Double Image (4 page)

Protecting his side, he struggled to the nearest wall of photographs and felt excitement build in him when he realized that he had never seen any of them before. Again and again, a card next to a photograph indicated that each was from Packard’s own collection. Their dates ranged from the fifties to the nineties, making clear that Packard
hadn’t
given up photography in his later years. He had simply chosen not to let the public see his work. Coltrane’s excitement changed to dismay when the force of the images hit him. This second act of Packard’s career emphasized the decay that he had only hinted at in his earlier work. Each photograph was devoted to blight — a dead seagull trapped in an oil spill, an emaciated child eating garbage, a brush fire destroying a spindly multimillion-dollar house perched ridiculously on a Los Angeles hilltop.

Repelled, Coltrane forced his way to another wall, oblivious to the annoyed looks people gave him as he shoved past. The next pictures were even more disturbing — policemen standing around a woman’s corpse in an alley, a caged pit bull snarling at children who taunted it with sticks, a man attacking another man during a riot. The black-and-white images had been printed to emphasize their shadows, the bleakness chilling. The only thing missing was a photograph of jumbled skeletons being clawed from the earth by a backhoe. Stumbling away, wanting nothing more than to leave, Coltrane felt the back of his legs bump against an upright metal circle with spindles and nearly toppled backward over it, catching his balance just in time, sensing with embarrassment that what he had struck was a wheelchair.

He quickly turned. “I’m very sorry. I didn’t . . .” His apology froze in his throat when he recognized the chair’s occupant.

Randolph Packard was wizened, but he still bore an uncanny resemblance to photographs that had been taken of him in his prime. Even in a wheelchair, he was tall, his thinness emphasizing his height. His trademark shock of hair over his forehead had receded, becoming wispy and white, but it was nonetheless recognizable. The hypnotic eyes were darker, the face narrower, the nose more bladelike. But despite being withered, with liver spots, his slack skin barely concealing his skull, he was unmistakably Packard.

“This chair’s taken, thank you.” Packard coughed, as if he had sand caught in his throat.

“I apologize. I should have looked where I was going,” Coltrane said. “Are you hurt?”

“The truth
never
hurts. Tell me what you think of my photographs.”

Coltrane was taken by surprise. “They’re, uh . . .”

“Indescribable, evidently.”

“. . . impressive.”

“You don’t make it sound like a compliment.”

Coltrane was determined to be tactful. “They’re technically perfect.”

“Technically?” Packard coughed more forcefully, still unable to get the sand from his throat. “That camera around your neck — is that a fashion statement? Don’t tell me you’re a photographer.”

“Yes.” Coltrane stiffened. “Yes, I’m a photographer.”

“Oh, well, then. Since you’re a photographer. What don’t you like about these photographs?”

Coltrane felt bile in his stomach. “They’re too bleak for my taste.”

“Is that a fact.”

“Actually, if you want to talk about facts, they’re ugly.”

“Ugly?”

“Coming here was important to me. I needed hope, not despair.”

Packard didn’t say anything for a moment, only steadied his wrinkle-rimmed eyes on Coltrane, then nodded. “Well, good for you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I asked for the truth. You’re the only person in this room who gave it to me. What are you holding there?”

“One of your collections.”

“You brought it for an autograph?”

“That was my intention.”

“But now you’re not sure.”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re really a photographer?”

Coltrane nodded.

“Then tell me something else that’s true. Why did you become a photographer?”

Coltrane turned to leave. “I won’t bother you any longer.”

“I asked you a question. Quick now. Don’t think about it. Answer me. Why did you—”

“To stop time.”

“Indeed?” Packard’s sunken eyes assessed him. “What’s your name?”

“Mitchell Coltrane.”

“Mitchell . . .” Packard’s gaze went inward, then focused on him more tightly. “Yes, I know your work.”

Coltrane couldn’t tell if that meant the same as stepping in dog shit.

“Tell me why you want to stop time,” Packard demanded.

“Things fall apart.”

“And the center cannot hold? I didn’t know anybody read Yeats anymore.”

“And people die.”

