Photographic (35 page)

Ian thought of the neighbors and was mortified. “Come in, come in. We can’t stand out here.”

Angus dodged through the door before Ian slammed it shut. Ian led the way into the living room, where he sat in the slipcovered chair in the corner and gestured to the couch across. Angus settled himself.

“You’re Beezer? You’re the fellow who stayed with Jane? The one who came in the middle of the night?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell her who you were? That you knew me?”

Angus chuckled. “I told her I was friends with Marta. I couldn’t really say I’m friends with you, Mr. Reilly.”

“Call me Ian, please. I’m shocked you wouldn’t tell her we worked together. I hope I’m not that stand-offish.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Reilly. Ian. I just don’t ever like to presume. Not a good thing to do in my business.” Angus took off his wire-rimmed glasses and polished them modestly on his handkerchief before putting them back on and blinking at Ian. “May I speak to Ms. Reilly?”

“Your timing is maybe not the best.”

“My timing is just what it should be.”

“Oh?”

“I came now for a reason.”

Ian studied Angus. “In that case I’d better fetch her. She’s busy with Tam. Wait and I’ll get her.”

Jane trailed down the stairs, her pants half-soaked, hair disheveled. “Beezer! What are you doing here? I thought you’d gone to Los Angeles.”

“Yes, well, plans change.”

“Oh. How are you?”

“I’m very well, thanks. More to the point, how’re you?”

Jane looked over at Ian, who stood in the bay window, looking out through the few-inch gap in the curtains into the street, his shoulders hunched.

“We’re all right. It’s been a little crazy today.”

“I can well imagine, luv.”

“Beezer, was there something in particular that you came about? It’s just that, we’re quite tired tonight, and…you see how it is.”

“Quite. Sorry. I’ll get to the point. I know what happened to you. I know who happened to you, more like.” 

Jane stood still, eyes torn between Beezer and Ian’s back. “What do you mean?”

“You know our mutual friend.”

“I…yes.”

“You know what she does for a living?”

Jane darted another look at Ian’s back. “Ye-es.”

“She’s the one. She sold you out. Lock, stock, and barrel.”

Jane walked slowly to the couch and sat down. She picked up a throw pillow and held it on her lap, running the fringe between her fingers. “How do you know?”

“You doubt me?”

“Just tell me how you know.”

“I know she knows what happened with Ian. I know she was under negotiations with the
Stargazer
to release the story.”

Ian turned from the window and faced the two of them, who were riveted on each other, seated facing on the two couches. 

“She told you this, Angus?”

“We’re mates. Have been for years.”

Jane sat digesting this. “I didn’t tell her what happened. So how did she know. How do you know?”

Beezer’s already red physiognomy turned an interesting shade of eggplant. “A journalist is sworn not to reveal his sources. That’s rule number one in the book, I’m afraid.”

“But you’ve just told us it was Marta who leaked the story.”

Beezer tugged at his collar, scratched the back of his neck as if a label irritated him, and folded forward like a collapsible chair. He looked up at them from over his glasses. “I didn’t want to have to say this, but I see I have no other choice. Somebody, er. Somebody talked. That’s how she found out. Marta has connections, resources, that even I don’t know about. And I’ve know her for fifteen years.”

Ian had turned to face the bay window again during this speech. His expressive back no longer saying enough to satisfy him, he faced and lit into the man who had always, to him, been Angus. This was his first encounter with Beezer. “Are you saying that one of us: Vaughn, Tor, or myself, revealed this information to Marta?”

Beezer bowed his head in concurrence, shaking it at human fallibility.

“Didn't happen." 

Beezer gathered his fingers together in a respectful steeple and considered them. “All I can supply in my defense is the bare facts. The story is out. I wished to help. I’m sorry if my intrusion is giving offense rather than the information I hoped would aid you.”

The jovial, chatty Beezer she knew now sounded like a professor of journalism. “Why are you coming to us?”

Beezer was silent for a moment, thumbing his suspenders. “There comes a time when a man has to decide. Has to choose which side he’s on. I’ve been on the side of the hunter most of my life. The chase, that’s what did it for me. In the old days I might a’ been a gamekeeper, or a big game hunter in Africa. I might have wielded a long bow, or a rifle, instead of me Nikon. This job does it for me. The thrill of it, you can’t imagine. Capturing the elusive shot, the one they don’t want you to get. The unexpected moment. Unposed—they don’t know you’re there, acting natural as can be—beautiful.”

