Straight Punch by Monique Polak Page B

grinned.
    â€œAre you telling me you spent a hundred and twenty bucks so you could photograph some old gray building?”
    â€œLook at it, Tessa. Really look.”
    So I did. This time, I noticed two pigeons pecking each other on one of the windowsills.
    â€œWhat do you see?” Cyrus asked.
    â€œI see two pigeons on a windowsill.”
    â€œYou’re getting warmer. Tell me what else you see.”
    â€œI think I see a spider plant in another window. And a tall lamp. Cyrus, are you going to be taking photos of what you can see in that other building’s windows? Is that even legal?”
    Cyrus laughed. “Of course it’s legal. Besides, I’m not looking for anything kinky. It’s an office building, Tessa. No one’ll be there over the weekend except maybe a janitor. What I’m interested in is the lonely feeling of an empty building—that spider plant you mentioned, the lamp, a desk with nothing on it or piled high with papers. With my telephoto zoom, I’ll be able to see inside a lot of windows.”
    â€œHmm,” I said. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
    â€œOf course, I’ll need better light than we’ve got today. Hold this, will you?” Cyrus handed me his tripod. He took out his camera and started snapping photos of the building across from us.
    â€œI thought you said the light wasn’t right.”
    â€œIt isn’t,” he said as he continued snapping. “This is just a test shoot .” He kneeled down to get another angle.
    Because I knew this could take a while, I went to sit down on one of the lawn chairs. Sitting felt good. My muscles were sore from working out.
    â€œCareful with my tripod!” Cyrus called out.
    â€œI’m getting hungry,” I told him.
    He wasn’t listening. This was one of those times that Cyrus’s commitment to his photography got on my nerves.
    â€œI’m getting hungry,” I said again.
    When Cyrus didn’t answer, I got up from the lawn chair and walked over to the other side of the roof. From here, I could see all of Chinatown. The giant gold-and-red decorative arch on St-Laurent Boulevard, the neon restaurant signs with Chinese lettering, the square where people practiced tai chi on Sunday mornings. A garbage truck was making its rounds. A woman dragging a green garbage bag rushed to get it to the curb in time.
    Photographing what was in the building across the street was a cool idea, but this view was interesting too. Being up here gave me distance, helped me see the beauty in an ordinary street scene.
    The constant clicking of Cyrus’s camera finally stopped. “Come look over here,” I called out to him.
    Cyrus came to stand behind me. He put his hand on my neck and massaged the dip between my shoulder blades.
    â€œDon’t you think this would make a good photo too?” I asked Cyrus.
    He looked out at Chinatown. I hoped he’d see what I had. “It doesn’t do much for me,” he said. “Hey, where’s my tripod?”
    â€œRelax,” I told him. “It’s right there. On the lawn chair.”
    â€œOkay, okay,” Cyrus said. “I just got a little worried. You know what they say about that Gitzo tripod. It’s the—”
    â€œFerrari of tripods.” It wasn’t hard to finish Cyrus’s sentence. He was almost as obsessed with that tripod as he was with his camera.
    â€œHave a look at what I shot,” Cyrus said.
    Cyrus had caught the pair of pigeons. He’d also caught a mop leaning, like a tired person, against a metal filing cabinet. Cyrus might not be as hot as Randy, and he was possessive and jealous and he talked a lot about himself, but when I saw his photos, I was…well…dazzled. How could I break up with a guy who still dazzled me?
    After we left the building, we decided to get dumplings on de la Gauchetière Street. Dumplings had two things going for them: they