Generation Loss

1

There’s always a moment where everything changes. A great photographer—someone like Diane Arbus, or me during that fraction of a second when I was great—she sees that moment coming, and presses the shutter release an instant before the change hits. If you don’t see it coming, if you blink or you’re drunk or just looking the other way—well, everything changes anyway, it’s not like things would have been different.

But for the rest of your life you’re fucked, because you blew it. Maybe no one else knows it, but you do. In my case, it was no secret. Everyone knew I’d blown it. Some people can make do in a situation like that. Me, I’ve never been good at making do. My life, who could pretend there wasn’t a big fucking hole in it?

I grew up about sixty miles north of the city in Kamensic Village, a haunted corner of the Hudson Valley where three counties meet in a stony congeries of ancient Dutch-built houses, farmland, old-growth forest, nouveau-riche mansions. My father was—is—the village magistrate. I was an only child, and a wild thing as the privileged children of that town were.

I had from earliest childhood a sense that there was no skin between me and the world. I saw things that other people didn’t see. Hands that slipped through gaps in the air like falling leaves; a jagged outline like a branch but there was no branch and no tree. In bed at night I heard a voice repeating my name in a soft, insistent monotone. Cass. Cass. Cass. My father took me to a doctor, who said I’d grow out of it. I never did, really.

My mother was much younger than my father, a beautiful Radcliffe girl he met on a blind date arranged by his cousin. She died when I was four. The car she was driving, our old red Rambler station wagon, went off the road and into the woods, slamming into a tree on the outskirts of town. It was an hour before someone noticed headlights shining through the trees and called the police. When they finally arrived, they found my mother impaled on the steering column. I was faceup on the backseat, surrounded by shattered glass but unhurt.

I have no memory of the accident. The police officer told my father that I didn’t cry or speak, just stared at the car’s ceiling, and, as the officer carried me outside, the night sky. Nowadays there would have been a grief counselor, a child psychologist, drugs. My father’s Irish Catholic sensibility, while not religious, precluded any overt emotion; there was a wake, a funeral, a week of visiting relatives and phone calls. Then my father returned to work. A housekeeper, Rosie, was hired to tend me. My father wouldn’t speak of my mother unless asked, and, forty-odd years ago, one didn’t ask. Her presence remained in the framed black-and-white photos my father kept of her in his bedroom. While Rosie vacuumed or made lunch I would sit on his bed and slowly move my fingers across the glass covering the pictures, pretending the dust was face powder on my mother’s cheeks.

I liked being alone. Once when I was fourteen, walking in the woods, I stepped from the trees into a field where the long grasses had been flattened by sleeping deer. I looked up into the sky and saw a mirror image of the grass, black and yellow-gray whorls making a slow clockwise rotation like a hurricane. As I stared the whorl began to move more quickly, drawing a darkness into its center until it resembled a vast striated eye that was all pupil, contracting upon itself yet never disappearing. I stared at it until a low buzzing began to sound in my ears. Then I ran.

I didn’t stop until I reached my driveway. When I finally halted and looked back, the eye was still there, turning. I never mentioned it to anyone. No one else ever spoke of seeing it.

My sense of detachment grew when I started high school, but as my grades were good and my other activities furtive, my father never worried much about what I did. Our relationship was friendly if distant. It was my Aunt Brigid who worried about me on the rare occasions she paid us a visit.

Brigid was like my father, stocky and big boned and red haired. I resembled photos of my mother. Tall and angular, narrow hipped, my mother’s soft features honed to a knife-edge in my own. Pointed chin, uptilted nose, dirty-blond hair and mistrustful gray eyes. If I’d been a boy I might have been beautiful. Instead I learned early on that my appearance made people uneasy. There was nothing pretty about my androgyny. I was nearly six feet tall and vaguely threatening. I wore my hair long but otherwise made no concessions to fashion, no makeup, no lipstick. I wore my father’s white shirts over patched blue jeans or men’s trousers I bought at the Junior League Shop. I wouldn’t meet people’s eyes. I didn’t like people looking at me. It made me feel sick; it reminded me of that great eye above the empty field.

“She looks like a scarecrow, Dad,” Brigid said once when I was sixteen. She and her husband were in Kamensic for a rare visit. “I mean, look at her—”

“I think she looks fine,” my father said mildly. “She’s just built like her mother was.”

“She looks like a drug addict,” Brigid snapped. She was sensitive about her weight. “We see them out where we live.”

I pointed out to the bird feeder at the edge of our woods. “What, like the chickadees? We see them too,” I said, and retreated to my room.

Several months later I had this dream. I was kneeling in the field where I’d seen the eye. A figure appeared in front of me: a man with green-flecked eyes, his smile mocking and oddly compassionate. As I stared up at him, he extended his hand until his finger touched the center of my forehead.

There was a blinding flash. I fell on my face, terrified, woke in bed with my ears ringing. It was the morning of my seventeenth birthday. My father gave me a camera. I sat at the breakfast table, turned it in my hands, and remembered the dream. I saw my face distorted in the round glass of the lens, like a flaw; like an eye staring back at me.

I took an introductory photography class in high school and was encouraged to take more.

I never did. I quickly learned what I needed to know. I liked a slow lens. I liked grainy black-and-white film and never worked in color. I liked the detail work of creating my own photographic paper, of processing then developing the film myself in the school photo lab. I loved the way the paper felt, soft and wet in the trays, then the magical way it dried and turned into something else, smooth and rigid and shining, the images a mere byproduct of chemistry and timing.

I didn’t care if the pictures were over- or underexposed, or even if they were in focus. I liked things that didn’t move: dead trees, stones. I liked dead things: the fingerless soft hand of a pheasant’s wing, mouse skulls disinterred from an owl pellet, a cicada’s thorax picked clean by tiny green beetles. I liked portraits of my friends when they were sleeping. I’ve always watched people sleep. When I occasionally babysat, I’d go into the children’s rooms after they were in bed and stand there, listening to their breathing, waiting until my eyes adjusted to the soft glow of nightlight or moonlight. I liked to watch them breathe.

When I was seventeen I fell in love with a boy from a neighboring village. He was a year younger than me, fey, red haired, with sunken, poison green eyes: a musician and a junkie. I’d hitch to his town and sit on the library steps across the street from his big Victorian house and wait there for hours, hoping to see him but also wanting to absorb his world, clock the comings and goings of his younger siblings, parents, his golden retriever, his friends. I wanted to see the world he knew from inside his junkie’s skin, smell the lilacs that grew outside his window.

One day his sister came out and said, “My brother’s inside. He’s waiting for you to come over.”

I went. No one else was home. We crawled underneath the Steinway Grand in the living room, and I sucked him off. Afterward we sat together on the front porch while he smoked cigarettes. This pattern continued until I left high school. One night we broke into the village pharmacy and stole bottles of Tuinals and quaaludes before the alarm went off then ran laughing breathlessly back to his house, where he pretended to sleep while I hid in his closet. We weren’t caught, but I was too paranoid to ever try it again.

I liked to watch him sleep; I liked to watch him nod out. I took pictures of him and got them processed over in Mount Kisco. At night in my room I’d look at those photographs—his eyes closed, cigarette burning in his hand—and masturbate. I told him I’d do anything for him. A few years later, he got caught burglarizing another drugstore up in Putnam County. His parents bailed him out and he wrote to me, desperate and lonely, while he was awaiting sentencing. I never wrote back. His family moved to the Midwest somewhere. I don’t know what happened to him.

He was the only person I ever really cared about. I still have those photos somewhere.

In 1975 I graduated from high school and started at NYU. I had vague plans of studying photojournalism. That all changed the night I went over to Kenny’s Castaways to hear the New York Dolls. The Dolls never showed, but someone else did, a skinny chick who screamed at the unruly audience in between chanting bursts of poetry while a tall, geeky guy flailed around with an electric guitar.

After that I quit going to classes. I took up with a girl named Jeannie who waitressed at Max’s Kansas City. For a few months she supported me, and we lived in a horrible fourth-floor walkup on Hudson Street. The toilet hung over a hole in the floor; the clawfoot tub was in the kitchen. We put a sheet of plywood over the tub and on top of that a mattress we scrounged from the street. I didn’t tell my father I’d been suspended from NYU. I used the checks he sent to buy film and speed, black beauties, crystal meth. There was a light that fell on the streets in those days, a light like broken glass, so bright and jagged it made my eyes ache, my skin. I’d go down to see Jeannie when she got off work at Max’s and take pictures of the people hanging out back. Some of those people you’d still recognize today. Most you wouldn’t, though back then they were briefly famous, just as I was to be. Most of them are dead now.

Some of them were dead then. I shot an entire roll of film of a kid who’d OD’d in the alley early one morning. No one wanted to call the ambulance—he was already dead, why bring the cops down? So I stood out there, shit-colored light filtering from the streetlamp, and photographed him in closeup. I was nervous about bringing the film to the place I usually went to. I had a friend at the university process the film there for me.

“This is sick stuff, Cass,” he said when I went to pick it up. He handed me the manila envelope with my contact sheets and prints. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You’re sick.”

I thought they were beautiful. Slow exposure and low light made the boy’s skin look like soft white paper, like newsprint before it’s inked. His head was slightly upturned, his eyes half-open, glazed. You couldn’t tell if he’d just woken up or if he was already dead. One hand was pressed upon his breast, fingers splayed. A series of black starbursts marred the crook of his bare arm; a white thread extended from his upper lip to the point of one exposed eyetooth. I titled the photo “Psychopomp.” I decided it was strong enough that I should start assembling a portfolio, and so I did, the pictures that would eventually become part of my book Dead Girls.

People used to ask me what it was like to take those photographs.

“‘How do you think it feels?’” I shot back at the guy from Interview. “‘How do you think it feels? And when do you think it stops?’”

He didn’t get it. No one does. I can smell damage; it radiates from some people like a pheromone. Those are the ones I photograph. I can tell where they’ve been, what’s destroyed them, even after they’re dead. It’s like sweat or semen or ash, and it’s not just a taste or scent. It shows up in pictures, if you know how to catch the light. It shows up in faces, the way you can tell what a sleeping person’s dreaming, if they’re happy or frightened or aroused. I don’t know why it draws me; maybe because I dream of leaving this body the way other people dream of flying. Not flying to a sunny beach or a hotel room, but true escape, leaving one body and entering another, like one of those wasps that lays its eggs inside a beetle so a wasp larva grows inside it, eating the beetle until the new wasp emerges.

It sounds creepy, but I always liked the idea of disappearing then becoming something new. That of course was before I disappeared.

But taking a picture feels like that sometimes. When I’m getting it right, it’s like I’m no longer standing there with my camera, with my eye behind the lens, looking at someone. It’s like it’s me lying there and I’m seeping into that other skin like rain into dry sand.

Sometimes it happens with sex. Once I brought a sixteen-year-old boy back to the apartment. I’d picked him up at a club, dark eyes, curly dark hair, a crooked front tooth, tiny scabs on the inside of his arm where he’d been popping heroin, still too scared to mainline.

The tooth is what got me. I’m still sorry I didn’t shoot him. He was beautiful, one of those Pasolini kids who absorbs light then shines it back into your eyes and blinds you. But I left my camera on the floor, and instead I just fucked him, more than once. Then I lay awake and watched him sleep. When he woke in the morning he looked at me, and I saw what had happened to him: his mother’s death, the small apartment in Queens where he lived with his father and sister, the after-school job at a pet shop. Cleaning fish tanks, measuring out birdseed. He told me all this, but I already knew; I could see the light leaking from his eyes. I wanted to photograph him, but suddenly I felt real panic. I gave him coffee and money for a cab and literally pushed him out of the door. The look he gave me then was crushed and confused, but that I could live with. What I couldn’t deal with was the knowledge that he was so close to dead already. The only thing that had made him feel alive was fucking me.

I tried to explain this to Jeannie. She looked at me like I’d spit in her face.

“You’re crazy, Cass. You’re, like, a nihilist. You’re in love with annihilation.”

“Yeah? So is that a bad thing?”

She didn’t think that was funny. She left me soon after and got a job at a massage parlor. I didn’t care. I stayed in the apartment. By then I’d gotten messed up with a rich girl from Sarah Lawrence who liked slumming with me. She split when the school year ended, by which time my father had figured out what was going on—that I’d been kicked out of school and was no doubt spending the checks he sent on drugs. He was surprisingly calm. He made sure I knew he wouldn’t give me another dollar until I straightened out and earned enough to put myself back through school, but he also let me know I was always welcome back home. I thanked him and kept in touch intermittently, usually by postcard.

I bought a tripod and began doing a series of pictures, black-and-white photographs of me dressed and posed like women in famous paintings. I called the series “Dead Girls.” There was me as Ophelia, wearing a thrift-shop bridal gown and ribbons, floating in a tenement bathtub filled with black-streaked water—dye bled from the ribbons so that it looked as though blood flowed from my dress. There was me topless, sprawled in a Bowery alley on my back as Waterhouse’s dead “St. Eulalia.” For Munch’s “The Next Day” I lay on top of my plywood bed with empty wine bottles scattered around me. I used a similar setup for Walter Sickert’s “The Camden Town Murder.”

It took me five months. I got a job at a wino’s liquor store on the Bowery to get by. There were twenty-three photos when I was done, enough for a show.

My central image derived from a lithograph from Redon’s “La Tentation de Saint-Antoine”4: a life-sized human skeleton, a plastic model I had a friend borrow for me from the NYU art department. I draped it with a white sheet and posed beside it, naked, my hand clutching its bony plastic fingers. I set the shutter so that the image was so underexposed as to be almost indiscernible, deliberately out of focus. All you saw was the skeleton, seeming to fall forward through the frame, and floating beside it a face suggestive of a skull: mine. I translated the drawing’s original caption into English.

Death: I am the one who will make a serious woman of you; come, let us embrace.

I added these to my portfolio, and a few portraits I’d done of Jeannie and her friends hanging out in the apartment and the back room at Max’s. The pictures were harsh and overlit, but they had a scary energy, most of it supplied by Jeannie herself in torn fishnets and smeared eye makeup, her works on the floor beside her, the glare of a naked hundred-watt bulb making Gillette blades glow like they were radioactive.

It didn’t hurt that some of the figures lurking in the background were starting to get written about. Back in January I’d begun seeing flyers stapled to telephone poles around town: punk is coming. I bought the first copy of the magazine for fifty cents at Bleecker Bob’s not long after. A month later, the first copy of New York Rocker came out, and I bought that too. When I got off my night shift at the liquor store I’d walk over to CBGB’s and get trashed and dance. I’d take my camera and shoot whatever was going on, speed, smack, sex, broken teeth, broken bottles, zip knives. People laughing while blood ran down their face, or someone else’s. Some people didn’t like getting their picture taken while having sex or shooting up. I got good at throwing a punch then running. I started wearing these pointy-toed black cowboy boots that weren’t good for dancing, but I could kick the shit out of someone if he lunged for me and be gone before his knees hit the floor. I loved the rush of adrenaline and rage. It was as good as sex for me.

“Scary Neary!” Jeannie shouted when she saw me coming. By then people were getting used to me. And other people were starting to take pictures too. Punk and New York Rocker didn’t create the scene, but they gave it a name, and we all knew where it lived.

By now I’d made some contacts in the city’s photography scene. I brought my photos to the director of the Lumen Gallery, and he agreed to give me a small show in the back room. Three years earlier, Robert Mapplethorpe had begun to win a following among Warhol acolytes and some prescient artworld types. The same thing was happening now with the downtown scene. I sent out a hundred xeroxed invitations to everyone I vaguely knew and scattered another hundred at the clubs where I hung out. I made sure all the musicians knew they were featured in the photos. Then I bought myself a bottle of Taittinger Brut, got smashed, and went to my opening.

It was the right place at the right time. “Dead Girls” bridged the gap between two camps, photography and punk, my staged self-portraits and documentary images of the downtown scene. The dreamy kitsch of photos like “St. Eulalia” melded into the shock of seeing Jeannie nod out while the lead singer of Anubis Uprising masturbated onto her face. I could hear the buzz as I stumbled into the back room at Lumen.

I was a hit, and I wasn’t yet twenty years old.

who are the mystery girls? ran the Voice headline a week after my show opened. cassandra neary’s punk provocations. They used a detail of “St. Eulalia,” cropped so you could see my bare foot and the Canal Street sign. It looked like a crime-scene photo. This wasn’t a bad take, since I was being castigated in the press for everything from pornography to drug dealing.

I didn’t care. I was safe behind my camera at CBGB’s. I loved the rituals of processing film. I had an instinctive feel for it, how long it would take for an image to bleed from the neg onto emulsion paper. I loved playing with the negs, manipulating light and shadow and time until the world looked just right, until everything in front of me was just the way I wanted it to be.

But best of all I loved being alone in the dark with the infrared bulb, that incandescent flare when I switched the lights back on and there it was: a black-and-white print: a body, an eye, a tongue, a cunt, a prick, a hand, a tree; drunk kids racing through a side street with their eyes white like they’d seen a ghost with a gun.

This is what I lived for, me alone with these things. Not just knowing I’d seen them and taken the picture but feeling like I’d made them, like they’d never have existed without me. Nothing is like that: not sex, not drugs, not booze or sunrise off the most beautiful place you can imagine. Nothing is like knowing you can make something like that real. I felt like I was fucking God.

You read a lot of crap about photographic craftsmanship in those days, and technique; but you didn’t hear shit about vision. I knew that I had an eye, a gift for seeing where the ripped edges of the world begin to peel away and something else shows through. What that whole downtown scene was about, at least for a little while, was people grabbing at that frayed seam and just yanking to see what was behind it; to see what was left when everything else was torn away.

My story was picked up by the Daily News. Then the Sunday Times Magazine interviewed me for a very brief piece. And there were the “Dead Girls” photos, and there was me, smoking a Kent and wearing beat-up black jeans and red Keds and a MC5 T-shirt filigreed with cigarette burns, my hair a dirty blond halo around a pale face with no makeup. I looked like what your mother dreams about in the middle of the night when you don’t come home.

I was actually a little worried about what my father would think. He finally called me after the Times Magazine story ran. He made it clear that he had no interest in seeing the show—a relief to both of us—but he also wanted to make sure I wasn’t in any legal trouble.

“Anything comes up, call Ken Wilburn over in Queens,” he said and gave me the number. “He represents some guys, they’ll help you out if you get into trouble. I don’t know how the hell you can make money out of this stuff, Cass, but I hope to God you do. Especially if you need Wilburn.”

I never did need to call Wilburn. But I didn’t make much money, either. The Times article did its business, and all the photos sold; but I had only set the price at seventy-five bucks a pop. Jeannie bought most of them—God knows where she found the money—but about six months later they were destroyed when her apartment flooded. The girlfriend of Anubis Rising’s lead singer bought the picture of him with Jeannie then proceeded to set it on fire with her Bic lighter in the gallery, screaming “Fucking cunt!” until someone threw her out. John Holstrom bought a picture that had Johnny Thunders in the corner.

And the last photo went to Sam Wagstaff, which is how I got a book deal. I’d met a literary agent at my opening, a petite red-haired woman in a red latex miniskirt named Linda Kalman.

“This is very interesting,” she said, peering at “Psychopomp.” She was older than most of the people at the show, in her mid-thirties, and wore expensive gold jewelry and stiletto-heeled boots. I pegged her for a socialite slumming among the barbarians. She glanced at the crowd drinking white wine in plastic cups, Jeannie and her friends hooting raucously as a reporter took notes. “Do you know which one’s the artist?”

I dropped my cigarette and stubbed it out with my sneaker. “That would be me.”

“Really.” Her eyes narrowed. She gave me a small smile then extended her hand. “Linda Kalman. I’m working on a book right now with Chris Makos. Do you know him?”

“Yeah,” I lied and shook her hand. “Cass Neary.”

“Cass. Are you with a gallery?”

“No.”

“Mmmm.” She looked at me sideways, opened a little red clutch purse. “Well. Here. Take my card. Call me. Let me know who buys your pictures. And good luck.”

As it turned out, she got in touch with me when she read the piece in New York Rocker.

“So.” I could hear her drag deeply on a cigarette on the other end of the line. “Have you sold any photographs yet? Do you know who bought them?”

When I named Wagstaff, she sucked her breath in sharply. “Sam Wagstaff?”

“Yeah.”

“You know who he is, right?”

“Yeah.” A collector and curator with deep pockets; Mapplethorpe’s lover, though I’d heard they were on the outs.

“Well, Cass. Are you interested in putting a book together? Because I have an editor who’s very interested in what’s happening downtown. She can get someone to write an introductory essay, I think she said Macey Claire-Marsden from the Eastman Foundation might do it. It’s not huge money, but it would be good exposure for you.”

She hesitated. “I think you should do it. Not just for me. This kind of opportunity doesn’t come that often, Cass. Not for someone as young as you. You don’t want to blow it.”

“Let me think about it.” I didn’t say anything, didn’t hang up. I counted to five then said, “Yeah, okay. Sure. I’ll do it.”

But you know what?

I blew it anyway.

2

A year later Dead Girls came out and got good press. Good reviews, good coverage, and the first printing sold through, which for a fifty-dollar coffee-table book by an unknown twenty-one-year-old photographer was pretty decent. This was back when you’d see books by Helmut Newton and David Hamilton in the front windows of Brentano’s and Rizzoli Books.

Now you started seeing Dead Girls too. I was written up in Interview and WWW. Word got out that I was funny: I got on the radio and even had a fleeting appearance on the Merv Griffin Show.

But I was fucking up big time. I showed up at interviews drunk. I insulted people. I came on to the women hired to talk to me, which pissed them off, and pissed off the guys too. A reporter referred to me as a lesbian photographer, and I reamed him out about it when I saw him a few nights later. I wasn’t a lesbian; I wasn’t straight. When it comes to relationships, I’m an equal opportunity destroyer. I fucked whoever I wanted to. Women just seemed able to put up with me better than men did. For a little while, anyway. The Soho Weekly News did a story on what a mess I was, quoting liberally from the interview I’d given them. I thought I was a fucking rock star, I thought I was Iggy fucking Pop; but no one was paying to watch me fall off the stage.

Dead Girls never went into a second printing. Punk had crested; the violence of the scene made industry people nervous about even using the word “punk.” They started slapping stickers on new EPs and 45s that said this is power pop music! Farfisa organs began to dull the edge of guitars. Kids wearing skinny ties and wraparound shades were everywhere now. The scene got bigger, hipper, imploded then exploded. There were celebrities and celebrity suicides, and celebrity photographers to cover them. When I saw a seventy-five-dollar ripped T-shirt in a Fiorucci boutique with a brace of black-leather-collared miniature poodles tied to a meter outside, I knew that was it.

Punk’s ugly little glittering perfect moment had ended. And so had mine.

I knocked around the city, at loose ends. People saw me, they recognized me, the skinny girl with ragged blond hair and chewed-up nails, striped boatneck shirt and shaky hands. But no one wanted to be reminded who I was, and after a few years nobody remembered.

I still had the apartment on Hudson Street. I got a job working in the stockroom at the Strand Bookstore. This signaled to everyone that I was truly finished.

One other thing happened back then. On my twenty-third birthday I was down on the Bowery, leaving CBGB’s, late, as usual. I was drunk, as usual. I was barefoot—I’d been dancing and left my shoes inside, even though it was late October and the streets were cold. I was alone, until a car pulled up alongside a broken streetlamp. Someone was repeating my name, a low, insistent voice. Piecing it together later, I think he must have said “Miss, miss.”

I heard Cass. Cass.

I stopped and turned. The car door was already open. There was a knife. It happened fast.

I don’t remember much. Or no, I remember a lot, but it’s all scattered, like those discarded photos you find strewn outside an Instant Photo booth.

This is what I see: a burned-out vacant lot. Me on my knees. A cut on my bare heel where I stepped on broken glass. Blood above my pubis. Blood and semen on my thigh. Me running across chewed-up asphalt. A man’s head protruding from a car window. Me screaming in the middle of the street. A police car.

I see these things, but I don’t really remember them. I remember floating above the vacant lot and looking down on two shadows, one moving, the other still. I remember a car. There was a knife.

They asked me, did I fight?

I didn’t fight. I couldn’t describe him, or the car. My mind had been wiped clean. I don’t talk about it much. It happened; I’m not in denial. I’m not ashamed.

But I know what that other set of photos would look like. The drunk young woman, the leather miniskirt, tight T-shirt, no bra, no shoes. That street, four am, late October. A bisexual punk who took pictures of dead boys. I didn’t fight. My whole life since then, the only thing that matters to me is those three words.

I didn’t fight.

You’ll wonder what it’s like to live with this. I’ll tell you. It’s like having a razor blade clamped between your teeth: you move your mouth too much, your tongue, you smile or talk or kiss someone, you cut yourself open. You could drown if you swallowed that much blood. You could fucking bleed to death.

3

I shut down after that. I didn’t clean up my act, just went through the motions of behaving like a normal person, punched the clock, blew my paycheck at clubs and bars and bookstores. My dealings with most people had always been so ephemeral that no one took much notice when I stopped making even cursory efforts at emotional connection. I made no attempt to get a better job and little attempt to be civil to the Strand’s customers. I had no interest even in getting promoted to stockroom manager. I went to work and opened packages and sorted books. I stole books as well, until store security got too tight. After a few years I got a tattoo incorporating the scrawl of scar tissue above my pubic bone into a frayed red banner with the words too tough to die emblazoned on it. I still took pictures, going to downtown gigs and occasionally selling my stuff to the Soho Weekly News. When no one else would buy them, I gave my pictures to a D.C. fanzine called Vintage Violence in exchange for copies that I sold for a dollar a pop.

I continued to photograph things that moved me, which were mostly things that did not move. Pigeons flattened upon the curb; a corpse washed up on the shore of the East River, flesh like soft gray flannel folded into the mud; a stripper at a Broadway club sleeping between acts, her exposed breast like a red balloon where the silicone had leaked beneath the skin. I liked to think of my talent as something I’d honed to a point, a spike I could drive right into the eye of the viewer. You’d think that the 1980s vogue for decadence, for breaking taboos, would have created an audience for these pictures, but time and again they were dismissed. Too grisly, then too evocative of others’ work—Mapplethorpe, Weegee, Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency—then ultimately not evocative enough.

“It’s too raw,” Linda told me when, after six years, I had finally put together another portfolio, enough pictures for another book. “It’s too much like being right inside someone’s head.”

I stared at her, the late afternoon sun in her uptown office, her gold jewelry and Armani jacket. “It is inside someone’s head, Linda. It’s the inside of my head.”

She pushed the portfolio across her desk back toward me. “I know,” she said. “Maybe you should show them to someone else, Cass.”

I left. No one else wanted me.

Twenty years passed. I participated in a few group shows at hole-in-the-wall galleries. Now and then someone would buy one of my photos, and there was the occasional mention of Dead Girls, usually as a footnote to work by Cindy Sherman. When the time came, I didn’t switch to digital. It wouldn’t have been hard. Light is light, you just have to know how to find it, where to look for that slant of shadow, that moment when someone’s eyes first open and you can’t be certain if they’re dead or asleep. I could have ditched my old Konica, just like I could have gotten another job or bought better clothes or gotten involved with someone.

This is what you have to understand about me: I could have changed. I didn’t want to. I fucked people I’d meet at clubs: men, women. Nothing ever lasted long. Ravaged as I was, I was still good-looking enough. But I was a bad drunk. Eventually I could walk into most cafes in the East Village and watch every person hide behind a newspaper or laptop.

