Photographs of Graves

I hunched my shoulders up against the heavy summer winds, leaning heavily against the stones of Morrow & Sons. A couple paces away stood a couple of interns smoking and talking in quiet tones, breathing smoke in front of their faces casually. They asked if I wanted a cigarette but I declined. I waited.

Marion had let me head off to the metro at about quarter to five, but not before giving me her cell number and making me swear that if he, or anyone else, tried any funny business I'd call her straight away. Ana also exchanged numbers with me, imputing herself in my phone as “Ana Morozovyyy :) :) :)” and telling me that if “anyone ever tried to hurt me she would scream and break his male parts and feed them to the grizzly bears”. I thought to myself that we didn't really have a ready supply of grizzly bears, but it was the thought that counted.

What I had learned of Marion and Ana so far was rather minimal, but enough to get by on for now: Ana was, of course, a journalism student and had been studying at Saint Petersburg State University in their department of international affairs. She lived with her three sisters, of which she was the third, her mother, her father, and her uncle. The other interesting thing about Ana was that she was a lesbian, which suddenly made me feel very sorry for eager young gentlemen like Mikael and Bastion. Her sexual preferences didn't phase me in the slightest beyond that, though, which made her giddy with glee.

Marion was thirty-one, a reporter, and had worked for Morrow & Sons since she got out of undergrad. She had studied to be a journalist and had spent a few years in that field but was recruited by the reporting staff for her charm and oratory skills. She had grown up in Pennsylvania, gone to college at Brown for a year before transferring to a school in England, spent a year abroad in Istanbul to study field journalism, then relocated upon receiving her job offer from Morrow & Sons. From what I gathered she had no boyfriend or significant other of any kind and instead kept to herself, filling her two story house with interns and her two dogs: One dog was a shiloh shepherd and one a great pyrenees, named Bear and Sherlock respectively. For those of you who don't know what these are, they're pretty much Godzilla versions of a german shepherd and golden retriever, each weighing over one hundred pounds. Upon seeing the lumbering furballs Ana squealed and hugged my arm. She couldn't be more delighted.

I was probably covered with dog fur by the time I left for Morrow & Sons, despite spending the better part of five minutes trying to vacuum it off of me. But I got out of the door nonetheless, so here I stood. Under Morrow & Sons. Ten minutes after five. Huzzah.

My phone buzzed. I pulled it out and read the message quickly: It was from Zoe and said, “fuck yes.” in response to what happened with Graves earlier today. Standing here on the corner ten minutes after we were supposed to meet I wasn't so sure. Had I been stood up in my first couple days in Amsterdam? Ouch.

My phone buzzed again. This time it was Ana, and she had recently discovered the revolutionary emoticon. Her message read, “Are you with the attractive man yet?!? :O :) ;)”. I snorted and quickly replied “No”. I stood there for another five minutes before things got a little too awkward and, dejected, I began to walk to the bus stop. It was almost five-thirty.

A few minutes later I was sitting on a bench under the metal overhang, kicking angrily at the newspapers that were tumbling across the ground, waiting. I kept my lips pursed and hands balled in my pockets, hiding my swelling anger and embarrassment. What the fuck, Graves? I guess it must've all just been some big game to him. A small part of me tried to reach for logical reasons for him to stand me up, but each of these crumbled like sandcastles against a breaking wave. The bus turned the corner and screeched to a halt, plexiglass doors folding open.

”Wait, Murphy!”

I turned just before I was slammed into by a fleshy freight train. Graves had picked up too much momentum to stop quickly and, upon collision, flung me backwards into some of the passengers trying to board the bus. A couple of patrons shouted something angrily and Graves said something apologetically in Dutch. He grabbed my arm, disentangling me from the others and pulling me back down the road.

“Sorry I'm late,” Graves panted, stepping to the other side of the sidewalk. I followed closely behind him. I snorted.

“That's a bit of an understatement.”

“Yeah, I know,” he nodded. “I was taking a test. It took longer than I expected.”

“Test?”

Graves waved his right arm. “I'm healed so I get my journalism license back. I have to take a physical exam though to prove I'm fit enough to travel in hostile territory.”

“So you're back in commission?”

“Something like that.”

I took a moment to ponder the implications of this. Graves could get back to doing what he loved doing the most: Photojournalism. He could go back to Darfur or Baghdad and finish his work there. He could get back on the front lines.

He could get the fuck out of here tomorrow and forget that I ever existed.

“I'm not shipping out until at least the end of the semester. I promised to house and mentor the interns and I'll stay until that's done,” he said after a moment. I wondered if he could read minds.

“Okay,” I replied. I tried to sound nonchalant about it.

He didn't say anything, but instead slowed his pace and wove his fingers into mine. It felt strange. I acted as if my heart wasn't doing summersaults or my stomach was filling up quickly with intestine-spawned butterflies.

Graves was apparently a man who searched for reactions in his women, because he quickly pulled me aside and kissed me in front of a store window for nostalgia items. He searched my face. I breathed in deeply.

“You've got an incredible poker face,” he gave a half-smile. “I feel like I can't get in your head.”

“I try to look that way, at least,” I replied. We kept walking.

Where he took me was not a fancy place or even a real dining place, but a little coffee place just up the road from Morrow & Sons. It was comfortable and homely, windows wide and adorned with cushions. Graves ordered us two cafe mochas and two croissants before sitting down on at one of the window seats. I sat across from him in the wide window, leaning across from him.

“Every person who works in this block should know about this place,” Graves confided, sipping his coffee, “It's the best place to go before and after a work day, and hell of a lot less expensive to boot.”

I nodded, sipping on my mocha pensively. Something was nagging at me from earlier today, back when he talked to Marion. Something she had said. Graves noticed.

“What's eating you, Murph?”

“Earlier today, when you talked to Marion...” I tried to think of the best way to approach the question but, as usual, opted for the bluntest. “Are you a womanizer?”

Graves blinked before he simply started laughing. He almost spilled his mocha.

“Murph, my parents were convinced I was gay until I was seventeen because I didn't have the balls to talk to a girl,” he chuckled.

“And now you're a renowned photojournalist. Answer my question.”

Graves looked at me levelly before he sighed and shook his head.

“No, Murph, I'm not a womanizer.” he thought for a moment. “If it makes me seem more honest, yes, while we were apart I saw someone briefly. It didn't last long. I ended the relationship. When you stormed out I thought that was it.” Graves looked at his coffee for a moment, thinking. “Until I saw that you had accepted the internship. I ended things shortly after that.”

Something twisted painfully in my chest, but my mind was at ease. His openness made me feel comfortable that what he said was true, and although it hurt an immature, wistful part of me that there had been another woman in my absence it made him seem a bit more human and this whole scenario more real somehow. I nodded and sipped at my mocha.

“Thanks for telling me,” I said with a smile. He returned the look.

“Well, now that that's out of the way: Tell me, what do you think of Amsterdam?”

We talked for a long time over drinks and croissants. The sun shifted in the sky and the rain began to fall thickly upon the city, coating it in a sleek new coat of tears. We departed with our hands brushing lightly but not actually intertwined, and as I hopped on my bus our foreheads touched as we said goodbye but we didn't kiss. A barrier had been set in place, falling between us like the raindrops.

I was breaking inside as I got on the bus. I didn't tell him about Oliver because he didn't ask: Now that I saw him disappearing in the mist of the stormy summer day I realized that it was now too late. Despite all my fears, I was the one that had been dishonest.