“You never heard of him?” I asked weakly. I thought of what he’d told me.
She specifically asked for you, God knows why.
Now I knew why. She hadn’t asked for me at all. This was another of Phil’s screwed-up plans, sending me on a fool’s errand because he was too lazy or chickenshit to do it himself.
Another Phil Cohen favor. And I was so desperate, I’d fallen for it.
“Have you had breakfast?” It was the same tone she’d used with the dogs.
“I—I wouldn’t mind some coffee.” I felt sicker than before but did my best to sound calm. “Thanks.”
“This way, then.”
I gritted my teeth and comforted myself with images of Phil with his nose broken. Aphrodite moved with small darting steps; that and the Klaus Nomi makeup made her look even more like some bizarre automaton. As we walked through the hall, heaps of kindling gave way to stacks of magazines and books, shoes in varying stages of decay, fifty-pound bags of dog food, cases of bottled water, cartons filled with empty liquor bottles, and baskets of plastic film canisters.
I glanced at one of the baskets then looked up. Aphrodite stood in a doorway with her back to me. I grabbed a film canister, shoved it into my pocket, and went on.
“Do you have your own darkroom here?” I asked.
“No. Sit down.” She looked at me irritably. “You should have left your jacket in the mudroom—no, give it to me, I’ll do it.”
I handed her my jacket but kept my camera bag. As she retraced her steps, I looked around at a big old-fashioned kitchen. A woodburning cookstove stood in the center, deerhounds flopped beside it like mangy fur rugs. There were fragments of Turkish carpets on the floor, and a trestle table covered with papers and the remains of breakfast. I set down my bag, wandered to the window and stared out at the cove. A small dark shape loped along the water’s edge then disappeared beneath the pines. It was too small for a deerhound. I wondered if it was a fox, or a lost cat.
“I see Toby got you here in one piece.”
I turned. A man was beside the stove, pouring coffee into a mug. I stared at him, incredulous, as Aphrodite came back into the room.
“This is my son, Gryffin Haselton.” She picked up a kettle from the stove and walked to the sink to refill it. “Do you want coffee or tea?”
“Coffee would be my guess,” said Gryffin. He crossed the room to hand me the mug he’d just filled. “I took your berth on Everett’s boat earlier. Toby said he’d make sure you got here okay. The way you were putting it away last night, I figured you’d sleep in.”
“You figured wrong.” I took the coffee.
“Well, you got some local color, anyway.”
Gryffin turned to get another mug. The deerhounds moaned softly as he stepped between them, and I reached down to stroke one warily. Its head felt like a skull wrapped in worn flannel. Aphrodite leaned against the kitchen counter and regarded me with those glittering black eyes.
“Tell me what this imaginary interview is supposed to consist of.”
I told her, glossing over the fact that Mojo was not a photography magazine and I was not, in fact, anywhere on its masthead. When I mentioned Phil Cohen’s name again, she frowned.
“Phil Cohen.” She stared at her moccasined feet then shook her head. “I never heard of him.”
“He said he used to come up here sometimes.” I fought to keep desperation from my voice. “He said there was, I dunno, a commune or something.”
Gryffin glanced at his mother.
“Denny,” he said, as though that explained everything. He stared at me in disgust.
Aphrodite gave him a quick look then turned back to me. “I have to check the woodstove.”
She left. Gryffin settled at one end of the trestle table. He pushed up his sleeves, displaying that scrawled scar on his wrist, crossed his long legs at the ankle and surveyed me with bitter amusement.
I drank my coffee and looked more closely at his face for any resemblance to Aphrodite.
Yeah, I should have seen it, I thought. Once, I would have.
That odd sense of recognition I’d felt when I’d first seen him outside the motel? It was his eyes. They were Aphrodite’s eyes, oblique, the green spark in his left iris a sort of optic smirk. His smile, too was hers; though what was cold in Aphrodite’s face became wry, even rueful, in her son’s. I thought of the joy in his photograph and wondered if he’d inherited that from his mother as well. I doubted it.
