The Best American Mystery Stories 2000

Peter Moore Smith Forgetting the Girl

From The MacGuffin

I hope this video camera works. Anyway, this (click) is a blowup of a model’s eye, the bluest I’ve ever seen. The only other time I remember seeing that exact color of blue was the day my sister Nicole drowned. It was everywhere: in the water, in the sky, Nicole’s skin. Blue, I remember, and coughing. And gold, the gold of the light off the surface of the water, like an empty frame. I was eight. No, seven. I almost drowned trying to rescue little Nicole. She was five. I look back and see myself coughing, coughing, and coughing. Nicole. She’s the one girl I’ve been trying to remember.

(click)

Here’s one I forgot — Marcie — with the usual drowning in gin. Before Marcie I forgot (click) Alexis, a blonde, in marijuana’s blue-gray haze. I had attempted to forget Alexis once before by going on an outdoor camping adventure (click) with some friends, that’s Jamie and Derek, but I forgot to bring those things you nail your tent down with, and I ended up forgetting her in some cheesy motel, I forget what it was called.

Let me explain.

My name is Kevin Wolfe. I am a studio photographer. I do head-shots, two hundred a package. Developing is extra. You’ve probably seen my flyers on lampposts all over the city. Almost every girl who comes into this studio, every actress (click), every model (click) (click), at least the ones I find pretty, I ask out. It’s simply a matter of policy. They almost always say, “No.” So I do this forgetting thing, this ritual. I know it’s weird. Like this one: (click) name was Colleen Something, all willowy, green eyes, chestnut hair. I don’t remember anything about her, really, just how she kept extending her neck into the shot (click), there it is, muscles all tense, like she was on the prow of a sailboat and leaning into the wind. “Relax,” I told her.

“Sorry,” she kept giggling. “I’ll relax, I’m so sorry.”

(click) Look at her face. Have you ever seen eyes that green? This is a perfect photograph, I have to say. The way the shadow of her nose falls across her cheekbone. The way her hair reflects the light. Colleen hardly needed any makeup, I remember, skin like ivory. She never came to pick up her pictures, though, either. I left messages on her answering machine, but the beep just kept getting longer and longer and longer, and then one day all I got was ringing. I guess I scared her. That’s what my assistant Jamie said, anyway. Apparently I do that sometimes.

Colleen’s memory played on in my psyche like an extended remix. So how’d I forget her? Trying to clear my mind, and failing. Jamie gave me this tape, “Relaxation Through Meditation.” She said it would help me rest, gain focus, whatever. I’d close my eyes and let the TV screen inside my head go static, but then I’d see Colleen’s bright face fade up. her eyes green and cool as Central Park in September, and I’d zoom in on her red lips moving, saying, “No, Kevin, but thank you, anyway.”

It’s like I have to perform this ritual, some conscious act of forgetting, and then it’s okay. You know when you’re in a museum, and you’re looking at a painting, and it’s freaking you out. like that blue-period Picasso of the woman crying, all jagged tears and awfulness, and it gets inside you? Well, all you have to do is turn your head and walk through the door into the next room of the museum where there’s another painting, a Mondrian or a Rothko or whatever, a calculation of colors, abstract and meaningless, just waiting for you. Just walk through those doors.

In the end, I did forget green-eyed Colleen. It’s not that I forgot her, understand, it’s that I made it so I didn’t care anymore. I don’t care. (click) This is a picture of me not caring. Jesus, I look like a serial killer. I am the original, mean-looking white man. Now do you see why I stay behind the camera? Oh yeah, sometimes this projector sticks, so I apologize in advance.

Sometimes, all I do is close my eyes, and when I’ve opened them up again, I’ve forgotten her, whoever she was.

(click) (click)

Sheila, for instance. She almost went out with me. She’s not as pretty as she looks in this shot. I mean, she’s all done up here. And not to brag or anything, but I’m an amazingly great photographer. “You single?” I remember asking. Jamie had hustled in to apply more makeup, adjust Sheila’s hair, or whatever, always taking extra care with the heavier ones.

