Jerry stood up too quickly and the blood rushed to his head, making him a bit wobbly. Ana grabbed his elbow to steady him.
“Jerry?”
He accepted her help and leaned on the kitchen island. “Nothing to worry about, Shvibzik—just stood up too fast. Maybe I should order some dinner.”
Ana helped him onto the stool but his dizziness quickly passed. “What a terrific idea, Mr. Powell. I should have thought of that myself.”
Jerry laughed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one appreciates a smart-assed imp. If you really want to make yourself useful, you could find my phone for me, please.”
“Of course. It is on the table.” She fetched it for him. “Now, please call for your dinner, and while you are doing that and then eating, I do believe I shall have a nap.”
“A nap? You don’t want to keep surfing the Internet to see what’s been happening for the last century?”
“No, I have seen more than enough for now, thank you. I think it best to discover the changes in person, one or two at a time. Now, if we are to discover this lovely city’s Chinatown, I need to return to the book for an hour or so.”
Jerry kissed the top of her head. “You have been out a long time, Shvibzik. Go, nap, or whatever you need to do. I promise I’ll order dinner, eat, and ‘wake’ you when I’m ready to go out.”
“Thank you. See you soon, my Sweetness.” She stepped over to the coffee table and faded out quickly, blowing him a kiss as she went. The sweatshirt and jeans crumpled softly to the floor. Jerry took his iPhone over to his desk and plugged it into the charger cord before making the call. He glanced down at the computer screen and nearly dropped the phone.
“Oh, no. Dammit!” He scrolled the screen down. “I should have known. It’s one of the first things a person does when they get access to the Net for the first time. Shit shit shit.” He sat down heavily in the chair and started reading what was on the screen. It was the Wikipedia page for “The Shooting of the Romanov Family”.
JERRY EVENTUALLY ORDERED dinner and then ate it with little enthusiasm as he finally clicked on the links he’d emailed himself and read more and more about Ana and her family; the facts and rumours surrounding their lives and deaths. When he’d had enough of both dinner and the sadness of Ana’s story, he put the leftovers in the fridge, hung the sweatshirt and jeans over the divider screen, and stepped into the shower.
Twenty minutes later, freshly shaved, scrubbed, and dressed, Jerry sat on the couch with the Blake book in his lap. He stroked it gently with his fingertips, as he would Ana’s own hand. After a heartbeat or two it began to glow blue, so he placed it beside him on the couch. Ana appeared, a soft smile on her face.
“Did you eat?”
He smiled back. “Yes, Your Imperial Highness, I ate.”
“And you still wish to visit the China Town?”
“I think that would be the perfect diversion for both of us.”
“Excellent. Then please allow me to get dressed and we can depart. What weather should we expect?”
“It’s stopped snowing, but we’ll take the umbrella because apparently it rains more often than it snows during Christmas here in Victoria.” He noticed Ana looking where she’d last seen the clothes and he pointed at the dressing screen. “Your wardrobe awaits, m’lady.” Ana giggled and walked through the screen, blowing him another kiss over her shoulder just before she was out of sight. She dressed quickly and stepped around the screen for his inspection.
“How do I look, good sir?” She did a little twirl for him, her nearly waist-length hair free-floating around her as though she were under water.
“You’d be beautiful in anything, Ana, but tomorrow we’ll see about getting you some clothes of your own. You usually keep your hair tied up so I hadn’t noticed how long it is. Was it that long… before?”
“Oh yes. It was only the last year when it was short. We had our heads shaved because we had measles and were losing our hair. Even though it was falling out, we cried softly when they cut our hair and shaved our heads. Such a silly thing—hair grows back, over time. If we had only known what our lives would hold in that next year, we would have seen how trivial our hair really was.” She gathered her tresses and with the quick, deft motions most men never understand, she braided it loosely and tied a knot in the end to contain it. “This is a few inches longer than I ever had it, but since I loved growing it, I assumed if I was twenty-two, it would have grown like this. Do you like it?”
Jerry smiled. “I think it’s perfect. I’ve always been a big fan of long hair, and your deep gold just shines.” He retrieved the coats and the umbrella and helped Ana on with his duffel coat while he shrugged into the red parka. Noticing his camera bag at the foot of the coat tree for the first time in days, Jerry picked it up by the strap and carried it over to the couch. “I have no idea if this’ll work, but I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before…” He unzipped the bag, pulled out his digital Canon SLR, popped off the lens cap, switched the camera on, and pointed it at Ana. “Smile.”
She smiled reflexively but had no idea what he was doing until the on-camera flash popped up and went off. “What… ? Jerry, is that a kameru—a camera?”
“It’s my pride and joy. But I’m not sure if it’ll work with you. I’ve never tried to take pictures of a ghost. Let’s take a look.” He turned so they could both see the three-inch screen on the back of the camera, then he switched the camera over to “view” mode. Ana’s gently smiling face filled the frame.
“Oh my! That’s astonishing! The picture is immediate? Where is the film? That is me! Oh, can I try? Show me, please, Jerry! I miss my camera ever so much!”
“You like to take pictures?” He handed her the Canon, and she turned it over in her hands, examining each and every little angle and part.
“I had a Kodak Brownie that was always pointed at someone or something interesting, but it was so long between taking the photograph and seeing the results that I became extremely frustrated. My tutor would have to take the camera and put it out of reach while I was supposed to be doing my studies. Ooo! This is lighter than it looks, but it is much heavier than my little box camera.” She discovered the viewfinder and looked through it at Jerry. She was nearly hopping up and down with the uncontainable joy of discovering her dream toy. “Oh Jerry, please please please teach me! I do not need to know everything at once, I just want to be able to take photographs again. I am certain that film is dorogoy—expensive—so I will be economical with my efforts.”
“It’s digital, so there’s no need for film. That’s a fresh sixteen-gig card in there so you’ve probably got two-thousand high-rez shots available before we need a new card.”
“Two thousand?” She turned the camera over in her hands, trying to grasp the concept.
“Two thousand. I can explain the digital world later, but in the meantime, shoot to your heart’s content. You know where to look through, so here…” he touched the shutter button “…is the shutter release, and…” he turned the wide zoom ring on the lens “…this is how you zoom it in and out.” He turned the dial on top so that the green square matched up with the shooting mode indicator. “You turn it on here, and I’ve just put it on PhD mode so you’re good to go.”
“PhD?”
“It stands for ‘Push Here, Dummy’. Just point, hold steady, and shoot. Press the shutter release down halfway, and the camera will focus and calculate all the settings for you. Press it the rest of the way to capture the image. There’s only one condition, though.”