The first time I met the man, I didn’t realize he wasn’t a photographer. I was fourteen and I had a notion of flirting with him. The bus stop was busy that day, so I wasn’t alone. Just a little harmless risk.

He didn’t look much older than the high school boys I wished I knew. I opened and closed my umbrella—it was overcast, but not snowing yet—and came up behind him in the crowd. The square had the usual photographables. He didn’t seem interested in any of them.

The man shifted slightly. The rims of his glasses winked silver-black. I was closer to him than I should have been, though I could barely feel the heat of his body. "Hey," I blurted out. "I think your camera's broken."

It was a large camera, and it was probably old. I'd caught a glimpse of the viewfinder. Through it I glimpsed blackened gum-spots on the sidewalk, leafless curbside trees, cars' bent fenders. But no people, not even where the camera was pointed straight at a clump of shivering tourists. It made me curious as to whether I'd show up in the viewfinder, and if so, what I'd look like.

It was odd, too, because my eyesight was sharp, but not so sharp that I should have spotted all those details.

"Of course it's broken," the man said matter-of-factly. He turned so I could see his face. Mostly I noticed his eyes, which were colorless behind the glasses, and his taut, narrow jaw. "Do you see me taking pictures?"

This wasn't how I wanted things to go. I shrugged and looked sidelong at him. "Why don't you get a new camera?"

"It's old. Sometimes I like things to be older."

My face burned.

He jostled his way out of the crowd, cocking his head at me. Despite my embarrassment, I followed; I was too curious about the camera. He took off his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. "So we have similar tastes, that's all." Now he was smiling. "You have to be home anytime soon?"

"Yes," I said, wishing it was true. The truth was my dad storming out of the house, or my mom. I'd stopped keeping score. Both of them had lost track of me months ago. "But I don't care."

He either knew I was lying about the first part, or believed the second part. "Where's a good cafe?"

"You're not from around here."

"If I were," he said cryptically, "maybe I'd have a working camera."

I didn't have much pocket money, since I burned through my allowance almost as fast as I got it. Maybe he'd be nice and buy me coffee.

The cafe around the corner was less popular than the nearby Starbucks, which suited me fine. Sure enough, the man bought me coffee.

"Thank you," I said, remembering my manners.

He picked seats near the windows. "You're not afraid," he said.

"Should I be?"

The man regarded me steadily. "Maybe."

"What do you do?"

He set the camera down at the edge of the table, hand resting on it as we talked. "I look at things," he said. "I like the way the sky changes just before dawn, and the smell of rain, and the soft wet sound your shoes make when you step in the mud."

"I like rain," I said. "We get plenty of it here."

He almost smiled. Then we talked about roadkill squirrels and stray cats, the color of stars through smog, the shapes that cigarette smoke makes. He didn't ask me to talk about myself, and he didn't tell me his life story. I wasn't sure if it would have been creepier if he had.

Three coffees later, my nerves were afire and it was getting late even for me. The man walked me to the bus stop. It had begun to snow. He stood there, white drifting onto his hair and shoulders, until the bus pulled up. He was still there, gazing skyward, when I looked out the window.

 

---

My parents united enough to ground me for the next week. I spent breakfasts banging things around and burning French toast. It wasn't like talking to a guy with a broken camera was the same as a one-night stand without protection.

I half-expected the man to hang around my school. If he did, I never caught him at it. I hadn't mentioned which school I attended, although it wouldn't have been difficult to guess. I looked out a lot of windows, thinking about how he'd describe shards of glass, or the way reflections were obscured by dust and fingerprints.

After I got ungrounded, I hung around the bus stop more. Winter became serious. I loved the sharpness of the air, the mornings of deceptive white, the slush and the reek of car exhaust. More often than not the umbrella went unused so I could close my eyes and lean into the wind to feel every snowflake.

Another week passed before I saw the man again. It felt like months. He was polishing the camera's lens despite the feather-fall of snow.

"Hey," I said. Our eyes met. I opened the umbrella and held it for him, although I had to stretch my arm up so it wouldn't bang into his head.

"Chivalrous," he said. There was a smile in his voice.

"Who are you looking for?" I asked.

His gaze was thoughtful. "People who aren't people."

I felt as though he'd shut me out. "What? How?"

"Are birds people? Are dogs?"

"I guess that depends on who you ask. I've never had a dog." Above us, pigeons circled before settling on a ledge. "What would it mean if I weren't a person?"

The man studied his hands. "I might take your picture."

"I thought you said your camera was broken."

He didn't answer that. We stood there for a while, in an uncomfortable silence that grew restful. I wondered if my parents did that anymore, sitting together without filling everything up with arguments or stringently divided chores.

The sky grew dark, and the shadows spooked me. The man waited at the bus stop with me, silent but attentive. As the bus rounded the corner, he spoke, startling me: "Are you any good at fixing things?"

I thought about my parents. "No," I said.

His smile was bleak. "Then we're alike." That was all he had time to say before I got on the bus.

 

---

On the sixth or seventh time we met, I paused partway to the bus stop. The man was talking to a long, lean woman with sleek hair and a red smile. Something was wrong. I couldn't see his camera, and he never let it out of his grasp.

I made myself breathe slowly and walked toward them. It was strange feeling protective of someone older and taller than I was. I sat on a nearby bench and watched.

The woman noticed me immediately. Her cool expression contained everything she had to say to me. She touched the man on the shoulder, like he was a cousin she didn't see enough of, and turned neatly on her heel. The man and I stared after her until her footprints had been trampled into obscurity by passers-by.