Sheila rolled her eyes. “I’m only nineteen,” she said.

“I meant, do you have a boyfriend.”

Jamie painted hollows of blush onto Sheila’s cheeks.

I was awarded a smile. “No-oo,” Sheila sang.

“Maybe we could go to a movie,” I said.

Jamie froze.

“Sure, okay,” Sheila said finally. She was trembling, I could tell. A lot of girls have a hard time saying no, especially the younger ones, and especially if they’re not from New York. They’re trying to be polite all the time, like their mothers told them to be. But in the end, you end up — I mean, I end up — on the receiving end of a can-we-please-just-be-friends speech, when the truth is they really have no intention of being your friend at all. And the last thing I need is a friend. (click) (click) (click) And look at these shots. Sheila wouldn’t even glance at the camera after that. The muscles of her face got all tight. See along the jaw? That’s fear. I remember her foot twitching on the rim of the stool, of this stool I’m sitting on now, twitching just like this. Sheila called the day I was supposed to meet her, saying she’d forgotten about other plans, a relative was in from out of town, blah blah blah. Bitch was chubby, anyway. I forgot her at the newsstand, looking through all the fashion magazines at the skinny supermodels, the emaciated and beautiful, the rich and famished.

Perhaps you’d like the grand tour. I’ll simply detach the videocam from its tripod and point it around for you. As you can see, this is a photography studio. These are my lights. This is my camera. It’s gelling old, I suppose. But these things are expensive. This is my backdrop. It doubles as a projection screen. Turn around again, and this is my projector. I always take at least a few slides of the girls who come in here. That’s my kitchenette over there, and behind that partition I’ve got a mattress. I used to have an apartment across town, but what with rent and everything and since I was always here, you know how it goes... I’ve got some chairs there in the waiting area. This is Jamie’s makeup table. And this is the body.

This (click) is Beth Dalewell, a petite model who, surprise of surprises, wanted to act. Check her out: shiny dark hair in a bob, those big, brown, watery eyes, her mouth permanently curved into a half smile. Cute, isn’t she? Do you see the way her skin is? Finely knit, like cream-colored silk. And her clothes, sort of preppy, but extremely tasteful. That skirt’s pretty short loo, if you know what I’m saying. I’ll never forget the way she looked me dead in the eye, and said, “Yes,” flat out.

“You will?” I practically knocked my camera over.

“What do you want to sec?” Beth asked.

Jamie was hunching over her makeup desk. Her back, broad as a billboard, was turned to us. She always wore big, droopy pink or yellow sweatshirts and these pleated skirts that she made herself out of all kinds of cheap fabric, weird tartans, paisleys, stripes, and checks. Colorful clothes were supposed to hide her hugeness, I guess.

I had no idea what Jamie was thinking at that moment. I mean, I knew she got uncomfortable when I asked a girl out, but I just thought it was a feminist thing. All I could think of now was, what did I want to see? My mind went blank. I couldn’t conjure up a single movie that was playing anywhere. I get so stupid when a pretty girl’s around. A comedy? A mystery? “I don’t know,” I shrugged at Beth. “Anything, anything you want. You pick.” Beth was looking at me, so I adjusted the lights to blind her. It makes me nervous when people look at me.

“I’ll call you,” Beth said, squinting, “later this afternoon. I’ll look in the paper and then I’ll call you up.”

I was starting to get giddy inside. I felt kind of trembly. My hands shook. I knew what would happen now. At least I thought I did. I’d send Jamie home and cancel the rest of my appointments for the day. I’d go out and buy flowers for the place. I’d do the dishes. I’d spray air freshener around, empty out the ashtrays, throw out the garbage. I’d change the sheets on my bed. I was feeling that agitation already. Beth would call. She’d have picked out one of those English movies set a hundred years ago. We’d meet in front of the theater. After the movie we’d find a nice Italian place, have a bottle of wine, maybe two, a little stimulating conversation. On the way home I’d invite her in for a drink. And so on. And so forth. It was going to be awesome, I was thinking. Truly incredible.

Jamie waddled over to Beth with the powder brush. “Let me even out your skin,” she said acidly. “You’re all blotchy.”

