“Ah! Sh*t.” He sucks in through gritted teeth, waving a throbbing and bloodied finger feverishly in the air. Cursing the boxcutter, he tosses it aside, which skids off the table and clatters onto the floor.

     When he opens the cardboard box, a cloud of dust and stale air rises up, and he retracts his arm to cough violently. He pulls his sleeve over his hand to wipe a film of dust off of his glasses, and then to wipe the dust off of the top layer of polaroids in the box. Carefully, he takes one stack out and places it next to the glowing candle on the counter. With trembling fingers, he removes the elastic that holds the stack together, and spreads them out before him.

     Dozens of single moments, frozen in time with some ink and paper, stare back at him. And in

so many of them, one woman grins eternally at the camera. He studies her face in one, the flowing strands of her golden hair, her eyes squinting against a glint of summer sunshine, and her smile, distinguished by a small gap in her two front teeth.

     “Marie, my sunshine,” he used to call her. 

     He rests his cheeks on his fists, now scanning the hurriedly scribbled captions.

 

     Marie at Sunset Cliff; 6/5/74

     Boating in San Francisco Bay; 5/2/72

     Fourth of July in Sonoma Valley; 7/4/73

 

     She sits on a park bench in one photo, strumming a guitar. He can hear her humming “Fire and Rain.” Fog forms on the lenses of his spectacles as tears begin to slide down his upturned cheeks. He feels his way to a cotton cloth usually used to polish his glasses. He wipes a few droplets off of the counter as well.

     The mahogany wall clock rotates three more times as he thumbs through each photo in the box. The corners on most of the polaroids are faded and yellowing, each waiting to be unveiled under a thin film of dust. His candle has nearly burnt out. Stark white sunlight no longer trickles in through the shutters of the windows. He rubs circles into his temples, overwhelmed by the hundreds of moments captured before the lens of his old Polaroid SX-70.

     Forty lost years, he thinks, half a lifetime.

     He had gotten the call one week ago, scratchy through the distance between callers on the phone. It had come at 8 PM, as he was sitting before a bowl of pasta and a glass of red wine, staring at the empty wooden chair across him—his nightly date. He had named it Carol. There weren’t many calls to him anymore, so he had been jolted by the sporadic ring.

     It had been forty years, but the single “hello” from the melodic voice on the other end reminded him of all those single moments. She had been widowed ten years ago, and would be in town for the week to visit her sister. What a shame. He met Todd once before, and he liked him.

     “Charlie, I’ve been thinking over the last few months about all of the adventures we’d embark on. And I miss them—you—dearly. Would you meet me for a dinner one night?”

     It was now 11:30. He should rest, and he should take his medicine as well. Tomorrow evening at 5 PM, at the old café that overlooks the bay. He can’t help but feel like he was twenty again, and ready to embark on another adventure with the sunshine both above him and the sunshine in the passenger’s seat beside him.

     He takes the elastic to wrap the photographs back up again. In the corner of his eye, he spots a glint of light off of the familiar lens of his old camera. He packs the photographs back in the box, one by one, stack by stack, but he leaves the camera beside his coat rack at the door.