"Like
what? Camera equipment?"
"No.
Stealing her soul.
Stealing her pictures! Not the photos—stealing what
she did. You know, ripping her off. Her ideas. Her 'vision.'"
He
laughed and wiggled his eyebrows. "Totally insane! Like how people used to
think you'd steal their soul if you took their picture? That kind of
thing."
I
frowned. "She couldn't believe that."
"Nah.
She
didn't believe it. But Denny did! He was very convincing, too."
Ray looked at me and shrugged. "I guess you had to be there. Anyway, nowadays
she spends all her time drinking with those damn bony dogs."
"Are
you two done?" Gryffin stood in the hall, watching us. Yeah," I said.
"Bathroom that way?"
He
nodded.
Compared
to the rest of Ray's jerry-rigged palace, the bathroom was luxurious. Mexican
tiles on the floor, a small Jacuzzi.
Best
of all, a well-stocked medicine cabinet.
I
locked the door then perused the contents: Percocet, Hydrocodone, Adderall. I
pocketed some of the Percocets, but I was more interested in we Adderall. At 25
milligrams apiece, they'd provide a nice little blast of Dexedrine. I popped
one then added a handful to what was already in my pocket. Ray wouldn't miss
them.
When
I returned, Gryffin was staring stonily out the window. Ray looked at me.
"I
thought maybe you decided to use the Jacuzzi," he said. "You can if
you want."
"No
thanks." I sat down. Immediately a phone began to ring. Ray turned and
bellowed at Robert, still sound asleep on the couch.
"Robert.
ROBERT. Get the frigging phone!"
Robert
stumbled to his feet. I glanced at Gryffin. He raised his eyebrows, silently
framing a question: Leave? I nodded.
"Hey,
Ray." Robert stuck his head out from the kitchen. "It's John
Stone."
"John
Stone, John Stone," Ray muttered. "Now what."
He
shuffled off to get the phone. Robert came out and sat at the table.
"She
was looking for you." He ran a finger across the seaglass necklace.
"What?"
I said.
"The
other night at the Good Tern? Kenzie—she was looking for you."
"That
girl from the motel?" I frowned. "I don't even know her. Why would
she be looking for me?"
"I
dunno. " He stared at his feet. "But she told me. She said there was
some lady from New York City staying there. She said you were nice."
He
shot me a baleful look. Gryffin glanced at me then leaned across the table to
ask, "So you saw her, Robert?"
"No.
We were IMing. I was going to meet her later, but she never showed up. She said
you were going to give her a ride."
"A
ride? To where?"
"New
York, I guess."
I
stared at him then laughed in disbelief. "Jesus! Poor kid. She must really
be hard up."
"That's
what I said."
I
looked to see if this was a joke, but his face had already shut down.
From
the kitchen Ray's voice rumbled on into the telephone.
"Did
you know her?" I asked Robert.
"Yeah.
We hung out. She gave me CDs to rip."
He
stopped as Ray came back into the room and announced, "That was John
Stone. He wants to talk to you guys—not you, Robert, I told him you were here.
You have an alibi, though he said he might need to talk to you if she doesn't
show up. But you—"
Ray
pointed, first at Gryffin, then me. "And especially
you
—"
He
sank back into his chair. "He wants to question you."
"Me?"
I felt a small hot flare inside my skull, the Adderall's opening salvo.
"What the fuck does he want to talk to me for?"
Ray
began to sing,
"'Sheriff John Stone, why don't you leave me alone . . .
?"
"This
guy's the sheriff?"
"Hey,
Cass," said Gryffin. "Relax. John's a good guy, he won't give you a
hard time. What'd he say, Ray?"
"He
said they were starting to question people. Her father filed a missing persons
thing a few hours ago, and now they have to follow up on it. Even though John
told me in great detail how Little Missy's probably headed off to Lubec or
Bangor or someplace with a boyfriend no one knows about, which personally I
also think is probably the case, but John has to do his job.
"But
he doesn't have to do it tonight," he added and laughed again. Cause he
don't want to come over here from Collinstown unless somebody has something of
interest to tell him. Which I said I'd ask. So, do any of you have something of
interest to tell him?"
Gryffin
shook his head. "Not that I can think of."
"I
already told him I was IMing with her last night," said Robert.
All
faces turned to me. The red flare inside my head mushroomed into something
white and hot. "Not without a fucking attorney."
