Dead Souls Page 7

  Christ, I don’t even believe in souls, or hell, or heaven. How can something you don’t believe in try to ruin you so completely?

  There’s a sudden flash of light, bright like a bursting star, coming from a knoll near a pyramid-shaped tomb. I see a tall, thin man standing next to a tripod, a sharp silhouette against the retreating, ominous clouds. Either he’s impervious to the rain or just doesn’t give a shit—even from three or four hundred yards away, there is something relaxed and confident about him, like a rancher surveying his land. I feel that magnetic pull again, so strong that my car drifts into the right-hand lane, almost of its own accord.

  And even though he’s so far away, I can tell he sees me. Locks on to my car like it’s a lost sheep, newly found.

  And waves me over.

  This is how I meet Alejandro.

  I DRIVE UP THE SERPENTINE ROAD, wheels crunching on gravel, past small rounded tombstones, taller ones adorned with Celtic crosses, rectangular granite monoliths. A weary angel rests his head on his hand. I pass mausoleums that look like small Parthenons or domed miniature churches. A small medieval city planted on a hill with stunning views the dead will never enjoy, and of course I think about the grass, how green it is, and why.

  When I reach the pyramid I pull over; a fluttery, nervous feeling builds in my stomach. The tall, thin man is leaning into his tripod, eyes fixed in the viewfinder of a non-digital camera, some kind of antique, boxy monstrosity that must weigh a good fifteen or twenty pounds. Brown, curly hair streaked with gray radiates out from his head like a halo, and he wears distressed black jeans, red cowboy boots, a trim, close-fitting rain jacket.

  I get out of the car.

  “Stop!” Faintest hint of an accent, Portuguese, Italian, hard to say. And I don’t know why, but I do what he says. He turns the camera, points it at me. Behind the lens is a black accordion-­like extension that meets a metal rectangle, some kind of large film format, four-by-five maybe.

  For a moment I just stand there, frozen, waiting. Rain starts to clump my hair—it drips down my cheeks, beads off my eyelashes. It feels good, the cold water. Why does this stranger look so familiar?

  He then holds up the most ridiculous-looking flashbulb. “Perfect. Beautiful. Beautiful. Don’t move.”

  And just like that I’m bound. Snap. The light blinds me and I blink furiously, trying to see through the glowing orbs that linger. But some kind of magic spell is broken and now I can move again, which I do, cautiously approaching him.

  It’s when he smiles that I realize where I’ve seen him before—for years, Sumpter courted the notable portrait photographer Alejandro Xavier for an ad campaign, but he had always been a few hundred thousand dollars out of our price range, and these days exists on a different planet altogether. There was a profile of him recently in the San Francisco Chronicle, an art show and auction where he netted a million dollars for one portrait alone, Girl in Shadow, Girl in Light, and a documentary about his life—his spectacular rise from Rio de Janeiro street orphan to central California strawberry picker to world-renowned photographer—won a major award in Cannes.

  “Welcome,” he says, extending a hand. Welcome, not hello, not an introduction. Maybe he realizes none is needed.

  I take his hand. His fingers are slender, elegant, like a pianist’s, and his palm is cool and dry. Behind him is the city, the gray waters of the bay, and beyond that San Francisco cloaked in fog.

  The rain lightens. In Lowell, we’d look out at rain like this, say it’s spitting. Maybe that’s what’s happening now. God is spitting on me. If I believed in such a thing as God.

  “Welcome to what?” I ask.

  He grins, lets go of my hand, raises his arms to the sky in a way that’s manic, ecstatic, and turns like everything in his purview is his to share.

  “To the damned my dear. To the tribe of dead souls.”

  Damned. Souls. Tribe. It’s a cold, brutal shock, hearing Scratch’s words regurgitated through another person, and a celebrity at that. I take a step back. “I’m sorry . . . what?”

  “Your darkness,” he says. He seems absurdly happy, in a Zen-like way. “We all share it.” Now he looks at me quizzically, curious. “Do you even know what I’m talking about?”

  My heart races. Deep down, even though I’m fighting this, I do know.

  But I don’t want to.

