ak hadn’t text her back. By this point, she was too hungry and thirsty to wait any longer. Em knew her order but the waiter did a walk-by menu toss. While she waited, her eyes wandered the restaurant, and landed on a man watching porn on his phone. He was the only other customer. Em was behind him, his back rounded to her. They both faced the window, but he paid the street view no attention. The waiter hadn’t noticed the porn. It was only when she leaned to her right that Em could partially see the screen cradled in his hands. She held focus for a few seconds to confirm.  Specifics were hard to decipher, but it was definitely porn. She wasn’t particularly disturbed; she’d seen worse things in the city—probably even just that day.
Em expected a pervert or a porn addict. Maybe a clammy basement-dweller logged in to multiple incel forums; maybe a faint-mustached background lurker; but the man didn’t match Em’s vision. She could see his face reflected in the window when passing headlights didn’t wash it out. His eyes, glazed over, were unmistakably kind. To her, he seemed like the trustworthy grandpa-type, had he not been watching porn in a restaurant.
The man noticed the waiter before Em. He flipped his phone face down on the chair, scooted in, and placed his hands on the tabletop in a deliberate motion. He ordered his meal. When the waiter came to Em, he scooted back out again. She ordered a number eight, but the waiter left without hearing her ask for a Coke. When he returned with both their meals, it came without a beverage. The man prayed to his videos as he ate and Em watched him the whole time. Strange as his behaviour was, Em was at ease.
Finally, he shuffled his phone into his pocket and replaced it with his wallet when the waiter brought the check. He positioned a few bills in a neat stack and poured out coins that seemed pre-counted. He removed his fortune cookie from its wrapper and slid the paper out without breaking the cookie. Em heard a pointed breath from the man. The man’s back moved with two more sharp sighs. In the window, she saw tears tracking down his cheek. He stopped crying and his bottom lip stiffened. When he dragged his jacket sleeve across his face, he was composed again. He stood, bumping the table just a little. It made a low pitch screech against the floor, and in dissonance, the chair made a high one. Then he left.
Possessed, Em put a spoonful of fried rice in her mouth and walked three steps munching over to the other table. She flipped the tiny slip of paper that was left behind, focused on its message, and carefully read each word in her head like a riddle or contract: “You will be highly respected in your field.”

MAHOY! EMAHOY! EMAHOY!” Her cousins all sing-cheered. Some jumped. One punched in all directions. No one had told them that this wasn’t accepted behaviour at exhibition openings. Maybe, there was also added excitement as this was Emahoy’s very first time exhibiting work—and how serendipitous for the opening to land on her birthday. The body of work consisted of photographs she had shot only one week prior, on a camera her grandfather had given her.
The camera—a plastic royal blue FisherPrice model was her first, a present for her sixth birthday. There had been a major blackout that left much of the Northeast United States and Ontario without power for a few days. To keep her happy and entertained, her grandpa bent the rules. Emahoy received the camera a week ahead of schedule. 
The exhibition started on the fridge. These first photos of Emahoy’s set the context: for that brief powerless, TV-free moment—yes, but probably much more too. Number one was black, an accidental exposure. Next, and the show’s highlight, was a portrait of Emahoy’s grandfather with a blissful grin and just barely-open eyes—the result of an experiment by Emahoy (which was turning on the flash).
When Emahoy’s mother thumbed through the developed photos, and saw the portrait of her father-in-law, she howled. It’s a story she’d practice retelling for years, and always included how she’d made the cat jump a foot high. “Boss-man! You’re looking wasted. You might have to slow your pace! Or do we blame that face on your reggae music, hey? Beenie Man, Bounty Killa? Hmm, think I don’t know?”
In fact, everyone knew Emahoy’s grandfather was a religious man who did not smoke or drink—but he never thought wrong of anyone who did. Like many grandfathers do, he wished success and happiness for his granddaughter. Perhaps not as universal of a wish, he hoped that Emahoy would stir the pot with her life, wherever it may need stirring.
Folded over laughing, Emahoy’s mother struggled to reach out and hand Emahoy’s grandfather the photograph. She was a fun person who laughed often, but Emahoy had never seen her mother laugh like that. Emahoy was proud of making her laugh but her greatest delight that day was the success of her first roll.
“Gimme that!” Emahoy’s grandfather said in a fake tough guy voice. He snatched the material in question, and winked at Emahoy as if to say, “We’re on the same team partner.” His eyes took a half second to focus on the photo, and when they did he howled with the same intensity as Em’s mother. The cat jumped again. Then he began to cough—one of the reasons he lived with Emahoy’s family.

