Depth of Field

by Michael Blair

  There was a little box with button and a speaker grill by the front door. I pressed the button. A far-off chime sounded, like church bells. A moment later a woman’s voice crackled from the speaker.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Waverley?” I said. “Mrs. Anna Waverley?”

  “Yes, I’m Anna Waverley. Who are you?”

  “Mrs. Waverley, my name’s Tom McCall. I’d like to speak with you, if you don’t mind.”

  “You don’t have to shout into the speaker, Mr. McCall. I can hear you just fine if you talk normally. And if you stand back a bit, I’ll be able to see you.” I stepped back. “Look up, Mr. McCall. Look way up.” I looked up and saw a glowing red dot beneath the lens of a small video camera. “What would you like to talk about?”

  “We could start with old children’s television programs,” I said. “I used to watch The Friendly Giant, too.” Silence. “Mrs. Waverley?”

  “I’m still here. I’m waiting for you to get to the point. You’ve got thirty seconds. Then I call the police.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes, I know who you are. You’re that photographer whose assistant was attacked and thrown into False Creek. I feel just awful about that, Mr. McCall. I really do. But if you’re looking for some kind of compensation, it hasn’t anything to do with me or my husband, despite the fact that the woman who hired you evidently used my name.”

  “It’s not about money,” I said. “It’s about my friend lying in the hospital in a coma. I’d just like to talk to you for a few minutes, to see if there’s anything you might be able to tell me that will help me figure out who attacked her.”

  “I’ve already told the police everything I know,” she said. “Which is nothing.”

  Her voice had an odd stereophonic quality, as if it were coming from two places at once. I realized that she must be standing on the other side of the door and that I could hear her voice through the mail slot as well as the intercom speaker. I moved closer to the door. “Mrs. Waverley,” I said, speaking up slightly, but keeping my voice calm and even and as reassuring as I could. “Someone who said her name was Anna Waverley hired my partner and me to take photographs of that boat. The police have evidence that my partner was attacked on the boat, before she was thrown into False Creek under the Burrard Street Bridge to drown. I’m sure that neither you nor your husband are involved in any way, but I would nevertheless appreciate it if you could spare me a few minutes of your time. I’m just trying to understand why Bobbi was attacked. The police aren’t getting anywhere. I —”

  A chain rattled and a bolt clicked and the door opened.

  Anna Waverley was a handful of inches shorter than me, with wavy reddish-brown hair worn short, rectangular hazel eyes, and a long, straight nose. Her most arresting feature was her mouth. It was wide and slightly crooked, and her lips, which were full and almost too straight, had a bruised quality, like overripe plums. It was not, I thought for some reason, a mouth that smiled often. Matthias had told me she was forty-five, but she could have looked much younger, if she’d tried a little.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you, Mr. McCall, but come in.” She stepped back, holding the door open. “Please excuse the way I’m dressed,” she added as I went into the house. “I just got back from a run.” She closed the door. “This way, please.”

  From the outside the house had looked spacious, but inside it seemed dark and cramped. It wasn’t that the rooms were small — they weren’t — but the front hall and the living room contained enough heavy, ornate furniture for three houses. Likewise, the dining room. Anna Waverley read my expression.

  “I’m afraid my husband regards this house more as a warehouse than a home,” she said. “Come through this way. We’ll be more comfortable in the day room. Would you care for a glass of wine? Or something stronger?”

  “Wine is fine,” I said.

  She excused herself and left the room.

  The day room wasn’t quite as big as the living room, but contained less furniture. What it did contain was eclectic and casual and comfortable. There was a big, blond wood entertainment unit containing a medium-sized flat-screen TV, a DVD player, and mismatched but high-quality stereo components. One wall of the room was mostly glass. Sliding doors opened onto a patio surrounded by semitropical plants in big terra cotta planters and beds of live bamboo and overshadowed by a towering magnolia. An ornate Victorian dining table by the windows looked as though it had seen better days, the finish scarred and cracked. One end of the table was piled high with magazines and newspapers and books. At the other end of the table, a white Apple laptop sat atop a four-inch stack of volumes from an old set of the Encyclopædia Britannica, raising the screen to a more comfortable height to use with the external keyboard and mouse. The computer’s power adaptor was plugged into a heavy-duty orange extension cord that snaked across the flagstone floor to an outlet by the entertainment unit.

