Show Your Work!

Cal had printed the contact sheets because Rima said she only needed to choose six photographs. The printer sat on the floor beside his desk, turning the garden picnic behind her building into rows of small faces: children with paper plates, adults standing half out of shade, somebody’s dog asleep beneath a chair.

Rima knocked before he had cut the first page apart. She was wearing a wool coat even though the afternoon was warm.

“I was passing,” she said. “My sister wants to see everything before she chooses.”

Cal looked at the stack. “Everything?”

“Just send me the folder.”

He had taken the pictures because Rima had asked him to bring his camera. Most were ordinary. Some were blurred. In one, her nephew had his eyes shut and was leaning against a woman Cal did not know. In another, Rima's older brother was standing near the bins with a phone to his ear.

“I haven’t made a folder,” Cal said.

“You can do it later. Nobody’s in a hurry.”

Rima stepped inside and looked at the pages on the floor.

“Oh, that one,” she said, pointing to a picture of her youngest niece holding a plastic cup over her head. “My sister will like that.”

Cal picked it up. “I can print it larger.”

“And the group one. And maybe the dog.”

He set the three sheets on the desk. Rima watched him look through the rest without touching them.

“Are there bad ones?” she asked.

“There are ones I didn’t print large.”

She laughed once, then stopped. “You’re very careful with your camera.”

“Sometimes.”

Rima pulled off one glove and touched the edge of the group photograph with one finger. “Could you bring these by tomorrow? I’ll ask them which they want.”

“I can bring prints of the ones you choose.”

“Not the folder?”

Cal shook his head.

Rima put her glove back on. “All right. Bring the dog too.”

After she left, Cal sent the dog photograph to print again. While the machine warmed up, he put the contact sheets back in a pile and found more paper.