Generation Loss (30 page)

"It's
amazing."

"Wait'll
you see Lucien's place."

We
began walking up a narrow gully. I was glad I had the boat hook to help steady
me against the slick rocks underfoot. As we climbed, the gully widened into the
remnants of a road.

"That
story you told me before," I said. "About Denny's girlfriend. The one
who died."

"Hanner."

"Right,
Hannah." The gale picked up. I looked back to where the
Northern Sky
bobbed
in the water like a gull at rest. "Those masks everyone made—did she have
one? Did she have a totem?"

"I
don't think so. I think she just went along with whatever Denny did."

"Your
totem animal? It was a frog?"

"Yeah.
Because they're amphibious. They live on the land and the water both. Like
me."

I
hitched my bag from one shoulder to the other. "What about Denny? What was
his totem?"

"Denny?"
Toby drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. "Good question. It was a long
time ago, but—"

He
pinched the cigarette out between his fingers then flicked it onto the slick
stones at our feet. "I think it was a snapping turtle."

22

Lucien
Ryel's house showed what you could do with Ray Provenzano's scrap-metal ethic
and several million dollars. It resembled an ancient temple crossed with the
remains of a lunar lander, built in the lee of a granite dome above the ocean
and surrounded by a stand of massive pine trees and withered rosebushes. A
cantilevered deck made of steel girders and I beams ran the length of the
building, all glass and weathered metal, inset with blocks of carved granite:
huge feathered wings, a colossal arm, an immense, preternaturally calm face.
Solar panels carpeted a roof bristling with satellite dishes. The windows were
pocked with silhouetted cut-outs of flying birds.

"First
summer Lucien was here, we had so many dead birds we had to pick 'em up with a
shovel." Toby paused to catch his breath. "They'd fly right into the
windows. So he put those stickers up. Kind of messes with the view."

The
road wound toward the back of the house. Two large propane tanks were set
alongside the wall. I stared at the roof. "He looks pretty plugged
in."

"That's
nothing. Lucien comes all the way out here and then he never leaves the house,
just spends all his time in the studio or online. He got a digital switch so he
could get high-speed Internet. Paid a bundle to run it here. He keeps talking
about getting a windmill, but right now everything s powered off batteries.
I've got to make sure they haven't drained. Denny's supposed to check them, but
he forgot once. He comes up here to use the phone and Internet but never
bothers to check the goddam power."

He
stopped and stared at a small outbuilding tucked into the trees. A modular
utility shed, its doors flapping in the wind.

"That
shouldn't be open." Toby walked over to peer inside. "Huh. He took
the tractor out too."

He
shut the doors and fastened them with a padlock. "Okay. Now we can get inside
and maybe get you warm again." He pulled out a key ring.
"Eureka."

After
the onslaught of wind and cold, inside was eerily silent, save for a soft,
rhythmic ticking sound.

"Solar
batteries," said Toby, shucking his rain gear.

We
were in a long, open room, its vaulted ceiling crisscrossed by steel I beams.
The polished wooden floor shone like bronze. No rugs, no cushions, but a lot of
1980s furniture made of welded copper and steel. The standing lamps resembled
carnivorous insects. A Viking stove lurked behind a wall of industrial glass,
along with a free-standing wine closet. The effect was of being on board the
battleship
Potemkin.

"So."
I wandered over to the window. "Did he really build all this? Or was it
delivered directly from the gulag?"

Toby
dumped his toolbox on the floor. "You wouldn't believe what this place
cost."

"Yeah,
I would. Taste this bad, you have to be so rich no one ever argues with
you."

"It's
very fuel efficient. See that south-facing window? You get incredible
passive-solar gain from that."

"When?
On the Fourth of July?"

"No,
really—it stays pretty warm in here, relatively speaking. Speaking of which, I
got to go drain the water tanks. You try and warm up, I'll be back up in a
bit."

"Here."
He fiddled with a dial on the wall. "That'll make it easier. Heat."

