In Between Frames Read online

  “Twelve, and dinners.”

  “Done.”

  The handshake between them was the first time they touched. She did notice that he held her hand a little too long. He must have noticed, too, that she did not pull her hand out right away. When she did, she felt no longing, no thrill of the first contact. I am not in love with him. She knew this, even as she knew that he had mistaken a simple exploration for desire. A few years was not long enough for the grief of David’s loss to lose its sting, and she could not bear the thought of inflicting the pain of her rejection on him, even though she knew it would be kinder.

  “I must warn you,” she said, as they kept walking. They were on the beach, where a few tourists (Americans, probably, she thought) lay like beached whales, their skin so red it glowed. She winced—these were not the people she wanted to be associated with, classless and crude in how they lolled about, letting their flesh broil. “I only make salads in the summer.”

  “I will teach you then to barbeque—for free,” he said.

  Mabel kicked off her sandals and ran into the ocean, until the lazy waves kissed the edges of her dress. Sam realized, suddenly, that she and Stephan were holding hands. She had to admit it was nice to be wanted. But she still didn’t want to be wanted by him.

  ~~~

  Miles tried the Leica one more time, with a fresh roll of film, one that he specifically hauled his ass all the way to Amherst for. He set up the tripod on the rotting pier and clicked away, a whole roll of identical, lakeside shots in black-and-white. Then he developed the film—and there were twenty-four shots of the lake, in black-and-white. He swore softly, but decided that somehow, the film he’d shot the day before had been exposed once, and that was that. It still didn’t explain how the exposure was so precisely in the middle of the roll, or how it fit so neatly between shots, but it was a more logical explanation than the other one, which was that his camera was haunted.

  He was packed for the European leg of his trip for exploring expatriate food, the shutters of his cabin all locked and closed, arrangements made for Gary to come by and get his mail twice a week made. His refrigerator was empty, his trash gone (lessons learned the hard way). His gear weighed almost as much as he did—he was a light packer, but even so, an eight-week trip was a long one, and in accordance with the conditions of his advance, he carried his camera equipment himself. “The reason photographer vests have so many pockets isn’t because the photographer needs them to carry his camera gear,” he once explained to Gary. “It’s because he’s already got a carry-on.”

  The addition of the Leica to his gear bag was an afterthought. He hadn’t wanted to bring it—he never shot film on these projects, anyway—but he justified it as “making sure the thing didn’t misbehave”. It was ridiculous, and he knew it was ridiculous, but he still felt better when it was with him, than when it wasn’t.

  He left France almost before he fully processed that he’d arrived, somehow filling two 16 GB memory cards, and not one shot of the Eiffel tower. In the Netherlands, he learned to hate the potato—there was no way to make a stamp pot look sexy, no way to turn a bland mash of taters and veg into anything visually appealing, and to make matters worse, every single expat had their own take on it. In Spain and Italy, he took photos of fresh produce, sausages so meaty they oozed, and fish so fresh he could almost smell it when he reviewed the pictures. Three weeks passed in a whirlwind of trains and planes. And so, when he was detained at Heathrow for being too conspicuous, and hadn’t eaten for eighteen hours because he lost his bag of raisins somewhere on the flight in, he resorted to reviewing the images of the food he’d shot in the days before, letting his eye fill his stomach.

  His bags were sitting on the desk in front of him. He’d been forbidden from opening them—they’d pointed out the CCTV cameras—but he wore his Nikon on around his neck, so he at least had something to fiddle with while sitting in the tiny closet of an office. The sickly shade of beige and the gray furniture did not improve his mood any. It seemed like hours before the door finally opened. “Mr. Garrison,” said the uniformed man who walked in. He was fat, but in a pleasing way, almost jolly. The roundness of his belly reminded Miles of Santa Claus. “Peter Standish. Nice to make your acquaintance. You’re aware of the problem?”

  “Not really, sir,” Miles said. “I mean, do realize that I have a lot of equipment—“

  “No, it’s not that. It’s that you have this,” he said, fishing out the Leica. “Our agents are rather baffled at this, since you have no film.”

  “Oh. That.” He had no sensible explanation for why he brought it. He couldn’t very well say that he wanted to make sure it didn’t misbehave. It was a camera, not a child. “I—uh, didn’t know it was in my bag.”

  “You didn’t know it was in your bag,” Peter Standish repeated, slowly, almost menacingly.

  “I was in a bit of a rush,” Miles said, hoping to God that Peter wouldn’t press any further. “I mean, I’ve got a tight itinerary, here,” he added, reaching into one of the zillion pockets on his vest and taking out his planner. “Look. I’m supposed to be in Cornwall tomorrow, Harrington the day after, and then it’s three shoots in London and then I fly to Greece. I’m a professional photographer whose services are in high demand where I live, and I very much doubt that having a camera I use to take fun shots with me on a working trip like this one is illegal.”

  “It’s not. It’s just—well, it’s a very high-end camera, you see. And it’s terribly similar to the one that I sold on eBay—“

  Miles almost shouted, “So you’re the original owner?”

  “Calm down. As I said, I bought it at an estate auction—the Wilcox family, in Kent, I believe.”

  They were laughing, now, the last vestiges of formality gone between them. “So how much did you pay for it?” Miles asked.

  “A thousand quid,” Peter said.

  Miles whistled. “You robbed them.”

  Peter shrugged. “The widow didn’t want to go through the hassle of looking through his things,” he said.

  Miles felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “Widow? Does she have a daughter?”

  “I believe she does,” Peter said. “Why? Do you know the Wilcoxes?”

  “No. I, uh, thought I saw their name mentioned in the society pages.” Miles frowned. Were there still such things as society pages? But Peter accepted the explanation, and stamped his passport, handing it back to him.

  “Do you know where she lives?” Miles asked. “I’d just like to pay my respects—and let her know the camera is being put to good use.”

  Miles would later acknowledge that it was a ridiculous reason, one that nobody except a fellow photographer would appreciate—and even then, it depended on the photographer. But Peter didn’t even question it, just shook his head. “I can’t tell you where she lives. But you could try asking around in Kent. That’s where the estate sale was held.”

