Read La Brava (1983) for Free Online

cream by the case. Also, I've got tubes of paint, sketch pads, canvases all over my room, I've got shitty light and I need more space."
    "I was at the Elysian Fields for a week last summer," LaBrava said. "This place's much better. Cleaner."
    "Are you saying there no roaches?"
    "Not as many. You see a loner once in a while. Think of it as a palmetto bug, it doesn't bother you as much. You paint, uh?"
    "Some oil, acrylics mostly. I'm getting ready to do Ocean Drive, figure out my views before they tear it all down."
    "Who's tearing it down?"
    "Progress. The zoners are out to get us, man, cover the planet like one big enclosed shopping mall. We're getting malled and condoed, if you didn't know it. Gray and tan, earth tones. The people that designed these hotels, they had imagination, knew about color. Go outside, all you see is color and crazy lines zooming all over the place. God, hotels that remind you of ships..."
    "I'm glad you explained that," LaBrava said. "I've always liked this neighborhood and I never was sure why." She gave him a sideways look, suspicious. Really weird hairdo but he liked it. "I mean it. I feel at home here and I don't know why."
    "Because it's cheap," the girl said. "Listen, you don't have to know why. You feel good here, that's reason enough. People always have to have reasons instead of just feeling." She said, "You're the photographer, aren't you?"
    Recognition. LaBrava leaned on the cool marble-top counter: artist relaxed, an unguarded moment. "Yeah, I guess so."
    "Aren't you sure?"
    "I'm just starting to get used to the idea."
    "I saw your show over at the Emerson Gallery, it's dynamite. But all the color here--why aren't you into color?"
    "I don't know how to use it. I feel safer with black and white."
    "You selling anything?"
    "A few more street shots than portraits."
    "Well, what do they know. Right? Fuck 'em. You have to do what you do."
    "You have to get mad?"
    "If it helps. Why not? It's good to be hungry, too. You do better work."
    She had a healthy build, tan arms, traces of dark hair. She would go about one-twenty, LaBrava judged; not the least bit drawn, no haunted, hungry-artist look about her. Gold chain. Rings. The white blouse was simple and could be expensive. But you never knew. He said, "You want some lunch? We can go across the street, the Cardozo. They got a nice conch salad, good bread."
    "I know, I've seen you over there. No, first I have to see about new digs. I'm not going back to that fucking cell I've been living in. You have to go in sideways."
    LaBrava looked up at the sound of the elevator cables engaging, the electric motor whining. He said, "You may be in luck," staring across the lobby at the elevator door, a gold sunburst relief. The door opened and he said, "You are. That's the manager."
    Maurice said, even before reaching the desk, "Where the prints? They didn't come out, did they? What'd I tell you last night? I said stop it down."
    "I've got an idea," LaBrava said. "Why don't you take care of this young lady--she's looking for a respectable place, no roaches, no noise--and I'll go see about the negatives I got hanging in the dryer."
    "How they look?"
    "Just tell me if you want 'em printed soft or crisp."
    "I want 'em now is what I want. While she's still hung-over, ashamed, kicking herself."
    LaBrava said to the girl, "Did I tell you he was a sweet old guy?"
    "You didn't have to," the girl said, smiling at Maurice. "Mr. Zola, it's a pleasure. I'm Franny Kaufman."
    A pair of dull amber safelights recessed in the ceiling gave the darkroom form, indicated shapes, but nothing more. LaBrava hit the negative with a squirt of Dust Chaser, slipped it into the enlarger and paused. He added a yellow filter, feeling sympathy for the woman upstairs in 304, Maurice's guest suite. The exposure was timed for twelve seconds.
    He moved to the long section of the L-shaped stainless steel sink, dropped the exposed eight-by-ten sheet into the first of three trays.
    An image began