He examined more photographs and came to a remarkable sequence in which Packard had done what Stieglitz only hinted at with Georgia O’Keeffe, photographing literally every inch of Rebecca Chance’s body, her ears, the top of her head, the nape of her neck, the area beneath her arms, the inside of her thighs, the backs of her knees. There was no area so commonplace or private that Packard had not taken a picture of in close-up. What made the sequence so moving was the devotion with which Packard had recorded the separate parts of the object of his obsession, as if in the thoroughness of his subdivision of her he could multiply her beauty.
Coltrane reached the last of the nude photographs and felt emotionally exhausted. Bracing himself against a shelf, he closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and mustered the energy to begin putting all the photographs back into their boxes. His hands felt numb. His heart pounded. Despite his closed eyes, he continued to see Rebecca Chance, naked, gazing at him. Raising his eyelids, he took one more look at the final nude photograph before him, then managed to put all of them away.
Upstairs, on the sleeping bag next to the increasingly pathetic-looking artificial Christmas tree in the living room, Coltrane fell into a black doze almost immediately. On previous nights, Ilkovic had haunted his dreams, turning them into nightmares, but tonight, it was Rebecca Chance’s arms that reached for him, her naked body pressing against him.
2
“CAREFUL,” the paunchy foreman told the two young men who were working with him. They all wore blue shirts that had the same logo as was on the side of the blue semitruck: PACIFIC MOVERS. They opened the back of the truck, the right and left hatches slamming against each side. After securing the hatches, they pulled out a ramp from a slot beneath the truck, the ramp making a scraping sound that grated against Coltrane’s nerves. While the workers hooked the ramp into place, Coltrane walked toward the open rear and saw stacks of furniture hidden by generous amounts of protective blankets.
“Careful,” the paunchy foreman repeated, and now Coltrane realized that the man was talking to him, not his young coworkers. “You’d better stay out of the way. Sometimes stuff falls, or one of these guys might trip.”
“I hope not.”
“The last thing we want is a client to get hurt.”
“I’m not worried about me. Don’t let anything happen to the furniture.”
“No problem there. I’ve been doing this for twenty years.”
But the young men obviously hadn’t – they looked barely older than twenty. Uneasy, Coltrane backed away, watching them mount the ramp and begin undraping blankets from the first layer of furniture.
His chest felt warm when he saw a glimmer of metal. He was suddenly looking at a chair. But he had never seen any furniture like it – so simple and yet so aesthetically pleasing. The chair’s legs and sides were composed of steel tubes, the gray hue of which was polished to a sheen. The seat and back had clean, straight lines, black suede over a padded reinforcing material. It invited being touched, which Coltrane almost did as one of the young men carried the chair past him at the bottom of the ramp. The second young man followed with another chair.
“Where do you want them?” the foreman asked, looking up from a clipboard.
“In the dining room.”
Coltrane led the way into the house. In the living room, the miniature Christmas tree and the sleeping bags were no longer in evidence. “The dining room’s to the left.”
“Nice house.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” The foreman turned to the young men. “Okay, put the chairs against the dining room wall so they won’t get in the way. Hold it. Those walls are…”
“Covered with strings of chromium beads,” Coltrane said.
“I definitely haven’t seen anything like that.”
And so it went, the young men unloading furniture while the foreman didn’t do anything but make check marks on his clipboard, then follow his helpers into the house to be certain that nothing was damaged.
Four more dining room chairs. Then the dining table itself: glass-topped, rectangular, with rounded corners, a steel frame supporting the glass top, and steel legs.
The foreman used a soft cloth to wipe smudges of dust from the glass top. “Not a scratch.” He looked at Coltrane for confirmation.
The living room furniture was framed by aluminum tubes that were coated a shiny black. The tubes were arranged horizontally, eight inches apart, forming low cages with high backs. The effect was vaguely industrial, a glorification of mechanization that had been prevalent back in the late twenties and early thirties, but the design was so harmonious that it felt liberating. Thick, wide cushions were set into the frames and against the backs. The material was red satin. Three chairs and an L-shaped sofa filled the living room. Glass-topped side tables, coffee tables, and wall tables filled more of the space, as did a chromium cabinet. So much glass and polished metal made the living room gleam.
Standing in a corner, telling the young men where he wanted them to set the pieces, Coltrane began to feel tugged toward the past. Oddly, though, the past seemed the present. The furniture had been designed so long ago that it seemed new and fresh.
“Mister, I’ve been hauling furniture half my life,” the foreman said. “I gotta tell you – this stuff is definitely different.”
“But do you like it?”
“What’s not to like? The junk I sometimes have to deliver… But this is solid. Look at the sweat on these kids’ faces from lifting all this metal. Nothing flimsy here. No danger of this stuff falling apart. Style. Reminds me of a real old movie I saw on cable the other night. It had furniture like this. I’m not a dress-up kind of guy, but being here makes me feel we ought to be wearing tuxedos and drinking martinis. Hey.” He turned to his helpers. “We’re supposed to be movers. Let’s get a move on.”
Coltrane turned to watch them go for more furniture, and he wasn’t prepared to find that Duncan Reynolds had come through the open front door.
Duncan looked more surprised than Coltrane was. In fact, he seemed startled. His usually florid face was pale, emphasizing the numerous colors on his sport coat. His mouth hung open.
“Duncan? What’s the matter? Are you all right?”
“I came to see your reaction when the furniture was…” Eyes wide, Duncan surveyed the living room. “To find out if you were satisfied with…” Shocked, he pointed toward the sofa, then the chairs, then the end tables. “How did…”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s just as I remember it. Exactly as I remember it. But that can’t… How could you possibly have…”
“What are you talking about?”
“The furniture’s in the same places where Randolph preferred it. Twenty-five years ago, a few months after I started working for him, the day he first showed me this house, the furniture was positioned exactly as it is now. Randolph told me it had been that way when he bought it, that he had never varied it, that he never wanted it to be varied. It never was. Until it was taken away to be auctioned. And now you’ve arranged it so it looks precisely as when I first saw it. I almost expect to see Randolph stroll upstairs from working in the darkroom. How did… How could you have known where to…”