Despite that, in 1998 I got involved with a married woman named Christine Conti, a professor who specialized in the French Nouvelle Vague. She was thin, dark, chic, emotionally intense, a recovering alcoholic with issues. We were a good match sexually, but we argued a lot. After a while we argued constantly. I drank too much. Eventually Christine left her husband and got her own place, down near Battery Park, but it still didn’t work out between us, not really. She said I wasn’t a fully integrated person. I refused to quit drinking. I refused to go to an AA meeting. She refused to leave me.

Then I hit her. She called the police but then said she wouldn’t press charges if I promised to get help. I suggested maybe she was the one who needed help, for staying with me, but I went. We saw a counselor. I sat there while Christine threw out words like predatory, detached, obsessive. The counselor came back with dissociative amnesia, depersonalization, affective disorder. The counselor recommended a psychiatrist, who put me on a regimen of lithium and antidepressants.

I took the medications for a week. They made me feel as though my brain had been shot full of strychnine. I refused to ever take them again. The doctor suggested other drugs, but I never went back to her.

“This is as integrated as my personality gets,” I told Christine. “So get used to it or get out of here.”

Christine, for whatever reason, continued to see me.

We didn’t fight as much, but I still drank. My few other friends lived lives less marginal than my own. I think they kept me around as an eidolon of the sort of bleak bohemianism they’d lost—still listening to the same old music, still going to work with a hangover, still sleeping in my ratty rent-controlled apartment on a piece of plywood with a foam mattress on top.

Finally even Christine had enough. Gradually, I stopped seeing even my few remaining friends. I stopped going to clubs to hear live music. I shot fewer and fewer rolls of film and lost the few contacts I’d kept in the dwindling rock press. When I didn’t have enough money to buy the photography books I wanted, I’d steal them.

Then Christine died. She’d called really early that morning and left a message: she was meeting someone for lunch at Windows on the World. Would I meet her for coffee first? We could talk things over. It might be better. It had been a long time. Maybe she was starting to get over some things. Maybe I had changed.

I hadn’t changed. Not enough, anyway. I erased the message and didn’t call her back. A few hours later the sirens started, the smoke. The sky was ice-blue. The phone rang, Phil Cohen screaming into my ear from Hoboken.

“Do you see it, Cass, do you see it?”

I looked out the window.

“Oh fuck,” I yelled and dropped the phone.

When I stuck my head out, eddies of ash and paper were showering onto Hudson Street, the stink of jet fuel. People stared up with mouths open like they were catching snowflakes on their tongues. Shouting.

It was like being inside a breaking glass. Christine was already dead, though I didn’t know that yet, didn’t know she had gone down there anyway, early, thinking I might show up. Thinking I might have changed. You never know.

I lifted my face to where a single white contrail blurred into the rain of black grit and glass and ember. A charred fragment of paper fell onto the back of my hand and stuck there, damp, warm. I peeled it from my skin and read it.

For when first we

I smoothed the scrap against my palm then placed it upon my tongue. It tasted of petroleum, scorched metal. I swallowed it: a moment later began to vomit uncontrollably.

No one ever contacted me about a memorial service for her. I wouldn’t have gone, anyway.

The wars began. I drank even more. For a while I saw flyers downtown with her face on them—her ex-husband and parents put them up. Every time I saw one I wanted to scream. I wanted to kill someone. Finally I began ripping them down, ignoring the angry looks I got from people on the street. Sometimes, alone in my apartment, I did scream. She was gone, it was all gone, there was nothing I could have done, nothing anyone could ever have done about anything. Why the fuck was I the only one who understood that?

That dead light that comes in late afternoon in winter, that light that makes everything look like it was cut from black ice—I could feel that light on me in the middle of summer; in the middle of the night. For a few months I got headaches, a blinding pain in my right eye, as though a spark had burned my retina. The ophthalmologist found nothing, but I could feel it, the hole left by a molten wire, a bit of ash or ember. I stared at my eye in the mirror, looking for a scar or scratched cornea, but there was nothing. It got so I had to drink three shots of bourbon just to get the nerve to pick up my camera.

I tried to forget I had ever been involved with Christine, or anyone else. Like the song goes, you can’t put your arms around a memory. I was forty-eight, and my life had been over for decades. That was when Phil Cohen called me about Aphrodite Kamestos.

4

Phil was an old crony from the East Village who now lived in Hoboken, a one-time drug dealer and music promoter who did freelance work for various print magazines and websites, along with writing a blog called Early Death. The rise of hip-hop and crap pop had reduced his job security significantly, but his addiction to speed had left him with admirable work habits, and he still got me meth or black beauties when I needed them. He seldom slept, he wrote compulsively, and he was constantly, obsessively, in touch with anyone who might give him work. If the city were to be flattened by a nuclear bomb, Phil would be scrabbling in the ashes, sending up smoke signals to other survivors in Hoboken. He resembled Don Knotts circa The Incredible Mister Limpet, only not quite as good-looking.

Still, Phil had always looked out for me, with mixed results. I ran into him at a coffee shop one rainy morning in October.

“Hey hey hey. Cassandra Android, how you doing?”

“Phil. It’s fucking great to be alive.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Hey, look—I was going to call you. Got a sec?”

We squeezed behind a table by the window. I sipped my coffee and stared at him. A few months ago Phil had shaved his head. He’d immediately realized this was a bad move and tried growing it back, with the result that he now looked like what you’d get if Edvard Munch had painted Chia pets.

“So what’s up?” I asked.

“So I think I got a job for you. I know this guy, editor for Mojo. That’s a London music magazine. Print mag, not a webzine. He wants to do a story with photos. I thought of you, Cass. It’s perfect for you, a real Scary Neary story.”

“I know what Mojo is,” I said. “Perfect for me? As in, ‘Underemployed Losers and the People Who Hate Them?’”

“That’s my girl! Close, very close! You know Aphrodite Kamestos?’”

“Do I know her? Or do I know who she is?”

“Well, either.” Phil’s eyes widened. “You don’t actually know her, do you? No, of course not,” he said and quickly went on. “This editor, he wants to do some kind of old-time photography feature. 1950s, ‘60s … you know, Avedon, Diane Arbus, that kind of shit. I was telling him how I’d actually been up at Aphrodite Kamestos’s place once. It was wild. So he wants a piece on her.”

“So? You know her, you do it.”

“I don’t really know her,” Phil admitted. “This guy she was involved with, he and I did a little business, back in the day. I still hear from him every couple of years. So I emailed him and asked could he maybe get me an in with Aphrodite Kamestos.”

“Is she even still alive? She must be, what? A hundred?”

“Nah. Maybe seventy. But well preserved. She’s got this place up in Maine, an island. There was a little commune there, that’s how I got involved. I was their private dope peddler for a couple months. So I told this editor I have a contact, I could probably get someone up there again. The money’s pretty good. Plus you’d be paid in pounds—good exchange rate.”

I stared at my coffee and considered throwing it in his face. “Why didn’t you suggest he do a story on me, Phil?”

“He said the fucking 1960s, Cass!” Phil looked hurt. “Christ, I’m trying to do you a favor!”

“Oh, right. A Phil Cohen favor—I almost forgot.”

“I pitched you big time to this guy, Cass. I told him no one else on earth is as well qualified for this particular job as you are.”

“Why the fuck would you say that?” I finished my coffee and pitched the cup into a trash can. “Again: why aren’t you doing it?”

“I’m not a photographer!”

“So why doesn’t this guy send a staff photographer?”

“Because I guess Aphrodite wanted someone they’ve never heard of. She’s, like, crazy or paranoid or something. She wants an unknown.”

He pinched his lower lip between thumb and forefinger. I started to laugh.

“An unknown? What’d she say? ‘I need a total unknown—I know, let’s get Cassandra Neary!’”

“Pretty much.”

“Shit.”

I sat and said nothing. After a moment, Phil shrugged. “Look, I was just trying to help you out some. I mean, she specifically asked for you, God knows why. But it could be an interesting gig. Remember how they used to say if you tipped the country on its side, everything loose would roll into California? Well, it’s like they tipped it up again, only now everything that was still loose rolled back up into Maine. And these islands—Cass, it’s your kind of place. ‘The old weird America’—this is, like, the new weird America. You oughta think about it.”

I sighed, then looked at him. “Really? She really asked for me?”

Phil shifted in his seat, staring at his cell phone. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “She did. Go figure.”

“Okay. I’ll think about it.”

Phil glanced at his watch. “You’ve got, uh, five minutes.”

“What?”

“I told the editor I’d call him back by three—three his time. Five hour difference. And it’s almost ten.”

“But I can’t—I mean, how’d you even know you’d run into me?”

“I didn’t. I was gonna call you—hey, I swear it!”

“But—Jesus, Phil. What, has this editor told her I’m coming?”

He shook his head. “No. I did. I promised I’d send you. Listen, don’t think about it, okay? Just say yes, I can set it up. You got a license, right? A credit card? You’re not a total fucking Luddite, right? You can still rent a car and drive?”

“Yeah.” I gazed brooding out at the street. The rain had turned fallen leaves and blown newspapers to gray sludge. “Shit. Can they give me an advance?”

Phil looked as though I’d asked him to cook a baby.

“Well, is there a kill fee?”

“I’ll get you a kill fee. If it doesn’t go down, Cass, I’ll pay your kill fee out of my own goddam pocket, how’s that?”

“Tell me again why you’re doing this?”

Phil ran a hand across his stubbled scalp. “Aw, man. You know, Cass, you are so fucking hardassed, you know that? I really did think it would be a great gig for you. The legendary Aphrodite Kamestos, the semilegendary Cassandra Neary—I mean, you could get close to her, you know that? I saw her place, that island. What you always used to talk about, all that bleak shit you like? Well, this is it. All these rocks, and the ocean, the sky.”

He sighed. “And, I dunno, there was something about her. When I met you—you reminded me of her. You know?”

“The forgotten Cassandra Neary,” I said. “The never-fucking-happened Cassandra Neary.”

“Forget it.” He glared at me, then said, “You know, I should know better by now. To try and do you a fucking favor.” He picked up his phone. “I’ll find someone else.”

I shook my head. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it. I need the money. I need to get out of town.” I glanced outside again. “So are you going to call me, or what?”

He opened the cell phone. “I’ll call this editor. Then I’ll call this other guy in Maine. I’ll get him to set stuff up, bring you out in a boat or something. Then I’ll call you.”

“Well, that’s suitably vague.” I stood. “So I guess I’ll wait for you to call me, or for some guy to do some stuff, or something.”

Phil nodded. “Great. Hey, aren’t you going to thank me?”

“I’ll thank you when I get paid, how’s that? I’ll take you to dinner.”

I leaned over to kiss his unkempt scalp.

“Thanks, Phil,” I said, and walked home.

5

You’ll think i was leaving the city because I needed to escape from grief, or guilt, or fear: all the reasons people fled in those years, and a lot of them escaped to the same place I was heading.

But the truth is that when Christine had called me that morning, it had been almost two years since we’d last spoken. She couldn’t bear the sound of my voice, she’d told me: it was like talking to a dead person. Or no, she went on, it was like that nickname Phil Cohen had given me. It was like talking to an android, something that mimicked human speech and affect but wasn’t actually alive.

“The terrible thing is, I really loved you, Cass,” she’d said on that last message. “I love you now.”

I knew she wanted me to meet her, to say I loved her too. I knew she was giving me a chance to save her—to save myself, she would have said—but I couldn’t lie. I can’t lie about that kind of stuff. This isn’t a virtue. It’s a flaw, just as my seeing the true world is not a gift but a terrible thing. I’ve lived my entire life expecting the worst, knowing it will happen, seeing it happen. Making it happen, people used to think, then photographing it and making other people see it too.

People think they want the truth. But the truth is that people want to be reassured that it’s only there that the horror lies, there on the other side of the television, the computer screen, the world. No one wants to look on the charred remains of a human corpse lying at their feet. No one wants to look on unalloyed grief and horror and loss. I don’t always want to myself, but I won’t deny that I do, and I won’t deny that my photos show you what’s really there. I can’t look away.

6

I had vacation time saved up at the Strand, so I gave notice that I’d be gone for a few weeks. They were surprised, but they also seemed relieved that I was doing something normal—it was the first time I’d taken off in about five years. I spent most of my last days there ferreting through the stacks, looking for anything on Kamestos.

I didn’t find anything, except for that one iconic photograph of her in an Aperture volume on 20th century photographers, a black-and-white portrait taken by her husband, the poet Stephen Haselton, shortly after their marriage. I knew there were other images: a pencil drawing by Jean Cocteau that was on the dustjacket of the original edition of Mors, a sketch by Brion Gysin that looked like Jean-Paul Marat’s death mask.

I assumed that when I googled her, I’d learn more. There was some stuff online, including Susan Sontag’s repudiation of Mors, but little in the way of biographical information except for a thumbnail entry on Wikipedia. Despite her name, Aphrodite was as American as I was, a third-generation Greek who’d grown up in Chicago. But there were no details about her childhood, and only a fleeting mention of her marriage to Haselton.

I don’t know anyone who looked less like her namesake. Aphrodite Kamestos was beautiful in the way a violent storm is beautiful, if you’re watching it from a safe distance. In his photo, Haselton must have caught her unawares. Her head is half-turned, her dark hair falling back from her face, her lips parted and eyebrows slightly raised. Her eyes are startlingly black against her white skin, and the light glances off her cheekbones. The gaze she shoots at the camera is direct yet impenetrable. She looks unafraid, but also unguarded, caught in that fraction of a second before she could compose her face into welcome or annoyance or desire or attack.

It was a strikingly beautiful face, but it didn’t make me think of the Goddess of Love. It made me think of Medusa, someone whose beauty would be turned upon anyone stupid enough to mess with her. That was the power of the photograph. It didn’t make you wonder what happened to her. It made you wonder what happened to the guy who took the picture. It’s almost anticlimactic to know that he killed himself in 1976.

My Google search turned up some of her own images as well, but that was such a depressing experience I wished I hadn’t bothered. I hate looking at bad reproductions of great photographs, and these online images were uniformly lousy. Generation loss—that’s what happens when you endlessly reproduce a photographic image. You lose authenticity, the quality deteriorates in each subsequent generation that’s copied from the original negative, and the original itself decays with time, so that every new image is a more degraded version of what you started with. Same thing with analog recordings. After endless reproduction, you end up with nothing but static and hiss.

This doesn’t happen so much with digital imaging, but what I found online had been scanned from a 1970 pirate reprint of Kamestos’s only two books, Mors and Deceptio Visus, first published in the late 1950s. Anyone who picked up that pirate volume could be forgiven for wondering how Aphrodite’s photos ever saw the light of day. Unfortunately, those horrible reproductions were what had filtered onto the web. They were nothing like the images in the original editions of Mors and Deceptio Visus—I knew that because I owned both books—and those, of course, would be nothing like the original prints.

Her greatest images were vistas—islands, mountains. Highly saturated blues and violets and magentas detailing an impossibly beautiful, distant archipelago that resembled a landscape by Magritte: elusive, irrecoverable. I couldn’t imagine those places were real.

Only of course they were—the pictures were taken in 1956, decades before computers made it possible to twist the world into a pretty shape. That was the year Kodak started hyping the Type C color process. Type C enabled photographers to produce their own color negs without relying so heavily on a lab, and there was some interesting color work done then by people like Nina Leen and Brian Brake. I don’t know if Kamestos was using Type C, but she would have been picking up on some of the press it was generating. You can see in her husband’s photo how those eyes still burned, though her hands looked as though they could handle a garrote as easily as a camera.

It was a suspicion fed when Mors appeared: a catalog of places where terrible things had happened. Suicide, a murder, sexual torture. These weren’t like Weegee’s crime scenes, or Bourke-White’s photos of Buchenwald. Kamestos’s pictures lacked immediacy or historical import; their sense of transgression was visceral because it was so detached. When it first appeared, Mors was dismissed as a form of malign spirit photography, and the 1970 pirate volume only made things worse, with its over-the-top intro by Kenneth Anger. It would be decades before that book’s influence was acknowledged by people like Sally Mann or Joel-Peter Witkin. And me, of course. But no one was listening to me.

The thought of seeing those original photographs is what set my heart pumping. More than the thought of money or escaping the city. More even than the notion that Aphrodite Kamestos had asked specifically for me, or that if I went up there, I might shoot some decent work myself again.

Though I’ll admit, I was curious—more than curious—about what the hell had happened to her. A nervous breakdown? Failure of nerve? Failed marriage? Her husband had been a minor poet, a kind of fringe person in the Beat movement, and my understanding was that he’d been gay. Kamestos met Haselton in 1955, and they married just a few weeks later. As a wedding gift, his wealthy father gave the couple a house on an island off the coast of Maine.

And that is where I was now headed: Paswegas Island.

I’d never known its name before. The thought gave me a weird feeling. It was like I was going off on some strange, creepy pilgrimage; like a Nabokov fan setting out to find the motels where Humbert Humbert slept with Lolita.

Because Paswegas was where Aphrodite shot the dreamscapes in Deceptio Visus. It was a place I’d thought and dreamed about for almost thirty years, a place I’d never quite believed was real. You know how you can look at a painting or picture and wish you could walk into it and just disappear? That’s what I’d always wanted to do with those photos. Now I’d have my chance.

The night after I ran into Phil, I called my father. We hadn’t spoken for a while, and as always, I could tell he was relieved to hear my voice: I wasn’t dead.

“Cassandra. Good to hear from you. Everything all right?”

I told him about my conversation with Phil. “Didn’t you used to go up there?” I asked. “Fishing or something?”

“Sure. Fishing and hunting. Up in the Allagash. I used to go with your grandfather. We’d stop in Freeport in the middle of the night and ring the bell at the little L.L. Bean store, and they’d let us in so we could buy our gear. Beautiful place, Maine. I haven’t been since your mother and I made a few trips down east,” he said, his voice suddenly sad. “That was before you were born.”

“Do you know how to get there? I’m renting a car.”

“Maine?” I heard the rattle of ice in his highball glass. “Sure. Drive to the New Hampshire border. Then turn right.”

We spoke a little longer, catching up. Catching up with him, I mean. I had nothing else to report.

“Well, Cassandra, I wish you luck,” he said at last. “Anything comes up, call Ken Wilburn. He’s in South Salem now. Here, I’ll give you his number—”

I wrote it down then said good-bye. Two days later I received a check for a thousand dollars, along with a note.

buy yourself some gum boots. love, dad

I blew a big chunk of the money on a pair of Hedi Slimane drainpipe jeans. I do have my little luxuries, and I figured the investment would pay off if I actually sold a story. The rest I stashed in my wallet.

That night I took out my copies of Deceptio Visus and Mors. I’d bought them cheap in a used bookstore in the city in 1978, when Kamestos’s reputation was in deep decline. Now I thumbed through Deceptio Visus, hoping to find some hint as to what the island might be like in real life, or where.

It was like trying to get a compass reading from a postcard. So I went back online, poking around till I hit www.maineaway.com, Your News for The Paswegas Peninsula And Beyond! The site banner showed a scroll of cloudless sky and a windjammer racing across a cobalt sea. There were lots of pictures of romping Labrador retrievers, autumn foliage, children eating corn on the cob and lobster, snow-dusted spruce, healthy-looking couples in canoes, loons and moose.

The headlines told a different story. A rash of teen suicides; support groups for people addicted to Oxy-C and vicodin; two big heroin busts. Another bomb scare at the high school. Another confirmed case of West Nile Virus. A missing persons alert for someone named Martin Graves, last seen August 29th. The police log listed three arrests for domestic assault and another for possession of crack cocaine. A body washed up in Burnt Harbor had been identified as a fisherman lost at sea the previous winter. More bodies were missing from another boat presumed lost in a recent storm. There was also a feature, “The Facts About Bear Baiting,” and notice of a Benefit Bean Supper for the Prout family, who had just lost their home to a fire. Someone was still looking for her husband, last seen driving home to Machias after work at Wal-Mart a month before.

So much for Vacationland, I thought, and went to bed.

7

It was the second week of November; the beginning of the Maine winter. I was naive enough to think it was still fall.

For a couple of months I’d saved a small stash of crystal meth. Becoming an addict takes a certain amount of organization to dedicate yourself to your need to get high. In this as in other matters I’d lacked ambition. Crank was intermittently fun and useful, but I never could make a serious commitment to it. The afternoon before I left, I picked up my Rent-a-Wreck then went home and packed a map, the directions Phil had given me, a few clothes and my copies of Deceptio Visus and Mors, my old Konica, a few cassette tapes. I went to the fridge and opened the freezer, took out the small Ziploc bag of crystal and another, larger bag. In this was a piece of paper with blurred writing on it—july 2001—along with two plastic canisters of Tri-X film. The date was when I’d bought them; it was also the last time I’d done any serious shooting. They went alongside my camera in the chewed-up leather satchel I’d had since high school.

Even traveling light, there was room for more. Problem was, I didn’t have much more. I had an old computer, but no laptop, no cell phone. No digital camera or iPod. I never had much spare cash, plus I just hated the stuff on principle: it made everything too easy.

“You’re a fucking Luddite Looney Tune,” Phil said once. “You got a microwave in that dump of yours?”

I shook my head. “I don’t eat.”

Now I went over to my old vinyl records and pulled out a portfolio wedged between The Idiot and Fear And Whiskey. It was filled with plastic sleeves holding dozens of black-and-white 8x10s. Not the pictures from Dead Girls; the stuff I’d been working on after that, the photos Linda Kalman had turned down. I still couldn’t bring myself to look at any of them, just stared at the cover sheet, a white page with my name typed on it and the title I’d given the collection: Hard To Be Human Again. I put it back, turned and found my bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Very early the next morning, while it was still dark and I was still drunk, I began to drive north.

The buzz from the Jack Daniel’s got me about an hour out of the city before it wore off. Just past the wooded exurban badlands where I’d grown up, I pulled over and snorted the remaining blue-white crystals from my stash, then shot back onto the interstate.

At some point I must’ve stopped for gas, but I didn’t have another fully conscious thought until I looked up, blinking, and saw brilliant sun, the span of a bridge before me and a broad, glittering blue sheet of water below. A sign at the highway’s edge read leaving new hampshire. I was halfway over the bridge, reading another sign—welcome to maine, the way life should be—before I began to wonder what had happened to Connecticut and Massachusetts.

That was my crossing into Maine. What little thought I’d ever given to the place was faintly contemptuous: Vacationland, snow. I didn’t understand yet how this place works on you, how it splinters your sensorium. All I knew was that it was midmorning of a November day, and I was fucking freezing.

Somehow it had never crossed my mind that it might be cold. Back in the city it was Indian summer. Here it felt like midwinter. Even with the heat cranked, the little Ford Taurus exuded only a thread of warmth that smelled of antifreeze. The rear windows wouldn’t close completely, and frigid air whistled through.

By the time I was fifty miles north of Portland my hands were numb. I pulled over and rummaged through my bag, pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt, a moth-eaten black cashmere sweater, my battered motorcycle jacket. I replaced my sneakers with my old black cowboy boots. This was my entire wardrobe, except for socks and underwear, another T-shirt, and a backup pair of black jeans nearly indistinguishable from the ones I’d blown a small fortune on.

I had no gloves, no boots save my ancient Tony Lamas, no winter coat. Over the years, I’d spent a few Thanksgivings with my aunt’s family in Boston, chilly days, nights warmed by firelight and Irish Mist. I figured Maine would be like that. I was wrong.

I drove for another hour before forcing myself to stop and eat at a convenience store. A table full of old men in flannel shirts and Carhart jackets glanced up when I entered then returned to low conversation. There was a sheet of orange poster board behind the cash register, two columns neatly written in Magic Marker:

Jeff Stonestreet Buck

Missy Weed Buck

Brandon Johnston Doe

Barbara Johnston Buck

Wallace Tun Doe

“Hunting season?” I asked as I handed over my money.

The girl behind the counter stared at me. “That’s right.”

I bought a pair of heavy yellow work gloves. They made my hands feel clumsy and thumbless, and they weren’t even very warm. But they were better than nothing. I bought a beer, too, then started for the door. There were a bunch of notices tacked to it: snowplowing, firewood, Little Munchkins childcare, along with numerous photocopies for Lost Cats. Beneath the missing cats, someone had taped another photocopy, of a young man in a Nike T-shirt and woolen watch cap.

HAVE YOU SEEN MARTIN GRAVES?

LAST SEEN AUGUST 29 SHAKER HARBOR

REWARD FOR INFORMATION

PLEASE CALL 247-9141

I returned to the car, sat inside and drank my beer, watching as two guys in orange vests wrestled a buck from their pickup and weighed it on a hook outside the store.

“Supposed to have snow up to Calais,” said one of them.

His friend lit a cigarette. “Good place for it.”

I set my empty bottle on the ground and drove off.

The road began to veer east. After two wrong turns, I realized the MapQuest directions Phil had given me were useless. I pulled over and opened my map.

On the page, the road appeared to hug the coast. In reality the sea seemed distant and ghostly, hoving in and out of sight like mist. Now and then I saw the raw wood scaffolding of a McMansion-in-progress, its mammoth exoskeleton dwarfing the trailers and modular homes beside it, or mobile-home churches with signs reading don’t wait for 6 strong men to take you to church. to be almost saved is to be totally lost.

But after a while, even these reminders of the encroaching world disappeared. I finally found the turnoff and passed through a town consisting of a general store with a single gas pump, a shuttered antique shop, and an abandoned gas station. Two boys in baggy pants and T-shirts were riding a Toro lawn mower down the middle of the street. The boys pulled over to let me by, and I turned onto a pocked road with a sign that said paswegas county line and another marked burnt harbor.

That was when I really began to feel like I was driving off the end of the earth. Now, at last, there was the ocean. The coast fell away and the sea opened like a huge blue eye, lashed with black islands and rocky outcroppings. I switched the car radio on and picked up a weak signal that seemed to come and go with the waves, an alternative station playing snatches of odd music, requests, pleas for information about lost pets.

And that light! It gave a merciless clarity to everything, clapboards the color of dirty snow, trailers banked with trash bags, pyramids of lobster traps hauled out for the winter. Spruce and pines that looked like they’d been knapped from flint. The orange flare of a hunter on the horizon, the woods behind him black, endless.

It was as if layers of ash had been blown away until the true sky was revealed, a sky so pure a blue that it no longer seemed a color at all but an emotion, a desolation that tipped over into joy. The cold was like that too, the numbness in my gloved hands no longer something I felt but something I was, a character trait like stubbornness or generosity. I could see the peninsula before me, a ragged, four-fingered hand thrusting into the Atlantic. I hunched over the steering wheel, frozen but exhilarated, and headed toward the sea.

It was nearly four by now; nightfall. Burnt Harbor, the village at the tip of the peninsula—that was where I was supposed to find the guy who would bring me over to Paswegas Island. Everett Moss, the harbormaster. I didn’t own a cell phone, so I drove until I found a gas station with an ancient pay phone outside. I hunched against the peeling vinyl siding and tried to keep my teeth from chattering as I fed coins into the slot.

There was another torn flyer taped beside the payphone. No photo on this one, just the words have you seen martin graves? last seen august 29, shaker harbor, please call with any information. I shoved in the last coin and prayed the harbormaster was still around. The wind roared up from the sea so loudly that I could barely hear when someone answered.

