Double Exposure (14 page)

Twenty-three
TLC

In the dream, it digs into the flesh of your palm.

Turning with the current, watching the shadow fall away, drifting slowly down, you hold it in your fist. Tightly closed. A tiny pinprick of pain at the core of the terror.

And part of you wants to open that hand, to cast it from you. To let it fall.

Away from the green-fading surface. Away from the light. To follow the shadow on its dark downward slide.

But the fist remains.

And the tiny sting.

And the memory, closed inside you like the pain inside the fist. Invisible. Unknowable.

As the water whispers against your skin.

As the air rises silver on the current.

As the world above intrudes …

*

T.J.'s story

It impinged gradually, drawing me out of the doze that was the best imitation of sleep I could manage. I suppose it was about three-thirty. I listened carefully, half-convinced it was the remains of some dream that had woken me before disappearing back into the cave of my unconscious.

But there it was again.

A soft, almost rhythmical thudding coming from the lounge-room, where Cain was sleeping.

It was after one when he'd drifted off. We'd talked and shared silence and watched a pointless movie on the box, which neither of us could raise the energy to switch off. Sometimes, just having something meaningless for your eyes and ears to focus on is better than having to focus on a situation for which the answers keep disappearing like smoke in a southerly.

Instead of waking him, I'd thrown a blanket over him, straightened his legs on the couch, and made my way up to bed, checking in on Ty on the way.

Now, I was moving silently down the passage, back towards the lounge-room, towards the source of the sound.

That was when I heard him, heard the almost-words, syllables of sound that carried emotion but no meaning – at least, not outside the dream that spawned them.

And the fear.

His hand was clenched into a loose fist, which he thumped slowly against the side of the lounge. Again and again. Like a soft heartbeat.

I leaned down to shake him gently, placing my hand on his shoulder, but he started up.

‘Leave me! I don't want to … You can't … T.J.? Shit … I was dreaming again, wasn't I?'

‘Again?'

‘Happens a bit.' He sat up and the blanket slipped to the floor in slow motion. ‘You should have woken me. I need to get home.'

‘It's three-thirty in the morning. Sleep here and leave first thing. I'll be up with Ty by six. I can wake you.'

For a moment it looked like he might argue, but then he smiled.

‘I might be more comfortable in your room. This couch feels like it was designed by the Spanish Inquisition.'

Nice try …

It wasn't that I didn't want to. It was … I guess with everything so messed up, I just wasn't ready to add another level of complication.

‘Actually, it's a Marquis de Sade original. Six ninety-nine at ‘Couches 'R' Us'. Anyway, you looked pretty comfortable there,' I half-lied. ‘Except for the mumbling and thumping the side of the lounge with your fist, of course. Are you always that violent in your dreams?'

‘Only when I'm drowning and someone insists on trying to stop me.'

‘You mean you
want
to drown? In your dream?'

He thought for a few seconds.

‘I guess I do. Never really thought about it, but it's like there's something I need to do down there, and they're stopping me from doing it. But what it is – why I'm fighting them …' He shrugged. ‘Of course, I probably wouldn't dream at all if I had someone next to me, providing a little TLC.'

I had to smile. He sounded so pathetic it was almost seductive.

‘Look, a few minutes. But out here. And no funny stuff. My mother's a light sleeper.'

I pushed him back down onto the lounge and slid in beside him, nestling into his shoulder and running my arm in under his, drawing him close until his face was almost touching mine. His eyes were staring into me and I could feel his breath on my lips, but he made no attempt to kiss me. I could feel the warm sting of anticipation in my chest, and I knew I'd never felt so close to anyone.

Slowly I placed my lips on his, and I felt him respond. Gently. No pressure, just a soft surrender and the touch of his tongue.

That was when he closed his eyes, and a moment later I did the same.

And that was how my mother found us three hours later, when Ty's crying woke her.

She didn't say anything, but I thought I caught the slightest hint of a smile as she went into the kitchen to make the kid his breakfast.

Half an hour later I was watching his car disappear around the corner at the end of the street, accelerating in the direction of Chris's place. I don't think he had any idea of what to do, but he wanted to be there. Just in case.

