"Help!" Ray shouted.
No one appeared.
Panic seized Ray--followed quickly by a primitive survival instinctive reaction. Flee. He tried to stand, but, nope, that was simply not happening yet. Ray was already a weakened mess. One more shot, one more hard blow with that baseball bat...
"Help!"
The attacker took two steps toward him. Ray had no choice. Still on his stomach he scrambled away like a wounded crab. Oh, sure, that would work. That would be fast enough to keep away from the damn bat. The asswipe with the baseball bat was practically over him. He had no chance.
Ray's shoulder hit something, and he realized that it was his car.
Above him he saw the bat coming up in the air. He was a second, maybe two, away from having his skull crushed. Only one chance and so he took it.
Ray turned his head so his right cheek was against the pavement, flattened his body as much as possible, and slid under his car. "Help!" he shouted again. Then to his attacker: "Just take the camera
and go!"
The attacker did just that. Ray heard the footsteps disappear down the alley. Friggin' terrific. He tried to slide himself out from under the car. His head protested, but he managed. He sat on the street now, his back against the passenger door of his car. He sat there for a while. Impossible to say how long. He may have even passed out.
When he felt that he was able, Ray cursed the world, slid into his car, and started it up.
Odd, he thought. The anniversary of all that blood--and he nearly has a ton of his own spilled. He almost smiled at the coincidence. He pulled out as the smile started sliding off his face.
A coincidence. Yep, just a coincidence. Not even a big one, when you thought about it. The night of blood had been seventeen years ago--hardly a silver anniversary or anything like that. Ray had been robbed before. Last year a drunk Ray had been rolled after leaving a strip club at two A.M. The moron had stolen his wallet and gotten away with a full seven dollars and a CVS discount card.
Still.
He found a spot on the street in front of the row house Ray called home. He rented the apartment in the basement. The house was owned by Amir Baloch, a Pakistani immigrant who lived there with his wife and four rather loud kids.
Suppose for a second, just a split second, that it wasn't a coincidence.
Ray slid out of his car. His head still pounded. It would be worse tomorrow. He took the steps down past the garbage cans to the basement door and jammed the key into the lock. He racked his aching brain, trying to imagine any connection--the slightest, smallest, frailest, most obscure link--between that tragic night seventeen years ago and being jumped tonight.
Nothing.
Tonight was a robbery, plain and simple. You whack a guy over the head with a baseball bat, you snatch his camera, you run. Except, well, wouldn't you steal his wallet too--unless maybe it was the same guy who rolled Ray near that strip joint and knew that he'd only had seven dollars? Heck, maybe that was the coincidence. Forget the timing and the anniversary. Maybe the attacker was the same guy who robbed Ray one year ago.
Oh boy, he was making no sense. Where the hell was that Vicodin?
He flipped on the television and headed into the bathroom. When he opened the medicine chest, a dozen bottles and whatnot fell into the sink. He fished into the pile and found the bottle with the Vicodin. At least he hoped that they were Vicodin. He'd bought them off the black market from a guy who claimed to smuggle them in from Canada. For all Ray knew, they were Flintstone vitamins.
The local news was on, showing some local fire, asking neighbors what they thought about the fire because, really, that always got you some wonderful insight. Ray's cell phone rang. He saw Fester's number pop up on the caller ID.
"What's up?" Ray said, collapsing on the couch.
"You sound horrible."
"I got mugged soon as I left Ira's bar mitzvah."
"For real?"
"Yep. Got hit over the head with a baseball bat."
"They steal anything?"
"My camera."
"Wait, so you lost today's pictures?"
"No, no, don't worry," Ray said. "I'm fine, really."
"On the inside I'm dying of worry. I'm asking about the pictures to cover my pain."
"I have them," Ray said.
"How?"
His head hurt too much to explain, plus the Vicodin was knocking him to la-la land. "Don't worry about it. They're safe."
A few years ago, when Ray did a stint as a "real" paparazzo, he'd gotten some wonderfully compromising photographs of a certain high-profile gay actor stepping out on his boyfriend with--gasp--a woman. The actor's bodyguard forcibly took the camera from Ray and destroyed the SD card. Since then, Ray had put a send feature on his camera--something similar to what most people have on their camera phones--that automatically e-mailed the pictures off his SD card every ten minutes.
"That's why I'm calling," Fester said. "I need them fast. Pick out five of them and e-mail them to me tonight. Ira's dad wants our new bar mitzvah paperweight cube right away."
On the TV news, the camera panned over to the "meteorologist," a curvy babe in a tight red sweater. Ratings bait. Ray's eyes started to close as the hott finished up with the satellite photograph and sent it back to the over-coiffed anchorman.
"Ray?"
"Five pics for a paperweight cube."
"Right."
"A cube has six sides," Ray said.
"Whoa, get a load of the math genius. The sixth side is for the name, date, and a Star of David."
"Got it."
"I need them ASAP."
"Okay."
