Cast a Pale Shadow(8)

The blue and white vehicle swallowed both girls and they were gone before he had gathered his wits enough to seize this chance to meet her by rescuing the scattered contents of her friend's handbag. Disappointed in himself, he left the camera store and collected the lost bits and scraps from the sidewalk. A comb, a handkerchief, lipstick, and a few folded papers, there was probably nothing here that the girl would miss. They would think it peculiar if he went out of his way to return them on Monday. He shrugged and shuffled back to the store.

Trissa. At least he had learned that her name was Trissa. It was a gem of knowledge that offered the first glimmer of hope he had felt in months. Trissa.

The name sounded sweet to him, sweeter even than the rumble of the salt truck on that lonely road in Michigan last November. He had climbed out of the blackness to hail it and it had carried him to help. By the time he was released from the hospital with two toes on his left foot lost to frostbite, the highway department had impounded his abandoned car. He had had the devil of a time proving it was his, and that he was Nicholas Brewer, its registered owner.

"May I see your identification, please," the clerk had said. They were the words he most dreaded hearing.

"Well, that's the problem, you see. I seem to have brought the wrong wallet."

"Then I suggest you come back when you have the right one. We can't release a car to just anyone."

"But I'll pay the fines. I swear I am Nicholas Brewer." Nicholas sorted through the useless papers in his wallet, hoping to find some shred of evidence to prove it. The driver's license fell out to the countertop and the clerk snatched it up.

"What about this? Who is this Cole Baker?"

"Damned if I know," Nicholas answered with the truth. Though it was a name he was not unfamiliar with, he had never met the man and it confounded him to be forever finding his possessions cluttering up and complicating his life. Sometimes he thought Cole Baker did these things deliberately, but that sounded too paranoid to admit.

"Hair blond, eyes brown, height five-eleven, weight one sixty. Matches you," said the clerk, glancing back and forth between the photo and Nicholas, eying him narrowly.

"Yeah, me and a million others."

"Say, hey, is that you, Nick?" bellowed a voice from the hall and the mammoth figure of the salt truck driver filled the doorway. "Hey, good to see you all thawed out! I wasn't too sure you would." The man reached out his huge hand to engulf Nicholas' own and pump it vigorously.

"You know this guy, Roy?"

"Know him? Hell, I saved his life, as I don't mind braggin' on. This is Nick Brewer, that guy I found half dead during the Thanksgiving blow. You remember that, don'tcha?"

"How could I forget?" The clerk began stamping papers and shoving them through the grating. "We thought we'd never hear the end of it around here," he muttered to Nicholas. "Take these papers to the garage on Beaumont Street. They'll give you your car. Any valuables we found are listed on the voucher. Get them from Police Claims at the Fifth Street Station. Sorry for the delay, Mr. Brewer. You're in luck. The fines have been waived."

But that luck was the last of it until now. He'd had difficulty picking up the traces of his life again. Cole Baker's identification led him back to an unremembered apartment in Grand Rapids. The ring that held his car keys had a key that opened the apartment's door as well. He'd poked around assembling the clothing and belongings he recognized in the closets as his own.

But he couldn't stay there. He had the uneasy feeling that this Cole Baker lurked somewhere nearby, waiting for a chance to pounce and maybe try to steal his soul away this time instead of just his driver's license and his car. He would not allow himself to think further than that, to puzzle out the link Cole Baker had with his life. He mingled so intricately with his memory, his madness, and his nightmares that finding Cole Baker might mean losing himself. And Nicholas did not want to chance that.

So he packed up and left that place, taking with him a roll of money found in a drawer -- probably Baker's but let him try to prove it. It wasn't much anyway, just enough to pay an installment on his hospital bill and tide him over until he found a job.

He also took the portfolio of photographs and the cameras. They were shared possessions, Baker's and his own, as difficult as that was for him to rationalize. There was nothing rational about it, so it was best not to think on it too long.

