The Woman Who Collected Empty Stages

How it begins

Clara waited for the cleaner to leave the frame.

The cleaner waited for the floor to dry.

Behind the camera, Eli looked from one woman to the other.

"We could take it now," he said.

"No."

"The light's going."

"So is the cleaner."

The cleaner straightened.

"My name's Ruth."

Clara lowered the camera.

"I'm sorry."

"That's all right. This section will be ten minutes."

She moved the warning sign and went back to work.

The theater had closed the previous night. Clara had photographed the empty auditorium at dawn, the dressing rooms at eight, and the box office after someone removed the last handwritten sign.

The stage was meant to be the final image.

One chair.

One work light.

Nothing left to distract from the shape of absence.

Ruth's bucket stood in the center of the composition.

Eli sat on the edge of the stage.

"Do you ever photograph the people taking it apart?"

"That's not the series."

"Why?"

Clara checked the exposure.

She had once been paid to answer difficult questions while thirty people waited for a decision. Now she found it irritating to be asked one by a man whose chief responsibility was carrying the tripod.

"Because I'm interested in what remains."

Ruth laughed softly.

Clara looked up.

"Something funny?"

"Just that I'm still here."

The words were mild.

They landed badly.

Above the proscenium, dust moved through a high window. Eli had been right about the light.

It would never fall across the stage quite this way again.

Clara lifted the camera.

Through the viewfinder, Ruth pushed the bucket toward the empty chair.

For a moment, the composition became less elegant.

It also became true in a way the planned image had not been.

Clara took her finger off the shutter.

"Ruth," she said, "may I ask whether you'd like to be in this?"