Generation Loss (7 page)

Damage.
This guy reeked of it.

I
backed away and glanced down at his hand. A scar ran from his middle finger to
his wrist, as though someone had tried writing on his flesh with a knife. When
I lifted my head, he was still staring at me.

"You
don't belong here," he said.

His
eyes were such a pale brown they were almost yellow. The left iris held a tiny
starburst just above the pupil, emerald-green, rayed with black. It made me
think of the trajectory a bullet makes through thick glass; it made me think of
that scar on his hand, and how I'd seen it, him, somewhere.

But
Id never seen this man before. I knew that. My brain is hardwired for recalling
bodies, eyes, skin; I absorb them the way emulsion paper absorbs light. I would
no more have forgotten that scar, or that iris's imploded green, than I would
have forgotten my own face in the mirror. I continued to stare at him, until he
began to lift his hand.

Without
a word I darted past him toward my car. He took a step after me, stopped. I
jumped into the Taurus and locked the doors, fired up the engine and the
headlights. The windshield was glazed with frozen mist; I waited for it to
defrost then peered out.

The
man was gone. My hands were shaking so much the steering wheel trembled. I
definitely needed to eat something and then try to sleep. My car was halfway
out the parking lot before I realized I'd left my bag in the room.

I
swore and glanced back at the motel office. The lights were on, and I could see
a figure seated in the alcove—Mackenzie—and another, taller, figure: the guy
I'd just bumped into. I sat in the car and waited until he stepped out of the
office and walked over to an older gray Volvo sedan, watched as he drove off.
Then I hopped out and ran back inside my motel room. I grabbed my bag and
Deceptio
Visus
—I wanted something to hide behind while I ate. No more small talk
with the natives. I headed back outside to my car then stopped.

The
door of the room next to mine was ajar—in the confusion of running into me, my
neighbor had forgotten to close it. As I watched, a gust of wind pushed it open
another inch.

I
hesitated then stepped over and placed my hand on the doorknob.

"Hello?"
The hairs on my arms rose as I thought of that green-shot eye. "Anyone
there?"

No
reply. I pushed the door open.

The
light was on and the room empty. I looked back quickly to make sure no one saw
me. Then I went inside.

You
might think I'd never done something like this before. In fact it was exactly
the sort of thing I did.

It
was a room identical to mine. Clothes tossed were over a chair. On the bed was
a computer case, open, with a laptop inside. A few books were stacked on top of
the laptop, along with a small notebook. I picked up the notebook, flipped
through lists of names, phone numbers, dates.

No
interest there. I tossed it aside then peered into the computer case.

Pens,
a calculator, cell phone charger; a thick yellow Rite Aid One Hour Processing
envelope stuffed with photos and a CD-ROM. I took the envelope and walked to
the window, angling myself so I could see outside without being seen, and
looked through the photos.

They
were color pictures, overexposed 4x5s. There were two copies of each. Hard to
tell how recent they were. I guessed maybe a few
years old, though some
people still use film and transfer the images to CD-ROM. The photos showed some
kind of family gathering—a brilliant sunny day, women in pastel and
tropical-bright dresses, men in light-colored jackets or shirtsleeves. A
white-haired woman in a broad-brimmed red straw hat held a champagne flute. Two
dark-haired women who looked like sisters cocked their heads and pursed their
lips in an effort to look disapprovingly at the photographer. A big dog ran
past a crowded table, a black blur, its tongue hanging from its mouth.

Everyone
looked happy, even the dog. A wedding? No one takes pictures of funerals.

But
there was no bride or groom that I could see; no wedding cake or birthday cake
or anniversary cake; no presents. A few darting children in the background, but
not enough to herald a kid's party. Round tables where people sat and smiled
for the camera, their faces shadowed by big striped umbrellas, yellow and
green. Pink blossoms strewn across some of the tables, wine glasses, wine
bottles.

Most
of the photos were like this. I'd almost reached the last of them before I
found one in which I could pick out the figure of the man I'd nearly run into.
He stood in a group of men and women, all dark haired, though sunlight and
distance made it impossible to discern any other resemblance between them. All
were nearly as tall as he was, and there was a similarity to the way they held themselves—squinting,
shoulders canted slightly to one side, as though flinching from something—the
light? a sudden cold wind?—that made it seem as though they might be siblings
or cousins and not just friends. I stared at the photo for a moment, glanced
out the window at the parking lot, then looked at the last two pictures.

Both
showed the man I'd seen. In one he was sitting alone at a table. Light filtered
through a canopy of leaves and splattered his face yellow and black. He seemed
brooding, distracted, though maybe he was just bored or tired. Behind him the
hindquarters of the black dog could just be glimpsed, its tail an arrow aimed
at the man's outstretched legs.

The
last photo was different.

It
was the same man in the same chair at the same table. The black dog was gone.
Now the man's head was turned, looking at someone out of camera range. He'd
moved just enough that sun fell full on his face, which was bright but not
overlit. His hair had blown back a little from his forehead; his face was split
with a smile so rapturous it seemed contorted. It made me uncomfortable, and I
looked away.

Then
I looked again. I tilted the picture back and forth, as though the unseen thing
he stared at might materialize; waiting for that same sense of damage I'd felt
outside to rise from the image like a striking cobra.

But
it didn't.

I
frowned.

What
was he looking at? His lover? His child? The black dog? It wasn't just that no
one had ever looked at me like that. I'd never seen anyone look at anything like
that. His expression changed everything. I went back to the first photo and
skimmed through them all again, as though they might now make sense, offer up a
shared secret like a shell prised open with a knife.

Of
course that didn't happen. It would never happen. I knew that. They were
nothing but a bunch of snapshots of someone else's party. I would never know
who these people were, or where they were. I would never know what the man saw,
or who he was, or why he was in the motel room next to mine.