  His light, burnished skin—a strange shade, and even now that a sliver of sun peeks out from the clouds, it isn’t getting lighter. The whites of his eyes slightly tinged with gray. The grass is sparkling with raindrops, the pale marble of the pyramid mausoleum glistens, begins to shine, but he’s still slightly in silhouette, in shadow.

  I hold out my own arm, roll up the sleeve of my coat. Yes, that same dark tinge clings to me.

  I swallow hard, fight back tears. Damned? He said damned.

  No. It just can’t be.

  I want to sink onto the ground. I want the earth to swallow me, cover me over with a soft layer of fine grass.

  “He was just a guy in a bar,” I say, my voice breaking. “He was just a guy I met in a bar.” If I say it often enough, maybe it’ll be true. “I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing, saying. It’s not fair.”

  “Oh, my dear girl,” says Alejandro, and he steps forward, folds me into an embrace. “You know the world we’re working with. When has fair ever come into play?” he says softly, like he’s trying to soothe a child.

  My arms are stiff at my sides. He smells like cigarettes and strong coffee. My shoulders shake.

  He leans in and whispers in my ear. “It’s not as bad as all that. Or . . . well it is . . . but you don’t have to think about it, not every day. And there’s wonder in it too. Magic. You’ll see.”

  My cell phone finally rings, and I know who it is, even without looking.

  Some days fate just fucks you over completely.

  Justin.

  I PRESS ANSWER. Is it really still Saturday? Did I really just leave the bar sometime in the early hours of the morning? Everything has gone several stages past surreal, and I am now in some new realm where it wouldn’t surprise me to see a hailstorm of frogs drop from the sky, or the blue waters of the bay turn bloodred, or see the dead pry themselves up out of the softened ground, heeding the call of some apocalyptic horn.

  “Hi there,” I say. My bones ache; I am so tired. So very, very tired.

  “Hey,” says Justin. “Did you try calling me earlier?”

  Did I? Oh, right, the bathroom stall. A decade ago. “You didn’t pick up.”

  It’s strange, this talking. How easy it is to put on a mask, make believe. Let’s make believe we’re doctors; let’s make believe we’re movie actresses; let’s make believe we live on the moon. Childhood, the most forgiving state of consciousness. Let’s make believe I didn’t sell my soul last night.

  “Your voice sounds strange.”

  “Does it?”

  Alejandro sets up his tripod just out of earshot, giving me some privacy. He pulls out a thermos, pours something hot and steaming into it.

  “Where are you?” asks Justin.

  I laugh before I stop myself.

  “Why, what’s so funny?”

  “Nothing, just . . .” Just I’m standing in a cemetery, just you’re in a strange city having an affair with a strange woman, just I might be condemned to hell. “I’m not feeling like myself today.”

  Intake of his breath on the line. I shouldn’t have said that. The last time I said that, I was in a low moment. I hadn’t even realized I’d scraped my thigh with a fork prong, but he’d brought up the m-word, marriage. It wasn’t a deep wound—just the slightest beading of blood, really more of a scratch, ha-ha—but Justin got scared, threatened to call the therapist I’d said I’d been seeing but had bailed out on months before. He still writes me pity scripts though. Ambien 10 mg, once daily as needed
, which is daily. A side of Xanax as needed, which is also daily. Probably charges my insurance company for our nonexistent visits, which suits me just fine.

  “How are you?” I ask, to change the subject.

  An odd pause. “We need to talk.”

  I almost have to cover my mouth; everything is so giddy, so funny, but not. “We are talking.”

  “In person.”

  So, this is where he dumps me. A restaurant? Should I suggest Make Westing and perfect the circle of disaster? I feel gypped, preempted—if he’s made up his mind to leave me for Pink Coat, there’s not much point to my invisible ghost-twin plan. Which means I sold my soul for nothing and made a motherfucker of a bad deal.

  It disturbs me, the things I’m starting to think.

  “I’m on a flight this afternoon,” he says. “I could be at your place by six.”

  Anything could happen by six. The world could explode, shatter into a hundred thousand million pieces, or there could be a nuclear strike, or we could get forty days and forty nights of rain. For the first time, a flood makes sense to me. I can see where a god would want to wash us all away.

