It’s too early. He knows it is. But Professor Weary checks anyway. He’s curious. Fine, all right! He’s obsessed. The click-refresh is soothing and anxiety-provoking and hope-filled and disappointing, and he’s helpless against it. Who isn’t, with our phones and tablets and laptops? We’re all crows, tapping at the levers for the reward.
With a few strikes of the keys he’s there, at his favorite first stop. It’s called ShutR, and it’s a small and hardly used photo-sharing site. Henry North generally stays off social media, but he cannot resist the narcissistic joys of the Web entirely. How could he, Renaissance man that he is? Poet, intellectual, chef, photographer…Ugh. Please. He’s the kind of person who learns how to play the piano and speak several languages just to demonstrate that he can play the piano and speak several languages. The problem with narcissists is that it can be hard to see past the glare at first. Honestly, they’re sort of glorious and fun and magical until the deep and abiding assholery begins to show through.
Weary scrolls through the familiar images, the photos of forests and North’s solo trip to the desert, subpar sunset shots, blooming flowers, the usual fare for amateurs. Sarah is even in a few of the old ones. Professor Weary gazes at those longingly. Sometimes he misses Sarah so badly, his heart feels entirely absent; his chest is the dark and empty bottom of a ship still moving through the sea.
Henry North does not use his real name on ShutR. He uses an alias, Mr. Aperture. Cute, no? How adorable, though if Professor Weary were to choose, he’d pick another photographic term, like Mr. Aberration, or Mr. Distortion, or, wait, Blowup. Yes, how about that one! Blowup. Weary loves it. He chuckles. It matches his intent. It matches the rage that rises, rises, rises when the professor opens ShutR to check (too soon) and sees Sarah again, her long, dark hair blowing across her wide, hopeful smile. She and Henry are on a bluff on Spectacle Island, he thinks. They used to like to go out there, he remembers. Sarah wears a blue windbreaker. If he closes his eyes, he can almost be that wind, brushing her soft cheek. The edge of Henry’s finger is on the lens, so it’s bad as far as the photo goes, Mr. Aperture, but a lovely image of her. She looks so happy.
Anyway, there is nothing new on ShutR. The last photo is still that lavender crocus blossom, tender and open. Weary’s pretty sure the flower is from Sarah’s garden, taken just before that asshole sold the house and gathered up his money and left town. He had every legal right to do it, too. This makes Professor Weary furious. Sarah’s garden has been left behind, and so has her kitchen, and the bedroom she painted. Weary remembers the way her hands looked at work the next day, still splattered with yellow. She’s gone, and meanwhile, North tromps around on his merry way.
Someone needs to do something.
Someone is.
The professor first found Mr. Aperture on ShutR after searching for HNorthpoe, which by luck was his user name on the account. It’s the same moniker North sported for both a review of a kitchen knife on a shopping site and the one he had used for his old university email address. So, now, the professor types HNorthpoe into the search bar. Same old same old. Nothing new.
Weary leans back in his chair in his office on lush Mount Khogi. He likes to think his “office” extends all the way to Parc Provincial de la Rivière Bleue, even if the research facility is here. The windows are open and so is the door, because there is no air-conditioning. He takes a pluck of his shirt and waves it in and out for relief. A gecko shoots up the wall and disappears into a crack. The crack in the wall, the beautiful gecko that disappears—it makes him think of Sarah and Henry North, but what doesn’t? Think of how it all might have been different if they’d never met at that holiday party at the department head’s house. He lured her with his broken arm, his weakness, Weary is sure of it. Compassionate people are such vulnerable marks. He’s sick about it. She was completely gaga for North after that. Her own work in the lab suffered. It wasn’t a priority anymore. Professor Weary thought she had a passion, and not for British literature, nineteenth century, either. For birds. For Corvus, specifically. But look what happened.
He hates to admit it, but he was disappointed in her, letting her passions slide for love. He still is, a little. Those passions were a lot more loyal to her than Henry North ever was.
Weary thinks about how Virginia and Henry met, too, paddling in the bay in Sausalito, with two groups of friends. He lost an oar. Surprise, surprise, weakness again. Ginnie (this is what her friends called her) helped tow him back in. That tiny thing! She looks like she weighed maybe a hundred pounds. How powerful she must have felt for a short while, saving him on that first day.
See the theme? Get it? Well, there are only two instances, so it’s merely conjecture. Still, when Grande Terre’s Corvus moneduloides twice picked up a twig, stripped it of its bark, nibbled its end to make a tiny hook, everyone immediately understood it was no coincidence. Helplessness is Henry North’s hook, his modus operandi. Along with everything else, this theory would never hold up in court; Weary has no real proof. The broken arm was real, to be fair. But why be fair? He’s a hundred steps beyond fair. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
Professor Weary can still see North on campus with his arm in that sling, knocking over a stack of cups in the cafeteria, fumbling with his silverware. Broken wing display. Most often seen in shorebirds and waterfowl and plovers, the bird will cock his wing and feign injury to distract a predator from a nest. The most dramatic and conspicuous displays come when the investment is greatest. Great potential loss means it all gets as bad as high school theater. Hobbling and dragging, exaggerated shows of pathetic plights…It’s all about tricking the predator, making him look away from the hidden thing.
One can forget, though, that this behavior is aggressive, too. It says, Come and get me. It says, You just wait.
It can get confusing in the great big game of life, who is predator, who is prey, who initiates the standoff. Who contributes to their own demise, seals their own fate with passivity.
At any moment, one of Weary’s research assistants will be arriving. They’ll take the Jeep up the mountain to the Corvus roost. They’ll spend the long, thrilling day doing what Weary does best: waiting and watching.
So, now, he hurries. He checks the credit card bill, his final hope of the day, or at least, his final hope until he can get back here and check again. How he’s able to look at that credit card—he’s not telling! He shouldn’t tell anyway—my God, he certainly wouldn’t want anyone to be able to see his. Tip-tip-tip, tap-tap-tap, and there it is.
He scrolls.
Mundane, mundane, mundane.
Gas. Ferry terminal. Coffee shop. Whatever, whatever.
Bookstore, pharmacy, who cares.
But, then…What?
What is that?
His heart drops. His hands actually start to tremble.
Can it be?
A grocery store. Front Street Market.
He feels a little sick. This is not usual, not at all. Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow. Weary feels giddy, true, but also suddenly anxious. Look at that. Look at it! He wants to shove back his chair and pace around with nerves and worry and the magnetic energy of possibility. Because this is no regular grocery bill. This is not the cereal and four-roll pack of TP and the single pink chicken breast of the lonely. This is not even the amount of a new arrival stocking his cupboard. It’s an extravagant figure, and knowing Henry North, it can only mean one thing.
Dinner for two.