Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

“Yeah. Thanks.”

He puttered into the kitchen. A few minutes later he returned, carrying something. “Denny gave me this last time I saw him, back around Labor Day, when I brought his supplies to Lucien’s house. This is what he’s doing these days.”

It was a large color photograph, 12x24, in a handmade frame, like the one at Ray Provenzano’s house. From an upright black shape, like a rock or tree, something protruded. A truncated branch, or an arm. Leaves surrounded it, silvery green. It was impossible for me to tell if the color was real or if the emulsion had been tampered with.

But in other places, the photograph had definitely been distressed, with needles and brushes, maybe a fingernail. Layers of pigment bled through. Handmade color separations, I would bet my life on it: a brilliant serpent green, a murkier, brownish jade, brilliant scarlet, dull orange, porcelain white. A muted, flaking shade of rust, like old iron.

I ran my finger across the surface, feeling countless little whorls and bumps and scratches, then held it beneath the lamp.

“There’s leaves in there. And insects,” I said, squinting. “And, I dunno, some kind of bug. A baby dragonfly, maybe?”

“Where? Oh—yeah, you’re right.” Toby ran his finger along the outline of an insect’s thorax, with tiny, oar-shaped wings. “That’s a damsel fly. A darning needle, we called them when I was a kid. They were supposed to come into your room at night and sew your lips and eyes together while you slept. Denny was scared of them.”

I looked at the damsel fly. Beside it were scraps of paper, each with a letter on it.

ST 29

Part of an address? I brought the print to my face. “Jesus, this is like the other one! It stinks.”

“Denny’s not much of a housekeeper.”

“It smells like dead fish, only worse. Skunky.”

“Well, he sets out a few traps, for lobster. And I know he goes ice fishing in the winter.”

I was going to ask how you went ice fishing in the ocean, but then I saw something written in the margin.

Some Rays pass right Through S.P.O.T.

“‘Some rays pass right through.’” I looked at Toby in surprise. “That’s from a Talking Heads song.”

“Denny’s big into music. I don’t know it.”

“It’s about exposing a photograph—that’s what happens, you expose the emulsion paper to the light. Some rays pass right through.”

I tapped the edge of the photo. Tiny particles rained from it.

“Ray told me these pictures are worth a lot of money,” I said. “Denny just gave it to you?”

“It was payment for some work—I built him a new darkroom a while ago. I do a lot of jobs on barter. I live here free, in exchange for keeping an eye on things. Thinking of which—”

He crossed the room. “I’ve got to get ready to go.”

I sat for another minute, examining the photo. A flake of rust-colored pigment came off and stuck to my hand. Where it had been, I could clearly see a torn piece of paper that had been embedded into the emulsion. A fragment of another, a black-and-white photograph of a bare foot with the ghostly outline of a street sign and something scrawled across it in blue ink.

ICU

My foot. Canal Street.

It was a detail from one of the photos in Dead Girls .

I stared at the flake of pigment then sniffed. It had a faint whiff of that same fishy odor. Cupping it in my palm, I walked to the wastebasket, fished out the wadded-up paper towel I’d just tossed, and smoothed it on the desk.

You got some paint there on your shoe .

The smear of blood from where I’d kicked Robert’s friend wasn’t the exact same shade as the flake of dried pigment. But it was close enough.

I threw the fragment and the paper towel into the wastebasket, ran into the kitchen. Toby was filling a gallon jug from the tap.

“Listen,” I said. “After you finish your work at this other island—are you coming back here? Or heading straight over to Burnt Harbor?”

“Depends on the weather. Probably I’ll be back. Unless it really comes down, in which case I’ll drop anchor over at Tolba and stay in Lucien’s house. Why?”

“Maybe I could ride out with you to the island. Then later, if you do go over to Burnt Harbor, you can drop me off. If not, I’ll just come back here with you.”

“You really want to get out of here, don’t you? Okay. I guess, if you don’t mind getting cold and wet. I just thought you might want to take a nap or something. You looked pretty whipped, to tell you the truth.”

“If I fall asleep now, I’ll never wake up.”

“Don’t want that.” He picked up the jug and headed for the door. “You got much to carry?”

“No.” I slung my bag over my shoulder. “Just this. My camera.”

“Good. You can help bring some things down. Then we won’t have to make two trips.”

He gathered a canvas bag of extra clothing, a toolbox, two water jugs. He stopped by the door and pulled on a parka.

“Cold out there.” He eyed my leather jacket and cowboy boots. “You’re not going to be warm enough.”

“I still have your sweater.” I unzipped my jacket to show him, and the sweater rode up, exposing my stomach.

“That a tattoo?” He stooped to peer at the scroll of words entwined with a scar. “‘Too tough to die.’”

He gave me an odd look. “Looks like you earned that.”

I didn’t reply. I thought of a girl walking toward a car beneath a broken streetlamp; of another girl walking down a darkened pier where a boat drifted, its engine cut and running lights switched off.

“Did it hurt?” asked Toby softly.

“It all hurts,” I said and turned away.

For a moment he was quiet.

“Here,” he said. “Take this—”

He opened a cupboard and tossed me a blaze orange watchcap. “You lose ninety percent of your body heat through your head. Not that it’ll do you much good if you go overboard.”

He picked up the toolbox and the canvas bag, gestured at the gallon jugs. “Can you handle those?”

I pulled on the watchcap and picked up the jugs. “Yeah.”

“What about this?”

He reached into the shadows and grabbed a wooden pole about six feet long, tipped with a lethal-looking bronze spike that had a hook like a talon welded to it. He hefted it, eyed it measuringly, then handed it to me.

“What is it? A harpoon?”

“Boat hook. For grabbing stuff that falls overboard. Among other things. Like if we run into your friends again outside. You know how to use a boat hook, don’t you? You just put your lips together, and—”

He mimed smashing someone. “Run like hell. Come on.”

I followed him outside. I tightened my grip on the boat hook, but the alley was empty.

“We’ll go this way.” Toby headed around the corner. “Shorter walk.”

It also avoided that sorry little main drag. A small crowd had gathered at the far end of the beach. I recognized Everett Moss and a few of the other men I’d seen when I first arrived, but not the guys I’d encountered by the Chandlery. Two black dogs played on the rocky beach. There were more boats in the harbor, including a Marine Patrol vessel.

“Guess that’s how they’ll get Aphrodite back to shore,” said Toby.

We headed toward the pier. No one seemed to have noticed us yet. They stood in a tight group, heads bent. Now and then someone looked across the reach to the mainland. “’Less they’re waiting for an ambulance boat or something.”

The sky had grown darker and more ominous. Clouds and sea were the same charred gray. A cold wind seemed to blow from everywhere at once. The black dogs were the same color as the clots of kelp they snapped at. The gulls were like white holes in the sky. Everything seemed to be part of one thing here, even the men in their slate blue coveralls and dun-colored coats and blaze orange vests: They were all like pieces that had broken off from the island but could be made to fit again, if you knew which jagged part went where.