Photographic, page 2
Most days lately, the answer plagued his waking thoughts. Not being able to climb out of his skin and exist, without notice, often without harassment, cost more than he could bear to pay, lately. Was it really worth it? At least here, on this island, he would be left in relative peace. This was nothing. He scrawled his name on his faces, covering as much of each picture as he could with the black mark of his signature, obliterating his image as he autographed it. Ian finished the stack and pushed it toward Mr. Stanos. Now he’d have the truck to himself, and sold only a small part of himself for it.
Evening come, transport of trees concluded, Mr. Stanos got behind the wheel and dropped Ian off at a nearby, false location so even the hotel proprietor would be in the dark for the time being. Ian worked on preparing limbs in the cove after the short hike and descent into his little realm. He propped a tree up on two boulders and chopped it in half. A fire flickered off to one side.
The last rays of the sun had not yet retreated fully into the horizon. Long shadows stretched across the sand, darkening the scooped indentations of his footsteps. A scrambling sound warned him of someone scrambling down the rocks into the cove.
CHAPTER THREE
CLUTCHING THE PAPER, Jane ran off the drive, into the avenue. She crouched behind one of the wide protective oaks, and thought. What if it was someone deranged, someone after Ian, who hadn’t seen him here, so now was taking potshots—or stranger still, someone after her? She tried to focus on where the noise had come from. It had definitely been the cluster of trees by the gate. Close to where the birds had taken flight. She got her breathing under control and stuck her head out, squinting into the trees.
She argued with herself for an uncomfortable thirty seconds. She was damned if a phantom noise was going to scare her to ground on her own property. Was she going to start going around armed next, or hire a patrol? In seven years they’d never had a problem. That time when they first moved in hardly counted. This was ridiculous. Depositing the paper at the foot of the tree, she crept forward, darting from tree to tree in the avenue, closer to the gate. She still didn’t see anything. Was she crazy? What the hell was it? At last she was almost to the small grove of trees. She hid behind a bush near the beginning of the copse, parted some foliage, and looked up. Someone was perched, high up, in one of the old oaks. Electricity flashed through her, scalp to fingertips. She put her hand over her mouth.
A gleam of light flashed from the tree, reflecting off a round, mirrored surface. Jane felt a click of recognition. Her shoulders dropped and she let her head fall forward. It was one of them. The moment of release was short-lived as she thought of confronting a stranger, throwing him off the property. He didn’t have the kind of weapon that shot holes in you. No. He had an entirely different device in his arsenal. There was no way out of it now.
She got up out of the bush and strode over to the big oak. She stood at the base of the trunk gazing up at the trespasser. Although he wore what looked like camouflage, his shape was ill-concealed once she knew where to look: the open, wide-reaching branches of the oak proffered few lower leaf clusters to disguise him, the cloud of leaves all concentrated at the ends of the great spreading branches. Sprawled lengthwise like a sunning Chilean jaguar, he must have snapped one of the branches while scrambling for a foothold on his limb. He wasn’t moving an inch. She stood staring up at him. He made a small grunt and gave up the pretense, starting a hesitant descent from his position twenty-five feet in the air. It was a huge-trunked, lofty tree, with comfortable forking branches at considerable height but without any footholds for climbing. Jane didn’t see how he’d got up there without equipment. Maybe he’d brought equipment. Unbelievable.
As he shimmied further down the tree, the front of his jacket snagged on something and hampered his progress. He wasn’t a very big man. Then Jane got a good look and realized she’d been mistaken; it was a woman, rigged up in a camouflage hat and jacket. The woman struggled to free herself, flailing like a fish on a hook, but couldn’t maneuver because of the backpack and the camera, the one with the tell-tale lens gleam, hanging off one shoulder. She was still a good twenty feet up.
Jane moved to stand beneath her. "Who are you?"
A brief silence. "Marta."
“Drop your stuff.”
"So you can stomp it."
"I might." She held her arms out, as winded as if she’d run for miles, having burned through all the adrenalin her body had to spare.
“No way.” The woman panted from her struggle.
Jane gaped up at her. “You’re not in a position to argue, are you?”
Marta clung to the tree, muttering. She shrugged one arm out of a strap of the backpack and transferred the heavy camera from one shoulder to the other. There was a rustle and the flap of material and something dark and huge plunged down. Jane lurched away from the trajectory of Marta’s body, now in a heap at her feet. Everything was frozen and still.
Marta rolled on the ground. She made a sound like an animal.
Jane crouched down next to her. “Are you okay?”
“Damn, damn, damn.”
She saw Marta’s camera on the ground next to her, the overgrown lens in one piece, broken from the body of the camera. Jane almost said, “Sorry,” but thought better of it.
Marta wore a cap with flaps over the ears and a kerchief around her neck. Out for a day of hunting. Her heart-shaped face was the only uncovered part of her body. We’re the prey, Jane thought, looking at her get-up. A foreign and insidious predator. This had never happened when Ian was gone. They seemed to know when Ian wasn’t there, so they didn’t bother coming.
