The Double Bind

CHAPTER NINETEEN

WHILE LAUREL WAS walking to the bar, slightly fortified by the juice and the scone, it dawned on her that agreeing to meet with this lawyer might prove to be an egregious mistake. He was, essentially, the opposition counsel. And Katherine had specifically asked her not to speak to him. Yet here she was, largely-but not entirely-on her way because early that morning she had wanted to get off the phone. Of course, she had also agreed to see him because she was interested in what he had to say, and she thought she might be able to learn something more about Bobbie Crocker. Nevertheless, she was anxious, and she found herself brooding upon the consequences and all the things that could go wrong.

Terrance Leckbruge had told her that she would know him because he would be reading the Atlantic . She decided the moment she walked into the wine bar that she would have picked him out anyway. He was sitting atop a tall stool when she arrived, a glass of something white and a well-thumbed copy of the magazine on the circular table before him. He looked about forty, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if he was considerably older than that: His hair, slicked back with a heavy gel, was so black that she was quite sure he had colored it. He was wearing the sort of oddly dated eyeglasses that she expected to find on senior citizens: rhombic-shaped spectacles the color of mustard. The glasses were particularly unnerving because his eyes were a dazzling, Day-Glo blue, and his nose was so petite that it was practically nonexistent. She almost wondered whether he epoxied his spectacles to his eyebrows to keep them from sliding off his face, especially since he was, when she saw him for the first time from the wine bar’s front entrance, peering down at that magazine, his head slightly bowed, his mouth frozen in a vaguely condescending smirk. He was wearing a gray linen jacket with a beige T-shirt underneath it, and Laurel felt more than underdressed in her jeans: She felt slovenly. She hadn’t washed her hair or showered in a day and a half, and she realized that she was wearing the same clothes she had put on Friday morning before leaving for BEDS. She also wasn’t wearing any makeup, and she wished at the very least that she had layered on some lipstick and blush.

Leckbruge glanced up as she approached the table, and then slid off the stool to his feet. She thought for a brief moment that he was actually going to try to kiss her cheek, but she was mistaken: He simply leaned in a little closer than most people when he shook her hand.

“You must be Laurel. I’m Terrance Leckbruge, but my friends all call me T.J. They always have, they always will-even if, God willing, I make it to a very old man. Thank you so much for dropping by. Now, you look like you are in serious need of a drink.” His accent was lovely in person, even more southern and pronounced than when he’d spoken with her on the phone. She wondered if it was an affectation, but she didn’t care. It still sounded nice.

“I am,” she agreed, and she reached for the burnished metal clipboard with the calligraphed list of wines. He must have sensed that she was in way over her head, because he quickly recommended one. Then, when the waitress arrived, he ordered it for her, sparing her from having to wrap her tongue and mouth around the name of an unpronounceable Tuscan vineyard.

For a few minutes, they discussed how much they loved Vermont ’s quirks and eccentricities, and he told her how he savored the kindness of his neighbors in Underhill. She grew silent when he brought up the town, and it crossed her mind that he might interpret that quiet as coldness-which was fine with her. As soon as her wine arrived, he said, “Really, Laurel, I am so appreciative that you’re willing to see me on such short notice. Truly I am. Thank you.”

“Well, I have to admit: If I hadn’t been trying to get out the door quickly this morning, I probably would have said no. But I didn’t want to argue with you.”

“And so you said yes.”

“That’s right.”

“I can be very persuasive,” he said, resting his chin on his knuckles.

“Not this time.”

“And persistent.”

“That’s more accurate.”

“Well, I am grateful that you have been so accommodating.”

She shrugged noncommittally.

“Where were you today?” he asked. “What was the engagement that was so pressing? May I ask?”

She considered lying, but saw no need. “I wanted to get to the darkroom to work on Bobbie Crocker’s negatives. See what’s there.”

“And?”

“And I saw absolutely no more images of your client, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Her house? Her property? Any pictures like that?”

“Look, I shouldn’t even be here.”

“But you are. Imagine if some individual-a profoundly ill individual-somehow took possession of your family’s photographs. Deeply personal images. Wouldn’t you want them back?”

