Klinsman had met him six years ago on a story at the Tijuana Cultural Center, an exhibition called “Africa’s Legacy in Mexico.” It was a photography show touring the world, offering portraits of black Mexicans, pardos, the descendants of slaves. Oscar was finishing up his studies at UNAM then. The university had sent him up to Tijuana to follow the show as it crossed the border into the States.
Oscar was himself a pardo. Among the portraits in the exhibit he looked as though he had stepped from a frame to wander stunned through the press party in his t-shirt and jeans. Klinsman brought him to the Review, and Gina hired him and helped him get his green card. She told him to learn to flatten his expression, told him his face was too forthcoming, all his features like living clay. She wriggled her fingers above his cheekbones. If you can’t do that, she told him, then maybe try looking happy when you’re sad, surprised when you’re bored. Don’t let your subjects get ahead of you. She made him into the best investigative reporter.
Oscar gathered himself—leaned against a desk and hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans. He faced Klinsman, drew the soft morning light of the pressroom floor into thoughtful shadow and flush. Klinsman could see his own copy on the desktop in front of Oscar. Then it blinked away, disappearing into screensaver.
“What are your three?” Oscar asked. He knew what Klinsman’s three assignments were. Oscar knew everybody’s assignments, often better than they did.
Klinsman answered anyway, in this quiet but demanding light. “She has me doing three old stories.” Remaining at the back, on the couch edge, he nodded toward his screen. “The Luchadors’ show last night. Then park surveillance. And then this little blotter piece at Motel San Ysidro.” Klinsman shrugged but felt secrecy and guilt weigh on his shoulders.
“Why’s that one old?”
Klinsman shrugged again, trying harder to seem casual. “I don’t know. It just feels somehow like walking into the past. Maybe it was just the light.”
“Old like stale?” asked Oscar. “Or old like something deep?”
He always sounded as though he knew your answers. So Klinsman gave him something new, something not wholly considered. “I found a woman. A kind of woman, I mean. Someone found and vanished at the same time. On the bed. From the bed.”
Oscar appeared skeptical, an unusual expression for him, a glare to his eyes.
“I know her and don’t know her—at the same time,” Klinsman said. This didn’t help. “I’ll show you,” he said. He stood to walk toward his desk.
Oscar leaned back on the desk edge, elbows into his sides, again into the ropes.
“Why do you keep doing that?”
“What?” asked Oscar. “Doing what?”
“Leaning away. Like you’re staying out of a circle. My circle.”
Oscar looked to the side as though catching an eavesdropper, then straight at Klinsman. “There’s trouble about you, Aron.” Ahrone, he pronounced it, trilling the r once.
10.
Klinsman told Oscar about the tag sending him to room 9, then about his first visit there. He told him he planned to go back today and ask around, try to find out who the woman was. Marta Ruiz. And then he asked, “Why do you sense trouble about me?”
“You look like you’re hiding something from me,” Oscar replied. “Right when I came in you looked that way. Hiding your lips behind a strawberry like that. People who really have something to say always do that in interviews. Rock their bodies a little like something’s trying to get out, guard their lips.” Oscar crossed his arms over his chest and gripped his shoulders. “Maybe it’s just me.”
They finally moved toward one another, among the desks, and stopped at number 7; Oscar straightened Klinsman’s screen so it was in formation with all the others. Klinsman leaned over his keyboard.
“Let me show you the room. I took a 360. It’s not very good. Rita will have a better one.”
“You took Rita?” Oscar backed away.
“The second time.”
“You went back?” Oscar stepped sideways, getting behind Klinsman’s shoulder.
“I had to go cover the Luchadors with Rita. So then I took her back to the motel with me to get better pics.” Klinsman opened his photos. The 360 of room 9, lit poorly with duskglow, grainy, moved across his screen. It paused on the blouse covering the TV, slowed over the bed. The tape pieces were difficult to discern. They looked like tiny blank squares in the screen, glitches in the display.
The light of the capture played across Oscar’s face like pool reflections, his sad eyes lifted.
“See the tape pieces?” Klinsman pointed to the screen, fingered the surface. “We figured they were markers. Like stage markers. Or marks for a shoot.”
“Or they could indicate blind spots,” said Oscar. He touched the screen along with Klinsman. “Where they are seems darker. See? If you were filming or photographing this, you’d want to know those. Rita would’ve figured that. She didn’t say that?”
Klinsman shook his head and watched the screen with Oscar. Their faces were now close, shoulders touching.
“How was she?” The breath of Oscar’s last word brushed Klinsman’s neck.
Klinsman felt a deep blush cascade through his entire body. Startled, he tried to think carefully about his next gesture, his next move, to quell any twitch for Oscar to read. He scratched his head.
“What do you mean?”
“How was she acting there? Was she acting funny? You know how she gets when she starts figuring things out ahead of you? I hate how she does that. I hate when she gets ahead of me. Gina says never let Rita get ahead of you. Then you’ll always know you’re at the front.”
“No,” said Klinsman, relieved. “She wasn’t funny. I was hoping she’d be in now so we could see her pictures of the bed.”
Oscar straightened and backed away a little. “You sure no one was there? No one real, I mean?”
“Yes. I was alone.” Klinsman gazed over his shoulder at Oscar. “We were alone.”
“Alone.” Oscar put a hand on Klinsman’s back and guided him into the chair, squared him in front of the screen. “Alone,” he said again. “Let me show you something. But you have to close your eyes until I’m ready. For the full effect. Yes?”
Klinsman closed his eyes. He heard Oscar click once at the keyboard and twice with the mouse. Then Oscar moved to each desk, one after the other, performing the same quick action, one click at the keyboard, two with the mouse. It sounded like a mechanical waltz, fading then nearing as Oscar glided from station to station.
When he was done, he stood behind Klinsman and guided him into a standing position, turned him a bit. Still from behind, his breath on Klinsman’s nape, he covered Klinsman’s eyes with his fingers. Aaron imagined the fingers as clay, the slate-colored stuff dug warm from the riverbed.
“Now look.” Oscar opened his fingers suddenly.
All the desk screens were on, clicked to their camera capture utility. Each one caught the empty room from a slightly different vantage point, but in ordered succession. It was like what you see when you hold a mirror to a mirror, an infinite telescoping of images. A few of the screens caught fragments and wholes of Oscar and Klinsman.
“Amazing,” said Klinsman, swaying himself to make his