Ray
slapped his thigh. "That's the spirit! Stick it to the man!"
“Shut
up, Ray." Gryffin looked annoyed. "You're overreacting, Cass. If you
don't have anything to tell him, just say that tomorrow. You don't need to get
paranoid; no one's accusing you of anything. Anyway, I saw you at the Good Tern."
I
could see Robert watching me with those blank cold eyes. A song went through my
head:
I was just gonna hit him, but I'm gonna kill him now.
"I
gotta go," I said, and stood.
"Yeah,"
said Gryffin. "We better get back."
As I
passed the couch, I looked down and saw several CDs scattered across the
cushions. Green Day, Mosque; and something else.
I
held the CD toward Robert. "This yours?"
"Nope.
Kenzie's. I told you, she gives me stuff to download."
"Huh."
I looked at it again: Television,
Marquee Moon.
"She has good
taste."
Robert
shrugged. "She likes that old shit."
I
tossed it back onto the couch and followed Ray and Gryffin to the door.
"Well,
very nice to meetcha, Cass. Maybe I'll get hold of your book." He embraced
Gryffin. "You be back tomorrow?
"I
doubt it. Got to get back to Chicago."
Robert
stayed where he was. When I looked across the room, I saw him nodding, earbud
cords dangling from his ears, his eyes fixed on me. I stared back at him, then
turned and followed Gryffin into the night.
15
We
walked back most of the way without talking. We were both pretty loaded; it
took most of our energy just to keep our footing in the icy mist. I had a nice
shiny feeling from the Adderall, and after a few minutes I popped a second to
boost it.
But
something kept gnawing at the glow: the memory of Mackenzie Libby s white face
in the headlights.
She
was looking for you. She said you were going to give her a ride.
Wishful
thinking, but why not? I was probably the first person she'd ever seen who
might have heard of
Marquee Moon.
I thought of Patti Smiths Piss
Factory,"
sixteen and time to pay off.
Leave home, sleep in the
gutter, find yourself a city to live in.
I
should have picked her up. Though then, of course, the locals would be coming
after me with pitchforks.
"Be
careful," Gryffin warned as the path narrowed. "It's slippery—"
I
felt impervious to anything short of a bullet to the head. When we came to the
final stretch leading to the house I began to run. I tripped and fell, hard.
"Hey."
Gryffin hurried to my side. "I said be careful! Are you okay?"
He
crouched beside me. I pushed him away, but he grabbed my hand and trained the
flashlight on it.
“Jesus,"
he said. "Doesn't that—"
"Hurt?
Yes." My palm was slick with blood. "Shit."
I
staggered to my feet, got the Jack Daniel's and took a swig. Gryffin watched me
with a kind of intrigued disgust. I laughed.
"What?"
he demanded.
I
couldn't speak, just kept laughing as I wiped my bloodied hand on my jeans.
Gryffin turned and walked on. I ran after him, an amphetamine surge knuckling
behind my eyeballs so that the darkness splintered into sparks.
"Aw,
don't go away mad," I yelled, but he ignored me.
"I'm
going to bed," Gryffin said when we got inside. He hung up his jacket and
started for the kitchen. "You and my mother can sit up doing Jell-O shots
if you want."
"Wait,"
I said.
I
leaned forward, grabbed his chin and kissed him. He didn't pull away. His cheek
was unshaven, his mouth tasted of Calvados. I let my hand trail down his neck,
my fingers resting for a moment in the hollow beneath his windpipe. I felt his
pulse, then drew my mouth down to his throat and kissed it.
"Gryffin,"
I whispered. "What kind of a name is
Gryffin?”
He
pulled away and left the room. When he was gone I started laughing
uncontrollably.
The
Adderall had kicked into high gear. I love speed, that black light you see
alone at three am, when bottles shimmer like cut glass and everything reminds
you of a song you once loved. This is when everything comes into focus for me,
when what's inside my head and what's outside of it become the same thing.
What
can I say? Bleak is beautiful. I stared at my reflection in a darkened window,
pressed my palm against the cold glass. I thought of my camera in the spare
room.
The
house was dead still, the woodstove barely warm. Two deerhounds lay on the
couch but didn't stir when I walked past. Aphrodite was still conspicuous by
her absence, though she'd left the radio on, a DJ whose voice droned into John
Coltrane. I turned it off, found an empty film canister and dropped my stolen
pills into it, and went upstairs.
