a picture

He'd been there once before in the daylight's yielding colors, which diluted across the walls the greens and reds of the Fuji-Film poster in the thick windowpane. The dirt road dirty with garbage more than with dirt outside offered a good final snapshot to seal off the last roll for handing over to the developing-man. That time he rode his bike through the unfamiliar aggressive city streets. These streets felt most perturbing to a biker not so much because of the slightly aggressive nature of the drivers but because of their complete certainty that a person sitting in a car seat is to be valued more highly than a person sitting on a bike seat. Drivers in these streets drove in ways that certainly claimed their dominion over the shared realm of transportation. To bike these streets he played them like a video-game, make-pretend fun. He pretended the nervous sweat making his hands slippery on the metal bars (he always refused the need for bar-tape in the temperate climate of his origin so had the same convictions in mind when birthing his newest creation in this heat, not realizing...) and threatening his eyes with sour stinging from the brow were part of the very realistic though pixelated obstacles of the game. Do not misunderstand him, he was not fooling himself. He was only doing like you do when you pretend to be someone else. You do that. I know you do that.
So he bounced about to the rhythm of the traffic, catching missed beats with swerves and anticipating swerves by skipping beats. At times he thought his one front brake was not enough. At times he thought his one front brake was not just not enough but too weak for a brake in its own right. But all this he accounted for in his riding style. In fact, it enhanced the video-game: it meant he paid incredible attention. These adrenaline levels were better for his focus than the Adderall he'd tried. The ingredients for this special adrenaline were fear, excitement, anxiety, and arrogance.
Re-watering his insides through the mouth and down the throat at every inhale, he stood, panting heavily, and looked about himself to ensure his station was in no one's way. He was usually in someone's way, someone carrying something on their head getting frustrated with him for not following the rhythm or removing himself from the way. He leaned his bike to rest and leaned himself on the counter to inquire, and also to rest. The diluted reds and greens sprawled across his face and into his eyes which were only secondarily aware of these flavors. First on his mind was the calculation of price per photo. That done the naming of more suitable prices got under way until they leveled out on an appropriate plateau. He handed over the rolls of film and sat around for nearly two hours, befriending a geography teacher and dragging his weighty plow of an attention through Borges' Labyrinths.
This time he did not bike there. He did not take a car or arrive by any progressive manner. He was just there, as though he woke up there. No greens and reds because it was night time. The walls were covered in little individual cardboard packages of film rolls, from the very linoleum on the floor to the even cheaper suspended ceiling panels. The little consumer-designed faces of the rectangles faced him from all directions, breathing in on him, but this didn't quite feel real so he was not sinking into fear. He was only a slightly awed and slightly sedated observer. Sedated because along with the not quite real feeling was a general vagueness, a strange but accepted confusion. Nothing was very tangible or clear. Just all these repeated geometric forms and dulled colors of Kodak in the dark with Fuji-Film.
He picked up an old film camera of black plastic and second-rate metal. He did not know how to use a manual camera yet but this along with learning how to play guitar and and five books or so were on his to-do list. Rotating the focus and aperture and letting its weight push his hands below his elbows felt right in the hands. He knew he could channel his vision through it with some practice. In this way it would become important to him, like his bicycles, like his memories. Pointing his face into the dark blue gracefully curved lens at the front he was at once reflected and diving into its innards. Yes, he could fall in love with this feeling. We do that. We all do that.
Now the walls were covered with cameras, from the very linoleum on the floor to the even cheaper suspended ceiling panels. They seemed more poised than the previous packages of film rolls. Countless distorted reproductions of his little body followed his movements with no delay through those blue eyes, curved like big eyeballs with saturated irises.
And then they flashed. All of them.
Light filled the room, displacing the darkness. A sequence of continuing unregimenting strobe flashing filled him with enthusiasm. He could not refuse to spin in smiles in the middle of that little linoleum square. The cameras erupting in rapid succession cast that other-worldly white light of flash that his science teacher once said had microscopic sparks hotter than the sun's surface of 6000 Kelvins. The flashing slowed and the overpowering familiar clicking of snapshots lowered as some cameras approached the end of their roll. A few stragglers caught up with final flickers and claps until darkness seeped naturally back into the space light had usurped. The cameras were no more except for the one he held in his hands. The film packets were covering the walls once again.
Glee hung his face.
This be his only fame.