Christopher Bohjalian - The Double Bind

There was no way she was simply going to charge in there alone, and as quietly as she could she brought her backpack up over her shoulders and reached inside for the fist-size canister of pepper spray that she knew was sitting somewhere at the bottom. She had carried one with her wherever she went ever since she had returned to Vermont to finish her sophomore year of college. She had never used it, and she rarely thought about it: She wasn’t even sure she remembered how to operate the spray mechanism on this particular model, since she had barely glanced at the directions when she had pulled it from its clear plastic sarcophagus. Still, she was relieved she had it with her now, and when she had the device cradled safely in her hand she stood perfectly still. She feared she had made too much noise already. She didn’t even dare cross the hall to knock on Whit’s door. And so she remained there, absolutely motionless, and listened. At one point, she felt sufficiently courageous that she considered tiptoeing back down the stairs and leaving the house, but the whole place felt so still. Finally, when there hadn’t been a sound from the apartment for almost ten minutes, she cautiously stepped inside. It had become increasingly evident that whoever had been there was gone.

She saw the doors to both Talia’s and her bedrooms were open, and she peered into each room. They seemed undisturbed. She pushed her bedroom door flat against the wall, prepared to use the pepper spray and run if she felt the slightest resistance behind it. She saw her CD player on the bureau and her small television set on a shelf in the armoire. She didn’t have a lot of jewelry, but the teak box with her earrings and bracelets and a couple of necklaces was still atop her dresser. So was her own iPod. She checked the bottom drawer of the bureau, and sure enough her checkbook and passport were still underneath her sweaters-which were, as she kept them, all perfectly folded. Everything was exactly the way she had left it Friday morning.

She sat down on her mattress, wondering what it meant that nothing seemed to have been stolen. And then it hit her: Nothing had been taken because the only thing the intruder had wanted was in her cabinet at the UVM darkroom. The snapshots, too, because she had wanted to keep everything together. Suddenly, even the way Terrance Leckbruge had tried to detain her at the wine bar seemed ominous-because, of course, it was. While they had been together downtown, Leckbruge had known someone was at her apartment, and he had wanted to keep her with him as long as possible while his associate, whoever it was, tried to find Bobbie Crocker’s negatives and prints. She recalled the way he had checked his watch and tried to prevent her from leaving.

“ Laurel?”

She looked up, and there was Talia in the doorway to her bedroom.

“Someone was here,” Laurel told her, her voice a stunned monotone. “Someone trashed our apartment. They were after Bobbie Crocker’s negatives.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Something’s in them. The negatives. Something’s in one of the negatives I haven’t printed yet. Or something important is in one of the ones I have, and I didn’t recognize its meaning.”

“ Laurel,” said Talia again, though this time it wasn’t a question. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the words “Make my day” printed on it, and there was a deep bruise forming along the back of her left hand and a string of badly applied Band-Aids on her right. Her hair was a rat’s nest, and she looked exhausted. Instantly, Laurel remembered: paintball. She was supposed to have helped Talia chaperone the youth group’s paintball outing that day.

“Oh, Talia, I forgot. I am so sorry. I really blew it, didn’t I? I don’t know what to say. It’s just been a completely weird, completely awful day. I blew off my best friend, and now I’ve come home to find our apartment was trashed by-”

“Gwen’s dog.”

“What?”

“Gwen is away this weekend, and she asked me to walk Merlin,” Talia grunted, as she limped over to the edge of the bed and sat down beside Laurel, trying to massage one of her sore shoulders with her hand. Gwen was the aspiring veterinarian who lived in their apartment house, and Merlin was the good-natured but gigantic foo dog-part canine, part lion-that Gwen continued to insist was a mere mutt from the animal shelter. “You know, I hurt everywhere,” Talia continued. Then: “Don’t feel guilty. No, strike that. Do feel guilty. Feel guilty as hell: I could really have used you today.”

Laurel felt like they were having two conversations at once: paintball and what had happened to their apartment. “Gwen’s dog made this mess?” she asked.

Talia nodded. “About, like, fifteen minutes ago. It’s my fault. I’d just finished walking him. Actually, he walked me. I hobbled. Anyway, I thought I heard a noise in our apartment, so I went upstairs to give you hell for leaving me alone in the woods with a dozen teenagers with semiautomatic Piranha-brand paintball rifles. You didn’t answer, but there was definitely something scratching around inside-”

“There was someone here? Did you see him?”

“Not someone. Some animal. It was a squirrel.”

“A squirrel,” said Laurel.

“Yeah, our window was wide open, and a squirrel was running along the couch when I opened the door. And Merlin saw it and went nuclear. Chased it everywhere. Toppled that nice lamp of yours, banged off the coffee table. Twice. Practically dove off the balcony when the son of a bitch scooted down the maple tree there. And I was, I am sorry to say, far too banged up to move with the kind of haste I would have needed to grab Merlin before he and the squirrel did in our living room.”

“So we weren’t robbed.”

“Not likely,” said Talia. “Not by the squirrel, anyway. I saw him leave, and he left empty-handed. Or empty-clawed.”

“There wasn’t anyone here.”

“Nope. Just the squirrel. Man, I wish I’d had my Piranha. That squirrel would have gone through the winter with neon-colored fur.”

“You know, I think I did leave the window open this morning.”

“So you were home then. I thought I heard you return from David’s. And still you forgot we were supposed to play paintball?”

“Really, Talia, I wish I could make it up to you. I just…I just forgot.”

“Where were you? You didn’t answer your cell. You weren’t at David’s-”

“You spoke to David?”

“No, he wasn’t home, either. Were you with him?”

Laurel shook her head.

“Then where were you?”

“The darkroom.”

“You were in the darkroom on a day like today!”

“Well, I also met a man-”

“An older man, no doubt,” Talia said.

“Yes, but it wasn’t like that. It was a lawyer who wants Bobbie’s pictures. That’s where I was just now. I was meeting with him because he has a client who believes all those photos belong to her. And I am simply not going to give them up. They’re too important! And…”

“Go on.”

Laurel suddenly had the sense that she was talking too much and she heard a frenetic urgency in her tone that she could tell from Talia’s gaze was alarming her friend. And so she stopped speaking. It was all too complicated to explain, anyway.

After a moment, Talia looked away from her and then laid back on the bed. “I think I’m just going to stay here and die,” she said, clearly hoping to direct the subject away from Bobbie Crocker’s photographs. “Would you mind? There is no part of my body that isn’t sore.”

“Was it that awful?”

“Awful? It was spectacular! The only thing in the world that’s more fun than paintball is really good sex. And trust me: The sex has to be really, really good.”