The Last Good Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

from Riverside,” she said. “This is my hometown. I was born here.”
    “Ah.” He seemed to be looking at her through a smudged bulletproof partition.
    “The textile factory where my grandfather used to work was right here. I used to ride past it on my bike all the time …”
    Just keep talking. Find a way to connect. She’d long ago realized that her greatest gift as a photographer was her own responsiveness, the way people liked to see themselves in her eyes.
    “See, I took all these photographs when I was a young girl growing up here,” she said. “And now I’ve moved back, so I want to take a whole new series. To show the passing of time …”
    She sensed that she was losing him. A boy of about seventeen, with almond eyes and ebony hair as long and straight as hers, came over and started striking beefcake poses, showing off big brown muscles in an American-flag T-shirt with the sleeves slashed off. She left her cameras dangling around her neck.
    “You know, if you don’t catch these things, they’re gone forever.” She stayed after him, riffing for all she was worth. “I mean, people forget, or their memories play tricks on them. A picture is at least something you can hold on to. Comprende? ”
    George turned his eyes into sideways dime slots, trying to find a reason to go along with her.
    “I mean, I took this picture a few years ago of my kids on the World Trade Center observation deck, when they were about eleven and seven. And now that’s all I have left. Of them as little kids and the towers.”
    “Oh.” He rubbed the end of his nose and looked around shyly, gradually lowering the partition. “You know, I have a friend who works in this big building when it come down,” he said quietly.
    “Yeah?”
    “He works in a restaurant at the top and …” He spread his hands, seeing no reason to explain.
    “He was working in the kitchen at Windows on the World?”
    She remembered going out to dinner there with Barry about twenty months ago when Ross Olson first offered him the job at Retrogenesis.
    He moved a little closer to her. “He never have no papers.”
    “You’re telling me he’s buried under all that rubble, and no one knows he’s there?”
    “Jes.”
    “Oh, how awful.” She pawed the air between them uselessly. It was like a cruel cosmic joke: let a man make it across thousands of miles of roiling seas and burning sand, let him struggle and make it to the pinnacle of one of the tallest buildings in the world, and then bring it all crashing down on top of him.
    “Doesn’t he have a family back home that wants to find him?” she asked.
    He turned his palms up and stooped his shoulders. “Qué más da!”
    What’s the difference? She fingered the auto focus, not knowing how to respond. These were guys who probably went for years without seeing their families. They knew plenty about the nature of impermanence before the Towers came down.
    “So, okay, maybe you make a nice picture of me.” He suddenly straightened up.
    The abrupt shift caught her off guard. She watched him smooth down his hair, fold his arms across his chest, and stare defiantly right into her camera. And then she understood. His friend was dead, but he wasn’t. So now he was demanding to have the indisputable fact of his existence recorded, to make sure no one would ever forget.
    “Maybe you make another picture so I can send it home to my family,” he said.
    “Good deal.” She nodded, getting the camera ready and making sure she had enough film to shoot at least a full roll with him.
    “And then maybe you take a picture of me working at your house.” A sly grin appeared. “You have a lawn?”
    “Oh, I see how this works.”
    She took out her Minolta light meter and tried to get a good reading, vaguely aware of a traffic cop blowing a whistle somewhere behind her.
    “Okay. Please don’t look right at the camera when I take your picture.”
    She started to change the lens on the Leica to a