Crude Sunlight 1 (11 page)

Julia sat still, watching him, and he sat looking through the table. The music and hubbub of the bar seemed to be coming from a room far, far away. Finally she spoke. "I... well, I think you're making a change now, you know? I mean, being here. You're trying to find him. That means something. I don't know what's going on in New York, but I know if Henry knew you were out here looking for him, he'd be... pleased, I guess. Right?"

Thomas looked up and met her eyes. They were a strange green, dark but seeming to glitter in the light. He expected her to look away, but she didn't. She hesitated, and then leaned forward.

"My mother left us when I was little--" began Julia, and then stopped abruptly as Buck strode up and suddenly loomed over the table.

"This'll get the party started," he said, and set down three beers and three shot glasses filled with clear liquid.

"Whoa," said Thomas, leaning back. "You serious? What is that?"

"These," said Buck, pushing a shot glass across the table toward Julia and Thomas, "are double shots of tequila. You drink them, and then you chase them with the beers. Understood?"

"What about the limes and salt?" asked Julia.

"We don' need no steenkin' limes," said Buck, grinning. "C'mon. Be glad I didn't get us some prairie fires. Here we go!"

The three of them up-ended the shots, and then grabbed the beers and swallowed quickly. Julia grimaced as she put her beer down, lowering her chin to her chest and pressing the back of her wrist to her mouth, while Buck just smacked his lips and slid in next to them.

"Hoo-whee! Now we're talking." He looked from one to the other. "So what's up, guys? What is up?"

"You," said Thomas, "Are getting drunk."

"Why yes, yes I am." Buck smiled widely, showing a lot of teeth. "But that is the point, my friend. Now, what were you two little love birds talking about?"

"We're not love birds," said Thomas, staring at Buck.

"Hey, whatever man. Give it time. Either that, or slide aside. What do you say, Julia? Want to do another shot with me?"

"No," she said. "I think I'm done." She was still grimacing.

"You okay?" asked Thomas.

"I swallowed it wrong. Excuse me," said Julia, and quickly edged out from the booth to dive into the crowd.

"Eesh. I thought she'd be able to hold her drinks better," said Buck, shaking his head.

Suddenly the whole night seemed wrong to Thomas. The thought of more drinks and staying in this loud bar was intolerable. He thought of Henry, and shook his head. "Man, who knows how many she had before we arrived? She's already had like five beers just with us."

"Oh, yeah. Huh. You think I shouldn't have bought the shots? My bad,
amigo
. "

"I don't know." Thomas sat back, and closed his eyes. He felt exhausted. "I'm sorry. I'm just not in the right headspace to enjoy this. You mind if we get out of here?"

"Yeah, sure, Thomas, sure. You think we should make sure Julia gets home?"

Thomas nodded. "Yeah. Let's make sure she's okay, then we can call her a cab."

"Yeah, okay. I'll go close the tab, and then we can get out of here."

Thomas nodded. Exhaustion was swallowing him whole, settling over his shoulders like a cape of lead. He felt as if he could go to sleep right there. Just go to sleep, and let all the noise and complications slide away into nothing.

Chapter 10

They were silent the next morning as they rolled down the streets toward Eric's house. Hollow homes filed past, made of broken boards and topped off with rotten roofs, the car moving with velvety smoothness over the potholes and miniature chasms which covered the surface of the road. The sky was overcast, pale and chalky white like the inside of an old iron kettle, and Thomas felt it pushing down on them, a ceiling that would descend and smother them when they weren't watching.

Julia sat upfront, a large cup of coffee clasped between her hands, while Buck snoozed in the back seat, his head lolling from side to side as the car took corners, his mouth agape, his large hands loose and open by his thighs. He'd gone into the hotel bar for a couple of goodnight rounds, leaving Thomas to fall asleep alone in the hotel room, thankful for the absence of his friend's haunting snores.

Cracked windows and dusty lots held back behind swaybacked chain link fences. An abandoned church passed them on the left, the white paint gone to gray and streaked with the red rust of nails sunken into the boards. Storefronts shuttered closed as often as they were open for business, and suspicious gazes from blank faces tracking them as they drove down the street, creeping along behind ancient Cadillacs and Victoria Towncars.

