William Bayer - Blind Side

She was moving less quickly now, slowed down by the crowds. I got her nicely framed between two young men in matching white tank tops. Then we marched along united for a block, she, the guys and I in lockstep, fifteen feet apart.

As I followed her I felt my excitement grow. Stalking Grace in downtown Cleveland-that had been cool, smart, passionless. This was something else.

I felt the bloodiust of a hunter on the track of a rare, seductive game. to follow or to kill-the choice was mine. That hunter's power made me heady; it also reactivated the hibernating photojournalist inside. As we walked I twisted the telephoto off my Leica, mounted on a 35mm. Elmarit, then raised it to my eye.

Even as I followed I wanted to take a shot at her. But when I looked through the viewfinder, all I could see were the backs of the two guys in front. The place between them where she'd been was empty. My prey had disappeared. It was twenty minutes before I gave up my search for her. Thinking she might have turned into a shop, I checked all the stores on the block. But of course you don't walk into a store with a bicycle, and her bike wasn't parked anywhere around.

There was a little alley she might have used; it was for pedestrians, but she could have ridden through. Or perhaps, in the instant when I'd looked away, she'd spotted me, mounted her bike, turned at the next corner and driven off.

All that seemed so unlikely that I began to doubt myself. Had I really seen her? Had she really been walking just ahead? Or had I gone delusional? Had the heat and all the salty starchy food clouded my brain?

I was standing on the sidewalk, wondering what to do, when suddenly I sensed a presence just behind. I trembled as I felt her breath upon my ear.

"Hello, Geoffrey," she whispered.

She said I should come with her, that she knew a quiet bar where we could talk. And so we walked in silent tension to the end of Duval, all my bitterness held tight inside.

She guided me into the compound of the Pier House hotel, where, the moment we entered, we were cut off from the rowdiness of the street. But the quiet there only added to my stress. By the time we reached a proper little bar called the Chart Room I felt I was about to burst.

Kim ordered a Bloody Mary. I ordered a Perrier. The waiter went away, and then our eyes finally met.

She peered at me.

"You look fit, Geoffrey."

"Do I? I'm not feeling very fit."

She was studying me the way one might study someone one had wounded, to measure how serious the injury was.

"No," she said, "I don't imagine you are."

"You never said good-bye."

"Oh, God!" She shook her head.

"Didn't you owe me that?"

"I'm sure I did," she said gently.

"I'm sure I owed you a lot of things."

The waiter brought our drinks. She smiled at him.

"I hope this isn't going to be one of those conversations, Geoffrey.

"What kind is that?" I asked.

"Kind where we talk about who owed what to whom, and all that sort of stuff."

"Sometimes," I said, pretending to be the soul of patience, "one has to talk about unpleasant things."

She sipped her drink, then picked up some peanuts from a bowl and popped them into her mouth.

"I was in trouble-you know that now. Shadow was killed that Saturday night. I had to get away. So I left. What could I have said? How could I have explained? No, the best thing was just to leave, get out fast and clean. The less you knew the better. You see, I didn't want to drag you into it."

That did it. I felt a rush.

"But I was in it. Right in the goddamn middle of it."

"No you weren't, Geoffrey. You were safe. Anything I told you, any good-byes I might have made-then you could have been implicated. But you weren't." implicated?" Of course I was 'implicated'! Are you really pretending I wasn't?"

There must have been a vicious intensity in my voice; a group sitting at another table stopped talking and glanced nervously at us.

"Try and keep it low, Geoffrey. This bar's not tacky Key West."

"Oh, I can see that," I said, looking around.

"It's just so fucking civilized. It tells me something, that you brought me here."

"What does it tell you?"

"That you're afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of me. My anger and what I might do."

"I'm not one to be afraid of things, Geoffrey. And I'm certainly not afraid of you." She gave my arm a gentle pat, as if we were lovers who'd been parted by nothing more than a weekend business trip.

I stared at her.

"You're-incredible!"

She looked at me as if I were mad. Something was wrong, we weren't connecting, were talking about different things.

"It was all your idea, according to Rakoubian."

"You talked to him?" She snorted.

"He would say that. "

"Then it wasn't your idea?"

"What do you think?" she asked.

"If I'd known. you'd talked to Dirty Adam I'd have left you standing there on Duval,"

"Then what would you have done?"

She shrugged.

"Left town. Since this place is now obviously blown." She peered at me.

"How did you find me here anyway?"

"I found you."

"How?"

"What difference does it make?"

"If you found me, someone else might find me. Someone who could hurt me. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"Arnold Darting? Mrs. Z?"

She exhaled painfully.

"Well, you do seem to know a lot." She squinted at me.

"Why would Rakoubian talk to you anyway? Why would he tell you about them?"

"Because I made him tell me."

"Made him?" She smiled. It was an eager smile, so eager it made me a little bit afraid of her.

"I told him if he didn't talk, I'd throw him out the window."

Her eyes enlarged.

"That's great, Geoffrey. Fantastic! Wow!" She looked at me closely again, then chuckled to herself.

"I wonder-"

"What?" And when she turned cool and didn't reply: "Jesus! Please don't act like that."

"Okay, Geoffrey, if you really want to know, I wonder if I underrated you."

"Oh, you most definitely underrated me," I said caustically.

"was that what this was all about? Rating and underrating? Seeing who could get the better of whom?"

"That certainly was not what this was all about."

"Wasn't it? You get involved in a blackmail schemer don't care whose idea it was-you get yourself involved and part of the deal is to set me up as the 'cover photographer." Then I show up here, find you, and all you can say is 'My, you're looking fit' and 'How did you find me here anyway?" What's with you? How do you hold up your head? Tell me, please. I really want to know."

She smiled.

"Is that really what you want to know, Geoffrey? Did you come all the way down here just to ask me that?"

"What else is there to ask you?"

She shook her head.

"If that's all you care about, you made a wasted trip."

"If you won't answer me, then I guess I did," I said. ,Ohl I'll answer, all right, when you get off that fucking high horse of yours. But if all you want to know is 'How do I hold up my head?-go screw yourself, Geoffrey Barnett."

"Jesus," I said, "I can't believe this. You're indignant. You!"

"Yes! Because who the hell are you to track me down here and ask me crap like that?" She finished off her drink.

"If you want to know what happened, really happened-that's something else, That might be worth talking about. But not this guilt trip you're running on me. That's crap."

"Yeah, crap . I said.

We went quiet after that. It was as if we both wanted the anger to subside, wanted, each of us, to cool down and rethink our positions.

I looked at her closely. I felt confused. Clearly there was more to the story than Rakoubian had told me. Moreover, seeing her a ain made me realize how much I still wanted her, no matter what she'd done, what horrible lies she'd told.