“Is this Everett Moss?” I shouted. The phone reception was for shit.

“Hay-lo.” The voice was brusque but cheerful. “Yes, it is.”

“This is Cassandra Neary. Phil Cohen spoke to you about taking me over to Paswegas this afternoon?”

“Oh yes.”

“I’ll be there in about half an hour. I’m in—” I craned my neck. “Well, I don’t know where I am, exactly, somewhere past Bealesville. Collinstown, I guess this is. So maybe fifteen miles away?”

“Oh yes, Collinstown, that’s about fifteen miles. Well, that’s very good, but I can’t take you out today.”

“What? Why not?” Cold and desperation made my voice crack. “I’ll be there in what? Half an hour?”

“Well yes, but I’m afraid I couldn’t do it then, neither. It’ll be dark. Could probably do it first thing tomorrow. How’s that?”

“Tomorrow?” I shivered, staring to where the ocean darkened from indigo to scorched steel. “Jesus! I don’t even know where I am! Is there a place to stay between here and Burnt Harbor?”

“Well, yes there is,” Moss boomed genially. “You just keep on heading this way, and when you get to just before the bridge, you’ll see there on your right the Lighthouse Motel. He’s open year round. Then first thing tomorrow, you come down here to the harbor and we’ll get you taken care of. Say, six o’clock. All right?”

“What if he’s not—”

“All right then!”

Click.

I stormed back to the car. My little by-blow of crank had long worn off. I wasn’t hungry or tired yet, but I knew the crash was coming, and I didn’t want to be stuck in a rented Ford Taurus when it did. That crystalline blue sky was now nearly black. Wind rattled the bare trees and sent dead leaves skittering across the parking lot.

I clambered back into the car and drove on. Once I crossed the bridge spanning an inlet of Hagman’s Bay, I was officially on the Paswegas Peninsula.

Even in the near dark, I felt a wild sense of space, of sky, the smells of salt and balsam and rotting fish. Wood smoke pooled like fog above the marshes. I peered vainly through the twilight for any sign of the Lighthouse Motel. It was hard enough to see any houses, and when I did spot one it wasn’t reassuring—a small, raised ranch house with what looked like a dog hanging above the garage door. That was weird enough, but it got weirder when I passed the next house and saw three dead dogs hanging alongside a shed. I slowed the car to get a better look.

They weren’t dogs but coyotes. Big ones too. I decided that if the Lighthouse didn’t show up in the next five minutes, I was going to turn around and drive back to Manhattan.

And then it appeared on a spur of land overlooking a small harbor, your basic American motel circa 1962. A one-story mockup of a lighthouse, minus the light, stood beside a neat white clapboard building with green shutters, lamps lit within, a neon office sign. Three cars were parked in front of a row of attached motel units. A sign hung from a denuded maple.

LIGHTHOUSE MOTEL

BEST RATES IN MAINE ALWAYS

YOUR HOST MERRILL LIBBY

NO PETS NO GUNS FREE COFFEE

VACANCY

That last word was the only one I cared about. I parked alongside the office, pulled my leather jacket tight against the cold, and went inside.

It was about what I expected, a room furnished in Early Knotty Pine, well-worn but clean. I couldn’t tell if someone had repeatedly spilled coffee on the carpet or if this was a design decision that had never caught on in the lower forty-seven. Still, it was warm. Heat blasted from a propane monitor. I was so cold, I would have slept on that carpet. I hoped I wouldn’t have to.

There was a little alcove at one end of the room, and here in a swivel chair a teenage girl, maybe fifteen, sat hunched over a computer. I drew close enough to catch a glimpse of a screen full of IM dialog bubbles. Then the girl looked up. A heavyset gothy kid with cropped hair dyed black, black-rimmed eyes, white skin beneath a flaking layer of pinkish foundation. She had a stud beneath her lower lip and what appeared to be a bunch of three-penny nails stuck through one earlobe. She wore a necklace made of the tabs from soda cans laced together on a leather thong and interspersed with bits of sea-glass, a flannel shirt over jeans wide enough to double as body bags, disintegrating lowtop sneakers.

She smiled shyly. That smile made her look about eight, that and the pink hearts she’d drawn on her wrist.

“You got a room?” I asked. “The sign says Vacancy.”

“Oh, yeah—sorry.”

She clicked off the IM screen and began rummaging around the desk. “We have lots of rooms. Um, non-smoking only, that okay?”

“Sure.”

She pulled out a clunky old credit card machine and handed me a form. “You visiting someone?”

“Yeah. Nice piercing.”

“Hey, thanks!” She was cute, in an early Xene Cervenka, bad hair kind of way. “I like your jacket. It looks … real.”

“It is.” I filled in the form and handed it back to her.

She read it then looked at me in surprise. “You’re from New York?”

“Yeah. You’d fit right in there.”

“I wish. I would love to go to New York.”

“Yeah? Maybe I could fit you in the trunk on my way back.”

She laughed, then froze.

“Mackenzie! I told you, cash only!” A bleating, high-pitched voice echoed from the other side of the room. “No credit cards, sorry—tear it up! Tear it up!”

I’ve heard that pigs are among the most intelligent mammals. Seeing Merrill Libby, I could believe this was true. A short, bloated man who looked like he’d been carved from a slab of salt pork, he wore brown Dickie overalls and a flannel shirt that billowed around him like a deflated plaid balloon. He had small bright dark eyes, and his cheeks were an unhealthy pink against his white skin.

I gave the girl a quick sideways look, raising my eyebrow in sympathy, then turned back.

He waddled up beside the girl and elbowed her out of the way. “I told you, cash only,” he repeated. “Go to your room.”

Mackenzie started for the door. Her father stared at me balefully.

“All I want is a room.” I pulled out two twenties and slid them across the counter. “Okay?”

He took the money and stuck it in a cashbox, keeping his cold little eyes on me the whole time.

“No smoking,” he said. “Checkout’s eleven. There are no telephones in any of the rooms.”

By now I was just hoping there’d be heat and a flush toilet. I waited as he turned and began checking a row of keys. Just outside the doorway, Mackenzie stood and watched, her face half-shadowed so that all I could see was the glint of metal along one ear.

Poor kid, I thought. If he was my father, I’d hammer nails in my head too.

Merrill handed me a key. “Checkout time—”

“Eleven,” I said. “One question—is there anyplace to eat around here?”

“This time of night?” Merrill looked as though I’d asked for directions to the local Satanic Hall. “No.”

I wanted to point out it was only five o’clock, then recalled that I had not, in fact, seen anything resembling a restaurant for at least two hours. I hadn’t seen anything resembling a motel, either, and all the B&Bs I’d passed were shut for the winter.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

I went back outside and got my stuff from the car. The wind had picked up; my cheeks stung from the cold and salt mist. I hurried toward my room—Number 2—slammed the key into the lock and kicked the door open.

Inside was no warmer than out, but at least there was no wind. I shut the door and put on a light then located the electric heater, a pre-Sputnik deal with exposed heating coils.

Within seconds the coils began to glow. I huddled over them and warmed my hands and face until I felt like I could move without cracking. I did a quick room inspection—more knotty pine, a single bed with protective plastic beneath thin white sheets, a hundred-watt bulb in a lamp shaped like a lighthouse, Sears Kenmore television with rabbit ears. Propped atop the pillow was a small hand-lettered sign—

Please DO NOT LEAVE

Your Disgusting Germy Used Tissues

Under The Pillows

Thank You Your Host Merrill Libby

I had just tossed the card across the room when there was a knock. I opened the door. Mackenzie stood in the dark, wearing a ratty wool poncho.

“Hi.” She gave me that sweet shy smile, then glanced over her shoulder. “I just wanted to tell you—what he said about nowhere to eat? He’s wrong—there is a place. Down in Burnt Harbor, on the waterfront.”

“Wait, come in,” I said. “It’s freezing.”

“Thanks.” She stepped inside, and I shut the door. “It’s warm in here, anyway.”

“It’d be warmer if you left the heat on.”

“Huh?” Her brown eyes widened. “You’d be paying to heat an empty room all winter.”

“Right.” I hadn’t thought of that. “So there’s a place in Burnt Harbor?”

“The Good Tern—it’s right on the main street, you can’t miss it. The only street,” she added. “There by the water. The food is really, really good. They open for breakfast at five.” She looked around and her gaze fell on my bag. “So you’re really from New York? That must be really, really cool.”

“Really, really different from here, I can say that.” I rubbed my hands above the heating coils. “You work for your father? No child labor laws in these parts?”

Mackenzie shrugged. “Only part time. I go to the voc school up by Naskeag Harbor. I’m studying culinary arts. I want to be a chef. Or maybe make my jewelry and sell it.”

“Good idea. You could come back here and open a restaurant.”

“No way. I’m going to New York. Or San Francisco. I hear that’s a sweet place.”

I looked at her, the pink heart on her hand and the piercings that hadn’t healed all that well; the way she stared at my leather jacket, like it was a shiny new bike or whatever the hell kids dreamed of up here—a snow shovel? I leaned forward to peer at her necklace, the sea-glass glinting green and blue between the aluminum tabs. “Did you make that out of old cans?”

She fingered it and nodded. “Yeah. I like to do stuff like that.”

She held out her arm to display more tabs and sea-glass threaded with wishbones and broken seashells and dirty gray twine—beautiful and strange, like something you’d find buried in the sand. For a moment I thought she was going to say something else.

Instead, she went to the door. She looked at me, her face half-shadowed, and gave me that sweet kid’s smile.

“Okay, bye,” she said and left.

For a few minutes I sat on the bed and tried to warm up. The protective plastic crackled noisily every time I moved. I was afraid if I waited too long I’d end up stuck to the plastic, stuck here all night, hungry but still too buzzed to sleep.

Plus, I needed a drink. I peeled off my jacket and held it above the heater until the room started to smell a little bit too much like me, slung it back on and went outside.

I headed for my car, walking past Room 1. Without warning the door flew open. I ducked as a man stumbled onto the sidewalk. When he saw me, he backed up, smacking his head against the door.

“Hey, watch it,” I said and edged away from him.

He rubbed his head and glared at me. “Goddamit, that hurts. What, are you lost?”

“No. I was leaving my room. I didn’t know anyone else was here.”

“Yeah, well you’re sure acting like no one else is here.”

He stared at me—a tall, lanky guy about fifteen years younger than me, with shoulder-length dark brown hair, a wide mouth, aquiline nose, wire-rimmed glasses. He wore corduroy jeans and a suede jacket over a white shirt, none of them very clean. After a moment he shoved his glasses against his nose and gave me a wry smile. It made him look younger but also oddly familiar. I had a spike of amphetamine panic. Could this guy know me?

Unexpectedly he laughed. There was nothing overtly sinister about that, but I felt such a powerful rush of fear—not just fear but genuine terror—that everything went dark: not just dark outside, but dark inside my skull, like there’d been an abrupt disconnect between my mind and my retinas. The only thing I can compare it to is what I felt the one time I shot heroin: a black wave that buries you before you even know it’s there.

Damage. This guy reeked of it.

I backed away and glanced down at his hand. A scar ran from his middle finger to his wrist, as though someone had tried writing on his flesh with a knife. When I lifted my head, he was still staring at me.

“You don’t belong here,” he said.

His eyes were such a pale brown they were almost yellow. The left iris held a tiny starburst just above the pupil, emerald-green, rayed with black. It made me think of the trajectory a bullet makes through thick glass; it made me think of that scar on his hand, and how I’d seen it, him, somewhere.

But I’d never seen this man before. I knew that. My brain is hardwired for recalling bodies, eyes, skin; I absorb them the way emulsion paper absorbs light. I would no more have forgotten that scar, or that iris’s imploded green, than I would have forgotten my own face in the mirror. I continued to stare at him, until he began to lift his hand.

Without a word I darted past him toward my car. He took a step after me, stopped. I jumped into the Taurus and locked the doors, fired up the engine and the headlights. The windshield was glazed with frozen mist; I waited for it to defrost then peered out.

The man was gone. My hands were shaking so much the steering wheel trembled. I definitely needed to eat something and then try to sleep. My car was halfway out the parking lot before I realized I’d left my bag in the room.

I swore and glanced back at the motel office. The lights were on, and I could see a figure seated in the alcove—Mackenzie—and another, taller, figure: the guy I’d just bumped into. I sat in the car and waited until he stepped out of the office and walked over to an older gray Volvo sedan, watched as he drove off. Then I hopped out and ran back inside my motel room. I grabbed my bag and Deceptio Visus—I wanted something to hide behind while I ate. No more small talk with the natives. I headed back outside to my car then stopped.

The door of the room next to mine was ajar—in the confusion of running into me, my neighbor had forgotten to close it. As I watched, a gust of wind pushed it open another inch.

I hesitated then stepped over and placed my hand on the doorknob.

“Hello?” The hairs on my arms rose as I thought of that green-shot eye. “Anyone there?”

No reply. I pushed the door open.

The light was on and the room empty. I looked back quickly to make sure no one saw me. Then I went inside.

You might think I’d never done something like this before. In fact it was exactly the sort of thing I did.

It was a room identical to mine. Clothes tossed were over a chair. On the bed was a computer case, open, with a laptop inside. A few books were stacked on top of the laptop, along with a small notebook. I picked up the notebook, flipped through lists of names, phone numbers, dates.

No interest there. I tossed it aside then peered into the computer case.

Pens, a calculator, cell phone charger; a thick yellow Rite Aid One Hour Processing envelope stuffed with photos and a CD-ROM. I took the envelope and walked to the window, angling myself so I could see outside without being seen, and looked through the photos.

They were color pictures, overexposed 4x5s. There were two copies of each. Hard to tell how recent they were. I guessed maybe a few years old, though some people still use film and transfer the images to CD-ROM. The photos showed some kind of family gathering—a brilliant sunny day, women in pastel and tropical-bright dresses, men in light-colored jackets or shirtsleeves. A white-haired woman in a broad-brimmed red straw hat held a champagne flute. Two dark-haired women who looked like sisters cocked their heads and pursed their lips in an effort to look disapprovingly at the photographer. A big dog ran past a crowded table, a black blur, its tongue hanging from its mouth.

Everyone looked happy, even the dog. A wedding? No one takes pictures of funerals.

But there was no bride or groom that I could see; no wedding cake or birthday cake or anniversary cake; no presents. A few darting children in the background, but not enough to herald a kid’s party. Round tables where people sat and smiled for the camera, their faces shadowed by big striped umbrellas, yellow and green. Pink blossoms strewn across some of the tables, wine glasses, wine bottles.

Most of the photos were like this. I’d almost reached the last of them before I found one in which I could pick out the figure of the man I’d nearly run into. He stood in a group of men and women, all dark haired, though sunlight and distance made it impossible to discern any other resemblance between them. All were nearly as tall as he was, and there was a similarity to the way they held themselves—squinting, shoulders canted slightly to one side, as though flinching from something—the light? a sudden cold wind?—that made it seem as though they might be siblings or cousins and not just friends. I stared at the photo for a moment, glanced out the window at the parking lot, then looked at the last two pictures.

Both showed the man I’d seen. In one he was sitting alone at a table. Light filtered through a canopy of leaves and splattered his face yellow and black. He seemed brooding, distracted, though maybe he was just bored or tired. Behind him the hindquarters of the black dog could just be glimpsed, its tail an arrow aimed at the man’s outstretched legs.

The last photo was different.

It was the same man in the same chair at the same table. The black dog was gone. Now the man’s head was turned, looking at someone out of camera range. He’d moved just enough that sun fell full on his face, which was bright but not overlit. His hair had blown back a little from his forehead; his face was split with a smile so rapturous it seemed contorted. It made me uncomfortable, and I looked away.

Then I looked again. I tilted the picture back and forth, as though the unseen thing he stared at might materialize; waiting for that same sense of damage I’d felt outside to rise from the image like a striking cobra.

But it didn’t.

I frowned.

What was he looking at? His lover? His child? The black dog? It wasn’t just that no one had ever looked at me like that. I’d never seen anyone look at anything like that. His expression changed everything. I went back to the first photo and skimmed through them all again, as though they might now make sense, offer up a shared secret like a shell prised open with a knife.

Of course that didn’t happen. It would never happen. I knew that. They were nothing but a bunch of snapshots of someone else’s party. I would never know who these people were, or where they were. I would never know what the man saw, or who he was, or why he was in the motel room next to mine.

Only he wasn’t in the room next to mine. I was in his room. I glanced out the window. The parking lot was still empty. I slipped the pictures back into the yellow envelope, retaining a dupe of the man with that rapturous smile. Then I stuck the envelope back into the computer case and left. I made sure the door closed tight behind me, made sure no one saw me leave. I got into my car and started it, sat for a minute and waited, just in case someone appeared who might have seen me emerge from Room 1.

No one did. I turned the heat and defroster up to high and shoved the photograph into my copy of Deceptio Visus. I waited until a black streak ate through the frozen condensation on the windowsill, and I could see into the darkness that surrounded me. Then I drove slowly away from the motel, out onto the main road and down the narrow spine of the Paswegas Peninsula, until I reached Burnt Harbor.

8

The village consisted of a handful of buildings perched on a rocky ledge overlooking the harbor. Maybe it was beautiful in the daytime, in the middle of summer. Now, in the early dark of a November night, it was as desolate as the Lower East Side had been once upon a time. For that reason the place felt—well, not exactly welcoming, but familiar. Like walking into a room full of strangers in a foreign country then hearing them speak my native language.

…all that bleak shit you like? Well, this is it, Phil had told me.

He was right.

There wasn’t much there. DownEast Marine Supplies, a lobster shack that was closed for the winter. A streetlamp cast a milky gleam onto a broken sidewalk. On the hillside above the harbor, lights glowed in scattered houses. There was a small crescent-shaped gravel beach and a long stone pier that thrust into the water, dinghies tied up alongside it. Farther out a few lobster boats and a solitary sailboat. It smelled like a working harbor: that is, bad. I looked for a place that might be the harbormaster’s office—a building, a sign—but found nothing.

There was no mistaking the Good Tern, though—a tumbledown structure a few yards from the pier, gray shingled, with a torn plastic banner that read budweiser welcomes hunters beneath a weathered painting of a seagull. There were pickups out front, along with a few Subarus, and I could glimpse more cars parked around back. The lid of a dumpster banged noisily in the wind.

I parked, stuck the copy of Deceptio Visus into my bag, and got out. The wind off the water was frigid. In the seconds it took me to run toward the building, I was chilled again.

The entrance was covered with photocopies advertising bean suppers, a used Snocat, snowplow services. Yet another flyer looking for Martin Graves, the same faded image of a young man in wool cap and Nike T-shirt. Wherever he’d run off to, I hoped he was warmer than I was. I went inside.

The open room had bare wood floors, wooden tables with miniature hurricane lanterns holding candles, walls covered with faded posters advertising Grange dances. A bar stretched along one wall, where six or seven people hunkered down over drinks. No TV. Blues on the sound system. Several couples sat at the tables, old hippie types or maybe they were fishermen; rawfaced women with long hair, bearded men. A man by himself reading a newspaper. One or two of them glanced at me then went back to their dinners.

I couldn’t blame them. The food smelled good. A middle-aged woman wearing a bright Peruvian sweater showed me to a table along the far wall.

“Cold out tonight!” she said, sounding shocked: Maine, cold? “What can I get you?”

I ordered a shot of Jack Daniel’s, a beer, and two rare hamburgers. I knocked back the shot and ordered another, sipped my beer. When my burgers arrived, I wolfed them down then ordered another beer. That ache you get after doing crank, the sense that your brain has been walled up behind broken rubble—that began to subside, replaced by the slow pulse of alcohol.

I nursed my second beer. I was in no hurry to head back to the Lighthouse, though the thought of hiding dirty Kleenex from Merrill Libby did have its appeal. A nearly full moon crept above the black harbor. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock. I angled my chair so I could catch the light from the hurricane lantern on my table and opened my copy of Deceptio Visus.

I turned the pages carefully—it was probably the most valuable thing I owned—until I reached Kamestos’s brief introduction.

I have called this collection of photographs Deceptio Visus, “deceiving sight.” But there is nothing here that is deceptive. Our gaze changes all that it falls upon. Within these photographs, I hope, the discerning eye may see the truth.

It had been a long time since I’d read those words. Once they had seemed to explain the world to me, the way I saw things; the sense I had that someone, or something, watched me. But I had lost that way of seeing or feeling, if indeed I’d ever possessed it; if it even existed.

Now it all just seemed like shit. I looked around for my waitress to order another beer.

Two of the people at the bar were watching me. One was a solid-looking man with a graying beard and close-cropped brown hair. A rat-tail braid dangled across his shoulder. As he cocked his head, light glanced off a jeweled stud in one earlobe. He wore a red flannel shirt, stained jeans, heavy workboots. He had a cigarette tucked behind one ear and a yellow pencil behind the other.

Beside him sat the man I’d run into at the Lighthouse. He stared at me, frowning slightly. Then he stood, picked up his wineglass, and walked over.

“Can I see that?” He pointed at my book.

Before I could say anything, before I could even remember the stolen photograph inside it, he picked up Deceptio Visus.

“No,” I said, but he had already opened it. He glanced at the copyright page then handed it back to me.

“My copy’s signed,” he said.

I grabbed the book and shoved it into my bag beneath the table. When I looked up, the other guy had joined his friend.

“Did he try to steal your book?” he said. “Because I can call the police if you want me to.” He plucked the cigarette from behind his ear, bent over my hurricane glass, and lit it. His hands were crosshatched with scars, and the tip of one thumb was missing. “Smoke?”

“No,” I said.

As if by magic, the waitress appeared and set down two more beers and a glass of red wine.

“You know you’re not supposed to do that in here, Toby,” she scolded.

The bearded man smiled sheepishly, pinched out his cigarette, and stuck it back behind his ear. His friend stood, silent, beside him. The sleeve of his suede jacket had ridden up so that his wrist was exposed, the scar grayish in the dim light.

I looked at him uneasily. I hated that he’d seen me before I saw him. The sense I’d had earlier, that overpowering taint of fear and damage—it wasn’t gone, but it was definitely subdued. I thought of how he’d jumped away and cracked his head on the door.

I’d surprised him. Now he’d surprised me. I picked up one of the beers and took a long pull.

“I’m Toby Barrett,” said the bearded man. He picked up the other beer and raised it to me. “I hear you’re looking to get to Paswegas.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Everett told me there was a lady looking to get over.”

“Oh yeah? Is he here? He fucking bailed on me when I called him this afternoon.”

“You mean he wouldn’t take you over in the dark?” Toby Barrett seemed amused. “You’re lucky he answered his phone.”

He pulled out the chair across from me and sat. “You’re from away, aren’t you? Not me.” Toby cocked a thumb at his friend. “Not him, either.”

I finished my beer. “What about Everett Moss?”

“No. Not Everett,” conceded Toby. “Everett was squoze from a rock.”

“You know her?” His friend pointed to my bag beneath the table. “Aphrodite Kamestos?”

“Yeah. Sure I do.”

He stared at me coolly then smiled, his teeth white and uneven. “You’re lying.”

I set one booted foot atop my bag. He finished his wine, set down the empty glass, and pushed the full one toward me.

“I’m outta here,” he said. “You can drink that, if you want. In case all that Jack Daniel’s isn’t doing the job for you.”

I said nothing. He turned and walked away. I watched him hand a few bills to the bartender then head for the door. He had an odd loping pace, his head thrust forward and staring downward, hands shoved into his pockets. At the door he turned and stared at me. He smiled again, his mouth moving silently, but I could read what he said.

Liar.

A blast of cold air rushed into the room as he disappeared outside.

“The fuck,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?” said Toby Barrett.

“Nothing.” I desperately wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to run into that guy again. Whoever the hell he was.

“Gryffin,” said Toby. “With a Y. Don’t mind him. He’s always like that.”

“Like what? Fucking rude? And who the hell names their kid Gryffin?”

“It’s a respectable old hippie name. He’s not rude, really—”

“Oh yeah? He just picked up my book and—”

“Well, he didn’t hurt it now, did he?” Toby’s voice was low and calming. I imagined he’d be good with fractious children or dogs. “That’s just what he does. He’s a rare book dealer. What about you? You a friend of Aphrodite?”

“Not a friend, exactly. I’m seeing her on business. Assuming I ever do see her.”

He looked surprised, then said, “Well, okay. We’ll get you out to the island. Don’t worry.” He finished his beer. “What’s your name?”

“Cass Neary.”

“Right. Well, Cass Neary, I’m off too. Got to get up at the crack of dawn. Nice meeting you.”

He nodded and left.

I paid my bill then went back outside. Three beers and two shots of whiskey did a lot to neutralize the cold. Gryffin was nowhere in sight. I walked down to the granite pier and looked out across the harbor. I could hear the creak of boats rocking, the thin rustle of wind in the evergreens. The northern sky arched overhead, moon so bright I could read the names of the lobster boats: Ellie Day, Aranbega II, Miss Behave.

Somewhere out there was Paswegas; somewhere beyond that a hundred other islands unknown to me, unnamed. I heard a low thrum, turned to see the running lights of a small boat cruising slowly along the shoreline. A green light on one side, red on the other, like mismatched eyes.

Our gaze changes all that it falls upon.

I stood and watched it move through the darkness. Did people here fish at night? Did they ride around in their boats for fun, looking for frozen lobsters?

My eyes teared, from cold and strain. I rubbed them and looked out again.

The running lights were gone, the outboard’s thrum silent. Nothing else had changed.

I drove back to the Lighthouse. I went slowly; I’d had a lot to drink, and the road wound perilously between woods and steep hills where the shoulder fell off into sheer rock that slanted down toward the sea. Then it was woods again. Even driving slowly, the car seemed to lunge through the forest. Trees momentarily shrank from its passage then loomed back into place. I gazed into the rearview mirror, entranced. It was a spooky effect but also hypnotic. I looked back at the road in front of me again.

A black form stood in the middle of the tarmac. I swerved to avoid hitting it, swerved again so I wouldn’t plow into the trees.

A deer, I thought, my heart pounding, and brought the car to a crawl. But it wasn’t a deer.

It was Mackenzie Libby. She had been walking toward Burnt Harbor, but now she turned to stare at my car, her baggy pants flapping like wings, her face a white crescent in the folds of a hooded sweatshirt. Her eyes caught the red glare of my taillights and glowed like an animal’s. Her mouth opened. She yelled something I couldn’t hear. It wasn’t an angry sound, more questioning or pleading. Then my car rounded another curve and she was gone.

Stupid fucking kid! I thought, but at least the encounter had woken me up. I drove the rest of the way without passing another car, or person, and reached the Lighthouse ten minutes later.

I wanted to be nowhere near Gryffin. I considered asking Merrill Libby for another room, but that seemed a little paranoid, even for me. Plus the office lights were off. I hopped out of the car and ran across the empty lot. I entered my room on tiptoe, locked the door and drew the curtains, then angled the room’s single chair beneath the doorknob. Security didn’t seem a high priority at the Lighthouse—there was no deadbolt, only a flimsy-looking chain.

And, of course, no telephone. But my choices were limited to staying there or sleeping in my car. I’d probably freeze to death if I did that. So I made sure the heat was cranked as high as it would go and got ready for bed.

It was only when I switched the light off that I realized there was no clock in the room and, natch, I had no travel alarm.

