by Adam Vine
Andy digs. Martin. Rebecca. Gloria. Apple. Piano Man. Mr. Hard Ass Catches a Cab. The Glamorous Life of a Non-Profit Environmentalist. Narcotics Anonymous, Relapse Nine.
“What are those?” Bea said, with her finger on the line I’d written the updated captions. “They change? They are the windows… we are the hole? Were you just stoned out of your mind when you wrote this crap?”
“Probably,” I said. I wasn’t going to let Bea know the pictures had the power to change.
“So, which part of these notes do we actually need?” Bea said, glancing over the doodles of Sunny Hill that bordered the edges of the college-ruled paper.
“Start at the beginning,” I said. “Andy digs.”
Bea found the sequence of Andy digging the hole in the basement and arranged the pictures in chronological order. The photos were still in their original iterations, showing the images of Andy, the hole, the bones, Andy and Marty posing with the skull. “That’s probably Scudds Gurney’s skull,” Bea said, writing it down on a fresh page of my notebook.
Buried without a prayer, where he drank himself to death, I thought. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for old Scudds. Maybe his end was fitting for such a despicable man. But what if Scudds Gurney wasn’t as bad as everyone thought? What if he had started off good, and something else, something here at Sunny Hill, had made him despicable? Would that happen to my bones, too, after I died? Would I be tossed in a hole and dug up half a century later by college kids who would stop just short of turning my skull into a bong? Whatever happened to his bones, anyway?
“I feel like I’ve seen him around town,” Bea said, tapping the close-up of Andy’s face.
“I haven’t.”
“She looks familiar, too,” Bea said, holding up a photo of Apple, then a picture of Gloria. “Not her, though.”
“Maybe the pictures want you to think that,” I said in a spooky voice.
Bea raised one eyebrow. “Can you be serious for one second, please?”
“I am.”
“So. Who was this guy, Andy? Let’s build a profile,” Bea said.
A stream of consciousness flowed from my mouth down into Bea’s pen as I gazed over the sequence of Andy and the skull.
“He was a surfer.”
“Liked to drink.”
“Did drugs.”
“Sold drugs.”
“Got in a fight at least once while he lived here – look at this one, he has a black eye. Marty looks beat up, too.”
“Had a morbid sense of humor, let’s say.”
“Owned a gun.”
“Used zinc sunscreen on his nose.”
Without looking up from the page, Bea said, “Looks like he didn’t respect women very much.”
I scratched my belly. “How so?”
She arranged a few more sequences of pictures above and below the main flow of Andy and the skull, forming a matrix. The top line showed Andy in various stages of partying. A different girl was on his arm, or face, in each picture. In the last photo Bea set down, from a Cowboys and East Indians party in the spring of 1994, he was pulling the top of a girl’s sarong down and fondling her breast with his tongue hanging out. The girl didn’t look too happy about it, either. I hadn’t seen that one before. Bea wrote misogynist at the bottom of Andy’s profile and circled it.
“I don’t know if I would go that far,” I said.
Bea said, “Moving on.”
She scooted over and arranged the pictures of Benny the Piano Man. There were only two. I studied his face, and couldn’t shake the feeling I’d been wrong about my earlier conclusion. This Piano Man didn’t look anything like the Mr. DeLucio who lived next-door.
It had to be him, I thought. Alfonso said so. Time changes people. So does pain. Isolation. Regret. We have different words for all of those things, but they all amount to the same end result: weight. Too much, and you don’t just buckle. You break.
Bea scooted some more and started putting pictures into Apple’s flow. Apple’s pictures didn’t form an easy chronological sequence, so Bea arranged them by theme: Apple partying, Apple around the house, Apple at the beach.
“What do we know about Apple?” Bea said.
“She has a weird fucking name,” I said.
Bea shook her head, irritated. “Helpful comments, Drew. Helpful comments.”
“Relax.”
“You’re the one wasting time.”
“Sorry,” I said. You bitch. Whore. Traitor.