“What are you talking about?” I said to Jamie. “Get away from her with that thing.” It was too late, though. Jamie dusted Beth with the brush. “And maybe after we ran get a bite to eat?” I asked, ignoring

Beth smiled through the powdery makeup, motes of dust floating in the air in front of her face. “Absolutely,” she said. “Why not?” (click) Beautiful Beth. Here’s another picture of her. As you can see, I started shooting wildly after that. (click) (click) I already had the shot, anyway. And, I figured, now that Beth was going to be my girlfriend and everything, I’d have plenty of time to take more photos of her. Especially headshots for her acting career, plus others of a more personal, private nature, if you know what I mean. (click) Here’s a blowup. I guess her skin was a little blotchy after all. But what a face.

(click) Here’s a face, Nicole’s face, a little girl’s face, a nothing face. I blew this up from an old picture I found in Grandma’s bottom bureau drawer. I was trying to remember exactly what Nicole looked like, her expression, what beamed out. See those wide cheekbones, slits for eyes? This isn’t her, though. I mean, it’s her. But not her. Nicole had a softness, a prissiness, that this doesn’t capture. This is just a faro. She used to sing. Stupid stuff. Tra-la-la. skipping around Grandma’s back yard, around and around that pool.

She would not have been pretty, my sister. When she grew up, if she had grown up, she would not have been a beauty. The truth is, she would have looked like me.

I don’t have many good pictures of Jamie, because I never really took a photo of her directly. Sometimes she’d inadvertently walk into the shot, though. (click) Okay, here’s one. Ignore the other girl there. Jamie had mousy-brown hair which, look, already had streaks of gray in it, even though she was only twenty-eight or something, a circular face, a narrow, needle nose. Her cheeks always seemed a little reddish — not from makeup, she never wore any, just from running around out of breath all the time, wheezing like an asthmatic. Her best friend was this guy Derek, a homosexual. You saw a picture of him from our ill-fated camping attempt. I always thought Jamie was in love with him. What can I tell you about her? Jamie was from somewhere in Ohio, Columbus or Cincinnati. Her father was a vacuum cleaner salesman or hardware store manager or something pathetic. Her mother was dead or in Canada, I think. She always had a piece of her hair twisted around in her mouth. Her smile indicated nervousness, and her teeth were all filmy. She had small, dark eyes that flew around the four corners of the room when you looked directly at her. She talked a million miles a minute until the one minute a girl showed up in the studio for pictures, then she’d go all silent and shy, and let me do the talking. I paid Jamie almost nothing, just over minimum wage, but she never complained about money. She never complained, period. She liked the Artist Formerly Known As Prince, Ursula K. Leguin novels, and Mike and Ike candies.

(click)

So, you’re saying, what about this body?

Well, let’s start with a hand. Because in the dark, all through the movie, I kept looking at Beth’s. I was like that guy in the Edgar Allan Poe story, right? I was fixated on it. It was sitting there on top of her thigh, on that denim skirt she wore, fingers curling geometrically inward, curving like a nautilus, the whole hand a resting animal, alive but waiting. Beth’s hand. I just wanted to hold that hand. Finally, I got up the courage to reach over and touch it with my middle finger, just lightly, like it was a mouse I might scare off. Beth was firm, though, sudden, and took my wrist — for a split second I thought. Yes! — placing it solidly, lonesomely, on the maroon, velvet arm of the chair. Now it was my hand that was the animal, a dead mole the cat dragged in, rotting there. I didn’t look at Beth’s face, but I knew she was rolling her eyes and sneering, the bitch. I’d seen it before, that look. I was so humiliated, though, that I was deaf, that I couldn’t hear anything, not even the Dolby Surround Sound in the movie theater, just the rushing of blood in my ears. You know that sound, like you’re under water? I would have to forget Beth with some severity, I realized. This would not be easy. Forgetting Beth would not be easy at all. I started planning rituals of drunkenness. I had been feeling my sexual appetite looming, so I thought I might go down to the porno shops on Eighth Avenue. There’s a place you can go where you step inside a booth and a girl takes her clothes off for you. It’s disgusting, really. But sometimes nothing can help you forget a girl better than another one, naked, offering her breasts.

