Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

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 a 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. I’d 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.”