Nicholas had himself purchased two or three of the cameras, though it was impossible now to remember which ones. He used them all. And at least half the photos in the portfolio were his. He favored people as his subject matter, portraits and candids. Cole Baker seemed to prefer landscapes and still lifes. Nicholas admired his skill with the interplay of light and shadow, something he had never had the patience to master. Neither of them had lost his soul to Polaroid yet. But maybe it was just the lack of funds that saved them.

The portfolio was like a trophy between them, captured and possessed for a season or two, then returned to the new victor without malice. Baker never harmed the portions of the collection that were his, and Nicholas kept intact those that were Baker's. He took care when using it for a job interview to de-emphasize Baker's work, leaving the best of it behind. He didn't want to get a job on the strength of a talent he didn't have.

He worked his way to St. Louis this time before Baker's pull on him had diminished to the point where he felt safe. There had been a couple of meaningless jobs until this one, which, while not exciting, allowed him to use his knowledge of photography a bit. He looked forward to the customers who asked him to critique their photos and give suggestions on how they could improve them. But they were the exception. Most just plunked down their money and hurried off with their envelopes of prints and new rolls of film.

It was evidence of the emptiness of his existence that customers of any kind were the highlight. Nicholas craved love and human contact, and for all he told himself that avoiding them would also mean avoiding the heartache and torture that came after, he found the craving overwhelming at times.

It was this yearning that drew his attention to the girl he now knew was called Trissa. She transferred busses each afternoon on the corner outside the camera shop, one of a dozen or so college girls who did so.

Trissa was a standout from the first. She stood apart literally, mostly holding herself away from the other girls, her beauty wreathed in brittle loneliness. Like Cynthia's. Like Janey's. She needed him. He knew that from the very start.

It had quickly become a pattern for him to delay the dusting of the window display until three forty-five, about the time when the girls would arrive at the intersection on their first bus. Dusting was a duty that required little concentration yet could be drawn out limitlessly, depending on the punctuality of the second bus.

The few minutes he spent watching over Trissa each day provided the fuel for his imagination. He could save her from whatever sadness kept her so aloof from the others. He could make her smile.

Each evening after work, Nicholas boarded the bus that followed Trissa's route and rode it all the way to the end. He studied the schedule and map he had taken from the rack behind the driver's seat, and carefully walked the streets back to the camera shop. At each intersection, he turned and squinted at the map under the streetlights, looked up and down the cross streets and tried to listen for her with his mind.

Maybe he would catch a glimpse of her at a lighted window. Maybe she would pass him on her way to the corner grocery or the mailbox or walking her dog.

Or maybe she transferred from that bus to yet another and she was still miles away from him.

It didn't matter. He felt so much closer to her than he did when he was home. He felt so much warmer walking on a street she may have walked. Sometimes when he reached the camera shop again, he found he did not have the will to climb into his car and drive the lonely distance to his rented room. Instead he would turn and retrace his steps to the end of the line and back again.





Trissa



In his new blue suit and maroon-striped tie, Bob Kirk whirled Edie onto the dance floor, aware of every admiring female glance turned his way. He was a looker and he knew it and it made Trissa ill to see how her mother basked in his glow. She regretted allowing herself to be recruited as coat check girl for this event. But she had thought the cloakroom would be out of the way and quiet enough to let her read. There was a test on Silas Marner on Monday and she was only on chapter four.

Instead, she found her outpost to be in a direct line with the dance floor and the ringside table where her parents polished their public veneer for all their friends and fellow parishioners. Bob Kirk had been the chairperson this year and had steered his committee to what appeared to be a rousing success, despite a raging thunderstorm. The bar was booming, the band was lively, the decorations were perfect, and they probably would make just enough profit to top last year's which would look good in the Sunday bulletin next week.

That Bob Kirk is a whiz of an organizer, people would say. He sure knows how to put on a good show, they would comment, with more truth than any suspected. You must be real proud of your old man, someone was bound to tell Trissa. Yes, real proud, she would lie with a smile that was as good a show as any he could put on.