  “Sure,” I say. I never say sure.

  “Okay.” Justin sounds relieved, like he was planning on this being harder somehow. “Are you okay? Did you sleep?”

  Alejandro holds his hand over his eyes. The sun now casts long, dark shadows. Down the hill, I see New Agey woman get out of a beat-up Volkswagen, carrying a pad of paper and some kind of rolled cloth.

  “Never better.” That could be a tongue twister, or a curse, never better, never better, never better.

  “Okay. I’ll see you soon.” There’s a foreign ache in Justin’s voice, like he’s as weary as I am. “I love you.”

  Words. More hollow, empty words. Apparently we’re to see the farce until the end, until he breaks it to me gently: It’s not you, it’s me.

  “I love you too.”

  “ ’Bye.” Click goes the phone. It feels heavy in my hand, a dead thing. I watch the woman down the hill wipe one of the tombstones dry with the sleeve of her coat, then she pulls a sheet of paper from her pad, presses it against the etching, and starts to rub something across it. Charcoal. Apparently the cemetery is a draw for all kinds of artists.

  “What did you say your name was?” Alejandro takes a long sip from his thermos mug.

  “I didn’t.” Don’t talk to strangers. Four words that just might have saved me, but now there’s nothing left to save. “Fiona. Fiona Dunn.”

  “Come here,” he says, beckoning toward the viewfinder. “Come and see Fiona Dunn.”

  IT’S COMFORTING to see the world framed in, limited to a box. Contained. The clouds cast stark shadows across some of the tombstones, mottling the wet, hilly landscape with light and dark. But the white of the stones glow, sparkle in the afternoon sun. It all feels cleaned, purified, reborn. A strange counterpoint to the day’s events so far.

  “Sublime, no?” Alejandro asks.

  Sublime, yes.

  “Take the picture.”

  I have no idea where the button is. I use my phone as a camera, everyone does these days, so I can’t imagine the purpose of lugging something this boxy and weighty around. Like scuba diving in one of those old suits with astronaut helmets.

  “Here,” he says, pointing to a thin cable. “There’s a button at the end. It will open the shutter, let the light in.”

  I take the cable in my hand, press the stainless-steel ­button—it feels like I’m working an IV. There’s an actual, soft click.

  “Aren’t you worried about the rain ruining your camera?”

  “This? This is a Linhof Technika. It’s a brick shit house. Virtually indestructible.”

  I look at him. “And it takes good pictures?”

  Alejandro laughs. “The camera is irrelevant. I could use an old Polaroid and still capture images that would make Ansel Adams weep. But I am old-fashioned. Sometimes I like to see how far I can perfect perfection. What you just took, it will be like his Moonrise. But you will not get the credit, of course.”

  This actually teases a small smile out of me. “Of course.”

  He looks at me, somewhat more seriously now. “This is what I traded for. My career. My success.”

  I know what he wants to ask next, but I don’t take the bait. What did you trade for? I showed you mine, you show me yours.

  He motions me to step away, then he opens something on the back of the camera and nods toward a dark blue duffel bag on the ground about a foot away. “Bring me that film-changing bag, will you? And that smaller leather one?”

  I do. He takes a square, flat film plate from the camera, hands it to me without another word, squats down to the wet ground, and unzips one side of the duffel bag. Then he slips his arms into two attached sleeves. The part of me that never turns off immediately starts making associations for a new Sumpter, Inc. bag, the Technika, expandable from a simple twelve-foot duffel to five feet long, depending on how many compartments you unzip. And it has to be waterproof, like this one seems to be.

  “Inside the leather one, you’ll find a yellow Kodak box.”

  “Kodak still makes film?”

  “For us large-format purists, yes. And I’ll take the film plate back.”

  I hand him the box of film and then, with remarkable dexterity, he zips the bag shut, changes the film inside it.

  “It took me a good month to get the hang of this,” he says. “I was so disappointed the first time I saw my results in the darkroom. All overexposed, parts of the image completely blackened. I would have thrown the negatives in the trash, but then I wanted to see what would happen. If he would honor his part of the deal. You know? Make even my failures grand successes.”

  I remember then, a bit of the Chronicle article. Alejandro’s first show, which astonished the art world. Overexposed.

