Arcane II (33 page)

At lunch on Wednesday, he went down to Winchester Point with an umbrella, hiding under the lee of the bridge and squeezing off shot after shot as the rain strode across the water in sheets. He trimmed his beard every evening before retreating to the darkroom, dizzy and faint with elation as he looked at increasingly sharp-molded cheeks. He played with the pictures mounted on the stereocards like a blackjack dealer learning a new deck, shuffling and rearranging them, sliding them through the 3-D viewer in succession.

Somehow, work slid into the spaces in between the cards, the flat world outside the viewer. Martin lounged in the green Morris whose upholstered arms had long since shredded under Millicent’s claws. He held up the stereocards and stared at their naked faces, trying to coax out the reality with plain vision while Millicent rubbed through his legs. Weariness settled on him like a gentle fall of dust. For over a week, he’d scarcely eaten; sleep came when he fell into it against his will.

He rubbed his eyes, then bolted up as the image jumped into focus. When he stared harder, it disappeared. He forced himself to relax, let his sight blur till the lamp had an angelic halo... the room hazed... and the face appeared again, beautiful and enigmatic. Long, sleek hair fell softly about broad cheeks, a delicate nose, slanted eyes that crinkled with a brilliant, even-toothed smile. Her fists fit into the hollows above her hips while the breeze stirred her bangs. She stood in front of what used to be the Koger building. He remembered the original shot: abandoned offices, light through ancient trees, the desolation of time. Yet here she stood by the brick courthouse, the corner shaded by elms and paved in cobbles. He knew that corner—knew its shape, had played marbles and hopscotch there; knew it from daguerreotypes of the old judge, antique paintings in the foyer of the savings and loan.

Without focusing, he held up the next.

The old Mennonite church, a cowbell bricked into the side

...she was younger, but he knew those delicate wrists, that secret smile as she raced hoops with other children dressed in worn frocks and faded trousers. Another shot through the glass of a picture window, showing not the antique shop he’d photographed, but the sparkling wonders of the old glass-blower’s. In every piece of glass, the ghosted reflection of her face smiled at him. His skin began to crawl.

Dizzy. Time doppled, tripled, and he was sitting up, elbows on knees, staring at modern derelicts and the patina of time.

The stereocards scattered as he ran for the bathroom. Heaving over the sink, he braced himself on weak arms and looked up into the mirror while water dripped from his beard. The eyes that looked back were worn, hollow, rubbed out by the decay of 36 years, too many empty photographic successes and all-too-predictable personal defeats. His cat had been with him longer than any woman, than any friend. The measure of his life lay in his portfolio, and he could no longer bear to look at it.

He dragged himself back to the living room and picked up stereocards that slipped through trembling fingers. Suddenly, he wanted very badly to forget the whole thing.

He pressed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Rose would have kneaded the kinks from his shoulders, her soft, quiet presence and gentle laugh easing this fever in his brain. Loneliness crushed him, darkness gritting the corners, the angled mirror on the closet, the shadows sprawling behind framed photographs. He staggered into the bedroom, collapsing on the squeaky bed with his arm thrown over his eyes. Freed of their cardboard memories, the images drifted before him, whirling in a sickening pattern.

***

The next day he went back to work. Claire filled out a request for sick leave, and he signed with pursed lips. He couldn’t bring himself to speak. He remembered a time when he’d been quick with a quip, but today he felt paper-thin, two-dimensional. He went about his work with perfect, dull precision. When Jacques locked up, Martin wanted to suggest that they go to a bar—anything but those narrow rooms and the stack of tantalizing, impossible photographs. But Jacques clapped him on the shoulder. “Go home, Martin, get some rest.”

Nights and days blended together. The stereocards lay scattered like some colorless jigsaw. He came home as late as he could and headed straight for the cool and steady hum of the air-conditioned bedroom, where he threw himself at sleep, afraid to look at the cards in case the magic faded. The lamp still burned by the TV, casting a comforting shawl over the room. He went to the library every night, hunting through old papers, local memorabilia, looking for the woman in the photographs. When the library closed, he’d hit the greasy midtown bars, meeting women he could have picked up with a smooth line, a zany joke—things he used to be good at. But what was the point?