I checked my watch. It was just after nine. The last time I’d turned in that early I was ten years old. At least I’d get a good night’s sleep and wake in plenty of time to meet Everett. I lay in bed, listening to the plastic crackle every time I moved, half expecting to hear a knock at my door or on the few inches of sheetrock that separated me from Gryffin. But there was only the sound of wind, and mice scrabbling in the ceiling.

The alcohol had done its job. I was drunk and exhausted. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept listening for the sound of a car pulling up outside. The thought of Gryffin in the next room wouldn’t leave me, like that sick rush when someone else’s pain lingers like the aftertaste of blood. It wasn’t even him I was thinking of, but the photograph of him, that unguarded, reckless eruption of joy on the face of a total stranger.

I switched the light back on and fumbled for the copy of Deceptio Visus, took out the photo and stared at it.

A happy man at a party. Sun, bougainvillea, and a champagne flute. That was all.

Our gaze changes all that it falls upon.

I looked around the motel room. Nothing had changed here in forty years. I slid the photograph back into the book and turned out the light. At some point I fell asleep; I at some later point woke, to the noise of car wheels on gravel just outside my room. I lay there listening to a car door opening and closing, and then as the door to the next room slammed shut.

I held my breath. Would he be able to tell I’d been in there? For a few minutes I listened as someone moved around on the other side of the flimsy wall. There was the sound of a flushing toilet and, finally, silence. I huddled beneath the blankets, telling myself that my anxiety was meaningless, that nothing was different, and that at any rate by the morning I would be gone. Only the last of these was true.

9

I woke with a blistering headache, reached for my watch then sat bolt upright.

Seven-ten. I was supposed to meet Everett at six.

I stumbled out of bed and pulled on my boots—I’d slept in my clothes—grabbed my bag and ran out to the car, my boots sliding on a sheen of ice. Sunlight streamed across icy puddles; the grass glittered with frost. The Volvo that had been in front of Room 1 was gone.

The door to my car was iced shut. I scraped at it with my room key until I could finally pull it open. Inside, I jammed on the defroster and started backing up without waiting for the windshield to clear. I pulled over by the office, ran inside, tossed my room key onto the desk then raced back to my car. As I started to drive off I saw Merrill Libby yank open the office door.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Did you—”

“I can’t,” I yelled back. “I’m late—”

He stumbled down the steps as I roared off, his face bright red. Maybe he was mad I didn’t stay for coffee.

The road was slick. I drove as fast as I dared until I got stuck behind a schoolbus. By the time I reached Burnt Harbor, it was seven-thirty. I drove to the waterfront and hopped out of the car.

I saw no one. A few pickup trucks were lined up at dockside. Gulls circled above the water, keening loudly. The lobster boats were gone.

I shaded my eyes and looked across the harbor. I could see the islands clearly now, bathed in morning light. The nearest one was a slaty blue, its jagged headland softened by golden mist. A small white shape churned toward it from the harbor’s mouth.

I hoped that wasn’t my ride. I turned and headed for the Good Tern.

It was more crowded than it had been the night before. A different waitress hurried between tables and gave me a brusque nod. “One?”

“I’m looking for Everett Moss.” I scanned the room, trying to figure out which burly man in a Carhart jacket and gimme cap might be the harbormaster. “Is he here?”

“Everett?” The woman frowned. “He was here earlier, but I think he went out. Hey, Toby—”

She called to a man sitting alone at a table by the window. “Where’d Everett go?”

Toby Barrett looked up from a plate of eggs and bacon.

“Everett? He left a while ago.” When he saw me, he blinked. “Oh. It’s you. You know, I think he was waiting for you—”

“Well, he didn’t wait long enough,” I snapped.

“Have a seat.” Toby nudged a chair toward me with his foot. “You want coffee?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I slumped into the chair. Toby paid me the courtesy of turning his attention back to his food. He was wearing the same clothes as the night before, with the exception of a faded T-shirt commemorating the 1975 solar eclipse in Boze, Montana. After a minute the waitress brought me coffee and a menu.

“I can’t eat,” I said. I held my head in my hands. “God, I can’t believe this.” I picked up my coffee, grimacing. “So where the hell is Everett’s office, anyway? If I had been able to find him?”

“His office? That would be it, there—”

Toby gestured out the window to a red GMC pickup.

“His truck?”

“Yup. He give you his home number? That’s the best way to get hold of him, unless you radio him on his boat. Not much cell reception up here.”

I drank my coffee miserably, hoping I wouldn’t get sick. “I overslept. But I thought he’d at least wait.”

“He did. For a while, anyway. He was in here for breakfast—he’s here every day.” Toby speared an entire fried egg and ate it in one bite. “But then he got another paying customer, so he left.”

“Will he come back?”

“Not for a while. He’ll make his delivery. Then he’ll probably be out hauling traps.”

“Shit.”

I finished my coffee. The waitress set a fresh pot on the table, along with a plate of toast. I picked up a piece and ate it slowly, fighting nausea.

Now what?

Toby leaned back in his chair. He reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt, took out some rolling papers and a bag of American Spirit tobacco.

“How come you need to get out there so bad?” he asked as he began to roll a cigarette.

“I have a job out there.”

“A job?” He seemed taken aback. “On the island? Who you working for? Aphrodite?”

I hesitated. Phil had geared me up with all this cloak-and-dagger stuff about Kamestos and her paranoia, but it all seemed stupid now that I was actually in Burnt Harbor. There was no one here, and certainly no one who seemed to care that I’d arrived.

“I’m supposed to interview her,” I said at last.

“Really? She expecting you?”

“Yeah.” I wondered if maybe this guy was the friend Phil had mentioned, and asked him.

“Phil Cohen. Nope. Never heard of him.” Toby tipped his head, regarding me with calm hazel eyes. “But you do know Aphrodite.”

I finished my coffee.

“No,” I admitted. “I’ve never even spoken to her. Phil was the guy set it up for me. Through an editor in London.”

I poured myself more coffee. “But you know what? I don’t even know what the fuck I’m doing here. I think I better just get back into my goddam car and drive back to New York.”

“That would be a long way to come to have a cup of coffee and sleep—where did you sleep last night, anyway?”

“The Lighthouse.”

“That would definitely be a long way to come to sleep at the Lighthouse.”

Toby tapped his cigarette and tucked it behind his ear, folded up his tobacco packet and rolling papers and put them away.

“Well, if you still want to get over there to Paswegas, I’ll take you,” he said.

I stared at him in disbelief. “You can take me?”

“Sure.” He pointed toward the harbor. “See that boat out there?”

“A sailboat?” I squinted at the sunlit water. “You can sail in the winter?”

“Sure. Water’s same temperature as it is in the summer. You’d just die faster if you fell in now. We’ll motor over, unless the wind’s with us. It’ll take a little longer than Everett’s boat, but I’ll get you there. I was going over later today anyway.”

“Jeez. Well, thanks.” I ran a hand through my dirty hair. “I didn’t even take a shower.”

“That won’t bother me. If you’re staying with Aphrodite, I’m sure she’ll let you take a shower. But we should get going.”

He stuck a ten dollar bill under his plate. “How should I pay you?” I asked.

“We’ll figure something out.” As we headed to the door, he glanced at me. “Those all the clothes you got?”

“Pretty much. You mean, am I dressed up enough to meet her?”

“I mean you’re going to freeze your butt off if you don’t put on something warmer.” He looked at my boots and shook his head. “You better be careful with those—cowboy boots are terrible on deck. I think maybe I got some stuff on the boat you could wear. Come on.”

I followed him outside. I retrieved my things, locked the car, then headed after Toby.

Two steps and my gut clenched. Maybe getting onto a boat wasn’t such a great idea, after all. But Toby was already halfway down the beach, so I hurried after him.

As he’d warned, my boots were terrible in the damp. The pointed toes caught between rocks and slid on lumps of greasy black seaweed. I walked gingerly to where he bent over a wooden dinghy. A few yards off, waves swept the shingle and left a trail of shining foam.

Toby glanced up. “That all you got?”

I nodded. “Will my car be okay if I leave it for a few days?”

“Should be fine till Memorial Day. Okay, come on down this way—”

He dragged the dinghy into the shallows, waved for me to clamber in. I did. A film of brackish water covered my boots and immediately soaked through to my feet, ice cold.

“Better get down,” said Toby.

I sat as he got behind the dinghy and shoved it farther out. A moment later he hopped in, settled in the bow, and took the oars.

“This won’t take long,” he said. A few strong strokes and we were free of the shingle. A few more and I leaned over the side and vomited.

“Seasick already?”

“Hangover.”

I cupped icy seawater with one hand, rinsed my mouth then splashed more water on my face.

I felt a little better. My headache receded. The frigid air and water seemed to purge exhaustion from my blood. My eyes stung, but the pain felt clean and sharp, almost welcome. I sank back onto my seat, making sure my satchel stayed dry.

“See there?” Toby gestured at a small, blunt-nosed sailboat bobbing a short distance from the end of the pier. “That’s her. Northern Sky. Know anything about boats?”

I blinked into the splintered blue-and-gold light. “No.”

“She’s what they call a gaff cutter. Twenty-six feet on the waterline. I bought her twenty years ago for a dollar, from the ex-wife of a guy in jail down in the Keys. You know the two happiest days of a man’s life? The day he buys his boat and the day he sells her.”

Out here the dank reek of the harbor was gone. The air smelled of salt and wet rock, with a faint undertone of diesel fumes. I shaded my eyes and looked for other boats.

“Are you the only boat out here?”

“The only sailboat, this time of year. There’s a few lobster boats. Bugs migrate to deeper water in the winter, so it slows down about now. In the summer there’s a bunch of people here—yachts, windjammers. But you want to get off the islands in a hurry, you need a power boat. That way you can catch your flight back to Florida.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Toby laughed. “Oh, it’s not that bad. Not nowadays. Fifty or a hundred years ago, then that would be bad, I guess.”

“What the hell do people do out there?” I squinted at the islands. “Besides fish. I mean, what do you do?”

“I go back and forth. Bring supplies out to the islands. I’m a carpenter, and I do heating systems. There’s a lot of rich people around. Summer people. Used to be everyone left after Labor Day. Now some of ‘em stay on till Thanksgiving, but they don’t winter over. Summer people, I mean. Islanders live here all year round. But they don’t need me to do their work for ‘em.”

He rested the oars and lit a cigarette, cupping his hands against the spray. “Aphrodite, I’ve done some work for her.”

“How long you been here?”

Toby exhaled a plume of blue smoke. “I came in 1972. Used to be a commune out on Paswegas, it was pretty well known back then. I came and hung out there awhile, ended up staying.”

“A commune? How long did it last?”

“Not that long. Few years.”

I zipped my leather jacket, shivering. “I wouldn’t last a week.”

“People been living on these islands a long time,” Toby said mildly. “The Micmacs were here for thousands of years. But no, that commune didn’t last long. None of them ever do. I guess that’s why they decided to rename it an artist’s colony. That was more successful. For a little while, anyway. That’s why they call it Burnout Harbor.”

I made a face, and Toby said, “Hey, I’m surprised you didn’t know about that. If you’re coming to see Aphrodite, I mean. She kind of started the whole commune thing, her and her friends.”

He fell silent, smoking and staring with narrowed eyes across the reach of blue water. Finally he said, “That’s what brought a lot of folks here. People from away. Back-to-the-landers. That’s why I came, actually. I studied at the Apprenticeshop, boatbuilding, but a lot of the folks I met then, they were real hippies. There was a lot of communal-type living going on. A lot of runaways. College dropouts. Kids from Boston and New York. Even kids from California. Some from around here. They wanted to, I don’t know what—build their own yurts? Raise goats? Whereas Aphrodite was more into art and, well, kind of a spiritual thing, I guess you’d say. Oakwind, that’s what she named the commune. That’s when I first met her.”

“Wasn’t she kind of old for the whole hippie scene?”

Toby frowned. “Well, no, I don’t think so. And she was really goodlooking back then.”

I did the math in my head: Kamestos was born in 1936, so…

“Well, okay,” I conceded.

“There were a lot of artists.” Toby took a final drag on his cigarette then began to row again in earnest. “A few photographers. Couple of writer types who were friends of her husband; one of them stayed on. Everyone smoked a lot of weed. There was a lot of acid. Aphrodite owned a big chunk of land on Paswegas, her and her husband. They’d let people squat on their property, build these little shacks and stuff. A few still live there; locals call ‘em the cliffdwellers. Aphrodite’s husband, he was dead by then.”

“Did you know him?”

“No. He killed himself. I never heard the whole story. I guess he was gay, and maybe that was an issue, or maybe it was drugs? Some weird stuff went on at Oakwind, the whole place kind of imploded. Everyone just went their separate ways after that.”

I rubbed my arms. “What kind of weird stuff?”

Toby’s gaze grew remote. He turned to stare at the green and black mass of Paswegas looming in the distance. “Out on the islands, every couple of years you get a witch hunt. People go crazy, cabin fever. Winter especially. Lot of times it’s directed at a schoolteacher, someone from away. Back then there was only about forty people living on Paswegas. Today there’s less than that. So the hippies came, and all of a sudden you’ve got, like, double the population on a place that’s not real used to having company, except in the summer. It’s a fragile human ecology, just like an animal ecology; you introduce a new species, even just one person, and everything goes to hell. Some bad stuff happened. Afterward most everyone split.”

“But not Aphrodite.”

“Not Aphrodite,” said Toby. “Maybe you could get her to talk about it. But I doubt it. Okay, here we go—”

We’d come up alongside the sailboat. A carved sign adorned the stern; Northern Sky picked out in gold leaf. Even beside the dinghy it looked small. I had a flash of panic: how could something so tiny hold two people, let along bring them anywhere safely? Toby grasped Northern Sky’s rail and pulled the dinghy against it. I stood and stumbled on board. Toby followed, then began tying off the dinghy at the stern.

“You go put your stuff below,” he called. “Just slide that hatch there, I’ll be right down. Watch your head.”

The boat was a pretty little thing. White paint, gray trim, mahogany accents. Bronze portholes verdigrised from age and salt air. I still couldn’t see how two people could move around without bumping into each other or tripping over a million lines, wires, sails, buckets, God knows what.

Not to mention ice—the deck was slick with it. Fortunately it was only three steps across the bridge deck to where the companionway led down. I skidded over and pushed open the hatch then climbed down a ladder into a space so densely packed it was like walking into a broom closet.

I had to stoop to enter, and even then my head grazed the ceiling. Forward, my way was blocked by the mast and, directly behind it, a sheet-metal woodstove roughly the size and shape of a large coffee can. Beyond this was the bow, a V-shaped berth crammed with boxes, milk cartons, power cells, books, ropes, tools, a small chemical toilet.

But where I was—smack in the middle of the main cabin—everything was meticulously, if eccentrically, organized. To either side was a bench covered with frayed corduroy cushions. Above these were amazingly carved shelves, pigeonholes, cupboards, and nooks, some no bigger than the pencils they held, others large enough to support rows of books and manuals. There were hooks carved like fingers, canned goods stacked behind carven filigree. Two copper gimbals shaped like mouths held kerosene lanterns. Crocheted nets dangled from the ceiling, filled with onions and garlic and sprouting potatoes. Tucked into an alcove by the ladder were a tiny alcohol-fueled cookstove and a NOAA weatherband radio beside a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Rum and several bottles of Moxie.

“You okay? Find a place to stow your stuff?”

Toby’s bearded face appeared in the hatch. I ran my fingers across a shelf carved with rows of eyes. “Did you do this? All this carving? And this?”

At the end of the shelf hung a mask. Papier-mâché, vaguely Native American-looking: a frog, mottled brown and green and creamy yellow. It had protruding golden eyes, a wide, lipless grin. The papier-mâché was so smooth it looked like plastic, except at the edges where you could see unpainted bits of newsprint. It was beautiful, but also unsettling.

I said, “You made this too?”

“Yup.” Toby came down, and I moved to make room for him. “Just put your bags there—”

He pointed at one of the cushioned berths. “We’ll motor over. Not enough wind; we’d have to tack back and forth. Just as fast this way.”

I turned from the frog mask and put my bag down then removed my camera.

Toby stared at the old Konica. “Boy, that’s an antique.”

“I’m a photographer.” It was the first time I’d spoken those words in a long time.

“Don’t most people use digital cameras these days?”

“I don’t.” I glanced around the cabin. “Do you have a mirror? I feel pretty gross.”

“No mirrors.” His gaze remained even, but his eyes narrowed as he added, “You don’t have a mirror on you, do you?”

“Would I’ve asked for one if I did?”

He leaned back against the ladder, still staring. Not at me; at my camera.

“There’s a mirror in that,” he said.

“Yeah? There’s a mirror in all cameras. This kind, anyway.” I was starting to get pissed. “Is this some kind of superstition? No women on board, no—”

“Put it away.” His tone was less patient now; vaguely threatening. “Here—give it to me and I’ll stow it.”

I started to snap back—I hate people touching my stuff—then shut up.

Something in his expression intimidated me. Usually I can tell if someone’s going to freak on me; there’s that smell of damage, like the smell of a spent match that signals an explosion a few moments later.

There was no hint of that to Toby Barrett.

But there was something else, just as powerful—a sense of occlusion, of an intense self-possession, like an emotional force field. Like the rocks I saw out in the harbor, their edges hidden by mats of seaweed, all their menace beneath the water.

I shoved my camera back into the satchel and handed it to him. Toby opened a cupboard and stashed the bag inside then opened another cupboard that held clothes. He picked up a heavy black wool sweater, gave it a cursory sniff, and tossed it to me. “See if that fits. It’s your color.”

I took off my leather jacket and pulled on the sweater. It was bulky and mouse eaten and smelled of cedar and lanolin.

But it was warm. I was just able to squeeze my jacket back on over it. Toby rubbed his beard and glanced down at my boots.

“You got some pretty big feet there. But not big as mine. I don’t know if I’ve got a pair of shoes to fit you. Maybe Aphrodite’ll have something.”

“I like to wear these. They’re … comfy.”

“I bet. Those steel tips look lethal.”

“They are.” I lifted one foot to display a black full-quill ostrich-leather Tony Lama cowboy boot worn smooth as eelskin by nearly twenty years of wear. I’d had the soles and heels replaced more than once. The steel tips were customized for me, no longer shining but dull gray.

“They won’t keep you warm, though,” said Toby. “We’ll see what we can find for you on the island.”

He moved back to the ladder, lifted it and set it aside, revealing a pair of doors. He opened these then stepped into a small engine room. His voice echoed back to me.

“Got to hand crank the engine. This could take a minute…”

I heard the rhythmic sound of a handle turning. There was a small sputter, the smell of diesel. Toby swore under his breath.

I turned and gave the cabin a quick once-over. The portholes were so crusted with salt that only an opaque, pearly light filtered through them. The woodstove was black from use, as was the cookstove. All of the metal flatware was tarnished. Everything had a comfortable sort of glow, but nothing gleamed or glittered.

I frowned. It was weird, but also weirdly methodical, and that was puzzling; as though there were some pattern here that just escaped my recognition. I sat on one of the berths and looked around, trying to filter out all the stuff—the shelves, the books, the tools—and concentrate on what, exactly, ordered the space around me. What made it lucid; literally, what made it shine.

Or not.

You learn to do this as a photographer. You’re always searching for light—its source, its distance; always measuring how diffuse it is, how long it’s going to last. You think about the same thing when you’re in the darkroom printing.

As I sat in Northern Sky, I began to see more and more darkness around me, despite the fact that there were no curtains drawn, despite the fact that it was early morning of a cloudless early winter day. Another minute and I began to lose a sense of perspective. The cabin seemed larger than it was; the darkness at the bow crept toward me until it enveloped the outlines of berths, bookshelves, the gimbels’ copper mouths. Everything blurred to a deep russet-brown, like a sepia image foxed with mold.

Toby Barrett may not have had something to hide, but he certainly cultivated the shadows. At the very least he wanted very much to preserve the illusion that he was safe from scrutiny, even if he was in a tiny cabin with no doors or screens.

A sudden roar shook the boat.

“Got it!” Toby ducked out of the engine room. “For a minute there I was afraid she wouldn’t start.”

He shut the doors, threw the ladder back into place, and disappeared up the companionway. I clambered after him. He was already in the cockpit, tiller in hand.

“Have a seat,” he said. An unlit cigarette protruded from one corner of his mouth. He brought the boat about until the nearest of the islands was ahead of us, lit the cigarette and took a long drag. “Want one?”

“Just give me a hit off that,” I said and took it from his mouth.

The cigarette tasted of diesel fuel and hashish. I passed it back to Toby and stared out at the dark bulk of Paswegas and the archipelago behind it. “How come you don’t use a powerboat?”

Toby shifted the tiller. He sat straight backed, oblivious of the wind and icy spray, his eyes fixed on the island. “How come you don’t use a digital camera?”

“It feels weird to me. Like a step is missing. Or a wall.”

“A wall?”

“Well, not a wall exactly. But you get used to having something between you and whatever it is you’re shooting. Maybe it’s just that you have time to worry if the picture’s going to come out or not. With digital it all happens immediately.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“Maybe not bad. But different.”

I hesitated. I was surprised to hear myself admitting this. I’d never really articulated it before, certainly not aloud.

“Maybe it was just too much trouble to keep up with it all,” I said at last. “Everything changed so fast. I guess I just didn’t care enough anymore.”

“What kind of pictures did you do? Magazine pictures? Anything I would’ve seen?”

“I doubt it. I had only one book, and not many copies were printed. My stuff was pretty dark. Dead people. I shot the downtown punk scene in New York for a while, before it went belly-up.”

“A dead scene,” said Toby. He flicked his cigarette into the water.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“So you must know all about Aphrodite’s photography. That’s why you’re here, right? You must like her work.”

“Yeah.” I shifted, trying vainly to get out of the wind, and bumped my knee against his. “Her pictures of the islands. She took those forty years before Photoshop, and people still can’t figure out how she did it.”

“I never got the impression she was that well known. She just had one or two books, right?”

“Yeah. But they were influential books.”

“Maybe your book will be influential someday. Maybe it’s influential right now and you just don’t know it.”

I shook my head. “No. She was a genius, even if she was only a kind of minor genius. I was just lucky. If you can call taking pictures of dead junkies lucky. I wasn’t even very good at that.”

My back was starting to ache, from the cold and being hunched against the wind. I stood, balancing myself against my seat, and gazed out at the island. It was an unwelcoming sight, thorny-looking evergreens and spiky outcroppings of black and gray stone. The buildings scattered across the rocky hillside looked as though they’d been thrown there and forgotten, falling down houses and gritty trailers.

“So that’s where you live,” I said. “What about your friend back in the bar?”

“Gryffin? No. He just comes up sometimes on business.” He craned his neck to stare past Paswegas. “You ever hear of someone named Lucien Ryel? He was pretty well known ten or twenty years ago.”

“Lucien Ryel?” I looked up in surprise. “Yeah, sure.”

“He lives out there—”

Toby pointed to a low gray shape on the horizon. “Tolba Island. I’ve done some work for him over the last couple of years. He doesn’t winter over. He’s got a power boat, a Boston Whaler.”

“Lucien Ryel,” I said. “No shit.”

In the early 1970s, Ryel had been the force behind the English prog rock band Imaguncula. He was famous for performing in drag, something between that guy in A Clockwork Orange and a Balinese temple dancer. He left Imaguncula in 1980 and went on to produce house music in Manchester before becoming an expat in post-Wall Berlin, where, as far as I knew, he had disappeared.

“What the hell’s he doing up here?”

Toby shrugged. “He’s only here a few weeks every summer. He’s another one came to the commune for a while, before my time. He even wrote a song about Oakwind. Liked it here enough that he bought an island too. I was never into his music. I had one of his albums when I was in college, but I never played it.”

The boat hit some choppy waves, and I clutched at my seat. “You okay?” asked Toby. “You could go below if you feel bad. You look a little green.”

“I told you, hangover.” I waited until the sick feeling passed, then said, “What is it with people buying islands?”

“They used to be cheap—you could buy an island for, I dunno, fifty thousand dollars. Maybe less than that. Not anymore. Lucien’s place, Tolba—back in the nineteenth century they quarried granite there. Cut columns and blocks for some big cathedral. When that was built, they cut it for houses. You’ve heard of a company town? This was a company island. One day someone showed up and told everyone they were shutting down the quarry. So everyone had to leave the island.”

“You’re kidding.”

He turned, adjusted the tiller, and blinked into the sun. Ahead of us the harbor of Paswegas opened up. Neon orange and red and green floats bobbed in the water. A small bell buoy clanked as we passed it.

“There were quarries on a lot of the islands here,” said Toby. “Vinalhaven, that’s where they got the stone for the Brooklyn Bridge. In the 1890s they were paving city streets, New York, Boston. They didn’t have asphalt back then, so they used stone. On Lucien’s island, you can see all these great big blocks of granite they left and quarry holes everywhere. He bought that place cheap and hired me to do his heating system. A real big modern-looking place—folks call it the Stealth Bomber. But he’s easy to work for. And he’s got deep pockets, and he only comes at the end of the summer so I see him maybe once a year. He lives in Europe the rest of the time.”

“Doesn’t this seem like a weird place for someone like that?”

“What’s weird about it? You’re here.”

I gave up. After a few more minutes we entered the harbor, passing a solitary lobster boat moored alongside a red float.

“Everett’s boat,” Toby said.

He brought the Northern Sky to a mooring and dropped anchor. I retrieved my stuff from the cabin.

“Weather’s changing,” Toby said when I got back on deck. He untied the dinghy and motioned for me to climb into it. “See those clouds? That’s a front coming in. You’re not planning on leaving today, are you?”

“I don’t actually have a fucking clue what I’m doing.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Toby.

He rowed toward the pier. The harbor was even smaller and grungier than Burnt Harbor’s. Busier, too. Paswegas may only have had thirty year-round residents, but half of them seemed to be hanging around the dock. Two derelict pickups were parked in front of a boarded-up building with a sign that read live bait coffee. One truck had cardboard covering half its windshield; another had no windshield at all.

“Beaters,” Toby explained as the dinghy drew up alongside the pier. Pilings black with creosote poked from the water. Budweiser cans floated past a ladder where a cormorant stood with wings outstretched, its eyes dull as uncut garnets. “No ferry service here, no mailboat anymore cause there’s no post office. Everyone shares those trucks. You keep your good vehicles in Burnt Harbor.”

“What about groceries?”

“You got the Island General Store. Or you bring stuff back from Burnt Harbor.” He lifted his chin toward the men in the harbor. “That’s why they’re looking at us.”

He tied off the dinghy, and we walked down the pier. The men leaned on a rail, observing us as they smoked and talked.

“There’s your friend Everett Moss.” Toby cocked his head at a burly man with a white beard, wearing stained coveralls and an orange watch cap.

“Toby,” the man called. Toby headed toward him, and I followed. “That the young lady I was supposed to bring over this morning?”

“This is her.” Toby halted and lit a cigarette. “Cass Neary.”

“Hello there.” Everett looked at me and nodded. He had bright blue eyes in a sunburnt face, an easy smile. I waited for him to apologize for not waiting for me.

Instead he turned back to Toby. I glanced at the other men. They quickly looked away, stubbed out their cigarettes then wandered in the direction of the closed bait shop. Everett glanced across the dark waters of the reach to the mainland.

