Four cameras were getting ready.
The photograph happened anyway.
“Are you Mira,” the woman in the pink jacket asked, “or have you come to photograph our luggage?”
Mira stopped beside the café table. Three suitcases stood around it, with camera bags occupying most of the space between them.
“Mira. Though the luggage has arranged itself rather well.”
“Nina.” The woman moved a bag from the empty chair. “Don’t encourage it. We’re trying to fit a fourth person in.”
The Other Three
Mira slipped her green suitcase beside the table and sat down. Her train had arrived on time; her coffee at the first station had not quite lasted long enough.
Behind Nina, a woman in a blue jacket was shortening a folded tripod.
“Clara,” she said, looking up. “This is already shorter than the version I nearly brought.”
“How much shorter?”
“It fits through doors without negotiation.”
Clara secured the last catch and leaned it against her suitcase. At the other side of the table, a silver-haired woman lifted a camera bag clear of the walkway.
“Elise. You’ll want that chair a little farther back. The leg catches on the paving.”
Mira shifted it. The chair settled evenly beneath her.
“Thank you.”
“I discovered it with coffee in my hand.”
“Any losses?” Nina asked.
“Only dignity. The cup survived.”
Familiar Habits
A waiter brought Mira’s coffee. Saucers clinked beneath the station announcements, and a breeze carried the smell of warm pastry past their table.
Nina was checking photographs from a portrait session. She turned her screen toward Mira: a woman laughing just beyond the camera, one hand still raised from a conversation.
“Lovely expression,” Mira said.
“She was describing her husband’s attempt to make curtains.”
“Did he succeed?”
“I didn’t ask. It might have spoiled the next photograph.”
Clara leaned in, careful not to touch the table. “You left the doorway in.”
“She wanted the place remembered.”
“I would have kept more of the room,” Clara said. “I keep backing up until someone asks whether I’m leaving.”
Elise smiled over her open bag. “I look for somewhere with a distant view.”
“And I rearrange the foreground,” Mira admitted.
She moved the little vase away from her camera strap, then caught Nina watching.
“Sometimes for practical reasons.”
A Fifth Camera
“I hope so,” said a voice beside them. “Those flowers belong to the café.”
Grandma stood at the edge of the table in a cream knitted cardigan and brown vest, a small camera hanging from her shoulder.
They rose to greet her. Nina nearly stood on her own bag strap; Elise lifted it out of the way before her next step.
“Leave yourselves room,” Grandma said. “We have three days together.”
They sat again. Clara turned to fasten her tripod to her backpack, while Nina checked the camera on her lap. A zip rasped beside Elise’s knee.
“Could you hold this a moment?” Clara asked Mira, offering her camera while she tightened a strap.
Mira took it. Elise shifted her bag to make space, and Nina looked up at Clara’s comment about the tripod now travelling better than its owner.
A shutter clicked.
Grandma lowered her small camera.
“That will do.”
Already in the Frame
She turned the screen toward them.
Four women filled the picture, each busy with something different. Mira held Clara’s camera. Nina was laughing. Clara’s hand rested on the tightened strap, and Elise leaned toward the others with her bag still open.
“We weren’t ready,” Clara said.
Nina studied the picture. “Apparently we were doing something else quite well.”
Mira looked at the space between them. No one had arranged it. She asked for a copy.
Grandma nodded, then took the last free chair.
“Tomorrow, one forest clearing. Each of you will approach it in a way you don’t usually use.”
Elise’s fingers paused on her bag zip. Clara glanced at Nina’s screen. Mira kept her hands away from the vase.
“And if we find a comfortable position?” Nina asked.
“Make a photograph. Then leave that position and try again.”
For a moment, all four were quiet.
Nina looked back at the candid.
“I usually ask people to relax their shoulders.”
Clara rolled hers carefully beneath the backpack.
“You could have mentioned that before the train.”
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