“Bobbie Crocker’s schizophrenia was under control. You make him sound deranged.”

“We don’t need to parse mental illness. He was homeless until your group parachuted into his life. I do not believe reasonable senior citizens live on the street in northern Vermont when they have a choice.”

“As soon as BEDS gave him the chance to come in off the street, he took it.”

Leckbruge swallowed the last of his wine and motioned for their waitress. When she returned to their table, he purred, “This was scrumptious. Every bit as exquisite as you’d said. May I have another, please?”

The waitress had the sort of twin piercings along her left eyebrow that Laurel found painful to look at, especially since otherwise her young skin was as smooth as a model’s in a face crème commercial. A lot of Laurel ’s acquaintances had small piercings and tattoos-even Talia had pierced her navel. Once, soon after graduating, she had toyed with the idea of following Talia’s lead and piercing her belly button, too. Piercing one’s navel, she knew, was a lot like the decision to pose nude for erotic photographs: It was best done well before you hit middle age. And so it had seemed to Laurel that if she were going to do it, she should do it sooner rather than later. Further goading her toward the body-art parlor was her boyfriend-older, as always, who presumed that a loop in her navel would make it even more apparent to the world both what a trophy catch she was and what a stud he was. In the end, however, Laurel decided that she didn’t want to draw attention to her stomach, because then she would risk drawing attention to her breasts. And ever since she had been attacked, that simply had not been an option. Besides, her boyfriend’s immoderate enthusiasm alone was enough to nix the idea.

“So,” Leckbruge said quietly, almost dreamily, when the waitress had left to get him a second glass of wine, “what will it take for you to relinquish the photos? That is, of course, why we’re here. My client feels deeply violated and she would like the pictures back. And, clearly, a part of you understands her deep sense of violation. After all-”

“Why would you think that?” Laurel asked, momentarily afraid that she had read more into his use of the word violation than was there. Here she was presuming that somehow he knew what had occurred years earlier on the outskirts of his little village, when most likely he was simply suggesting that she was a particularly empathetic soul. She was about to apologize, or at least try to write off the stridency of her interruption to a lack of sleep or exhaustion-anything-when he reached across the table and rested a warm, gentle hand atop hers.

“Please, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, I shouldn’t be so touchy. It’s just that-”

And this time he cut her off: “You were attacked. I understand. I should have used a different word than violation. That was callous of me, and profoundly unthinking.”

And so he did know. And she should have guessed that he did. After all, he had a place in Underhill. He was a lawyer. He probably knew all along what had happened. She quickly took back her hand and reached down for her knapsack, planning to leave. But then an image came to her: the girl on the bike on the dirt road. The photo that Bobbie Crocker had taken.

“When was your client’s brother in Underhill?” she asked.

“My client says her brother died a very long time ago. He-”

She waved him silent, scything a swath through the air with her fingertips. “When was Bobbie Crocker in Underhill?”

“I didn’t know he was. You know considerably more about his life in Vermont than I do.”

“He took pictures there. In Underhill. I’ve seen them. Does your client believe those are hers, too?”

“What are they of?”

“A bicyclist.”

“You?”

When she had been nearing the wine bar, she had considered the different mistakes she might make. This thread, however, wasn’t one she had contemplated. But, then, she wasn’t even sure this was a mistake. Hadn’t she come here after all to learn what she could? She sighed, and in the abrupt silence at their table she heard for the first time the music and the conversations and the clatter of the glasses all around them. Almost suddenly, the bar seemed to have filled up.

“Me,” she answered finally, and then added quickly, “at least it might be.”

“You’re not positive.”

“Not completely. But it’s likely.”

“My client is a collector. There is no reason not to believe that among the photos that disappeared was an image of a girl on a bike.”

“This would have been taken seven years ago. When does your client claim that her collection-”

“A part of her collection.”

“When does she believe that a part of her collection disappeared? It would have to have been since then.”

“Your point?”

“Did Pamela inform the police of the theft? If the collection was that valuable-”

“Value needn’t be judged solely in monetary terms. What she cares about most are the images of her home. Her family. A picture of her and her brother means considerably more to her than it would to, say, the George Eastman House. If you want this picture of you so badly, I am sure my client would be happy to let you have it.”

