The Measure of the Moon

by Lisa Preston

  “Ooh, how pretty!”

  Encouraged by the enthusiasm, the child turned a clumsy half circle, toddling like a little drunk with as much sideways sway as forward motion while pattering about the room, chortling away with unintelligible speech.

  It’s talking, really talking to us, but we don’t understand, Gillian realized. How many times does this happen to children? They communicate their wants and thoughts as best they can, but remain unheard.

  When the baby stepped on a dragging end of the scarf, an immediate change showed in its face and posture as betrayal wrecked the day. For that split second, for that child, the world went wrong as it tripped. Both women lunged to protect it from the fall. Both failed.

  Liz gathered the baby up, kissing and whispering, talking about love, how it would be all right, how it was scary, but things would be fine as soon as they were cried out. She twirled her baby, murmuring away.

  Gillian knelt in stiff horror, staring at her abandoned scarf, the scarf she’d let the baby play with. She drew herself up to leave, cringing. I’m no good, no good at this. I played with a child for two minutes and hurt it.

  CHAPTER 10

  Six in the morning was black as a dirge in the Northwest winter. Gillian arose before Paul and sequestered herself in the darkroom. Before he left for the university, he called his good-bye and I-love-you from the other side of the closed door.

  In the eerie red light, she sharpened the grainy image of the boys in the woods. She’d done a good job rescuing the negative, but there was only so much she could do to bring the people and brushy background into better relief with one enlargement exposure. The contrast in some areas was poor, without a great depth of field to provide clarity. With a great deal of consideration, light, timing, and luck, she could draw out a single area of the shot, but the entire frame required compromises.

  When the print was dry, she texted Kevin: Meet up?

  Starbucks, he texted an intersection.

  When he moved to kiss her hello at the coffee shop, she leaned her face away. He took the rejection easily, passing her cup and chiding her for sticking with a simple Americano while he succumbed to steamed milk, espresso, amaretto syrup, and whipped cream with a shake of black chocolate on top. She brought her drink to the table he indicated, one with a leather journal and an empty cup on it. Sitting with both palms around the hot mug, pressed against the glass wall, Gillian watched him stow his wallet back in his jeans. Not her fault she had the butt view. Not her fault he had such a great butt either. The jeans were just right, snug and roomy all at the same time. The dark leather jacket swung wide from his broad shoulders, the lower edge skipping around a firm belly. And his hair. Was he the last guy willing to let it get long enough to creep over his collar in that sexy, come-hither way?

  She raised her coffee and scalded her lips to regain her senses, forcing herself to think about the possibilities of the old photo, to wonder about a group of kids in the woods, so many decades past. Still, it was nothing more than an option to pursue, this story. Gillian reminded herself that she was part of a team.

  “I think I’ve got something,” Gillian said.

  “I’m sure you do,” he said immediately, grinning an appraisal down at her. His sideways glance let her know that he was not a man who minded playing with words, nor one who minded that she was married.

  She made her voice light as she filled him in on the Istok story, sitting back when he told her to go for it.

  “I think you have untapped potential,” he said.

  Why, Gillian wondered, shaking her head? “Are you planning something on your own, actually? You seem to be stepping back a bit from the idea of working together.” If you’re skunking me, doing a project on your own without photography, tell me now.

  He shook his head, stretching his right hand toward her. “No secrets. Deal?”

  She slid her palm onto his. “Deal.” Opening her slim portfolio, she thumbed to the black and white oversize print she’d done of the children in the woods. One shot. Minor mottling—probably heat damage—was centered at the top and bottom, ruining a bit of the sky and the ground, but not the people, the six kids who were now adults, old and worn. Or dead.

  “You have a beautiful eye,” Kevin said.

  “I didn’t take that shot.”

  “But you found it, saw something there. And besides, Tilda showed me other examples of your work. I can categorically state that you have a beautiful eye. And beautiful eyes.” He looked at her and said enough by saying nothing. Gillian felt nude under his knowing gaze and wondered how much he guessed about her.

