Pain and Pictures

Chapter 1- VIP

Waiting, waiting, and more waiting.

That is the life of a paparazzo.

It fucking sucks!

Back when I was a professional photo journalist, less than a year ago, I was doing a peice on the military and I became very familiar with the term 'hurry up and wait'. I never thought something like this could be worse.

Any tips we get, we take. If we're lucky, we're the only ones that got the tip. Sometimes it meant waiting for a few minutes, sometimes it meant all day.

If a subject was worth it, waiting all day wasn't so bad. Honestly, if you could get five-figures just to take one picture of a celebrity, you'd wait.

Then there are the b-listers. The ones you might make $50 off of, if you're lucky. Unfortunately, more often than not, those are what I get.

I'm free-lance. I have to be! I've been offered jobs at places like the Inquirer and TMZ, but I refuse to be a lap dog. I still sell them my work, I can't afford not to, but I won't limit myself. Plus, it means I don't have to run or jump when they say run and jump.

When do I run? When I get a call from my best friend/roommate, saying that there's a VIP in his restaurant. He couldn't say who, he was being especially vague and kind of skittish. That told me more than I needed to know. It was a big one.

So, here I sit. Across the street from LeRouix, waiting. It's now been three hours. Three fucking hours of nothing. I'm trying not to be pissed, maybe Morgan was wrong. Maybe whoever was there left in the ten minutes it took me to dress and run the four blocks to get here. I didn't know.

I sure as hell couldn't go inside and blow my cover! There were no other paps around, so I knew (if it really was a big-wig) that this could pay my rent for months. The more of us there are, the less the pictures are worth.

Supply and demand. Basic economics.

I itched to call Morgan. I knew he couldn't take calls at work unless it was an emergency (if he had to make a call, he'd take a five minute break, that didn't happen often). He was the head manager and therefore constantly busy. It didn't keep me from pulling up his contact info and hovering my finger over the call button 20 times.

A limo pulled up. Sleek, black, and seemingly in a rush. This is it.

Out walks Violet Monroe. Damn!

Damn, damn, fucking damn!

Violet never lets pictures be taken off her. She even has a special scarf she wears over her head that actually fucks up the photo when the flash goes off at night. So, I either take it without a flash (on a dark night) or I miss the shot.

Seconds. I had seconds to get it.

I had hoped to get the picture from across the street, to avoid any problems. But even I wasn't good enough to take a no flash shot from that far away, and have it turn out even slightly decent.

So I ran across the street and nearly got run over. Shit, my brain was too busy trying to figure out how to get the shot, not the fact that I was in New York and not invincible.

The loud horn blaring through the night made everything stop. My breath, my heart, and (apparently) Violet Monroe.

She watched on, wide-eyed, as I backed away from the cab on shaky legs.

I looked at her, lifted my camera, and shot.