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  “This is a family business,” he said. “We treat each other like family.”

  Melissa nodded; if she understood what he was driving at, she was alone.

  “Don’t worry about the bus. Zane’ll drive you. He lives in your part of town.”

  Melissa cocked her eyebrow and subjected Zane to a careful appraisal, as if calculating the probability that he was some kind of pervert.

  Another childhood lesson, lately discarded: the clothes make the man, Lucas. Although, in all likelihood, not one tailor today living could compensate for your cadaverous appearance. Zane essayed a sunny smile, in effect somewhat closer to a death rictus. It was a problem he’d been having.

  “Shit, Zane, you sick or something? You look like the night of the living dead.”

  “I think I’m coming down with something.”

  Zane felt vile, but above all, he simply felt tired.

  “I hope you’re taking something for that,” said Jade. Jade carried antiseptic wipes in her purse, inspected restaurant cutlery with care, kept a small bottle of hand sanitizer on hand at all times. The studio reeked of it, the chemical smell recalling a doctor’s office, tongue depressors, the clinical penetration of a cold otoscope into the ear canal.

  Zane said nothing. What he was coming down with, specifically, was the sudden onset of bad memories. And Zane was indeed taking something for that: he drank.

  This choice of medication had done little to improve the quality of his sleep. He had begun to suspect, furthermore, that it might be responsible for his blotchy appearance, which had recently begun to attract comment.

  Zane fussed with his cameras and looked up to see Melissa studying him carefully. He felt that he had become completely transparent.

  Melissa departed for the change room, an incongruous token of modesty, and returned as Alyssa, who wore a tartan skirt, knee-high socks, a white shirt and a surprisingly elastic cardigan that was a clear example of one size failing to fit any. To compound the effect, she had fixed her hair neatly into pigtails and tied them with coloured ribbons, which she fussed with as she sat down on the bed.

  Barker had provided the script, such as it was. Alyssa had spent her tuition money and was without money for rent; her Dad was so gonna kill her. But then she’d seen this ad in the paper. And so on, ad lib.

  Zane had always preferred to work in close. If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough; so Robert Capa had said. Then Capa stepped on a land mine. Melissa looked directly into Zane’s lens and tilted her eyebrow, then dropped it again. Grey irises, flecked with brown, eyes the colour of a rusting blade. He tripped the shutter: snap.

  “Hi, Alyssa,” said Bill.

  She giggled, threw a shrug. Snap. A sidelong look, biting her lip. Snap.

  “So I went down to the campus, and look what I found,” said Bill. “And you’re not just your average, garden-variety slut, are you?”

  Shakes her head, giggles. Snap.

  “Alyssa here needs a little money for tuition, so’s she doesn’t get kicked out of school. Isn’t that right?”

  “I like, spent all my money. My dad’s so going to kill me.”

  Light falls from suspended fixtures, reflects from this woman with the cocked eyebrow, bends through fourteen elements in eleven groups, bounces off the reflex mirror and casts an image on the focusing screen. The retina scans that image and feeds it through the optic nerve and thalamus to the primary and secondary visual cortices, who discuss among themselves matters of form, contrast and colour. The important thing is to stay grounded; as for the rest, it’s really not up to you.

  “Well, we don’t want that to happen to a hot girl like you. And we’ve got a way for you to earn that money, don’t we?”

  Melissa giggled and averted her eyes, then looked up again and parted her lips and touched her lower lip with the tip of her tongue.

  Zane concentrated on the hum of the computer’s cooling fan, the clack of his camera’s reflex mirror, the whine of the capacitor charging in his flash. This girl has a fake name and a fake outfit and she sits on a fake bed in a fake motel room; triangulation becomes somewhat tricky.

  “And I’ll bet you want to earn that money, don’t you? Look at that, you’re blushing. Tell us how you’re going to earn that money.”

  Melissa giggled and fanned her face with her hand. This woman can blush on demand: money in the bank.