  With the photo centered on the table in front of him, Kevin squinted at it again and that was it. He switched to personal questions and recovered how she was married, childless. He learned what Paul did for a living and seemed to take in her carefully modulated voice when she talked about her husband.

  He told her he was free, nothing held him back, not even a goldfish. “Able to leave at a moment’s shout.”

  What a life that would be, Gillian thought, telling herself to get back on track, to redirect the conversation. “If you don’t think you need to come along, I’ll go see Istok at the Sartineau Shop on my own.”

  He nodded. “Good. Okay, just try some interviews, see if there really is something there. Just try it. You want to try, don’t you?”

  She leaned forward with immediate passion. “I do, yes.” Gillian discovered this as she said it. She wanted to try the unknown.

  “It’s not rocket science,” Kevin said, leaving Gillian in laughter.

  The Sartineau Shop occupied the ground floor of a gray, multistory building. Gillian gave herself a pep talk. Her resolve grew and she smiled at the thought of Kevin’s interest—of all sorts—and of the path she had started herself down.

  I will always remember this day.

  A small office area in the glass front stretched out to a showroom. In one of those neighborhoods where the industrial works overlap old residences, it could be mistaken for an odd home or a business of any sort. Nothing on the outside prepared Gillian for the first words she heard as she walked inside.

  “Time to cut your throat.”

  In the large workshop area beyond the office’s front counter, a bearded, black-haired man in his forties bent over a vise, talking to himself and his work.

  “Shave you back, you silly frog, get you smooth. Give in already.” Then he looked up, his round eyes showing embarrassment over being caught babbling.

  “I’m here to talk to Alexandru Istok,” she told him.

  He grinned and nudged his head over his shoulder at the other two people in the studio, thirty feet away, looking at a handsome display of bows. An old man, perhaps eighty or ninety years old, and a woman about middle forties, him in black pants and a long-sleeved, white shirt buttoned all the way up to the collar, her in a full-length leather coat, cashmere sweater over her tailored slacks, a silver bead necklace pouring over her breasts in a swirl that danced every bit of light. They were an unmatched couple, having a diplomatic difference, seller and buyer.

  She wondered how old Alex had been when the grandson was born. How old were the parents of the young man at the Istok house? Pretty old.

  “My daughter needs a much better bow,” the woman said, her insistent voice making it clear she was repeating herself.

  Everything about her seemed to make the younger man in the workshop area bug out his eyes and suck in his full cheeks to stem laughter. His full beard bristled as he twisted his mouth, and he was careful to stay seated, out of their sight. Gillian found herself drawing her cheeks in to tamp down a sympathetic grin. She recognized the woman’s type—one of those people whose child is the world and who imposes her world on others.

  The woman waved the violin bow, pointing it at the old man, all about her wants. Neither gave any indication they were aware of Gillian at the other end of the shop, or even the other worker, who puffed his upper lip, stifling a snort as he winked at Gillian.
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  The woman’s tone grew instructive, haughty. She waved the bow like a conductor’s baton. “But it says Tourte right on there. It’s stamped in the wood.”

  “It is a Tourte copy.” The old man ran one hand over his longish, stiff gray hair and kept his face serious, displaying none of his much younger coworker’s mirth.

  “You’re saying it’s an imitation?” the woman asked, the beginnings of doubt creeping into her voice.

  “I am. It is.” He sounded every inch the master.

  She faltered, frowning at the bow. “But you can appraise it for me?”

  “Of course. And I can tell from here it is merely a copy, not an original Tourte.”

  The woman sniffed. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

  “And of counterfeiting,” the younger man whispered to Gillian with a conspirator’s wink, his chin tucked well down.

  Gillian saw now that the wooden rods behind him were bows-to-be. Beautiful wood, old wood, wood with a story. She wanted to draw a camera from her bag, not the Bantam of course, but one of her pro shooters. Her mind inventoried what she’d loaded. Not the Hassy, the Nikon and the Canon digital SLR in its padded nylon case.