I just sat next to Beth for the next fifteen minutes or so, until I realized that she was far, far away, that she would hate me, that if I were truthful, if I really told her who I was, if she really knew me, she’d hale me forever. I leaned next to her, and I could tell she was disgusted, I could feel her shrinking away from my closeness. Why the hell did she go out with me in the first place? What’s wrong with her, I thought. “I’m going to the bathroom,” I whispered. I got up, and then I walked out of the movie theater and onto Twenty-third Street. It’s strange to do that, you know. You’re used to leaving the movies with a huge crowd of people. But it was just me, all alone, walking out. I walked a few blocks as if on automatic pilot to a public phone I remembered on the corner of Twenty-sixth and Seventh, don’t ask me why, but I thought of bowling, and I popped my quarter in.

“Hello?”

“Jamie, it’s me,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“Watching TV. What happened to your date?”

“What date?”

“Oh.”

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“No, “ Jamie said.

“Will you meet me?”

I had this picture in my head. I wanted to go bowling. At the Port Authority Bus Terminal, they have this bowling center. You’d never know it was there, but there it is. And you just can’t go bowling alone. Who could go bowling alone? So that’s why I called Jamie. I wanted to forget Beth by bowling my sorrows away. Why did I do that? What made me make that choice? Why bowling? And why Jamie? I mean, I hold no malice in my heart. Do I?

(click)

The truth is, women are objects. I mean, the feminists can say what they want, but when it comes right down to it, girls are made of bone and muscle and blood. They have eyes and chins and cheekbones and lips, arms and breasts, hair... You’re behind the camera over there looking at them, you’re creating a moment, an object in space, you’re saying, “Smile, look this way, smooth your hair, that’s it, perfect.”

They’re saying, “How do you want me? Here? Like this?”

(click)

We were standing in the flickering lights of the pinball machines at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. There was the smell of urine and antiseptic, cigarettes and cleaning supplies. Jamie had said she wanted to play the Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball game with multiple levels. I wanted to bowl and was still trying to convince her. “I don’t know how to bowl,” she kept saying. Her eyes were everywhere but on me. “And,” she almost whispered, “I don’t want to wear someone else’s shoes.” She pressed the button for one player.

“You agreed to bowl,” I said. “You met me here on the pretense of bowling.” We’d been out socially before, but never in such degenerate surroundings. It amused me to see her here.

I slouched against the blinking machine and watched Jamie inexpertly paddle the silver ball into the starships of the Klingon Empire. The game was over quickly. Jamie’s shoulders slumped downward as she turned toward me, defeated, with something to say, I could tell, her eyes moving everywhere. “Is this... helping you?” she said finally. As usual, she was sucking on a piece of her hair. It was all pointy and wet, like she was going to thread it through the hole of a needle. I wondered when was the last time she washed it.

“What do you mean,” I said, “the pinball?”

“I mean with that girl, with Beth. Is this helping you, you know... with your... forgetting thing?”

(click)

Angie. Forgotten with a pint of Deep Chocolate.

(click)

Darlene. I forgot her by watching the Gulf War on CNN.

(click)

Vanessa. I forgot how I forgot her.

(click)

Jamie had never mentioned that she knew about this before about forgetting. I said, “Um.” That is exactly what I said in response, “Um,” and a nod. It was all I could think of. I must admit I was freaked out. I felt like someone had just lifted the trunk and found me there, where the spare tire and gas can should be.

“Because I don’t mind,” Jamie said, and now she looked directly at me. “I mean, I like helping you, helping you do whatever, whatever it is, you know what I mean?”

(click)

Have you ever been taken over by an alien?

(click)

Sometimes I remember things about my sister Nicole for no discernible reason. These pictures are just there in my head. For instance, Nicole used to have this pillowcase. You know, some kids have blankets or teddy bears, things that comfort them. For her it was this pillowcase. All ratty and filled with holes, it had a floral motif, but it was designed, I think, by the same people who did the graphics for Laugh-In. The flowers were all loopy and cartoony, like they’d exploded across it. Nicole used to get inside that pillowcase and curl up, completely covered, she was so little.

