Double Image by David Morrell Read Free Book Online

the towel next to it.
    “And what are you thinking now?”
    “That I’ll prepare lunch.” His lips barely revealing a smile, Duncan left.
    Coltrane felt the champagne bubbles touch the tip of his nose when he sipped.
    “I see you also brought . . .” Packard gestured toward the Nikon that hung from a strap on Coltrane’s shoulder. “‘To stop time,’ you said.”
    The change of subject threw Coltrane off.
    “I asked you why you became a photographer. That was your answer. Then you added, ‘Things fall apart. . . . And people die.’”
    “Yes.”
    “Who?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Who died?”
     
12
     
    COLTRANE LOOKED AT THE FLOOR.
    “My question makes you uncomfortable?”
    “. . . Yes.”
    “At my age, I find that it saves time” — Packard paused to catch his breath — “if I ask new acquaintances to tell me the most important thing I need to know about them.”
    “A lot of people don’t like to be reminded of the most important thing about them,” Coltrane said.
    The oxygen hissed.
    “Was it a sister?”
    The champagne suddenly had an acidic edge.
    “A brother?”
    Coltrane set down the glass. “My mother.”
    “I see.”
    “And my father.”
    “When you were young? My own parents died when I was young. Not far from here. In a boating accident off Santa Catalina.”
    “Yes, when you were sixteen.”
    Packard didn’t seem surprised that Coltrane knew any detail of his life.
    “My parents died when I was eleven,” Coltrane said, “although really both of them were dead a long time before — it just took several years to work it all out.”
    Packard frowned.
    “My father beat my mother.”
    Packard didn’t move, didn’t speak. If he had reacted in any way, Coltrane would have ended the subject right there. But Packard seemed to sense Coltrane’s ambivalence. The old man’s presence was hypnotic. As the silence lengthened, except for the hiss of the oxygen, Coltrane found himself wanting to continue.
    “My father didn’t beat my mother because he was a drunkard or because he was worried about his job or any of the other excuses you sometimes hear. I never saw him take a drink. He had his own successful business, a chain of dry-cleaning shops that kept expanding every year. Maybe it was work pressures I didn’t know anything about. Or maybe
his
father liked to beat
his
mother. Maybe that’s why he did it. Maybe he thought it was normal. For a while,
I
thought it was normal. I thought
every
kid’s father beat up . . .”
    Coltrane felt taken back in time. He blinked, coming out of a trance, and picked up the champagne. Regardless of how much the acid of his memories tainted it, he took a long swallow. He felt an odd need to keep explaining, as if Packard, more than anyone else in the world, would understand.
    “One night, after my father had given my mother an especially thorough work-over, he did something he’d never done before — he started on
me
. He knocked out one of my teeth. The next morning, he said he was really sorry and it wouldn’t happen again and I should tell my teacher I’d fallen off my bike and that was how my face got messed up and honest to God he would make it up to me for hurting me. Then he drove off to work. The minute his car disappeared around a corner, my mother rushed me upstairs and helped me throw clothes into two suitcases. Then she filled two suitcases of her own, and I remember all the while she was glancing frantically out the bedroom window, afraid that my father might drive back.”
    Coltrane studied the bubbles in his champagne glass. They seemed to get larger. Again he was tugged back into the past. “She must have been planning it for a long time. She kept the garage door closed while she put the suitcases in her car — so the neighbors wouldn’t see. Then she and I drove to the bank. After that, she drove to a bus station and made me wait there with the bags while she left the car somewhere else — at a train station, she