Blood in the Water and Other Secrets

by Janice Law

  “Please go on Ms. Dasgupta.”

  But I must be careful. I am tending to drift off onto the realm of “whole truth” which is dangerous. I must stick to “nothing but the truth,” which I like because it tells what I must leave out without committing me to exactly what must be put in. “Some of our younger models have been known to lie about their ages,” I say. “Mr. Addison always felt it important in uncertain cases to have an older woman in the studio.”

  “Yourself.”

  “Yes. All the other staff are very young and neither Toby nor Mark, the assistant photographers, would have been quite suitable.” Most unsuitable, in fact. When I am at a shoot, I wear my large gold earrings and drape a scarf over my head and carry a clipboard and see that they sign everything in sight: permissions, waivers, statement of age, contract, model’s agreement, etc, etc. We have never had any trouble.

  “And what time did you leave on the evening of the 9th?”

  “I wanted to finish up some correspondence, and I was still working at ten to six when Mr. A asked me to leave.”

  “He asked you to leave?”

  “He said there was no need for me to stay.” Of course, I had been intending to stay; the correspondence was just an excuse. I believed that she was coming and I was afraid for him. But that, too, is an unpalatable “whole truth.” For Mr. A, too. Or perhaps it was just too late for him. Maybe it was too late from the first day, the first day she arrived at the office.

  “And what sort of mood was he in?”

  “He was looking forward to shooting a favorite model. I think he said she was scheduled for 6:30.”

  “Do you know who this was?”

  Now here is a difficulty, a case where the “whole truth” and “nothing but the truth” are in conflict. “Nothing but the truth” is obviously safest, and I hear myself say, “I believe it was to be Ms. Kal.”

  “You believe?”

  “That was the name written in his calendar, yes.”

  “The mysterious Ms. Maria Kal. The Ms. Kal with no known address.”

  The judge is again displeased. He feels that it is unbusinesslike that we have no address for her. I could explain that manifestations rarely have addresses in the modern sense, although they may have localities. Indeed, they may have localities. Ms. Kal’s, I think, is around our business. I think she was attracted. And why should that be surprising? For millenniums we have tried to attract spiritual forces: flowers, incense, sacrifices, dances, songs, prayers, rituals spiritual and sexual. We call the forces and sometimes they come. But they do not leave an address; they do not present social security cards or sign waivers or fill out W-2 forms. They come, like Ms. Kal, invoked but unbidden, and in surprising forms.

  It was late, I remember. Six P.M. or maybe 6:30. The July issue had just been sent to the press, and Mr. A had been working, working at the last minute as he always does, checking this, changing that, driving the retouchers mad with his demands for perfection. And I am, of course, reassuring him and calming them and closing doors when tempers are getting high and talking to the printer and being, as Mr. A is always telling me, indispensable. So we are at 6:15 P.M., say, on that June evening, the evening of the solstice, the longest day, the shortest night, a significant day with the warm breezes, the perfect sky. Toby and Mark have gone home; Lydia has made the last coffee of the afternoon; the building’s cleaners are running vacuums and polishers in the halls. I am tidying up and getting my purse ready to go when there is a knocking at the locked office door.

  I am thinking to ignore it and then it comes again and, such ill luck!, I open the door. There is Ms. Kal as I saw her: a handsome woman of indeterminate age. Older by ten years than our models, though how old, I can’t say. Perfect skin, wonderful figure, magnificent hair, but mature eyes. Our models tend to be perfect but half formed, all the better to take on the suggestions of the photographer, to be the receptacles of fantasy and desire. In contrast, Ms. Kal was mentally fully formed, her intellect aged and bottled in bond like the premium whiskey that advertises in Skin. Thirty? Maybe, though forty was not out of the question. Way, way too old and yet impressive! Perfect in her own way, splendid black hair, pale caramel skin, green eyes: a northern princess carrying the blood of warriors and maharajahs or the most wonderful nautch dancer ever imagined.