She sat huddled on the ground, holding the two pieces of the camera together as if they were whole.
“Are you hurt?”
“This can’t be fixed.” Marta cradled the camera. She darted a look at Jane. Her dark, slanting eyebrows were drawn close together. “My ankle.”
Jane eyed the camera. She took a breath and looked through the gate, out at the road. “How’d you get here?”
“I drove. It’s the only way to get to the boonies.”
“Can you get yourself back out?”
“I don’t know. It’s my right foot.”
Jane looked back up the drive, to the house peeping through the trees. “I thought you might have a gun.”
Marta set the pieces on the ground. “Why would I have a gun?”
“Why would you have a camera?”
Marta shrugged and fiddled with her lens. “I think you know.”
“What am I supposed to do with you?”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
“I can imagine. We’ll have to go back to the house.” Jane picked up the backpack. She unzipped it and held it open. Marta put the parts inside. Jane slung the pack over her shoulder and held out her hand. Marta took it and pulled herself up. She put her arm over Jane’s shoulder, and they started up the drive.
Getting out of the truck, up the steps, and into the house was a painstaking business. Anything that touched her ankle or leg sent spasms through her. They hobbled through the front hall and living room into the kitchen. Jane pulled out a couple of chairs. Marta sat down with a sigh and propped up her leg.
Jane untied the black tennis shoe, removing it and her sock with care. "Your ankle might be broken. You need an X-ray.” Jane turned away to get ice from the freezer, turning the cubes upside down over the plastic ice bin, where they rested whole and interconnected until she tapped them with the ice scoop. They shattered, the sound cacophonous in the silent kitchen. Once she had corralled the cubes into a plastic bag, she wrapped a thin tea towel around it and draped the pack over Marta’s ankle. “I don’t know if that’s going to stay.”
“It’s fine.”
“I know." She ducked into the front hall. As she hunted for a wrapping for Marta’s foot, she felt a light-heartedness bubble up inside, a pleasure at doing something different, helping someone. She stood for a moment in the shadows of the hallway, her hand on the silken fabric she was looking for. She pulled the scarf out from a stack of other scarves, gloves and hats, and wound it around her hand. Was even a tabloid photographer company? Returning to the kitchen, more subdued, she knelt by Marta.
“Here.” Jane tied the pale yellow scarf around the ice pack and ankle so it would stay in place.
“That’s very pretty.”
“Thanks.” She smoothed it and got up, leaning on the chair. “I’ll take you to the urgent care. You’ll need that looked at. You can’t drive.”
Marta shook her head. “You know what? I’m so tired right now. If you don’t mind, I’d really rather stay for a little while and rest with my foot up. I’ve got the ice. I’m okay. If you don’t mind.”
Jane stood looking at her in consternation. “It’s got to be killing you.”
“I’m tough. I just want to sit. Okay?”
Jane looked from Marta’s camera, which hung from the chair on the opposite side of the round table, to Marta. She shrugged. “If you say so. As long as you’re not taking pictures. Would you like coffee?”
“Please.” Touching the embroidered scarf, Marta winced. “Was this a gift?”
Jane glanced over. “Yes, when he went to India, Ian brought that back for me.”
She poured two cups of coffee from the pot, still half full from that morning, before sitting down. Marta took large gulps of coffee as if it could go right to her ankle and take away some of the pain. She finished one cup and sipped more slowly on the second, as if she could afford to, and was able to give some of her attention to watching Jane.
“I’m surprised.”
“By what?”
“By you. Asking me in.” She set her coffee down for a moment and unzipped her jacket, shrugging it off.
Jane leaned her head on her hand for a moment. She rubbed her forehead. “I feel something for you that you don’t feel for me and my daughter.”
“What’s that?” Marta leaned back in her chair. Her hat looked out of place inside.
“Empathy.” This woman had crossed all the bounds of propriety and surely some law of trespass. But since she had crossed the threshold from outside gate to kitchen table, she felt like a guest. Jane found herself wondering about the details. “It must have been cold in that tree. How long were you up there? You must have come while it was still dark.”
“Maybe an hour. It was damn cold,” Marta said. She held out her mug, ready for a third cup. Jane poured.
“That’s why you twisted your ankle. Your legs got stiff.”
“Probably.” Marta sipped.
“You should take something.” Jane observed the line of pain between Marta’s brows and got up to get her some tablets from the cupboard.
Marta took four, slugging them down with more coffee.“My mother didn’t look after me this well.”
Jane smiled.
“You think I’m kidding.”
In the confused mix of emotions she was experiencing, Jane felt the important question rise to the surface, the problem that had been bothering her most since she discovered Marta in the tree that morning. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Will you make a deal with me?”
“What kind of deal?” Marta set down her coffee and squared her elbows on the table. She pulled off her hat and threw it on the table, revealing blond, spiky hair. With her olive complexion and dark eyebrows, it was a striking contrast.
“You have something I don’t want you to have.” Jane locked eyes with her. “I could give you something else, if you agree not to use it.”
