He hadn't been out to Underhill since early August, perhaps a month after he'd moved into this house. That day he'd spent time in the state park and then ridden for a while on the logging trails in the nearby woods. He liked the way a ride there was peppered with long stretches beneath a vaguely claustrophobic canopy of leaves, followed by picture-postcard-like vistas of Mount Mansfield and Camels Hump.
Tentatively, he tugged his bike shorts over the grapefruit-sized black and purple bruise on his hip, and then held his breath and closed his eyes as he pulled a tight long-sleeved jersey over his chest. Reflexively, he moaned aloud. He wondered briefly if this ride really was such a good idea, but he couldn't imagine spending a day like this inside. Not with seriously cold weather barely a month or two in the distance.
As he was passing Laurel and Talia's front door, he paused. He heard music inside and decided to knock. He wanted to ask Laurel about yesterday, inquire why she hadn't joined them for paintball. Talia answered, and it didn't appear she had been up very long. He guessed she had walked the pony that their neighbor Gwen claimed was a dog and then gone back to bed for a couple of hours, because her hair was wild with sleep and she was wearing a pair of pink and black polka-dot pajama bottoms with the drawstring so loose that they hung far--erotically far, hip bone low far, a wisp of mons pubis far--below her waist and a silk camisole that neither matched her pajama bottoms nor hid the vast majority of her breasts. He felt far more guilty than aroused, however, because in the long strip of flesh between the bottom of her top and the top of her bottom he saw a machine-gun line of welts across her abdomen. Even her navel looked bruised.
"Well," she said, her voice thick and tired and in desperate need of a drink of water, "if it isn't Sergeant York."
He motioned toward her stomach. "I think I know when that happened. I have a bad feeling I even know who did it. It was when you came over the top of that rusty jeep and didn't know I was there, right?"
She looked down. "Usually, I have a silver flower in my belly button. A little Celtic charm. It dangles. It's very lovely. If I hadn't had the foresight to take it out before we played, you probably would have shot it through my intestines."
"I'm really sorry. I guess I got a little out of control."
"Are you serious? You can't be serious. Yesterday was the most fun I have had in a very long time. It was fabulous. You were fabulous. I was fabulous."
"You make it sound like sex."
She shook her head. "Oh, as I told Laurel, paintball is better than sex. At least most sex. I am so glad you were there. Really, Whit, thank you."
"I had fun, too. Is Laurel home?"
"Nope. Left this morning at the crack of dawn. Enter the crib and I'll tell you the little I know."
He hadn't thought about the possibility that only Talia might be here, and he realized he was looking at a lengthy detour. But he did want to know what had happened to Laurel, and suddenly he liked the idea of commiserating with another grown-up who had spent the previous day mercilessly abusing her body.
"You can't possibly feel up to a bike ride," she said, motioning him inside, waving her arm ironically as if she were fanning it over a wall of game-show prizes. "If you do...then you're a bloody superman. I can barely walk. Really, come in."
The place was a mess: There were blue jeans and tops and bras and thongs (or at least very small bikini panties) wadded up on the couch and the coffee table, and the floor was awash in CD cases and fashion magazines and books, some of which had titles like The Powerfully Contagious Christian and Teen Saviors.
"So, I guess you just got up?" he asked, wondering for a moment where he should sit. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to move her clothing and her lingerie or sit on top of it. Quickly, however, she scooted in front of him and gathered her underwear and her jeans into a ball and heaved them through the door to her bedroom so he had a place to sit down.
"Just got up? Are you crazy? I just got back from church! I was about to go back to bed, if you want to know the truth. But, no, I suck it up, thank you very much, and get my butt to church every Sunday morning. I am--and this does horrify some people, I guess--a role model. At the moment, of course, I might be a role model who looks like she just spent the night at some nightmarish frat party. But I was in bed last night with the lights out by ten. And this morning I was cleaning and organizing before church. Gwen's dog sort of trashed our place yesterday, and when I was tidying up I decided to do some serious organizing. Even clean out my drawers. Hence, the...the chaos. You want some coffee?"
"No, I'm good."
She nodded. "Right answer. It would mean getting dressed and going to Starbucks." She plopped herself down on the couch beside him.
"So, did you see Laurel before you crashed?" he asked.
"I did. And it wasn't pretty."
"Excuse me?"
"Your crush is losing her shit."
"Laurel is not my crush!"
She ducked her chin and looked at him over the tops of her eyes, a glimpse that conveyed in an instant her incredulity. "You have serious longing issues for that girl--and, I might add, ones with little chance of fruition given that she seems to have an older man jones."
"What do you mean she's losing her shit?" he asked, picking up one of her books about Christians and teens off the floor. "Did you find out why she didn't play paintball with us?"
"Yup. It was those pictures. The ones some old BEDS client left behind at the Hotel New England. She actually spent yesterday--most of it, anyway--in the darkroom. Can you believe it? She is so obsessed with those loopy old photos that she completely forgot she was supposed to be running around the woods with my youth group. With me! She's actually forgotten about me totally lately. I must confess, I didn't think such a thing was possible, and I am more than a little bent out of shape. But more than that, I am worried about her."