The
door to Gryffin's room was closed. Mine was open. I went in and sat on my bed
for a few minutes, my legs twitching. To blunt the speed, I drank some more
Jack Daniel's. The bottle was almost empty, so I killed it. I picked up my
camera and checked the flash.
It
was dead, and I hadn't brought a spare battery—I couldn't think of the last
time I'd needed one. I thought of a recent argument I'd had with Phil.
"Get
a digital camera, Cass. Anyone can take a great picture with one of those. Even
you."
"Screw
that," I'd said. "It's too easy. It's degraded art—no
authenticity."
"Oh,
right." He looked disgusted. "The last word on Degraded Art, from Ms.
Authenticity 1976. You know what your problem is? You're a goddam dinosaur,
Cass. You're fighting a culture war that ended thirty years ago. And you know
what? Your side fucking lost."
I
started, hearing a voice in the spare room. I'd been talking to myself. It
happens. I made the mistake once of mentioning it to Phil. He suggested I try
Ecstasy.
I
cradled the old Konica against my chest. It wasn't even that late—a little past
midnight. The drugstore speed would keep me going for a few more hours.
I
felt pretty good, in between spasms of speedy paranoia. Kenzie Libby's face, an
outboard engine droning into voices that whispered my name. I wondered what
Kenzie had said about me when she'd been online with Robert. I remembered what
Toby had said about the islanders.
Every
couple of years you get a witch hunt.
I
pushed the thoughts aside. Time to move.
"Hey
ho," I croaked.
I
went to the bathroom and drank from the tap then stared at my reflection in the
mirror.
I
looked like I'd crawled here from the city. I popped the lens cap from my
camera and took a picture of myself. A great photographer could make something
of all this, night and speed and that raw face in the mirror, shaky hands
holding a cheap camera and a black T-shirt riding up to reveal a faded tattoo.
A great photographer would see past that, all the way back to shadows in an
alley and a car wreck in the woods.
I
thought of Aphrodite.
Our
gaze changes all that it falls upon.
I
needed to talk to her again. I needed to make her see me; I needed to tell her
how her photos had changed me all those years ago. I needed her to understand
that I'd come here now hoping they would change me back.
The
door to her room was open and a light was on. I listened for the television,
the sound of voices, or dogs.
But
the TV was off. If any dog was in there, it was asleep.
And
Aphrodite? I peeked inside.
No
dogs. No drunk. The rumpled bed was empty, still strewn with photography books.
A lamp cast a piss yellow glow across the floor. I stood in the doorway and
listened in case she was just out of sight, in a closet maybe.
But
everything was silent. I went inside, stepping around a pile of black tights
and underwear, a shapeless cardigan felted with dog fur, an empty bottle of
Courvoisier. The cast-iron woodstove was cold, but the space heater worked
overtime, cooking the room's scents to a stew of dogs and brandy and unwashed laundry.
I
stepped around heaps of clothes until I reached a wall of photos. Aphrodite
when she was young and beautiful, a hybrid of Lizzy Mercier Descloux and Liz
Taylor. A faded photo of a tall bearded guy, very handsome, glancing at the
camera through lowered eyelashes. He held a toddler on his knee, the little
boy's head turned from the camera. Gryffin and his father.
Steve
Haselton looked different from the photo I'd seen on that New Directions
paperback: edgier, less blandly patrician. I guessed it was the long hair and
beard and manic smile. He looked kind of like Hunter Thompson, right before or
right after the drugs kicked in. There was a picture of Gryffin too, standing
on the rocks by the ocean; maybe ten years old, gawky and wildhaired, holding up
a starfish. Unsmiling. A somber kid.
And
there were photos of the Oakwind commune at what I guessed must be a clambake.
It looked more like the down east version of an acid trip. Long-haired people
in gypsy clothes gamboled on the beach. It was raining. Smoke rose from a pile
of stones covered with black gunk—seaweed?
Mushrooms?
In one photo, a naked little boy poked grimly at smoking rubble with a stick.
Gryffin again.
It
was less Summer of Love than it was Lord of the Flies. The photos were
underexposed and out of focus, like the negs I'd processed downstairs. The kind
of artsy stuff an ambitious high school photographer might shoot.
But
each bore Aphrodite's signature in the lower right corner. I turned away.
It
was true. Something had been stolen from her. She'd had it, and she fucking
lost it.