Only
he wasn't in the room next to mine. I was in
his
room. I glanced out the
window. The parking lot was still empty. I slipped the pictures back into the
yellow envelope, retaining a dupe of the man with that rapturous smile. Then I
stuck the envelope back into the computer case and left. I made sure the door
closed tight behind me, made sure no one saw me leave. I got into my car and
started it, sat for a minute and waited, just in case someone appeared who
might have seen me emerge from Room I.

No
one did. I turned the heat and defroster up to high and shoved the photograph
into my copy of
Deceptio Visus.
I waited until a black streak ate
through the frozen condensation on the windowsill, and I could see into the
darkness that surrounded me. Then I drove slowly away from the motel, out onto
the main road and down the narrow spine of the Paswegas Peninsula, until I
reached Burnt Harbor.

8

the
village consisted OF a handful of buildings perched on a rocky ledge
overlooking the harbor. Maybe it was beautiful in the daytime, in the middle of
summer. Now, in the early dark of a November night, it was as desolate as the
Lower East Side had been once upon a time. For that reason the place felt—well,
not exactly welcoming, but familiar. Like walking into a room full of strangers
in a foreign country then hearing them speak my native language.

..
. all that bleak shit you like? Well, this is it,
Phil had told me.

He
was right.

There
wasn't much there. DownEast Marine Supplies, a lobster shack that was closed
for the winter. A streetlamp cast a milky gleam onto a broken sidewalk. On the
hillside above the harbor, lights glowed in scattered houses. There was a small
crescent-shaped gravel beach and a long stone pier that thrust into the water,
dinghies tied up alongside it. Farther out a few lobster boats and a solitary
sailboat. It smelled like a working harbor: that is, bad. I looked for a place
that might be the harbormasters office—a building, a sign—but found nothing.

There
was no mistaking the Good Tern, though—a tumbledown structure a few
yards
from the pier, gray shingled, with a torn plastic banner that read BUDWEISER
WELCOMES HUNTERS beneath a weathered painting of a seagull. There were pickups
out front, along with a few Subarus, and I could glimpse more cars parked
around back. The lid of a dumpster banged noisily in the wind.

I
parked, stuck the copy of
Deceptio Visus
into my bag, and got out. The
wind off the water was frigid. In the seconds it took me to run toward the building,
I was chilled again.

The
entrance was covered with photocopies advertising bean suppers, a used Snocat,
snowplow services. Yet another flyer looking for Martin Graves, the same faded
image of a young man in wool cap and Nike T-shirt. Wherever he'd run off to, I
hoped he was warmer than I was. I went inside.

The
open room had bare wood floors, wooden tables with miniature hurricane lanterns
holding candles, walls covered with faded posters advertising Grange dances. A
bar stretched along one wall, where six or seven people hunkered down over
drinks. No TV Blues on the sound system. Several couples sat at the tables, old
hippie types or maybe they were fishermen; rawfaced women with long hair,
bearded men. A man by himself reading a newspaper. One or two of them glanced
at me then went back to their dinners.

I
couldn't blame them. The food smelled good. A middle-aged woman wearing a
bright Peruvian sweater showed me to a table along the far wall.

"Cold
out tonight!" she said, sounding shocked: Maine, cold? "What can I
get you?"

I
ordered a shot of Jack Daniel's, a beer, and two rare hamburgers. I knocked
back the shot and ordered another, sipped my beer. When my burgers arrived, I
wolfed them down then ordered another beer. That ache you get after doing crank,
the sense that your brain has been walled up behind broken rubble—that began to
subside, replaced by the slow pulse of alcohol.

I
nursed my second beer. I was in no hurry to head back to the Lighthouse, though
the thought of hiding dirty Kleenex from Merrill Libby did have its appeal. A
nearly full moon crept above the black harbor. It wasn't yet seven o'clock. I
angled my chair so I could catch the light from the hurricane lantern on my
table and opened my copy of
Deceptio Visus.

I
turned the pages carefully—it was probably the most valuable thing I
owned—until I reached Kamestos's brief introduction.

I
have called this collection of photographs
Deceptio Visus,
"deceiving
sight." But there is nothing here that is deceptive. Our gaze changes all
that it falls upon. Within these photographs, I hope, the discerning eye may
see the truth.

It
had been a long time since I'd read those words. Once they had seemed to
explain the world to me, the way I saw things; the sense I had that someone, or
something, watched me. But I had lost that way of seeing or feeling, if indeed
I'd ever possessed it; if it even existed.

Now
it all just seemed like shit. I looked around for my waitress to order another
beer.

Two
of the people at the bar were watching me. One was a solid-looking man with a
graying beard and close-cropped brown hair. A rat-tail braid dangled across his
shoulder. As he cocked his head, light glanced off a jeweled stud in one
earlobe. He wore a red flannel shirt, stained jeans, heavy workboots. He had a
cigarette tucked behind one ear and a yellow pencil behind the other.

Beside
him sat the man I'd run into at the Lighthouse. He stared at me, frowning
slightly. Then he stood, picked up his wineglass, and walked over.

"Can
I see that?" He pointed at my book.

Before
I could say anything, before I could even remember the stolen photograph inside
it, he picked up
Deceptio Visus.

"No,"
I said, but he had already opened it. He glanced at the copyright page then
handed it back to me.

"My
copy's signed," he said.

I
grabbed the book and shoved it into my bag beneath the table. When I looked up,
the other guy had joined his friend.

"Did
he try to steal your book?" he said. "Because I can call the police
if you want me to." He plucked the cigarette from behind his ear, bent
over my hurricane glass, and lit it. His hands were crosshatched with scars,
and the tip of one thumb was missing. "Smoke?"