Generation Loss (19 page)

It
was another mask, like the frog I'd seen on Toby's boat. Green, with a beaked
mouth and a stiff ridged collar like some kind of horned dinosaur, only this
thing had no horns. The glossy paint had peeled, revealing swatches of
newsprint. I touched it. It felt pulpy and soft, like an enormous mushroom.

I
walked to the rear of the bus. Here a few windows were intact. A raised plywood
platform held a foam mattress covered with the remains of an india-print
spread, chewed to a paisley filigree. Above the bed, moisture-swollen
paperbacks lined a small bookshelf.

What
the Trees Said. The Forgotten Art of Building a Stone Wall. Walden Two.

The
only hardcover was an old edition of Mircea Eliade's
The Sacred and the
Profane.
Its frontispiece was stamped
Harvard Divinity School Library
above
a name written in faded blue.

D.
Ahearn.

I
opened it. The spine was broken, its pages heavily annotated in the same blue
ink.

UNDERTAKING
THE
CREATION
OF THE WORLD

GENERATION
THROUGH
RETURN
TO THE TIME OF ORIGINS
               !!!!!!

recovering
this
time of origin
implies ritual repetition of the gods' creative act.

!!!!!!!!
The
marine monster Tiamat
!!!!!!!—symbol of darkness, of the formless,
the non-manifested—

Excitable
boy,
I thought.

There
was also a New Directions paperback of Stephen Haselton's poetry, with a
picture of him on the back. A thin guy, fair haired, clean shaven, blandly
handsome. Photo credit: Aphrodite Kamestos.

I
flipped through this book but found nothing. No name on the frontispiece. No
marginalia. I tossed it onto the shelf and wandered back to the front of the
bus. The place looked and felt as though it had been stripped of everything
that might have been of interest or value. Not even a torn Grateful Dead poster
remained.

So
much for the counterculture.

I
went outside. Dun-colored clouds crowded the sky. The wind rattled stalks of
burdock and dead goldenrod as I headed toward the path. As I entered the stand
of trees, I hesitated, feeling that someone was watching me. I turned and
looked back at the clearing.

A
gray stone loomed among rubble and dead ferns. That was all.

14

No
one was in the house when I got back. I paced between the kitchen and the
living room, anxious for Gryffin to return and tell me I had a ride to the
mainland. I killed time by cracking the second bottle of Jack Daniel's. I considered
calling Phil to ream him out but decided I'd rather do it in person.

Finally
I decided to take another look at Aphrodite's island photos. I'd spent my life
dreaming of them. Maybe for just a little longer, I could pretend I was in my
own private museum, with the pictures all to myself.

The
upstairs hall was cold and smelled of ash. I retrieved my camera and went into
the room, leaned against the wall and stared at the photos.

After
a few minutes I shot a few frames. It felt good to handle my camera again
without someone yelling at me to put it down. I knew I'd never get anything
worthwhile—I was fighting nightfall, exhaustion, Jack Daniel's on a nearly
empty stomach. I stumbled around anyway, struggling to get enough distance,
enough light, a focus.

The
sound of the shutter release was like a moth beating against glass. I took a
dozen pictures then slid down to the floor. I began to cry.

Those
photos . . . They were so fucking amazing. It was like shed thrown open a
window and let you look into a perfect world, the most beautiful place you
could ever imagine, but you could never get inside it. No matter what I did, I
would never be able to produce something that good. I would never make
something
great.
Even at my best, for fifteen seconds thirty years ago,
I wasn't capable of it. Aphrodite had been right.

Bile
and the afterburn of bourbon rose in my throat. I lurched into the hall and ran
right into Gryffin.

"Jesus!"
He caught me and shook his head. "Can't you walk out a door without
knocking me over?"

"No."
I pushed past him.

"Hey,
wait up—"

He
followed me to my room. I shoved my camera into my bag, avoiding his eyes.

"What
happened?" he said. "Did Aphrodite get back?"

"No."
I fought to keep my voice even. "Did you find Toby? I really need to get
out of here."

"He
wasn't around. Suze said he had a job in Collinstown and he stayed over
there."

"I
have to go! Isn't there someone else? The harbormaster, the fucking Coast
Guard—I don't care who it is. Just get me back to my car!"

"Hey,
I wish I could, okay? But no one's around. Merrill Libby's daughter never came
home last night. Everett's helping organize a search party."

"Then
why aren't you there?"

"I'm
city folk now. They don't want me."

He
leaned against the door. "I came to see if you felt like
celebrating." He grinned and suddenly looked remarkably like the guy in
the snapshot. "I just made fifteen grand."

I
snorted. "Stock market?"

"I
sold a first edition to a guy out in L.A. That's what took me so long. Suze has
a better internet connection at the store, so I was working from there. I've
been waiting till the market was right. I paid ten pounds for it —about fifteen
bucks—at a shop in Suffolk a few years ago." Nice turnaround. What is
it?"

Northern
Lights.
The original title for
The
Golden Compass."
What's
The Golden Compass?"
I thought you
worked at the Strand?" Not in the stacks. Stock room."

“It's
a children's book—that's where the big money is. The English edition predates
the American, so .. ."

"Is
it a good book?"

"You
think I have time to read these things? You didn't answer me—you want to help
me celebrate?"

"How?
Where do you spend fifteen grand around here?"

He
started down the hall. "I'm going to dinner again at Ray's. I told him
last night, if I came back I might bring another guest—I figured if you were
still around you'd need to get away from this place. He's a good cook. He has a
decent wine closet. But I'm leaving now, so—"

I
followed him downstairs into the kitchen.

"So
either you come with me or you're on your own, dinner-wise," he finished.