“I don’t want the picture,” she said, aware that she was starting to grow dizzy, that the table was starting to inch up toward her, “I want…”

“Yes?”

“I want to know why he was there.”

“Assuming he was.”

“I want to know why he was on that road the same day those two men were.” The words, she knew, had come out as a mumble, a small sad plea smothered by falling snow. She felt like she was being smothered by falling snow-she was starting to feel cold and clammy now, though inside her head she could hear her heart beating like an African drum.

“The men who hurt you?”

“Yes! What other men could I possibly mean?”

“But you don’t know for sure it was the same day. Do you?”

“No. Not for sure.”

“All right, then. Were your attackers homeless? Forgive me, Laurel, I just can’t remember.”

“Why would you ask that? Why is that relevant?”

“You sound defensive. You sound like you believe the homeless never get violent. And yet just last spring two of your clients got into a knife fight in the alley adjacent to that pizza parlor on Main Street, and now one of them is dead and the other is in jail. According to the newspaper, the perpetrator-excuse me, alleged perpetrator-even threatened the victim over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in your shelter.”

She bowed her forehead into the table. Of course she knew the story. But she also knew the two were exceptions: Everyone who had met them at BEDS had feared they were going to come to a bad end the moment they arrived. They spent a mere two nights at the shelter and then were gone. Laurel herself had never met either of the men, and so she had been more frustrated by the utter meaninglessness of their ends-death and prison-than she had been saddened.

“ Laurel?”

She flinched when she felt his hand move up her arm to her shoulder, and she forced herself to look up. “One of the men who attacked me was a drifter,” she said finally, her voice halting and slow. “But he had never set foot inside BEDS. I checked that years ago.”

“May I get you something? Have the waitress bring you water? Are you…”

She raised her eyebrows and waited. She recalled the van backing toward her, over her, her mouth and her lungs momentarily filling with exhaust. The weight of the tires on her toes. Her collarbone and a finger already broken. The bruises on her breast.

“Anemic? Diabetic?” asked Leckbruge.

“I just…I just felt weak for a second. I’m fine.”

“I’m not altogether sure you are. And I would like to help you.”

“I don’t want your help.”

“Look, when you were raped-”

“I wasn’t raped,” she said, and with the last of her strength she stood, using her arm to lift herself to her feet. His hand fell away and quickly he tried to retake hold of her shoulder, but whether it was to help her or restrain her she couldn’t tell. His eyes, once sympathetic, seemed to have grown cold.

“Please, Laurel, you don’t want to go home now.”

“You’re wrong. I do.”

“Stay. Sit. Please. I need you to stay for just another moment. I can’t…I can’t let you leave like this.”

She breathed deeply and held the air inside her for a long moment, and slowly the world began to return to focus. “This sounds all about you,” she murmured. “Why is it that you middle-aged men all think the world revolves around you?”

His lips curled reflexively into a boyish grin. “Au contrare. What torments the middle-aged man most is that he has discovered the world does not, in fact, revolve around him. That, alas, is what ails us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He glanced at his watch. “I would like to continue this discussion.”

“And you may: with the Burlington city lawyers. But not with me.”

“It need not be antagonistic.”

“It is if you bully me.”

“I don’t mean to bully you. Honestly, Laurel. I don’t. There are others who might. But I personally would not bully anyone-let alone someone who has endured all that you have. Trust me.”

Laurel thought about this. Was he insinuating that he knew people who might be willing to intimidate her? “Was I just threatened?” she asked, more nonplussed than fearful.

“I don’t think so,” said Leckbruge. “But, please, make me one promise. Will you?”

“Unlikely.”

“I’ll ask it anyway. If you change your mind and realize the reasonableness of my client’s request, will you call me?”

She gazed at him, and he raised his eyebrows above those gigantic yellow spectacles in a gesture that may actually have been sadness. Then he looked at his watch once more and sat back down on his stool. She realized as she left the bar that she had never even tasted her wine.

