"Good,"
I said.
"You
like cassoulet?" He poked me with a wooden spoon. "Not in the
kitchen! Gryffin, get her outta here. Go sit or something, I got stuff to
do."
I
went into the main room. Robert sat on a sprung couch, listening to an iPod
through a pair of earbuds. Gryffin stood perusing the bookshelves. I made a
dent in my wine, then inspected those photographs.
He
had a good eye, this friend of Gryffin's. There was a signed early Caponigro; a
Bobbi Carey cyanotype; an image from Kamestos's island sequence that I'd never
seen before.
But
it was the next photo that made me catch my breath.
It
reminded me of Aphrodite's stuff. Threads and fuzz protruded from the hardened
emulsion, and a stew of pigments bled through the image. Colors you normally
wouldn't see in the same frame—magenta, crimson, a sickly psychedelic orange;
acid green, spurts of violet and leathery brown. The rush of colors was
disorienting but also purposeful, like one of those untitled de Kooning
paintings that seems to hover just beyond comprehension.
Somebody
knew what he was doing here. But I sure as hell couldn't figure it out: I was
at a total loss as to what I was looking at.
To
make it worse, the picture had been messed with after processing. I could see
brushstrokes and the marks of a fine-point drafting pen, or maybe 1 needle, and
there were bits of leaves or feathers just under the emulsion surface. It all
distracted from the image itself, that abstract mass of color and texture; and
while there was a real painterly quality in the use of pigment and brushwork,
it was definitely a photograph and not a painting. All the post-production
stuff—brushstrokes, dirt—made it impossible to get a fix on what the original
image had been.
Perversely,
that's also what made it hard to look away. It was weirdly familiar, like
Aphrodite's pictures, but like something else too. What? I kept feeling like I
almost had a handle on it—a face, a dog, a branch—feeling like I
knew
what
it was. Id seen it before.
I'd
bet cash money that whoever shot this picture had looked a long time at
Mors,
maybe too long. And I'd bet my life it was the same guy who'd shot those
peekaboo pictures of the little hippie chick.
The
weirdest thing was how it
smelled.
You
had to be practically on top of it to notice, but it was there—a pungent,
indisputably
bad
smell, like nothing I'd ever encountered before. It
smelled like a skunk, only much, much worse, musky and intensely fishy at the
same time. It smelled horrible and rank without smelling like something
dead—whatever it was, it somehow smelled
alive.
I've been around
corpses. I've seen a body hauled out of the East River. I've taken pictures of
a severed arm.
None
of them smelled good. And none of them smelled like this.
Gryffin
came up behind me. "What're you looking at?"
"This
picture here," I said. "Who took it?"
Gryffin
squinted at it. "I dunno. Ask Ray."
"It's
not by Aphrodite, right?"
"Definitely
not. Although ..."
He
peered at the corner of the print, then tapped it. "Look at that."
I
had trouble seeing it at first, but then I made it out—a tiny word, in black
ballpoint ink, printed carefully as though by a kid.
S.P.O.T
"'Spot'?
What's that?" I remembered the turtle shell I'd seen in the Island Store.
"What, is it a pet?"
"It's
a joke. It's got to be one of Denny's."
"Denny
Ahearn?"
"Yeah.
Ray would know. Want more wine?"
We
sat at a table set with candles and heavy old silver, also two more bottles of
wine. I refilled my glass and said, "So Denny—he was a photographer
too?"
"Oh
sure." Gryffin rolled his eyes. "Drugs, sex, photography—Denny's a
Renaissance man."
"Robert!"
Ray's blistering voice rang from the kitchen. "Get in here, I need you.
Now!"
Robert
stood, still jacked into his earbuds, hitched up his pants, and sloped into the
kitchen. I leaned across the table toward Gryffin. "What's with the kid?
Does this guy like getting beaten up by the natives?"
"Robert's
eighteen. Ray pays him to help out. I don't think they sleep together—Ray just
likes to have someone to boss around."