  Delight with the bow makers’ esoteric world and the way this young-Santa-Claus-looking man drew her in, grew. She bet there were dimples under that curly black beard as he grinned. Stepping all the way up to the customer counter, she peered, her gaze playing over the tools and shavings and long, straight strands of off-white hair on the work table in front of the bearded man, as she continued to eavesdrop on the conversation at the shop’s other end. The back and forth between the old man and well-to-do woman, as he tried to please her and not spoil it all while she continued to flaunt what little she knew, intrigued Gillian as much as the workspace and tools surrounding the young man.

  Power tools and hand tools, modern and ancient. Loving her old cameras while appreciating the technological capabilities of her high-end gear, Gillian nodded at the bow makers’ workshop. The past and the present could come together for the future. And photographs, perhaps her coming photojournalism, would record and celebrate this melding.

  But not everyone appreciated everything on the offer. The customer’s voice was a mixture of snobby and bored. “We already have a good intermediate bow. It’s imported pernambuco.”

  “Imported pernambuco,” the old man said, his face impassive, his English clear but accented.

  “Not the native kind,” the young man whispered to Gillian. She hadn’t more than a passing idea what kinds of wood were native and which were not. She looked at the older man, studied the way he clasped his hands behind his back while listening to his customer.

  Alexandru Istok, she considered, tasting the name in her mind. Grandpa Alex? No, Grandfather. Grandfather Istok? Grandfather Alex? She wanted a shot of his grandfatherly status and wished the photo would show cute little kids on his knees, not the young man at the Istok home who needed manners. She whispered to the young man, content to bide her time in this new world of bow making. “I’m a photographer and I’d love to photograph bow making.”

  Leaning farther over the work bench, the bearded guy muttered to Gillian. “Last week, a woman who looked,” he jerked his thumb over in a semidiscreet flick, “just like that bought a five-thousand-dollar bow for her four-year-old kid.”

  “Five thousand dollars,” Gillian said. “How expensive can a bow get?”

  “It would make you blush.” He beamed in appreciation when she flushed in response to his tease. Then he waved to the open end of the counter. “I’m Mario. Mario Sartineau. Would you like to see the shop?”

  Gillian nodded and stepped around to the walk-through, slipping out of the customer’s sight with Mario Sartineau.

  He pointed to shelves and drawers in the workshop, announcing the contents of one after the other as he showed off his raw supplies. “Ebony. And here, bone, like ivory. There’s the abalone, our mother of pearl, and some tortoise shell. Only the legal kinds, all of this. And here’s horn, there’s antler, different kinds. These are reject sticks. There’s our unworked wood supply. It’s got to last a lifetime.”

  Fascinated, she looked wherever he pointed, eager for the photographs she could render of his materials. Next he showed her lengths of thick hair nestled in long boxes. “Mongolian and Manchurian. All from stallions, of course.”

  “Of course,” Gillian agreed, her mind spinning to make up something here. “Because it’s … easier to pull out stallions’ tails than it is to pull the … the girl horses’ tails.”

  Guffawing, Mario regarded her with interest. “Mares get pee on their tails. This hair,” he pointed to the shop supply again, “has not been sprayed with urine every day, several times a day, for years.”

  “I had no idea,” Gillian said, stopping herself from blurting that she’d never peed on her hair and glad she hadn’t pinned it up or braided it today, cocking her head slightly to induce a back and forth toss of her thick, draping ponytail.

  When he waved her on to look at his stocks of wood, she made sure to sway enough to make her hair swing as she moved. He noticed. Good. She could joke about mares’ tails with the best of them, she could slip into a conversation and learn, extract. She could be a real photojournalist.

  “I’m Gillian Trett,” she said, extending her hand, hoping her formal self-introduction didn’t set them back.

  “A nice Italian girl. My mother will be so pleased.”