LAUREL FOUND the front door to her apartment was partway open when she returned, and initially she thought nothing of it. She presumed Talia was home. If she imagined anything precise, it may have been her beautiful friend reading on the couch, her iPod in her lap with its cords snaking up to her ears, her head and her shoulders bobbing slightly to the music. Instead, however, she understood as she pushed in the door that Talia wasn’t there and they had been robbed. She stood in the frame, momentarily stunned, her eyes taking an inventory of the room. The window to their small balcony was open and the chair beside it overturned. The porcelain table lamp by the couch-a delicately hand-painted, Chinese fixture that had sat for years in her parents’ living room before her mother had redecorated after her father had died-was smashed on the floor. The coffee table had been upended, the books and newspapers tossed to the ground like so much recyclable detritus. And Talia’s small mandarin writing desk had been shoved closer to the door to their kitchen, as if someone had pushed it aside while ransacking its single drawer. The computer was still upon it, apparently untouched, and she was relieved they hadn’t stolen that, too-though she still had no idea of what precisely had been taken.

There was no way she was simply going to charge in there alone, and as quietly as she could she brought her backpack up over her shoulders and reached inside for the fist-size canister of pepper spray that she knew was sitting somewhere at the bottom. She had carried one with her wherever she went ever since she had returned to Vermont to finish her sophomore year of college. She had never used it, and she rarely thought about it: She wasn’t even sure she remembered how to operate the spray mechanism on this particular model, since she had barely glanced at the directions when she had pulled it from its clear plastic sarcophagus. Still, she was relieved she had it with her now, and when she had the device cradled safely in her hand she stood perfectly still. She feared she had made too much noise already. She didn’t even dare cross the hall to knock on Whit’s door. And so she remained there, absolutely motionless, and listened. At one point, she felt sufficiently courageous that she considered tiptoeing back down the stairs and leaving the house, but the whole place felt so still. Finally, when there hadn’t been a sound from the apartment for almost ten minutes, she cautiously stepped inside. It had become increasingly evident that whoever had been there was gone.

She saw the doors to both Talia’s and her bedrooms were open, and she peered into each room. They seemed undisturbed. She pushed her bedroom door flat against the wall, prepared to use the pepper spray and run if she felt the slightest resistance behind it. She saw her CD player on the bureau and her small television set on a shelf in the armoire. She didn’t have a lot of jewelry, but the teak box with her earrings and bracelets and a couple of necklaces was still atop her dresser. So was her own iPod. She checked the bottom drawer of the bureau, and sure enough her checkbook and passport were still underneath her sweaters-which were, as she kept them, all perfectly folded. Everything was exactly the way she had left it Friday morning.

She sat down on her mattress, wondering what it meant that nothing seemed to have been stolen. And then it hit her: Nothing had been taken because the only thing the intruder had wanted was in her cabinet at the UVM darkroom. The snapshots, too, because she had wanted to keep everything together. Suddenly, even the way Terrance Leckbruge had tried to detain her at the wine bar seemed ominous-because, of course, it was. While they had been together downtown, Leckbruge had known someone was at her apartment, and he had wanted to keep her with him as long as possible while his associate, whoever it was, tried to find Bobbie Crocker’s negatives and prints. She recalled the way he had checked his watch and tried to prevent her from leaving.

“ Laurel?”

She looked up, and there was Talia in the doorway to her bedroom.

“Someone was here,” Laurel told her, her voice a stunned monotone. “Someone trashed our apartment. They were after Bobbie Crocker’s negatives.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Something’s in them. The negatives. Something’s in one of the negatives I haven’t printed yet. Or something important is in one of the ones I have, and I didn’t recognize its meaning.”

“ Laurel,” said Talia again, though this time it wasn’t a question. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the words “Make my day” printed on it, and there was a deep bruise forming along the back of her left hand and a string of badly applied Band-Aids on her right. Her hair was a rat’s nest, and she looked exhausted. Instantly, Laurel remembered: paintball. She was supposed to have helped Talia chaperone the youth group’s paintball outing that day.

“Oh, Talia, I forgot. I am so sorry. I really blew it, didn’t I? I don’t know what to say. It’s just been a completely weird, completely awful day. I blew off my best friend, and now I’ve come home to find our apartment was trashed by-”

“Gwen’s dog.”

“What?”