"Helps
out with what?" I looked at the skeins of dust trailing from the ceiling
and walls. "Is Robert in charge of the duct tape?"
"Voila!
Ray made his entrance, carrying a
Majolica tureen. "Cassoulet!"
There
was also home-baked bread and pickled string beans. The wine was great.
And
there was a lot of it. The cluttered space began to take on a warm glow. If I
let my eyes go out of focus, I could almost imagine what our host might see in
Robert, who ate in silence, earbuds dangling around his neck.
Mostly,
though, I looked at Gryffin. There was nothing special about him. He was
nothing like my type, unless you consider too much melanin in one iris to
constitute a type.
But
I couldn't tear my eyes from him. I kept waiting to see him look the way he did
in that stolen photograph.
It
wasn't happening. Occasionally he'd glance at me, that oddly furtive look. When
we finished eating, Robert cleared the table then brought in more glasses and a
bottle of Calvados before flopping back onto the couch. Within minutes I heard
him snoring softly.
"Ray."
Gryffin pointed to the photo we'd examined earlier. "That picture—who took
it?"
"That
one?" Ray's broken face twisted into a frown. "That's
Aphrodite's."
No,"
I said. "The one next to it."
"This?"
Ray stumped to the wall and removed the photo. "This is one of
Denny's."
He
blew on the surface. A fume of dust rose, and he began coughing. "Ugh—Robert!
You're falling down on the job! For chrissakes."
He
shook his head. "Yeah. Denny's—this is one of his. I paid a lot of money
for this."
Gryffin
laughed. Ray glanced at him irritably and turned the frame over. It was backed
with a piece of stained cardboard.
"He
needs to work on his presentation," Ray said. "I told him that. He
never listens."
"Denny's
incapable of listening to anything except the UFO voices in his head,"
said Gryffin. "May I?"
Ray
handed him the photo. Gryffin stared at it, finally pronounced, "I still
think it's crap."
"You
Philistine," moaned Ray. "It's
beautiful"
Gryffin
looked at me. "What do you think?"
"I
think it's good," I said as Ray poured Calvados. "But—what is
it?"
Ray
handed me a glass. "Who knows? I like it."
"Yeah,
me too." I sipped my Calvados, still staring at the photo. "Does he
do a lot of these?"
Ray
leaned back in his chair and stroked his beard. "I'm not sure. Not a lot,
I don't think. She started him on it—Aphrodite." He pointed at Gryffin.
"He doesn't like to hear this."
Gryffin
stood. "No, I don't. Excuse me for a minute."
He
left the room. Ray shrugged. "Don't mind him. Aphrodite, she and Denny
were involved, back in the old days. This was before Gryffin was even born, but
there was always bad blood between him and Denny. Who fucked everything, I
might add. Everything in skirts, anyway."
He
hesitated, his expression pained. "Gryffin's father, you know, Steve—the
love of my life. We were together seventeen years. Steve lived here, Gryffin
was always around. I mean, when he wasn't off at school. Aphrodite was never
much of a mother. Actually, Steve was never much of a father either," he
said. "Whereas I love kids—and don't you look at me like that, I never
touched him.
Never touched him!'
He
sighed, staring across the room to where Robert snored on the sofa. "You
know, I never touched those others, either. I did
look,
though," he
added and laughed again. "But you know what that's like, right? You
photographers. You like to look and not touch. Voyeurs."
"No,"
I said. "Voyeurs need to feel protected. I like to feel threatened.
"Seems
like you'd be able to find a lot of work these days."
"Hasn't
worked out that way. Denny—how come he didn't sign his name?"
"Didn't
he?"
"There."
I pointed at the corner of print. "It says 'Spot.'"
"Oh
yeah. That's him."
"Spot?
What's that mean? Gryffin said it's a joke."
