A Simple Art

It was filled with long narrow boxes, each numbered with printed black characters on a white label. Isabela grabbed one near the bottom and tossed it onto the pile of my clothes. "The negatives," she told me. "I don't know why you want them, but I guess it's probably a good reason."

"Isabela," I said. "All those photos of you. There must be twenty years worth..." I rounded down, like you're supposed to when talking about a woman's age.

"Twenty-seven," she said. "More years than she's been alive." She pronounced She like we were talking about the Rider Haggard novel. "But in Murray's eyes a woman a third his age is less scandalous in his social circles than me."

"I see," I said. "So then this was..."

She nodded, looked once at the blown bulb. "Everywhere," she said.

It didn't take Marlowe to figure out what she meant. I wondered if Murray wouldn't end up liking it though.

***

I thought about the photos and the negatives and the money my landlord wanted to charge for repairing my bathroom and how it might be nice if my sign didn't read "Privat Investigations." Later, I put the whole lot in a big brown envelope and wrote an unfamiliar address on it.

Three days later she showed up at my door again.

"You like my work?" I said.

"With you," Stacy said, "satisfaction was always guaranteed."

She smiled. "I shredded the photos, burned the negatives. Thanks, Joe. You've always been my knight in shining armour."

"This wasn't much of a game for knights," I said, but I smiled back at her. She locked the door and we kept it that way for more than a while.