  ~~~

  Sam finally found the typewriter she’d been dreaming of having. She had to admit it was a silly conceit—that she hadn’t written anything because she didn’t have a typewriter—but it was a true, nonetheless. Of course everything was done by computer, these days, but Sam had learned to type on an old fashioned typewriter, where each key needed to be depressed six inches before the type bar would even move and a new line required smacking the bejesus out of the carriage return. She did not want one of those, for all that she liked the aesthetics, but the small, “portable” (it still weighed six pounds) electric typewriter she uncovered at the local second-hand shop was perfect. Sam ordered a few new ribbons for it online that evening, but what carbon there was on the ribbon would suffice for her to begin.

  Begin what, exactly, was something she hadn’t really given much thought to. She didn’t even have much of an idea of who, or what, her novel was going to be about. She titled the manuscript “The Beast”, but she didn’t even know if there was going to be a monster in it. When Mabel got up the next morning, she
had already been at work for two hours, scribbling down ideas and trying to get her characters straight, but it was futile.

  “Stephan is coming today, mummy,” Mabel reminded her, as she fried an egg for her daughter. Mabel, Sam was pleased to see, had eaten her cucumber-and-tomato salad without any comments about how stupid it was to have this for breakfast.

  “I know,” Sam said, in Greek. “So, will it be hamburgers, then?”

  “Yes! With tzatziki!”

  “All right, then. But that means you can’t play on the beach all afternoon, understand?”

  “Yes, mummy.”

  In the weeks that had passed since Sam had settled down in the place, she had completely lost her habit of going grocery shopping once a week. The supermarket was only a mile from their place, and it was a pleasant walk, especially after a morning like this one, where she’d been writing for three hours straight. Most of it was schlock—she might be conceited and vain, but she wasn’t deluded about her ability to write—but that was what the second draft was for. Writing in the morning, while Mabel played on the beach, long walk in the afternoon, followed by Greek lessons and dinner—life, for once, was almost as perfect as it could possibly get.

  There was only one thing that bothered her, and that was Stephan. He’d made no advances and no romantic gestures in all the times that he came by, and he was great fun to have for dinner. But even so, Sam felt vaguely uneasy when he was around, as if she were leading him on, and he knew that she was leading him on, but had agreed to play the dupe, the sacrificial idiot, the good guy whose heart got broken by a cold British bitch, anyway. Compounding the difficulty was that she’d never stated she was interested in him, nor he in her, and she had no idea what he’d read into that handshake. God only knew what he was telling his friends about her.

  Still, it was hard to be too bothered by this, especially since Mabel had made friends with a few other girls. Apparently the game of “house” was the same no matter which country you were from. And Mabel liked Stephan, in part because on the two days of the week he came, Sam made “good food”. Sam was slightly indignant about this—she had grown up in France, after all, where one couldn’t escape the concept of good food, well-cooked—but she had to confess to herself that she did take more care to select choicer ingredients, and put some more attention into seasoning, on the nights Stephan was coming. It was a point of hospitality, she told herself, but at the same time, she had to wonder if perhaps her subconscious were trying to tell her something.

  Life had settled into a pleasant rhythm, and as she washed the breakfast dishes, Sam was starting to think that maybe that was part of the problem. Her life, so extraordinary at first, had now become mundane, at least to her. She needed a new perspective. The ream of office paper she’d bought shrank by another sheet of paper, this one with the word “PERSPECTIVE” written in angry capitals, encased in a ragged rectangle. A new perspective, or perhaps a new problem to solve.

  Make that, a problem with a solution, she thought, as her thoughts wandered straight to the raisins that kept appearing in their pantry. She was sure she never bought them. Mabel denied putting them in with the rest of the groceries at the last minute—and indeed, “ÃıƯ´µ” never appeared on her receipt. Sam made a point of throwing them away, or giving them to the children Mabel sometimes came home with, only to find the package returned, whole, in the pantry. At first it was unnerving, and in the first few weeks, Sam had spent several nights sitting up, waiting to catch the raisin-leaver. But after a while, when it became clear that nothing was missing or moved, she gave up, since whoever was doing this apparently only wanted her to have raisins, for some reason. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but if it was a ghost, she freely accepted the possibility that it could elect to do worse. It was a ridiculous problem to have, one that she couldn’t square with writing “real” novel.