“You haven’t seen Mackenzie Libby?” he said to Toby. “Merrill called me this morning. She didn’t come in last night. My granddaughter Leela told me they’d been emailing earlier, Kenzie said something ‘bout going into town.”

Toby frowned. “Mackenzie?”

“Merrill’s daughter.”

“Oh.” Toby tugged at his braid. “She run off?”

I snorted. “I would, if that was my father.”

The two men looked at me, Toby amused, Everett Moss less so.

“Cass Neary,” he said, as though he’d just figured out who I was. “You stayed there last night, didn’t you. She told my daughter she’d been talking to you.”

I had a sudden flash of a white face in the night, black branches. I shifted my camera bag from one shoulder to the other and looked at the sky. A wheel of gray cloud had escaped from the dark ridge that was blowing in. As I stared, the cloud began to turn, like a clock’s mainspring unwinding. I heard a low buzzing like a trapped fly and dredged up the image of the girl in the Lighthouse, the way she peered shyly into my room, as though I had something special hidden among the shabby furniture and plastic mattress cover.

There’d been no reek of desperation about her, no fear, just a kid’s longing for something she couldn’t put a name to yet. She was bored; she dreamed of waking up somewhere else. Her father might have been an asshole, but he didn’t beat her or abuse her.

That’s why she hadn’t interested me. No damage.

“Merrill’s wicked pissed off,” said Everett.

“Yeah. Now he’s got to clean the motel rooms,” Toby said. They both laughed.

“Well, he’s all worked up, no doubt ‘bout that.” The harbormaster slung his hands into his pockets. “John Stone told me Merrill called him this morning too, got him out of bed. John told him she aint’t back by sunset, then he should call. Or maybe little miss went on down to Florida, see her ma. Anyway, you see her, tell her to get herself home.”

He began walking down to the water, stopped and looked back at me.

“You too,” he said. His gaze wasn’t threatening. It was worried. “You see her, call me or John Stone, he’s the sheriff. Don’t like these kids running off.”

He lifted a hand to Toby and headed off.

“Come on,” said Toby. “We better get you up to Aphrodite’s house.”

We walked through the village. The bait shop, a mobile home with a bunch of large, scary-looking dolls standing in the window. The Island General Store, a clapboard building covered in flaking rust-colored paint, with a low wooden stoop and a gas pump with a trash bag tied over it. A bunch of flyers flapped from the store’s walls and screen door.

“That guy,” I said. I walked over and pulled at a faded piece of paper. “Martin Graves. I keep seeing these everywhere. What’s the deal with him?”

I glanced aside and saw another flyer, curled with damp and age. “Jesus. What’s the deal with all of them?”

I smoothed out the second flyer. This one was a color xerox of a smiling teenage girl, her face and hair bleached to a brown slurry between faded words.

“‘Heather Pollitt,’” I read aloud. “What happened to her?”

“She ran off.” Toby stepped up beside me. “Went down to Bangor, I think. She had a baby or something. That’s a real old flyer, that one; we should take it down—”

He tore it down and crumpled it, tossed it into a barrel by the door. “Oh, and look here—somebody’s cat is missing too. That’s a new one,” he added, tapping a handwritten sheet dated a few days earlier. “Poor Smoky! I hope they find him. But that guy—”

He pressed a scabbed-over thumb against the picture of Martin Graves. “I don’t know what happened. I heard he just took off or something. Supposedly he had a fight with his girlfriend, or maybe it was his wife? Anyway, his parents keep putting these up. You saw some driving up here?”

“Yeah. I think I read about him online too. This place has a high mortality rate for kids. And cats.”

We started back up the hill. Behind us gulls wheeled and screamed above the harbor. The road was dirt and gravel and ice, chunks of broken blacktop. After a few yards it curved and began to climb steeply between scrawny firs and birch.

“Fishers get the cats,” said Toby.

“Huh?”

“What you said about kids and cats. Fishers get them.”

I looked at him suspiciously. “They use them for bait?”

“Not fishermen. Fisher cats. That’s what they call them, but they’re really just fishers. They’re kind of like a wolverine, or a big mink, but they can climb trees. Usually they eat porcupines, but sometimes one will move into a neighborhood and start picking off all the local pets. Cats, small dogs even.”

“Kids?”

Toby laughed. “Not that I ever heard. They’re not that big—maybe the size of a big coon cat. I think that’s why they call ‘em fisher cats.”

“How do they eat porcupines?”

“They’re really smart. Smarter’n a porcupine, anyway. But you don’t find them on the islands, usually. Just the mainland. Here, let’s go this way.”

He turned off the narrow road into a pine grove. There was no path that I could see, but Toby moved confidently among the trees. The shrieks of gulls died into a muffled near silence; the sound of wind in the trees was louder than the ocean. The moss underfoot was so thick and damp it was like walking on soggy carpet, and the moss wasn’t just on the ground—it covered everything, rocks, logs, even an empty beer can. If I fell asleep on the ground, it would probably cover me, moss and this bright yellow mold, and something Toby said was old-man’s-beard, long stringy hanks of lichen that hung from tree limbs like hair. Unlike the rocks by the harbor, these looked soft and plushy with moss. They looked organic, like if you stared at one long enough you might catch it breathing.

It was a weird place; what you’d imagine a fairy tale would look like if you fell into one. They gave me a bad feeling, all those trees. When I touched one, the bark wasn’t damp but wet and slimy. It seemed to give beneath my finger, like skin.

It creeped me out.

I used to like that feeling. I used to hunt that feeling down. For a second, I thought of getting out my camera and hunting it again.

But I couldn’t. The island spooked me. I got the sense here that nothing you did could ever matter—not for long, anyway. You could build a house or an entire town and the island would just swallow it and you’d never know it had even existed. Everything would just be eaten away. I kicked at a boulder, and my boottip snagged in two inches of moss. I had to bend over to yank it out.

Toby stopped to wait for me. “Porcupines like pine trees,” he said. “Like fishers do. But porcupines are stupid. Porcupines and skunks. Ever notice how much road kill is porcupines and skunks? They rely so much on being obnoxious, they think nothing can kill them. But a fisher’s smart—vicious, but smart. And fast. They come up on a porcupine, bite it on the nose then flip it over and tear its throat and belly out. They’ll go right for its head, rip its whole face off, then eat it from the inside out.”

I made a face. Toby laughed.

“You don’t need to worry,” he said. “Like I said, they don’t come out here to the islands. And they don’t attack people. Not much, anyway. They go for smaller things. I saw one once, in the woods by Burnt Harbor. It was playing with a mouse, like a cat does.”

“But what if one did come here?”

“I don’t know.” He ran his hand along a branch covered with lichen that looked like peeling orange housepaint, snapped the branch off and tossed it. “They can swim, I think. Maybe one could swim over. I guess then it could swim back to shore. Or maybe they eat each other. There never seems to be a real long-term problem back on the mainland. People trap them.”

He began to walk again. “You getting tired?”

I shrugged. That hangover was starting to rage behind my eyes. It wasn’t even ten, and I was ready to crawl back to bed. “Just fried,” I said. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“The Lighthouse didn’t suit you?”

“It wasn’t that. Too wound up, I guess.”

“Last I saw, you were knocking back the Jack Daniel’s. That would unwind me pretty fast.”

We walked on. Now and then I’d spot sea urchins on the moss, their spines the same gray-green as the lichen. I stopped and nudged one with my foot. “How do these get here?”

“Sea gulls drop them on the rocks to crack ‘em open.” Toby glanced at me curiously. “So’d you see her last night? Merrill’s daughter?”

“Just for a few minutes.” I picked up the sea urchin. Several spines fell away at my touch, not sharp but soft and brittle, like burnt twigs. “She checked me in. And she came to my room after, to tell me about that place where we ate. The Good Tern. So I guess I can thank her for my hangover.”

“I think you can thank yourself for that,” said Toby.

I rubbed my finger across the sea urchin until the rest of the spines flaked off. What I held now looked remarkably like one of the small tussocks of moss everywhere. I cupped it in my hand then carefully put it into my bag.

“Those are real fragile,” Toby warned. “You want to watch, they break like eggshells.”

“I’ll be careful.” I looked around, shaking my head. “It’s so strange. I mean, it’s almost winter and it’s still green.”

“The fog does that. It covers everything, the rocks and trees; then the moss and lichens cover them and feed off the moisture. It’s a paradise for parasites.”

Ahead of us the pines thinned out. The shadowy green world gave way to a bleached-out stretch of stone and birch, a building barely visible through the trees. I thought of Mackenzie’s white face momentarily blazing in my headlights.

She was a cute kid. Probably she’d been running away—or, more likely, running off with some boyfriend or girlfriend. I preferred to think of her on a Grayhound headed south to Boston or New York, meeting a friend in Port Authority, heading west. Who was I to stop her escape? I hoped she was a hundred miles away.

“How much farther?” I asked Toby.

“Almost there.”

I blinked as we stepped into milky sunlight. We were at the top of a long slope leading down to the rocky shoreline and a small cove. The slope was scattered with trees—birch, oak, hemlocks. Tucked within the trees were two small gray-shingled buildings. Both looked utterly derelict and abandoned.

“You were asking about the commune,” said Toby, and pointed. “Most of it was up at the top of this hill, but people salvaged it or burned it for firewood. Those shacks are all that’s left. Denny’s old bus is over the hill a ways. And that’s Aphrodite’s place there—”

Among the trees by the cove stood a clapboard building that looked as though it were attempting to pull itself up the hillside. There were loose and missing boards everywhere. The roof was sunken, the stone chimneys crumbling. The white paint had weathered to a uniform gray and was filigreed with moss, and moss-covered boulders thrust up against the walls.

I looked at Toby. “At midnight does it turn back to rocks and pine needles?”

“Not what you expected?”

“No. It’s so dark. Photographers want light.”

“Light’s better on the eastern side.” He gestured toward the black water of the cove. “It’s old. Wasn’t real big, so she kept adding on to it.

“I don’t see any lights.”

Toby looked up. Smoke threaded from one of the chimneys, carrying the acrid smell of creosote. “She’s here. Someone is, anyway.”

He headed for the front door, its granite sill scattered with ashes. An untidy stack of firewood stood beside it, and a snow shovel.

“Hey, Aphrodite.” Toby rapped loudly on the door. “You got visitors.”

I felt a flicker of real excitement. I thought of the pictures in Deceptio Visus, of a Medusa’s frozen face gazing from a black-and-white photograph. Then the door opened, and those Medusa’s eyes were staring at me.

10

She was so small and finely built that I felt huge and ungainly standing in front of her, silver-white hair to her shoulders, white skin, bright red lipstick carelessly applied. Her face was lined, but otherwise she looked remarkably like the woman in the photo. Behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses the familiar onyx eyes glittered, bloodshot but still challenging. She wore a black woolen tunic, black leggings, scuffed-up moccasin slippers. She looked like a girl headed for dance class, or a wizened geisha doll.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

Without warning a mass of dark shapes surrounded her, growling and whining. I backed away in alarm. “Jesus—”

“They won’t hurt you.” Aphrodite gestured at me impatiently then crooned, “Runi, Fee—down, get down.”

The writhing shadows resolved into three immense dogs, the biggest dogs I’d ever seen. Toby put a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

“Those are her dogs,” he said.

“No shit.” I pulled away from him. One of the dogs jumped toward me, its head brushing my chest before I pushed it down. Another stood on its hind legs and pawed at Toby’s shoulders. It was so tall it looked as though they were dancing.

“They won’t hurt you,” Aphrodite repeated. The look she gave me was disdainful.

Toby took a step back, toward the trees. “I better get going,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

“Hey, wait,” I said and pushed at a grizzled, narrow muzzle. “I didn’t pay you yet.”

“Not to worry,” he said. “You can catch me another time.”

“Get inside,” ordered Aphrodite. “Fee! Tara, Runi! Now.”

The panting dogs receded. As I followed them inside, one thrust its nose against my hand and stared up at me with moist, imploring eyes.

“I’m Cassandra Neary,” I said as Aphrodite yanked the door shut. “Man, those are some big dogs. Are they wolfhounds?”

“Deerhounds.”

She hissed a command, and the dogs pattered off. We stood in a narrrow foyer, its pine flooring scratched and furrowed, tattered rugs askew. A line of windows on the opposite wall looked across the cove to open water and a gray prospect of islands and gathering cloud. There was a bench heaped with yellow rain slickers and boots, split kindling and old newspapers, aerosol cans of Deet, several big flashlights. Kerosene lamps hung from the ceiling alongside coils of rope and a pair of snowshoes. Aphrodite’s small, black-clad figure was incongruous among all this North Woods clutter. She stared up at me imperiously, finally asked, “Who did you say you were?”

“Cass Neary. Cassandra Neary.” My mouth went dry. “I’m supposed to—Phil Cohen said he’d spoken to you. About an interview for Mojo magazine.”

“Never heard of it. An interview?” She made a throaty sound that I realized was a disgusted laugh. “I never give interviews. Who sent you?”

“Phil Cohen.”

She continued to stare at me, shrugged and turned away. “Never heard of him.”

“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 dining 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…”

I peered at the photo. “Well, it looks like she worked over the finished prints. Touched them up with colored pencils, or maybe pastels. It must’ve taken her forever.” I shot him another look. “Didn’t you ever wonder about that? How she did these?”

“Not really. She never cared what I thought. And, well, she’s my mother. Did you spend a lot of time wondering about what your mother did?”

“No. But I spent the last thirty years wondering how your mother did this.”

“Satisfied?”

I took a step back from the wall. The way the photos were hung made the two windows, with their views of the real islands, look like part of the sequence.

I liked the illusory islands better.

“Yeah,” I said at last. “I guess I am. But…”

I glanced around the room, frowning. “Her other pictures—the ones from the other book. Mors. Where are they?”

“She destroyed them.”

“What?”

“She burned them. Or, I dunno, maybe she tore them up and threw them into the ocean. It was a few years after I was born. I don’t remember it, but I remember hearing about it years later. There was some kind of a big scene, with—”

He stopped. I felt as though I’d been kicked in the stomach. “But—why?”

“I don’t know.” He looked away. “Something bad happened. You know about Oakwind? The commune?”

I nodded, and he made a grim face. “Well, this was after Oakwind split up, but I gather it had something to do with that. There was a lot of bad blood there, between her and—well, her and just about everyone except for Toby. It didn’t start that way, but…”

“But why would she destroy those pictures? They were taken, what? In the 1950s.”

He shook his head. “Cass, I have no clue. I wouldn’t bring it up, though, in the unlikely event she talks to you again. Not unless you still want to drive back to New York tonight. You hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I’m heading down to the Island Store to get a sandwich. Want to come?”

I wanted to stay, but I wasn’t sure he’d leave me alone there. And even if I wasn’t hungry, I needed a drink.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “One minute.”

He waited as I made a final circuit, looking at each photo. Then we went back down to the mudroom.

“My mother’ll be off for a while with the dogs,” he said and pulled on a heavy coat. “They won’t bother you. Mostly they just sneak around looking for a soft place to sleep. But if you were expecting Aphrodite to make lunch or something—uh, she doesn’t do lunch. She barely does dinner. She does cocktails, after-dinner cocktails, pick-me-ups. A lot of pick-me-ups.”

He opened the outer door, looked doubtfully at my leather jacket. “You going to be warm enough?”

“I’ll be warm when I get back to the city.” I swore as the zipper caught in Toby’s sweater. “Your helpful fucking friend already gave me this—”

I yanked the zipper free then opened my bag, grabbed my camera, and slung it around my neck. “And you know what else?”

We crossed the moss-covered yard, heading back to the harbor. “I could use a pick-me-up too.”

11

Instead of going through the woods, Gryffin cut down toward the water. There was no sign of Aphrodite or her dogs.

“This isn’t the way Toby took,” I said. I had to pick among wet rocks and clumps of seaweed, my boots slipping when I tried to climb over a granite mound.

“I like to see the water,” said Gryffin. He stopped and held out his hand to get me over the boulder. I ignored it, and he shrugged. “That’s the whole point of coming here, right? For the water.”

“You tell me. Did you go to school here?”

“School? No.” He seemed amused. “They only have a one-room schoolhouse here. It goes up to eighth grade. After that, kids used to go live on the mainland and go to school in Machias. I don’t think there’s any kids left here now.”

“Is that what you did?”

“I went to the Putney School. In Vermont.”

Nowadays, tuition at Putney will set you back nearly thirty grand. Even back in the ‘70s, it would have cost a nice bit of change.

“Isn’t that where Dylan’s kid went?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think so. But that was after my time.”

The tide was coming in, covering the gravel beach and lifting black strands of kelp from the rocks. I saw another sea urchin shell, almost as big as my fist. The bottom had cracked open and the shell had filled with sand. I sifted the sand through my fingers then pocketed it.

Gryffin started for where a thin line of birches ran up the hillside. When he reached the first tree he paused to stare out to the islands. His profile was sharp, his dark hair tangled in the collar of his coat. The light showed up more gray than I’d noticed earlier. It wasn’t a conventionally handsome face—nose too big, eyes too small, weakish chin—but it was an intense one, eyes narrowed and mouth set tight, as though it were a constant effort not to lose his temper. Deep furrows in his brow suggested this was a habitual expression.

I wondered what he looked like when he really did lose it. My fingers brushed the spiny little mound in my pocket. I thought of hurling it at him, just to see what would happen, but the shell was so fragile it wouldn’t do much good. Instead I popped the lens cap from my camera and shot a few pictures. Gryffin looked back.

“What are—hey, stop that!”

“What, is there a family ban on photography?”

He didn’t reply, just turned and began walking again. I lowered the camera and followed in silence up the hill, to where the birches joined bigger trees, oaks and maples. Some of the birches must have been really old. They were huge, their trunks charcoal gray. Not much moss here, just drifts of leaves with a film of ice and scattered patches of thin snow. The ground crackled underfoot, like walking on crumpled newspaper.

“So, you come up here a lot?” I asked.

“Not a lot. A couple times a year. Usually in the summer, or earlier in the fall. I had to go to a show in October, otherwise I would’ve been here a few weeks ago.”

He didn’t walk particularly fast, but his legs were so long I had to hurry to keep up. He kept his head down and his glasses jammed close to his face. He looked like an overgrown teenager, gangly and wary. “I mostly came to see a friend of mine. Ray Provenzano, he lives on the far side of the island. He was a friend of my father’s. Another poet. Also a book collector—that’s the delivery I told you about.”

“I know his name. Vaguely,” I said.

“Yeah, the Strand’s a place you might still find Ray’s books. Here, we’re at the road again.”

He crashed through a clump of underbrush onto the rutted roadway. I picked my way more carefully, watching that my camera didn’t snag on anything, finally stomped out onto the blacktop.

“See where we are?” Gryffin pointed. “There’s the Island Store.”

“How do you get to see your friend on the far side of the island?”

“There’s roads—tracks, anyway—all over the place. Not a lot of cars, that’s true. Everyone uses three-wheelers or four-wheelers. ATVs. In the winter they use snowmobiles. Hear that?”

A sudden roar like a chainsaw erupted from the woods behind us. “That’s a four-wheeler. A few of the old-timers, they still have their old beaters to get around in. Ray, he has a four-wheeler here. Not that it goes anywhere unless his flunky, Robert, drives it. Not that he goes anywhere.”

“How come?”

“Ray made him himself persona non grata a while ago. He was hiring teenage boys from Burnt Harbor to come over and paint his house. I don’t know what went on exactly.”

He sighed. “Anyway, the kids’ families didn’t like it much. Next time he came over to Burnt Harbor, he was ambushed. Spent the rest of the summer in the hospital. He didn’t press charges, so … everything’s kinda blown over. But he doesn’t go off-island much anymore.”

“How does he get his groceries?”

“He has a teenage gofer. Robert.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. Hey, Ray knows if he tries anything again, he’s dead. Here we go.”

We’d reached the Island General Store. Gryffin held the door for me and we went inside.

Reggae music blasted from the kitchen. An enormous Newfoundland dog lay on the floor, sound asleep.

“Hey, Ben.” Gryffin reached down to rough the dog’s head. Its eyes remained shut, but its tail moved slightly. “Where’s Suze, huh? Where’s Suzy?”

I looked around. A woodstove with no chimney hookup was covered with coffee thermoses and Styrofoam cups. I could smell pizza baking, and stale beer. There were shelves of canned goods and boxes of pasta; in a smaller back room, cold cases of beer and milk. An ice-cream freezer. Behind the wooden counter, cartons of cigarettes; on a high shelf accessible by a stepladder, bottles of rum, whiskey, brandy, sake. An open doorway led into the kitchen.

“Sake?” I said.

“Summer people,” said Gryffin. “Suze’s got a pretty good wine list too.”

I eyed the comatose Newfoundland. “What’s with all the big dogs? I thought this was golden retriever country.”

“That’s Southern Maine. This is the Real Maine—Rotweilers and half-breed wolves. You can ask Suze. Hey, Suze!”

A petite woman walked out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. She was obviously Paswegas Island’s groove supply. I pegged her to be about my age, bleached blond dreadlocks streaked pink and green, windburned cheeks, pale blue eyes, a front tooth with a tiny chip in it; gray cargo pants and a multicolored cardigan over a T-shirt that read they call it tourist season: why can’t we shoot them? She had the kind of milk-fed face that would have seemed open if it wasn’t for a deep wariness in her eyes, the web of broken capillaries around her upturned nose.

“Hey, Gryffin. What’s up?” She had a raw, husky voice, as though she spent a lot of time shouting. When she noticed me she did an exaggerated doubletake. “Whoa. Incoming stranger.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” I went over to a beer case and grabbed a 16-ounce Bud. Suze scowled. Then she started to laugh.

“Nice manners.” She turned to Gryffin. “She with you?”

“Kind of.”

“Figures.” She glanced at the counter. A set of keys rested beside a stack of paper plates. “Shit. Tyler left his keys again. He’s gonna be wicked pissed if he gets all the way over to town before he notices.”

Gryffin looked toward the harbor. “Want me to go yell at him?”

“Nah. He’ll figure it out. What you up to, Gryff? Seeing your ma for the weekend?”

“Maybe. A few days.”

“Gonna go see Ray?

“Yeah. How’s he doing?”

There was a blast of cold air as the door opened. Two guys entered, eighteen or nineteen, wearing Carhart coats and reeking of cigarette smoke. In the kitchen a phone rang. Suze went to answer it. Gryffin followed her. So did the big dog. The newcomers walked past me, heads down, and went to the beer case. One of them looked curiously at my camera.

“Hey, Suze, you got a pizza going yet?” he yelled.

Suze’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “Yeah, in a minute—”

The new customers went into the back room and studied the beer cooler as though it were a Warcraft cheat sheet. Otherwise the place was empty.

I picked up a bag of Fritos and bellied up to the counter. Keeping an eye on the back room, I palmed the forgotten keys, slid them into the pocket with the sea urchin, then set my beer and the bag of Fritos where the keys had been. Then I stepped over to the window and picked up a copy of the local paper.

It wasn’t that local—the Bangor Daily News—but at least it was that day’s news. With no mailboat, I figured Everett Moss must bring the papers over from Burnt Harbor. I scanned the headlines—national news mostly, none of it good, and some cautiously optimistic predictions about the state’s deer season. I flipped to the local section. A bean supper in Winthrop, an investigation into welfare scams, more bad news for the Atlantic salmon fishery.

And, at the bottom of the page, a brief item.

body washed up at seal cove

The body of an unidentified man was found washed up on a private beach just north of Seal Cove in Corea. The body was discovered just above the high-water mark by an appraiser working on a neighboring house. Cause of death will be determined following an investigation by the State Medical Examiner.

“Hey, Suze.” One of the customers ambled back to the counter. He plunked down a six-pack and a box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. “I’ll take a couple slices of pepperoni or whatever you got going.”

I replaced the newspaper and wandered toward the register. A glass case under the counter held nothing but bottles of Allen’s Coffee Brandy—pints, liters, big plastic gallon jugs. The guy with the beers noticed me eyeing the case and shot me a grin.

I nodded at him, hoping this wouldn’t be misconstrued as part of a Maine courting ritual, then crossed to the other side of the room and pretended to look at a shelf of rental videotapes and DVDs. A darkened doorway opened onto a set of stairs. Beside it a curling bit of cardboard read paswegas historical society. I peered up the steps, but it was too dark to see anything.

A few other customers entered and made a beeline toward the back room. I waited to see if one of the newcomers was keyless Tyler. So far, no. After several minutes Gryffin reappeared.

“I ordered us both a turkey sandwich. That okay? She’s making them now.”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.” I inclined my head toward the little crowd around the counter. “Lunchtime rush?”

“You got it.”

The door opened again. A young woman came in with two small children. The kids ran over to the ice-cream freezer and began rooting around inside it. The woman walked over to one of the young guys.

“Hey, Randy. You seen Mackenzie?”

Randy shook his head. “Kenzie Libby? No. What’s going on? I heard she was missing or something.”

“Her father hasn’t seen her. Someone said she was down to Burnt Harbor last night.”

“At the Good Tern?’

“I don’t know.” She looked over at the kids. They were both facedown in the ice-cream freezer, their feet dangling behind them. “Brandon! Zack! Get your butts outta there—”

The kids extricated themselves and ran to their mother. Suze came back out of the kitchen, carrying sandwiches and slices of pizza. The woman with the kids bought a pack of cigarettes and left. The remaining customers filed over to the register, paid for their food, and did the same. When they were gone, Gryffin placed a bottle of apple juice on the counter.

“You hear about that? Mackenzie Libby’s gone missing,” said Suze.

“I heard,” said Gryffin as he paid for the sandwiches. “I saw her last night, at the Lighthouse. She checked me in. She was there too,” he added, cocking a thumb in my direction. “Not with me, though.”

“You see her?” Suze said to me. “She’s usually in the office there after school gets out.”

“Yeah, I saw her. Gothy little Suicide Girl type?”

“Yup. That’s Kenzie.” Suze took note of my camera. “You from a newspaper?”

“No.” I looked at her T-shirt. “I’m a tourist. But I’m out of season.”

“Always open season on tourists.” Suze shook her head. “I just hope she didn’t get messed up with one of those kids running a meth lab over by Cutler.”

“You get a lot of that?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s all over the state these days.”

“Any around here?”

“Here on the island? God, I hope not.”

“Hey, never hurts to ask,” I said.

Suze snorted. “Nice.” She bagged our sandwiches, a bottle of juice for Gryffin, and my beer. “Well, have fun. That may be work if you’re hanging out with Gryffin.”

We went outside. “What, you’re no fun?” I said.

“Not much.” The door banged shut behind us. Gryffin set down the bag and buttoned his jacket. He raised an eyebrow as I snagged my beer. “Isn’t it a little early for that?”

“Beer. It’s what’s for breakfast.” I cracked it and took a sip. “Your mother would know.”

We trudged back uphill. “What’s with all the coffee brandy?” I asked. “Looks like Suze is stockpiling the stuff.”

“That’s Allen’s Coffee Brandy, the Maine drug of choice. It’s lethal—70 proof. That’s how a lot of people up here get their Vitamin D—they mix it with milk and get an extra buzz from the caffeine. Kills more people than heroin does.”

I took another pull at my beer. “That’s disgusting.”

“Pot kettle black.”

“I hate sweet shit,” I said.

