Winter, 1994.  In the middle of the night, Rey calls me.  “Do you know anyone who wants a camera?” he says.  Ricki needs rent money from him.  Rey has never owned a camera, so I don’t know where he got it, but I can make a guess as to how.  “It’s sweet,” he says.  Bernie’s would only give him fifty for it, the crooks.  As it happens, I want a camera; I have always wanted a camera.  But I have resigned myself to never owning one.  I don’t know how to buy one.  They’re meant for people who know about things like that.  And good cameras are expensive, probably, and I can’t spend that kind of money on myself.  I can give that kind of money to Rey, though.

When he brings it to me, I give him two hundred dollars.  Two hundred sounds fair to me.  What do I know?  It’s beautiful and heavy and real and sinister, and I am immediately afraid of it.  So I put it in an old binocular bag from the Army-Navy store and hide it, or hide from it, until spring.

1994