He wanted to make her beautiful.
Mark sat inside the apartment that Collins and Angel shared. As soon as Collins came home from work at NYU, they were going out to Life Support, the three of them. For now, it was just Angel and Mark.
They were just starting out as friends, so Mark felt awkward asking to film her as she went through her everyday motions. But when she turned around to face the mirror in the bedroom, adjusting her wig and applying make up to her face, Mark unconsciously raisedhis camera. At just the right angle, he zoomed inon the reflection inthe mirror, where Angel lovingly applied her mascara. The beauty of this simple gesture, done with all the care and precision of anyone's older sister, was emphasized by the light from the setting sun through the western window. He focused on her slender fingers, running gently but effectively through the dark wig. He caught the image of her eyes, as reflected in the mirror. She knew he was filming this moment, but she didn't say anything, nor did she turn around until she heard him turn the camera off with a soft "click."
Mark made him beautiful.
The way his face lit up when he was with his friends, the way he lovingly looked at Collins nearly every moment of every day, the compassion in his deep brown eyes during Life Support. These were the days Angel dressed in blue jeans and tee-shirts and played his drum on street corners. Mark focused on Angel's face, or sometimes his hands. Without looking naïve, Angel always looked so much younger than he really was, and Mark captured that youth, preserving it forever onto grainy millimeter film.
Angel let Mark tag along when he played the drums. The intensity in his brow, the way he unconsciously closed his eyes when he got a good rhythm going, the way his wrists moved like fluid to create the staccato beats of an empty pickle tub—it was captivating. Mark squatted ten feet away on the sidewalk, ignoring the pain in his feet, as he filmed Angel channeling the music of the city, the music of life, through a ten-gallon plastic pickle tub.
Mark made him beautiful.
While the others hesitated to enter the hospital room where Angel lay dying (dying--Angel was honest with everyone from the beginning), Mark entered with a smile. They were close friends now, and what they lacked in conversation they encompassed in their art. Beneath the pale skin and sunken eyes lay beauty, and Mark saw this and only this. When Angel allowed it, he filmed the dying man in his last days. The light in his eyes, the way he held Collins' hand, the soft whispers of love and comfortto the others—Mark captured them all. And when Angel was ready to say goodbye, Mark filmed his final valediction to his friends.
Days later, after the funeral, Mark sat watching bits of the film. On the screen, he had just asked Angel what she wanted more than anything. Blowing a kiss to the camera and flipping the edge of her wig, she had responded flirtatiously "To be beautiful!"
Mark smiled through his tears. She always had been.