Finally Thomas pulled over before Eric's house. It was as decrepit as he remembered, looming up over the street and the weed-filled yard. Killing the engine, he reached back between the seats to smack Buck on the knee.

"Wake up," he said. Buck snorted, lifted his head, blinked and rubbed his hand across his face, pulling at his cheeks and wiping at the corner of his mouth.

"We here?" Sitting up, he glanced out the windows, frowning as he took in the neighborhood. "Hell, are we in the Bronx?"

Julia shouldered the door open and stepped out, letting it swing closed behind her. Thomas followed suit, and soon the three of them were stepping across the street toward the splayed gate.

"Should we try the front door?" asked Thomas, looking at Julia. She had denied being hung over earlier on, but from her surly attitude he wasn't too sure.

"Yeah. He said he'd be expecting us." Walking stiffly up the steps, she pulled open the punctured and blown-out screen and hammered on the door several times. Buck slipped his hands into his jean pockets, hunching his shoulders and looking up and down the street, while Julia stared at the door, sipping at her coffee. Thomas looked from one to the other, and then stepped back when the door opened.

Eric squinted into the bland daylight, his coppery curls mussed and wild about his pale face. He looked quickly passed Julia and Thomas to Buck, who nodded his head amiably at him.

"Hello Eric," said Thomas. "This is my friend Buck. He works with me back in New York. He's just along for the ride."

Eric nodded slowly, as if considering, and then pushed the door open. "Buck. Hello. Come in."

They stepped into the vestibule. Daylight filtered in gently through the shuttered windows, illuminating furniture covered in white sheets, chairs knocked over onto their sides, a table listing where a leg had snapped. Warped wooden boards reflected the light back brokenly where the varnish was worn away, and shadows hung uncertainly over everything.

Julia followed Eric without hesitation, pausing only to turn and look down at where the two men stood with an arched brow before gaining the landing. Buck clapped Thomas on the shoulder, shook his head and followed, each step causing the worn boards to groan in protest. Thomas took a breath and followed suit.

Eric didn't lead them into his bedroom, but instead into a larger room across the hall. A long table had been shoved into one end, and piles of rotting magazines rose tottering along its length. A clothing line sagged back and forth before it from wall to wall, with large black and white prints clipped to it. A few chairs were shoved in the opposite side of the room near the door, and two large, shuttered windows admitted slatted bars of light onto the floor where they melted into the amber glow of several lamps.

Eric stopped before his photographs, adjusted one or two nervously, as a groom might adjust his tie, and then turned and crossed his arms and moved to stand by a wall. Thomas drifted forward with Julia to examine the photographs, while Buck stayed by the door, frowning and watching their host.

The photographs were stark close-ups of random objects. The base of a lamp. A crack between two flagstones where a clump of weeds rose in sharp focus. A handful of coins scattered across the base of a porcelain sink. A shattered bulb, filament still intact. A portion of a swirling letter, graffitied onto a brick wall. Each was precisely taken, the center in sharp relief against a blurred backdrop. Eric watched them both with a neutral expression, rubbing his thumb along the line of his jaw as he did so.

"Is this what you've been doing with your time?" asked Thomas, turning to regard him.

"Yes," said Eric, pursing his lips and dropping his hands by his side, only to slide them into his pockets and then draw them free once more. "Yes, you could say that."

Thomas nodded, turning to look at an abstract shot of black square shadows on a white surface, too close to discern what they were a part of. He felt like an art critic, come to an impoverished artist's studio to inspect his work.

Julia ducked under the first clothesline, and then a second, to look at some photographs hanging from a third behind them all.

"Those--" said Eric, starting forward and then stopping, stepping back, "Those were the first I took, with, if you look, a small object that is consistent in each. I started using a marble at first, placing it as a common element in each shot, but then realized that I didn't need it. My seeing was the common element, if you will, and that is what unites each shot into a collective whole. They're--they're all things that I have seen, compositions of a world that I have witnessed, and through the witnessing, asserted." He stopped as suddenly as he began, closing his mouth with a snap, and looking warily from one to the next.

