Fuscia bouganvillea vines crept inside the open arched window of a stone-walled room in the old stucco house on the ridge overlooking the Hollywood reservoir. Twenty-seven-year-old photographer Daisy Valentine dunked a Lorna Doone into an iced coffee and took a bite. She broke off another corner and fed it to a skinny old cat curled up next to her keyboard as she manipulating pixels on a photo of onion rings that she was editing. It was a job for a local burger joint.
A coyote cooed. The cat looked up. Daisy grabbed her Pentax and went out to her back patio. She made her way across the flagstones and weeds to that low back wall just below the Hollywood sign. Beyond the forest and reservoir, the lights of LA glittered like distant sands. Someone in a neighboring house played some old Stones… “Oh I am sleeping under strange strange skies…”
Travis appeared on her patio, softly landing. She put down the Pentax.
“You got it?” she asked.
He slipped the tin film can out of his pocket. She took it as she passed by and went back into her house. He followed, “I got some food. Gelsons was open.”
“In a minute.” she told him as she went back into her studio.
Daisy unlocked a steel safe and took out a half-full 12 inch reel of 35mm film. She brought it to a second work table across from her computers. Wedged against it was an old tank of a film editor – ’56 35mm Moviola. She opened the film tim Travis had brought her and took out a roll of uncut 35mm slides. She slid it into the gears of the Movieola. Hand-cranking it, she viewed the film: the pictures were good. There were six shots of the light shimmers coming up from the forest. There were nine individual shots of the three Domingos’ dead girls, two shots of the two girls holding each other and one group shot of the three of them. Each individual shot had a small ripple of light rising above each girl. She also had twelve exterior shots of the barely-visible light ripples rising above Domingos and six shots of Rhea, three in the cement river bed and three behind Domingos. She glue-spliced the roll of film onto the bigger, 12-inch reel. She put the reel back into the cabinet and locked it.
“It’s ok?” Travis asked as she came back out of the studio. “Yep.” She said, then pointed to the pastry box. “What do you have?” He opened it. She took the piece of Princess cake, put it on a napkin and headed back out onto the patio. He followed. He watched her licking crumbs from her lips as she ate. A coyote came up and sat by her feet. She scratched his ear and gave him a piece of her cake.
“Some old chick tried to bang me.” He broke the silence.
“Bang?
“Screw. Do. Fuck—”
“I know what it means.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“Old?”
“No. Older, like thirty five. I like old…er—” Travis blushed. He had a crush on Daisy. Maybe he even loved her but she was completely indifferent.
The coyote got up. He hopped over the low wall and walked to a flat spot of land just outside the wall. The spot was well worn. There were no plants, weeds or bushes on it. He lay down. Daisy watched him. She looked at the land, at the sloping hill just beyond. An idea came. She went back inside. She rummaged through a cabinet where she kept all her important stuff: papers, lenses, a purple cat collar. She found a surveyor’s drawing of her property. She took it outside, comparing it to her back yard.
“Travis, come here–” she told her young assistant. He obliged. She showed him the drawing.
“You see this line, here? The edge of my property?” He looked; nodded. “Yeah–“
“Do you think Ralph is inside it or outside it?” she asked, pointing to the reclining coyote.
Travis looked from the drawing to the hill back to the drawing then back to the hill. “Outside.”
“Yeah..” Daisy agreed, still thinking. “But pretty close.”
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