Recovering Charles by Jason F. Wright Read Free Book Online Page B

shutterbug taking pictures on a disposable 35-millimeter to standing in the back of the White House Rose Garden shooting images of the president and leader of the free world.
    I wanted that back then, but my heart and head didn’t believe I had the eye.
    Thank goodness Larry Gorton thought I did.
    “Mr. Millward, what can I do for you? You bring me pictures to gush over?”
    “No, sir, not this time. Just visiting. Checking in.”
    He chugged the rest of his water and shot the bottle hard across his office, using the wall as a backboard, watching it bounce around the rim and settle in the trash can. His raised both arms above his head. “That’s a three.”
    I grinned and fidgeted with Larry’s plastic Rudy Giuliani
bobblehead doll.
    “What’s on your mind, kid?”
    “Sir?”
    He lowered his eyes and folded his arms across his sweater-vest.
    “I don’t know, I guess I just wanted to say hi. I’ll let you get back to work.” I returned Rudy to his spot on Larry’s desk and stood.
    “Sit.”
    I obliged.
    “You’re a horrible poker player, Luke Millward.”
    You have no idea.
    “How’s your father?”
    It was my turn to chug the rest of my water bottle. I tossed it toward the trash can. Missed. “Figures.”
    “You heard from him lately?”
    “Not exactly.” As my academic mentor, Larry had known bits and pieces of my personal history. He knew Mom was dead from prescription drug abuse, and he had met Dad once during my freshman year at NYU. But sitting there I couldn’t recall how much I’d told him about Dad.
    “You hear from him much anymore?”
    “It’s been a while, sir.”
    “How long?”
    “A couple years, I guess, maybe a little less.” I picked up the bobblehead doll again.
    “He still drinking?”
    I nodded.
    Larry did, too. “That’s a shame. . . . Tough life you’ve lived, young man. I bet your mom would be proud.”
    I nodded once more.
    “Then tell me, Mr. Millward, what else is going on in your exciting, jet-setting life? Is there a woman?”
    “Not really. Dates here and there. I’m hanging out a lot with a girl I met in school—Jordan Knapp.”
    “Good woman?”
    “Sure is. We’re just friends though. No time for a relationship right now.”
    “Does she know that?” he asked.
    “That we’re just friends?”
    He nodded.
    “Sure she does.”
    Wait for it.
    “Good. And let’s not forget the most important relationship, the one with our lens, you remember?”
    I laughed despite myself. “Of course.” I mocked his deep voice. “‘The eternally intimate relationship between life and lens.’ How could I forget?”
    Larry smiled and probably congratulated himself on another job well done. Few professors took as much pride in the finished product than Larry Gorton did.
    The two of us sat and enjoyed the rare silence that comes when two people trust one another. Eventually the chatter resumed. Politics, Iraq, the rash of paparazzi incidents in LA, Katrina, Rudy’s rumored run for the White House in 2008, the Yankees. He showed me photos he’d taken earlier that summer on a trip to China. The pictures were captivating enough to take my mind off Jerome Harris. Almost.
    “Can I ask you for some advice?” I finally said.
    “Of course, that’s why you came.” He checked his clock. “I’ve still got time. Class starts in twenty-five.”
    “I got a call the other day from a man in New Orleans.”
    “After Katrina?”
    “Yes.”
    “Proceed.”
    “This man, Jerome—a native I’m guessing—he called to tell me he knew my father. He’d been living in New Orleans.”
    Larry put his feet back on the floor and leaned onto his desk. There was never a better listener.
    “He said he played with my father in a band. They both live in the Lower Ninth Ward.”
    Larry’s eyes asked for more.
    “My father is missing. No one has seen him since last Sunday.”
    “Before landfall.”
    “Yes, sir. And now they’re all worried. Worried he’s dead somewhere, or