  Mrs. Waverley returned carrying a tray loaded with a bottle of red wine, a bottle of white wine in a sweating beaten-silver cooler, and two tall wineglasses. She set the tray on a massive Spanish-style coffee table. In the short time she’d been out of the room, she’d also managed to brush out her hair, apply a little makeup, and change into jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, and sturdy Rockport walking shoes.

  “I wasn’t sure if you wanted white or red,” she said, sitting on a heavy, worn leather sofa.

  “I’ll have whatever you’re having,” I said.

  “White, then,” she said, lifting the bottle from the silver cooler. “Please, sit down, Mr. McCall. I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already told the police. I feel just terrible about what happened to your friend. You said she is still in a coma. The police told me she’s expected to make a full recovery, though.” She deftly levered the cork out of the bottle.

  “That’s what the doctors tell me.” I sat in an equally worn burgundy leather tufted armchair, facing her across the coffee table.

  “Well, I certainly hope it’s true.” She handed me a glass of wine. It had a rich, slightly fruity aroma. I imagined that that one bottle cost more than what I usually spent on three bottles. She raised her glass. “Here’s to your friend’s full and speedy recovery,” she said. We drank. The wine was very good. I upped my estimate of its cost.

  “I understand you were at the marina at around nine that night.”

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Waverley replied. “Three evenings a week I park my car at Jericho Beach Park near the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club and run to Granville Island and back. Don’t look so impressed. It’s a total of only a little more than ten kilometres. Ten years ago I used to run more than a hundred kilometres a week. Slowing down in my old age, I suppose.”

  “It’s all I can do to run to answer the phone,” I said.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” she responded.

  It wasn’t true, or at least not quite, but I was hoping to make her smile. I wanted to see what a smile looked like on that wide, sensuous mouth. I was disappointed when she remained straight-faced. I was going to have to try harder.

  “Do you normally run at that time of day?” I asked. “After dark, I mean?”

  She shook her head. “No, in the summer usually I run between six and seven, but I was, well, running late that day.” She didn’t even smile at her own joke. “More wine?” she asked, holding out the bottle.

  “No, thank you,” I said. My glass was still almost full. Hers was almost empty. She refilled it.

  “Your friend — Bobbi?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “I saw her photograph in the newspaper. She’s very attractive. Are you and she lovers?”

  I was taken aback by the bluntness of the question. “No,” I sputtered. “Just friends. Good friends, though. We’ve worked together for almost ten years.”

  “Is it interesting work?”

  “It can be,” I said.

  “Have you exhibited?”

&nb
sp; “My photographs? Not hardly. No one’s interested in photographs of shopping malls or bridges and helicopters. I did win an award once, though, for a photograph I took when I was working for the Vancouver Sun of a man rescuing a huge potted cannabis plant from a burning house.” Did her ripe, bruised mouth twitch slightly? I couldn’t be sure because she lifted her wineglass and drank.

  She lowered the glass. “Ralph Steiner’s photographs of everyday objects are quite beautiful,” she said. “Although I think I prefer Aaron Siskind’s abstract work. I am also a big admirer of Diane Arbus, although some critics feel her work is too intrusive. Of course, you don’t want to simply repeat what’s already been done, do you? However, there are many contemporary photographers whose vision of the common, the ordinary, the everyday, often says more about the values of our society than the rare or the beautiful or the fantastic. Do you work with digital, Mr. McCall? Although many people in the arts disapprove, technology has always been at the forefront of art, don’t you think? Visual artists are always exploring ways of using technology to push the envelope, whether they be painters, sculptors, photographers, or performance artists.”