  “You got what you wanted then.”

  “No, I would not go that far.” He pauses for a moment. I can almost hear the woman down the hill rubbing charcoal on her paper. It’s a soothing, white-noise sound.

  “I got what I asked for,” Alejandro continues. “Exactly that, and nothing more. What I wanted, in my heart, was revenge. Revenge takes you on a twisted journey, until the end has no meaning anymore, until everything tastes like ash. The truth is . . . I hate photography. Absolutely hate it. I mean, everything about it—the people who are drawn to it, like flies to shit, the stink of chemicals, the flattening of the world into a sheet of paper. But the materialism . . . well, I have to admit I enjoy those benefits. Once you’re poor, and then you’re rich, you’d rather die than be poor again.”

  There had been a photo in the Chronicle too, of his lovely restored five-bedroom Victorian in Noe Valley. I remember because we clipped the picture and added it to our vision board for the Istanbul’s demographic.

  “But why ask to be good at something you hate?”

  “Because that was part of the retribution. I have never felt so righteous as when I was planning my revenge. I miss being that naive.”

  He unzips the bag, pulls out the film plate, inserts it back into the camera. “When I was sleeping on the streets, a man came, a Western man.”

  “Scratch?” I ask tentatively.

  He chuckles softly. “He hasn’t used that name in a long time.”

  “Why, you don’t call him that?”

  “Oh he has many names. Lucifer, Iblis, the Son of the Morning, Satan, Melek Taus, Mara, Kölski, Angra Mainyu, der Leibhaftige, Diabolus,” he says, adjusting the tripod. “And he takes many forms. Whatever he thinks will work best—woman, man, child. Stranger, friend, lover.”

  An unnerving thought strikes me. “So he can look like anyone. Even you.”

  Alejandro smiles. “Do you see my face?”

  Of course I can, even the fine lines edging his gray-blue eyes
. But Scratch? No.

  As if he can see the realization hit, Alejandro adds, “No one sees the face of the devil. We would go mad, apparently. But a good way to know if the person you are speaking to is him.”

  He looks off into the horizon line, something weary in his expression, and I sense there is more, much more to this story. But he continues with the other.

  “It was another kind of devil that came to me as a child,” he says. “A man with a camera. For a few days, he took photos of all of us—how we lived, how we stole, how we sold cocaine in the favelas. He was an artist, he said. It was for a famous American magazine, he said. He gave us ice cream, Belém cakes, sonhos. And then he showed me an American hundred-dollar bill. I followed him back to the hotel room where he was staying . . . and there he took different kinds of pictures.”

  There is no reason to ask what kind. It’s in his face, a small death there.

  “Before she died, my grandmother, who was full Mayan, warned me of photographs. How they could steal your soul, trap them in celluloid. Mine was long gone before I ever met our mutual friend.”

  Oddly there is not even the slightest trace of bitterness as he says this, or a twinge of pain. It’s like he’s telling me a story about someone else, about something that has nothing to do with him directly. There was once a woman at work like this; she’d been diagnosed with lung cancer, given three to six months to live. She was ashen-faced at first, hostile, a broken glass you were afraid to speak to. But then, toward the end, she came back for one last visit, and she was preternaturally calm, kind almost. Like we were the ones suffering, not her.

  “I met the devil in Monterey. There was a library in town with a computer, and after months of searching I’d found the American man with the American hundred-dollar bill. Toby Whitfield. A photojournalist in the seventies. He tried and failed to become a fine-art photographer and moved into real estate photography instead. So when I made my trade, I knew what I wanted. The poor orphan would achieve the heights Whitfield aspired to, and then I would reveal myself to him, degrade him, taunt him with my success. Ruin him, if there was anything left to ruin. I thought there would be some satisfaction in that. I had damning evidence that I was planning to confront him with before calling the authorities. Then I hired him to come shoot my impeccable house, so he could see the life that would never be his, make his failure visceral. But when the moment came, when he arrived in his beat-up van, with his battered camera, I found no satisfaction. I saw he was a small man, an old man, a broken man. His demons had already claimed him long ago. I didn’t even tell him who I was.”