Part 20

        Work seemed to drag on forever the next day. It really shouldn't have, I was only there for maybe four and a half hours before everything that needed done was finished, and I was shooed out of the office. My co-workers had noticed how antsy I'd been the whole day, so there had been all sorts of jokes about me having a hot date that night. I just laughed and said that yeah, I was actually heading to a red-light district right after work. (It took them a minute to get it. My jokes are awful, they really are.)
        It was all I could do to not flat-out run across campus to the dark room, and in my hurry I almost dropped my ID card when I went to swipe it in the lock on the door. I sighed in relief as I stepped inside the dim entryway, my eyes relaxing to the gloom of the dorm basement after the brilliance of the sunlight outside. I clanged open the metal locker door and took out the iPod speakers, setting them on a table next to the lockers. I hauled the negative binder out of my bag, then folded my backpack over a few times and crammed it into the tiny cubby, flinging it shut again. Binder and speakers in hand, I quickly made my way through the winding hallways, past the empty classroom and locked computer lab, and slid in through the spinning doorway to the dark room. I flipped on the red lights, then darted from one corner to another, grabbing pans and filling them with chemicals, arranging everything to where I needed it, letting my eyes adjust to the dusky light. I plugged my iPod into the speakers, which I set on the long counter behind my usual enlarger. I started it on a playlist of random Japanese pop music - something a friend of mine had gotten me into, most of it was ridiculously bubbley, high-pitched and fast-paced, but that made it great stuff to work to. I couldn't stand those stupid "techno" remixes of old pop songs that most people used for work-out music, so this was my substitute.
        Finally, everything was set to go, so I leaned against a counter, away from the wooden cubbies that separated the enlargers, where the light was brighter. I opened my binder, and flipped through the pages of negatives and contact sheets, trying to decide where to start...
        Oh who the hell was I kidding?? I grabbed the pages en masse and moved them all aside, and unclipped the last two pages, pulling them out and setting the binder aside. This was my summer, to do the pictures I wanted to do. So, I'd start with the villa. I skimmed over the shots I'd marked for enlargement, and decided to just start at the beginning of the villa shots, and work my way through.
        As much as I hated doing test-strips, it wasted less photo paper overall. A town as tiny as this, with the campus bookstore closed for the summer the only way I could get more was to order it online, and photo paper was heavy, so shipping costs would be awful. Since I was outside for all of the shots, none of the exposures were way off, nothing really too bright or too dark, though a few were a little shadowy. I skipped the ones I'd tried taking through the wisteria for the moment, starting with one that had more normal lighting conditions. I'd taken a close-up of the wisteria twisting around one of the pillars at the beginning of the entryway, where the light was nice and bright, so I started there. I decided to go with a slightly higher contrast than normal, so I swapped out the bit of acetate in the enlarger accordingly. I didn't do a full-out test strip, just a few different exposure times, since I had a general idea of how long the exposure should take. Once I'd developed that, I swung myself around the sharp corners of the short hallway that led to an adjoining room, where the drying racks were set up, and regular white lights were turned on. I checked my test sheet, and decided which settings looked best, then went back and ran off a few full-sized prints, using the two settings that had looked best on the test strip.
        I pseudo-sang along with a few songs (not knowing more than a handful of words of the language) as I processed the prints, watching raptly as the developer did its work, trying to get into the swing of doing a few prints at once. I had a lot to do if I was going to be caught up again by the weekend - which was my goal, since I'd probably take another dozen rolls worth of shots this weekend, if I could just find a way into the villa. I left the prints to float in the running water unattended, while I started setting up the next shot to print. I decided to take advantage of having the whole lab to myself, and put the next strip of negatives into the enlarger next to mine - this way, if I needed to make another print of that first shot, I wouldn't have to reset everything, and meanwhile I could start in on the next. I glanced over the contact sheet, and decided to go for a close-up of a rose bush, a vine-covered stucco wall of the house as a backdrop. I adjusted the composition a bit as I set it up, letting the projected image spill over the edges of the area the paper would fit into, balancing the rose with a particularly dense spot of ivy that was above and to its right in the shot...
        Once the photo of the rose was floating in the running water, I pulled out the pictures of the pillar with the ivy wrapped around it. I held them over the sink for a few seconds, letting most of the water drip off, then followed the twisty hallway into the drying room, where I could take a proper look at them. I'd definitely been right to up the contrast, it really brought out the texture of the weather-worn pillars, and made the vines stand out better, now that they were a bit darker. I decided I might crop off a little of the side later, but I'd let them dry first. God it was great to have the place to myself! Usually you had to move everyone else's pictures out of the way, and cram yours into the one shelf of wire mesh you were technically allotted... but now I had the whole rack if I wanted it! Until the summer classes started up, anyway - and I wasn't really going to use the whole thing, I couldn't possibly make that many prints in less than the time it took for them to dry, and anyway I knew there were a few other people who might pop in at any time to use the lab. Hoped they wouldn't mind the music.

        After about two hours, I had nearly finished with the prints of the villa. I'd done a few more than I normally would have, I let myself be a little indulgent and print some that I doubted I'd ever do anything with - I just wanted pictures of the place to look at, until I had a chance to get back there. Anyway, I reasoned that having these would help me plan out other shots I wanted to take, other spots I wanted to get a better look at. Finally, I came to the last one I planned to do - the shot of the front door, as seen from partway up the wisteria path. I took a little longer setting the print up, since the lighting hadn't really been the best at the time. I ran off a couple of different test strips, one for the darker areas of the picture, one for the lighter areas, and one for the middle-ground. I was going to do a full-sized print with a normal exposure, but then I'd probably have to play around with exposing some part of the paper longer than others, since I wanted the door to stand out a bit more, and not nearly enough light filtered down through the walkway to light the door like I'd wanted. I frowned as I looked at the projection of the image, trying to get it in focus, which was difficult due to the poor lighting. I tried to find something that I knew should be in sharp focus, and decided to stare at the door knocker, using that as my baseline. I fiddled with the focus knob on the enlarger, trying to get it just right... I gave the rest of the image a quick glance, just to see if anything else had been thrown completely out of whack. My brows furrowed as I squinted at the door handle - had some dust gotten onto the negative? Something didn't look right... but I couldn't tell what, so decided just to run off the print and then take a look at it in the light, and see what I needed to do.
        I watched the chemicals drift lazily back and forth over the blank page, watching as the image slowly appeared, the blankness washing away and leaving behind intricate patterns that formed the thousand details of the photo. Never got tired of watching this... There it was again! I leaned down close, trying to figure out what was wrong with that handle, the shape wasn't quite right... was I just remembering it wrong? Or was there something on it?
        ---I started and stood upright, hacked and gasped for breath. I should really know better than to breathe in when I was that close to the developer! Ugh, my sinuses were burning, I shook my head back and forth, snorting air out through my nose. Ick, oh that was strong! Then I glanced at the clock in panic - but I still had five more seconds until the picture needed to come out, thank God! I reached for the tongs and pulled it out, letting the chemicals drip off, holding my breath. I moved it into the stop, then the fix, then plopped it into the running water, and half-ran out of the room into the hallway, for some fresh air and a drink from the water fountain. Ugh, I could not get the smell out of my nose!