He
went into the mudroom, pulled on his coat and picked up a big flashlight,
dashed into the kitchen and returned with a small book that he stuck into his
pocket.

"For
Ray," he explained. "You coming?"

"Yeah,
what the hell." I glanced down at my T-shirt and leather jacket. "I'm
not dressed for dinner."

"For
Paswegas, you're overdressed."

"How
far is it?"

"Not
that far. Come on."

He
walked outside, heading for the water then turned to where a line of white
birches glowed ghostly in the early dark. "Less than a mile. There's a
path through here, just watch your step."

He
switched on the flashlight. The birches flared as though they'd been ignited,
and Gryffin disappeared into a thicket.

"Is
Ray another book collector?" I said, hurrying to catch up.

"Not
really. He's just ... a collector. All kinds of things. Books, junk, stuff he
finds at the dump. Folk art—he's big into folk art. Primitive art."

"Like
Cohen Finster?"

"Not
that classy. Ray likes his art down and dirty. Not pornographic—well, not
necessarily pornographic—but he likes an artist with dirt under his
fingernails. You know, guys who build a model of the Sistine Chapel out of old
carburetor parts. Lifesized cows carved out of soap. That kind of stuff But
you'll like his place—Toby helped him build it. Ray's one of the original cliff
dwellers."

After
about ten minutes the path began to climb more steeply. I grabbed at trees for
balance. The wind raged up from the water, bitter cold, and sent dead leaves
whirling around us. Finally we reached the top.

"This
is it." Gryffin stopped. He pointed the flashlight to where the ground
abruptly disappeared. "See that? Don't go that way"

The
boom of waves echoed up to us, the relentless wind. He waved the flashlight,
and its beam disappeared into the darkness. I turned and saw lights showing
through the mist.

"What
the hell is that?" I said.

"That's
Ray's place."

It
was made entirely of salvage. Clapboards, barn siding; car hoods and bumpers;
washing machine doors and a satellite dish, as well as cinder blocks,
corrugated metal, blue sheets of insulation. There were dozens of windows, no
two alike. Solar panels covered the roof. A row of propane tanks was lined up
alongside one wall, and a Rube Goldberg contraption that looked like it might
have something to do with water.

Weirdest
of all was that it had all been fashioned to look like a castle, complete with
a shallow moat filled with dead leaves, a footbridge made of two-by-fours, and
a turret. Sheets of plastic flapped from the walls, as though it were a snake
shedding its skin.

"Boy,
Sauron's really fallen on hard times," I said.

"He
built it all himself, and it didn't cost a thing," said Gryffin. He strode
across the footbridge to a door which had once belonged to a walk-in freezer.
"Hey, Ray! Company—"

The
steel door swung open, revealing a teenage boy, maybe seventeen or eighteen.
Tall and heavyset, with sandy hair and beautiful, almond-shaped blue eyes in a
pockmarked face. He gave Gryffin a perfunctory smile, but w«en he saw me the
smile faded.

“Gryffin,
hey." The boy lifted his chin in greeting and stepped away from the door.
Around his neck he wore a necklace like the one Kenzie had made, of seaglass
and aluminum tabs. "S'up?"

I
followed Gryffin inside. The boy gave me a hostile stare. His mouth parted so
that I could see a black stud like a boil on the tip of his tongue.

"Nice,"
I said. "You oughta have that looked at."

We
walked into a large room filled with freestanding bookshelves. Faded banners
hung from the ceiling like flypaper, emblazoned with mottoes in the same lurid
colors as the old school bus.

VENCEREMOS!

THE
MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS HAS NO EXPIRATION DATE

TEMPIS
FUCKIT

The
books leaned heavily toward the Beats, mangled paperbacks of
On The Road
and
Junkie
and
The Dharma Bums,
but also some that were valuable. And
there was artwork, if you could call it that: a couple of Paint-by-Number
pictures in homemade frames; a series of paintings of fanciful dirigibles on
small oval canvases; a poem composed of words and phrases cut from newspapers
then glued on a sheet of cardboard and signed by Brion Gysin and William
Burroughs. That would be worth what the whole house cost to construct, plus a
small retainer for Lurch back by the front door.

There
were framed photos, too, on the wall beside the kitchen, where Gryffin had
disappeared. I heard a whoop, and Gryffin stepped out.

"Well,
glad you're pleased," he said. "I told you I might bring someone?
Here she is. Cass, this is Ray—"

A
figure came bustling toward me. A stocky man in green drawstring pants and
voluminous purple T-shirt, his white hair long and wild, eyes glinting behind
purple-framed glasses repaired with duct tape. His face looked as though it had
been dropped then reassembled by someone who’d never done it before. The hand
he thrust at me was missing the middle finger.

"Hello,
hello!" he exclaimed in a hoarse Brooklyn accent. "So glad to have
anuthah visitor. Ray Provenzano."

He
shook my hand vigorously. "You didn't mind coming to dinner, did you?
Aphrodite's a terrible cook. Robert! Robert!"

He
shouted, and the boy who'd let us in lumbered back into
view.
Ray
clapped a hand on his shoulder and looked at me. "What would you like to
drink, Cassandra? Wine? I just opened a great Medoc."

"Sounds
good."

"Robert,
get another bottle, wouldja please? Here—"

Ray
stepped into the kitchen. There was the sound of stirring, a burst of fragrant
smoke, and he reemerged holding two full wineglasses.

"Shalom,"
he said, thrusting one at me. "I know who you are—the photographer who
shoots dead things. I googled you. I'll hafta see if I can get some of your
stuff. Your book, maybe. You still taking pictures?"

He
kept talking as he ducked back into the kitchen. "You can see, I'm a big
collector. All kinds of stuff. If I'd known you were coming, I'd of gotten your
book. How's that wine?"