Photographic (4 page)

“You don’t seem all that good at it either,” Jane shot back.

Marta bridled, drawing herself up in her chair to her full sitting height. “I’m a photographer. If I were doing this properly, someone else would be asking the questions, but I have to take opportunities as they arise.”

Jane studied her, the wide-cheekboned, catlike face. “You think I’d change my mind if you left and came back, that’s why you’re doing the interview now.”

“Well, yes. That thought crossed my mind.”

“You’re right.”

For the moment, the interview had somehow lost momentum. Marta dragged herself up using the table and tugged at the chair holding the backpack until she had it slid around next to her. Settling down in her chair again, Marta unzipped the outer compartment and withdrew a pen and pad. Folding back the cover of the pad, she scratched away on the paper, until under her pen a tree and gate appeared, followed by a long drive and more trees on either side. It appeared she was doodling the front of the property she’d recently invaded. 

Marta added a little person in one of the trees near the gate. “This might be a bad move on my part, but I have to ask, why did you agree to the interview? Is it just the pictures?”

“Obviously, I don’t want you to publish pictures of my daughter. And…”

“And?”

“I have to say, I’ve always been a bit curious. People who do what you do. Who is the person behind the big lens? Why do you do it? The money, I know, but it’s a strange life. Why this?”

“You know what I’m curious about…about your life? How it feels to have all those women drooling over your husband. And the sheer access to women he must have. How do you bear it?”

Jane laughed at her serious, almost awed expression. “I don’t see any of that here.” 

“Is that why you stay here?”

“What an odd question. Would I stay out here to avoid Ian’s fans? No, I like it here.” She hunched her shoulders and brought her hand to her mouth, brushing her knuckles lightly across her lips. 

“Why don’t you ever go to the premieres or the awards shows? People think your marriage is on the rocks because you’re never with him.”

Dropping her hand into her lap, Jane looked away and sighed. “I like staying on the farm. That’s the reason. There’s no deep reason having to do with our marriage.”

“Do you watch his movies when they’re on TV?”

Jane squirmed, her shoulder rubbing against the wooden dowels of the wheelback chair. It felt more personal than anything else Marta had asked. “Sometimes. We don’t watch much TV because of Tam. I have his DVDs, though. Of course, she can’t see those yet.” 

Marta fished another notebook out of the backpack and consulted it. “Don’t mind me,” she said. She tapped her pen against her mouth, leaving a small black mark on her lip, and wrote something down. “Do any of his fans ever come out here?” Marta stared down at the notebook.

Jane got up and poured herself more coffee. She sat down, adding milk and sugar. “Do you want any more?”

Marta shook her head. “I’m wired enough as it is.”

“Occasionally they come out here. You might have been one. They don’t usually climb trees, though.”

“How’d you know I wasn’t?”

“When I saw your lens.”

“Of course. Silly of me. I need a non-reflective lens coating, or remember to use a filter,” she muttered. “How do you deal with them?”

“There haven’t been all that many. I talk to them. They just want to make contact. Not with me, of course, but often he’s not here, so I tell them I’ll say hello, take a note or something. They’re pretty harmless. We live so out of the way it’s been few and far between, really.”

“I don’t think I’ll write all that,” Marta said, with an expression of distaste. “You don’t call the police?”

“I’ve never had to.”

“They could be psychos. Aren’t you scared?” 

“You could be a psycho, but you’re not. I size them up. Like I sized you up. I was scared as hell of you because of that damn branch snapping. It sounded like you were shooting at me.”

“Lord, really? I knew it gave me away but I didn’t think of that.” Marta actually looked contrite. “I’d never intentionally terrify anyone.” 

“You don’t think it might scare someone to find a stranger in camo staked out in their shrubbery? You don’t need a gun for that to be a shock.”

“I’m trying to do my job,” Marta said, with a pained expression. “In this instance I was a few feet on the wrong side of the property line, which is rare. Then you detected me, also rare. I’m like a commando: I’m in, I’m out. Anyway, all that’s beside the point. How often is he home?”

“As often as he can be.”

“Don’t you miss him when he’s gone?”

