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AS COLTRANE TWITCHED FROM A NIGHTMARE that was indistinguishable from the trauma of his wide-awake memories, he seemed to have been running forever. He fell from the impact of the bullet that shattered his camera, rolled desperately to avoid Ilkovic’s line of fire, and flinched as hands grabbed his shoulders, pushing him.

A moan escaped him. His eyes jerked open in a panic, the hands continuing to press him down, a gentle voice whispering, “Ssshh, it’s only me. It’s Jennifer.”

“Uh.” Sweat slicked him. His chest heaved.

“You’re home. You’re safe.”

“. . . Uh.”

“You were having a nightmare. I had to grab you before you rolled out of bed.”

Coltrane’s heart hammered so fast that he feared it would burst against his ribs. His tongue felt dry and thick. “. . . Jennifer?” In the shadows of what he now recognized was his bedroom, he peered up at her. Still disoriented, he seemed to see her through an imaginary viewfinder, framing her lovely oval face, her light blue eyes, and the dark worry behind them. His gaze lingered on her appealing curved lips, her smooth tan cheeks, and her short blond hair that resembled corn silk.

His heartbeat no longer made his chest feel swollen. At last, he seemed to be getting enough air. He eased back onto his pillow.

“Here.” Jennifer reached for a glass of water on the bedside table. Adjusting a straw, she placed it against his parched mouth. He took several deep swallows, luxuriating in the wonderful coolness, ignoring the drops that rolled down his chin.

“Guess I’m the last person you expected to see, huh?” Jennifer asked.

Coltrane didn’t know what to say. The last time he had seen her was six months ago when they had broken up.

“Daniel sent for me,” she said.

Coltrane nodded, the motion aggravating a headache. Daniel was a friend who lived in the town house next door.

“When you showed up at his place this morning, you really spooked him. He took care of you during the day, but he’s working nights at the hospital, and he needed somebody to watch you.” Jennifer smiled awkwardly. “He phoned me at the magazine.” She hesitated, then made a mock salute. “Nurse Nightingale reporting. Unless you can find somebody better, I guess you’re stuck with me.”

“I can’t think of
anybody
better.”

Jennifer’s smile was now filled with pleasure. “Can I get you anything? Daniel said I should give you Tylenol for your fever. And this antibiotic. Your wound’s a little infected.”

“Whatever the doctor ordered.” Coltrane swallowed the pills, then took several more sips of water. His body seemed to absorb the fluid instantly.

“How do you feel?” Jennifer asked.

Coltrane tilted his right hand from side to side, as if to say, Not so good.

“Daniel told me what you told
him
. There are a couple of blank parts. You can fill them in later. When you get your strength back. That’s all I want you to concentrate on — getting better.”

“Need . . .”

“Tell me.”

“The bathroom.”

“Put your arm around my shoulder. I’ll help you stand.”

When Jennifer pulled off the covers, Coltrane realized that he was wearing only boxer shorts and a T-shirt. His shirt hiked up, making him conscious of the bulk of the new bandage that Daniel had taped over the stitches on his side. There was dried blood below the bandage, scrapes on his stomach, and bruises on his legs.

Coltrane leaned on her.

“Can you manage by yourself?” Jennifer asked as they entered the bathroom. “Should I stay here with you?”

“I’m fine.” But Coltrane lost his footing, and Jennifer had to grab him.

He sank to the seat. “Not my best profile, I’m afraid.”

“Just do what you have to.”

“I’m okay. You can wait outside.”

“You’re sure?” Jennifer asked.

“Thanks.”

“As long as you’re certain you won’t fall on the floor.”

Coltrane nodded, watching her start to leave the bathroom. He whispered her name.

She looked back.

“I mean it,” he said. “Thanks.”

“I’VE BROUGHT TWO PRESENTS FOR YOU,” Jennifer said the next evening, “but the first one doesn’t count.”

Curious, Coltrane watched her bring her left hand from behind her back. She set down a copy of
Southern California Magazine
, a photograph of the windmill electrical generators outside Palm Springs on the cover. “The latest issue. I’ve made a lot of improvements. I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with it since . . .”