"A
joke?" Ray held out his hand, and I gave him back the photo. He looked at
it then replaced it on the wall and settled back into his chair. "I guess it's
a joke. Tell you the truth, I don't really remember. It was something weird,
though. Denny, he was into that kind of woo-woo stuff. That commune of his,
they got into all kinds of ritual shit. Well,
they
called it religion. I
called it ripping off the Indians. Native Americans, I mean—they were crazy for
that kind of stuff. After they finished the Buddhists and the Hindus and the
God knows what else. All those off-brand religions. But those kids, none of 'em
was any more Native American than me."
He
sighed. "Denny, he was way into it. He was smart too—he flunked out of
Harvard. He was studying comparative religions or some such.
Gilgamesh,
that
was one of his big things. Babylonian stuff. He was a beautiful young man,
Denny. You wouldn't know it now. Let's face it, living here takes years off
your life. That's why everyone drinks like a fish. It's the winters. Heating
with wine. Look at me! Aged before my time."
He
downed another shot of Calvados. "But that photo—what think you, huh? His
stuff is starting to get picked up. Lucien Ryel, he bought some. That one
there, I paid a grand for it a year or so ago. It's probably worth more
now."
"A
grand?" I gave him a dubious look. "That's a lot of money for someone
no one's ever heard of."
Ray
shrugged. "Hey, I'm a collector. You know how it works. Everyone wants to
bet on the new kid. Even if he's an old new kid. The photography market's crazy
these days, you know that. I don't think Denny gives a rat's ass about that
kind of shit, but Lucien, he's got an investor's eye. He turned on his rock
star friends—Pete Townshend, he bought some of Denny's stuff. Townshend goes
for outsider art. I guess this qualifies as outsider photography."
"Pretty
good for someone who used to live in a bus."
"Did
Gryffin tell you about that?" Ray gave his braying laugh. "Hey, don't
knock it! This is one of the last places in the country where people can still
live between the cracks."
It
didn't seem to me that Ray would fit between a crack smaller than, say, Chaco
Canyon. But I kept my mouth shut as he went on.
"They're
all one-offs, his stuff. Does he do a lot of these? I don't know. I've never
seen where he lives. But he obviously spends a lot of time on them. Like
Aphrodite used to, you know? Making her own paper and stuff."
"And
emulsion," I said. "He must prepare his own emulsions too. That's
what it looks like to me. If they're really one-offs, then he's producing some
kind of monotype. Or monoprint, if he uses the neg more than once.
Interesting."
"That
the kind of stuff you did?"
"No.
I would've been happy to sell lots of copies of my stuff. If anyone wanted to
buy them. But—"
I
pointed at the photograph. "What it means is, that's an original work of
art. Like if this guy was Robert Mapplethorpe, that picture would be worth a
ton of money. Probably you've already figured that out."
"That
it's worth a lot of money?"
"That
this guy ain't Robert Mapplethorpe." I finished my Calvados. "So,
what about her? Aphrodite. How come she stopped taking pictures?'
Ray
ran a hand across his scarred cheek. "Hard to say. Those early photos—she
never really had a success big as that again. I think part of it was she took
so long with each one. And there wasn't a market back then for photographs,
like there is now—she couldn't make money at it. She refused to do commercial
work when they wanted her to, and after a while no one wanted her to. And the
drinking—that's been going on a long time. When she and Steve got
involved—well, you know, she really loved him. And he loved her too, in his
way. But it was different then; for a long time he couldn't really admit to
himself what he was. That he was gay. Unlike me, who never had a problem."
He
laughed.
"They
must've gotten along at least once," I said. Ray looked at me, puzzled.
"Gryffin. They had him."
Ray
made a face. "Oh yeah. Gryffin. The miracle child. That was Denny's idea.
Like I said, Aphrodite never really took to it—being a mother and all. But
things went bad between her and Denny early on. They got real competitive, he
started taking photos, Aphrodite encouraged him—like, here's this beautiful
young guy, she takes him under her wing, you know? But then they got
competitive, and then it got weird.
He
got weird. Aphrodite, she's
accusing him of stealing stuff—"