She recounted for him the way Laurel had presumed their apartment had been ransacked yesterday, and her fear that someone was after the old homeless man's pictures. She told him how her friend had been avoiding her since she had returned from Long Island, and how Laurel's life seemed, suddenly, to be revolving around this strange dead man's work. When she was finished, she leaned her head against the back of the couch, closed her eyes, and said almost plaintively, "Really. I don't know what to make of this or who I should call. Her boss, maybe? The minister at my church? What would you do?"
He wondered if she was, perhaps, overreacting. "Isn't this just a new hobby? Something she's jazzed about because it's all fresh? Obviously, I don't know a whole lot about her life or how she spends her time. She's from Long Island, she works at BEDS, she's dating an older guy from the newspaper. She likes to swim in the morning. She used to bike. That's about it. But she doesn't seem to have a whole lot going on in her life, does she? So why shouldn't she work on those photos? It sounds like all they're really keeping her from is...well, you."
He hoped this last remark had sounded like a good-natured joke, but given the speed with which that sleepy hand of hers had backhanded him on the chest--a spring-loaded paddle, it felt like--he wasn't so sure.
"Not everything is about me," she said.
"No?"
"No. There is actually quite a lot going on in our Laurel's life--or, at least, in her head. You don't know what the girl has been through. Almost no one does."
Her tone was uncharacteristically wistful, and it made him wonder: "Does this have anything to do with the fact she was nearly raped once?"
"Nearly?"
"Yeah, I guess. The other day Gwen said something to me that implied Laurel had almost been raped. I don't know anything more than that. I don't know where or when or the circumstances. I figured it was none of my business and I didn't want to pry."
She raised her head from the couch and turned toward him. "It wasn't almost."
"Oh, shit."
"And it wasn't just rape. They--"
"They?"
"There were two of them. You want to know about L
aurel? You want to know why she doesn't bike anymore and why I worry? Okay, Captain Lycra, here's the four-one-one on Miss Laurel Estabrook," she said. Then, her eyes never wavering from his, Talia told him precisely what had happened to her friend up in Underhill, and why she was worried now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AFTER SHEM HAD LEFT, Laurel went through the photos one last time in the diner, trying to piece them together in a linear fashion. Not chronologically. She'd already done that. This time she was seeing if she could, as Shem had suggested, form a treasure map. She winnowed out the celebrities--pushing aside the likes of Chuck Berry and Robert Frost and Julie Andrews--and then she made two piles, one of places and one of things, and she wrote down on a yellow legal pad what was in each.
Places
The Brooklyn Bridge
Plaza Hotel
Washington Square
Train station, West Egg
Manhattan cityscapes
Chrysler building
New York Philharmonic
Greenwich Village
Street football underneath Hebrew National billboard
World's Fair (including the Unisphere)
Brownstones (in Brooklyn?)
Mustang in front of Marshfield estate Midwestern arts-and-crafts house (Wright?) Unknown jazz club (a series)
Central Park
World Trade Towers
Wall Street
Main Street, West Egg
Valley of Ashes office park (not real name) East Egg train platform
East Egg shoreline
West Egg shoreline
My old swim club (Gatsby's old house) Underhill dirt road scenes (two with a girl on a bike) Stowe church
Waterfall
Mount Mansfield ski trails (in summer)
Things
Hair dryers
Autos (many)
Cigarettes (in ashtrays, on tables, close-ups in people's mouths)
More autos (a half dozen)
IBM typewriter (three)
Mustang in front of Marshfield estate Fifth Avenue bus
Lava lamps
Love beads and peace medallions Art deco jewelry box
Crab apple tree (a few prints, one with a little pyramid of apples beside it)
Dog by bakery
There were certain images that Laurel assumed were valueless in this quest: the cigarettes, the lava lamps, the cars. The hair dryers. Likewise, she knew that other photographs had been commissioned assignments, such as the Unisphere. The ones that were most puzzling to her were actually the pictures of Vermont and the pictures of her that were taken just before her life would be altered forever: photographs Bobbie had snapped on that very Sunday in Underhill, perhaps, or on one of the Sundays that had preceded that awful day. Were those images relevant to her search? Was she actually a clue herself in Bobbie's treasure map? Or was it just an odd coincidence that her path and Bobbie's had crossed years before they would formally meet, and that they would cross in that particular month--perhaps on that very Sunday afternoon? Were the photographs of a bicyclist on a dirt road or of a church up in Stowe a part of the pictorial labyrinth he was constructing, or were they irrelevant? After all, there were no indications that either Gatsby or the Buchanans had ever set foot in Vermont.