  She would see Mr. A. I am explaining that he is so busy, so tired, that our models are booked so far in advance and only through certain reputable and famous agencies. And she is smiling, smiling without showing her teeth, which I know will be sharp, and making little impatient gestures like a fine horse, and walking toward Mr. A’s office and, before I can stop her, putting her head in and calling him out. I am hoping, hoping, he will send her on her way. But instead, he makes a little sound as if he’d just sucked in his breath – and hers with it. “Come in,” he says. “Come in. I’ve been waiting for you.” I am feeling very cold because this is not true in the business sense: no appointment, no phone calls, no letters, no contacts. So he can only mean that she is the one he has been waiting to shoot; she is the one who is looking exactly right with no retouching; she is desire and sex and woman all distilled and perfect.

  “You have no address for this woman?” the judge asks again.

  “Alas, no. I did not wish to interrupt their first conversation, and she was never on the books.”

  She came, she went. Always late, always at the last second, always on the spur of the moment. A curious and vivid phrase, that, and so right for her. Mr. A would prepare to work late, to shoot her picture into the wee hours, to work til dawn in the darkroom— and then to sulk all day the next day because he had failed. There was always something wrong with the film, with the light, with the always so mysterious inner workings of the camera. Despite an obsessive, heart-breaking persistence, Mr. A never did succeed in getting a usable picture of the absolutely unique Ms. Kal.

  “But she did come to the office more than once?”

  “I only saw her once. It was my understanding she came several times.” This, I am thinking, is safe to say. And quite true.

  The judge shakes his head. He is still trying to make sense of a senseless situation. “I have a description given by Mr. Toby Bell, one of the assistant photographers on the magazine. He has testified that he saw Ms. Kal one night when he returned to pick up a camera which he had left on his desk. He describes her, if you remember, Ms. Dasgupta, as slim, blonde, extremely pretty and about seventeen years old.”

  “That is not the woman I saw. And Mr. A, as I have explained, would not have been photographing a young woman of ‘about seventeen’ alone in the studio at night.”

  “On the other hand, your co-worker, Penny Rohmer, may have seen her leaving the offices. Ms. Rohmer describes a fashionably dressed African-American with very short hair.”

  “I do not remember any such model.”

  The judge is not pleased with my memory. As the keeper of the calendar, I should be more accurate, more precise. I should have the full name and address for Ms. Kal and a consistent description of her. I shrug and draw my scarf around my shoulders. I am not venturing onto the “whole truth.” I have my green card but not my final papers. I am a “resident alien” who must be mature and logical, not a tabloid-crazed citizen who can safely spot Elvis or go joy riding with Martians.

  “Now, on the night in question, did you see Ms. Kal – or whoever the model was – arrive?”

  “No, I did not.” Though I knew she was coming, though I feared the consequences. Mr. A’s ambition had become an obsession. He was dropping all his other work, even neglecting his true and only love, the magazine; he was forgetting the joys of fantasy and letting Mark and Toby shoot the November photo spreads. A great mistake, I was reckoning. They lacked Mr. A’s so fatal imagination; they lacked his style and flair. But he could think of nothing else but Ms. Kal. Would she return? Could he succeed? Her photos would be the crown of his career, the artistic summit of his ambitions, absolutely unprecedented and, of course,
worth a fortune. Meanwhile, I was telling him that she was bad luck, a dangerous woman, a manifestation to be avoided at all costs. Poor Mr. A was alternately laughing at me and drinking bourbon straight out of the bottle in his darkroom.

  “All right, Ms. Dasgupta, will you tell the court what happened when you arrived at the office the next morning.”

  I feel the tears in my eyes and begin to shake. I was truly very fond of Mr. A, and I am still uncertain whether I am under Ms. Kal’s sentence or protection.

  “The witness,” the judge says, “can have a minute to compose herself.” When I am composed, we go on.

  “Just take it slowly, please, Ms. Dasgupta. What time did you arrive at Skin Magazine?”