“How very true.” Packard coughed again, painfully.

At once, an effusive, colorfully dressed man burst from the crowd. “There you are, Randolph. I’ve been looking everywhere.” He was in his forties, overweight, with a flushed face, a salt-and-pepper mustache, and several thousand dollars’ worth of designer labels. “Some people came in you absolutely have to meet.” The man gripped the back of Packard’s wheelchair. “Excuse us. Coming through, everyone.”

“Just a moment.” Packard’s frail whisper carried amazing force. He motioned for Coltrane to step close. “This is my card. I’d like you to come for lunch tomorrow. One o’clock sharp. Bring the book. I’ll sign it then.”

And Packard was gone.

WELL, WHAT DID I EXPECT? Coltrane asked himself, struggling through the crowd to get out of the reception. There were many mysteries about Randolph Packard, but everything Coltrane had read about him was clear about one thing: his personality. Even to his most sympathetic biographer, Packard was haughty. His overbearing attitude was variously explained as the consequence of having been spoiled by wealthy parents whose fortune he had inherited at the age of sixteen after the parents died in a boating accident, or as the imperious manner of a genius whose sensibility was constantly being assaulted by those around him.

Whatever its cause, Coltrane had definitely had a taste of it. Angry, he escaped from the art gallery, so distracted by his emotions that he didn’t notice the change in the weather until he got to where he’d parked his Chevy Blazer near the intersection of Forest and the South Coast Highway. At almost six o’clock in late November, darkness was natural. But not
this
much darkness. A remnant of the sunset ought to have been visible on the ocean’s horizon; despite the glow from streetlights, stars should have started to glitter. But now the sky was absolutely black, and the horizon was indistinguishable from the ink that had become the ocean. A wind stung his cheeks, flinging sand from the beach. The first drops of rain pelted his windshield as he hurried to unlock his car and get in.

For about twenty minutes, as he headed north along the slippery, glistening 405 back to Los Angeles, the storm matched his mood. Then it seemed to cleanse him. Although the rain-slowed traffic would normally have made him impatient, he felt oddly content just to gaze past his flapping windshield wipers. He put on one of his favorite tapes and listened to Bobby Darin sing heartbreakingly “The Gal That Got Away.” As he admired Darin’s perfect phrasing, it occurred to him that almost no one had ever spoken favorably about Bobby Darin as a human being. Because of a heart condition, Darin had known that the odds were he wouldn’t live past his thirties. Feeling the pressure of limited time, he had so devoted himself to his career that no one else had mattered.
Self-centered
didn’t begin to describe him. Nor did
cruel
. Talent, it seemed, wasn’t any guarantee of noble character. Mulling over these issues, Coltrane made the obvious application to Randolph Packard: Maybe it’s not a good idea to meet one of your idols.

THROUGH THE STORM, Coltrane’s headlights revealed Jennifer’s red BMW parked at the curb in front of his town house. It troubled him. He had left a message at Jennifer’s office, telling her he wouldn’t be home. Why had she come over, regardless? Worried that their problems might be starting again, he pressed his remote-control garage opener, steered into the single stall, and shut off the engine. After hours of listening to the cacophony of rain drumming on his roof, he sat motionless, wearily enjoying the comparative silence. Then he pressed the remote control again and got out of the car. Despite the rumble of the descending garage door, he heard another door, the one at the top of the stairs. Kitchen light spilled down.

“Mitch?”

As Jennifer appeared above him, he saw her through an imaginary camera, its lens intensifying her. Nimbuslike, her blond hair seemed to radiate the light behind her. She wore gray slacks and a crewneck navy sweater. Her lips had a touch of pale orange lipstick.

“Are you all right?” She took several steps down toward him.

“Didn’t your assistant give you my message?”

“Message?” Jennifer looked confused. “No. I was away from the office all afternoon. By the time I had a chance to call in, my assistant was gone.”

Coltrane’s shoulders relaxed. It had just been a simple misunderstanding. It wasn’t going to be like before. He gripped the railing and climbed to her.