Ian spoke up, his voice distant. “But, Angus, you’re a set photographer.”

Beezer shook his head. “Well.”

Ian turned back to face the window, the window he didn’t dare look out without flashbulbs in his face. He could only peep through the line in the drapery. "You're paparazzi."

"I do a job when it's called for."

She liked the other Beezer much better. “Thank you for the information.” 

He was driven out of his chair by the finality of Jane’s tone. “If you have any more questions, I’ll be staying at The Hosteler’s Lodge. Good luck and all.”

CHAPTER FORTY

O
VER
THE
NEXT
twenty-four hours, the tableau varied, but it was always Jane and Ian, or the two of them and Tam, in silence or in argument, discussing their predicament.

Jane washed the dinner plates, her hands dunked in the slippery water. “What if we didn’t run.” 

Ian looked up from underneath the table where he was trying to get the four legs to stand evenly. “Okay…” 

“What if we stayed and faced it. What if we answered their questions. Gave them what they want, in a way, but on our terms.” 

“How, exactly?”

“I don’t know, exactly.” Her slight parroting of him came out sharper than she intended.

Ian placed several thin pieces of cardboard from cereal boxes under one of the legs and crawled out from under the table to test it. It still wobbled. He crawled back under and fitted some under another leg. “You’re saying speak publicly,” he muttered from under the table. 

The last dish finally in the drying rack, she turned around. “I remember when you told me about it, right after you did it, you weren’t ashamed. It was like you’d made a connection or seen a bigger meaning to life. You were all lit up. I don’t know why. That’s partly what made me so furious. Then there was the whole sex with another woman part. That didn’t help.” 

She had meant to say the last bit humorously, but that’s not how it came out. Emotions burbled up, traveling right to her throat. They silenced her. It was as if it had just happened. She turned around and poured the warm soapy water out of the tub into the sink, letting it run over her hand as it spiraled into the drain. The bubbles clung to her hand like a glove of exploding, sparkling diamonds. She swept it up her wrist with her other hand. With a flick the cold water was on, washing all the glitter away.

Ian had the table level and was now sitting at it, she could tell from the sounds behind her. She could also tell he knew she had was too quiet. 

“I’ll get a new table. Look on the Internet, have it sent over, so we don’t have to go out.”

She wiped the sink area, with a wet cloth, then a dry one. “It’ll be Marta’s.”

“I keep forgetting. We’re actually living in enemy territory, aren’t we? If what he says is true.”

 Now she got the glass cleaner out from below the sink and polished the inside of the window above the sink. “You don’t believe him?”

“Let’s put it this way. That guy was a set photographer on at least three pictures I worked on. No one had a clue he was anything else. I don’t see how he did it. He must have led some kind of double life. That means he was taking illicit pictures while he was on the set without us knowing it, selling pictures to tabloids, illegal stuff, instead of just the studio prints he was contracted for. It’s all copyrighted. I don’t know why he would unveil himself to us. Does he expect us to keep it a secret?” 

Jane finished the last pane and gathered up her dirty towels. She crossed the kitchen and tossed them in the dirty hamper in the corner, near the small stacked washer and dryer in the hallway. She put a kettle on to boil. “Maybe he’s retiring, so he doesn’t care.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. They could still get him. Studios live for copyright infringement. Of a certain kind.”

In the quiet of the kitchen, Jane listened to the hum of the refrigerator as the motor switched on.

“Maybe we should give an interview,” she said at last.

“To who?”

“We give an interview about it, to settle some of the questions.”

“Seriously?”

“Does it sound like I’m kidding?” 

“I’d have to think about it, Jane. Maybe you’ve thought this out and it all makes sense to you, but it sounds like a step further down the path of career suicide to me. So give me a minute to think here, okay?” He pushed away from the table and walked down the hall to the downstairs bedroom, where he’d spent quite a bit of time over the past two days, ever since the story broke. 

Jane called out, “All the time you need to recover from your betrayal!” her voice carrying above the screaming kettle. 

In a rage, she batted at the stove to turn off the gas, finally snatching the kettle and shoving it off the burner. She burnt her hand on the hot kettle and cried out, clutching her hand to her chest. A twist of the faucet with her good hand sent cool water rushing over the burn. 