  Zane heard the fluorescent tubes humming overhead, one concrete fact for his mind to latch onto. You reach out for anything you can. A drowning man grabs at a lifeline; the lifeline smiles, steps back, plays hard to get.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It had begun to rain. Traffic crept along the rain-black pavement in the usual rainy-day Toronto fashion, which is to say slowly, ten thousand drivers eyeing the wet roadway with distrust. Better keep your eyes on the road; factions among the puddles plot mayhem, lie in wait to prey on the inattentive. Anything could happen. Consequently, a million people arrive late home for supper. Zane watched brake lights glow and fade through the smear of his windshield wipers with irritation swelling in his chest.

  In Nicaragua, when a good rain hit, the streets would be knee-deep, lost under brown, roiling water laden with silt and garbage. Under all that, you could never be sure that the road was still there. And probably, sizeable chunks of it weren’t. So then, then it made sense to slow down. But a little rain like this, a little rain is nothing. Long pedal on the right, full speed ahead. The puddles are not going to jump out and hurt you. You people, you people in your Beemers and your mall-assault land tanks, sport futility vehicles, you people don’t know how good you have it.

  Drizzle flecks the windshield, fracturing the light, brake lights swelling in glowing red splatter. The passenger-side wiper blade has split and the loose end trails across the glass, leaving a refracted smear in its wake. About time you fixed that wiper. That’s not the sort of thing you ought to let go. Road safety is no laughing matter, etcetera.

  Melissa emanated from his passenger seat.

  Zane was a creature of routine, and recently, solitude had become the central element of that routine. Melissa’s presence was a serious disturbance in the quiet field of his existence, a standing wave creating sympathetic vibrations of ever-increasing amplitude, the kind of thing that took down the Tacoma Narrows bridge. Zane was no engineer; his solution to such problems was to ignore them until they dissipated. He papered her over with layers of silence and concentrated on the road.

  It was not that Zane was ignorant of social convention and its demand for small talk. He simply felt that his present situation highlighted a serious omission from even the finest etiquette books: how one is to make small talk with a stranger, having just watched her act out the fantasies of a compulsive masturbator. It was difficult to identify an appropriate conversational gambit. Above all, one had to avoid any suggestion of ulterior motives. It would not be appropriate, for example, to compliment her mastery of the finer technical points of her trade, nor even her grasp on certain fundamentals.

  The safest course, therefore, seemed to be to deliver Melissa to her home at best possible speed, and thus to remove the disturbance from the quiet field of his existence. But Zane was fighting the inevitable. All lines of pressure now bent in her direction; the conversational barometer was falling like a brick down a well. Sooner or later, something was going to get said.

  “Nice weather we’re having,” said Melissa.

  Zane peered at the gloom above, the glow of illuminated signs through the steady drizzle: an Indian restaurant, a donut shop, an adult video store with its windows painted over.

  “For a duck, I mean. Nice weather for a duck.”

  He considered it essential to pay close attention to traffic.

  “So I guess you’re the strong and silent type.” She leaned against the passenger door, elbow propped on the window frame. The cocked eyebrow, the smile of amusement. He felt that she should be wearing her seat belt.

  “I w
as just watching the puddles. For ducks.”

  An arrested laugh: her head fell back, her mouth opened, but nothing issued.

  “A sense of humour. This date might just work out after all.”

  Zane glanced across at her, saw young love, laughter flashing in darkened streets, tearful breakups, rent troubles. Twenty-five years before, at an age when he fell in love approximately once a week, Melissa would have rendered him doe-eyed and helpless. As things stood, he wanted only to get her out into the rain.

  “I bet all the girls think you’re creepy.”

  Time to get that wiper fixed; it grows irritating. Zane reached for the radio knob, turned it on with the volume down low. Some inane DJ chatter, an advertisement for payday loans, followed by another for a bankruptcy trustee. Now this, this is a business plan that Richard Barker himself would admire. You get the suckers coming and going.