  And then she realized, that was it. The perspective she needed. The ridiculous nature of high literature and modern art. The ideas came quickly, easily, after that. And there was even a beast.

  ~~~

  Miles rushed the last shoot in order to have a few hours in Kent. He hadn’t wanted to rush, but he had been all over Britain in that week, logging more hours than he cared to count on the trains, setting up his equipment in cramped flats, conducting interviews, and for the last shoot—a Morrocan’s take on the British “steak and kidney pie”—he reached into his bag for his raisins and discovered they weren’t there. A wave of uncontrollable crankiness pulsed through him, and it was all he could do to pack his equipment and get himself to a nearby Marks & Spencer’s without killing anybody, where he picked up a boxed sandwich and a bottle of Coke. As he stood in the parking lot, eating, he imagined he could feel the sugar hitting his system, knocking back the crankiness to a manageable level. He actually felt physically better with every bite he took. By the time he finished the sandwich, he was calm enough to regret leaving Hassim El-Abou so quickly, but not sorry enough to slog twenty minutes back to his place and set up his equipment again—if there was anything left to shoot of it, since Hassim had told him he loved this variation and could eat the entire pie in one sitting.

  So onwards to Kent it was. Miles decided, as he finished the Coke, to buy a roll of black-and-white from Ritz Photos, shoot off a few frames with the Leica. With overnight processing, he could pick it up the next day, be in Kent, inquire about the camera, show them the shots and tell them how nice it was, and ask if they knew where the widow had gone. He’d tell them that there’d been a roll of film left in it, which he’d developed, and that he’d like to know where to send them.

  Ritz only sold one type of black-and-white, and he was feeling the weight of his equipment. Still, he managed to shoot off the roll—he’d call it his “London on the street” series—and drop it off, and head back to the hotel without incident. It was a good series of shots, he thought, as he lay soaking in the tub—meditative views on the street, rusty signs, a homeless guy panhandling for change next to a sign that read “HeLP WaNted”—appropriately artsy, not too pretentious. He’d ordered larger prints, for a more quasi-professional look and feel. It would give his story legitimacy, and the family might be more willing to talk with him if he offered them a print or two.

  The next day, he’d checked out of the hotel, picked up his photos, and took the train to Kent. It was a short trip, so he’d only just worked the envelope open when the train pulled into the station. He tucked the envelope under his arm, checked his hair in his reflection in the train window, and hailed a cab to take him to the address he’d found through extensive Googling the night before. Finding the news piece on David Wilcox’s death had been hard enough, but it had taken him several hours banging away at his laptop before he finally located the obituary in a cached page issued by King’s Crossing, and then he had to look for Werner and Deirdre Wilcox in the antiquated phone book. They were David’s parents—he hoped they didn’t hate their daughter-in-law.

  As the cab left him by the curb in front of an imposing Tudor-style house, he began to have his doubts about this scheme working. He didn’t even really know what he hoped to gain by it, other than meeting the woman whose image haunted his camera. And for what end?

  Still, he was standing at their door, knocking, before he could persuade himself not to. The woman that greeted him was not what he expected when he read David’s obituary—the rising star of trauma surgery, a driven man dedicated to his field. He expected that she would be taller, more imposing—the type of mother who never had to tell her children to do anything, because she’d managed to instil in them the martial discipline to do things themselves. Deirdre Wilcox was tiny, standing at four feet eleven inches, her hair pulled back in a matronly bun, wearing glasses Miles had only ever seen on John Denver. “Yes?” she mouthed. It was a moment before Miles realized she’d spoken.

  He was tempted to make up a name, and a purpose, but he heard himself say, “Hello, ma’am, I’m Miles Garrison, a professional photograp
her,” before he could think to do anything different. “I bought a camera from eBay, and by chance the customs agent at Heathrow was the man who sold it to me. My condolences for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” she said, beginning to look puzzled. “Can I help you?”

  “Well, there was a roll of film in it, which I processed, and I would like to send the prints to his widow. Do you know where she might be?”

  At that point, a male voice—Werner—could be heard shouting, “Deirdre! Stop letting out the air conditioning!”

  “Please, come in,” the woman said, her voice so soft Miles had to strain to hear it. She really was a tiny, wispy thing—Miles noticed that she was wearing heels, even. “You’ll have to speak to my husband. He’ll know.”

  The air inside the house was stuffy, as if they hadn’t opened the windows for years. Most of the curtains were still drawn. Werner Wilcox turned out to be a tall, looming man, whose six feet was enhanced by his ill-fitting suit which hung off his lanky frame, the pants and sleeves a smidge too short, revealing too much pasty, blotchy skin on his wrists and too much paisley sock around his ankles. He was sitting in an overheated room, where the curtains were drawn shut and the only source of light was a single dim bulb burning away. Miles shook his damp and sweaty palm, struggling to keep his face from writhing in disgust as he repeated his story for his benefit.