Let me show you something else. I just have to turn on the Super Eight projector. Do you know how hard it is to find these things nowadays? This footage of Nicole I found last time I was home. My uncle Arnie shot it when he was a teenager. Okay, here it is. See? That’s the back yard at my grandmother’s. There’s the pool she drowned in. That’s me in the water. I used to like to sit in the shallow end with my nose just above the water’s surface like that. I wouldn’t move, just let the water go all still and quiet. In the sun, the surface of the water would become reflective, and I’d get lost in the blue and the gold. It was beautiful. I guess I was always visual, a born photographer. Under the water I’d let my body relax and sort of float. I’d cross my legs. It was its own kind of meditation, I suppose. I remember the sounds too. The water lapping at my ears very gently, very slowly. That echoing sound under water. The light glinting blue and gold, white and gold, white and blue.

“Hey,” I asked Jamie, “do you want to get drunk?” The truth was, I didn’t want to play pinball. But it suddenly occurred to me, there in the middle of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, surrounded by all the alcoholics and junkies, prostitutes and petty thieves, that I would much, much rather get smashed, completely and totally blotto, than play pinball or bowl or anything else. It had been, after all, the original idea. I was picturing Beth, her cute shoulders in the flickering movie-light. I kept seeing her hand resting there in the dark of her lap, that creamy skin. That fucking bitch.

Jamie started, “I don’t really—”

“Oh, come on, Jamie,” I cut her off, “a couple of belts won’t hurt you.”

She hesitated, then she said, all resignedly, “All right.”

I gave her a smile. Nervously, she smiled back, her teeth pointy and green. “This way,” I said. I led her over to the Port Authority Bowling Center Snack Bar and ordered a couple of beers. When they came, I toasted Jamie, downed my whole cup, and asked the derelict behind the counter for another round. He served them in big waxy-paper cups, and it was cold, straight from the tap, deliciously numbing. “A couple more of these,” I said, “and then I know a fabulous place on Tenth.”

Jamie belched. And throughout the evening, amazingly, she kept up beer for beer. After a while, it became shot for shot. It was pretty funny seeing her drink that way. Big, fat girl there knocking them back with me — little skinny guy at some terrible bar in New York’s most depraved part of town. There was something about the drinking and that, you know, that it was Jamie, my assistant, that made me relax, let me rest it a bit. I did forget Beth. And not just in the usual way I forget a girl, like I said, not just that I made myself not care anymore. I honestly and truly wasn’t thinking about Beth at all. I was looking at Jamie and I was seeing into her squinty eyes and her puffy cheeks, and it came to me in the midst of this drunken stupor that nothing mattered anymore, she knew, I could tell her anything, that I could offer my body to her, eyes closed, palms out, I could explain. I told her about Nicole. We slid into the wooden bench of a booth in the back of that seedy place, and I relayed the story of how I sat in the pool watching the light and how my grandmother pulled Nicole out of the water, her body limp and blue. It came out of me like a wound gushing. Jamie opened up too, telling me her life story, that there was this guy in her high school, she was so incredibly in love with him, but he was gay, blah blah blah. And it’s like, it’s like something amazing happened. It’s like I was watching. I mean, I was doing it, I was there, with Jamie, in the bar, on the hard wooden bench with all the names scratched onto it, but I was also very far away. My true self was up around the ceiling, far up, just watching. And I could see myself sitting there. And I could see huge Jamie, and she was just a tiny, little, infinitesimal speck.

