A gentlemanly old man named Marty Smythe and his friend Dot, both from my seniors’ scrapbooking class came in and bought two children’s needlepoint sets for Dot’s grandchildren. When I first met Marty and Dot, I figured them for an old married couple. Then one afternoon in the shop when Dot was talking to Barbara about ribbons, Marty whispered to me that he was going to ask Dot to marry him, he was just waiting for the right moment. I thought it was sweet. Barbara told me later that both Marty and Dot had lost their spouses a long time ago.
He looked at me and his eyebrows came together. “You okay?”
I nodded. “I must look horrible. I think I’m coming down with something.” Coming down with something. Right, like a miserable life.
“Well, you take care, sweets,” he said as I rang up the order.
I promised him I would and I watched him leave, the back of him, white hair bunching out under his black woolen cap. Something about the back of his hair under his cap made me start for a moment. I looked, but couldn’t put a finger on it. I shook my head and went back to work.
Just after noon, Barbara came in cheerful and breezy the way she always does.
“How was the class?” she asked, unzipping her raincoat and hanging it in the back. “Oh, I can see how the class was. How lovely!” Barbara’s one of those wonderfully warm maternal types who talk nonstop. I knew she’d have lots of good advice for me if I told her about my parents and the picture questions. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not yet. She stopped her chattering and looked at me. “Are you okay, Marylee?”
I attempted a laugh. “Everyone keeps asking me that. I think it’s my glasses. I don’t usually wear them, so when I do, everyone looks at me strangely.”
“I think they’re very charming. They make you look quite studious.”
I told her that I hadn’t slept well, and that when I’d gotten up in the night someone had been standing down across the street smoking in the bus shelter. “It unnerved me,” I said. “I didn’t sleep much after that.”
“Well I don’t blame you!” Her eyes were wide. “Did you call the police?”
“Last I heard it wasn’t a crime to stand in a bus shelter and smoke in the middle of the night.”
“Still, it would be kind of spooky, I’d say, someone looking up at your window like that.”
I looked down at my hands. “It was just somebody smoking.” But it wasn’t, was it? I had seen a face upturned in my direction.
A little while later, I told her I had an errand to run and left her in charge of the store. I walked the three blocks through a gray drizzle to Evan Baxter Photography. I wasn’t sure this was the wisest thing I’d ever done. After what he had done to Johanna, not to mention to his fiancée, I knew I should probably just steer clear of him.
I was surprised that his store was so close to my own. I had done a bit of walking in the neighborhood, but never in this direction. Usually when I head out I go down Main Street, and then turn right at the ferry terminal and into the waterfront park. Most of the time, when I get to the coast guard building, I turn around and go home.
Evan Baxter Photography is located in an upscale brick building just up from the railroad yard. In the same building is a design studio and a law office. Inside it was quiet and no one seemed to be around. There was a ring-for-service bell on the counter, but I hate those things, even though I have one myself. They sound so impatient and demanding to me. After standing at the counter for a few moments and having no one appear, however, I pressed it tentatively and looked around.
The photos on the wall were arranged as if in a gallery. There were insects on branches, close-ups of flowers and faces. There were lots of faces; old people with expressive smiles, children on swings, wedding pictures, graduation pictures, photos of quilts that caught my attention for a while. I could name some of the patterns: log cabin, cross weave and tessellating flowers. Aunt Rose was also a master quilter and in my apartment I have a small quilting frame, a graduation gift from her. I’m attempting to finish the quilt she started before she got sick.
But the photo that drew me, the picture that caused me to stand there unmoving, was one of a small girl standing beside a campfire. She was young, maybe ten, and wore scuffy pink sneakers and a hooded zippered sweatshirt that was opened to reveal a pink T-shirt. She was pointing at the flames.
I marveled that Evan was able to capture the vivid hues of the fire and how they were reflected in the solemn face of the girl as she pointed.
Close behind, very close behind me was a sound.
“You didn’t get your medium nonfat latte today.” I jumped, turned and found myself face-to-face with my winking coffee stranger. I muffled a gasp, put a hand to my mouth.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s okay. I…uh…” I felt my face flush. “I didn’t hear you. I was looking at the picture.” I was conscious of the fact that I couldn’t look any worse if I tried; glasses, flat hair tied back, red eyes and any makeup I did have on, being long ago smeared off by my sniffles. I hoped desperately that I didn’t have mascara lines running down my cheeks. And then I wondered, what in the world was he doing here, anyway? Maybe he was here buying film on his lunch hour.
“Are you, uh, are you a photographer?” I asked him stupidly. I was backing away slightly, aware, so aware of him standing close to me. I caught a whiff of a kind of musky aftershave.
“Do you like that one?” He pointed at the picture of the girl.
I nodded. “It’s very, um, vivid. The colors. The girl. She sort of, um, reminds me of myself when I was a girl. She looks so sad, somehow.” My voice trailed off. Why for goodness’ sake was I going on about this to a complete stranger? And why did I think he would care?
He said, “That one is sort of special to me.”
It was special to him? How could it be special to him? Someone had started a blender in my stomach.
“You asked if I was a photographer. I try to be,” he said.
I nodded some more. I felt like a bobble-head doll. He was even better looking close-up than across the crowded coffee shop. And what was I thinking with these thoughts, anyway? I needed to find Evan Baxter and get out of here.
“Are you in the market for a camera? Digital, perhaps?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, um…” I swallowed. “I’ll just wait here for the owner. I need to speak to Evan Baxter about something.”
He raised one eyebrow, and then did the wink thing again. “Well, you’re looking at him.”
It took me a moment to figure out what he said. “I’m looking at him?”
He nodded.
“You’re Evan Baxter?”
“In the flesh.” He was smiling broadly.
“You can’t be!”
“Was last time I looked at my driver’s license.”
“But, but…” I sputtered. “I didn’t know you were Evan Baxter.” My hand flew to my mouth. “You really are Evan Baxter?”
He grinned. “I really am.”
“Oh…Oh…”
“I’m glad you like the campfire photo,” he said.
I kept sniffing and feeling foolish. I felt around in my pocket for a Kleenex, but of course I didn’t have one when I needed one. I kept nodding. I still hadn’t managed to say anything. I could almost hear what he was thinking: Why won’t this stupid, simpering woman get to the point?
Time to do just that. I took a breath. “I came in because, well, I need some help identifying a