"Then everything is copasetic," Fester said. "Except, well, without a camera, you can't do George Queller tomorrow. Don't worry. I'll find somebody else."
"Now I'll sleep better."
"You're a funny guy, Ray. Get me the pics. Then get some rest."
"I'm welling up from your concern, Fester."
Both men hung up. Ray fell back onto the couch. The drug was working in a wonderful way. He almost smiled. On the TV, the anchorman strapped on his gravest voice and said, "Local man Carlton Flynn has gone missing. His car was found abandoned with the door open near the pier..."
Ray opened one eye and peeked out. A man-cum-boy with frosted tips in his spiky dark hair and a hoop earring was on the screen now. The guy was making kissy lips at the camera, the caption under him reading "Vanished," when it probably should have read "Douchebag." Ray frowned, a stray, vague concern passing through his head, but he couldn't process it right now. His entire body craved sleep, but if he didn't send in those five photographs, Fester would call again and who needed that? With great effort, Ray managed to get back to his feet. He stumbled to the kitchen table, booted up his laptop, and made sure that the pictures had indeed made it to his computer.
They had.
Something niggled at the back of his head, but Ray couldn't say what. Maybe something irrelevant was bothering him. Maybe he was remembering something really important. Or maybe, most likely, the blow from the baseball bat had produced little skull fragments that were now literally scratching at his brain.
The bar mitzvah pictures came up in reverse order--last picture taken was first. Ray quickly scanned through the thumbs, choosing one dance shot, one family shot, one Torah shot, one with the rabbi, one with Ira's grandmother kissing his cheek.
That was five. He attached them to Fester's e-mail address and clicked send. Done.
Ray felt so tired that he wasn't sure he could get up from the chair and make his way to the bed. He debated just putting his head down on the kitchen table and napping when he remembered the other photographs on that SD card, the ones he'd taken earlier in the day, before the bar mitzvah.
An overwhelming feeling of sadness flooded into his chest.
Ray had gone back to that damn park and snapped pictures. Dumb, but he did it every year. He couldn't say why. Or maybe he could and that just made it worse. The camera len
s gave him distance, gave him perspective, made him feel somehow safe. Maybe that was what it was. Maybe, somehow, seeing that horrible place through that oddly comforting angle would somehow change what could, of course, never be changed.
Ray looked at the pictures he'd taken earlier in the day on his computer monitor--and now he remembered something else.
A guy with frosted tips and a hoop earring.
Two minutes later, he found what he was looking for. His entire body went cold as the realization hit him.
The attacker hadn't been after the camera. He'd been after a picture.
This picture.
2
MEGAN PIERCE WAS LIVING THE ultimate soccer-mom fantasy and hating it.
She closed the Sub-Zero fridge and looked at her two children through the bay windows off the breakfast nook. The windows offered up "essential morning light." That was how the architect had put it. The newly renovated kitchen also had a Viking stove, Miele appliances, a marble island in the middle, and excellent flow to the family-cum-theater room with the big-screen TV, recliners with cup holders, and enough sound speakers to stage a Who concert.
Out in the backyard, Kaylie, her fifteen-year-old daughter, was picking on her younger brother, Jordan. Megan sighed and opened the window. "Cut it out, Kaylie."
"I didn't do anything."
"I'm standing right here watching you."
Kaylie put her hands on her hips. Fifteen years old--that troubling adolescent cusp between adult and childhood, the body and hormones just starting to come to a boil. Megan remembered it well. "What did you see?" Kaylie asked in a challenge.
"I saw you picking on your brother."
"You're inside. You couldn't hear anything. For all you know, I said, 'I love you so much, Jordan.'"
"She did not!" Jordan shouted.
"I know she didn't," Megan said.
"She called me a loser and said I had no friends!"
Megan sighed. "Kaylie..."
"I did not!"
Megan just frowned at her.
"It's his word against mine," Kaylie protested. "Why do you always take his side?"
Every kid, Megan thought, is a frustrated lawyer, finding loopholes, demanding impossible levels of proof, attacking even the most minute of minutia.
"You have practice tonight," Megan told Kaylie.
Kaylie's head dropped to her shoulder, her entire body slumping. "Do I have to go?"
"You made a commitment to this team, young lady."
Even as Megan said it--even as she had said similar words a zillion times before--she still couldn't believe the words were coming from her own mouth.
"But I don't want to go," Kaylie whined. "I'm so tired. And I'm supposed to go out with Ginger later, remember, to..."
Kaylie may have said more, but Megan turned away, not really interested. In the TV room, her husband, Dave, was sprawled out in gray sweats. Dave was watching the latest fallen movie actor bragging in some tasteless interview about the many women he'd bagged and the years of scoring at strip clubs. The actor was manic and wide-eyed and clearly on something that required a physician with a loose prescription pad.
From his spot on the couch, Dave shook his head in disgust. "What is this world coming to?" Dave said, gesturing at the screen. "Can you believe this jerk? What a tool."