He
got his tools and went downstairs. I peeled off my anorak, then my boots and
wet socks. My feet felt like frozen lumps of meat. I warmed them as best I
could with my hands, found some dry socks in my bag and put them on. I stuck my
boots on top of the heater and set off on a quick circuit of the house.

It
wasn't exactly a party pad. The wine closet was locked. Other rooms contained
yet more minimalist furniture, a plasma-screen TV, small recording studio. A powder
room—no medicine cabinet—where I tried to clean myself up. The water was
brackish, but it was warm. Right then I wouldn't have traded warm water for the
best sex or drugs I'd ever had.

I
emerged feeling, if not appearing, a bit more human. I forced myself to stand
in front of the mirror, staring at a face that looked more like Scary Neary
than it ever had. I resembled my own skeleton, tarted up with bloodshot eyes
and wind-burned skin.

I
bared my teeth in a grimace and wandered into the master bedroom suite. It
seemed to float among giant pine trees. Lucien Ryel had sunk a ton of money
into building this place and heating it all winter long, not to mention keeping
a caretaker on retainer.

Now
I understood why. There was a fortune in artwork on those bedroom walls. And
not the usual stuff your aging rock stars collect, Warhols and Schnabels and
Koons and Curtins.

Ryel
had a taste for the art equivalent of rough trade, or what had been considered
rough trade up until about ten years ago, when, like bondage equipment,
outsider art became mainstreamed. There were two Chris Mars canvases, a Joe
Coleman, paintings by artists whose names I didn't recognize but which were the
sorts of things that would give you bad dreams, if you're susceptible to them.

The
stuff was amazing. Some, like a Lori Field collage of women with animal heads
and pencil-thin limbs, were ethereal. Others, like a Nick Blinko drawing of a
skeleton eating its own skull, were nightmarish.

There
were photographs too. A couple of eerie Fred Resslers where you could see faces
in the trees. An early Mapplethorpe portrait of Patti Smith. A vacant lot by
Lee Friedlander. Works by Brian Belott, Branka Jukic...I would have been happy
to take whatever could fit into my pockets, if Id had room.

Then
I saw the photos beside his bed.

There
were three of them. Oversized color prints, handmade frames, no glass.
Monotypes, like the photos at Ray Provenzano's place and Toby's apartment. All
three had the same childish signature.

S.P.O.T

Nothing
else to identify them. No title. No song lyrics.

Yet
I knew they formed a sequence with the others. And even though I still couldn't
pin down what these were photos
of,
I knew they were linked, somehow,
with the older photos I'd seen in Aphrodite's room—those crudely manipulated
SX-70 prints—and Toby's picture of Hannah Meadows.

I
couldn't tell how they fit. The pattern was there, but because it wasn't my own
craziness I couldn't put a finger on what held them together. But I knew they
were all images of the same thing.

What?

From
some angles it resembled a body, from others an island, or the humped form of
some kind of animal. The colors were murky greens and browns and viscous blues,
shot through with glints of red and orange. Like the others, these used
handmade emulsion paper distressed with a needle or fingernail. In spots the
dyes had flaked or been rubbed off. Stuff was embedded in the layers of
pigment—a fly's wing; hair; shreds of newsprint. Messy, but it gave the prints
a strange depth, as though they'd captured some of the real world the photo
sought to hold on to.

They
reminded me of daguerreotypes. When you look at one of those head-on, even the
darkest parts throw light back at you, so you get a reverse image. It's like a
photographic negative and positive, all in one.

But
then you tilt a daguerreotype just right, and the shadows and light fall into
place, and what you're looking at becomes a 3-D image. It's an effect
impossible to reproduce in a book or print, or even with computer imaging technology:
the purest example of generation loss I can think of. A daguerreotype portrait
always seemed like the closest you could come to actually seeing someone who
had died a century and a half ago.

I
tried to puzzle out the scraps of newsprint embedded in the photos.

U
_S
                             T
²
                       SEE

EN

The
letters reminded me of the ransom-note typography on 1970s album covers and
band posters.

