"Well, that must be encouraging for them," said Ira.
Jonathan asked at the reference desk for a copy of the 1927 local paper. It had been stolen. Jonathan took 1928 instead. Ira sat and read Jonathan's book.
It was full of photographs. There were Mexican railroad workers in the snow. A great cloud of rabbits, thousands of them, ran between picket fences, watched by women in high, folded formal hats. Someone called Mr. Hannah and his friends posed on the front porch of the Lancaster Hotel in 1901. The hotel had two floors and was three windows wide, and the upper floor of the porch leaned outward. Cowboys lined up on horseback in 1906. There were truckloads of alfalfa, and photographs of floods, horse carriages fording the main street. The Woman's Relief Corps smiled out at Ira from the turn of the century. Some of the women were named, but there was one woman with a particularly smiling, attractive face who was not named. No one, apparently, knew who she had been.
Ira began to be able to trace particular people. One face started as a watchful, rather handsome lad graduating from grammar school in the twenties. Then he was seen even more stern behind the counter of a grocery store. The sports teams began and there he was again, still stern until the 1930s when, disastrously, he smiled. His face looked plump, uncertain, unrecognizable. And there he was as a coach in 1948, looking suddenly lively, bright-eyed, gleaming. In one photograph, in the 1950s, he was portly, polished and beaming. It was the story of a man who had learned how to smile.
Ira looked up at the quiet, modern library, with its rows of books, its tan and varnished index-card files, and its very slightly battered computers. Redolent of its age. There will come a time, Ira thought, when Jo and I are gone. Or one of us is gone. It wouldn't be the same, with one of us gone.
An athletic-looking man in running shoes strode past and left behind him a disturbance in the air, a bit like body odor. Ira looked at Jonathan, his long, fan-shaped back, his nonexistent butt, his wiggly, knobbly legs, and the effect on Ira was bland, neutral as if the body were invisible. A perfect relationship, except for one thing.
Ira went over to see how Jonathan was doing.
As he approached, Jonathan seemed to flicker sideways somehow, and he flipped the microfilm forward.
"You really don't want me to see what this is all about, do you?" Ira chuckled.
"I wanted you to look at this," said Jonathan, oblivious with enthusiasm. A headline in quaint serif type said: STERLING RINEAR TALKS TO KIWANIS ABOUT EISTEDDFOD.
The Eisteddfod was the Welsh bardic festival-another one of Jonathan's enthusiasms.
"It just all connects," said Jonathan.
Like electricity. Even Ira felt the jolt, but only through Jonathan.
"Look at this. And look at this," said Jonathan, showing him ads for Safeways and banks.
"I mean the Bank of Italy. What was it doing here? Except that it became the Bank of America." He paused. "You bored?"
"A bit," admitted Ira.
Jonathan rubbed his forehead and looked helplessly at the unending trail of stories, advertisements. "Yeah. Okay. I just wish I could photograph the whole thing."
It was impossible to catch the past. "You know, someday they'll do a computer model of every town every ten years. The shops, the cars, the parks, the houses. The people in them, the clothes, everything. And you'll put on your electronic glasses, and your earplugs, and you'll walk through it. You'll say hello to women in cloche hats and brown silk stockings and they'll say hello back." He paused, and Ira saw that he was almost near tears. "In very slightly tinny voices."
It was Ira's private conviction that he had married a genius. Ira never said anything about this to anyone, especially to Jonathan. But Ira had seen Jonathan act Shakespeare and had heard him talk. No one else knew what Jonathan was. The TV shows, the horror movies in which Jonathan appeared, were rubbish. This only made it more poignant for Ira, so Ira joked.
"Wouldn't you bump into them if you had electronic specs?"
"This isn't some dumb joke, Ira." Jonathan's face had suddenly gone solemn, and slightly ill-looking.
"No," said Ira gently. "No, it isn't." Ira kept watch over Jonathan. There was a downside to the hyperactivity that glittered in Jonathan's eyes.
Suddenly the downside was dispelled or, rather, cast out. "Get out of here!" said Jonathan, bullish again, and he stood up with a kind of whiplash smartness to his spine. He tossed the microfilm up into the air and caught it effortlessly. He was strangely put together, too long in the back, but top-heavy, with small thin legs. He had wonderful coordination and he always beat Ira at everything. Ira had to try hard at everything. Jonathan tried hard at nothing. Ira was the success.
"On," said Jonathan, "to Cedar Street."
"What's there?" Ira asked.
"A house," said Jonathan, with another secret smile.
"If this is some dumb movie-star pilgrimage…" Ira threatened. He had been the kind of kid who preferred Mozart to Kiss. And Bach to Mozart.
"You'll do what?" Jonathan asked.
"I'll tell everyone you're a John Wayne fan."
"Well, he's from Lancaster."
"I know! Listen, it's not John Wayne, is it? Please. Tell me it's not John Wayne."
"It's not John Wayne," said Jonathan, still smiling with his secret.
The house was on Cedar Street, on a corner, by what had once been the grammar school. "That's it, it must be it, two-story!"
"You want to stop?" Ira asked.
"No, no, keep going," said Jonathan, ducking down.
"Are you or are you not the world's only photo-realist actor?"
"I'm embarrassed," said Jonathan, and the words were like lead. "That's someone's house. I can't just go up and start snapping pictures. Go on, go on!"
There was a hum as the car accelerated. "I'll tell you one thing," said Ira, "you'll never be a photo-realist journalist."
"Drive round the block," said Jonathan. He switched baseball hats.
"Hey, master of disguise. Do you really think they won't recognize you in a different baseball hat?"
"You're a lawyer," accused Jonathan.
"Whenever I think straight, you tell me that."
Jonathan looked afraid. Ira chuckled and slapped his leg. "You're nuts," he said.
"I know," said Jonathan very seriously.
The fake-Spanish bungalows, the tiny 1920s frame houses with porches and tile roofs, slipped past. Consistency was not Jonathan's strong point. It ruined his career. He would sometimes freeze like this on a part. Something about it wouldn't be right, and Jonathan would have to stop. No amount of ambition, or gratitude to the people who had worked so hard to get him the part, could force a performance out of him. "I'm sorry," Jonathan would say, helpless. "I'm not being funny. I want to do it, I wish I could, but if I tried now there would be nothing. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." And implacable, he would walk away from money, from opportunity, from reputation.
And it isn't even artistic integrity, thought Ira. I mean, he does those terrible monster movies. There's just something in those that he can grab hold of.
"Go by there again, and just park," said Jonathan quietly.
And then sometimes, when it all came right, Jonathan would step into the lights of the stage of a little theater, and his friends would not know him, and there would be a hush or even a gasp from the small and scattered audience. It would be like a dagger coming out of a sheath. Jonathan could take people's breath away.