But I felt no recurrence of what I’d sensed earlier; no damage.
“He wouldn’t have waited for you, you know.” Gryffin glanced out the window at the cove. “Everett. I would’ve gotten a ride with Toby like I’d planned, and you’d still be sitting there in Burnt Harbor.”
I took a seat at the other end of the table. “No. By now I’d be on my way back to the city.”
“Really? You don’t seem like you’d give up without a fight. I would have guessed you’d have started swimming over.” He looked at my beat-up cowboy boots and black jeans. “My other guess is you’ve never been north of the Bowery.”
I didn’t take the bait. “So. Did she abuse you as a child?”
“Nope. She drinks too much, but I bet you can relate to that. Cassandra Neary. I googled you. You get a few hits. Your book does, anyway. Did you bring a copy?”
“No.”
“Too bad. That might have given you some street cred with her.”
“Phil Cohen said she knew I was coming.”
“She didn’t. And I have no idea who this Phil Cohen is. But if he’s a friend of Denny’s…”
His voice trailed off.
“Who’s Denny?” I asked.
“You really don’t know?” I shook my head, and an expression that might have been relief flickered across his face. “Good. Keep it that way.”
He leaned forward and added, “I don’t need to tell you she doesn’t do this often, right? See people.”
“My impression was she didn’t do it at all.”
“She doesn’t.” He sipped his coffee. “You’re not going to find out anything new, you know. I mean, you’re not going to find where any bodies are buried, because there aren’t any. You probably wish there were.”
“She said she didn’t have a darkroom here. Is that true?”
“She told you that? Christ.” Gryffin looked annoyed. “Of course she has a darkroom. Downstairs, in the basement. It’s been locked for, I dunno, ten years at least. Maybe longer.”
He gave a sharp laugh. One of the dogs looked up in alarm. “Aphrodite hasn’t taken a picture for years and years. She used to talk about getting another book together, showing in a gallery. But she never did. Maybe you can light a fire under her.”
He shot me a look, then shrugged. “My guess is, that ain’t gonna happen.”
I held my mug so tight it shook. Hot coffee spilled onto my hand. “You can go fuck yourself,” I said.
“Yeah? I’ll call you if I need any help with that.”
He stood as his mother entered the room.
“I’ll leave you two,” said Gryffin. “I’ve got some work to do upstairs.”
In the doorway he stopped and looked back at me. “Stick around for dinner,” he said. “We’re having crow.”
Aphrodite watched him leave. Her face was flushed, the glitter in her eyes banked to a glow. I caught the burnt-orange scent of Grand Marnier on her breath.
“Let’s go into the other room.” She started back down the hall. “The fire’s going in there.”
“What does your son do?”
“He’s a rare book dealer. On the internet—he had a shop, but he closed it a few years ago.”
I was glad I hadn’t mentioned the Strand.
I followed her into the next room, an airy space that looked out across the reach. This was more like I’d imagined Aphrodite Kamestos’s home. Twentieth Century Danish Modern furniture, Arne Jacobsen armchairs, a cane and bamboo Jacobsen Slug chair, a beautifully spare Klint di
ning table that served as a desk. A small black woodstove sat upon a tiled heath.
Surprisingly, there were no photos. But I saw a bookshelf on the far wall, filled with oversized volumes. Some I recognized from my own collection; others were books I had held covetously at the Strand but didn’t try to steal—too big, too valuable. There were pristine copies of Mors and Deceptio Visus; the limited Ricci edition of Lewis Carroll’s photos; Cartier-Bresson’s Images a la Sauvette. Pictures of Old Chinatown, Untitled Film Stills; books by Avedon, Steichen, Arbus; Herb Ritts, Larry Fink, Joel-Peter Witkin, Katy Grannan.
It was a small fortune in photography books—the Cartier-Bresson alone was worth a thousand bucks. And the presence of those last few artists signaled that Aphrodite had kept up with the field. It made the room feel like a museum, or the kind of place where you instinctively remove your shoes. I looked furtively at my scuffed boots.