“Apple, Apple, sweet, red, Apple. She liked hanging out in her swimsuit.”
“Mm-hmm,” Bea nodded. “Looks like she had a pretty rockin’ body, too.”
“Really? I think she kind of looks like a man,” I said.
“No way. Why? Because she doesn’t have huge boobs like the girls you look at in porn?”
“Maybe she ran track,” I said.
Bea blew a fart through her lips and stopped writing. I thought she was going to get up and leave, but she slowly lowered her pen back to the notebook. “Next observation, please.”
I scanned the Apple partying column of pictures: Apple kissing a bottle of champagne, Apple passed out on the hallway floor in a t-shirt and panties, Apple laughing slack-jawed and red-eyed with her arm around Gloria, Apple double-fisting a Swisher blunt and a bottle of cognac with a grin that said, Fuck love; tonight, I’m getting skunked.
“She appears to be the drunkest of the bunch,” I said.
“I’ll put down Party Animal.” Bea made a note.
“She was pretty.” Not really my type, but I’m sure some guys would find her attractive. I wonder what she looks like now…
“She liked reading books.”
“She was a hippie.” The picture in question showed Apple in a floor-length skirt and tie-dye shirt, blowing a dandelion in a field somewhere in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Bea pointed her pen at me and shook her head. “I dress that way sometimes, and I’m not a hippie.”
“It’s 2015,” I said. “Being a hippie is mainstream these days. It wasn’t back then.”
“Whatever.” Bea wrote down Nature Lover.
“Next victim.”
Bea began arranging the pictures of Gloria. There weren’t as many as there were of Andy or Apple, who seemed to be the Piano Man’s favorite subjects to photograph.
“Bad hair,” I said. “Look at those bangs.”
“I think she’s cute,” Bea said. “Sad, though. You can tell she carried a lot of pain. Hid it under a smile. I do that, too, sometimes.”
You don’t know shit about pain, you pretty, vapid slut, I thought. “Of course you would think those bangs look good,” I said. “You’re Mexican.”
“I’m Brazilian-Japanese, neither being on the same continent, or in the same language group. Don’t be racist, asshole.”
“Jeez. Kidding! Sorry,” I said. You wouldn’t get mad at Jay if he said it.
I really did think she was going to leave then, but instead she hung her head, and continued writing. She supplied the rest of the observations about Gloria, while I sat still, cheeks burning. “She was shy. Didn’t like being photographed,” Bea said. Bea was right; in every picture of Gloria except one with the other housemates, her hand was up in front of her face.
“Biology major.”
“Drove a Toyota Corolla.”
“She liked laying in the sun.” The picture showed Gloria on the balcony listening to music with headphones on.
“This was taken from inside the kitchen,” I said. “And it doesn’t seem like she knew she was being photographed.”
“Creepy,” Bea said. She turned the Polaroid over so it was facedown.
Next, Bea arranged the photos of Rebecca. There were more than of Gloria, but less than of Apple.
“She liked low-cut tops,” Bea said.
“I do, too.”
“Drew, if you don’t knock it off right now, I’m done.”
“God, why are you so uptight? Lighten up.”
Bea
growled. “I can do this on my own.”
The thought of leaving Bea alone with the pictures scared me. “I haven’t been feeling like myself these past few days,” I said.
“I can tell,” Bea said. “This girl’s pretty, too. But you notice how she’s not smiling in any of these pictures?” Bea wrote down Bitch Face.
I’m going to lose the love of my life to Jay, I thought. I’ll never be as funny or as confident as him. He’s always been the better man, since I first talked to him about X-Men cards on the playground in the fourth grade.
“She’s not as pretty as you,” I said.
Bea put the pictures down. “Drew, what’s going on.” It wasn’t a question.
“N-nothing. You’re just pretty,” I said.
Bea clenched her lips. “Thank you for the compliment. But how does the way I look concern what we’re doing?”
I want to be with you. I want to be inside you. I want to possess you. I want you to be mine. Forever.