He angled off toward the path I’d first taken with Toby. I let him get a few steps ahead of me, then slid my hand into my pocket. I found the keys I’d nicked, felt around till I located the hole in the bottom of the sea urchin. The keys just fit, though a bit of the shell broke off as I poked them inside. I removed the sea urchin from my pocket and held it, a spiky little fist in my palm. Then I set it down at the edge of the road a few yards from the store.

It blended in nicely with gravel and rocks and dust-covered moss. “Bye-bye,” I said and hurried after Gryffin.

We walked without speaking, skirting the pine grove and taking a different path toward the water. I finished my beer, reached over to tuck the empty into the paper bag Gryffin carried. A flicker of distaste crossed his face, but he said nothing.

“So,” I said. I was feeling better. The beer made me feel warmer, and everything had that benign, soft-focus look it gets when you drink in the middle of the day. “This commune everyone talks about. Any of those guys still around?”

“Oakwind?” Gryffin stopped to shake a stone from his shoe. “Not really. Most of them were clueless as to how to actually build a house, so their places fell apart over the years. There’s a couple of them left.”

He put his shoe back on and began walking again “Mostly they got sold when the hippies went back to Wall Street or Julliard or wherever. Some people went native and stayed here. There’s three or four folks around Burnt Harbor. Here on Paswegas it’s just Toby and Ray, I think. One or two guys on the outer islands, but they’re not people you want to mess with. I’m talking about guys who live in old school buses and survive on blocks of government cheese.”

“And Allen’s Coffee Brandy.”

“And Allen’s Coffee Brandy,” Gryffin agreed. “Old Toby, now, he’s just a few steps ahead of them—he lives on rum and Moxie. He keeps an apartment here down by the harbor, but he stays on his boat until the weather gets really bad.”

“What about this guy Denny?”

He fell silent.

“He’s a burnout,” he said at last.

I waited, and after a minute he went on. “The winters were too hard for most of them, so they split. The ones who stayed tended either to be the most together, like Toby, or the most burned out. Like Denny. Lucien Ryel, he was together. Together enough not to live here year-round, anyway. You know who he is? He owns an island not too far off.”

“Yeah, I gather he’s a local celebrity.”

Gryffin laughed. “Who told you that? Toby? Around here, someone hires you and his check clears, he’s a celebrity. Lucien’s more like another has-been. We have a lot of them, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“What about you?”

“I’m a never-tried-to-be-something.”

We were high on the seaward side of the island now, near a line of misshapen firs that formed a bit of windbreak. They leaned away from the water crashing far below, as though trying to flee from it. Beside the trees were two huge boulders. Gryffin walked toward them and gestured for me to follow.

“See that?” He stopped and pointed across the reach to a long shadow that seemed to hover just above the water’s surface. “That’s Lucien’s island. Tolba Island. That means “turtle” in the Passamaquoddy language.”

I squinted, but distance and sea-haze made it hard to get a fix on the place. I popped the lens cap from my camera and focused, took a few shots then lowered it again. “It doesn’t look like a turtle to me.”

“Yeah, me neither. I guess when you’re on it, it does. I wouldn’t know—I’ve never been there. Toby says he’s got a whole compound—recording studio, main house, hermit’s cave…”

“A cave? Really?”

“No. That’s just what Toby calls it. It’s where the caretaker lives. Denny.”

“I thought Toby was the caretaker?”

“Toby? No. Toby did a lot of the work, but he’s never lived there. And Lucien lives in Berlin—he only comes here for a week or two in the summer. He wanted Toby to stay out on the island and watch the place for him, but Toby said no. So he got Denny to do it.”

“Better than living on a bus,” I suggested.

“Yeah, I guess.” Gryffin gave me a resigned look. “Denny was the guy started the commune. He was around our house all the time when I was little. He and my mother, they had a thing. It ended badly.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. When I was really little, I was always scared of him. When I got a little older he was gone, but by then I thought he was, like, Charles Manson. I could never figure out what the appeal was, for my mother and everyone else.”

I thought of Phil. This guy she was involved with, he and I did a little business, back in the day.

“Probably he had really good drugs,” I said.

Gryffin nodded. “I remember at Putney, this girl—big druggy—she died of an overdose. When they did the autopsy, the medical report said her brain looked like a Swiss cheese. And I thought, Christ, Denny Ahearn’s brain looks like that and he’s still alive.”

“Maybe that’s what happened to the girl from the motel.”

“Drugs?” Gryffin shook his head. “I doubt it. Not Kenzie.”

“No. This Denny guy. Maybe he kidnapped her or something.”

“Uh-uh. Denny never leaves the island. I mean, he might come over once or twice a year to get some groceries, but that’s it. Toby brings him whatever he needs when he’s out there provisioning Lucien. Denny’s a total hermit. I mean, he’s just sane enough to be on this side of AMHI.”

“AMHI?”

“Augusta Mental Health Institution. State loony bin. If he were down in Portland or someplace like that, he’d probably be on the street. But here—well, he’s pretty normal.”

“Normal?” I stared at him in disbelief. “Ever hear of Stephen King? I mean, you were the one who brought up Charles Manson.”

Gryffin looked exasperated. “You’re from away, so you don’t get it. Half the guys in Maine look like Charles Manson. Especially here down east. There’s a lot of survivalist types living off in the woods; you can’t go arresting them every time someone wanders off the Appalachian Trail. If you could even find them.”

“But you know right where Denny is.”

“Yeah, and it’s a good place for him.” He stared out at the bulk of Tolba Island. “Guys like Denny, maybe they know what’s best for them. Stay away from the rest of us. Some people just don’t play well with others. If they want to hide and waste their lives, that’s their business.”

I didn’t say anything, just stood beside him, gazing at the water. After a minute I peered at his face.

“What?” he demanded.

“The green ray.” I extended my finger. He flinched, and I stopped, my finger hovering an inch from his cheekbone. “There—in your eye. That weird speck of green. I’ve never seen that before.”

“Pigment. Too much melanin. Like a freckle, only in my iris.”

“It’s weird. It’s kind of beautiful.”

“That’s your beer talking. Come on, I’m starving.”

We walked to Aphrodite’s house. The day suddenly felt old. The sun was already sliding down toward the western horizon, and as we approached the house it all seemed plunged in shadow. I was hungry now too, and tired.

“I’m going to crash after I eat,” I said as we went into the kitchen. The house was silent, with no trace of Aphrodite or the dogs. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“I’ll get you set for a nap after lunch. Sit.”

He cleared aside the papers on the table by the window. We ate without talking. When we were done he cleared the plates, then said, “Okay. I’ll show you the guest room. Then I’ve got to make some phone calls and do some work.”

“What about your mother?”

“What about her? She’s either schnockered or out in the woods with the dogs. She’ll be back at some point. Maybe after you have your little nap the two of you can trade hangover remedies,” he said angrily. “She drives me nuts. She always has. We’ve never really gotten along.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You want to know the truth? If I were you, I’d just leave and go back to the city. Even if she’d known you were coming, even if you had brought a tape recorder—she would have found some way out of it. And that—?”

He pointed at my camera. “Not in a million years.”

I stared at the table. I still hadn’t paid Toby for bringing me out; it couldn’t cost much more to have him bring me back to Burnt Harbor. If I left early the next morning, I could be home by tomorrow night. I wouldn’t be out much more money, or time, and I’d have the rest of the week to—

To what? Scream at Phil? Drink myself to sleep or shuffle around the clubs looking for music and someone to go home with?

That wasn’t going to happen. The clubs were gone. I had a better chance of getting laid here in Bumfuck than on the Lower East Side. I had the Rent-A-Wreck for the rest of the week, but not enough money to do something interesting with it.

And there was still the minor matter of Phil Cohen. No matter that he’d screwed this up, he would give me grief and almost certainly do his part to make sure everyone within the Tri-state radius thought it was my fault.

“Shit, I dunno.” I looked up at Gryffin. “Listen, would there be a problem with me staying overnight? I mean, this editor arranged this for me, and I don’t really want to bail and go back without anything to show him. I’ll keep a low profile,” I added. “Just for a day or two.”

Gryffin sighed. “I guess we can see what she says. Get your stuff, and I’ll show you the guest room; you can sleep or read or whatever. Check how your Nokia stock’s performing.”

He led me back upstairs. We went past the room with Aphrodite’s islandscapes, into a narrow ell that led to one of those jerry-built additions, its floor uneven and the windows mismatched.

“Remember what I was telling you about the folks at Oakwind having no idea what they were doing when it came to architecture and building? This is Exhibit A.” Gryffin waved in disgust at the walls. “Denny built this—my wing of the house, including the guest room. And if you think it’s bad now, you should have seen it back then. Snow blew right through the cracks in the walls; there’d be two-inch drifts in here. Nothing was plumb—you could set down a bowling ball at one end of the hall and it would roll to the other. Toby had to come in and basically rebuild it. So it’s still kind of funky, but—”

He stopped and opened a door. “You will find no snow in your sleeping quarters.”

No heat, either, that I could detect, but I was afraid to push my luck by mentioning that. The room was under the eaves. There was a bed with a white coverlet, a nightstand and lamp, a ladderback chair and small chest of drawers. Braided rug on the floor, a window overlooking evergreens and gray rocks.

“It’s fine.” I dumped my bag on the bed. “Thanks.”

Gryffin bent to feel the baseboard heater. “This isn’t on. And I forgot the space heater. Well, you’ll be okay for a while. If you stay, I’ll bring you the heater before you go to bed tonight, how’s that? But now I have to get some work done. Bathroom’s down the hall, there should be hot water. See you later.”

He left. I grabbed a change of clothes and found the bathroom. More mismatched windows, a cracked skylight that had become a morgue for moths and flies, clawfoot tub, rust-stained sink.

But there was a nice Baruch rug on the pine floor, and expensive Egyptian cotton towels, and a block of Marseille soap in a brass holder by the tub. All of which led me to peg Gryffin as a closet sensualist.

I took a long bath. There was plenty of hot water. When I was done I dressed, keeping my expensive jeans but upgrading to a clean black T-shirt. Then I went back to my room, crawled under the blankets, and passed out.

It was late afternoon when I woke. The light seeping through the windows had that trembling clarity you get in early winter, when there are no leaves to filter it and the clouds are the same color as the sky. I exhaled and watched the air fog above my mouth. Then I got out of bed, went to the bathroom and washed my face. I raked my fingers through my hair and confronted the mirror.

I looked like shit. For the last few decades I’d coasted on good bone structure and good teeth. Right now those were the only things I still had going for me. With my ash-streaked hair and sunken eyes, I looked like a bad angel scorched by the fall to earth. I bared my teeth at my reflection and stepped back into the hall.

The door to Gryffin’s room was shut. I knocked on it softly. No reply. I went inside, closing the door behind me.

The room wasn’t bigger than mine, though less monastic. There was a more elaborate rug on the floor, a nice Mission-style bed, carelessly made with plaid blankets and a heap of pillows. Dark curtains, half drawn. A small desk with the now-empty computer case I’d seen in his motel room. An open suitcase holding flannel shirts and jeans. A few framed photos on the walls—a fishing trip, friends from Putney, graduation from Bowdoin College. On the desk a heavy old brass candlestick with a thick pillar candle and a Gauloises matchbox; on the windowsill some smooth gray rocks and the carapace of a box turtle.

I went to the bed, pulled back the covers, and ran my fingers across the sheets. No protective plastic here—the bedding was fancy cotton, soft as suede, or skin. Christine had loved expensive sheets too. She’d tried to buy some for me, but I wouldn’t let her.

“Why?” she demanded. “This is crazy, Cass. Your sheets are like sandpaper! You sleep on nice sheets at my place.”

I hadn’t said anything. She wouldn’t have understood. It was crazy. It was like not having a cell phone or a digital camera. The discomfort, the annoyance, reminded me that I was alive. It kept me from feeling completely numb, even as it kept me detached.

Christine had kept me human, barely. I knew that, and it scared me. Sometimes when she’d touched me I’d felt like I was burning, like her bed was on fire. I still felt like that sometimes when I thought of her.

I picked up one of Gryffin’s pillows and buried my face in it. It smelled of some grassy shampoo, and faintly of male sweat. It had been a long time since I’d been close enough to a man to smell him. I stood for a moment with my face pressed against the pillow. Then I lay on the bed, pillow crushed to me so I could breathe in his scent, and masturbated, thinking of the way he’d looked in the photo, that green-flecked eye.

Afterward I smoothed the coverlet and headed back to my room. I thought about getting my camera, decided to leave it. I hadn’t brought much film with me. I pulled on Toby’s sweater and went downstairs.

The house had a strange, late-afternoon calm. Chilly hallways, dead bluebottles on the windowsills; the dull ache, somewhere between anticipation and disappointment, of knowing night was almost here. In the living room a deerhound curled on the couch like a gigantic dormouse, snoring. No other dogs. No Aphrodite. Not much heat coming from the woodstove, though I could see a dull glow through the soot-covered window.

I found Gryffin at the kitchen table, bent over his laptop. He waved tersely at me without looking up. I crossed to the refrigerator and peered inside.

A container of skim milk, another of V-8 juice; eggs and a bag of coffee. Breakfast wasn’t just the most important meal of the day around here. It was the only meal.

“I’m going to the store,” I announced. “You want anything?”

“Me? Uh, no,” Gryffin said distractedly. “Thanks.”

Outside, chickadees fluttered in the trees. Something rustled in the dead leaves of an oak then made a loud rattling sound as I passed. It didn’t seem as cold, despite looming shadows and a steady wind off the water.

Or maybe it was like my grandmother always said: You can get used to anything, even hanging. I remembered Phil’s words—all that bleak shit you like? Well, this is it.

He was right. It made me feel the way the Lower East Side used to make me feel, before the boutiques and galleries and families moved in and the clubs closed and the place became just another sewage pipe for American currency and overpriced clothes. I loved the way it used to be, loved that edge, the sense that the ground beneath me could give way at any time and I’d go hurtling down into the abyss. I had fallen, more than once, but I’d always caught myself before I smashed against the bottom. Back in the day, of course, I was out there taking pictures of people who weren’t so lucky. It was terrifying, but it was also exhilarating.

Now all that had changed. Now there were clean wide sidewalks over the pit. Making my chump change last from week to week for twenty-odd years was no longer a sign of being a survivor. It was further proof, not that any was needed, that I was a fuckup.

I was still managing to be a fuckup here, of course. But I was starting to like it. It seemed a good place to be, if you needed something to slice through the scar tissue so you could feel your own skin. At the moment, the cold was doing a pretty good job of that. I zipped my jacket and shoved my hands into my pockets, wind at my back. That beer had been good. Some Jack Daniel’s would be better.

I walked through the woods. A small animal burred angrily from a tree. I stopped, thinking of the fisher Toby had mentioned, looked up and saw a red squirrel glaring down at me. I chucked a pine cone at it and went on.

There was no one in the Island Store when I arrived, just the big Newfoundland lying in front of the counter. The air smelled good, garlic and tomatoes cutting through the underlying odors of beer and pizza. Dub music thumped from the kitchen. The dog stood and yawned then followed me as I went to the back room and got another beer from the cooler. When I returned to the counter Suze stood there. She slid a carton of cigarettes behind a Plexiglas window, then locked it.

“Going for another pounder?” She pronounced it poundah. At my blank look she picked up the beer and held it in front of my face. “Sixteen ounces?”

“Yeah. And two pints of Jack Daniel’s.” She raised an eyebrow. “I’m on the South Bend Diet.”

“Too quiet for you here?” She dragged over the ladder and got my bottle from the shelf. “Coming from the big city?”

“Seems busy to me. That girl disappearing. Bodies washing up on the beach.”

“Aw, that happens all the time. The bodies, I mean. Often enough, anyway. The hungry ocean, it’s a dangerous business.” She took my money, put the bottles in a paper bag and pushed it across the counter to me. When I started to remove the beer, she shook her head. “You can’t drink that in here.”

Before I could retort, she motioned behind her. “But you can drink it out here.”

I followed her into the kitchen. She grabbed a coffee mug then kicked open a battered wooden door, letting in a blast of wintry air and revealing a rickety set of steps. One of the rails was broken, and there was only room for two people to stand side by side. But it had a commanding view of a dumpster and a propane tank and, past a ragged scrim of stone buildings and faded clapboard, the harbor. Suze leaned against the intact railing, leaving me to stand with my back to the door.

“Yeah, Mackenzie.” She cupped the mug in her hands. “John Stone called me a little while ago—county sheriff—I guess they’re waiting till tomorrow to officially call it a missing persons case.”

I popped my beer. “Isn’t that kind of a long time to wait? If they’re really worried?”

“That’s what I said.” Suze nodded vehemently. “I asked him why this wasn’t an Amber Alert—they practically shut down 95 and close the Canadian border if that happens—but he said she’s too old. Under fifteen, that’s the cutoff date. Older’n that, you’re screwed. And the local authorities, they don’t have a lot of manpower. So they don’t like going off on a wild-goose chase, which is what John Stone thinks this is.”

She shook her head, disgusted. “This is so messed up, man. You’re from away, so you wouldn’t know, but this kind of shit happens all the fucking time. Kids go missing, no one ever finds them. Or they show up…”

Her husky voice trailed off.

“Dead?” I suggested.

“No,” she said. “A lot of people just never get found. But I think that’s because they don’t want to. The rest, mostly they turn up alive, in Florida or South Carolina or someplace like that. Someplace warm. Kenzie’s mom, she lives around Orlando. Her and Merrill had a really nasty divorce. Kenzie hasn’t seen her mom in two years. I think she headed down there. But in the meantime everyone’s all worked up and the cops are pulling over everyone with a broken headlight. Over there, I mean.”

She indicated the mainland. “And, I mean, some scary shit does come down, you know? People disappear, you don’t find the body for ten years, or maybe ever. And maybe you never find out what really went down. Then you get the critter factor, and you got to bring in forensics from Augusta…”

“What’s the critter factor?”

“You know—animals getting to the body, eating it. This ain’t Disneyland. People forget that. Even people who live here and oughta know better. Like, you don’t fuck around on a boat in the winter. You don’t get drunk when you go out to get your deer.”

She glanced at my leather jacket. “You don’t forget to wear blaze orange in November. Anyway, that body in Seal Cove? Maybe they drowned, maybe it was or suicide or drugs.” She sighed and drank her coffee. “Our local law enforcement sucks.”

“I’m surprised you have local law enforcement.”

She gave a croaking laugh. “We sure don’t have much. John Stone has to come over from Burnt Harbor whenever a call goes in. That can take hours, if he’s up in Eastport or someplace. If you need an ambulance, someone has to take you to Burnt Harbor by boat. If things are really bad they Medivac you out by helicopter. That costs, like, three thousand dollars, so you better be insured. Which of course nobody is.”

“So, what—you just don’t get sick out here?”

“Pretty much.” She smiled, and a sheaf of blond dreadlocks fell across one eye. I reached to brush the matted curls away, waiting for her to flinch or snap at me. But she just stared out toward the shore.

“Sure is slow today.” She laughed again and pointed to where a figure in yellow raingear paced slowly along the beach, head down. “Look at Tyler! He’s still looking for his keys. Man, he was pissed. He came roarin’ back up here, but they were gone, and he starts yelling at me—’Where’s my goddam keys, goddamit, where the goddam hell you put my goddam keys!’”

She finished her coffee. “I told him he better not be accusing me. You saw them, right? Right there on the counter? I told him he probably came in and got ‘em and just forgot about it. He’s always wasted. That or one of his friends picked them up for him and he’ll get ‘em later when he runs into them.”

I watched the man on the beach.

“Yeah, I saw them,” I said thoughtfully. “They were right there on the counter. Maybe one of those little kids picked them up.”

Suze frowned. “Yeah, maybe. I’ll ask Becky next time she comes in. Or I’ll just sic Tyler on them—that would teach ‘em.”

She gave her rough laugh and edged past me to the door. “I better get back, before someone else loses something. So, you’re a friend of Gryffin’s? He’s an odd guy.”

I finished my beer and followed her back inside. “Odd?”

“Well, you know.” Suze pulled her dreadlocks back from her face and fastened them with an elastic. She looked prettier that way. “His family’s kind of weird. Did you know his father, Steve?”

I shook my head. Suze gave me a funny look, as though she was about to say something. Instead she began fiddling with the register.

After a moment she glanced up again. “He was a nice guy, Steve. A poet—he hung out with Allen Ginsberg and those guys, they came up a few times when the whole commune thing was happening. I was just a kid, but I remember; it was very cool. That’s how Ray ended up here. But I don’t really know what the deal was with Steve and Aphrodite. He was gay, and, I mean, she had to know it. Everyone at that commune was screwing like rabbits. Aphrodite got pregnant, and then Steve and Ray, they began living together. Ray pretty much raised Gryffin after his father died. He’s a sweetheart—total opposite of Aphrodite. Who, as you may have figured out, is a total bitch.”

I nodded. I took the two pints of bourbon from the bag and shoved them in my jacket pockets, turned to toss the empty beer bottle into the trash.

“Hey!” Suze frowned. “We recycle here!”

“Sorry.”

I grinned sheepishly and handed the empty to her. Suze stuck it beneath the counter then lifted her head as a woman walked in. Before she could say a word, Suze had a pack of cigarettes and a lottery ticket on the counter. I looked across the room to the darkened stairway.

“Historical Society open?”

“Yeah, sure. Light switch’s on your right. It’s pretty rank, no one’s been up there in about six months.”

I went upstairs. A bare bulb illuminated a sparsely furnished room, cold and smelling of mildew. Two grubby armchairs, their greasy upholstery covered with knitted afghans. A few makeshift cases held arrowheads, fishing spears, rusted farm equipment. Faded photographs on the walls—members of the Paswegas County Grange circa 1932, lobster boats, the Island General Store in palmier days. The island school’s eighth-grade class of 1978, seven bright-faced kids in jeans and tie-dyed shirts. I looked at this one closely and recognized Suze, her blond hair and the same puckish grin, flashing a sardonic peace sign.

That was about it for the Historical Society. There was also a shelf labeled library that consisted entirely of the collected works of Clive Cussler, and a third-place trophy from the Collinstown Candlepins Bowling League. Beside the trophy was a turtle shell the size of my hand, black with yellow spots.

Something was scratched into the shell. I picked it up and tilted it until the ragged letters caught the light. Letters and something else—a crudely carved eye.

S.P.O.T.

“Spot,” I whispered and rubbed my finger across the carving. A pet spotted turtle. I turned it over. Someone’s initials were carved on the bottom.

ICU

I started to put the turtle shell back on the shelf when something rattled inside. I shook it, turning it back and forth until a small object dropped into my palm. I held it toward the overhead bulb.

It was a tooth. Not a baby tooth, either—a grownup incisor. The upper part was smooth as ivory, but the long root was discolored, mottled brown and black.

Not with decay. When I scraped it with my fingernail, flecks came off. Dried blood.

I sank into one of the armchairs, set down these mildly gruesome trophies and pulled out one of the pints of bourbon. I took a few sips, again picked up the shell and the tooth and stared at them broodingly.

I traced the letters on the upper carapace—S.P.O.T.—and wondered if they’d been carved while the turtle was still alive. I hoped not. I swallowed another mouthful of Jack Daniel’s, then slid my hand beneath Toby’s sweater, across the scar tissue on my lower abdomen and the raised lines of my tattoo.

I let the sweater fall back and studied the shell some more. Some kid’s pet, I assumed. I peered inside, but I couldn’t see anything, so I stuck my finger in and wiggled it around. Something prickly was stuck on the bottom.

I fished it out. I thought it was a wad of cloth, but when I rubbed it between my fingers I realized it was a frizz of human hair, dark brown and friable as a dead leaf.

I flicked it away. I dropped the tooth back inside the shell and replaced it on the shelf. I wiped my hands on my jeans, stuck the Jack Daniel’s into my pocket, and went back downstairs.

The place was empty again, save for Suze and her dog.

“I better go,” I said. “See you.”

Suze leaned on the counter and grinned. “You get bored, you know where to find me.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” At the door I stopped. “You know where Toby Barrett lives?”

“Toby? Yeah—he’s right down there in the Mercantile Building—”

She pointed to an old granite structure on the far side of the dock. “His apartment’s in the basement. You go round to the back, there’s a door there. You have to pound on it and hope he hears you. He’s not there now, though,” she said, scanning the gray water. “His boat’s out, so he must’ve gone back to Burnt Harbor. He’ll either spend the night there or come back here late. You need to talk to him? I can give him a message when I see him. Probably won’t be till tomorrow.”

“That’s okay. I was just curious. I’ll catch up with him later,” I said and headed up the road. At the crest of the hill, I stopped.

There on the beach was that stocky yellow-clad figure, still looking for his keys. He was a lot higher on the shore than he had been; it must be close to high tide. The sun had dipped behind the far end of the island. Ragged clouds hung above a sea streaked yellow and green as an overcooked egg yolk.

I wished I’d brought my camera. For a few minutes I watched the solitary form pacing the shore, slate-colored gulls wheeling above his head like the black cloud that used to follow Joe Btfsplk in old L’il Abner comics.

Some people make their own bad luck. Others, I help them out.

Finally I turned. As I approached the shadow of the firs, I looked down to make sure the sea urchin was where I’d left it. It was.

12

By the time i reached Aphrodite’s house, it was almost dark. The wind had risen, and my boots squeaked on the frozen ground. But in the kitchen everything was noticeably warmer and brighter than when I’d left. All the lights were on, and someone had stoked the woodstoves.

Aphrodite was nowhere in sight. Neither were her dogs. I heard Gryffin’s voice from the next room, looked in to see him pacing as he talked animatedly on the phone. Before he could see me, I retreated to the woodstove and tried to warm up. I did another shot of Jack Daniel’s. Then I pulled out the film canister I’d nicked from the basket earlier and opened it.

Inside was a roll of processed film. God knows how many years ago it had been cooked—decades, maybe. I assumed the photographer was Aphrodite, though there was no way to be sure. Whoever it was, he or she hadn’t given much thought to conservation.

Film is alive. Too much heat, too much humidity, too much sunlight—these things kill it. Fortunately, the chilly conditions in Aphrodite’s mudroom had functioned as a makeshift fridge and protected this roll, at least, over the years. I turned from the woodstove, so the sudden exposure to warmth wouldn’t cause condensation. I unspooled the film carefully between my fingers and held it to the light.

It was black and white, Tri-X. I caught its familiar sweetish odor, somewhere between latex and lactose. The negs were overexposed, maybe deliberately. They showed a naked man lying on his back, the image cropped so the head was out of frame, his torso a surreal contortion of erect cock and hands. All the highlights and shadows were reversed, of course, so that his cock became a luminous wand surrounded by radiant fingers. There were dark shapes in the background that might have been faces, or masks.

Or they might have just been shadows. I continued to thread the negs through my fingers, frowning as I examined each one.

“…great. See you then.”

In the next room, Gryffin’s voice abruptly fell silent. I curled the film back into a tight spool, replaced it in the container, and shoved it into my pocket just as Gryffin entered the kitchen.

“I’m heading out.” He crossed to the sink to dump his coffee mug. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

He started to go, then leaned against the sink and stared at me. I could see the little wheels turning behind those wire-rimmed glasses. Was I a safe bet to leave alone for the evening? Or would I rob his mother blind?

I stared back at him, thinking And where the fuck would I go then?

He must have gotten the message. “Anything edible you can find, help yourself. Or Suze down at the Island Store stays open till six or seven.”

“I’ll manage,” I said.

He studied me again, then beckoned me to the woodstove. “Here. Watch.”