“Gwen is away this weekend, and she asked me to walk Merlin,” Talia grunted, as she limped over to the edge of the bed and sat down beside Laurel, trying to massage one of her sore shoulders with her hand. Gwen was the aspiring veterinarian who lived in their apartment house, and Merlin was the good-natured but gigantic foo dog-part canine, part lion-that Gwen continued to insist was a mere mutt from the animal shelter. “You know, I hurt everywhere,” Talia continued. Then: “Don’t feel guilty. No, strike that. Do feel guilty. Feel guilty as hell: I could really have used you today.”

Laurel felt like they were having two conversations at once: paintball and what had happened to their apartment. “Gwen’s dog made this mess?” she asked.

Talia nodded. “About, like, fifteen minutes ago. It’s my fault. I’d just finished walking him. Actually, he walked me. I hobbled. Anyway, I thought I heard a noise in our apartment, so I went upstairs to give you hell for leaving me alone in the woods with a dozen teenagers with semiautomatic Piranha-brand paintball rifles. You didn’t answer, but there was definitely something scratching around inside-”

“There was someone here? Did you see him?”

“Not someone. Some animal. It was a squirrel.”

“A squirrel,” said Laurel.

“Yeah, our window was wide open, and a squirrel was running along the couch when I opened the door. And Merlin saw it and went nuclear. Chased it everywhere. Toppled that nice lamp of yours, banged off the coffee table. Twice. Practically dove off the balcony when the son of a bitch scooted down the maple tree there. And I was, I am sorry to say, far too banged up to move with the kind of haste I would have needed to grab Merlin before he and the squirrel did in our living room.”

“So we weren’t robbed.”

“Not likely,” said Talia. “Not by the squirrel, anyway. I saw him leave, and he left empty-handed. Or empty-clawed.”

“There wasn’t anyone here.”

“Nope. Just the squirrel. Man, I wish I’d had my Piranha. That squirrel would have gone through the winter with neon-colored fur.”

“You know, I think I did leave the window open this morning.”

“So you were home then. I thought I heard you return from David’s. And still you forgot we were supposed to play paintball?”

“Really, Talia, I wish I could make it up to you. I just…I just forgot.”

“Where were you? You didn’t answer your cell. You weren’t at David’s-”

“You spoke to David?”

“No, he wasn’t home, either. Were you with him?”

Laurel shook her head.

“Then where were you?”

“The darkroom.”

“You were in the darkroom on a day like today!”

“Well, I also met a man-”

“An older man, no doubt,” Talia said.

“Yes, but it wasn’t like that. It was a lawyer who wants Bobbie’s pictures. That’s where I was just now. I was meeting with him because he has a client who believes all those photos belong to her. And I am simply not going to give them up. They’re too important! And…”

“Go on.”

Laurel suddenly had the sense that she was talking too much and she heard a frenetic urgency in her tone that she could tell from Talia’s gaze was alarming her friend. And so she stopped speaking. It was all too complicated to explain, anyway.

After a moment, Talia looked away from her and then laid back on the bed. “I think I’m just going to stay here and die,” she said, clearly hoping to direct the subject away from Bobbie Crocker’s photographs. “Would you mind? There is no part of my body that isn’t sore.”

“Was it that awful?”

“Awful? It was spectacular! The only thing in the world that’s more fun than paintball is really good sex. And trust me: The sex has to be really, really good.”

“Are you kidding?”

“I’m not. It was awesome. You have no idea what you missed. I may never be able to sit up again. I may stay like this forever. But it was worth every gash and cut and bruise. We started out really badly. Whit came along-”

“Whit?”

“Uh-huh. Thank God. I needed another chaperone, you know-and a captain for a second team. And Whit took it incredibly seriously-more seriously than I did. It is so clearly a guy thing. Women can do it. But it’s not instinctive with us the way it is with guys. He took a team and I took a team. And for the first two hours he just spanked us. I mean spanked us hard. It was pretty harsh, trust me. But then I figured it out. I just, like, totally got it: You actually need to view it like chess at first and plan your moves. And then, all at once, as soon as you’re in position, you stop thinking and you pretend you’re at the wildest party you’ve ever been at in your whole life, you’re on the dance floor, and you are totally out of control. You just give it up completely. And once I understood that? Well, Whit was a dead man for the rest of the day. We were unstoppable, and I didn’t have the kids on my team who live for their PlayStations. I did it with soldiers like Michelle. You know Michelle, right? Shy little Michelle? Well, we took no prisoners. None. Zip, zero, nada.”