“I got worried when you weren’t here,” Jennifer said. “Then I finally noticed the open magazine on your kitchen table. When I saw the article in the calendar section, the time and date for the Packard exhibit, I figured out where you’d gone.”

“If you ever decide to get out of the magazine business, you’d make an awfully good detective.” Coltrane shut the kitchen door. “You wanted to know if I’m all right. No.” He stroked her hair and kissed her; her lipstick tasted of apricots. “I was a fool. I should have stayed home. With you.”

The compliment made Jennifer’s blue eyes seem as clear as the Caribbean when the sun emerges from behind a cloud. Then something else he had said registered on her, making her frown. “Why did you call yourself a fool?”

“Let’s just say meeting Randolph Packard wasn’t what I’d hoped it would be.”

“You have awfully high standards.”

Her remark puzzled him. “I’ve admired his work since I was old enough to tell a good photograph from a bad one.”

“Then I don’t know what more you could want. From everything I hear, things couldn’t have gone better.”

“Everything you hear?” Coltrane creased his brow.

“Packard phoned fifteen minutes ago.”

“
What
? You’re kidding me.”

“He got your number from the magazine photographers directory. He thought you’d be back by now. When I told him you weren’t, he talked about you. You made quite an impression on him.”

Coltrane felt a dizzying sense of unreality.

“He said he hasn’t met anybody as honest as you in a long time. What on earth did you say to him?”

Coltrane sank onto a kitchen chair. “Actually, I insulted him.”

Jennifer’s mouth hung open.

“I told him I thought his photographs at the exhibition were ugly.”

“You certainly know how to win friends and influence people.”

“Believe me, I wasn’t exaggerating about his photographs. They’re as ugly as the ones
I’ve
been taking.”

“And the ones you removed from your wall?”

Coltrane turned toward his living room. During the day, he had taken down all his framed photographs. His
Time
cover of an American soldier spooning food into a skeletal child’s mouth in Somalia, his two
Newsweek
covers (one of which showed a widow keening, holding her dead daughter in one arm and her dead husband in the other after a rocket attack in northern Israel), and his much-reprinted Associated Press photo of the first wave of American helicopters to invade Panama. These and other sensational highlights of his career were now stacked on a closet shelf. “It takes one shitty photographer to recognize another.”

“Maybe that’s why he wants to do a project with you,” Jennifer said.

Coltrane wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “Do a project with . . .”

“He says he knows your work and thinks it’s impressive.”

“You’re making this up.”

“Not at all. But he says
you’ll
be putting in most of the effort.
He’ll
supply the advice and the original photographs for a photo essay in
Southern California
.”

“What are we talking about?”

“His famous series of L.A. houses in the twenties and thirties.”

Coltrane straightened. That series of twenty photographs was a masterpiece. Packard’s depiction of various styles of houses in widely separated areas of the not-yet-overgrown city not only had been hauntingly beautiful but had seemed to mourn the impending loss of the innocence it celebrated.

“Packard thinks they ought to be done again,” Jennifer said. “Go back to the same neighborhoods. Find the same spots where he set up his camera. Choose the same angles. Shoot what’s there now. He says he’s been thinking about a continuation of the series for a long time, but now he isn’t well enough to do it.”

“All he’s asking me to be is his assistant?”

“More. Even if he
could
take the photographs, he says he
wouldn’t
. He agrees with your opinion of his recent work — he can’t see beauty anymore. He’s hoping, if
you
take the photographs, the same places all these years later, maybe you’ll find the beauty he can’t find.”

“I’ll be damned.”

SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT, Coltrane woke to find himself reaching for her. His lips touched hers, but as he continued to roll onto his injured side, he winced from pain. “Lie still,” she whispered. “Let me do the work.” He felt her warmth when she leaned over him, kissing his neck. She trembled from the brush of his hands against her breasts. Floating. Flowing. Pain stopped. So did time.

“WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE SPLIT UP,” he said.

The bedside lamp was on. They had just returned from the bathroom. Naked, Jennifer sat next to him on the bed, her legs curled under her.

“I didn’t give you a choice,” she said.

His emerald eyes studied her. “I didn’t pay enough attention to you.”