"They're all close-ups," said Julia, still moving from one print to the next. "Extreme close-ups." Eric nodded unhappily, opening his mouth as if to say more and then subsiding. Julia stopped and looked through the erratic arrays of photographs to where Eric stood. "Why close-ups, Eric? You used to just do portraits."

Eric chewed on the inside of his cheek before shrugging to examine the windowsill and brush some dust off with quick sweeps of his fingers. "Well. Portraits. People. I'm more interested in the actual now, the real. The basics." He turned his head and glanced at Thomas. "Everything is complex. The more complex the image, the greater the chance to deceive. You keep things basic, you have a chance to get the seeing right. To see what is there. You take shots of people, and you risk--you risk not knowing--well." He frowned and looked down, shook his head.

"So," said Buck pointedly, stepping forward. "Where's Henry? You got any new info?"

Eric shot Buck an annoyed look and moved away from the window toward one of the chairs, where he sat on the thick arm of an armchair and then rose again to his feet as if it were too hot to rest on. "I don't have any new information. Or, rather, no new facts. I gave Julia the tape, and she showed it to you. It's not evidence, it's not proof, but it's enough, isn't it? Enough to make you come back, to come back and take a second look, or to begin asking questions?" His eyes were bright, very wide, and a hesitant, complicit smile hovered over his lips.

"Yes. I have some questions." Thomas nodded slowly. "What do you think happened at the end of that video? What's your interpretation of it?" Julia stepped forward, ducking under the lines to stand next to Thomas.

"My interpretation?" Eric edged toward the wall once more. "I don't know. I've thought about it." His smile cracked, "Oh, I've thought about it. When we found Henry after the first time, when he dropped the camera, when we found him outside, he wouldn't tell us what had happened. And when he showed me that tape, he wouldn't explain it either. He just wanted to show me what we were going down to. To scare me out of going." Eric looked over at Julia, and smiled again, a hurt, brilliant smile. "Oh, and to show me the two of you kissing and laughing, I suppose. But that wasn't even the point, I don't think. I've thought about it a lot, you see, and I think perhaps he wasn't daring me to go down there. Not really, though that's what he was saying. I think he wanted me to pull him out of it, to stop him from going. Because he wanted to go, he was fascinated, or obsessed, or attracted or something. It scared him, scared him shitless, but there was also something about it that made him want to go back. To go back and see. And I think he wanted me to grab him and make him run in the other direction. But saving him would mean my losing, and I couldn't have that, now could I?"

Thomas listened in rapt silence. Eric finished speaking and he began to rub his thumb along his jaw line once more, and then walked past them toward his photographs, to touch one, to adjust a second.

"So, yes, here I am in this old house, and I'm sure you think I'm crazy, I know my mother does, and mother always knows best, but I can't--well, I can't just pretend nothing happened. But I can't do anything either, now can I? What can I do? Go down there again?" He laughed then, a bitter sound, tinged with hysteria. "No, I can't go back down there. So instead I've been trying to think, to find an answer, and in the meantime I've been taking photographs, trying to put things back together, to examine the pieces and by looking at the world so carefully that I can begin to once more understand the basics. Rebuild a reality from the ground up, start from the very beginning and assemble the smallest parts, and understand where to go from there."

Thomas turned to look at Buck, who made a circling gesture next to this temple with a finger and shook his head. Looking back at Eric, he saw that he had lowered his arms to his sides, and bowed his head. Julia took a half step toward him, and Thomas thought that Eric would spin, would lash out, but instead he did nothing, and it was this silence that defeated Julia so that she stopped and stepped back.

"We're going back down there," said Thomas. "We're going to go back there and see what we can find. I don't know if we'll find anything, but we're going to take a look." Eric turned and met Thomas' eyes. "You can come with us if you like, or you can stay here. It's up to you."

For a long moment Eric simply gazed at Thomas with his clear, crystal blue eyes, and then he shook his head. "I can't go back down there. I don't think--I wouldn't be able to--no. I can't go back down there. I understand that you want to find Henry, but I don't think you will. You won't find Henry. I think Henry is gone. You should go back to New York. If you want, I'll let you know if I figure something out. But the answer's not down there. It's not down there in those tunnels. Don't go."