or years, Josep had not heard his own name other than in waiting rooms and a couple other general cueing or administrative situations. He hated these; the situations, but also that he had no one to speak to in the city, or on the phone, or anywhere, really. The Internet was important to him, but solely as a consumer and observer.
He watched films of all genres—usually at least two features per day. Over time, his watching habits grew with the rise of streaming services, so he’d never really stopped to think that his movie intake might be higher than the average person. He had become adjusted enough in his way that he didn’t quite understand the crucial role they played in the groove, doubled as a hiding spot, he had carved out. He would think it too cocky to call himself a film-buff. Actually, the term had not crossed his mind. He just thought he really liked movies.     
“Before Sunrise, the first installment in the Before trilogy, is a 1995 American romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater and co-written by Linklater and Kim Krizan.  On his way to Vienna, American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meets Celine (Julie Delpy), a student returning to Paris. After long conversations forge a surprising connection between them, Jesse convinces Celine to get off the train with him in Vienna. Since his flight to the U.S. departs…”
Josep’s film love wasn’t delusional—he didn’t think the characters were his friends. He wasn’t the type to re-enact a Travis Bickle episode. What films did, was keep him somewhat attached to the world and current. He was well aware that solitary life can make a person weird. Josep was a bright, witty man, often fighting his own cynicism.
He used to read a lot, but now rarely. Most readily available material was English. He’d learned it in his mid-twenties but never formally. He understood everything he read but found himself too slow for the amount he wanted to know. Luckily, he gleaned what he needed from films. He surely wasn’t as happy as he could be, but movies kept his sadness calm and kept him shuffling along like a rock he might kick down the sidewalk.
There was also a story. He had written it a few different ways, a few times, in his head and in point form spread through different notebooks, and in his phone. It split between English and Polish, but never finished. He had amassed quite a large amount of material, gradually, not feverishly. The story hadn’t left his mind since its arrival, but now he mostly watched movies, patiently waiting until the end came. The idea for the story—the tiniest, but truest little single-celled organism of an idea—first popped into his head the day he left Europe (to which he never returned). Josep, through the act of replaying the memory to himself for decades, had timed the genesis of the story coming to him at the very moment his boot left European soil. For years, it built steadily, but had remained without an end for a long time—even for someone so stubbornly patient.
Josep watched Ethan Hawke, as Jesse, and Julie Delpy, as Celine, fall in love on a self-directed walking tour of Vienna, but he was more focused on the architecture, the signs on storefronts, and the people in the background of the film. Jesse and Celine, fine as they were, were tourists. He checked the year it was made: “Hm, ‘95,” he said to nobody.
This week, he felt urgency to finish the story. Or rather, for Josep, something more akin to ‘get the ball rolling again.’ The urgency was fresh, arising out of nowhere, but magnified by the end credits of the Linklater movie. He hated it; the urgency, not the movie.
He was aware he had two cigarettes remaining. He would smoke the first at home, and the last on the way to the only restaurant he went to, and the only one he’d ever tried in the city. He saved the restaurant as a big treat to himself. He only went maybe once a year, if that, and never on a silly day, like his birthday or Christmas. He would eat and then get the ball rolling.