Marta nodded, eyes dark, half-closed. “Do you have any idea how much what I have is worth?”
“I’m afraid not.” Jane got up from the table and looked out the window over the sink, out over the fields through the trees, to the lake behind the house. A fine haze had settled in the distance; gray and forgiving, its pale wash gave the familiar landscape an air of elusive mystery. The lake might be a stone’s throw or a mile away.
“A lot.”
Jane turned back around and leaned on the counter. “I don’t see why. Ian’s not even in them. Why would anyone care?”
“One: You wouldn’t believe what people will pay for, and how much. Two: No one sees much of you. Or the kid. That gives it a premium. Supply and demand. When you live like a hermit…”
“We don’t live like hermits.”
“I don’t think there’s been a decent picture of Tamsin published in the last couple of years.” Marta leaned into the table, her pronounced way of speaking becoming more noticeable, her voice taking on a tone of righteous indignation. “You, too. I mean, when there is one, it’s been telephoto, bad quality, grocery store parking lot, stuff like that. Can’t really see what you look like. You’re better looking in person. Not as…well, never mind.” She leaned back and nodded toward her camera where it hung on the kitchen chair. “You deserve something decent. I could make you look good.”
“Oh, yes. Just what I hoped would happen today.” She folded her arms, each hand rubbing the opposite arm slowly. “We’re living here in happy ignorance. I prefer to keep it that way.”
“What were you going to offer in exchange for the pictures of the kid?”
Jane swallowed. She crossed back to her chair and sat down again. “I’ll talk to you a little bit. That’s all. Is that worth something to you?”
Marta’s face took on a considering remoteness. “Get him to talk to me, too.”
“He won’t do it.” Jane looked down at her lukewarm coffee.
“He wouldn’t have to know we struck a deal. You could say you met me, talk me up. How I’m so easy to talk to, and how it’ll be such a good article. Only you and I would know how it came about. Unless you want to tell him the whole story. It’s up to you.”
“He’s working. He’s shooting in some ruin somewhere or on a boat. It’s not a good time.”
“I could do it by phone. Or…I could fly over there, if it were more convenient.”
Jane took a sip of her coffee, though she didn’t want it, and shook her head. “I’m telling you it wouldn’t work.”
“He needs publicity. He has to do publicity when it comes out, anyway. It would be good for the film. Just some early promotion.”
“He hates that part and only does the minimum. He doesn’t do it while he’s working for sure, unless it’s do or die.”
“Well…” Marta looked Jane over as if she were a sorry substitute, “instead of that, you’d give me a full interview?”
“What is that exactly?”
“Say…an hour? Recorded? With pictures of you and the house.”
“Oh, my God. No. No pictures.”
“It would be tasteful,” Marta said hastily. “Not a tabloid.”
“Your camera is broken anyway. And you're not coming back."
“I could sue. I fell on your property.”
“I could sue. Trespass.”
They glared at each other.
“We would win.”
“Maybe, but I would fight it. It could last for years.” Marta smirked. “A big hassle for all concerned. He doesn’t want any hassles, does he?”
She looked as if she enjoyed this haggling. Like a hawk gliding through its native medium, lingering on the air currents, waiting to strike.
“Why are you here? Why did you wake up this morning and climb our tree?”
Marta shrugged at the question. “Simple. I’m sure you can figure it out.”
“Money, I suppose.”
Marta raised her eyebrows, pursed her lips, and kissed the tips of her fingers. “A lot of money.”
Jane felt anger rise up in her, pushing against her chest. Ian had suffered so much at the hands of these people. Now that she didn’t travel with him anymore she didn’t have to bear it like he did. And here she had invited it in. She could have called an ambulance. Or driven Marta straight to the emergency.
“It better be enough to let you sleep at night.”
“A gal’s gotta eat.”
“Good for you.”
“Supply and demand. I’m just the messenger.” Marta seemed to find it all amusing.
“That’s as close to an apology as you’ll ever give, I suppose. The messenger of what? Don’t you care?”
“Of course, to a certain extent.” Marta’s tone changed. From mischievous and teasing her expression shuttered down and became unreadable. They were silent for a moment.
“You pray to the god of self-interest.”
“So do we all, dear.”
Another silence said enough for both of them.
“I’ll drive you to the hospital.” Jane stood up.
“What about the interview?”
“Your ankle might be broken.” Contradictory feelings warred in Jane. She dreaded of the idea of an interview, yet she sensed even deeper an odd excitement, a thrill, at having Marta here to talk to—a longing to connect with someone, even this woman, to prolong her stay, to talk more. She thought about an interview and what it would mean. She thought about having someone to talk to. Did the fact it was the former mean she couldn’t enjoy it being the latter? Marta was saying something.
“It doesn’t hurt as much as it did at first. I think I’ve gone numb. We could talk right now.”
Jane stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking from the camera on the chair to the phone on the wall.
“Do you need to call him to see if it’s okay?” Marta said, the slightest suggestion of a taunt in her voice.
“No, of course not.” If she had needed him for every decision, she never would have been able to get anything done, for the past four years at least.
