“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.