he flipped the white paper a few times, hoping to reveal a clue, but the same message of encouragement and lottery numbers came up. Beside the coin pile there was a little blob of paper (that had been through the wash, maybe more than once)—a business card that had fallen out with the money. Em un-balled it, and could just make out the name.
She was aggressively hunched in her inspection of the man’s table when the waiter, already standing at her table with the bill, cleared his throat. She jolted and spun, instinctively showing her palms. “I wasn’t—I just—he left a—Sorry, I was just looking at something.”
The waiter, assuming Emahoy a little strange, raised his eyebrows in patronizing exaggeration and smiled at her with a perfectly horizontal mouth. She nodded meekly in apology as she grabbed her backpack to fish the mess for her wallet. The waiter waited. Visible twin pools of sweat had formed beneath her arms. She tipped way too much, but would have doubled it to leave one second sooner.
Outside, she checked her phone to help rid the awkward vibe. Nothing from Dak. When Em was nervous, her mouth dried quickly. Thirsty and annoyed about not receiving a Coke, she huffed along the longer route home that passed the bodega. Real effort had been required to stay on top of her day and not become swallowed by it. Em decided she would treat herself to a Mexican Coke. Maybe she’d bring an extra home. She texted him again: “heyyy, gonna maybe grab dinner with some photo ppl from the show. might be late. idk maybe not.”
In her peripheral vision, Em caught a green mass pass by. She registered that green to the jacket the man in the restaurant used to wipe the tears from his face.  She let him walk ahead a couple steps and reassessed her instincts. Her camera brought her confidence in these uncertain moments; as an introduction but also to remind her of the many faces she’d learned, and the sharpness of her judgment.
“Hey, hey! Um… Simon! Simon Guerke!” Em called out. He walked a couple steps like he hadn’t heard her and then paused. “Hey! Simon!” she repeated. “I was just eating with you at King Dragon. I’m a photographer and I was wondering what you do for a li—”
He removed a cigarette from his mouth slowly and turned. His very wrinkled brow, working hard in Em’s presence, was at odds with the smoothness in the rest of his face. Even though his moustache (stained, the only visible evidence of an old smoker) hid the corners of his mouth, she knew a smirk was there. He cleared his throat twice and answered too quietly for Em to hear. Finally, putting his neck into it he said, “That’s my chiropractor.”
“Oh.”
They walked a bit closer. He was holding five packs of cigarettes (three in one hand and two in the other, which was also maneuvering a lit cigarette). Instead of a handshake he nod-bowed and said, “Hello, young lady. My name is Josep.”
“Oops! I’m so sorry about that! I saw a card on the table and... Anyway, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Em. Emahoy. I was wondering if I could photograph you for a project I am working on? I think that you’re an absolute perfect fit for it.”
She assessed his reaction—barely there, but not dismissive—and laughed like a friend. “I mean, you don’t have to commit right now. We can talk a little first, and I can explain it to you, if you’ve got the time?”
He smiled, but she might have not known.
“So what do you do, Josep?”
Josep smiled again. This time, noticeably. “Well, Emahoy, mostly I worry.” She didn’t laugh aloud, so he continued earnestly: “About the ending of a story. But this very well could be the ending I’ve been hoping for. Thank you, young lady.”
He took the walking lead while Em explained her project. In his head, he’d agreed at its first mention, so while still trying  his best to be respectful, he enjoyed the moment of interaction, letting the time pass as slow as he could make it.
He was glad he didn’t wander too far into his contentment, so when she finished, he could respond with natural ease. “It’s beautiful. I’ll do it.”
They were approaching an elementary school and Josep clued in to how long they had already been walking together. Realizing he owed a little more to the conversation, he said, “I would have liked to study something like photography too, maybe cinema. Maybe even writing...”
With the last sentence, he veered into himself, and became, momentarily, deflated. Then, hoping to push away the feeling, shrugged it off like a high school senior still weighing options.
“You don’t have to be in school to study those things,” Em said. Squinting to make him malleable, Em imagined Josep in his youth. He was the athletic type—maybe football.
In reality, Josep was a stick skinny child. Though he now took on a square, he wasn’t muscular or even overweight. His form had simply molded to his couch.
They came to the next intersection and paused while they looked both ways. In the way the universe can direct a sitcom, they turned to each other and said in perfect unison:“Seen any good movies lately?”
They laughed so hard, a group of passing kids tried to make a video.
“Jinx! You owe me a Coke!” she said.
He didn’t ask for clarification. “Well, I very recently watched a film called Before Sunrise. Very beauti–”
“Josep! I love that movie!”
“I was going to say a very beautiful film, but give me a break with those two! Ethan Hawke’s character—what are these fairytale magic romance ideas? I know he is playing a young man here, but are there men who are over-dramatic like this?” Josep didn’t feel the need to alter his statement to fit Em’s enthused reaction. He felt like he had found a friend.