  “About 8:40. It depends on which bus I catch. Sometimes I am as early as 8:30 and sometimes it is almost nine o’clock. I go in and do a little work and then I am opening the office at nine for the others.” I could explain a good deal about the office routine, and I would like to do so. I could tell how I open up the shades on the west side and close the blinds on the east. How Lydia starts the coffee machine that wheezes and groans so that Tony and Mark are making rude remarks. How I turn on my desk radio to the classical station and listen to Monteverdi or Bach, so soothing, so regular. Instead, I must tell about seeing the red light above the darkroom door.

  “This was unusual?”

  “The red light is only on when someone is working in the darkroom. Mr. A worked at night but rarely until nine in the morning. And Toby and Mark did not have keys.” But I was not thinking then about Toby and Mark, I was thinking terrible thoughts and remembering terrible memories of the ignorant old village festivals for the goddess with their rivulets of blood and the smoking corpses of headless goats. The goddess of the dawn feeds on blood; the patroness of sex bears our death.

  “Please continue,” the judge says.

  I am surprised to be in the big square courtroom with the so white walls, the green tinged lights, the brown seats. I had been in the office, our pretty airy office with the colors of the subcontinent, ocher, cinnabar, turquoise, and pink, knocking on the door of the darkroom, calling, imploring, begging, then warning that I must be opening the door, the sacred darkroom door never to be opened when its red light is on. I turn the knob, push the door, and blood colored light washes over darkness. I see the shape on the floor and fumble for the switch and then in an instant, I am seeing and understanding everything. Poor Mr. A, my benefactor, employer, and friend, is lying on the floor, his tongue out, his face a hideous mask of fear and horror, his bodily fluids mingling with puddles of developer and fix. I put my hand on his chest and touch his wrist and his jugular vein, but Mr. A has already been transformed, swept away on the great wheel of earthly illusion. Perhaps he is even now being reborn in Bombay or Brooklyn, screaming into life with all his old sorrows and pleasures forgotten.

  I stand in the darkroom, knowing I must be calling the police and 911 and preparing to tell “the truth,” “the whole truth” and “nothing but the truth.” But first, I am having a look around. There are strips of film, developed film, hanging up against the light, and I can make out images of a nude woman of extraordinary beauty, images which were waiting, I think, only for me and which are fading now with unnatural rapidity, fading and twisting, and going back into the chaos of all things before “truth” and “whole truth” and “nothing but the truth” got separated and distinguished from lies and untruth and indeterminacy.

  On the floor lies a single print, the first, perhaps, of the negatives Mr. A had been developing, the print that would have crowned his career and made his fortune. I pick it up carefully, because it has lain in the water and chemicals and is creased and stained. I turn it over and even though I am expecting the worst, I am frightened. The voluptuous Ms. Kal has been transformed into the dark goddess with her long red tongue, her necklace of skulls, her girdle of human hands, her black and terrible body, at once the womb and tomb for every thing living now and in the future, through every incarnation.

  In the windowless courtroom, I tell the judge “nothing but the truth’: how I found Mr. A, how I screamed, how I ran out to call 911.

  “Now Ms. Dasgupta, I know this is difficult for you, but these next questions are very important. Were there any photographs?”

  I am so glad he has asked me something I can answer honestly. There was one photograph, which now resides wrapped in a piece of fine silk under a garland of flowers in my bedroom. The photo I managed to secret out of the office under the noses of the so busy crime scene technicians, investigating officers, coronor, and photographer. But there were other photographs and I am pleased to say, “Oh, yes. There were photographs of Everly Chique for the November issue. They were hanging up to dry and some of her slides were still on the light table.”

  “Ms. Chique is employed by Hot Stuff Videos, Inc., I believe.”

  “Ms. Chique has extensive video credits, yes. She is scheduled to appear in our Skin Flicks feature for November.”

  “According to the office records, these photos were taken on September 6th and 7th. Is that correct?”

  “That is correct. Toby was shooting those. He is still learning, but Ms. Chique is very experienced with photo sessions.”