(click)

This is a picture I took of a pile of garbage. I use it to illustrate what Jamie’s apartment was like. Hell, it was practically a closet. It was decorated like a teenage girl’s bedroom, too, with pop music and movie posters lining the walls, audiotapes and compact discs piled so high they practically reached the ceiling. As far as furniture goes, this place had just enough room for one double mattress. I watched as we fumbled together onto it. It smelled sour. These huge sweatshirts and skirts she wore were heaped all over. She pushed a pile off her bed so we could sit on it, and she turned off the light. As if from that far-off vantage point, I saw the two of us kissing sloppily. I looked through the darkness and held witness as we rolled around on her unwashed bedclothes. I soared away to an even greater distance when I saw myself unbuttoning my shirt. And when I saw her peel off her clothes, unbundling that sweatshirt, twisting off that skirt, I retreated even farther in the recesses of the ceiling. I saw her folds of flesh from two places, from my eyes which were stupid and drunken, and from somewhere else, up above, far off, sickened. “I love you, Kevin,” Jamie was saying. “I’ve always loved you.” She was sort of crying.

“Yes,” I heard myself say, my hands caressing her immense breasts, “Yes, I know. It’s okay. I know everything.”

Then she started calling me “Kev-ee.”

(click)

This is Jean. Forgotten after a long, hot bath.

(click)

This is Fiona. I forgot her by going to a nightclub.

(click)

I forgot Brenda at the Museum of Modern Art.

(click) (click) (click)

I forgot, I forgot, I forgot.

(click)

It’s like there were two parts of me, the one doing it, and the other one watching. I slipped out of the bed, with Jamie snoring there, her mouth open, her teeth pointing ceilingward. I had the plan. This was something I had to forget. I had made a mistake. I knew I had the drop cloth. I like to keep the studio freshly painted, so I always have plenty of supplies. I left her apartment surreptitiously. Did anyone see me? No. I’m sure of it. I came back here and got everything ready. I unrolled these huge plastic sheets of drop cloth onto the floor, right by the door. I pulled this stool over to that wall, and then I waited. I just sat there. I knew she’d be in at nine. She was always punctual. I kept the lights off, and I listened to her footfalls all the way up the stairs, and when she got to the door she did something strange — she knocked. She never knocked. But today, maybe because of last night, because she thought I might still be sleeping it off, who knows why, today she knocked. “Come in,” I said, and my voice cracked. I watched the knob turn, and as soon as she was inside I was behind her with the hammer. I’d thought one hit would do it, but I was wrong. She turned around to look at me. Here’s an example of how wrong I was: it wasn’t even Jamie.

It was Beth.

(click)

This is New York. People scream all the time.

People are also made of stronger stuff than you’d think. Girls are especially. It took several whacks. You know that sound? Like from the movies? Big, squishy thuds? Beth went down and started twitching, trying to get away, I guess on sheer instinct. She couldn’t have known what the fuck I was doing this for. She turned around and faced me as she fell, and she put her hands up in the air. She saw me too. I caught that look of recognition, that spark of understanding. And now, it’s like I’m still the one watching, but I’m even further away. I’m watching myself through a telescope turned the wrong way around. Or maybe I’m the one watching through this videocam. Maybe I’m you.

Hello there.

Come on, I had to forget all this somehow.

(click)

I just wish I could remember more about Nicole. I mean, what the hell was she doing in the water? She wasn’t allowed. She was too little to swim. I barely knew how to swim myself. I was only, what, eight or nine or something.

(click)

I guess Beth was coming to yell at me. Or maybe she wanted the film. Whatever. I didn’t mean to... you know. It was Jamie I wanted. And it was Jamie who showed up, like, five minutes later. Talk about a surprise. There I was, covered with blood, pieces of Beth’s head everywhere. But Jamie got it, I have to say. She sussed out the situation right off.

“What are you going to do with her?” she said.

I was still kind of numb from the whole thing. I looked up.

“Why don’t you hop in the shower,” she said gravely, “and I’ll wrap her up.” So I did. And when I was in there, I started thinking. It’s kind of my thinking place, you know, standing there under the hot water, watching the steam rise and stick to the tiles. I started thinking about my mistake. I started thinking about Jamie out there wrapping Beth up in the plastic sheets. And I wondered if I’d ever be able to forget now, if I’d ever be able to forget last night with Jamie, or this morning with Beth. And then something hit me that was even more important. Would Jamie? Would Jamie be able to forget?