When she had calmed down she placed a call to see if Marie-Renée was available for that afternoon. She couldn’t keep Tam cooped up any longer. She couldn’t keep herself cooped up any longer. They could go to the park, and between Marie-Renée and herself, she thought they could manage Tam and the flock of photographers who would follow. Marie-Renée was available. As she hung up, she wondered, why is Marie-Renée always available? She’s competent and friendly. Surely she must be in demand. It was the last thing Jane could worry about now. If some things, some people in her life couldn’t be taken at face value, she thought she might go mad. She washed her face and went to find Tam. 

Tam was playing dinosaurs in her room. The model dinosaurs they’d bought at the Natural History Museum gift shop had been a lucky contribution to Tam’s imaginary world. 

“We’re going to the park later this afternoon with Marie-Renée.” She tried to bring excitement into her voice.

“Goody.” The dinosaurs ranged amidst the mountainous crags of Tam’s duvet.

“Those photographers are going to be around. There’re a lot of them right now. We’ll keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t get in the way of us having a good time, okay?”

“Okey-doke.” Tam picked up one of the dinosaurs and put it in a cave created by a hump in the blanket. “Can I bring my pterodactyl and my plesiosaur?”

“I don’t see why not. You’ll have to be careful if you bring them all the way to the park. We lost Piers Tiraloo at the park that time. That was a drama. How will you carry them?”

“Mom, that was like, two years ago. In my backpack. Plus my triceratops and my brachiosaur!”

“Why don’t we keep it to two.” They weren’t exactly small.

A small black cloud appeared over Tam’s head, her eyes darkening as they did when things weren’t going her way. “That’s not enough.” Her voice quavered.

“How come?”

Tam looked down at her dinosaurs on the floor and away. She said quietly, so that Jane could hardly hear, “There’s a whole ‘nother country there, with mountains and lakes. They all have to go or someone will be left behind. He’ll be sad.”

Jane sat down on Tam’s bed. “You know what I think?”

“What?” Tam moved her dinosaurs around on the mountain range, maneuvering them up and down the terrain.

“Even if one did get left behind, the others would go back and get him. They’d notice he wasn’t there. They’d miss him so much. They’d all say, ‘What happened to Archibald? We miss Archibald sooo much. We have to fetch him right away!’”

Tam looked up with a pained expression. “None of them is called Archibald, Mother.”

“There is, too. I heard one of those dinosaurs call another dinosaur Archie. I’m sure of it.”

Tam shook her head and paraded her terrible lizards all in a row, her mouth in a line. “You’re just being silly.”

“If I’m silly, there’s one place I got it.”

Tam glanced up her mother and laughed a nervous, “Hee hee hee,” in the back of her throat.

“Oh yes!” Jane got up and tiptoed toward Tam with her hands held out in tickle position. “Seven years ago, I got a bad case of silly. So bad,” (she caught Tam, who shrieked, and started tickling her), “they had to send me to the hospital,” (they were rolling on the floor as Tam tried to tickle back), “and I gave birth to a wee baby silly, and I was given a silliness prognosis forevermore.” 

“Gotyou gotyou gotyou!” Tam yelled as she tickled around the back trying to get under the arms, Jane’s extra-ticklish spot.

“You win, you win,” Jane screeched. They broke away from each other and lay on the floor breathing.

“Mommy?”

“Yessy?”

“Can’t I bring all the dinosaurs? They’re a family.”

Jane was silenced by this argument. “One-track mind child. You’re the pack mule. If you want to carry them all. You lose any, that’s it, kiddo.”

Tam’s stormy countenance was a memory, her expression light and glowing. Just like her Da, Jane thought. 

“Goody! Thank you Mommy Mommy best of Mommies.” She got up to play with the dinosaurs, who did back flips.

Jane shook her head, got up, and wandered back downstairs. She heard Ian talking on the phone in the other room. With a sigh she lay down on the floor in the living room to wait for Marie-Renée. Despite the off-white carpet, drapes, and furniture, it was still dark because of the window shades, pulled down by Ian, which did double duty along with the lighter linen draperies. She got on her hands and knees and crawled over to the front window. Rising up to a crouch, she pulled the cord on the center shade so it rose to the top, keeping her head out of sight. The other two shades got the same treatment. Now the space had an entirely different character; light flooded in, streaming in brilliant blocks of sun that turned the palette of the room from silver gray to pale lemon. The sound of voices shouting Ian’s name came from the street. She lay flat on the floor and let the sun bake her in a warm diamond.