My
foot nudged an empty bottle. It rolled beneath the bed, and I noticed something
beside it, a stack of three oversized portfolios, expensive black leather
Bokara cases.
They
didn't seem to have been moved for a while. The leather had a dull green bloom
of mildew. I gingerly picked up the first portfolio, sat on the bed and opened
it.
Inside
were clear vinyl sleeves. Not the kind any serious artist would use
today—chlorine gas leaches from the vinyl and turns your photos yellow.
But
these pictures were old. More middle-class hippies playing at a freakshow; a
sad photo of Aphrodite with her arms around her younger husband, his head
turned from her, long hair covering his face. I replaced the portfolio and
pulled out the next one.
This
was more interesting. The vinyl sleeves held color landscapes, not the
hand-worked images of
Deceptio Visus
or
Mors
but stark views of
distant islands. With these photos she was almost onto something, but the
pictures were all too literal: a stormy sea, some jagged rocks, forbidding
clouds. There wasn't the imminence that irradiated her earlier work, the sense
that she'd witnessed something unearthly and terrible yet lovely, something
that had only revealed itself for that hundredth of a second and would never be
glimpsed again, except here, now, in this image. There were so many photos
crammed into this second portfolio—not just photos but contact sheets, negs,
even faded Polaroids—that I could almost imagine her desperation, shooting
hundreds of frames in hopes of nailing just that
one.
From
what I could see, she never did. I reached for the last portfolio.
These
photos were different.
For
starters, they were all shot on SX-70, the famous One-Step film developed by
Polaroid in the early 1970s. The SX-70 camera was a huge innovation, and the
first model, the Alpha, was hugely expensive—three hundred dollars, which these
days would equal almost fourteen hundred bucks. SX-70 film came in individual
sheets, each containing its own pod of developer, covered by a layer of
transparent polyester. After the film was exposed, it would slide between
little rollers inside the camera, like the wringers of an old-fashioned washing
machine. These rollers burst the pod and spread the developing chemicals across
the film. Once
it
developed inside the camera, you had what Polaroid
called an integral print.
But
the SX-70 had a feature that the folks at Polaroid hadn't counted on. The
exposed film took a long time to fix. So you could use your finger or a pencil
or just about anything you wanted, as long as it wasn't too pointed or sharp,
and manipulate the developing chemicals in their polyester sheath. This
produced cool,
if
simple, special effects—halos, silver and black dots,
penumbras like solar flares. They looked like those blotches you see when you
hold a piece of Mylar up to the sun. If you really wanted to work with an
image, you could extend the time it took to fix by warming then cooling the
print, over and over again.
It
was like a very primitive form of Photoshop. Some people played with the
chemicals on purpose and declared the results a new art form. Most people, of
course, did so by accident, made a mess of their snapshots, and complained.
Almost immediately Polaroid rushed to make cheaper versions of the Alpha,
"improving" the film to something called Time-Zero, so that the
problem wouldn't exist in later camera models.
Some
artists still use SX-70s—you can buy the film through Fuji. But these weren't
recent photos. I'd guess they'd been taken around the time that the cameras
first appeared, in the early 1970s, roughly the same time as the Magic
Clambake. I recognized some of the people, commune members I assumed: a couple
of skinny guys in overalls and flannel shirts; Aphrodite, looking far too
imperious to be hanging out with a bunch of longhairs ten years younger than
she was; little Gryffin.
And
then, a series of pictures that made my neck prickle. They showed a pretty,
freckled girl with long hair—the same girl in the 8x10 I'd processed in
Aphrodite's darkroom. In the SX-70 photos, she was sleeping, or pretending to.
The pictures were in extreme closeup, and the film had been manipulated so that
little wiggly shadows ran across her face, giving the images a spooky,
submarine quality. I couldn't tell if her eyes were open or shut. Someone had
gone over them with a needle-sized stylus, so that in some photos it looked as
though they were covered by silvery green coins. In others her eyes seemed wide
open with amazement.
Same
deal with her mouth—the chemicals had been moved around so that her lips were
distorted and discolored. It looked as though something were protruding from
them, a snake's head, or maybe a finger.
This
will make the pictures sound grotesque, and they were. But they weren't
just
grotesque. Small as they were, they seemed outsized and even kind of funny,
the way R. Crumb drawings are, their creepiness outpaced by audacity. Why would
someone do
that
to a Polaroid picture?