Megan nodded, suppressing a smile. Years ago she had known that tool quite well. Biblically even. The Tool was actually a pretty nice guy who tipped well, enjoyed threesomes, and cried like a baby when he drank too much.
A long time ago.
Dave turned and smiled at her with everything he had. "Hey, babe."
"Hey."
Dave still did that, smiled at her as though seeing her anew, for the first time, and she knew again that she was lucky, that she should be grateful. This was Megan's life now. That old life--the one nobody in this happy suburban wonderland of cul-de-sacs and good schools and brick McMansions knew about--had been killed off and buried in a shallow ditch.
"You want me to drive Kaylie to soccer?" Dave asked.
"I can do it."
"You're sure?"
Megan nodded. Not even Dave knew the truth about the woman who had shared his bed for the past sixteen years. Dave didn't even know that Megan's real name was, strangely enough, Maygin. Same pronunciation but computers and IDs only know spelling. She would have asked her mother why the weird spelling, but her mother had died before Megan could talk. She had never known her father or even who he was. She'd been orphaned young, grew up hard, ended up stripping in Vegas and then Atlantic City, took it a step further, loved it. Yes, loved it. It was fun and exciting and electrifying. There was always something going on, always a sense of danger and possibility and passion.
"Mom?"
It was Jordan. "Yes, honey."
"Mrs. Freedman says you didn't sign the permission slip for the class trip."
"I'll send her an e-mail."
"She said it was due on Friday."
"Don't worry about it, honey, okay?"
It took Jordan another moment or two but eventually he was placated.
Megan knew that she should be grateful. Girls die young in her old life. Every emotion, every second in that world, is almost too intense--life raised to the tenth power--and that doesn't jibe with longevity. You get burned out. You get strung out. There is a heady quality to that kind of action. There is also an inherent danger. When it finally spun out of control, when Megan's very life was suddenly in jeopardy, she had not only found a way to escape but to start over completely anew, reborn if you will, with a loving husband, beautiful children, a home with four bedrooms, and a pool in the yard.
Somehow, almost by accident really, Megan Pierce had stumbled from the depths of what some might call a seedy cesspool into the ultimate American dream. She had, in order to save herself, played it straight and almost talked herself into believing that this was the best possible world. And why not? For her entire life, in movies and on television, Megan, like the rest of us, had been inundated with images claiming that her old life was wrong, immoral, wouldn't last--while this family life, the house and picket fence, was enviable, appropriate, celestial.
But here was the truth: Megan missed her old life. She was not supposed to. She was supposed to be grateful and thrilled that she of all people, with the destructive route she'd taken, had ended up with what every little girl dreams of. But the truth was, a truth it had taken her years to admit to herself, she still longed for those dark rooms; the lustful, hungry stares from strangers; the pounding, pulsating music; the crazy lights; the adrenaline spikes.
And now?
Dave flipping stations: "So you don't mind driving? Because the Jets are on."
Kaylie looking through her gym bag: "Mom, where's my uniform? Did you wash it like I asked?"
Jordan opening the Sub-Zero: "Can you make me a grilled cheese in the panini maker? And not with that whole grain bread."
She loved them. She did. But there were times, like today, when she realized that after a youth of skating along slippery surfaces she had now settled into a domestic rut of dazzling sameness, each day forced to perform the same show with the same players as the day before, just each player one day older. Megan wondered why it had to be this way, why we are forced to choose one life. Why do we insist that there can only be one "us," one life that makes us up in our entirety? Why can't we have more than one identity? And why do we have to destroy one life in order to create another? We claim to long for the "well rounded," the Renaissance man or woman inside all of us, yet our only variety is cosmetic. In reality we do all we can to smother that spirit out, to make us conform, to define us as one thing and one thing only.
Dave flipped back to the fallen movie star. "This guy," Dave said with a shake of head. But just hearing that famous manic voice brought Megan back--his hand twined in her thong, his face pressed against her back, scruffy and wet from tears.
"You're the only one who understands me, Cassie...."
r /> Yes, she missed it. Was that really so horrible?
She didn't think so, but it kept haunting her. Had she made a mistake? These memories, the life of Cassie because no one uses a real name in that world, had been kept locked up in a small back room in her head all these years. And then, a few days ago, she had unbolted the door and let it open just a crack. She had quickly slammed it closed and locked it back up. But just that crack, just letting Cassie have a quick gaze into the world between Maygin and Megan--why was she so sure that there would be repercussions?
Dave rolled off the couch and headed for the bathroom, the newspaper tucked under his armpit. Megan warmed up the panini maker and searched for the white bread. As she opened the drawer, the phone rang, giving off an electronic chirp. Kaylie stood next to the phone, ignoring it, texting.
"You want to answer that?" Megan asked.
"It's not for me."
Kaylie could pull out and answer her own mobile phone with a speed that would have intimidated Wyatt Earp, but the home phone, with a number unknown to the Kasselton teenage community, held absolutely no interest to her.