Anonymole – apocryphal agitators

“You’re doing it again.”

I’d been staring at Leo’s hands, their wrinkled backs, as he worked the numbers. Dozens of printed negatives lay scattered across the sandalwood table, the stars reversed to black, fuzzy dots. We’d been at it for hours, photographing the night sky, focusing on one narrow quadrant of the cosmos high above the island of Kauai.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Have you figured its diameter?”

“I need one more image printed. The one at three-oh-seven.” Leo maintained that being an astrophysicist had little to do with observing celestial bodies and more to do with grinding out the math.

I tapped the laptop’s keys, printed and slipped the fresh page next to the others. “Stuffy in here,” I said as I levered out the awnings that let the sweet smell of the Nā Pali Coast drift in. Our observation shack, high above the Waimea Canyon, remained in the sunrise shadow of the mountains, but the glow at the horizon promised another lovely day.

Continued here…