“I haven’t missed an issue.”

Her light blue eyes glittered.

“Even when I’ve been out of the country, I had it forwarded. It kept my memories warm on a lot of cold nights. If this is the gift that doesn’t matter, I can’t imagine what you’ve got behind your back in your other hand.”

Jennifer showed him a flat, stiff object, about eight by ten inches, gift-wrapped. She watched intently as he shook it.

“Doesn’t rattle. Feels like glass. I wonder what . . .”

She watched him pull open the wrapping. But the discomfort on Coltrane’s face at what he saw caused her anticipation to change to confusion. “Your third
Newsweek
cover,” she said. “It came out yesterday. I thought you’d like it framed.”

Coltrane somberly studied the stark black-and-white image of the backhoe dropping bones into the pulverizing machine while Dragan Ilkovic watched with satisfaction. “. . . Thanks.”

“You don’t sound as if you mean it.”

“It was very thoughtful of you.”

“Then why aren’t I convinced?”

The room filled with silence.

“What you told Daniel about how you got wounded,” Jennifer said. “I already knew some of it — from the CNN interview you did while you were in the hospital over there.”

“That’s why I snuck out of the hospital and caught the first plane back to here. After CNN tracked me down, I knew it wouldn’t be long before a lot of other journalists would be swarming around me. I had no idea the UN would release the photographs so quickly. I couldn’t bear talking about them.”

“You unplugged your phone.”

“It kept ringing. I couldn’t sleep. A half a dozen TV talk shows asked me to be a guest.”

“People think you’re a hero.”

“Please.” With distaste, Coltrane set the framed
Newsweek
cover aside. “I was lucky to survive.”

“You’ll get another Pulitzer Prize.”

“I hope not. Not for
those
photos. It didn’t take a genius to get those pictures, only a damned fool who was willing to lie in a hole in the ground for a day and a half .”

Jennifer looked baffled. “I’ve never heard you talk this way before.”

“Did the pictures make a difference? Was Ilkovic charged with war crimes and arrested?”

“He disappeared. Nobody knows where to find him.”

“Great.” The word sounded like a curse.

“They’ll get him.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t understand what’s happened to you,” Jennifer said. “You were always proud of scraping through tough spots.”

“I had a lot of chances to think while I was trying to get through the night without freezing to death. I got to wondering if I’d ever taken any photographs that made people feel glad to be alive because they’d seen my work. Maybe it’s time I became a real photographer.”

“But there isn’t anybody better.”

“I’m not a photographer. Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand, Weston, Adams, Berenice Abbott, Randolph Packard —
they
were photographers.
They
knew what a camera was for.”

A somber moment lengthened.

Jennifer interrupted it. “I brought some Chinese food. Do you think you could eat it if I go downstairs and bring you a plate?”

Instead of answering, Coltrane caught her by surprise. “How have you been, Jennifer?”

“Fine. Working hard. The magazine’s doing well.”

“But what about
you
? Are
you
doing well?”

“It’s been lonely.”

“Yes.”

She seemed to hold her breath.

“The same with me. I’ve missed you, Jennifer.”

Her eyes misted. She walked slowly toward him and knelt, her face level with his, stroking his beard-stubbled cheek. “I’m sorry. I needed too much from you. I think I smothered you. I’ll never act that way again.”

“It was my fault as much as yours.”

“No. I’ve changed. I promise.”

“We both have.” Ignoring the tightness in his side, Coltrane leaned forward and kissed her.

COMING EVENTS
Legendary photographer Randolph Packard will have a rare showing of his prints at the Sunset Gallery in Laguna Beach, from 5:00 to 7:00 P.M. on Friday, November 21. Packard, whose work documents the changes in Southern California, is generally considered to be one of the great innovators in modern photography. He was born in . . .

COLTRANE COULDN’T GET OVER IT. If he hadn’t opened the copy of
Southern California
Jennifer had given him, happening to scan its calendar section, he wouldn’t have known about Packard’s opening until it was too late. Even then, he barely had enough time, suddenly realizing that today was the twenty-first and that it was almost three. Fortunately, he had already mustered the strength to get out of bed and clean himself up. His sneakers, jeans, and denim shirt weren’t exactly what he would have chosen for what sounded like a formal reception, but he didn’t have time to change, only to grab a sport coat, a camera, and a copy of one of Packard’s collections, then get to his car.