  She laughed. There was something so harmless and friendly in his playful flirting. “I do a little freelancing, sometimes for the Seattle Times.” Well, she’d offered them photos just for the credit, won their readers’ choice, and sold them some work. It counted. And Kevin certainly sold a lot to them, and she might be working with him on a project.

  Mario raised his eyebrows and one corner of his mouth, then folded his arms across his chest. “And you’re either in the wrong place or a plant.”

  “A pothos?” she suggested, thinking of Paul’s magnificent green houseplant that had crept all over the living room and foyer as it grew.

  “A spy,” he decided with a delighted grin. “Probably from the Von Peltz shop.”

  “You have no idea,” she said, just for a comeback.

  After the customer left, the older man turned to Mario and Gillian, his disapproving expression making it clear that he’d understood the mirth and sniggers the younger man had displayed behind the customer’s back. Gillian noticed the old man’s almost-black eye color as he swept a curious glance at the visitor in the shop area and shook a finger at the younger man. “That is not a very good kind of service you were doing, Mario. Cannot you be helpful in both ends of the shop?”

  Sensing a long time teasing bond between the two men and delighted to peer into their inner sanctum, Gillian paused, nearly held her breath as she watched them.

  “Alex,” Mario taunted right back, “cannot you get with the modern world and consider the carbon fiber sticks?” The young man’s instant retort and bugged eyes let Gillian know this was old ground for both of them. She ached to move on to the antique photo, now that Mario had called the old man Alex.

  Wiping his hands together, as though cleaning them of dust, Alex pointed to a yellow pad near the telephone, then waved a hand at Mario. “What does Janos decide?”

  “Something exotic. Snake.”

  “Snakewood? A frog of snakewood he wants?”

  “Snakeskin. On the wrap.”

  “And what else?”

  “Engraved frog, cut-back, round heel. Gold mount, short winding. And he wants to be surprised on the eye.”

  “And that restoration call?”

  “The guy thinks it is primarily re-hairing he needs.” Both men laughed and Mario talked about re-cambering the bow.

  Alex pointed back to the yellow pad with notes on the special order. “Back to Janos …”

  “He wants a new bow case, but he’ll bring in a favorite of his for the new bow.” Mario’s voice l
ightened as Alex looked questioningly at Gillian standing in the shop area. “She works for the newspaper.”

  The senior man seemed interested within a natural reserve. Gillian wondered if she should correct Mario and if the grandson was merely putting her off to tell her that Alex would not talk about the old times.

  Alex stepped around a small work table and swept it clean of wood shavings as he eyed Gillian. “I knew you were here for something unusual. It is obvious you do not play a stringed instrument.”

  Mario nodded with this comment and Alex continued. “But we hoped maybe you were here to buy a bow for your son or daughter, or maybe your husband is an important violinist.” He edged the slightest smile to one corner of his mouth before letting his mouth drop again as Gillian denied his suggestion with a shake of her head.

  “Why is it obvious that I don’t play?”

  “Same as that woman who just left. You have fingernails.”

  She looked at her fingertips. The nails weren’t long, just slightly more than serviceable. Unpolished but shaped, with less than an even quarter-inch of natural white showing beyond all ten nail beds.

  “You cannot play a stringed instrument with fingernails,” Mario explained.

  “If I cut my nails, I’ll suddenly be able to play? That is terrific news.”

  Clapping hands heralded the older man’s pleasure at her jest. He turned and reached for something on the desk behind them and suddenly was coming at her with a pair of fingernail clippers, roaring in laughter as she waved in protest. Then he relinquished the clippers to the table and gestured at her bag. “What do you have in there?”

  Was he always so curious? That’s what she needed to be, she decided, thinking about Mario’s ease in inviting her into his workspace without knowing why she was there. Gillian shook her head and turned the gesture into a nod.

  “Cameras. I’m a photographer.”

  He pointed at her bag. “That is your real business?”

  She nodded, gave him her name, and slipped one hand into her bag to withdraw the Canon digital, abandoning talk of the antique for the time being. She wanted more, much more, and she raised the Canon halfway to her left eye.