He loaded the firebox with wood, adjusted the damper, pointed to more wood in a box by the door. “If I’m not back in a couple of hours, throw some of that on, okay?”

He left. When he was out of sight, I scanned the living room for any sign of Aphrodite then headed into the basement.

The steps were half rotted, and a naked hundred-watt bulb made ominous spitting sounds when I switched it on. Plaster flaked from the walls, exposing wooden lathes and clumps of horsehair. I heard scrabbling in the shadows as I walked around. Dirt floor, stone foundation; exposed beams curlicued with wormholes. Cobwebs covered shelves of old bottles and rusted tools. An oil drum served as a trash bin.

But nothing that resembled a darkroom setup. I was starting to wonder if Gryffin had lied to me when I spotted a door in the far corner. It was set into a floor-to-ceiling cubicle not much bigger than a closet, made of drywall and two-by-fours. I hurried over and tried the knob.

Gryffin was right. The door was locked.

I tried to jimmie it open. No luck.

I retraced my steps and returned to my bedroom. For a few minutes I sat and watched the sky fade from lavender-gray to indigo to dead black. I didn’t put the light on. Instead I drank Jack Daniel’s until the darkness no longer seemed ominous but soft, diffuse, as though a heavy black curtain had been replaced with gray gauze. A few stars showed through the trees then disappeared. The fog was coming in.

Finally I got up. I found my wallet and retrieved my credit card and started back downstairs.

The hallway was dark. But at the far end, light spilled from an open door. I walked quietly as I could, until I was close enough to see that the light came from a bedroom. Inside was a TV with the sound turned off. I cleared my throat and took another step, waiting for someone to call out.

No one did. I stuck my head inside.

The place was a mess. Heaps of clothes on the floor, books and papers piled on top of a woodstove that obviously hadn’t been used in a while. A space heater hummed noisily. Black-and-white prints hung everywhere, and a double bed was pushed against the far wall. It seemed to be covered with big fur throws—the three deerhounds. I could just make out a small black figure in the middle of the bed, Aphrodite. She lay on her stomach, silver hair tied back with a black ribbon. Several opened photo books were strewn around her. Her skinny legs in their black tights stuck out from beneath one of the dogs, as though the geisha doll had been tossed in with a bunch of stuffed animals.

I couldn’t believe I’d left my camera behind.

I knew better than to go back for it. The Decisive Moment—that was the English title for Cartier-Bresson’s most famous book. And I’d missed my chance—already one of the dogs was stirring. I went back down to the basement.

In a few seconds I’d sprung the lock with my credit card. I entered and instinctively reached for the safelight switch.

Red light surrounded me, along with the dank smell of mildew and the sour-wine stink of acetic acid. As my eyes adjusted to the faint crimson glow, I felt my neck prickle.

It had been twenty years since I’d been inside a darkroom. I steadied myself against a counter and took stock of what surrounded me.

A plywood table with plastic trays for developer and stop bath, fixer and holding bath; shelves made of cinder blocks; a stainless steel sink. Boxes of photographic paper bleached with mold. Jars of developer. A metal cabinet scattered with curled, moisture-damaged prints so blackened with mildew they resembled fungi. Plastic sleeves for holding negatives, all empty. An enlarger. Above the table, a sagging clothesline for drying prints. A pair of heavy rubber gloves hung from the clothesline. I put them on, grateful to have something between me and the foul air. When I picked up a jar of developer, a bloom of spores rose from it like smoke.

Even thirty years ago, this darkroom hadn’t been state-of-the-art. But I didn’t need high-tech equipment to do what I’d come down here for. I flipped on the overhead light. The bulb had blown. I’d have to do my prep work under the safelight. It was dim, 15 watts, but I’d manage.

I opened the tap, hoping the pipes hadn’t frozen. The faucet gurgled and coughed and finally spat a thin stream of brownish water. I waited till it ran clear, rinsed out the plastic processing trays, then set about mixing the developer, the stop bath, the print fixer. I had no idea if the chemicals would still be lively, but it was worth a shot. I mixed each batch directly in its tray and lined them up on the plywood table. Then I looked for tongs.

No tongs. I’d have to agitate the paper by hand, shaking each tray. Messy but feasible. I did find scissors, and the heavy piece of glass I’d need to flatten the negs. I cleaned and dried it on my T-shirt then dug out the roll of film. I uncoiled the long spool and gingerly cut it into four pieces, careful not to damage any individual frame. The plastic envelopes for holding negs were too filthy to use. Again, I’d make do. I turned to examine the enlarger.

It was a Blumfield, circa 1974 by my guess, British made. An expensive piece of equipment, with a flat easel surface and an upright pillar holding the enlarger itself. It seemed dusty but otherwise in working order. I cleaned off the surface where the negs would go, blew dust from the enlarger lens, then switched on the tungsten diffuser bulb, praying it hadn’t blown too.

It hadn’t. I switched off the diffuser and searched until I found a sealed box of Kodak paper. The cardboard was buckled and smeared with mold, but inside its foil wrapper the paper was undamaged. I grabbed a sheet and went to work.

I moved fast. I set the negs on the enlarger’s easel, covered them with the glass plate, and exposed them for eight seconds. I slid the sheet into the stop bath, shook it and counted to thirty, then transferred it to the rapid fixer and did the same thing again.

Even with the rubber gloves, my fingers were numb when I finally rinsed the sheet under running water. I didn’t care. I’d already seen the ghostly images bleeding through, each one an eye opening slowly, irrevocably, onto another world. When I turned the water off my hands shook with cold and excitement. The safelight was so dim I could barely see what I’d just printed on the contact sheet. I needed a loupe.

I found one in the rusted cabinet. The round eyepiece was badly scratched. It was like looking through a submarine porthole, but I needed to see if any of the images warranted an enlargement. If so, I might have something to bring back to Phil, or just keep for myself—my own little souvenir of Bad Vacationland. I squinted at the contacts, and swore in exasperation.

This wasn’t Blow-Up. There was no body; no dead body, anyway. The nude pictures were lousy, not to mention overexposed and out of focus. A dick is a dick is a dick, and no one was going to be interested in this one.

But three images were different. They showed a young woman, also nude, with light brown hair, head tipped to smile at the camera. She had a hand cupped over each breast, and her hands were holding something, coconuts maybe, or balloons.

Technically, these images were slightly better than the others. They were in focus, and the exposure seemed right. But there was something about the girl’s expression that held my eye. She looked innocent and sexy and slightly daft, Betty Boop recast as a long-haired hippie chick.

I spent another minute trying to decide which of the three was best. Finally I chose one, found the matching neg, and made a hasty 8x10 enlargement. Then, just for the hell of it, I picked one of the other negs at random and pulled a print of it too.

Both were sloppy. My buzz was wearing off. I was exhausted. My initial excitement now turned to fear of getting caught. I hung the contact sheet and the two prints on the line to dry, dumped the processing chemicals down the sink, and did my best to clean the place up. The negs went back into the canister in my pocket. I peeled off the gloves and flung them onto the cabinet, grabbed the still-damp prints and contact sheet, switched off the enlarger and safelight. I split, locking the door behind me.

The basement was cold and empty. I waved the prints back and forth for a few seconds. When they seemed dry, I rolled them into three narrow tubes and stuck them down the front of my jacket. I made sure I still had the loupe and went upstairs.

After the basement, the kitchen felt like a sauna. The only sounds were the crackle of wood in the stove and the slap of waves on the shingle outside. I pulled a chair in front of the woodstove, looked around for any sign of Aphrodite or her dogs. All seemed down for the count.

I was starting to feel the same way. I yawned. When my stomach growled, I decided against another shot of bourbon and stumbled over to the fridge.

The pickings, as noted, were slim. I grabbed two eggs and the V-8 juice. I rinsed out a coffee mug and cracked the eggs into it, filled the mug with V-8 and downed it in one long swallow. Then I dragged myself to my room and collapsed into bed.

13

I woke from a dream of a cold finger touching my forehead, pressing until it felt as though someone were driving a nail into my skull. I groaned and opened my eyes, recoiling when I saw an enormous brown eye staring at me.

I shot upright as the eye resolved into a grizzled head and cursed as the deerhound backed away. Pale light flooded through the window. The dog sat and cocked its head, staring at me. I stared back then started to get up.

My stomach churned; I doubled over and was sick on the floor. I sat shivering on the edge of the bed until I summoned the strength to stagger to the bathroom. By the time I’d showered and stumbled back, the dog had cleaned up for me.

“Nice work.” I pushed it from the room.

I dressed, opened the window, and leaned out so the icy wind could scour my cheeks. I shut my eyes and remained there until I felt my hair freeze.

I had no idea what time it was. Mid-morning, maybe. I felt lightheaded, with that deceptive lucidity you get from a world-class hangover, the feeling that you’ve finally purged yourself of everything that made you drink in the first place.

Another spasm of nausea cured me of that. I stayed on the bed until it passed then remembered the prints I’d made yesterday.

They were still tucked into my jacket. I took them out and smoothed them on my knees: the contact sheet and two 8x10s.

In the darkroom, I’d assumed all the photos had been taken by Aphrodite. The first picture—that closeup of a cock surrounded by waving hands, as though it were a Theremin—it definitely had the hallmarks of Aphrodite’s work. The uneasy juxtaposition of the familiar and the strange had been reduced to a banal attempt at 1960s hardcore, but the same eye had been behind the camera. I recognized it the way you recognize someone in a bad Halloween costume.

Like I said, it was out of focus and the lighting was all wrong. The depth of field was off. But even if it could have been improved by more time in the darkroom, what would be the point? It was crude and banal.

What a waste.

I examined the other photo. This one should have been cheesy, with its wide-eyed subject mugging for the camera, long hair tossed back from her face, hands covering bare breasts.

Yet this photo worked. It wasn’t just that the girl was cute and had nice tits, what I could see of them, anyway. It was that the photographer had trusted his instincts, and the girl had trusted them too. Even more, she’d trusted him.

And, just as I knew the first photo was by Aphrodite, I knew this one had been taken by a man. Phil used to make fun of me for claiming I could identify a photographer, no matter how obscure, by his or her images. He ranked on me even worse when I once drunkenly announced I could identify the gender of a bunch of unknowns whose pictures hung at a small gallery in DUMBO.

But I did it. I nailed every single one.

“That’s amazing, Cass,” Phil said. “Another remarkable if totally useless skill.”

Even now, I couldn’t tell you how it works. It’s like me picking up damage, like there’s a smell there, or a subliminal taste. And you’d think that would be an easy call to make with this picture, because it sure looked like it would taste like cheesecake.

But this photo was weirder than that. When I’d first glimpsed the contact sheets under the safelight, I’d noticed the girl was holding something over each breast. I thought they were coconuts, which would fit in with the whole kitschy vibe this little hippie chick projected.

Now that I looked more closely, I wasn’t so sure. Even when I got out the loupe and peered at them, I still couldn’t tell. She was holding something, and from the shit-eating grin on her face, it was something funny. But what?

I had no clue. Whatever it was, though, it made me queasy. The girl trusted whoever was behind the camera. That came through, in her smile and the way she’d tilted her pelvis toward him, which seemed less of a come-on than a welcome. She looked about nineteen or twenty. There were tiny furrows to either side of her mouth, and tinier lines around her eyes.

And the photographer had done a sharp thing there too. You couldn’t see it in the frame, but he’d set a lit candle in front of her then positioned her so that the flame was reflected in each eye, making them sparkle. A simple effect, but a good one.

For a few more minutes I sat and stared at the photo. Then I put away the loupe and slid the prints and contact sheet into my copy of Deceptio Visus. I needed coffee and something other than Jack Daniel’s as a nutrient.

Downstairs, the living room woodstove was dead cold. The one in the kitchen had nearly burned out. I wadded up some newspapers and tossed them inside, along with a few sticks of wood, and hoped for the best. Then I made coffee, trying to convince myself that my hands trembled from the cold and not because I had the shakes. The deerhounds heard me and came skittering into the room. They looked hungry, so I gave them some water and filled their bowls from one of the sacks of dog food in the mudroom. They ate voraciously and afterward shambled over to where I sat by the window with my coffee and a piece of dry toast.

“Poor old dogs,” I said. Their heads were almost on a level with my own. “Doesn’t anyone ever feed you?”

“That’s the way they’re supposed to look.”

In the doorway stood Aphrodite. The dogs turned and raced toward her. She put a hand to the wall to steady herself from the seething gray mass.

I stood awkwardly, pointing to my chair. “Do you want to sit?”

“In my own house? I’ll sit where I choose.”

She walked toward the sink. In the thin morning light she appeared ancient, her skin dull and her hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot behind wire-rimmed glasses. I felt a pang. She looked so frail. It seemed impossible this wizened doll could have shot the pictures in that upstairs room, let alone the grim, hallucinatory images in Mors. Her hands trembled as she pulled a coffee mug from a shelf.

“I made coffee,” I said.

“So I see.”

She reached into a cabinet and withdrew a bottle. A minute later she joined me at the table, steam threading from her mug, and the smell of brandy.

We sat in silence. I wondered if she’d rail at me again, or acknowledge that we’d met the day before. Did she even remember?

Finally I said, “Gryffin showed me your photos. The island sequence. They were—it blew me away, seeing them for real. I mean, I waited my whole life to see them, and then, last night…”

My voice died. “They’re just incredible,” I said at last.

“I was never happy with the transfer process.” Aphrodite sipped her coffee. “That whole book. I was never happy with it. The colors were muddy. Today, maybe they could do a decent job. But back then?”

She shook her head. One of the dogs whined and thrust its nose at her. She stroked its muzzle absently. “They ruined it.”

I stood to refill my coffee. “Do you want some more?” I asked.

She gazed out to where thin eddies of mist snaked across the water’s surface.

“Sea smoke.” She drank what was left in her mug and slid it toward me. “Thank you.”

I filled both mugs and handed hers back.

“The other pictures,” I said tentatively, settling in my chair again. “From Mors. I didn’t see them up there. Do you—are they here?”

“They’re gone.”

“Oh. Jeez. I—”

I stopped, afraid I’d said too much already. She seemed not to have notice I’d spoken.

“I saw them,” she said after a moment. “Your pictures.”

I looked up in surprise. “My pictures?”

“Yes. When your book came out. A long time ago. Twenty years, I suppose.”

“More like thirty.”

“Thirty.” She nodded slightly without looking at me. “Yes, that would be right. Some of them—you had a good eye. One or two, I remember. The rest, though—”

One thin hand waved dismissively. “Derivative. And late. You weren’t the only one who saw Mors. You know that.”

I stared at the table. Everything went white. There was a sharp taste in my mouth, that pressure against my forehead. It was a moment before I realized she hadn’t stopped talking.

“…his were just grotesque. Tabloid fodder. He stole from me like the rest of them did, and it was all shit. Just shit.”

I looked up. Aphrodite’s eyes shone with a hatred so pure it was like joy.

“You little thief.” She jabbed at me. “Cassandra Neary. You think I didn’t see? But you were the least of it. The least.”

One of the dogs barked as Gryffin walked into the kitchen.

“This the breakfast club?” he asked, yawning.

I shoved my chair back and stormed outside, the door slamming behind me.

I didn’t stop until I reached the gravel beach. I paced along the shore, kicking at rocks. The wind tore at my face, but I hardly noticed. I headed to a stand of small, twisted trees and boulders. Driftwood had fetched up against the rocks. I grabbed a branch and smashed it into a boulder, again and again until it splintered into dust and rot. Then I leaned against a barren tree, panting.

“If only we could harness this power for good.” Gryffin stepped gingerly up the path from the rocky beach. “I come in peace,” he added and raised his hands.

I drew a long breath. “Fuck off.”

“Here.” He held out something wrapped in a paper towel. “Ray made this for dessert last night. I brought a piece back for you.”

I hesitated, then took it: a slab of apple pie.

“He’s a good cook,” said Gryffin. “Those are his apples too. Fletcher Sweets, they’re called. They only grow here on the island.”

“Thanks.”

“A Yankee is someone who has pie for breakfast. That’s what Toby says.”

Gryffin watched me eat. “You were really whaling on that tree,” he observed. “What’d she say to you?”

“Nothing.”

“She’s a monster. But you knew that. It’s why you came here.”

“I came because I needed a fucking job and Phil Cohen lied to me that he’d set up this interview.” I finished the pie and started walking back along the beach. “And because I wanted to see those pictures. Most of which, I gather, she destroyed. So instead of this goddam trip earning me money, it’s costing me money.”

I picked up a rock and threw it into the waves. “Which I don’t have.”

“Well, she’s gone off, for a while, anyway. Her and the dogs.”

“What does she do all day?”

“Beats me. Usually she makes a circuit of the island.” He swept his arm out, drawing an imaginary circle. “Along the shore. She picks up stuff that washes up. She’ll be gone for a while, unless the weather gets really bad.”

We walked toward the slope that led back to the house. A raven hopped across the dead grass and let out a gravelly cry at our approach.

“I’m going to the Island Store,” said Gryffin. “Want to come?”

“No. Not this minute, anyway.” I sighed. “You think I’ll be able to get a ride back over today?”

“Today? Well, you missed anyone who’d be going early this morning. But someone’ll probably head back later in the afternoon.”

“What about your friend Toby? Will he take me?”

“Probably. If I see him, I’ll mention it.”

“That’d be good.”

He started up the hillside. I jammed my hands in my pockets and watched him go. The steely light burned my eyes, and my feet ached from the cold. But I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Aphrodite again. When Gryffin was out of sight, I began climbing the hill myself.

Once I reached the pine trees, the path split. One trail bore off to the left and angled downhill again, toward the village; the other wound upward among more trees and jagged outcroppings of stone. I took the right-hand path, scuffing through a mat of pine needles and fine snow.

It was a steep climb. After a few minutes, I began to sweat. My fury diminished, bitten away by the cold. For the last few years I’d carried on conversations in my head. Well, not conversations, really: arguments. Now the voices fell silent. I found myself focusing on things I didn’t usually notice, like the vapor clouding my face with every breath, the way sounds seemed to carry from far away. Seagulls, a diesel engine, waves tugging at the shingle beach below.

As I neared the top, the hill’s crown emerged, a granite dome surrounded by oaks with a few dead leaves still clinging to them. A weathered sign dangled from a lopped-off bough.

oakwind est. 1973

Boards and buckled plywood poked up between rocks and burdock stalks, all that remained of the commune. I picked my way between scrap metal, broken bottles, old tires, a firepit. A man-sized standing stone reared from the wreckage of weeds and winter-killed saplings, flecks of white paint on its granite surface. I crouched in front of it and pushed away dead ferns to get a better look.

Someone had painted three concentric circles on the stone, like a target. The central circle—the bullseye—had been filled in with white paint. There was a smudge of metallic green pigment in the middle circle.

I touched it. The stone was rough and cold. When I withdrew my hand, specks of pigment and lichen stuck to it.

I felt a sudden wave of dizziness, stumbled to my feet and backed away.

From the far side of the hill a raven clacked. A late cricket clung to the standing rock, rubbed its legs then crawled toward the earth.

I kicked at the ground, then, for good measure, bent and dug at it with my fingernails. A scant half-inch of turf came up. I rubbed it between my fingers and stood again, relieved.

There was nothing buried under the stone, not unless the hippies had jackhammered their way into the hill’s granite dome. It was just a rock with a bullseye painted on it. The commune had probably used it for target practice. I started back down the hillside, but only got a few steps before I stopped again.

Tucked among the oaks was the mottled bulk of a large vehicle. An old International school bus, painted in a camo pattern with candy colors—pink, lime green, orange—that time had turned splotched and sickly. Branches burst through the broken windows. What looked like lime green paint was splattered against the glass, but as I got closer I saw this was some kind of mold, its edges curled and black.

I pushed through the underbrush until I reached the cab. Above a wooden platform that served as a step, the door hung in two pieces. I pushed it open.

It was like being in a fish tank where everything has died. Light streaked through windows hung with blackened plastic curtains that had once been green. All the seats had been removed, and wadded rugs had been chewed to fuzz by rodents. There were beer cans and condoms, signs of more recent occupation; splintered chairs, a plastic bucket crusted with brown. An exploded futon. A jagged face hung from the ceiling, lantern-jawed and with huge hollow eyes.

It was another mask, like the frog I’d seen on Toby’s boat. Green, with a beaked mouth and a stiff ridged collar like some kind of horned dinosaur, only this thing had no horns. The glossy paint had peeled, revealing swatches of newsprint. I touched it. It felt pulpy and soft, like an enormous mushroom.

I walked to the rear of the bus. Here a few windows were intact. A raised plywood platform held a foam mattress covered with the remains of an india-print spread, chewed to a paisley filigree. Above the bed, moisture-swollen paperbacks lined a small bookshelf.

What the Trees Said. The Forgotten Art of Building a Stone Wall. Walden Two.

The only hardcover was an old edition of Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane. Its frontispiece was stamped Harvard Divinity School Library above a name written in faded blue.

I opened it. The spine was broken, its pages heavily annotated in the same blue ink.

Excitable boy, I thought.

There was also a New Directions paperback of Stephen Haselton’s poetry, with a picture of him on the back. A thin guy, fair haired, clean shaven, blandly handsome. Photo credit: Aphrodite Kamestos.

I flipped through this book but found nothing. No name on the frontispiece. No marginalia. I tossed it onto the shelf and wandered back to the front of the bus. The place looked and felt as though it had been stripped of everything that might have been of interest or value. Not even a torn Grateful Dead poster remained.

So much for the counterculture.

I went outside. Dun-colored clouds crowded the sky. The wind rattled stalks of burdock and dead goldenrod as I headed toward the path. As I entered the stand of trees, I hesitated, feeling that someone was watching me. I turned and looked back at the clearing.

A gray stone loomed among rubble and dead ferns. That was all.

14

No one was in the house when I got back. I paced between the kitchen and the living room, anxious for Gryffin to return and tell me I had a ride to the mainland. I killed time by cracking the second bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I considered calling Phil to ream him out but decided I’d rather do it in person.

Finally I decided to take another look at Aphrodite’s island photos. I’d spent my life dreaming of them. Maybe for just a little longer, I could pretend I was in my own private museum, with the pictures all to myself.

The upstairs hall was cold and smelled of ash. I retrieved my camera and went into the room, leaned against the wall and stared at the photos.

After a few minutes I shot a few frames. It felt good to handle my camera again without someone yelling at me to put it down. I knew I’d never get anything worthwhile—I was fighting nightfall, exhaustion, Jack Daniel’s on a nearly empty stomach. I stumbled around anyway, struggling to get enough distance, enough light, a focus.

The sound of the shutter release was like a moth beating against glass. I took a dozen pictures then slid down to the floor. I began to cry.

Those photos … They were so fucking amazing. It was like she’d thrown open a window and let you look into a perfect world, the most beautiful place you could ever imagine, but you could never get inside it. No matter what I did, I would never be able to produce something that good. I would never make something great. Even at my best, for fifteen seconds thirty years ago, I wasn’t capable of it. Aphrodite had been right.

Bile and the afterburn of bourbon rose in my throat. I lurched into the hall and ran right into Gryffin.

“Jesus!” He caught me and shook his head. “Can’t you walk out a door without knocking me over?”

“No.” I pushed past him.

“Hey, wait up—”

He followed me to my room. I shoved my camera into my bag, avoiding his eyes.

“What happened?” he said. “Did Aphrodite get back?”

“No.” I fought to keep my voice even. “Did you find Toby? I really need to get out of here.”

“He wasn’t around. Suze said he had a job in Collinstown and he stayed over there.”

“I have to go! Isn’t there someone else? The harbormaster, the fucking Coast Guard—I don’t care who it is. Just get me back to my car!”

“Hey, I wish I could, okay? But no one’s around. Merrill Libby’s daughter never came home last night. Everett’s helping organize a search party.”

“Then why aren’t you there?”

“I’m city folk now. They don’t want me.”

He leaned against the door. “I came to see if you felt like celebrating.” He grinned and suddenly looked remarkably like the guy in the snapshot. “I just made fifteen grand.”

I snorted. “Stock market?”

“I sold a first edition to a guy out in L.A. That’s what took me so long. Suze has a better internet connection at the store, so I was working from there. I’ve been waiting till the market was right. I paid ten pounds for it—about fifteen bucks—at a shop in Suffolk a few years ago.”

“Nice turnaround. What is it?”

“Northern Lights. The original title for The Golden Compass.”

“What’s The Golden Compass?”

“I thought you worked at the Strand?”

“Not in the stacks. Stock room.”

“It’s a children’s book—that’s where the big money is. The English edition predates the American, so…”

“Is it a good book?”

“You think I have time to read these things? You didn’t answer me—you want to help me celebrate?”

“How? Where do you spend fifteen grand around here?”

He started down the hall. “I’m going to dinner again at Ray’s. I told him last night, if I came back I might bring another guest—I figured if you were still around you’d need to get away from this place. He’s a good cook. He has a decent wine closet. But I’m leaving now, so—”

I followed him downstairs into the kitchen.

“So either you come with me or you’re on your own, dinner-wise,” he finished.

He went into the mudroom, pulled on his coat and picked up a big flashlight, dashed into the kitchen and returned with a small book that he stuck into his pocket.

“For Ray,” he explained. “You coming?”

“Yeah, what the hell.” I glanced down at my T-shirt and leather jacket. “I’m not dressed for dinner.”

“For Paswegas, you’re overdressed.”

“How far is it?”

“Not that far. Come on.”

He walked outside, heading for the water then turned to where a line of white birches glowed ghostly in the early dark. “Less than a mile. There’s a path through here, just watch your step.”

He switched on the flashlight. The birches flared as though they’d been ignited, and Gryffin disappeared into a thicket.

“Is Ray another book collector?” I said, hurrying to catch up.

“Not really. He’s just … a collector. All kinds of things. Books, junk, stuff he finds at the dump. Folk art—he’s big into folk art. Primitive art.”

“Like Cohen Finster?”

“Not that classy. Ray likes his art down and dirty. Not pornographic—well, not necessarily pornographic—but he likes an artist with dirt under his fingernails. You know, guys who build a model of the Sistine Chapel out of old carburetor parts. Lifesized cows carved out of soap. That kind of stuff. But you’ll like his place—Toby helped him build it. Ray’s one of the original cliffdwellers.”

After about ten minutes the path began to climb more steeply. I grabbed at trees for balance. The wind raged up from the water, bitter cold, and sent dead leaves whirling around us. Finally we reached the top.

“This is it.” Gryffin stopped. He pointed the flashlight to where the ground abruptly disappeared. “See that? Don’t go that way”

The boom of waves echoed up to us, the relentless wind. He waved the flashlight, and its beam disappeared into the darkness. I turned and saw lights showing through the mist.

“What the hell is that?” I said.

“That’s Ray’s place.”

It was made entirely of salvage. Clapboards, barn siding; car hoods and bumpers; washing machine doors and a satellite dish, as well as cinder blocks, corrugated metal, blue sheets of insulation. There were dozens of windows, no two alike. Solar panels covered the roof. A row of propane tanks was lined up alongside one wall, and a Rube Goldberg contraption that looked like it might have something to do with water.

Weirdest of all was that it had all been fashioned to look like a castle, complete with a shallow moat filled with dead leaves, a footbridge made of two-by-fours, and a turret. Sheets of plastic flapped from the walls, as though it were a snake shedding its skin.

