked at me, saw what I meant, and said, “No. I won’t do it.”
We argued back and forth and she finally agreed, but on the condition that her
face didn’t show. She took off her shoes, walked atop a row of rocks a few feet
in front of the camera, using her arms like a tightrope walker on a cable. She
lowered herself on one of the rocks facing west in the direction of Syros and
Kythnos. She flipped her hair so it covered the bands at the back of her head that
held the mask in place. She looked at me over her shoulder.
“Remember,” she shouted, “count to one twenty.”

She turned back to face the sea.
I stooped and peered over the box, looking at Thalia’s back, the constellation
of rocks around her, the whips of seaweed entangled between them like dead
snakes, a little tugboat bobbing in the distance, the tide rising, mashing the
craggy shore and withdrawing. I lifted the shutter from the pinhole and began to
count.

One … two … three … four … five …
We’re lying in bed. On the TV screen a pair of accordion players are dueling,
but Gianna has turned off the sound. Midday sunlight scissors through the
blinds, falling in stripes on the remains of the Margherita pizza we’d ordered for
lunch from room service. It was delivered to us by a tall, slim man with
impeccable slicked-back hair and a white coat with black tie. On the table he
rolled into the room was a flute vase with a red rose in it. He lifted the domed
plate cover off the pizza with great flourish, making a sweeping motion with his