  “Yeah, you got serial killer written all over you. Next thing, you’re gonna start talkin’ to yourself or something.”

  “There’s room for you in the trunk.”

  “Another funny.”

  “You think I’m joking.”

  “I think you’re just shy.”

  Offering her a long walk in the rain seemed an appropriate rejoinder, but that would be to concede defeat. The lesson came long in the learning: they can’t get your goat if they don’t know where it’s tied. His father’s words. Don’t show them where it’s tied.

  Melissa was now discovering the location of every farm animal that Zane had ever owned.

  “I don’t feel well. I didn’t sleep last night. I’m really not in the mood.”

  “Maybe I can get you in the mood.”

  “Maybe you can walk home.”

  Melissa lapsed into silence. Zane celebrated victory over the length of an entire city block, then pulled up at a red light. At this rate, you’ll never be rid of her. The rain was coming down hard now, pounding on the roof.

  “How’d you get into this, anyway?”

  “Get into what?” Barker got me into this. He said, drive her home. So I’m driving you home.

  “I mean, the business. How’d you get into the business.”

  “How did you?”

  She shook her head. “I asked you first.”

  “I answered an ad.”

  “You just don’t seem to belong, you know?”

  Zane knew, but pretended otherwise.

  “You’re not the type.”

  He drove for a moment, absorbed this.

  “Bill’s the type. Rich is the type. You’re not the type.”

  He dodged a car waiting to turn left. So you’re not the type. What type? And why does anybody do anything, anyway?

  “I’m in it for the money,” she said. “The money’s great. I’m gonna make a bundle and then get out, so I don’t have to work some shit job.”

  He wanted to ask just what constituted a shit job, in her mind, but thought better of it.

  “It just happens to be my shit job.”

  “You’re in it for the free peep show. Admit it.”

  Is it impolite to inform her that her finest work does nothing for you?

  “Yeah, I bet you go home and jack off to all your pictures.”

  “Barker keeps all the pictures.”

  “I bet you keep your favourites.”

  “Barker takes the card. He’s afraid I’d just turn around and sell them to someone else.”

  “Would you?”

  “Probably.”

  “That’s all you really think about? Selling them?”

  “After a while, skin is just skin.”

  On the radio, the DJ attempted a joke, with uncertain results, and then took refuge in the next song. Melissa became a blank face staring out into the rain. Ahead, a traffic light turned orange and Zane stamped on the gas, blew through on the red.

  “You always drive this fast?”

  Zane checked his speedometer and eased back. “I just want to get home and get some sleep.”

  “Mind if I join you?”

  The same smile of amusement, the same cocked eyebrow. The question filled him with a discomfiting sense of his advancing age, not to mention unwelcome memories of Bill in action. In my day, young lady, sweaty entanglements of the sort you so disingenuously propose were preceded by an appropriate period of mooning about and holding hands. Now, you get the AIDS test, you do your interview segment with Bill, you tell us just how you want to earn that money.

  Helicopters rain Agent Orange on the Garden of Eden; the tree of life grows cancer apples as Adam frolics in the grass. The serpent drapes himself over Eve’s naked shoulders, says, hey babe, you can do a lot better than this. We could take this snake act on the road, make us some good money. We won’t have to work no shit jobs.

  “Not tonight.”

  “You gay?”

  “No.” Furthermore, don’t flatter yourself. You are not, in fact, all that.

  Some things, you prefer not to explain. Ladies, this is the captain speaking: we are experiencing difficulties with the engines, and have been for some time.

  “Shit, Zane, you’re wound tight as they come.”

  “How ’bout we talk about your problems?”

  “You’re a walking hangup, man.”

  The bleat of a car horn, briefly dopplering, a falling note of futility.

  “Thanks for the insight.”