“Bumble…”
“My name is Beatriz. Say what you mean.”
“D-d-d did you hook up with Jay?”
“That’s none of your business,” she said.
So you did. I wasn’t just imagining it. The pictures showed me the truth.
“Don’t get it twisted. We’re friends, Drew.”
“I know that.” Just nice, friendly, friends.
“I think of you like… like a brother or something.”
A nice, friendly brother who wants to fuck you.
Bea folded her arms. “I value you as a person, as a friend. But that’s all we will ever be.”
“Okay.”
Falling again, down into the hole, the hole with the pull, that magnetic hole. Moans echoing from my pocket. Bea’s hands flicking and playing where I wasn’t supposed to see. The knives. The horrible, cutting knives.
“You don’t know him like I do,” I said.
“Speak up. You’re mumbling.”
I raised my voice. “I said you don’t know him.”
Bea stood up and got her jacket. “I need to go.”
“Why? We haven’t found anything yet.”
Bea stopped at the door. “I found everything I wanted to. Piano Man was in love with Apple. He was obsessed with her, but Apple didn’t like him. She liked Marty, which is why Marty isn’t in any of the pictures, except for pictures with Andy. Anyone with two eyes could see that. Now, I really need to go. I’ll come back in an hour to help you burn them. But I need to be alone right now. You’re freaking me out.”
She went.
Goddammit. It should have been so clear. Apple was Piano Man’s Bea. He took pictures of her because it let him watch her. He fell in the same hole that’s devouring me.
Bea’s voice broke my concentration. Her head was peeking in the door. “Drew, there’s something else I want to say.”
“Shoot,” I said.
“Don’t ruin this.”
“Ruin what?”
“You know what.”
“No, I’m pretty bad at guessing games. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Our friendship. And your friendship with Jay.”
Why not? Neither of you are my real friends. You’re the reason I’m fat. You’re the reason I’m a virgin. I should cut both of you into pieces and be done with it. I should carve out your whore uterus with a rusty pair of pruning shears while you’re naked and begging me to stop.
“I wasn’t aware I was ruining anything,” I said, straightening my glasses.
“Fine,” Bea said. “Never mind.”
“Wonderful.”
I felt carpet under my fingertips. I realized I had gathered all the pictures in my lap in a single pile, raking them towards myself with my fingers until there was nothing left to rake.
Bea sighed. “See you in a bit, okay?”
“Can’t wait.”
When Bea was gone I submerged my face in the box and took a deep breath, inhaling the musty smell. I wondered if I could suffocate myself to death if I stayed there long enough.
Why didn’t the pictures change? There was that picture of Andy grabbing that girl’s boob I didn’t see before. No. I’m crazy. This is all in my head. But that can’t be true, unless my own eyes and ears are lying to me.
At that moment I experienced what the horror movie writers refer to as a Midpoint Revelation. The pictures didn’t just change when they wanted to. They picked their viewers. Bea wasn’t a viewer, because she was a subject.
I heard someone crying over the soft, gentle tinkling of piano music and lowered the box from my face. I dug quickly and found the picture that was updating. It was the one of Piano Man playing at the party in 1993.
The image dissolved, and the piano music grew louder. Forty year-old Mr. DeLucio’s face, the doughy, greasy one that had showed up at our door on New Year’s Day bedecked with bifocal glasses and a grossly receding hairline, filled the image, tear-drenched and swollen.
Mr. DeLucio was playing the piano, the slow, minor march of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, sobbing violently as he caressed the ivory keys like they were his last friend in this world. The caption, which originally read Piano Man, had updated to Failure.
***
Looking back on that night, it’s obvious to me now that the Piano Man knew what was coming. How could he not? Marty, Rebecca, and Gloria – half of the ’93 Sunny Hill Crew – were already dead. Benny knew he was living on borrowed time.
***
Five minutes before everyone went outside for the Big Burn, I took a final look at the pictures in the orange shoebox. I knew at that point I wasn’t going to burn the camera, because I might still need it if everything went wrong. But I hadn’t yet made up my mind whether or not I was going to burn the picture of Bea.