“What do you think?” Jane snapped. Marta’s eyebrows rose. She added more calmly, “Some times are worse than others, when someone is away, when you’re missing them.”

“Don’t you worry about the women he’s working with? They’re beautiful—he’s thrown together with them—you’re apart. Bad combination.”

“I trust him.”

“Oh.” Marta put a lot of expression in the word. She appeared to be thinking over what Jane had said. “Do you read the tabloids?”

“No.”

“You’ve heard the rumors about his sexuality, though.”

“Your point is?”

“You never thought he was gay?”

“Uh, no.”

“And the rumors about the other women?”

Silence.

“What are you referring to exactly?”

“Lies get printed all the time, of course. I’m in the business, and I can tell you first hand—but I just wanted you to have a chance to respond to rumors, put them to rest.”

“You’re saying there are rumors about him now? Since we’ve been married? Recently?”

“Of course. It goes with the territory.” Marta hesitated.

“What?”

“Let’s get back to what we were talking about earlier,” Marta said. “You were telling me about being on the set of
Bird in the Hand,
and how you fell in love.”

CHAPTER FOUR

M
ARTA
SAID
SHE
was exhausted and asked to take a quick nap. Jane found herself agreeing. She cleaned up the small meal she had prepared for the two of them. Helping the woman to the house, nursing her wounded ankle, bargaining for the pictures, and the interview had taken some time. It would have been much easier to call the police.

She wandered into the living room and looked out the front window, as if there might be another photographer lurking in the shrubbery. The empty fields in front of the house, divided by the front drive, looked bleak in the afternoon light. She felt the outside gloom infecting her mood. Had she done the right thing?

The interview had gone better than expected. She couldn’t have betrayed so very much with her careful answers. As she replayed the last couple of hours in her head, though, she wasn’t so certain. How perceptive might a woman be, this Marta, who had maneuvered herself into the unlikely position to get such an interview? 

When Jane woke up this morning no one could have convinced her she would be talking to a member of the press for two hours that day, spilling her guts about her relationship and her life. If Marta didn’t have the ultimate bargaining chip, pictures of Tam, she wouldn’t be in this position. She remembered how Marta’s eyes glittered as they spoke. 

What’s he like?
Jane thought about that question again now. 

It wasn’t that she expected much more than she had, she told herself. It just got very quiet sometimes. Not when Tam was home: never then. Even when she was asleep, the house still had a satisfied quality to Jane that wasn’t there when Tam was away at school. Jane gazed out the window.

Raindrops began to fall. 

She put on a jacket and walked out the front door. The sky was flat gray, like slate. Hands shoved in her pockets, she walked slowly around the house, inspecting it in the gentle rain. A farmhouse, after all, even if immaculate and glistening with fresh paint, rambling in three directions, gray clapboard with white trim. Sometimes, like today, she saw it as if it were someone else’s house. It didn’t look like a house she would live in. No one in her family had ever lived in a house like this. 

She studied the ground now, her feet crunching on the tiny rose-colored stones filling the circular drive. One automatic step after another, she traveled in a circle back toward the front door, back to Marta. As she wiped her feet on the mat, she heard her mother’s voice on the answering machine in the kitchen. When Jane stepped forward and turned her head, she saw Marta’s form stretched out on the couch. Occasional snores punctuated Marta’s sleep. 

“Jana?”

To her mother she was always Jana,
Ya-na
.

“Jana? It’s Magdalena.”

Her mother always announced herself, as if her own daughter hadn’t heard that voice, its deep carrying tones, surely since before she was born.

She stood listening, wondering if Marta would wake up at the sound. 

“Are you inside, Jana? Can you hear me?” There was a brief silence as her mother waited. “Well, darling.” Her mother only left messages between festivals, when she wasn’t mentally in another century, one without telephones. “I’ll try you again soon.”

Marta lay on the sofa, her foot propped up with a pillow. Buttermilk, the cat staying with them while their neighbor Hank was away, took up most of the space on her torso. Marta’s hair was so blonde it shone almost silver in the shaft of light from the window, paler than the cream tabby on her chest. Her brows were perfect broad arches, tapering to fine points. Her unlined sallow skin, thin mouth, finely arched nose, and compact efficiency gave Jane the impression of a petite bird of prey. With a ka-thump to the floor, Buttermilk wandered over to rub himself against Jane's legs. She leaned down and pet him.