"She wanted your camera," I said. I wasn't stupid.

"Close enough," he said.

"I know it's none of my business," I said, "but what's the deal with your camera? And what makes it so important?"

"It's ordinary enough if all you want is to take pictures of landscapes, or still lifes," he said. "But where people are concerned, it takes pictures of absences." He paused to read my expression, then said, "I haven't any right to ask this of you—"

"Ask," I said.

I saw a flash of a smile and wondered what it would look like if he smiled all the way. He said, "The camera's been in my family a long time. But you know how families are. I want you to have it. It's mine to give, if you want it."

"There's a catch," I said.

"Of course," he said. "You're welcome to use the camera—but for your own sake, don't take pictures of people. There are things you're happier not knowing."

"All right," I said.

He handed the camera over. It weighed more than I had expected.

"It's snowing now," I said, blinking against the cold kisses on my eyelids. I would take pictures of pigeon tracks in the snow, and flowers stillborn after an unexpected warm spell, and crumpled newspaper pages.

The man nodded. Then he walked me to the bus stop and waited with me there, as always.

 

---

Being careful with the camera started with keeping it from my parents' eyes. They wouldn't be pleased with how I'd gotten it. I walked around with the camera at night, not bothering with film. So I took "pictures" in low light, not worrying about f-stops or any of the things I'd picked up from art class last year: black cats silhouetted against barbed wire fences, empty overturned flowerpots, broken DVDs.

Remembering the man's warning, I avoided pointing the camera at people. Even when I did by accident, they never showed up in the viewfinder. It made me feel invisible. But I was used to that. As long as I turned in my homework and showed up for dinner every so often, my parents assumed I was still with them, even when they weren't with each other, not in the ways that counted.

Then I got tired of hiding, or lonely for the man's company, and headed back to the square.

The woman with the red smile was waiting for me.

I kept the camera in a large, battered bag. I knew she knew it was in there.

"I'd like to ask you a question," the woman said. Her voice was low and pleasant and reasonable. I hated it immediately. "Have you ever taken your own picture?"

"What?" I said before I could stop myself.

"All it would take is a reflection," she said. "Have you tried it?"

I thought of the Jan van Eyck painting we'd seen a copy of in art class, the painter painting himself. I huffed in the cold and kept silent.

"You'd see yourself," the woman said. "More accurately, you'd see the part of yourself that goes on and on, that talks to angels. You'd see what you really look like. It's not pretty. Most people go around wearing skin and bone and hearts because it hides what they have inside them."

That wasn't what the man had said. "Why would it work on me when I can't take pictures of anyone else?" I said.

Her mouth curled. "Ah, but you're the camera's owner now. You've become part of the family. Things are different for you."

"And you," I said. I trusted the man. I didn't trust this woman. Even so, talking to her made me feel like I'd betrayed the man.

"And me," she affirmed, "and my brother, whom you're so fond of. Go on. You must be wondering. Take my picture."

Had she come here evening after evening, waiting for me to return? "Is he all right?"

"Do it," she said. So it was a dare.

I saw her, or rather, I saw the part of her that went on and on, that talked to angels. She still had sleek hair and a red smile, but the angels she talked to weren't the kind with halos and adoring faces. She had the wrong kind of beauty, as though looking at her for too long would singe your eyes.

I lowered the camera. I knew I was in trouble, but I had to stay and be brave, for the man's sake, if not my own.

"Now you know," the woman said. "It's a bitter fruit, isn't it? Take all the pictures you want. You'll always wonder what you'd see if you took a picture of your friend. I wanted you to know what a poor gift he's given you in exchange for your innocence."

"That's not true," I said. He had been my family when my real family was busy ignoring me.

There was a shop window behind us, some florist I had never had occasion to visit. There were windows everywhere in the square, mirrors of every small transaction. No wonder the woman had waited for me here.

I was shaking.

I raised the camera and took her picture, and mine in that reflection. There was a flash.

The camera didn't have a flash. Or it hadn't had one until that moment.

I raised my hand to my face and looked at my reflection again. It was just a face, my face, and it had nothing to do with angels of any kind.

But she hadn't lied to me entirely. The camera did see us in negative; it took pictures of absences.

I had seen my parents where my reflection should have been.

"Goodbye," I said to the woman. Because even if the camera had shown me that my parents were dead to me, it hadn't shown me the man. If I couldn't have my real family, I could have the one I'd made for myself. Even if I was fourteen, and he was much, much older.

The woman had already gone. Maybe that was what happened when you were exposed as an absence in the universe's tapestry.

 

---

I waited for snow—the season's last snow, as it would turn out—before visiting the square again. The man was waiting for me. "Hey," I said. I couldn't stop my knees from shaking. "I'm done with your camera."

"Are you sure?" he said. "I'm glad you're safe." Not glad that the camera was safe, but that I was safe. Tentatively, he rested a hand on my shoulder. "You don't look so well."

I met his eyes.

"You took the picture after all," he said.

I held the camera out to him, remembering what he had said about broken things. "My dad's not staying with us anymore," I said.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I did warn you."

"You did."

The man accepted the camera. "Perhaps I should do something about this before it can do any more harm," he said. He drew in a deep breath, jaw taut. Then he pointed the camera toward his reflection in the florist's window and pushed the shutter. In an instant's flash of red and white and shadowy wings, he was gone.

"I'm sorry too," I said to his absence, and walked to the bus stop, accompanied by the snow.