I WAS BARELY on photo 625 out of 4,344 when one of the fishbowls caught my attention. A new argument—apparently definitive—between Jennifer and Summer. Jennifer never liked to argue in front of Stephen, as if she didn’t want to disturb his comatose peace. Maybe that was it; Summer was playing with an advantage there, and that’s why she decided to drop the bomb.
SUMMER: I’m leaving.
JENNIFER: You’re going out?
SUMMER: Yeah, off the island. Forever. Bye-bye, Robin Island. This momma’s leaving Mom’s Island behind.
JENNIFER: What do you mean, you’re leaving forever?
SUMMER: We agreed I’d breastfeed the girl for three months.
JENNIFER: No, we agreed to six, and then we negotiated it down to five. And we’re not even through the three months you’re saying.
SUMMER: Can you show me where we signed that agreement?
JENNIFER: What do you mean, signed? We didn’t sign anything.
SUMMER: Exactly . . . I’m not spending another summer here dying of boredom. Give me the rest of the money and I’m out.
JENNIFER: Summer, let’s have the party in peace.
SUMMER: You know what it is? The more time I spend with the baby, the closer I get to her. So you choose, Aunt Jenny: Either I bounce or I keep the girl. There’s only one life . . .
Almost simultaneously, I saw the fishbowl in Karen’s Petite Maison go out. Karen was talking on the phone with a swimming pool maintenance company so they would come clean hers for the summer. The image went black and the audio cut out completely. The signal was gone. I made sure all the connections were good. Everything was in order. The camera had burned out. It wasn’t the first to do so. Sometimes the signal had interference, was blurry, or would give out for a few hours or even days and then come back. It depended on a multitude of meteorological, environmental, structural and fortuitous factors. I didn’t think anything more of it at the time. I ignored the flapping of the butterfly wing that anticipated the chaos about to come raining down on me.
I reread Julia’s novel—this time the printout she gave me—to try and find some clue about Chris. But once more, just after starting, I found myself trapped, forgot my purpose and abandoned the notebook and pencil.
An hour and two glasses of wine into our meeting in Le Café, Julia stopped suspecting every positive comment I made.
“I love how the people don’t have names. It makes them more enigmatic and more recognizable at the same time.”
“At first they had them: the protagonists were named Paul and Samantha, like Mark’s brother and his girlfriend. Samantha died in an accident on prom night. Paul had gone with her.”
Of course I knew the sad story of Paul and Samantha perfectly, and I already knew the characters had been called that at first because I remembered the argument Julia had had with Mark when she caught him reading her novel at Christmas.
“So why did you decide to take away their names?”
“Well, I could lie to you and tell you something artsy, but the truth is that it was pure spite. I was mad at Mark, and I decided he didn’t deserve any homage to his brother or his girlfriend or their perfect love.”
“A perfect love can only be a love cut short, that’s what she says in the novel.”
“You think that phrase is true?”
“I don’t know. You?” Before I could say anything, Julia corrected herself. “Sorry, how tactless. That wasn’t my intention. I’d forgotten that . . . How stupid. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing. Me, I don’t think the phrase is true. At least I need to think it isn’t true.”
“But there must be something you didn’t like.”
“Yeah, there’s one thing I couldn’t stand: not being able to read the end. How does the novel end?”
“I don’t know; I’m blocked. That’s why I gave it to you. It’s been two weeks since I’ve written a line. Sometimes I think the best ending is not having an ending. But I think that’s just a lazy lie to justify myself. So don’t ask me if it’s finished or how it’s going to end, Alice. You tell me how you want the story to end.”
When I returned home, I scrolled through the photos from the cemetery on my laptop. The majority of them were passersby visiting other graves, the guard making his rounds—sometimes walking, sometimes on a bike, sometimes in a car—the gardener and the occasional animal passing by. It was like a photo essay, a study of life through death. I thought that a great painter of the everyday—Norman Rockwell, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, or even Diego Sánchez Sanz—would have used those photos as a mirror into society to make a powerful and expressive collection of pictures, always with the same setting. Starting with the first photo, of Ruby’s carriage with the rake inside. That would undoubtedly be the first in the series. So why don’t you do it, or try, at least?
When I was on photo 2,510 out of 4,344, I paused to look at the monitors and noticed that more of the fishbowls had gone black.