  “I don’t really consider myself an artist,” I said. “I suppose you could say that I used to be a news photographer, but nowadays I’m just a common, ordinary, everyday commercial photographer. I take pictures of whatever people are willing to pay me to take pictures of. Their kids, their dogs, their airplanes or construction sites, their chairpersons of the board.” Not to mention half-naked lady loggers and almost totally naked escort service providers and their girls. As I’d told Bobbi’s father, someone had to do it.

  “Do you miss being a news photographer?” Mrs. Waverley asked.

  “The pay was better,” I replied. “But only marginally. More regular, though.”

  Mrs. Waverley held out the bottle. I held out my glass, although it was only half empty. She topped it up, then poured more wine into her glass. The bottle was nearly empty.

  “Are you married, Mr. McCall?”

  “I was,” I answered, then added quickly, “Mrs. Waverley, the woman who hired us to photograph that boat, do you have any idea who she might be?”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t. How would I? It wasn’t even our boat. Not that that’s relevant, is it? I’m sorry, I’m rambling, aren’t I? I’ve had too much wine on an empty stomach, perhaps. I should eat something.”

  I stood up, prepared to take my leave, albeit regretfully, mission unaccomplished.

  “No, please,” she said. “You don’t have to go. Unless you have another appointment, of course, if there’s some other place you need to be.”

  “No, there’s no place I need to be. But I don’t want to be an imposition.”

  “You’re not imposing. Not at all. I enjoy your company. But perhaps we could talk in the kitchen while I make something to eat.”

  “As long as I’m not imposing,” I said.

  “You’re not,” she said and started to pick up the tray.

  “Let me,” I said, and bent quickly to pick up the tray. A little too quickly. We thumped heads, hard.

  She sat down on the sofa, eyes momentarily glazed. Way to go, McCall.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, ears ringing. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said, rubbing her forehead at the hairline. She stood. “Let’s try that again, shall we?” She gestured toward the tray. “If you would …”

  I picked up the tray and followed her into the kitchen without further incident.

  chapter ten

  “Do you believe in parallel universes, Mr. McCall?”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I said.

  She’d made a salad of leafy lettuce, spinach, blue cheese, and pine nuts, but ate very little of it, opening the other bottle of wine instead. We sat at a small, round, glass-topped table in her big, immaculate kitchen. I watched her as she spoke. She sat with her heels on the edge of her chair and her arms folded around her knees. She unwrapped only long enough to reach for her glass of wine, or to nibble on a leaf of lettuce, a crumb of cheese, or a pine nut.

  “I read a very strange novel a few years ago,” she said, “about a man who created parallel universes every time he made a choice between two or more courses of action. Every time he chose, say, between having the apple pie or the blueberry crumble for dessert, or whether to drive to work or take the bus, the universe split into two separate universes. Alternate timelines, the author called them. In one timeline, the protagonist drove to work, had a car accident, and became a paraplegic, but in the other, he took the bus on which he met the woman he would eventually marry. He was able to move between the different timelines at will, and discovered others who could do the same.”

  “Handy,” I said. “Like being able to take back chess moves.”

  “It’s the only science-fiction novel I’ve ever read. I don’t remember the author’s name, or even if it was very good. For some reason, I didn’t finish it, so I don’t know how it turned out, but I often feel as though I exist in two different universes at the same time, this me in this universe, getting blotto with a perfect stranger, and another me in another universe in which perhaps I’m also getting blotto, but all by myself because I didn’t let you into my house. I think I prefer this timeline,” she added, and almost smiled.

  “Schrödinger’s cat,” I said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Schrödinger’s cat. It was a ‘thought experiment’ in quantum mechanics by a physicist named Erwin Schrödinger. I read about it in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Physics. It had something to do with the probability that an atom of uranium or some other radioactive substance would decay within an hour, trigger a Geiger counter, and release a gas that would kill a cat in a sealed container. In one quantum reality, the atom decays and the cat dies. In the other, the atom doesn’t decay, and the cat lives. According to quantum theory, the cat’s two possible states — alive and dead — are mixed or entangled together until we look into the box to see what happened, at which point the cat’s realities separate and it will be either dead or alive.”

