The Last Time We Met

9

I was supposed to be looking for a Halloween costume.

Instead, I had found my way back to the antiques co-op and the box of photographs. There had to be something else here. My dreams had been so vivid, and with this new information I thought I might be able to see something familiar in the photos that I had missed before.

Studying the faces in each one took hours. Cedric had gone on a college tour with his parents, so I wouldn't see him until tonight. My first college tour was going to happen next weekend, but it was a tour of UCLA and Cedric was going, too.  And I was going to see the campus where I knew I had lived before, back in 1985.

But first, 1906.

I found a photo that I thought might be Theodore, sitting on a bed in a sparsely decorated room. In my dreams I didn't spend a lot of time looking in mirrors, but the memory of what I looked like was something I just knew. His dark hair was parted along one side, and he was clean-shaven and wearing just a shirt, unbuttoned at the throat with the sleeves rolled up, elbows on his knees. This could have been his bedroom, the room he shared with a roommate whose name I hadn't remembered yet. Had the roommate taken the photo, or did he have a self-timer?

The rest of the portraits didn't spark anything. Then I came to a sheaf of photographs that weren't of people. Or at least, not specifically people. Photographs of buildings, seascapes, landscapes. Flowers, fences, horses. Then I recognized one of Golden Gate Park. It looked much different from the park I'd seen: tents covered the lawns, and people huddled beneath them.

I flipped this photograph over, and saw written After the earthquake April 1906. Excited, I shuffled through the rest: pictures of the refugees who had relocated to the park after their homes had been destroyed.

There weren't many. I selected a few that had good composition, or at least better than others: Theodore's photographs, if these had been taken by him, seemed to exist only to document what was happening, not to sell to newspapers. Or maybe he had sold some of the photographs, which was why they weren't sitting in an antiques shop a hundred years later.

I packed the photos back into the box and stood up to put the box away. Then I had a thought.

"Do you know anything about the photographer?" I asked Mr. Valdez, the store owner. I showed him the photos I wanted to buy. "I also bought another photo that I think he took."

"I remember," Mr. Valdez said.

"His name was Theodore Shaw, I think."

"Yes, that's right. I got most of these from an estate sale a few years back." Mr. Valdez scratched his beard. "More than a few years. Maybe fifteen, twenty years."

"Do you have other things from the estate sale?" I asked, trying to sound casual and failing.

"Oh, sure. I've sold a lot of those things, it's been a long time. Old photos aren't a big sell. But I might have a few things left."

Mr. Valdez came out from behind the counter and headed past the area I was in. "There were a lot of cameras in that sale, all kinds. Most got sold. But..."

I was practically vibrating in my body by the time Mr. Valdez reached a glass case at the back of the store and pulled out his keys.

"This one here, it's mint condition. Still works. Not easy to find the kind of film it uses, though."

Mr. Valdez pulled out a camera that looked so familiar: it was a view camera, where the lens of the camera and back plate, where the film would go, were connected by a bellows.

It was definitely the same one Theodore had used. My hands reached for it, before remembering that there were things in this shop that cost more than my car.

"How much is it?" I asked.

"It's marked for twelve hundred." Mr. Valdez must have seen the disappointment on my face. "It comes with a stand and a case and even the black cloth they'd have attached to the back here. Really, this is in great condition. Mr. Shaw took excellent care of his cameras. All his others were pristine, too."

"Wow," I said, because I didn't have anything else to say. I wanted so badly to have Theodore's camera, to see life through that lens.

"Honestly, though, the film is expensive. Fifty bucks for 25 sheets. You got a dark room?"

"I use the one at school."

"Well, maybe someday. I have some other cameras, they're sold as is, but they're a little less pricey if you want a look?"

I'd already been through the cameras in the store that weren't in the case – this was where I'd bought my Pentax, after all, even if I'd had to order a lot of the accessories online. I paid for the photographs and headed home.

I didn't so much need further proof that Theodore Shaw had existed. I wanted to know what the rest of his life had been like, and what had happened to Henrietta. There had to be more than one secret date, a few stolen hours. I was certain that after the earthquake, Theodore would have tracked Henrietta down to make sure she was alive.

Cedric's Halloween party had slipped so far down on my list of priorities that I almost walked past the costume shop. This wasn't one of those stores that sprout up like crocuses to herald the Halloween season. Uncommon Costume was the name of this shop, and the mannequins in the window were dressed in what looked like authentic Western gear: weather-beaten cowboy hats and boots, full-skirted dresses. There were a lot of costume shops in Southern California, given the proximity to Hollywood.

If vintage clothing had ever been my thing, I might have shopped here before, but I'd never been one for fashion. Mom had attempted to throw out anything vintage I'd brought home from the co-op. She grudgingly allowed the suspenders, so long as the rest of the clothes were bought new.

The bell rang overhead as I stepped inside.

A rail-thin woman with her dark hair piled on top of her head called out a hello and a "Let me know if you need help with anything!" then returned to working on draping fabric over a dress form. She looked to be making a ballgown out of deep red fabric – maybe she was a costume designer for a movie studio, and ran this shop between jobs.

It would explain the variety and quality of costumes packed in the small space. Clothes from all eras, all social classes. There were ragged-looking trousers and vests with stains to make the wearer look like a street urchin. There were formal gowns and suits.

What I didn't see were the cheap, offensive costumes those big Halloween stores stocked. My eyes scanned the tweed suits and bowler hats before I decided it was stupid to try to dress like Theodore. No one would get it, and I didn't think Cedric would be willing to dress as Henrietta. He didn't even know she had a name, because I hadn't told him anything.

I moved into a section of more modern clothing, covered in sequins and glitter. The way the disco ball overhead caught the light made me think of that other past life I had remembered only vaguely. I hadn't had any clearer memories than that first one. Just that song playing, a song I had yet to hear when I wasn't dreaming.

But the sequins weren't pulling me in, either. I moved further back and stopped.

A black mask with goggles and a long bird-like beak stared back at me.

On the surface I knew this was a plague doctor mask, in steampunk style that wasn't historically correct.

Under the surface, I struggled to breathe for the noxious scent of herbs and flowers that hung in the air. Blinking to clear my eyes of the smoke, I reached for the mask with dread sitting heavy on my chest. Something in me knew more, knew to pick up the mask and turn it around and peer through the goggles.