“It all sounds sort of violent,” said Laurel.

“Sort of? Hello? I found myself snaking through a quarter mile of mud and pricker bushes on my stomach so I could sneak up behind a half-dozen teenagers I’m supposed to be mentoring in the ways of the Lord. When I rose up to nail them, I heard myself screaming they better drop their rifles or their brains would be roadkill.”

“Did you really say that?”

Talia paused. “Actually, I think I said something much worse. But we won’t go there.”

“And they dropped their rifles?”

“Well, if you want to know the truth, I didn’t really give them the option. I think Matthew tried to get off a round before I gunned him down. But he didn’t have a prayer. None of them did. I torched them all. Next time, you have to join us. You simply must.”

Laurel smiled politely and hoped she looked sincere. But she wasn’t sure that she did. “Okay,” she murmured. “I’ll really try.”

“I’m serious,” Talia said, exhaling loudly, contentedly, despite her aches and pains. “And I know I owe you a lamp. Is there any other wreckage? I dragged Merlin back downstairs before I could really survey the damage.”

“Just the lamp. And you don’t owe me anything. Don’t even think about it.”

Talia pushed her ragged body back up into a sitting position, resting her weight on her elbows. It was apparent to Laurel that this small feat had taken serious effort. “Well, I’ll buy us a new one. And I should clean up this mess myself. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can bend over.”

“You stay here,” Laurel insisted. “I can pick up the pieces. Do you want something to drink?”

“Morphine.”

“Will wine be okay? Or juice?”

“Wine’s fine. But crush an analgesic in it…or morphine.”

“Okay,” she said, hoping they really did have a bottle of wine in the kitchen. She honestly wasn’t sure.

“Tell me something,” Talia said suddenly.

“Sure.”

“Why haven’t I seen you since you got back from your mom’s?”

“Is that true?” she asked, though she knew that it was.

“I can’t believe you’re pissed at me,” Talia continued, “because I am far too adorable for anyone ever to be pissed at me. At least for more than, like, a minute. But someone with a less-healthy ego might wonder what’s going on here. I mean, I haven’t seen you since before you left for Long Island, and then today you left me to the lions.”

Laurel felt an eddy of autumn wind in the room, and so she closed the window and locked it. She thought for a moment before answering, because she was of two minds. On the one hand, she had always taken a small amount of pride, perhaps unjustified, in the reality that she was attentive and responsible in the eyes of her family and friends. She didn’t let people down. On the other hand, she wondered if the reason she forgot about paintball wasn’t that she was so focused on Bobbie Crocker’s work; perhaps it was because a part of her understood that the last thing in the world anyone should expect of her was a desire to run through the woods with a toy gun. Perhaps she forgot because Talia should never have asked her to join the group in the first place.

“I didn’t mean to leave you to the lions. And I’m certainly not mad at you. Why would I be?” she asked. She recognized a small iciness in her voice and did nothing to rein it in.

“So you’ve simply been busy.”

“Yes.”

“With David?”

“No.”

“Not with your dead homeless man, I hope.”

“Why do people refer to him that way? He wasn’t homeless! We found him a home-”

“Hey, Laurel, chill. I didn’t mean-”

“And why must being homeless be anyone’s sole distinguishing feature? I notice you didn’t describe him as a photographer. Or a veteran. Or a comic. He was very funny, you know. Frankly…”

“Frankly what?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“There’s nothing to say. Just…nothing.”

Talia lurched slowly to her feet and narrowed her eyes as if to say, I’ve had enough of this, thank you very much. Laurel hadn’t noticed it before, but the girl had a gibbous-shaped bruise the color of eggplant on the side of her neck. “I think I’m going to go take a hot bath,” Talia said quietly. “I can get my own wine.” Then her roommate limped past her into the kitchen, where Laurel heard her reaching into the cabinet for a glass and into the refrigerator for the wine. Laurel waited, unmoving, until she heard their bathroom door close. Talia did not exactly slam it, but she gave the door a demonstrable thwack.