(click)

Beth wasn’t very big. So after we wrapped her in the plastic we shoved her into a huge bag with lots of other trash and garbage. Then she went out onto the street. The garbage guys come around pretty often, and I’ve watched them heave those trash bags up into the truck. They don’t know what’s in there, and I’m willing to bet they don’t want to. I wonder how many other people are out there in the landfills, rotting away.

Anyway, it was a nervous day. I even had a couple of appointments, which I kept because I didn’t want to arouse suspicion. See? (click) This is Jilah, a girl from Thailand. Pretty. And this (click) is Meredith. Skin’s not so good. Not so pretty. And this — well, this next one didn’t have an appointment or anything, but since I’d never really gotten a decent shot before — this is Jamie. Her eyes were always like that, looking away. I couldn’t get her to look at the camera. She just wouldn’t do it. “Why don’t you sit up there on the stool?” I had asked her.

“Me?”

“Sure,” I said. “Just for one shot.”

“But I don’t have any makeup or anything.”

“It’s not a glamour shot,” I said. “Come on.”

She made that clicking sound girls make with their tongues, then slid up onto the seat and looked at her hands.

I adjusted the camera. I futzed with the lights. “You know,” I told her, “I’ve got a problem.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said.

“Oh, I know that,” I said. “I know you wouldn’t do that. But you have to understand, Jamie, that I can’t go around remembering all this. I have to forget. I have to forget all this, or I’ll go crazy.”

“Oh.”

And that’s when I took this photo.

“Do you know what I mean?” I asked her.

“I think so,” she said. Then she cried, very softly, for quite a while. Then she told me in a voice all trembly and sorrowful that she’d been thinking about it for a long time, anyway, and that she had a whole bottle of blue Valiums in her backpack. And we calmly talked about how it would all happen. We’d wait until it was really late. Then we’d lay out the sheets of plastic. She’d write a note — I’d help her — about how she didn’t have anything or anyone, and that nothing made any difference. I could drop it in the mailbox in the morning. And I’d pour her a big glass of water, and she’d take those little blue pills, two at a time, until they were all gone. She’d lie down, then, and go to sleep. It would be beautiful, I thought. I said so, too. I told her that.

And that’s just how it was. Beautiful.

Here’s a blowup of Nicole’s eyes. (click) Here’s one of her mouth. (click) Her hand. (click) I floated there in the water, watching, my eyes and nose just above the surface, my mouth and ears beneath the water. You know that sound? That underwater sound? And the next thing I remember is coughing. I couldn’t get the water out of my lungs. And then my grandmother was there, and she leaned down and waded in. Nicole must’ve still been in the water then. Why did she jump in the water? I was out, though, coughing. Why was I coughing? And she was still in the water, in the pool, in the blue. A blue just like this. (click) Now the projector’s stuck again. Shit. (click) (click) (click) That’s what it looked like, though, flashes of white. I saw the whole thing through flashes of white, empty slides. The sun flashing off the water. (click) (click) Like this. (click) (click) (click) Oh Jesus, I watched her. I watched the whole thing happen through the blue and the gold and the white flashes. The white flashes. I saw Nicole. I saw her pointing, running. I saw her jumping. Did she think I was drowning? Was she trying to save me? I watched. I knew what was happening but like with Jamie I was far, far away. I was watching through the light. And then my grandmother came out and yelled at me. “Kevin!” And I was startled. I inhaled some water, that’s why I was coughing. Nicole was floating facedown, among the flashes (click) (click) when my grandmother came out and yelled. She pulled Nicole out, and then I got out, coughing. And my parents came out and I was still coughing and someone said Kevin tried to save her, he tried to pull Nicole out, my grandmother, I think, saying, but he couldn’t, oh the poor dear. But I knew what happened. I knew Nicole wasn’t supposed to be in the water, and I watched it. I was looking through the light, into the heart of the light. I knew my sister was drowning and I watched it. I let it happen, because it was beautiful to see.

(click)

Under the water, she called my name.

(click)

What I saw was a flash of light, like these empty slides. (click) (click) (click). And what I heard? What did I hear?

Put your hands over your ears.

Press down.