And what of that house Laurel had presumed was somewhere in the Midwest? Was it in Chicago, where she knew Tom Buchanan's family was from? Or was it in Saint Paul, where Howard Mason had said that Bobbie might have tracked down a grandfather? For all Laurel knew, the house with its gently pitched roofs and wide boxlike floors--a second floor that jutted out like a jaw above the first--might very well exist in East or West Egg, Long Island. Or it might have belonged to one of those Louisville cousins.
The prints that Laurel thought had the greatest potential were the ones that most obviously hinted at a part of Bobbie's life. Carefully, she drew a line through the images that she was confident were not clues to his parentage, and decided that what remained was manageable. Doable. She could see the elements of a map, just as Shem had suggested. She would simply tell Katherine that she needed some time off from work--a week, maybe two. Tonight she would make prints from the last of the negatives, and perhaps as soon as tomorrow or Tuesday she would start to use up her vacation days and go...
Well, she might have to begin with a prison in northern Vermont. And, if that inmate wasn't Bobbie's son, then one in Montana. Because although the project might be doable, it wasn't going to be easy. There were the trace elements of a map, perhaps, but which were the clues and which were merely the aimless photos (or, perhaps, even the red herrings) taken by a schizophrenic who drank too much she couldn't decide. She had landmarks in East and West Egg: the houses and train platforms and the manicured lengths of beach. Her country club--Gatsby's estate. She had an office park that had risen from the Valley of Ashes. She had the Plaza, the hotel where Bobbie's own mother had been asked to choose between her husband and her lover, and been unable. She had an art deco jewelry box with scalloped mirrors along the lid. Surely there was a chance that the box held Jay's wartime portrait--and perhaps something more. A letter. A locket. A ring with an engraving. But how did one begin to find a box in any of these structures? Suppose she found the arts-and-crafts house? What then? Ask the owner if she could dig up the basement? Ransack the floorboards in the attic? Likewise, what could she do at her old country club? Ask to rummage around the library--the one that had once dazzled guests simply because it happened to have books that were real?
Nevertheless, she felt confident now that no one could possibly question what she knew was true: not David, not Katherine, not Talia. No one ever again would question her sanity.
WHEN SERENA REJOINED her in the booth, Laurel pushed the portfolio case toward her, reminding her to tell no one she had it. As soon as Laurel had finished speaking, however, she could see by the look on Serena's face that she had been wrong, completely wrong, a moment earlier: People were still going to doubt her. It was clear what the woman was thinking, and Laurel knew more or less what her friend was going to say before Serena had even opened her mouth.
"Laurel, you know there is nothing I wouldn't do for you...and I will hang on to these for you. I will. It's fine. But honestly, girl, do you really believe for a second that someone is going to try to steal these pictures from you?"
"Yes. And I don't believe it. I know it."
"But--"
"You think I'm crazy."
"No, of course I don't. But I do think you may be, I don't know, overreacting."
Laurel repeated the word. It was long. A euphemism for misbehavior. For inappropriate behavior. "Well, then," she asked. "What would you do? What would you have me do?"
"Come on, Laurel, don't take that tone with me. I'm just..."
"Just what? Worried?"
"No. Okay, yes. Worried. I'm worried."
"Then tell me. What would you do?"
"Well, for starters I wouldn't get so freaked out," Serena said, but after that opening Laurel really didn't pay much attention to the rest of her speech. Serena was sweet and she was well intentioned, and Laurel knew now that she couldn't trust her. Her friend didn't realize the importance of the images she had with her. As soon as Leckbruge or some minion appeared, Serena would turn them over to him. The whole portfolio case. Of course it would be an act of naivete on her part, not betrayal. But it would have precisely the same effect. The pictures--and all of her work and Bobbie's--would be gone.
And so Laurel thanked her for her time and her conversation, and when she left she took the portfolio case with her. She was polite. So polite that Serena walked her to the diner's front door and assumed, when they parted, that Laurel was going to heed her advice and relax.
SHE WOULDN'T HAVE been able to tell what it was from the negative. At least not for sure. It only started to become clear on the contact sheet.
It was when she first printed the photograph Sunday night, yet another resin-coated print, that the image became unmi
stakable in the orange light of the darkroom. She studied it for a long moment in the chemical bath, not hypnotized, but absorbed. Incapable of looking away.
She thought of something Shem Wolfe had said to her that afternoon about Bobbie, and she felt her face flush:
He had his own devils.
Shem had been referring to Bobbie's mental illness, but the word devil came back to her now--along with the other words that had dogged her for years. Cunt. Twat. Pussy. Gash. Fish cunt. Slut cunt. Dead cunt. She saw in the calm waters of the darkroom tray the tattoo. Here was the picture Bobbie had told Paco Hidalgo he'd taken. What she had presumed all these years had been a mere human skull--albeit one with fangs--she saw now was in actuality a tattoo of the devil: skull-like, yes, but it had ears. And it was breathing. Hence the smoke.
And Bobbie Crocker had known this man and photographed this image: a devil amid stubble, an earlobe hovering above it like a planet. He was either Bobbie's son, or a friend of Bobbie's son.
Because, apparently, even rapists had friends. Murderers, too.
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