The woman in the photographs was real, was all he wanted. His eyes burned with too much microfilm; his fingers stank with old newsprint—aged images, their sharpness blurred by time. He found her at last, in a lone volume hidden under a stack of old racing forms that crumbled when he touched them. His Mai, smiling for the camera even then. A smile that must have covered secret grief. At 36, Mai had drowned herself off Winchester Point. Finding the dull obituary, Martin closed the book of bound newspapers in a cloud of dust and sat with hands linked over buckram binding. He drove home slowly, the stretch of highway lit by stars, an emptiness he could not cross.

Millicent tried to cheer him up, winding around his legs until he flopped on the bed fully clothed. She nestled with his feet, purring; he lay there, hands folded on his chest, staring at the faint play of lights from the parking lot. He felt like a dead man. He tried to think past the cloud, past the pain, to any good that might have come of his life. His father had died of pneumonia, too sick to get out of bed or call; Martin hadn’t thought to wonder till the police called weeks afterward. Rose had left him. He tried to remember how it felt to love her, but all his numb fingers could recall was twisting a lens to a different angle, sweet as a woman’s thigh. Behind his eyes, a 36-year-old posed on the bridge, jumping as dawn filled the sky.

The bridge stayed with him. He’d photographed there, since this began, and the images hadn’t changed. It looked the same at night as it always had. Martin jumped up, grabbed camera and keys, squealed out of the parking lot with the Stereo Realist cradled to his chest. He raced down Route 79 toward Winchester, toward the bridge... toward Mai. The woods brushed close on either side, lower branches white in the headlights. He dug in his pockets for change and rolled through the tollbooth with eight dropped coins, passing the gate in a wash of yellow keen as a flash. As he rushed past into darkness, he pointed the camera out the window.

Slowing to focus, he shot the old brick courthouse that should have been dilapidated office front. The schoolhouse rose in pioneer clapboard, complete with the iron Maypole that had been condemned when the Anders child strangled. He tore up the dirt road past the jetty, heading for the Falksbyrd Bridge. A string of lights spanned the channel where sand gave way to killing rock. The bridge held a slim footpath on the side, empty but for one small figure. Martin jumped from the car, camera to his eye, the door hanging open. The wind buffeted him as he shot her faint figure, shining thin and pale in the moonlight, the electric lamps of the bridge rendering her diaphanous, a two-dimensional ghost. Martin clenched his teeth and edged along the rail. She was climbing, and he dared not call for fear of startling her.

One shot, he prayed, and snapped. He tried to get closer. She swayed on the top rail, poised like a swan over the drop, head thrown back, her long, silky hair blowing like a shimmering veil. As she balanced there, only feet away, he squeezed off three more shots, feeling the shutter close inside as though each formed a link on a vital chain.

The mist lifted from her face. She cast a startled glance toward him, eyes sad and full of longing. As he stood beside her, she leaned out without a cry. Her ankle grazed his wrist as he flailed at empty air.

He didn’t scream. He knew what he’d done. He slid against the side of the bridge and huddled there, the grid of the railing cutting his back, tears streaming down his cheeks. He heaved for breath, the camera clutched in his hands; then, suddenly, gagging laughter. He had caught her after all—inside the camera!

When he developed them, the shots held only modern buildings, his own figure posed against the guardrail where Mai had perched on the old.

Deliberately, he let the old camera fall out the window, heard the shatter of twin lenses as it hit.

His soul, shattering, if he had a soul.

II.

Martin L. Gregory had a beautiful wife, a ten-year-old daughter, and a job he loved. He lived in a mansion with six wooded acres, where his wife stayed home to field bids for his freelance work. With his museum job, he could only accept so many.

Marty liked to spend his lunch hour on the pleasant country drive, running film to the camera shop. Gus was not only a wizard at developing, he had an astounding collection of antiques. Marty would jokingly offer ridiculous sums, which Gus always refused. Today there was a new arrival: a subminiature, complete with tiny tripod. The sight of it called up childhood memories, playing with his mother’s spy camera. The tiny 2" x 2" prints had been more fun than trading cards. His daughter Millicent might enjoy such a camera. Feeling warm and a little cocky, he said, “Give you five hundred for the Petietux.”