“Boy, Sauron’s really fallen on hard times,” I said.

“He built it all himself, and it didn’t cost a thing,” said Gryffin. He strode across the footbridge to a door which had once belonged to a walk-in freezer. “Hey, Ray! Company—”

The steel door swung open, revealing a teenage boy, maybe seventeen or eighteen. Tall and heavyset, with sandy hair and beautiful, almond-shaped blue eyes in a pockmarked face. He gave Gryffin a perfunctory smile, but when he saw me the smile faded.

“Gryffin, hey.” The boy lifted his chin in greeting and stepped away from the door. Around his neck he wore a necklace like the one Kenzie had made, of seaglass and aluminum tabs. “S’up?”

I followed Gryffin inside. The boy gave me a hostile stare. His mouth parted so that I could see a black stud like a boil on the tip of his tongue.

“Nice,” I said. “You oughta have that looked at.”

We walked into a large room filled with freestanding bookshelves. Faded banners hung from the ceiling like flypaper, emblazoned with mottoes in the same lurid colors as the old school bus.

VENCEREMOS!

THE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS HAS NO EXPIRATION DATE

TEMPIS FUCKIT

The books leaned heavily toward the Beats, mangled paperbacks of On The Road and Junkie and The Dharma Bums, but also some that were valuable. And there was artwork, if you could call it that: a couple of Paint-by-Number pictures in homemade frames; a series of paintings of fanciful dirigibles on small oval canvases; a poem composed of words and phrases cut from newspapers then glued on a sheet of cardboard and signed by Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. That would be worth what the whole house cost to construct, plus a small retainer for Lurch back by the front door.

There were framed photos, too, on the wall beside the kitchen, where Gryffin had disappeared. I heard a whoop, and Gryffin stepped out.

“Well, glad you’re pleased,” he said. “I told you I might bring someone? Here she is. Cass, this is Ray—”

A figure came bustling toward me. A stocky man in green drawstring pants and voluminous purple T-shirt, his white hair long and wild, eyes glinting behind purple-framed glasses repaired with duct tape. His face looked as though it had been dropped then reassembled by someone who’d never done it before. The hand he thrust at me was missing the middle finger.

“Hello, hello!” he exclaimed in a hoarse Brooklyn accent. “So glad to have anuthah visitor. Ray Provenzano.”

He shook my hand vigorously. “You didn’t mind coming to dinner, did you? Aphrodite’s a terrible cook. Robert! Robert!”

He shouted, and the boy who’d let us in lumbered back into view. Ray clapped a hand on his shoulder and looked at me. “What would you like to drink, Cassandra? Wine? I just opened a great Medoc.”

“Sounds good.”

“Robert, get another bottle, wouldja please? Here—”

Ray stepped into the kitchen. There was the sound of stirring, a burst of fragrant smoke, and he reemerged holding two full wineglasses.

“Shalom,” he said, thrusting one at me. “I know who you are—the photographer who shoots dead things. I googled you. I’ll hafta see if I can get some of your stuff. Your book, maybe. You still taking pictures?”

He kept talking as he ducked back into the kitchen. “You can see, I’m a big collector. All kinds of stuff. If I’d known you were coming, I’d of gotten your book. How’s that wine?”

“Good,” I said.

“You like cassoulet?” He poked me with a wooden spoon. “Not in the kitchen! Gryffin, get her outta here. Go sit or something, I got stuff to do.”

I went into the main room. Robert sat on a sprung couch, listening to an iPod through a pair of earbuds. Gryffin stood perusing the bookshelves. I made a dent in my wine, then inspected those photographs.

He had a good eye, this friend of Gryffin’s. There was a signed early Caponigro; a Bobbi Carey cyanotype; an image from Kamestos’s island sequence that I’d never seen before.

But it was the next photo that made me catch my breath.

It reminded me of Aphrodite’s stuff. Threads and fuzz protruded from the hardened emulsion, and a stew of pigments bled through the image. Colors you normally wouldn’t see in the same frame—magenta, crimson, a sickly psychedelic orange; acid green, spurts of violet and leathery brown. The rush of colors was disorienting but also purposeful, like one of those untitled de Kooning paintings that seems to hover just beyond comprehension.

Somebody knew what he was doing here. But I sure as hell couldn’t figure it out: I was at a total loss as to what I was looking at.

To make it worse, the picture had been messed with after processing. I could see brushstrokes and the marks of a fine-point drafting pen, or maybe a needle, and there were bits of leaves or feathers just under the emulsion surface. It all distracted from the image itself, that abstract mass of color and texture; and while there was a real painterly quality in the use of pigment and brushwork, it was definitely a photograph and not a painting. All the post-production stuff—brushstrokes, dirt—made it impossible to get a fix on what the original image had been.

Perversely, that’s also what made it hard to look away. It was weirdly familiar, like Aphrodite’s pictures, but like something else too. What? I kept feeling like I almost had a handle on it—a face, a dog, a branch—feeling like I knew what it was. I’d seen it before.

I’d bet cash money that whoever shot this picture had looked a long time at Mors, maybe too long. And I’d bet my life it was the same guy who’d shot those peekaboo pictures of the little hippie chick.

The weirdest thing was how it smelled.

You had to be practically on top of it to notice, but it was there—a pungent, indisputably bad smell, like nothing I’d ever encountered before. It smelled like a skunk, only much, much worse, musky and intensely fishy at the same time. It smelled horrible and rank without smelling like something dead—whatever it was, it somehow smelled alive. I’ve been around corpses. I’ve seen a body hauled out of the East River. I’ve taken pictures of a severed arm.

None of them smelled good. And none of them smelled like this.

Gryffin came up behind me. “What’re you looking at?”

“This picture here,” I said. “Who took it?”

Gryffin squinted at it. “I dunno. Ask Ray.”

“It’s not by Aphrodite, right?”

“Definitely not. Although…”

He peered at the corner of the print, then tapped it. “Look at that.”

I had trouble seeing it at first, but then I made it out—a tiny word, in black ballpoint ink, printed carefully as though by a kid.

S.P.O.T.

“‘Spot’? What’s that?” I remembered the turtle shell I’d seen in the Island Store. “What, is it a pet?”

“It’s a joke. It’s got to be one of Denny’s.”

“Denny Ahearn?”

“Yeah. Ray would know. Want more wine?”

We sat at a table set with candles and heavy old silver, also two more bottles of wine. I refilled my glass and said, “So Denny—he was a photographer too?”

“Oh sure.” Gryffin rolled his eyes. “Drugs, sex, photography—Denny’s a Renaissance man.”

“Robert!” Ray’s blistering voice rang from the kitchen. “Get in here, I need you. Now!”

Robert stood, still jacked into his earbuds, hitched up his pants, and sloped into the kitchen. I leaned across the table toward Gryffin. “What’s with the kid? Does this guy like getting beaten up by the natives?”

“Robert’s eighteen. Ray pays him to help out. I don’t think they sleep together—Ray just likes to have someone to boss around.”

“Helps out with what?” I looked at the skeins of dust trailing from the ceiling and walls. “Is Robert in charge of the duct tape?”

“Voila!” Ray made his entrance, carrying a Majolica tureen. “Cassoulet!”

There was also home-baked bread and pickled string beans. The wine was great.

And there was a lot of it. The cluttered space began to take on a warm glow. If I let my eyes go out of focus, I could almost imagine what our host might see in Robert, who ate in silence, earbuds dangling around his neck.

Mostly, though, I looked at Gryffin. There was nothing special about him. He was nothing like my type, unless you consider too much melanin in one iris to constitute a type.

But I couldn’t tear my eyes from him. I kept waiting to see him look the way he did in that stolen photograph.

It wasn’t happening. Occasionally he’d glance at me, that oddly furtive look. When we finished eating, Robert cleared the table then brought in more glasses and a bottle of Calvados before flopping back onto the couch. Within minutes I heard him snoring softly.

“Ray.” Gryffin pointed to the photo we’d examined earlier. “That picture—who took it?”

“That one?” Ray’s broken face twisted into a frown. “That’s Aphrodite’s.”

“No,” I said. “The one next to it.”

“This?” Ray stumped to the wall and removed the photo. “This is one of Denny’s.”

He blew on the surface. A fume of dust rose, and he began coughing. “Ugh—Robert! You’re falling down on the job! For chrissakes.”

He shook his head. “Yeah. Denny’s—this is one of his. I paid a lot of money for this.”

Gryffin laughed. Ray glanced at him irritably and turned the frame over. It was backed with a piece of stained cardboard.

“He needs to work on his presentation,” Ray said. “I told him that. He never listens.”

“Denny’s incapable of listening to anything except the UFO voices in his head,” said Gryffin. “May I?”

Ray handed him the photo. Gryffin stared at it, finally pronounced, “I still think it’s crap.”

“You Philistine,” moaned Ray. “It’s beautiful.”

Gryffin looked at me. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s good,” I said as Ray poured Calvados. “But—what is it?”

Ray handed me a glass. “Who knows? I like it.”

“Yeah, me too.” I sipped my Calvados, still staring at the photo. “Does he do a lot of these?”

Ray leaned back in his chair and stroked his beard. “I’m not sure. Not a lot, I don’t think. She started him on it—Aphrodite.” He pointed at Gryffin. “He doesn’t like to hear this.”

Gryffin stood. “No, I don’t. Excuse me for a minute.”

He left the room. Ray shrugged. “Don’t mind him. Aphrodite, she and Denny were involved, back in the old days. This was before Gryffin was even born, but there was always bad blood between him and Denny. Who fucked everything, I might add. Everything in skirts, anyway.”

He hesitated, his expression pained. “Gryffin’s father, you know, Steve—the love of my life. We were together seventeen years. Steve lived here, Gryffin was always around. I mean, when he wasn’t off at school. Aphrodite was never much of a mother. Actually, Steve was never much of a father either,” he said. “Whereas I love kids—and don’t you look at me like that, I never touched him. Never touched him.”

He sighed, staring across the room to where Robert snored on the sofa. “You know, I never touched those others, either. I did look, though,” he added and laughed again. “But you know what that’s like, right? You photographers. You like to look and not touch. Voyeurs.”

“No,” I said. “Voyeurs need to feel protected. I like to feel threatened.”

“Seems like you’d be able to find a lot of work these days.”

“Hasn’t worked out that way. Denny—how come he didn’t sign his name?”

“Didn’t he?”

“There.” I pointed at the corner of print. “It says ‘Spot.’”

“Oh yeah. That’s him.”

“Spot? What’s that mean? Gryffin said it’s a joke.”

“A joke?” Ray held out his hand, and I gave him back the photo. He looked at it then replaced it on the wall and settled back into his chair. “I guess it’s a joke. Tell you the truth, I don’t really remember. It was something weird, though. Denny, he was into that kind of woo-woo stuff. That commune of his, they got into all kinds of ritual shit. Well, they called it religion. I called it ripping off the Indians. Native Americans, I mean—they were crazy for that kind of stuff. After they finished the Buddhists and the Hindus and the God knows what else. All those off-brand religions. But those kids, none of ‘em was any more Native American than me.”

He sighed. “Denny, he was way into it. He was smart too—he flunked out of Harvard. He was studying comparative religions or some such. Gilgamesh, that was one of his big things. Babylonian stuff. He was a beautiful young man, Denny. You wouldn’t know it now. Let’s face it, living here takes years off your life. That’s why everyone drinks like a fish. It’s the winters. Heating with wine. Look at me! Aged before my time.”

He downed another shot of Calvados. “But that photo—what think you, huh? His stuff is starting to get picked up. Lucien Ryel, he bought some. That one there, I paid a grand for it a year or so ago. It’s probably worth more now.”

“A grand?” I gave him a dubious look. “That’s a lot of money for someone no one’s ever heard of.”

Ray shrugged. “Hey, I’m a collector. You know how it works. Everyone wants to bet on the new kid. Even if he’s an old new kid. The photography market’s crazy these days, you know that. I don’t think Denny gives a rat’s ass about that kind of shit, but Lucien, he’s got an investor’s eye. He turned on his rock star friends—Pete Townshend, he bought some of Denny’s stuff. Townshend goes for outsider art. I guess this qualifies as outsider photography.”

“Pretty good for someone who used to live in a bus.”

“Did Gryffin tell you about that?” Ray gave his braying laugh. “Hey, don’t knock it! This is one of the last places in the country where people can still live between the cracks.”

It didn’t seem to me that Ray would fit between a crack smaller than, say, Chaco Canyon. But I kept my mouth shut as he went on.

“They’re all one-offs, his stuff. Does he do a lot of these? I don’t know. I’ve never seen where he lives. But he obviously spends a lot of time on them. Like Aphrodite used to, you know? Making her own paper and stuff.”

“And emulsion,” I said. “He must prepare his own emulsions too. That’s what it looks like to me. If they’re really one-offs, then he’s producing some kind of monotype. Or monoprint, if he uses the neg more than once. Interesting.”

“That the kind of stuff you did?”

“No. I would’ve been happy to sell lots of copies of my stuff. If anyone wanted to buy them. But—”

I pointed at the photograph. “What it means is, that’s an original work of art. Like if this guy was Robert Mapplethorpe, that picture would be worth a ton of money. Probably you’ve already figured that out.”

“That it’s worth a lot of money?”

“That this guy ain’t Robert Mapplethorpe.” I finished my Calvados. “So, what about her? Aphrodite. How come she stopped taking pictures?”

Ray ran a hand across his scarred cheek. “Hard to say. Those early photos—she never really had a success big as that again. I think part of it was she took so long with each one. And there wasn’t a market back then for photographs, like there is now—she couldn’t make money at it. She refused to do commercial work when they wanted her to, and after a while no one wanted her to. And the drinking—that’s been going on a long time. When she and Steve got involved—well, you know, she really loved him. And he loved her too, in his way. But it was different then; for a long time he couldn’t really admit to himself what he was. That he was gay. Unlike me, who never had a problem.”

He laughed.

“They must’ve gotten along at least once,” I said. Ray looked at me, puzzled. “Gryffin. They had him.”

Ray made a face. “Oh yeah. Gryffin. The miracle child. That was Denny’s idea. Like I said, Aphrodite never really took to it—being a mother and all. But things went bad between her and Denny early on. They got real competitive, he started taking photos, Aphrodite encouraged him—like, here’s this beautiful young guy, she takes him under her wing, you know? But then they got competitive, and then it got weird. He got weird. Aphrodite, she’s accusing him of stealing stuff—”

“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 the 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 Smith’s “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?

Someone wanted to do it a lot. There were dozens of photos, most of the same girl, her face altered so that she resembled a broken statue, mottled green and black. But a few pictures seemed to be clumsy self-portraits. One showed a mirror and the flashlit reflection of a figure holding the SX-70. The others showed portions of a face, badly out of focus. A scalp, a nose or ear, a toothy grin. Someone had gone to the trouble of taking these photos. And someone else had taken the trouble to save them.

None of these photos were signed. They didn’t need to be. I knew it was him.

Denny Ahearn.

Those Polaroids pumped out damage the way that little space heater cranked out BTUs. I could taste it, a tang like biting into an old penny, like the taste you get from speed that hasn’t been cooked enough. I wanted to recoil, but the images drew me on. I looked at one after another, impelled by the eye behind that camera, a presence so strong it was like it was in the room with me.

And then, there really was an eye, staring out at me from the last page. It was the only photo that hadn’t been manipulated. A single amber eye, gleaming as though it had been coated with glycerin. The cornea wasn’t white, but a custardy yellow, threaded with red filaments. I could see the pale reflected outline of a camera in the iris.

That was creepy enough. What made it worse was a blotch of green pigment like the one in Gryffin’s eye. Only this was a bigger flaw, and it was in a different place, just below the pupil.

I couldn’t look away from it. It was like staring at a painting where the canvas has been torn: if you could only rip away the ruined canvas, another painting would be revealed: the real painting. I felt the same vertiginous horror I’d experienced as a girl, looking into the sky to see a great eye gazing down at me.

Now I felt that jagged bit of pigment was the real eye, the realest eye I’d ever seen. I brought the photo to my face to get a better look, and grimaced.

It stank. Not the musty, doggy smell of Aphrodite’s room, but the smell I’d detected on the photo back at Ray Provenzano’s house, a reek like someone had dumped rotting fish on top of a dead skunk.

It was faint, but unmistakable. And it was coming from the Polaroid. I held it under my nose and sniffed.

I replaced the photo, sat on the floor and stared at the unmade bed, soiled sheets, dog fur, all those expensive photo books, Roberto Schezen, Rudy Burckhardt…

“Shit,” I whispered.

I stood and grabbed a book, the familiar RUNWAY colophon on its spine beneath the title and photographer’s name.

DEAD GIRLS CASSANDRA NEARY

On the title page was an inscription.

’ONE BECOMES HUMAN BY IMITATING THE GODS’

FOR A WITH LOVE

D

“What are you doing?” For a second I thought I’d imagined the voice. “What are you doing?”

I looked up.

It was Aphrodite, the deerhounds at her sides. A twig was stuck to her leggings; her lipstick was faded and her silvery hair flattened as though she’d just woken up.

But by the way she swayed back and forth, red eyed, I figured that she’d been up—though maybe not upright—for a while, and keeping the same kind of company I had; no speed, maybe, but plenty of cognac or whatever it was that made her look like a skeletal marionette.

“Aphrodite.” I blinked. “Wow. I—”

Before I could move she was on top of me. I fell back as she yanked the book from my hands and smashed it against my head. I cried out and fell backward, struggling.

“Hey!” I gasped. “Stop, I was just—”

A dog whined as she smashed the book against my face again. I kicked out violently and struck her shoulder. She staggered backward and the dogs growled, as though this was a game they’d played before.

“Get—out—” The book dropped to the floor. Aphrodite beat at the air as though there were another, invisible assailant between us. “Get—out—get—out—”

I crouched on the bed as the dogs pawed at each other and Aphrodite swiped madly at nothing, like someone practicing a deranged form of Tai Chi.

“Get out, get out…”

Whoever, whatever, she was fighting seemed to have nothing to do with me. She didn’t even seem to remember I was there. I edged off the bed.

“Get—out!” Aphrodite’s voice rose to a strangled cry. Abruptly she grew silent. She lowered her hands, panting, and looked around.

Now she did see me.

No, not me: my camera. She gazed at it then lifted her head and stared right at me. When she spoke, her voice was calm.

“Amateur. Thief.” She smiled a horrible broken doll’s smile. “You’re nothing but a little amateur. Both of you—nothing. You think I didn’t know? You thought I wouldn’t know who you were? You—”

She lunged and grabbed at my camera. “You’re nothing…”

I covered the Konica with one arm and pushed her away. She reeled back, the dogs dancing around her as though this, too, were part of the game. One of them leaped up, its paws grazing her shoulders. Aphrodite gasped, still staring at me, then fell.

I had no time to stop her, only watched as her head struck the corner of the woodstove. I heard a snap. Not like a dry stick breaking, more the sound of something green that doesn’t want to give way.

Her body hit the floor. The deerhound backed away and slunk toward the bed. The other two dogs surged forward, tails wagging, and nosed at her crotch.

I clutched my camera and held my breath, listened for the sound of footsteps and Gryffin’s voice: sirens, shouting, God knows what.

But there was nothing. The room was still, except for the snuffling dogs and the hum of the space heater. I drew a breath and ran my hand protectively across my camera.

“Go,” I whispered. I swatted at the dogs. “Go, go on—”

They backed off, mouths split in white grins.

“Lie down.” I gestured toward the bed. “Go on, lie down.”

They leaped onto the bed, padded across the covers, and settled down, long gray muzzles on their paws. I made sure there was still no sound from the hall then went to the body.

Her head lolled to one side. A skein of spit ran from the corner of her mouth to the floor, mingled with blood from a deep cut in her temple. The cut formed a shape like a tiny inverted pyramid, glistening pink at the sides, deep indigo at the deepest point. I glanced at the woodstove. A small chunk of flesh was impaled on one corner, a few hairs protruding from it, like a daddy longlegs snagged in a bit of bloody Kleenex.

I looked down again. One of Aphrodite’s eyes was fixed on me. A pinkish glaze sheathed the cornea, like a welling tear. As I stared, the eyelid dropped in a wink then slowly rose, the tear darkening to scarlet as it spilled onto her cheek. A red bubble appeared in one nostril and popped. Tiny red specks appeared across her cheeks, a flush.

She was still alive. I took a step toward the door.

And stopped. I turned back, got onto one knee, popped the lens cap from my Konica, and began to shoot.

I had shit for light, but I didn’t care. There was enough for an exposure. That’s all I needed. Tri-X doesn’t pick up as many details in the gray area as something like T-Max. It doesn’t have as fine a grain, it’s a colder film, it can be raw. It’s perfect for what I do. It was perfect now.

What mattered was what was in front of me at that moment: the matte bulk of the woodstove, ash on the floor; the macabre doll with her head twisted. She was beautiful, it was all beautiful, her spill of silver hair and the play of blood beneath her skin.

I got a series of close-ups. At one point I worried that her breath might fog my lens. But by then she hardly seemed to be breathing at all.

I don’t know at what point she actually died. But gradually the flush on her cheeks took on a violet tinge. A strand of hair fell across her face, obscuring one eye. I moved it aside, shot two more frames before checking the camera.

I only had four shots left. I stopped, suddenly aware of my body clammy with sweat. I looked at the bedroom door then scrambled to my feet.

On Aphrodite’s bed, the dogs slept. A body lay on the floor, and a leather portfolio.

Otherwise nothing was out of place. It looked like an accidental death. To me, anyway. Even kind of a natural death, all things considered. I tugged at my T-shirt so it covered my hand, grabbed the copy of Dead Girls and stuck it on a bookshelf, lining it up so it looked as inconspicuous as possible. Then I got the portfolio, did my best to clean it with my T-shirt, and shoved it back under the bed.

Would that be enough? My fingerprints were probably all over it, and the other two as well. But I couldn’t waste time trying to clean up. I’d have to hope no one would bother with it. I glanced around the room for any hint I’d been there.

All seemed as untidy and forlorn as when I’d entered. I used my T-shirt to polish the doorknobs, swiped the fabric across the doorjamb for good measure. I felt surprisingly calm, as though I were cleaning up from a party.

Had I touched anything else?

Nada.

I was safe. Maybe.

16

Phil used to say my motto should be Born to Lose. At that moment, Nothing to Lose seemed just as good. I gave one last look at Aphrodite’s room. Would she have left the door ajar? The light on?

I decided yeah, sure, if she didn’t know she was going to be dead. I headed for Gryffin’s bedroom.

His door was shut. I stood and tried to get my nerve up.

I was wasted, but I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened back there in Aphrodite’s room—did she fall or was she pushed?—but I knew it didn’t look good.

I needed to cover my ass. Getting rid of the film in my camera would be a start, but I didn’t want to do that. Those pictures … maybe no one else could ever see them, but I wanted to see them. I needed to see them, to prove that I wasn’t like her, not yet. To prove that I hadn’t lost it.

The hall was black. But gradually my eyes adjusted. There’s always a gray scale, even in what seems like total darkness. I went into Gryffin’s room and closed the door behind me.

The bedroom was warm. I could hear him breathing deeply. Not snoring, which was good. I don’t sleep well with other people in the room.

Not that I could sleep yet. I crossed to the far wall. There was enough light that I could see Gryffin lying on his back. One arm rested on his forehead. His head was tilted. The sleeve of his T-shirt had hitched up so that I could see the hollow beneath his arm.

He looked beautiful. Otherworldly, I would say, except that what was so lovely about him was his very ordinariness, the fact that he could be in the same room with me, breathe the same air; and know nothing of me at all. As though I were a ghost; as though Aphrodite had been right, and I was truly nothing.

But for as long as I stood there, for as long as he didn’t wake, our worlds occupied the same space, the way a photograph can create a secondary world that exists within the real one. I felt as though I had stepped inside a photo—not one of my own pictures but someplace calm, someplace suspended between waking and sleep, the real and the ideal. A place my work would never belong, any more than I would.

Gryffin belonged there. Dark as it was in that room, I could imagine he slept somewhere else, sunlit. A beach, a green woodland. Sun, a man smiling; always out of reach. I would never be able to touch him.

Grief hit me then, the image of Aphrodite’s sad small body sprawled beside the woodstove, and horror at the darkness around me. I turned and groped around the room until I found Gryffin’s desk, the brass candlestick and box of wooden matches. I struck one, not caring if he woke, lit the candle then extinguished the match.

The flame seemed blinding, but he didn’t stir. I stood at his bedside, candle in my hand, and gazed down at him: his mouth parted slightly, as though he were on the verge of speaking to someone in his dream. His eyes moved behind his eyelids. His breath was warm and smelled of toothpaste and alcohol. He was beautiful.

Everything is random. That’s what I used to believe. Nothing happens for a reason, nothing happens because we will it. I never believed in gods. I believe in Furies. I think there are beings, people, impelled by the power to do harm. Sometimes the impulse is momentary. Maybe in some instances it’s eternal. And maybe that’s the one thing in the universe that isn’t random.

When I was raped, I ran into one of those Furies. Over the years, I became one myself.

But if there is an opposite to whatever I am, it—he—was lying there in front of me. As I stared at him I realized that what I had first sensed outside the motel room, that black roil of damage … it had nothing to do with Gryffin Haselton, nothing at all. He’d looked at me, and I’d seen a glimpse of myself in his eyes. My own rage and fear had come back at me like bullets bouncing from a wall.

Nothing else.

I shot the last four frames. I steadied the camera on the edge of the desk so that my shaking hands wouldn’t ruin the exposure. Even so, I knew the images would be blurred. Like when you’re outside shooting the moon without a tripod—no matter how hard you try to remain still, you move, and the moon moves, and the earth moves. And the camera captures everything.

Now, in Gryffin’s room, very little seemed to be moving: but I knew the photos would show differently. They would show how everything changes, a fraction of a second at a time. Death is the eidos of that Photograph, Roland Barthes wrote, but not even death is static like a picture is. If you look at a corpse long enough, you see things move beneath the skin, as real and liquid as the blood in your own veins.

Now I saw a sleeping man, motionless. Four frames. When I was done, I rewound the film inside the camera then removed the roll. I needed to hide it.

Gryffin might find it in a drawer, or under the mattress. I saw the turtle shell on the windowsill and remembered what I’d found in the room above the Island Store. I picked up the shell, pressed my finger against the bit of carapace that formed a trap door where the turtle’s head had once retracted. It moved to reveal an opening big enough for the roll of film.

I slid it inside then shook the shell. The film didn’t move; it was wedged tight. I put the shell back on the windowsill, turned and watched Gryffin sleep.

Our gaze changes all that it falls upon…

I never wanted my gaze to change him.

But, of course, it already had. I blew out the candle, removed my boots and leather jacket, wrapped my camera in the jacket and set it on the floor.

Then I pulled the blanket back and slipped beneath the covers. Gryffin made a small questioning sound and shifted onto his side.

“It’s me,” I whispered. “I’m cold.”

“What?” He mumbled and turned toward me. “Huh?”

“Cass. There’s no heat in my room. I’m freezing.”

I could see him frown. Then he shut his eyes.

“Whatever,” he said, and put his arms around me. “Just go to sleep.”

Gradually the cold ebbed from my body; gradually the room grew light. I listened to the humming in my head and the sound of Gryffin’s breathing.

Finally I slept. It wasn’t exactly the sleep of the just. But for those few hours, it was enough.