She had a nagging sense that she didn’t feel quite badly enough that Talia and she had snapped at each other-that she just might have overreacted when her friend had referred to Bobbie Crocker as homeless. But this had been a stressful week, hadn’t it? And it had been a very long day, right? And, besides, what did any of it matter when Crocker’s work-when her work-might be in jeopardy? When there remained negatives left to print? The most important thing to do now, Laurel decided, was to return to the UVM darkroom and find a secure place for Bobbie Crocker’s negatives and photographs. Just because someone hadn’t tried to take them that afternoon didn’t mean someone wouldn’t try to steal them tomorrow.

The rest-Talia and David and Mr. Terrance J. Leckbruge-would just have to wait. The mess on the living room floor would just have to wait. And so she shouted through the bathroom door that she was leaving again, and then she started down the old Victorian’s creaky wooden stairs.

BEFORE PACKING AWAY Crocker’s photos at the UVM darkroom-the finished ones that he had kept with him all those years, as well as the negatives Laurel had printed herself-she ripped a piece of paper from a yellow legal pad and scribbled a time line indicating roughly when they had been taken. Most of the dates were guesswork based on Internet research: The Hula-Hoop had been invented in 1958 and the craze had run its course by the early 1960s. Assuming that the photograph of the two hundred girls with their Hula-Hoops on the football field had been taken at the pinnacle of the toy’s popularity, it had probably been snapped between 1959 and 1961. Laurel ’s aunt Joyce had looked at the liner notes of her cousin Martin’s Camelot CD and given Laurel the rough years when Julie Andrews had played Guinevere. Other dates were even more imprecise: Eartha Kitt was ageless, but Laurel guessed she was about forty in the portrait of her Crocker had taken outside Carnegie Hall-a guess based entirely on Laurel’s sense that Kitt looked about the age she had been when she had played Catwoman on the old Batman TV show, and the performer was thirty-nine that year. Sometimes Laurel gave a picture a date based on nothing more than her profoundly limited knowledge of vintage clothing and cars.

And yet as approximate as the time line was, it was helpful nonetheless.

Crocker Photos: Rough Dates

Mid-1950s:

Chuck Berry

Robert Frost

Jazz musicians (many photos)

The Brooklyn Bridge

Muddy Waters

Plaza Hotel

Late-1950s:

Beatniks (three)

Eisenhower (at United Nations?)

Real Gidget (Kathy Kohner Zuckerman)

Hair dryers

Autos (many)

Washington Square

Train station, West Egg

Cigarettes (in ashtrays, on tables, close-ups in people’s mouths)

Street football underneath Hebrew National billboard

1960/61:

Julie Andrews (Camelot)

Girls with Hula-Hoops

Early 1960s:

Sculptor (unknown)

Paul Newman

Zero Mostel

More autos (a half-dozen)

Manhattan cityscapes (including Chrysler building)

New York Philharmonic

IBM typewriter (three)

Greenwich Village street scenes (four)

Chess players in Washington Square

1964:

World’s Fair (a half-dozen shots, including the Unisphere)

Freedom march, Frankfort, Kentucky

Martin Luther King (at Frankfort march?)

Lyndon Johnson (in big hat in a ballroom)

Dick Van Dyke

Mid-1960s:

Eartha Kitt

Bob Dylan

Myrlie Evers-Williams

Brownstones (in Brooklyn?)

Mustang in front of Marshfield estate (car introduced in 1964)

Midwestern arts-and-crafts house (looks like Wright)

Nancy Olson

Fifth Avenue bus

Modern dancers (a series)

Late-1960s:

Jesse Jackson

Coretta Scott King

Lava lamps (many-a series? for an ad?)

Jazz club (a series)

Joey Heatherton (I think)

Sunbathers at Jones Beach

Central Park series (picnics, baseball, the zoo, hippies)

Paul Sorvino (and Mira?)