  Zane made a left turn and accelerated. The valve clatter was growing worrisome. A mechanic would first recoil in horror, then consider his bank account, like a dentist peering into the mouth of a child raised entirely on candy. The motherlode. Best to let the engine die a natural death.

  “Maybe you’d like me as a cheerleader,” she said.

  “That kind of crap’s for assholes who never grew out of high school.”

  “Or I can be your daughter. I bet you’d like that.”

  “Give it up.”

  “Lots of guys like that.”

  “I said give it a rest.”

  “And what if I don’t? You want to give me a good spanking?”

  “You can get out and walk.”

  She laughed, head back against the passenger window. He pictured the door falling open behind her, the look on her face as she fell backwards to land in a puddle.

  “Why can’t you just chat about the fucking weather?”

  “Shit, Zane, I already tried that.”

  This, Zane could not refute. He foundered on a lack of gambits. Beyond meteorology lies hockey, the universal Canadian topic. Zane hated hockey. Work was not a topic he wished to explore. Still, it was essential to maintain the initiative.

  “Where do you go from here?”

  “Left at the next lights.”

  “I meant in a broader sense.”

  “I don’t think that far ahead.”

  “I meant tonight.”

  “You mean your place is out?”

  “Seriously.”

  “I’m going to get solidly baked.”

  “That’s how you deal with it, is it?”

  The car was filled with a regrettable hit of the 1970s, the clink and squeak of a windshield wiper reaching the limits of its arc, and the sound of the rain. It occurred to Zane that he had slipped from small talk to much larger talk. Served her right. He thought he would just leave it at that.

  “I’m not some kind of victim, Zane.”

  She shifted her body to sit back in her seat, and at last he had quiet.

  You get to see a lot of victims.

  Christine was his first. When Zane first saw her, she was dead.

  He found Christine in El Salvador, on the road to a small town near the Honduran border, a place called Guarjila. Guarjila was in the middle of what would eventually be called the Zona Roja, the red zone. Romero was dead and in San Salvador the police were firing on demonstrators, and Zane had come to El Salvador to cover that story. He had three Nikon camera bodies, six lenses, a case filled with black-and-white developing gear and chemicals
, and the contact information of a dozen photo editors to whom he expected to sell his pictures. He was out to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. He was out to stop the killing. He was out to win the Pulitzer. Lucas Zane was almost twenty-two years old, and El Salvador was his first war.

  In San Salvador, he met Terry Lapierre, whom he had long idolized. Lapierre had shot every war from Vietnam forward, won the Pulitzer, and had three times been awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his work. Zane spotted Lapierre outside the Hilton San Salvador and introduced himself. He said he was in-country shooting freelance and Lapierre said, for who.

  Just freelance, he said. I came here after Romero.

  And you know no one, you have no contacts, said Lapierre.

  Zane did not reply.

  You better stick with me, then, said Lapierre.

  In a war, you don’t work without contacts, he said. You have to be with one side, or be with the other. If you do not have friends, you will be killed. So you always make sure to have friends. And you must have contacts so that you can know the next story before it begins. These demonstrations, they are the last story.

  Lapierre said that the next story was up in the mountains, in Chalatenango. So Lapierre headed to Chalatenango, to Guarjila, and Zane followed, and found Christine.

  The first sign of trouble was a green-and-white van pulled over at the edge of an open field, its doors hanging open. The wheels were almost in the ditch and the van leaned towards the hills as if drunk. Luggage and papers and bundles of clothing were strewn in the grass and along the road, and as they drew closer Zane saw that some of the bundles of clothing were not bundles of clothing but bodies, collapsed in the curious shapelessness of death. Outside of the sterile confines of the funeral home where he had seen his father, dull and deflated in his casket, these were the the first dead bodies Zane had ever seen.

  The dead were four women. One had blonde hair that clearly marked her as a foreigner. She lay on her back. Her vacant blue eyes, on which flies now lighted, implored an indifferent sky. All four had been raped.