I shut my eyes and recalled his face as I’d first seen it, the emerald flaw in his iris. The green ray. I thought of the photo in Aphrodite’s room—a different green-flecked eye—and the larger picture of Hannah Meadows in Toby’s apartment. Painted eyes, one with a green star inside it.
I couldn’t make sense of it. There was no sense to it, not to anyone except the person who’d shot those pictures.
I’ve heard alcoholics say they can recognize another alcoholic without ever seeing them take a drink, that they can read a book or hear a song and know that the person who wrote it was a drunk. I’m not crazy 24/7, but I’ve been crazy enough that I recognize someone else who’s nuts.
Especially another photographer. Like Diane Arbus. She was a genius, and maybe I’m not. But I know what she saw out there when she looked at the world through her viewfinder. I know what she saw when she killed herself. Just like I know what I saw when I watched Aphrodite die, what I felt: the stench of damage like my own sweat, and my own reflected face like a flaw in her iris.
I rode a wave of grief that left nothing in its wake, not memory or remorse or rage. When it passed I looked down and saw Gryffin’s photo still in my hand. I slid it into Deceptio Visus and put the book into the bag with my camera. I went back on deck.
“We’re all set,” announced Toby. His cheeks were white with cold. “You got everything? Grab one of those life jackets.”
The rain had nearly stopped, but the sky remained nickel colored, swollen with cloud. I fished out another Adderall and washed it down with a mouthful of whiskey. There was something behind those clouds, something behind that black lowering bulk of granite and stunted trees, something I couldn’t see yet. I got the life jacket and waited in the stern by the dinghy. Toby returned with another life jacket, the canvas bag, and a toolbox.
“I think this is everything. You sure you’re okay?” His brow furrowed.
“I think so.” I picked up the boat hook. “What about this? Can it come along?”
“Yeah, sure, go ahead and bring it. Just don’t leave it behind.”
We loaded the dinghy then rowed to shore. It was rough but not scary. Or maybe I was just getting used to it. I scanned the sea for signs of another boat, saw nothing but a few floats. No planes in the sky, no sign of the mainland; just a few black shapes that seemed to flicker above the dark water. Fish, I thought, or maybe dolphins or seals. Toby said they were rocks.
“Another reason Denny never leaves,” he said, pulling at the oars. “Summer it’s okay, but winter—forget it.”
We reached the shore and got out. I helped him pull the boat well above the highwater mark, kicking through tangles of seaweed encrusted with dead crabs. When we were done, he straightened and shaded his eyes, staring out to sea.
“I don’t see Lucien’s boat.” He frowned. “Huh. Denny must’ve moved it.”
I hoisted my bag and the boat hook. Toby dug a cigarette from his pocket and looked at me. “So. What do you think?”
It was beyond desolate: it was where desolation goes to be by itself. Stone pilings reared from the water, skeletal remains of a dock. I couldn’t see a house. Surf-pounded stones lay on the beach between skeins of weed and blackened driftwood. Farther up, those huge blocks of blood red granite were the only jolts of color in a scoured gray world. My entire body ached with cold and fatigue, but somehow that seemed like the right way to feel here. It was a place that had the flesh stripped from it. Just above the shoreline reared a stand of dead trees—cat spruce, said Toby—trunks bleached white and every needle stripped from their branches. Overturned tree stumps surrounded them, roots exposed like tentacles, and the wing of a seabird, its feathers eaten away so it resembled a shattered Chinese fan.
And everywhere, red granite. Not boulders or rocks but immense blocks and overturned pillars, Greek columns covered with lichen, poison green, blaze orange, white, half-carven angels and a monolithic horse and rider.
“This is incredible.” I walked to an angel whose face was veiled with black mold and ran my hand across its eyes. “It’s not all rotted away.”
“That’s why they call it granite.” Toby took a drag from his cigarette. “Back when everyone left here, they just packed their clothes and what they could carry. Obviously they weren’t going to cart off the granite. They left things you wouldn’t believe. When Lucien built his place, I found saw blades and drills. Beautiful stuff; I’ve got some of ‘em back in my place. Not to mention the carvings. They had a hundred guys out here quarrying the stuff, but there were men stayed in the sheds and just carved stone. You know how you see all those memorials from a hundred, hundred-fifty years ago? Well, a lot of them were carved here then shipped out to Boston and New York. Angels, statues … if the carvers made a mistake, they’d just leave it here.”
“It’s amazing.”
“Wait’ll you see Lucien’s place.”
We began walking up a narrow gully. I was glad I had the boat hook to help steady me against the slick rocks underfoot. As we climbed, the gully widened into the remnants of a road.
“That story you told me before,” I said. “About Denny’s girlfriend. The one who died.”
“Hanner.”
“Right, Hannah.” The gale picked up. I looked back to where the Northern Sky bobbed in the water like a gull at rest. “Those masks everyone made—did she have one? Did she have a totem?”
“I don’t think so. I think she just went along with whatever Denny did.”
“Your totem animal? It was a frog?”
“Yeah. Because they’re amphibious. They live on the land and the water both. Like me.”
I hitched my bag from one shoulder to the other. “What about Denny? What was his totem?”
“Denny?” Toby drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. “Good question. It was a long time ago, but—”
He pinched the cigarette out between his fingers then flicked it onto the slick stones at our feet. “I think it was a snapping turtle.”
22
Lucien Ryel’s house showed what you could do with Ray Provenzano’s scrap-metal ethic and several million dollars. It resembled an ancient temple crossed with the remains of a lunar lander, built in the lee of a granite dome above the ocean and surrounded by a stand of massive pine trees and withered rosebushes. A cantilevered deck made of steel girders and I beams ran the length of the building, all glass and weathered metal, inset with blocks of carved granite: huge feathered wings, a colossal arm, an immense, preternaturally calm face. Solar panels carpeted a roof bristling with satellite dishes. The windows were pocked with silhouetted cut-outs of flying birds.
“First summer Lucien was here, we had so many dead birds we had to pick ‘em up with a shovel.” Toby paused to catch his breath. “They’d fly right into the windows. So he put those stickers up. Kind of messes with the view.”
The road wound toward the back of the house. Two large propane tanks were set alongside the wall. I stared at the roof. “He looks pretty plugged in.”
“That’s nothing. Lucien comes all the way out here and then he never leaves the house, just spends all his time in the studio or online. He got a digital switch so he could get high-speed Internet. Paid a bundle to run it here. He keeps talking about getting a windmill, but right now everything’s powered off batteries. I’ve got to make sure they haven’t drained. Denny’s supposed to check them, but he forgot once. He comes up here to use the phone and Internet but never bothers to check the goddam power.”