A Candid Exchange by Brian Hawkins

Though the supermarket stayed open twenty-four hours a day, the photo counter closed at ten. Most people, Kroger believed, did not need rolls of film urgently developed in the middle of the night.

To Devin Boyd’s way of thinking, soon no one at all would want this service. In the time he had worked at the counter, while finishing high school to save money for college, he had already seen the impact of digital cameras on the store’s revenue. Now that most cell phones included cameras as well, he did not see how film could survive.

This shift, all four thousand hours of it accompanied by a Muzak soundtrack, he had dealt with only two customers. As he prepared to close the register, sure he’d served his final amateur photog of the day, Emily Preston showed up to make a liar of him.

“Hi, Emily.”

“Hey. Kevin,” she replied. “I dropped film off the other day. Is it too late?”

“Devin,” he corrected.

She damn well knew his name. They had sat at the same table in kindergarten for Christsakes. Not to mention he had crushed on her from about the fourth grade through junior high when he realized she was way out of his league in the looks department while he clearly outpaced her in personality. “Just give me a sec.”

He shuffled through the alphabetical rows of envelopes until he located “Preston, Emily.” By the time he turned around, she had pulled out her new screen phone, fixated on what appeared to be Facebook.

Devin did not understand the obsession his peers seemed to have for this social media shit. He still carried a flip phone and had never quite understood why someone would want to spend so much time looking at other people’s dinner. He supposed it was inevitable, joining the masses, posting pictures of his own food, digging for spring break pictures of girls in bikinis. Just not yet.

Plus, his job required him to look at plenty of other people’s pictures. Why would he want to carry that crap around in his pocket? Usually, sifting through those stacks of 4x6s, he found very little of interest. Lots and lots of children’s birthday parties, to be sure. After nearly eighteen months of practice, he could tell damn near everything about a kid and its family just by the party favors they chose.

He’d rather not experience so much vicarious family fun, but Kroger had a policy requiring him to look at every picture in front of the customer to assure satisfaction. No matter the reason, if the prints sucked, no charge.

“I’ve got to look at these. To make sure they’re okay. Okay?”

“Uh-huh,” she said without looking up from her phone.

When he opened the envelope on which Emily had scrawled her name, he thought this could be one of those cases. The first picture might have been a child’s art project. Just drag a piece of paper over a nearly-dried painter’s palette and voila!

The next one was better. Clearly these had been taken at a party. Probably Friday night after the game. A universe he did not inhabit – cool kids and their weekend machinations.

In the pictures, Emily wore a tight tank top – bright white with nipple ripples! – along with a pair of low-rise jeans. Here, she danced with her friend Tara, another member of the cheer squad. Next, Emily drank from a red Solo cup with her boyfriend, Ryan. Of course, the obligatory duck-face pose with several girls he recognized but did not know. Typical party-girl fare.

Until somewhere around photo number twenty-five.

In this one, the girl who stood directly in front of him looking so intently at her phone, red nails clicking the screen again and again, lay on a purple paisley coverlet, spread as wide as the body God gave her would allow. Fully naked. Fully shaved.

Devin may have squealed. Just a little.

Composing himself, he raised the prints to eye level. To make sure they were not blurry, of course.

Far too soon after his discovery, his buddy Logan, a bagger, stepped up to the counter. Right next to Emily the Pinup. “Hey. Yo. Devin. You gettin’ off? Wanna grab some Subway?”

Devin could only stare slack jawed at his friend. He pulled the candids to his chest in fear Logan’s interruption would draw Emily’s attention away from her phone. Luckily, the voice of a supermarket bagboy did not hold the power to seduce her from her digital world.

“Uh, yeah. Fine. Head on down. I’ll be there in a minute,” Devin finally answered.
As Logan walked away, and Emily continued to ignore them both, he flashed through the final pictures.

Emily pushing her boobs together. Naked. Emily on all fours, ass to the camera. Naked. Emily with a cock in her mouth. Both naked.

Devin presumed the dick belonged to Ryan but had no intimate point of reference by which he could compare his classmate’s junk to the lucky one before him. Had Emily not been standing right here, had she not shown her face in the pictures, he would not be able to pick her bare coochie out of a lineup either.

In the last two photos, Emily looked tired but content. And a little sweaty. And still naked.

Devin calculated the risk for what he was about to do and decided nothing in the universe had been so worth it.

“Hey, Emily. Hey!” he said, finally getting her to look up. “I’m sorry. These didn’t turn out.” He showed her the abstract, completely washed out picture that led the roll.
“Do I still have to pay for them?” she asked.

“No, but I have to keep them. To square the register. Sorry. Store policy,” he said as he pulled the metal grate shut on the one-hour photo counter for the night, “Private Eye” by Hall and Oates, Muzak edition, droning away, endlessly, into the night.

Brian Hawkins

Image: A pile of rolls of film canisters mostly yellow a couple of other colours from Pixabay.com