Twenty-four
The child inside

Chris's story

Of course, Abby had set me up.

I mean, what was I going to do in the weeks leading up to the trial if I wasn't being bugged every five minutes by Libby or Maxine checking up on how the finishing touches were going? They knew the whole story, so she'd obviously talked to them about a lot more than my art.

On the Thursday afternoon before the trial, Libby Fielding dropped in and strolled around the studio, stopping in front of different works, not saying a word.

Eventually it dawned on me that the pictures she was studying closely were all the ones of Ab.

I moved up beside her and she looked at me.

‘She's an angel,' she said.

‘I don't know that she'd describe herself that way,' I replied. ‘And neither will the prosecutor.'

But she wouldn't be drawn.

‘I'm not being sentimental, Chris. You saw it yourself the first time you shot her picture. It's why you went back. Look at the light in those eyes. The tilt of her head. No fear. Not an ounce of self-consciousness. She takes life head-on and dares it to blink. That's the secret weapon of all great models. It's what the camera loves about them. You can't teach it. It's an instinct and she's got it in spades. With the right agent, she could make a killing.'

An unfortunate choice of words under the circumstances. A slight wince showed her recognition of the fact. I looked up towards the picture. I knew what she was talking about, but at that moment … Well, at that moment it wasn't a modelling career that concerned me.

‘And with the right lawyer, and a bit of luck, she might get out before her thirtieth birthday.'

It was unfair to bring it up. Libby was trying to be supportive, to focus on the positives, ease the burden. I hadn't known her long, but we got on well, and she was obviously worried about me. About how I'd react if things went badly.

And it wasn't that she was worried about the show. Everything was ready, and no matter what happened in the trial, the opening would go ahead. I'd promised Abby.

Libby was a decent person and she didn't deserve the sarcasm. I did my best to weaken the effect of my words.

‘Sorry. Lowest form of wit.'

But she just smiled.

‘Don't sweat it. No blood, no foul.'

The picture before her was a study in charcoal and pastels. Abby facing herself, reflected in the mirror, shadows defining the curves of her bare shoulders, the rise of her shoulder blades, the curved valley of her spine. The hair escaping its loose knot, sending a single tendril down across her cheek. The tiny brown birthmark a couple of centimetres below the base of her neck.

I knew her skin's texture like a familiar poem. Its tiny flaws, its perfection. The slight sheen as the light soaked into its pores.

Her eyes stared out at me from the imprisoning depths of the mirror.

For all its simplicity, it was one of my favourites. It was going in the exhibition, but I'd decided not to sell it.

It took a moment for it to register that Libby was talking again.

‘Maxine wanted to know if you're free for lunch tomorrow after the delivery. The space is cleared and we'll begin hanging them over the weekend, ready for next Saturday's opening. She just wanted to know if you had any last-minute … requests.'

‘Demands, you mean.'

Another smile.

‘No, I mean requests. Believe me, kid, compared with some of the prima donnas we have to deal with, you're a pussycat. She just wants to make things right for you. She cares about her artists.'

‘What time, and where?'

She took out a thin pad and a pen. Scribbling the information, she tore off the sheet and handed it to me.

‘Say, one-thirty?'

I nodded and slipped the paper into my shirt pocket.

Friday, of course, dawned grey and it was all downhill from there.

The delivery truck pulled up at eight-thirty in teeming rain, and three men spent three hours with rolls of bubble-wrap and masking tape, protecting the merchandise for the short trip to Images and filling in time with coffee and a few hands of poker until the rain eased enough for the loading to take place.

By one they were gone, and I looked at the bare studio with a mixture of relief and emptiness.

While it was all happening – the planning, the execution – there was a life in the place, a spirit that lingered in the canvasses and hung on the air like an intangible presence. Now, it was just a huge empty space, and I realised that it was much more than the absence of the pictures that made it that way.

Something else was missing.

At first I thought it was Abby – and she was certainly a part of it – but it was more. I walked the length of the room, and for the first time since my early days in the place I heard the empty echo of my footsteps. I stood in front of the mirror and imagined the reflection without me in it. It was as if all I was had been poured into the work and there was nothing of me left – if there had ever been anything of me in the first place, beyond the paint and the charcoal.