“Sit.” Aphrodite settled into one of the armchairs. “Did you forget your tape recorder?”
“Hmm?” I took a seat and looked at her, puzzled.
“Your tape recorder. Did you leave it in the other room?”
“My tape recorder.” I winced. “Shit! I forgot—”
Aphrodite’s thin eyebrows lifted. “You left it in your car?”
“Yes.” I rubbed my forehead. “Back in Burnt Harbor.”
That was a lie: until now, I’d never even thought of bringing one. I rubbed my hands on my thighs and stared at them. My computer was five hundred miles away in my apartment. I didn’t even have a spiral notebook.
“Well,” I said quickly. “I guess we can do it the old-fashioned way. I can just write everything down.” I nodded at my bag. “I have my camera—”
Aphrodite stared out the window. The full daylight on her face showed her age; her white skin looked as though it would tear if you touched it with a fingernail.
“No,” she said. “I don’t allow myself to be photographed.”
She didn’t sound angry or disappointed. Her expression was resigned, as though when all was said and done, she’d been expecting no better than this. She turned, and I could see where the corners of her mouth twitched slightly upward in an ironic smile, just as her son’s had. For a moment I felt as though this had all been some kind of bizarre, over-elaborated joke. Then she stood.
“I have some things to take care of.”
“Wait!” I got to my feet and without thinking reached for her. She recoiled.
“Your photos—I mean, you know what they are.” I didn’t care if I sounded crazy or just pathetic. “They changed everything for me. When I first saw them—it was like I’d never seen anything before that! It made the whole world look different, everything. Deceptio Visus—that book? It’s what made me want to be a photographer.”
“A photographer.” Her lips curved in a thin smile. Her gaze was hateful. “Is that what you think? Every dilettante I ever met was a photographer. Every little vampire. Every little thief.”
She spat the last word. “Deceptio Visus,” she went on. “You never could have seen those pictures.”
“The book,” I repeated weakly. “I have the book—the original, not the reprint.”
“They were all shit.” She stared at me as though daring me to argue. “Nothing was like the originals. Nothing.”
She slashed at the air so violently she lost her balance. I reached for her again. This time she hit me, so hard I staggered back a step.
“Don’t you touch me,” she whispered. “I never let them touch me.”
I rubbed my arm. Her dark eyes had grown distant. Or no, not distant: they seemed to focus intently on something in the air between us, something I couldn’t see. What Phil had said about her paranoia suddenly made sense.
Without another word she turned and headed from the room.
I called after her. “Your photos.”
She didn’t stop, but I had nothing left to lose. “Deceptio Visus. I won’t touch them. I just want to see them. Please.”
She stumbled in the doorway. It was the first gesture of hers that seemed to belong to an old woman. “Gryffin will show them to you.”
She was gone. Bam, just like that.
I’d blown it.
“Fucking hell,” I said.
I drew a deep breath. I shook uncontrollably as I sank back into the chair, a chair worth what I earned in six months. I felt the same surge of rage that had come when I’d hit Christine, my hands burning like they’d scorch right through the chair’s arms, right through anything they touched. I clawed at my jeans and felt five hundred dollars’ worth of fabric tear.
A door slammed. A moment later three sleek gray forms streaked down toward the cove, followed by a slender figure in a barn coat. I sat with my head in my hands until I heard another door behind me. I looked up and saw Gryffin Haselton, carrying a laptop.
“Oh. Hey.” His brow furrowed. “Where’s my mother?”
“Gone.” I stood unsteadily and looked away. “I fucked up. I forgot a tape recorder. I guess she doesn’t like that.”
“She doesn’t like a lot of stuff. I wouldn’t worry about it.” He set his laptop on the table and plugged it in. “Don’t worry, I’m not sticking around. Just recharging.”
He fiddled with the computer then glanced at me.
“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here,” I said. Something about him made me feel calmer, or maybe I was just exhausted. I ran a hand through my filthy hair. “Christ, what am I doing? You saw me last night! Why the fuck didn’t you tell her I was coming out to talk to her?”