“You like it? It’s yours,” Gus said, looking more surprised than Marty. He pulled it out, setting the tripod on the counter. Marty took the camera gently, turning it over in his palm, moving the parts reverently. But when he pulled out his wallet, Gus waved him aside.

All day at work Marty would think of the camera and smile. Just before they shut down, he took a few test shots, starting with big Justin the lab developer, who struck a goofy pose on one foot with his hand outstretched like a vaudeville performer. Marty drove through the park, shooting the stone lions, the water, the pillared mansions along the shore. He enjoyed the click and whir of the little camera, the tiny focus, the miniature lens. As he crouched to change the film, he realized with a pang that he would miss it.

Inspired by the sun, the hills, the rolling train, he greeted his family with tiny snaps, Gayle giving him a sweet smile from behind the hydrangea. He took surprise pictures of Millicent as she played with cats, talking to them as if they understood her. Life was good—too good, he thought ruefully as Millicent jumped up, squealing as she ran to him with open arms.

He held the camera high and away.

“Daddy, is that a toy?” Her pretty features contracted with an expectant frown, dirt smearing her arms and coating her legs till they looked gray. Brown stains marred turquoise shorts and the seashell design of the sleeveless shirt.

“No, it’s a very special camera. I’ll show you later if you’re good.”

But later never arrived. Gayle hadn’t felt like cooking in the heat, so they went to her favorite Italian restaurant, where Gayle smiled too broadly and flirted with the hosts and servers, and Millicent yelled for glasses of water, then stirred in crumbled croutons, scallions, and dried ketchup. Marty tried to melt into the far corner of the booth, flinching while his daughter grabbed scraps from their plates to throw at passersby. Gayle waved daintily to the nearest waiter and asked demurely for a slow, comfortable screw up against the wall.

Slouching away from them, Marty felt the cold square of the tiny camera in his pocket. He pulled it into his lap, hiding it while he undid the straps and set up the flash, until Gayle laughed gaily and asked him if he were practicing for later that evening. Marty gave her a broad smile.

Snap! into their joyful, unsuspecting faces. The blue flash froze everything—a collapsible moment of time that he controlled—then Gayle blinked, uncomprehending smile, while Millicent crowed for the nearest waiter.

Later that evening, Marty sat up in the dark, Gayle’s soft snores shaking his arm. He disentangled himself carefully from her body, perfect as a model’s, though it had failed to entice him for perhaps two years. Strange how memory outlived desire. Once, they had been quite happy... he remembered evenings in the grape arbor, the rustle of leaves over the patio, the summer wind stirring her red-gold hair as they discussed exhibitions, their philosophy on friendship, movies, literature. Simple companionship had meant so much.

But now... too often evenings were tedious, awkward, with nothing meaningful to say. Millicent had become a cute little monster. Though he still loved his family, he was somehow disappointed. They had failed to fulfill a need that he could not quite name himself.

He crept out of bed, careful not to wake Gayle as he went down to his lab to see what he’d captured with the subminiature.

When he pulled the negatives from their final bath and pinned them up to dry, he was a bit surprised. There was Justin, dancing on one toe like the sugarplum fairy... but wasn’t there something sinister in the curve of his lip, the supercilious lift of one brow? Marty glanced at a few other frames, shivered, and prepared to print from the 14-millimeter negatives.

When he’d finished, he realized that it wasn’t just the red glow of the safelight. That really was a malevolent gleam in Justin’s eyes, a knife clutched in his upraised fist. There was Claire, not holding a mug of coffee but clutching an iron scepter, a crown of stars upon her brow. Jacques no longer chuckled at slides, but sucked a bottle, a blanket draped over his head, his other hand holding a carved red sailboat. Marty grabbed a sweater to counteract the dry chill of the lab as he printed the second roll.

He retrieved the pictures, shaking so hard he nearly dropped them in the bath. Gayle... the hydrangea shot had become an alluring pose in a white slip frilled like a dress, with long white gloves and a rose between her teeth. The shots in the restaurant made his heart labor with the weight of ice. She was electric blue, her head pointed, her face flaming clean and pure as an Indian goddess, her nose sharp and one-dimensional as a playing card. No hair, a forked tongue curled and sticky as a salamander, piercing eyes above a spiked green tail that coiled behind her like a spiny tree.