  “How awful.”

  “Tough on Dr. Schrödinger’s cat, anyway,” I said. “Fortunately for Felix, it was only a thought experiment. No real cat involved.”

  “Do you believe it’s possible that with each choice we make,” she said, “we create a separate parallel universe for each alternative?”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” I said.

  “But unlikely?”

  “The probability is not good,” I said, and she almost smiled again, but once again hid behind her wineglass.

  She refilled her glass from the bottle on the table between us. There was an almost visible aura of sadness about Anna Waverley, an emotional entanglement field in which I was trapped along with her. It was distorting my reality — she was distorting my reality — and while my reality was far from perfect, I liked it the way it was. Besides, like it or not, it was the only one I had, and I was stuck with it. I wondered what was so terrible about Mrs. Waverley’s reality that she wished for another. Or was I misreading her? Maybe she was just plain nuts.

  “How long were you married, Mr. McCall?” she asked.

  She changed topics like a stone skipping across the water. “Six years,” I said. “It ended ten years ago.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  “A daughter. She’ll be fifteen in August.”

  “My husband never wanted children,” Anna Waverley said. “I did, but Sam had had a vasectomy even before I married him. We’ve been married almost twenty-five years. If we’d had children, they’d be grown now. I could even be a grandmother.”

  In an effort to get the conversation back on track, I said, “Is it possible that Bobbi’s attack, or the woman who hired us, is somehow connected to your husband or his business?”

  “What? No, the idea is ludicrous. If you knew my husband, you’d know just how ludicrous. My husband is an extremely bor
ing man. He was boring when I married him twenty-five years ago and he’s even more boring now. And his business is equally dull. Do you like this kitchen, Mr. McCall?”

  I looked around. The kitchen of Sam and Anna Waverley’s house was as big, if not bigger, than my living room. It was equipped as well as the kitchens in many small hotels. And it was spotlessly clean, like a model kitchen in an Ikea showroom.

  “It’s very nice,” I said. “Very clean.”

  “It should be. It’s rarely used. My husband doesn’t like home-cooked meals. We eat in restaurants most of the time. Or order in. That’s when we eat together at all, which isn’t often. Sam lives for his work.” She drank more wine, then topped up her glass.

  “Mrs. Waverley, when you were at the marina the other night, did you notice anything unusual?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “No strangers hanging around, especially near the Wonderlust?”

  She shook her head. “No.” She picked up the wine bottle and gestured toward my glass. There was still a bit of white left in it.

  I shook my head. “I should be going,” I said.

  “How did you meet your wife?” she asked, as though she hadn’t heard me. Perhaps I only imagined I’d spoken aloud.

  “I met her in a club,” I said. “I was doing photography for a lifestyles piece on working students and she was working her way through university as a bartender.”

  “She’s younger than you are, then?”

  “Just by a couple of years,” I replied.

  “My husband is quite a few years older than I,” she said. I found her grammatical precision slightly pretentious, until I realized that she was more than a little drunk. “I was twenty-one when I married him. Sam was forty-two. I had graduated with a degree in art history and got a job in his gallery. There was another woman working for him then. Andrea. She was about thirty, plain, and it seemed to me that she hated me on sight. A month later she was gone, and less that a month after that Sam and I began having an affair. I was so damned utterly naive it embarrasses me to think about it even now. Andrea resented me because she’d been having an affair with him, too, and I was the usurper. She wasn’t the first of his assistants with whom he’d had an affair, of course, nor was I the last. His current assistant is Doris. A lovely woman, really. A little plain, perhaps, as have been most of Sam’s assistants, but very sweet. I don’t know what she sees in him.”