He looked at me, bemused. “I don’t know you from Adam. But even if I had told her, she wouldn’t have let you in.”
“Whatever.” I sighed. “She did say you could show me her pictures. If you don’t mind.”
“No. I don’t mind.” His voice made him sound younger than he was. “I just flew up for a few days to deliver something.”
“You live here?”
“Chicago.”
“Your mother said you’re a book dealer.” I hesitated, then said, “I work at the Strand.”
“Yeah? I don’t do much business with them anymore. Too expensive. The internet’s ruined it for everyone. That’s why I had to close my shop.”
“You don’t do photography, then? It’s not the family business?”
“Christ no. I’ve never wanted to know anything about what she does. Not that she’s done much of it since I’ve been alive. She blamed me for it.”
“For…?”
“You name it,” he said. “Her marriage. Her work. Her drinking. All of it. She needed an excuse. I was it.”
I digested this. After a moment I asked, “Why are you here, then?”
“Business,” he said tersely. “And just because she’s a bitch doesn’t mean I have to be.”
He turned to stare out the window. Aphrodite’s slight figure walked along the water’s edge. Behind her, the deerhounds ran and leaped across the mossy slope like figures escaped from a medieval tapestry.
“Wait till after lunch, maybe she’ll be better then,” said Gryffin at last. “After a few more drinks.”
“I doubt it. She seemed a little—paranoid.”
“She is. And the alcohol makes it worse. Actually, I was surprised she opened the door. If Toby hadn’t been with you, she wouldn’t have. But come on. I’ll take you upstairs.”
He stood.
“So the drinking’s a problem,” I said.
“Sure is. It’s why she stopped working. Or maybe she stopped working and then she started to drink. It changes according to who she’s pissed off at. It was after my father killed himself. None of this is breaking news, so don’t bother taking notes.”
He held open a door for me. “Watch your head—”
The stairwell was dark. At the top Gryffin opened another door, and I stumbled after him into a long, sunlit gallery. At the end of that hall, more steps led up to another narrow corridor.
“Sorry it’s so cold
,” said Gryffin. “No central heat. I think there’s a space heater in your room.” He stopped in front of a closed door. “The pictures you want are in here.”
Cold stale air surrounded us when we stepped inside. On the far wall, two small windows looked across the water to the islands. “I assume these are what you meant. Deceptio Visus.”
I nodded. For a minute I couldn’t speak.
“Jesus,” I finally said. I felt as though I’d been holding my breath for years, waiting for this. I started to laugh. “Holy shit, this is amazing.”
They hung on the walls, each photo framed and numbered as in the book. Some had been shot from a promontory looking out across the bay at distant islands; others were views of Paswegas. I crossed the room, shivering again, but not from the cold.
“Amazing,” I repeated in a whisper.
Close up, the colors looked like prismatic syrup poured onto paper: indigo and blood red sky, cadmium sunlight smeared across cobalt water, pine trees like emerald stalactites. The paper was thick, and there were tiny flecks of pigment on the white borders, as though someone had flicked a paintbrush. I brought my face so close to the prints that my breath fogged the glass.
“This is fucking incredible.” I glanced over my shoulder. Gryffin leaned against the far wall, watching me. “Do you know how she did these?”
“Hey, if you’re asking me—”
“I’m not. I know. You don’t?” He shook his head. “It’s an unusual method. “See, this is all really heavy watercolor stock…”
I tapped the glass covering one photo. “You coat the paper with gelatin and let it dry. Then you paint over it with layers of pigment mixed with starch. Remember when you were in kindergarten and you colored a page with a red crayon, and then a blue crayon on top of that, then a yellow one or whatever, then scraped it off with a nail or a chopstick so the colors came through? This is the same principle. Once you’ve covered the paper with pigment, you add a sensitizer then dry it in a closet, someplace dark. It’s a really slow emulsion when it’s finished, and light sensitive. When it’s dry you put your negative on top and set the whole thing outside in the sun for, like, three hours. You need really strong, hot light—I bet she did it on the beach. The sun just boils that emulsion right off. Then you wash it, and…”
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