I realized that the batteries in the cameras were starting to die. I felt an uncontrollable attack of rage, an inner burning, a horror. Because I knew this was going to happen. Of course I knew. Maybe not so soon, but it was bound to happen. I had thought it wouldn’t matter because I was going to solve the mystery before then.
“You told me they’d last a year.”
Now Antonio was the target of my anger.
“A year standby, Blondie. Seems like not much standby, cameras and you. You always active.”
“I’m asking you, please, don’t joke with me.”
Maybe Antonio had been scamming me the whole time, anticipating my movements and needs? Making me run up absurd expenses, taking me down a much longer road than necessary, like a taxi driver with a clueless tourist. What if he was the one who had turned me into a spy junkie?
“It no joke . . . Blondie, you no tell me you no think first. Of course you think first. You very smart.”
“No, I have the impression you’re the smart one here.”
“Hey, hold up,” he said, seriously. “Don’t get aggressive, I no like. You on my good side, I’m good; you on my bad side, I’m bad, Alice.”
Why was I blaming poor Antonio? He had always put up with my madness and bad moods with a smile and infinite patience? I was going to let down my guard and ask him sincerely to forgive me, when I realized he had mentioned my name.
“How do you know my name?”
“License plate, Alice. Figure out things much easier than it seem. You should have diversify more. Not always buy here. Beginner’s mistake. You know after September 11, law we have to alert authorities when strange behaviors? And your behavior very strange.”
I wanted to cry and confess everything to him, tell him everything from the beginning and then offer him any kind of sexual favor. Whatever it was to keep him from turning me in.
“What do I have to do to keep you from turning me in?”
He took two seconds to answer. It goes without saying they lasted an eternity. I started to get queasy and wanted to run out, but running would do nothing in that case.
“Alice, two things: If you don’t mind, I rather still call you Blondie. Very offensive you still not know I on your side. And I never turn you in for mistreating me.”
“Sorry, Antonio, forgive me, the truth is . . .”
“Eh, eh, wait. You not listen to second thing.” This is where I thought we’d turn a dramatic corner and he would ask me for some sexual favor. “Smile a little. Smile for me. A smile, Blondie.”
I didn’t smile right away, but Ruby did. Her unworried pleasant smile infected me.
“How lovely. See how easy it is be happy when you want to?”
How right Antonio was. But somehow, just then, I wasn’t interested in my own happiness.
“I did think this would happen,” I said, completely tired of myself. “That sooner or later they’d go out . . .”
“Can I make question? What you try and find out? What you investigating? Why so much time and effort? Maybe you think doing something bad?”
“Every day, every hour.”
“Or maybe you doing everything good.”
“Antonio, I don’t understand you.”
“I think you do.”
I suppose he meant that maybe all my methods were keeping me from finding the truth. That I was deceiving myself. Maybe. In that moment it didn’t matter to me. Nothing mattered to me. Before I could go, Antonio, seeing my dejection, took out a camera from under the counter.
“Wi-Fi connection, HD quality, no interference. Remote viewing and recording. Motion-activated.”
“I don’t see how it’s different from the cameras you sold me before.”
“There’s a difference maybe you don’t know: cable. Connect to plug and bingo, signal forever. Sound familiar?”
Seeing that I didn’t react, he added, “Look, do one thing. Today better go home and rest a little. No buy nothing. Think about you and what you want to do with life. I always be here for what you need. But let me make you gift. Let me give you camera.”
That was like giving a baggie to an addict at the entrance to Narcotics Anonymous. It revived the burning suspicion that Antonio was manipulating me, that I was his precious toy, his favorite video game, and he wanted to take it to the next level. Anyway, obviously I took the gift.
When I was on photo 3,510 of 4,344, I noticed on the monitor that John and Keith were on Gchat. But they didn’t mention Chris again. What had he been to them? Apparently no one. A university acquaintance for John, a guy who put in tennis courts for Keith. If he’d been going back and forth to Robin Island for two years, how is it possible John hadn’t seen him again? Was he lying? And Chris installing the court without a contract or an invoice, billing in cash? He was very scrupulous about the law. I didn’t understand anything. I was furious and wanted to confront them. Punish them for going on with their sexual games and not answering my questions.
On the table, I had the camera Antonio had given me. I wasn’t thinking of opening it. At least, not for now. I had to seriously reconsider what I was doing and where I was going.