What’s he like?
 

Marta’s intensity as she asked that question bored through Jane’s head, an inescapable question demanding an answer other than the superficial trivialities she’d given as substitute for the real thing.

He comes home and…she rubbed her temples, pressing as hard as she could. She crossed from the hall, past Marta, to her favorite chair by the fireplace and sat down, her head between her hands.

She looked at Marta. The photographer snored on. Buttermilk trotted off on some business of his own.

Marta had insisted on waiting until Tam came home from school before they left for the hospital. Otherwise they would have had to go get Tam out of school and bring her along, since she might have arrived home while they were gone. Jane wasn’t sure about the origin of Marta’s concern: that she not disrupt Tam’s school schedule or that she see Tam (not just through a camera lens) and have more time in the house. Marta wasn’t gaining much information at the moment. The combination of painkillers and too much coffee seemed to have knocked her right out. Maybe she would sleep until Tam arrived and there wouldn’t be any more questions. 

Don’t you worry about the women he’s working with? They’re beautiful—he’s thrown together with them—you’re apart. Bad combination.
 

Do you read the tabloids?

You’ve heard the rumors about his sexuality…then, of course, the other women…don’t you want to comment on that? I wanted you to have a chance to respond, put the stories to rest.

Marta was doubtless using the tactics such people employed: telling lies in hope of a big reaction…creating news out of the product of a sick imagination. Trying to sell magazines.

Jane had avoided tabloids for years. It wasn’t hard to blur peripheral vision with practice.

If only Marta had been better at her job and stayed perched in her tree. Jane never would have known Marta were there if the branch hadn’t snapped, giving the interloper’s position away. 

It would have seemed like a normal day. Marta would have had the pictures of Tam. Whether any harm would have come of it was debatable. There wouldn’t have been any decision to make; what happened would have been out of her hands.

CHAPTER FIVE

I
AN
HACKED
AWAY
at the smaller pieces protruding from the trunk balanced on its end, pretending to ignore the rustling coming from the bank. He threw the finished piece to one side and started on the next. He paused and looked up. A man huffed up beside him. 

“Work cut out for you, I see.”

“Tor.” He nodded hello. It seemed somehow typical that Tor would have already sniffed him out.

“This is the place, eh?”

Ian put the second piece with the first and hauled over a dead trunk he had scavenged. 

“That it is.” He balanced the stump on a flat rock and split it for firewood. They could take his whole paycheck, per diem and backend included, before he’d ask Tor how he’d found the spot. 

He’d imagined one week. At least one week of grace.
What a fool.
 

Tor surveyed the ocean. “That’s a view.”

Ian hacked the axe into a piece of wood lying on the ground and dug his feet into the sand, padding over to the fire with a piece of firewood in each hand. 

“Have a seat.” He sat on the sand and took a drink from a silver thermos sitting next to the fire. “Drink?”

Tor reached for it and took a swig. He grimaced and handed it back. 

“No alcohol.” 

Ian smiled, a ghost of a smile. Tor smiled as well, his colorless lips lifting to display a predatory set of teeth, parted in the middle. 

“About all this,” Tor said, waving at the partly-constructed hut. “You’re already going places with this character. I see it in you."

Ian studied Tor before switching his attention to the fire. He wasn’t prepared to discuss his character with Tor, here and now. Verbalizing his motivations, his ideas, or listening to Tor’s suggestions the night before the first day, as he sat here trying to forget the twenty-first century existed…it wasn’t something he’d choose. Tomorrow he would be prepared for direction. 

Tonight was for letting his subconscious have its way with him, letting all their earlier work with the script and the character melt away so there was a chance for the essence at the core of Odysseus to show itself, if it were going to. It had happened for him before like this, the magic taking hold, if he set the stage right. What other reason for sleeping outside, outfitting himself in authentic clothes, imagining himself three thousand years in the past; getting lost in the luminous time travel of firelight? With Tor here messing him about, however well-meaning, the chances of the mysterious alchemy happening were slim to nonexistent.