The Clairvoyants(57)

“Why are you doing this?” he asked me.

The snowplow roared past, the snow spraying off its dull blade.

“Would you ever photograph me?”

I knew I was being coy and that I should tread carefully. He rolled away to look at me. We breathed puffs of white around our heads. I threw the covers back, and my naked body was gleaming and slick in the candlelight. William smirked. He didn’t think I was serious.

“Are you asking me if I think you’re beautiful?”

“I’m asking if you’d ever take a picture of me. Not if I’m a worthwhile subject.”

William didn’t know what to say. There was a frozen quality to our bodies. I began to grow cold.

“Why do you want to know?” he said.

I hadn’t planned to admit to seeing the photographs. This would reveal I’d searched for a key, inserted it in his locked desk drawer—that I had no idea what I’d find, but that I didn’t trust him enough to simply ask. Still, my curiosity got the better of me. Why shouldn’t I confess to seeing them? He might be relieved and even discuss them with me. They were only photographs, after all.

“Your sleeping women,” I said. “They’re all the Milton girls, aren’t they?”

William sat up, his back white in the dark room, the splotch that was his heart-shaped mole on his shoulder. He sat that way, statue-like, and I could read nothing of what he thought.

“It’s understandable,” I said, aware I might be digging myself in deeper. “They were part of your past. Your memories. I could see how they’d be significant.”

I watched him carefully ease himself off the edge of the bed. He took a few steps away, toward the window, and then stopped and cried out.

“Goddamnit!”

I’d never heard him raise his voice like that before, and I withdrew back onto the bed. I felt sure his anger was directed at me. He lifted his foot in the candlelight. He’d stepped on a piece of an ornament. It was a big piece, and he must have stepped on it exactly right. His foot had begun to bleed, and I cringed and looked away.

“Oh, no,” I said. “Does it hurt?” I put my hand over my mouth and felt vaguely sick. I climbed from the bed, the afghan wrapped around me. “What do I do?”

“When did you see them?” William said, his voice cold.

He hadn’t removed the ornament from his foot. He balanced with his foot in his hand, hopped over to the bed, and sat down, and I stood nearby, listening to him breathe in and out in his anger.

“Should I get you a towel?”

I put on a sweatshirt, slipped on my jeans. I found a dish towel and wet it, and wrung it out. I sat beside him with the towel, my hand growing numb, and I felt odd and displaced. Accused. It had been wrong for me to snoop. He shoved the towel away.

“When?” he said. “That night in my office?”

“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t deny it now.

William felt for the glass in his foot and cursed, softly. Then he looked at me, our faces so close I could see the anger in his eyes, smell the sour tinge of his breath. He was struggling to maintain his composure, and I wasn’t sure why he didn’t discuss them—why they had to be a secret. Still, I couldn’t say it.

The snow pinged against the window and the panes rattled.

Outside we could hear the plows moving up and down the grid of streets, throwing snow in high banks. I had the distinct feeling we were being buried. The candle flickered over his hair, his face, his tense jaw. Why was I the one who needed to explain? He’d photographed the girls of Milton, in bed, exposed in the intimacy of sleep. I felt a surge of jealousy.

“This is a breach of trust,” he said. “You broke into my desk, went through my private things.”

“I didn’t break in,” I said. “I used the key.”

This made my prying even worse. He could now imagine me taking down the little tin, opening the lid.

“I asked to see them, and you told me no,” I said.

“I’m still working on them,” he said, slowly.

I handed him the towel. “I think you apply pressure to stop the bleeding.”

He shoved my hand away again and stood and felt for his shirt, his pants.

“Where are you going?” I asked him. “There’s a snowstorm.”

He hunted around in the bureau, and then he grabbed his socks, threw open the apartment door, and started down to the vestibule. At the bottom, he put on his boots, his jacket, the ridiculous hat. He flung the front door open and his dark shape moved across the porch, down the steps into the snow. The front door wasn’t closed all the way, and I slipped down and stood in the doorway, watching him go. The streetlights were out. He was a moving figure, disappearing into that darkness. The snow blew in over my bare feet, but I didn’t feel the cold. I didn’t call out to him or beg him to stop. He was going to his office to find the portfolio, and when he saw it was gone, he would be back.

I closed the front door, and Del opened hers. The beam of her flashlight blinded me.

“Why are you down here?” she said, her voice lit with alarm. She came to me and put her hand out and touched my face. When we were little I would unconsciously frown and Del hated when I wore the expression.

“I was looking at the snow.”

I felt like a child with her cold hand on my cheek. I felt as if our roles were slowly revolving, reversing. In the darkness, with the wind rattling around outside, knocking off roof tiles, I thought about being Del, the uncertainty the world presented her, and I felt twinges of bewilderment as if I were now experiencing what she usually did.