I held up my hand. It looked solid enough at first, but then I could see the cracks of the floorboards through its transparency.

I closed my eyes and shook my head.

You're finally cracking up …

‘You're nothing. All that talent and
nothing!'

My father's words returned to haunt me.

It's a strange thing. All the work, the paintings, the photographs, the drawings … No matter what anyone said about them, no matter the feeling I had when I finally called it quits on a work and stepped back, seeing it as if for the first time, no matter that I knew, without the intrusion of some bullshit modesty, that it was good, no matter what, there's a child inside each of us that holds on to what we were told when we were too young to filter out the crap. A child who believes every word, even in the face of contrary evidence.

I looked at my watch. 1:24.

I was late.

I grabbed my jacket and fled the room and the feeling.

*

‘Her name was Rachel. Aunt Rachel. She died two years ago. She was my father's older sister and she lived with us for about eight years.'

Chris pauses with the fork halfway to his mouth.

‘I don't think I ever saw her smile. In fact, apart from shopping and church, I don't remember her leaving the house all that much. It was like she moved in and that was it. By the time she died she was part of the furniture, sitting in a corner of the room, doing a cross-stitch or hunched over the stove, cooking something for dinner. Alive, but not living exactly. If you know what I mean.'

Maxine nods and Libby stabs at one of the strawberries on her plate. The waitress is serving the table near the window. A young woman and a little girl of four, five maybe, sitting holding the menu as if she can read what's on it. The mother looks at her over her own menu and smiles, then she reaches across and touches her daughter's hand. Just a touch. But the girl is talking to the waitress and it goes unnoticed, like most accustomed things.

He returns his attention to his own table.

‘Do you need any help with the set-up tomorrow, or do you like the artist to stay out of the way?'

A smile from both women.

‘All help gratefully accepted,' Maxine replies. ‘Brad will be there to do the heavy lifting, but all other jobs are up for grabs. I have no objection to standing around giving orders. Of course, if you have any suggestions for how we might improve things …'

‘And you place so little value on your life,' Libby cuts in.

Maxine pushes on regardless.

‘Your input is very welcome, Chris. You know that. Seriously, I haven't been this excited since we stole Kim Nelson off that dickhead Chesterton. In fact, this is better, because we actually
discovered
you! Did you invite your parents?'

Chris's fork pauses again.

Then he slides the pie into his mouth and shakes his head.

‘No point. They wouldn't come.
He
wouldn't even consider it, and no matter how much she might want to, there's not a chance in hell she'd stand up to him.'

‘So, tell us more about your aunt.'

Libby changing the subject. He nods gratefully.

‘Not much to tell really. I remember when I was about eight I was in hospital. I can't remember what for. It doesn't matter … When I came out, she'd moved into the spare bedroom down the hall from me. No one said much about it. You don't explain stuff to an eight-year-old. Whatever the reason, she was there and there she stayed. She taught me to play patience once. Took her ages. I was only young, and I couldn't remember all the rules. But she stuck to it. She had a sort of … unflappable serenity. But she wasn't much of a conversationalist.'

‘So, why d'you think your father took her in like that? From what you said, he doesn't appear to be the fraternal type.'

‘They lived in the same house, ate the same meals. Apart from that, he pretty much ignored her. They could sit in the same room for hours and not even acknowledge each other. To him I guess she was a duty. He gave her a roof and she helped out around the place, but apart from that he didn't have to go out of his way to make her welcome. Sometimes, it was like she wasn't even there, as if our lives went on around her. Does the sea notice a rock on the beach? It's going to go on ebbing and flowing with the tide whether the rock's there or not. That was what it was like when she died. Suddenly she wasn't there any more and the waves kept rolling as if nothing had happened.'

‘That's sad.' Libby dabs at her mouth with a paper serviette and watches his fork dicing the remains of the pie on his plate.

‘Spend a few nights on the street,' he replies. ‘“Sad” is a relative concept.'