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(the effects of light on film.)
It is a very rare occasion that Pam isn’t sitting at reception. Jim knows that if he looks up and smiles she will be there to smile back at him, to offer a wave or a wink or some little unconscious gesture that he would file and store away. However, there are days when she is simply gone, when she takes the liberty of taking her lunch hour a little early and just deserts. Like today.
Jim has always known that Pam was an artist, from the very first day that he had met her. He’d taken one look at her small, graceful hands and could just tell that they were made for gliding a paintbrush across a canvas or creating sketches and scribbles of everything around her. He guessed that she skimmed the newspaper, but focused intently on the arts section, new artists and museum exhibits being more important to her than foreign policies.
It is no surprise to him then that every once in a while Pam is prone to be overcome with an artists temperament. He knows that she could be overcome by the urge to sit or to move, to create and be reckless; that sweet, reliable Pam could be a whirling dervish of pastels and paint and desperation, if she was allowed. So when Jim looks up to reception for one of those looks that makes his stomach jump and his heart work over time, and sees that Pam is gone and the light on the phone is blinking, he can’t think of anything else to do but go after her, wherever she had gone.
He doesn’t make it far before he sees her, catching a glimpse of her brown curls that had sprung into riotous spirals in the strange late spring humidity. Pam is stretched out on the grass near the edge of the parking lot, staring up into the branches of an oak tree. Jim starts to make his way over to her, but stops a few feet from where she lay. He stands for a moment, burning the image in his mind. She is lying down on the grass, stretched with her arms behind her head. Her hair is fanning out all around here, there is a small content smile on her face and he can see a small sliver of pale skin where her shirt has ridden up. Her entire body is dappled with warm sun spots, little bright burst that light her up and make her look ethereal. A sketchbook sits abandoned by her side, and she looks so at peace and lovely that Jim almost wishes he had a camera.
Cautiously, he crosses the rest of the distance to her and sits by her side. He feels the damp earth start to seep through his pants, and it reminds him of summer and ice pops and games of freeze tag. She looks over at him, shielding her eyes with her hands as she glances up, and smiles languidly, a liquid, golden smile that he could get completely lost in.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
They smile at each other for a few seconds and then his stomach starts to jump around and he decides that maybe its time for him to say something.
”So, I’m assuming that this is your lunch hour, and that if I look around I’ll see some abandoned yogurt containers and, seeing the way you’re acting, maybe some of those little airplane bottles.”
She giggles at him and it sends shockwaves through his body.
“Nope. Well, yeah I took my lunch hour early. But no little glass bottles, I promise. I just needed to be out of there.”
He nods. He understands that feeling completely. Another moment full of unspoken words passes between them. Jim plays with the dirt beneath him, digging into it with a little stick and feeling it get underneath his fingers. He’s about to pluck some grass and tie it into knots when he feels her hand, small and smooth and cool, lock into his.
“C’mon, lay down with me.”
The words make him shut his eyes and squeeze them until little stars swim, but he lies down next to her anyway. The spiky grass tickles his back through his dress shirt and gives him the faint sensation of sneezing, but what he’s even more aware of is the fact that her hand is still resting in his. They’re stretched out next to each other, her legs ending way before his, her head somewhere near his chest. The air smells like spring, which Jim has always likened to fresh, clean laundry, the kind that hung on a line in a field somewhere, and the sun in leaving imprints on them, little circles and dots of shadow and light. Jim follows Pam’s gaze up into the tree boughs, which are laden down and thick with green leaves, and understands why she is so captivated by this spot. There’s something calming and so familiar about sitting under and old oak tree and watching the sun play games, and he feels like if were to lie here with Pam forever it would be an acceptable way to spend the rest of his life.
“This always makes me think of photographs.”
Jim looks over at Pam, and pictures them as a snapshot, two friends escaping from monotony and trying to abstract reality.
“What do you mean?”
He feels Pam shift a little bit, so that her head is resting on his chest and he is sure that she can hear his heart, hammering and ricocheting in his chest.
“This is going to sound stupid…”
“No it won’t.”
He feels her smile a little bit, and can’t help but feel pretty good about himself.
“Well, one of my best friends in high school, she was a photographer. And I used to just sit and watch her take photos with this huge old 35, the ones the school gives out to students, y’know?”
He nods, knowing that she’ll continue anyway.
“And this one picture she took, it won a whole bunch of awards at our art show. It was of me and her, just sitting under this huge old tree in my front yard, and you could see all the sun spots and over exposures, and it was just perfect.”
“Sounds like a great photo.”
“It was. And she titled every picture she ever took, and I was looking at it at the show, and she’d named this one ‘the effects of light on film’, and I totally didn’t get it.”
He gives a little “hmmm?”, and he knows that she can feel the vibrations by the small laugh she lets escape and the subtle way she shifts into him.
“Exactly. So I asked her what it meant, and she told me and I still remember exactly what she said.”
Jim feels Pam take a breath, and has such an urge to kiss her hair and not stop, but he contains himself and settles for giving her hand a little squeeze and biting his lip so hard that he thinks it might split.
“She said that friendship is like how light effects film. She said that it leaves this imprint on you, and sometimes it’s only a subtle change, maybe a tiny white streak through a tree branch or a slightly off color in someone’s shirt, but it’s there. It’s permanent. It never leaves.”
She pauses, pushing a stray curl from her face.
“She said that our friends change us in ways that we can’t even understand.”
Jim looks down at Pam, resting so comfortably on his chest, and can’t help but smile and fall a little more in love with her.
“Hey Pam?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you’re my friend. And she was right.”
He feels Pam’s mouth quirk into a smile, and could swear that he feels a few tears soak into his oxford.
“I’m glad you’re mine.”
And he knows that she means that she’s glad that he’s her friend, but he allows himself to maybe think otherwise. And neither of them says anything. The sit under an old oak and let the sun make their cheeks pink and let the grass make their backs damp and Pam lets Jim kiss her hair and squeeze her hand. Jim knows that if he were to make a soundtrack to the moment it would be all soft guitars and lush vocals, songs about being young and having to grow old, bittersweet songs that make him feel rushed and spinning, songs with choruses as familiar as the feel of her hand in his, songs that make him feel content and in love, songs that remind him of lazy summer days and that comfortable, safe feeling of home.
And he knows that whenever he sits under a tree and looks up through its branches, he’ll think of the clean smell of her hair and her warm weight on his chest, the way she leaned into him and how small she seemed next to him, and he’ll describe it all in one phrase: the effects of light on film.
ella eternity is the author of 2 other stories.
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