“Uh, garage sale. In the Valley. Can you believe?”

“I can’t believe.”

“Yeah. Bobby sort of chipped in.”

“Oh?” I said, removing my sneakers. “How serious are you and Bobby?”

“Uh, okay. I need you…” He pulled me by the shoulders and dragged me to a spot that was maybe one-eighth of an inch away from my previous spot. “Here. We’re not very serious. What is serious, anyway?”

I shook my head, smiling. “I don’t know, Spence. Did you break this mirror on purpose?”

“I had to break twelve of them before I got the right shattering. Can you look here?” He snapped six inches to the left of his head.

“Twelve? What is that, like, a million years bad luck?”

“84,” he responded and then smiled slightly. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”

“I don’t-”

“Okay, no talking.” I heard the shutter click a few times. “Don’t move.” After a few minutes, he asked about Max, which meant that I could talk again.

“Uh, he’s fine.”

“He’s really nice.” He was retreating behind me; I couldn’t see him anymore, and the room was dark except for the harsh lights.

“Yeah?”

“He told a funny joke about these carrots walking into a bar… I can’t remember the punchline, but it was funny.” I giggled. The shutter clicked.

“I bet the mirror will look good in black-and-white.”

“No, no, no.” Spencer’s voice was soft behind me. “Color. This is all color.”

“Color?” I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

“Ah, neutral face, Alice, please.” A few successive shutter clicks. “Yes, color. Bette Porter says the biggest problem of over 75% of artists in any medium is their reliance on one idea, one frame of mind. Color.”

My first impulse was to laugh loudly, painfully, but I curbed it. After a few long, agonizing minutes where Spencer must have taken at least fifty-billion pictures, I asked, “Bette Porter says that, huh?”

“Yes.”

“She said this to you?”

“No. Okay, you can relax.” He turned the photography lights off and flicked the overhead light on, setting his camera down on his nightstand. “She wrote an article in The Photo Review about the new photography exhibit at LACMA.”

“Oh.” Of course she did. I tied the laces of my sneakers.

“I have it here; do you want to read it?” he asked, opening one of the drawers of his nightstand.

“No thanks.”

“Do you talk to her at all?”

“No.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “Not at all?”

“We’re not really friends, Spence.”

“I thought you were.”

“Nope.” I gestured to his camera. “Is that it?”

“I think it’s good for now.” He walked with me out of his room and we joined Bobby and Kyle in the living room, where they were watching Another World. Kyle shouted over his shoulder: “She is so possessed!”

“Oh, great,” I said. “I better get going.”

“You going downstairs to your place?”

“Yeah. I’ve got some work to get done.”

“All right.” Spencer smiled at me. “Thanks for coming over. Don’t be a stranger.”

“Nah, I won’t.”

But once I was out the apartment, I didn’t go right home. I walked out of the building and to the cornerstore, where I picked up a copy of The Photo Review. I tucked it under my arm. Then I went home.