The effort exhausted him, but he didn’t think twice about its worth. Leaving Los Angeles, driving south as fast as possible amid the smog-shrouded traffic on the San Diego Freeway, he felt as if he’d been told that someone had risen from the dead. Good God, how old would Packard be? In his nineties? The bulk of his work had been done in the twenties and the thirties. From then on, his output had dwindled, until, by the fifties, he had disappeared from public view. As the
Southern California
article had noted, paraphrasing a quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “For Randolph Packard, there wasn’t a second act.” But his
first
act had certainly been remarkable. The rumors about drugs and orgies, about his frequent unexplained trips to Mexico, had rippled through California’s artistic community and generated publicity for his work.

Not that Coltrane had needed the article to tell him any of this. When he had first been learning about photography, Randolph Packard had been one of his idols. He owned every Packard collection that had been published. His work had been deeply influenced by Packard’s theory that every effective photograph ought to tell the viewer something that merely looking at the subject of the photograph in its natural setting could not.

Packard’s famous portraits of silent-screen movie stars, for example: Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Ramon Novarro, a lot of others, many of whom nobody would remember if Packard hadn’t immortalized them. Each portrait presented its subject in a splendor of light. But the actors didn’t radiate the light. Instead, they absorbed it. The brilliance was so intense, Packard seemed to think of them as
literally
being stars, but of a special sort, sucking up energy until, because of their egos and their frantic lifestyles, they would either burst or collapse upon themselves and be consumed.

Heading into the wall-to-wall cities that made up Orange County, Coltrane felt his anticipation swell. He was reminded of when the county had literally been covered with oranges, grove after grove of them, and how Packard’s classic sun-bright photograph of the area had depicted more oranges on the ground than in the trees, an abundance of ripeness on the verge of decay.

Packard had also photographed Laguna Beach, not the town (which had been only a few cottages back in the twenties and thirties) but the curve of sand along the ocean. That area of the Pacific Coast Highway was still as winding as it had been in Packard’s day, but now it had been overbuilt, the same as everywhere else in Southern California — gas stations, gift shops, and restaurants jammed next to one another. The crowded four-lane road felt like the narrow two-lane it had replaced. At dusk, in late November, the beach itself was almost deserted, cold waves crashing onto the sand. When Packard had photographed the area, he had made it seem an unoccupied paradise. But if the viewer looked closely at Packard’s most reproduced depiction of the beach,
Horizon, 1929
, the telltale imperfection, the poignant regret for time passing that was typical of Packard’s work, became evident: distant smoke belching from a passing freighter.

Coltrane managed to find a parking space on Forest Avenue across from the beach. He slung his Nikon single-lens reflex around his neck and took a deep breath, surveying the lights of art galleries along the tree-canopied street. When he reached back into his car to get his copy of Packard’s
Reflections of the City of Angels
, he suddenly felt light-headed and almost collapsed across the seat. His side in pain, he grabbed the steering wheel, took another deep breath, and straightened. Sweat chilled his face.

Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, he told himself. It’s a wonder I didn’t faint driving down here. I belong in bed, not getting crushed by strangers at a cocktail party.

No, he thought, feeling much older than his thirty-five years. I need to start over.

THE RECEPTION IN THE RUSTIC- LOOKING SUNSET GALLERY had spilled out onto the street. Coltrane stepped past trendily dressed couples wearing expensive jewelry, their makeup and hair perfect, and ignored the looks they gave his sneakers. The gallery was crammed with people who spoke with pseudo-British accents. Many of them had lips so tight, they seemed to have lockjaw. They sipped from flutes of champagne, but Coltrane had no interest in finding the bar. He heard music playing from hidden speakers, a CD of a string quartet, it sounded like, but he couldn’t be sure — the conversations were too loud. All he cared about were Packard’s photographs, and even before he worked his way through the crowd, it was obvious that the sheer number of them was astonishing.