S
^T
2
₉

Street
29? Saint 29? Maybe it wasn't an address. Maybe it had some bizarre religious
meaning. I took the first photo from the wall and sniffed it.

I
gagged. That same sick, rank fishy odor combined with the worst dead skunk you
can ever imagine.

"Uh,
Cass?" Toby stood in the doorway. "What are you doing?"

"Come
here. I want you to smell this."

"What?"

I
handed him the photo and went to the next two.

"Whoo
boy!" Toby thrust the print back to me. "That stinks!"

"No
shit. These do too."

"I'll
take your word for it." He tugged his pigtail. "Did they go off or
something? Can a photograph go bad?"

"I
don't think so." I hung them back on the wall. "I think it's
something in the pigments he used to make the emulsion."

"Do
they use stuff like that? Stuff that spoils?"

"Not
usually. Not at any photo lab I ever hung out at, anyway."

Toby
peered at the prints, his nose wrinkling. "It smells like, I don't
know—cod liver oil or something. Only worse. Like a skunk."

"That's
what I thought too."

"Is
there a kind of fish that smells like a skunk?"

"You
tell me."

He
wandered the length of the room, looking at the other paintings. "I forgot
he had this stuff. Kind of dark for my taste." •

He
stopped by the window, stared out at the sea then glanced at his watch.
"It's getting pretty late. We're not going to make it back tonight, not if
we don't hurry. I still have to check a few things here. And I need to go see
Denny ..."

He
sighed. "I don't want to be the one to tell him about Aphrodite, but I
guess I'll have to."

"Were
they still close?"

"No.
But I think that makes it worse. Gryffin—"

He
fell silent and looked away.

"We
better keep moving," he said at last.

He
left. I hurried to a nightstand, rifling the drawers till I located a piece of
stationery. Then I got out John Stone's pen and my film canister with the
stolen pills and removed four Percocets.

proud
to serve read the pen, and it did. I rolled it back and forth on top of the
pills, pressing with the heel of my hand to crush them to a powder. When I was
done, I scraped the powder into the slip of folded paper and stowed it
carefully in my pocket.

I
was almost to the door when I saw a bookshelf nearly hidden behind a metal
bureau. Its oversized art and photography books were organized by size, not
artist, but I knew where I'd find
Dead Girls,
lined up neatly between
Untitled
Film Stills
and Roberta Bayley's
Blank Generation.
I pulled it out
and looked at the title page.

For
Lucien

A
shot in the eye! This one's the RIAL THING.

Denny

I
left without looking at Denny's photos again. I didn't want to get any closer
to them than I already was.

23

Toby
was in the kitchen, putting away his tools. I sidled toward the counter.

"You
mind if I give that rum and Moxie thing another try?"

"Go
ahead." He smiled wearily. "Help yourself."

"You
want one too?"

"Thanks,
yeah. Not too much rum." He rubbed his forehead. "I'm going out to
have a cigarette. Lucien doesn't like me smoking in the house. Right
back."

I
found a glass in a cupboard and tipped the crushed pills into it. I could see
Toby through the window, smoking on the stone steps. I poured a shot of rum
into the glass then filled it with Moxie.

I
sniffed and took a tiny sip. The stuff tasted so foul to begin with, I couldn't
tell any difference with the Percocet chaser. To be on the safe side I added
more rum.

I
needed this to work fast if it was going to work at all, but I didn’t want to
kill him. Toby was a decent guy. He was also my only ticket back to Burnt
Harbor.

Someone
told me once that there's no such thing as luck. You make decisions all the
time without being conscious of it—like, you move before you realize you're
darting to avoid an oncoming truck. Or you walk toward a car before you realize
the voice you hear is a stranger's, and it isn't whispering your name.

So
maybe these things aren't accidents at all. Maybe they're just the beginning of
a long chain of events that you set in motion yourself. Maybe you set it in
motion before you were even old enough to remember. Playing in the car while
your mother's driving. Hearing what happened next. Opening your eyes when they
should have remained closed. Seeing something you should never have seen.
Moving when you should have stood still. Standing still when you should have
run.