Love beads and peace medallions

Early-1970s:

Flip Wilson

Unknown rock band

Actors: Jack Klugman and Tony Randall

World Trade Towers

Wall Street (many)

Main Street, West Egg

Ray Stevens (maybe)

Liza Minnelli

Jazz trumpeter

Late-1970s (or later!):

Valley of Ashes office park (not real name)

Plaza Hotel (again)

Jewelry box (may be art deco, but on negative strip with Valley of Ashes office park)

East Egg train platform

East Egg shoreline

West Egg shoreline

My old swim club (Gatsby’s old house)

Crab apple tree (a few prints, one with a little pyramid of apples beside it)

Late 1990s/Early 2000s:

Underhill dirt road scenes (two with a girl on a bike)

Stowe church

Waterfall

Dog by bakery

Mount Mansfield ski trails (in summer)

She noticed that either Bobbie stopped working through much of the 1980s and 1990s, or those images had been lost. She also found it interesting that he seemed to have returned with increasing frequency as he grew older to East and West Egg and the Valley of Ashes. It was possible that he had been returning there all along, annually perhaps-she had that photograph of the West Egg train platform with cars nearby from the late 1950s-and those negatives and prints had simply disappeared over time. But she had a feeling this wasn’t the case. She imagined him in his mid- to late-fifties, retracing his steps and the swath left behind by his parents. She noted how he had photographed the Plaza at least twice, and she was sure that he couldn’t help but see through the walls of the hotel to the steamy afternoon when his mother’s lone (at least Laurel believed it was lone) infidelity had become clear to his father.

She gazed at each of the images before she packed them safely away in the portfolio case. What could have taken ten minutes took close to ninety. Initially, she presumed she was searching each photograph for whatever it was that Pamela Marshfield or Terrance Leckbruge so desperately wanted-the clue to their impenetrable interest. She was looking as well for the devil: a person, an image, a carnival freak. Wasn’t that what Pete Stambolinos had said? There might be a photo of a carny. But there wasn’t, at least not yet. There certainly weren’t any images from the county fair held annually near Burlington. There weren’t even any images that might be considered in the slightest way threatening.

And so, increasingly, she found herself studying the compositions themselves, Bobbie Crocker’s use of light and dark, and the way he was capable of making even the most journeyman subjects fascinating: a typewriter. A cigarette. Men playing chess. She feared that her printing wasn’t doing them justice. He deserved better.

After she had boxed the prints up, she decided she couldn’t bring them back home. Yes, it had only been a squirrel in the apartment today. But tomorrow? Other people wanted these images; Bobbie had understood that. It was why he had shared them with no one. And so she viewed the squirrel as a sign sent by a guardian angel. The message? Put those pictures someplace safe.

And that place certainly wasn’t going to be her office at BEDS. She trusted Katherine, but not the lawyers. David’s co-op was a possibility, but that might endanger his little girls if someone broke in. And while his office would be secure-it was impossible to venture inside the newspaper without either an ID card with a strip that could be read by the scanner or being buzzed inside by the receptionist-that security might also preclude her from accessing the materials when David wasn’t there. She knew some of the receptionists, but not all.

Briefly, she even considered Pete Stambolinos, appreciating the irony of hiding the photos in the very same building in which they had moldered the last year of Bobbie Crocker’s life. But it didn’t seem especially prudent to turn them over to a man who had never numbered levelheadedness among his personal strengths.

She needed an acquaintance, someone who Marshfield or Leckbruge would not associate with her, and decided she should try Serena Sargent. She was going to Bartlett tomorrow to visit the Congregational church that Crocker’s old editor may have attended, but she figured she could leave the prints she had already made with the waitress when she was done. She could visit the woman at her home in Waterbury or, if Serena was working, she could stop by her diner in Burlington in the afternoon. Meanwhile, she would keep the unexamined negatives-and, in truth, there were no more than three dozen strips left to print-with her wherever she went.

PATIENT 29873

It would be helpful to know the most recent or pertinent stressor.

In the meantime, it remains difficult to keep a conversation on track. Patient has moments of marked conversational clarity followed consistently by a delusional digression that derails our progress. Still unwilling to discuss treatment and aftercare plans.

From the notes of Kenneth Pierce,

attending psychiatrist,

Vermont State Hospital, Waterbury, Vermont