  “Now I want to be clear about this. There were no other photographs, negatives, roles of film in the darkroom?”

  “Oh, yes, Sir. As I am sure the police have been reporting. Some blank negatives, some torn up papers. Nothing useable, alas, and all the time poor Mr. A lying dead on the floor.”

  “The police on the scene described him as lying in a pool of liquid with several flat plastic pans around him. How does that fit with your recollection.”

  “It is fitting perfectly. He had obviously been working developing something. Perhaps he was discarding the results. Perhaps there was a flaw in the film. I am thinking a roll of film had not come out.”

  “Did you remove anything at all from the darkroom, Ms. Dasgupta?”

  “No, I did not.” Now I am lying. You see how treacherously one slips from a decent approximation of the truth to out right lies? But what should I say? That I removed the photograph that killed Mr. A, a now fading but still dangerous representation of the goddess whom I know as Kali and whom Mr. A knew as Ms. Kal? That would be the “whole truth” but what good would it do us? I am thinking “nothing but the truth” with one exception is what I will be sticking with.

  “And did you bring anything into the darkroom, Ms. Dasgupta?”

  “Some flowers. For the dead.” It is appropriate to be ending with truth and a lie. Or with a truth that is not the “whole truth.” They understand flowers for the dead. That is very appropriate and how often have I been sending expensive flowers to the funeral service of this person or that for Mr. A. But they might not comprehend flowers for the cruel goddess, who may be lonely in this cold and alien land, who may yet visit me.

  Now the judge is rebuking me for tampering with the crime scene, though my actions were understandable and, he believes, innocent. I sense it will be all right. I will keep my green card; I will get my final papers. I must be, I think now, under the protection of the goddess, for he is saying, “Thank you, Ms. Dasgupta. That will be all,” and I am stepping down from the witness stand.

  The View From Above

  Although Philip said the parasail would be a good thing to try, something to mark her recovery, Callie wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t a great swimmer and the gliders can go pretty far out from shore. Up high, too, but Philip, her brother Phillip, said, “That’s the point, Callie. The whole point is that you’re doing something you wouldn’t normally attempt. It’s sort of a test to mark a new stage in your development.”

  A new stage of development was certainly a welcome idea. The last one hadn’t been so good, what with confusion and imagination and things not being what they seemed at all. That was a bad spell, a very bad spell, which ended after a series of steps, that had seemed logical enough at the time, with Callie gagged and
bound with duct tape on the ground in a city park.

  Of course, finding herself there was a shock. She thought anyone would agree with that! And when the police asked, it had made sense for her to say that she’d been tied up, because she’d been abducted, because she’d been forced into a car. By a man, by men, with a knife, a gun. That’s how things go when you lose the thread of life.

  Callie remembered staring at the dirt, unable to move, tape hauling at her hair, at the skin of her wrists, and asking herself, How did I get here? That actually was a quote from a Talking Heads song she liked, the one where David Byrne keeps repeating, same as it ever was, and doesn’t recognize his wife or his house or anything in his life. The song has a good chorus and a beat that could almost carry Callie over whatever questions she had at the moment.

  Of course, without the distractions of music, Callie had to do her best to think how she’d gotten into such a mess. “There was a man,” she told the police, and they wrote her answer down in their little notebooks to use against her later. But though she’d feared and anticipated disaster, she still had to give them more, like how tall the man was, how dark or light, and what kind of hair he had. Before she knew it, life had gotten away from her again. She was in terrible trouble and making difficulties for everyone from the man they arrested to Philip, who had to come and explain about medication and the way things escaped her sometimes.

  So maybe the parasail idea was a good one after all. She was feeling much better, without lost time and mysterious difficulties, and her probation was going well. She was on probation, because, really, there hadn’t been any knives or guns or men, either. It appeared— though Callie couldn’t admit this because she didn’t remember— that she had tied herself up and staggered around the park until she reached the clump of beach plum trees.