With a cartoon expression of pretend shock and disgust, it was clear Em loved his answer.
“How could he know that  this one girl, Julie Delp—err, Celine, I mean—is the true love of his life from only just seeing her on the train?,” Josep continued.  “It’s an especially lonely time for him too, right? Loneliness and a man’s mind...Does he ever consider how many people there are on this planet? In Europe, rather, my goodness! You’ve been, yes? To Europe?”
“Yes,” said Em. She added an eye roll hoping to add fuel to the growing fire of his monologue.
“Good. Anyway, this nut-job who believes in love at first sight—beautiful a night as they had, this is not what love is,” said Josep. “They were not in love, but OK Emahoy,  only to move this forward, let’s assume they were. Even if they were, which they weren’t, sometimes shit happens, right?” 
Josep had dropped the ‘young lady’ by now, and Em, an avid studier of people, enjoyed watching Josep become more animated.
“It just can’t possibly work out that way for everyone. What a fine-tuned machine that would be.”
“You do believe in love, right Josep?” asked Em.
“Emahoy!” he said. “My God. Almighty! Of course, I do! But, tell me, how were they in love? How did you know it?”
“The last time I watched it, I was maybe a different person. From what I remember, it was the way they talked so easily. Not just that, it’s the kind of things they said too.”  Her voice dropped at the end of the sentence.
“Anyone will say anything they want, especially if it can bring them something they want.”
“Are you completely sure you believe in love?”
“Emahoy, Emahoy, Emahoy,” said Josep. “You know I do, but its proven fact: people can say anything at all, with or without the existence of love.”
“For example,” he said in a nasal tone. “My name is Simon Guerke. Is Emahoy there?” When he shook his shoulders in a funny dance, Em spotted the hidden drama nerd she had mistaken for an aged jock.
They laughed for more than half a block. When Em finally caught her breath, she said, “But what about the beauty of chance encounters? That must amplify things.  The feeling of a life-shifting cosmic lottery landing on your number? You meet a person with so much to offer, but under an impossible time limit—just knowing you may never see a person again must instill some kind of feeling, reaction, response…”
She fell into a silence looking for accuracy. Josep walked comfortably alongside her. “It’s nice to meet someone new. It’s the endless possibilities, like a blank roll of film. And you get to be a blank roll too,” she said. “To bring it back to the movie, Jesse and Celine are, what? Twenties? You can’t deny that what you feel in those years seems bigger—an impossible period to compete with, for a million reasons. If it feels real, it’s real to them.”
Josep’s face dawned an understanding.
“Plus, don’t you feel that, as you get older and older, things become less exciting? I haven’t felt properly excited about anything since…” Em stopped speaking as she searched for the feeling’s last appearance.
Josep’s face changed again and she was shocked at the carelessness of her speech. She tried to cover her embarrassment in casualness. “All I know, Josep, is that we are a rare and wonderful chance encounter in action. I am most excited to have met you. Plus, at the end of the day, what do I know about love, or life, or movies, or anything, really?”
“Hopefully a little bit more than Jesse and Celine—tourists. You definitely know more than them, Emahoy. I can tell you are a brilliant gem of an artist,” Josep said these last points with a sincerity they both felt. Then he sighed.  “Almost home. Thank you for the walk.” Hearing his own voice still sounded strange to him.
“Of course, Josep. We’re homies now. Oh, you know it’s a trilogy? It’s your chance to find out if I really do know more about love, life, and the world than Jesse and Celine.”
They stopped so she could take two photos: one of him standing in a parkette under a streetlight, and a second joyfully blinded one where he agreed to let the flash go off four inches from in his face. Under different circumstances, he might wince in discomfort but this time he laughed from it.
When she saved Josep’s number, she saw that Dak had responded. She wished Josep well and read the text as she walked back to the parkette.

“eating!? without me?
made plans w
alex
he’s w me now /we’ll head home soon/ grab beers?
or you gonna be out late-late?
y/n?

look I made an acrostic poem w ur name!! ^^”

She sat on the parkette’s public bench. Swimming headlights illuminated a brass anonymous dedication plaque affixed to it: “In memory of a quiet lover of life, an admirer of all worlds, and the creator of mine.”
She waited another stretched moment and used her phone to write: “not sure when ill be back.”
Her phone then abruptly died like it had put forth great effort on its part in delivering the text-turned-swan-song. Her shoulders relaxed and she loosened into the bench.
In his apartment, Josep smoked a cigarette and opened a notepad. He flipped through to find a blank page, tapped his pen once, and closed the notebook again.
“The story will finish itself,” he thought, and he cued up Before Sunset.

Alex Sheriff is a Los Angeles-based artist, filmmaker, writer, and co-editor of AFTERNOON.
alexsheriff.com