I had the power to see her any time I wanted, to watch her without her knowledge or consent, the power to see her naked, the power to watch her masturbating, or having sex. I had a power I didn’t deserve, but that I was suddenly terrified to lose.
I may be a monster now, but I wasn’t then. I took a deep breath and did what I had failed to do my entire life. I did the hard thing. I put Bea’s picture in the box with all the others, dooming it, and them, to be eaten by flame, all except one, the picture of Mr. DeLucio playing the piano.
I had to know what would happen to him after we burned the pictures, because I had the stark premonition that whatever happened to him would be my fate, too.
***
“Officer Skoakland?”
“Drew-buddy! How’s it hanging?”
“Yeah, it’s me. How’d you know?”
“Kid, c’mon. I’ve done hourly drive-bys of your house for the last two days. I know what kind of toothpaste you use.”
“You do?”
“How’s life up there on Sunny Hill?”
“Sunny.”
“That little rat DeLucio give you any more trouble?”
“Not exactly.”
“No more break-ins? No one strange following our friend Beatriz?”
“Not that I know of. But, listen.”
“What’s up?”
“I think we figured out who the stalker is.”
Officer Skoakland sounded skeptical. “You think? Or you did?”
“I mean we did.”
“All ears.”
“It’s him. Mr. DeLucio.”
A long pause hung over the soft static of the call. “That son of a bitch. You sure?”
“Positive.”
“Give me the run-down.”
“Remember that box of pictures we found buried under our house?”
“Nope.”
“I told you about it.”
Skoakland sighed. “I’ve got a lot of cases right now, buddy. Refresh me.”
“We found a box of party pictures buried in our basement. Mr. DeLucio took them when he was in college. He used to live at our house. He’s been camping out down there, looking at them. We found his sleeping bag, and he tried to break int
o our basement last night after I locked the door. Bea got his sweater.”
I heard Skoakland spit. “Right. I remember.”
“I think Bea reminds him of someone he used to be in love with,” I said.
That sparked Skoakland’s interest. “Have any idea who that might be?”
“His old roommate. A girl named Apple.”
“Apple…” Another long pause, then cold, and disconnected as the first time he’d visited our house, Skoakland said, “So how exactly can I help you with all this, Drew?”
“We’re going to burn the pictures. Tonight.”
“Really.”
“In about five minutes. Everyone’s waiting for me outside. We’re going to burn them, right where he can see us, and we’re going to make sure he knows that we know what he’s been doing.”
Officer Skoakland whistled. “Oh, I get it. Poke the little pervert in the eye, huh? Then, sure, before you ask, yes, I’ll be your contingency plan.”
“Just in case he loses it and goes nuts,” I insisted.
“I’ve known old Benny a long time,” Skoakland said. “He’s a freak, but he’s not a violent freak. If all you guys plan to do is burn some old Polaroids on your own property, I don’t see anything legally wrong with it. I can swing by later to make sure everything’s groovy.”
“Thanks. But I don’t think that’s necessary. Maybe just…”
Officer Skoakland cut me off. “Say no more, Drew old buddy. The instant my Spidey-Sense starts tingling, even if it’s just some chump changing your playlist on the ghetto blaster, I’ll show up and splatter him.”
I chuckled.
“Stay gold,” Officer Skoakland replied, and hung up.
Something occurred to me as I stepped out into the chilly January night to join my friends on the deck, next to the coals already blazing in the Weber barbeque.
I'd never told Officer Skoakland they were Polaroids.
Snapshots #25 & 26
Captions: Sunset at 8-Mile
(first photo)
Bonfire Dance Party
(second photo)
Six of us sat on the beach at sunset, drinking beers and sharing the silent beauty. The sun was a jagged bottle bottom of gold sinking low into white-capped waves, the sky a nimbus of colors flung far into the twilight like a thousand shards of shattered glass.