Coltrane somberly studied the stark black-and-white image of the backhoe dropping bones into the pulverizing machine while Dragan Ilkovic watched with satisfaction. “… Thanks.”

“You don’t sound as if you mean it.”

“It was very thoughtful of you.”

“Then why aren’t I convinced?”

The room filled with silence.

“What you told Daniel about how you got wounded,” Jennifer said. “I already knew some of it – from the CNN interview you did while you were in the hospital over there.”

“That’s why I snuck out of the hospital and caught the first plane back to here. After CNN tracked me down, I knew it wouldn’t be long before a lot of other journalists would be swarming around me. I had no idea the UN would release the photographs so quickly. I couldn’t bear talking about them.”

“You unplugged your phone.”

“It kept ringing. I couldn’t sleep. A half a dozen TV talk shows asked me to be a guest.”

“People think you’re a hero.”

“Please.” With distaste, Coltrane set the framed Newsweek cover aside. “I was lucky to survive.”

“You’ll get another Pulitzer Prize.”

“I hope not. Not for those photos. It didn’t take a genius to get those pictures, only a damned fool who was willing to lie in a hole in the ground for a day and a half.”

Jennifer looked baffled. “I’ve never heard you talk this way before.”

“Did the pictures make a difference? Was Ilkovic charged with war crimes and arrested?”

“He disappeared. Nobody knows where to find him.”

“Great.” The word sounded like a curse.

“They’ll get him.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t understand what’s happened to you,” Jennifer said. “You were always proud of scraping through tough spots.”

“I had a lot of chances to think while I was trying to get through the night without freezing to death. I got to wondering if I’d ever taken any photographs that made people feel glad to be alive because they’d seen my work. Maybe it’s time I became a real photographer.”

“But there isn’t anybody better.”

“I’m not a photographer. Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand, Weston, Adams, Berenice Abbott, Randolph Packard – they were photographers. They knew what a camera was for.”

A somber moment lengthened.

Jennifer interrupted it. “I brought some Chinese food. Do you think you could eat it if I go downstairs and bring you a plate?”

Instead of answering, Coltrane caught her by surprise. “How have you been, Jennifer?”

“Fine. Working hard. The magazine’s doing well.”

“But what about you? Are you doing well?”

“It’s been lonely.”

“Yes.”

She seemed to hold her breath.

“The same with me. I’ve missed you, Jennifer.”

Her eyes misted. She walked slowly toward him and knelt, her face level with his, stroking his beard-stubbled cheek. “I’m sorry. I needed too much from you. I think I smothered you. I’ll never act that way again.”

“It was my fault as much as yours.”

“No. I’ve changed. I promise.”

“We both have.” Ignoring the tightness in his side, Coltrane leaned forward and kissed her.

COMING EVENTS

Legendary photographer Randolph Packard will have a rare showing of his prints at the Sunset Gallery in Laguna Beach, from 5:00 to 7:00 P.M. on Friday, November 21. Packard, whose work documents the changes in Southern California, is generally considered to be one of the great innovators in modern photography. He was born in…

COLTRANE COULDN’T GET OVER IT. If he hadn’t opened the copy of Southern California Jennifer had given him, happening to scan its calendar section, he wouldn’t have known about Packard’s opening until it was too late. Even then, he barely had enough time, suddenly realizing that today was the twenty-first and that it was almost three. Fortunately, he had already mustered the strength to get out of bed and clean himself up. His sneakers, jeans, and denim shirt weren’t exactly what he would have chosen for what sounded like a formal reception, but he didn’t have time to change, only to grab a sport coat, a camera, and a copy of one of Packard’s collections, then get to his car.

The effort exhausted him, but he didn’t think twice about its worth. Leaving Los Angeles, driving south as fast as possible amid the smog-shrouded traffic on the San Diego Freeway, he felt as if he’d been told that someone had risen from the dead. Good God, how old would Packard be? In his nineties? The bulk of his work had been done in the twenties and the thirties. From then on, his output had dwindled, until, by the fifties, he had disappeared from public view. As the Southern California article had noted, paraphrasing a quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “For Randolph Packard, there wasn’t a second act.” But his first act had certainly been remarkable. The rumors about drugs and orgies, about his frequent unexplained trips to Mexico, had rippled through California’s artistic community and generated publicity for his work.

Not that Coltrane had needed the article to tell him any of this. When he had first been learning about photography, Randolph Packard had been one of his idols. He owned every Packard collection that had been published. His work had been deeply influenced by Packard’s theory that every effective photograph ought to tell the viewer something that merely looking at the subject of the photograph in its natural setting could not.

Packard’s famous portraits of silent-screen movie stars, for example: Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Ramon Novarro, a lot of others, many of whom nobody would remember if Packard hadn’t immortalized them. Each portrait presented its subject in a splendor of light. But the actors didn’t radiate the light. Instead, they absorbed it. The brilliance was so intense, Packard seemed to think of them as literally being stars, but of a special sort, sucking up energy until, because of their egos and their frantic lifestyles, they would either burst or collapse upon themselves and be consumed.

Heading into the wall-to-wall cities that made up Orange County, Coltrane felt his anticipation swell. He was reminded of when the county had literally been covered with oranges, grove after grove of them, and how Packard’s classic sun-bright photograph of the area had depicted more oranges on the ground than in the trees, an abundance of ripeness on the verge of decay.

Packard had also photographed Laguna Beach, not the town (which had been only a few cottages back in the twenties and thirties) but the curve of sand along the ocean. That area of the Pacific Coast Highway was still as winding as it had been in Packard’s day, but now it had been overbuilt, the same as everywhere else in Southern California – gas stations, gift shops, and restaurants jammed next to one another. The crowded four-lane road felt like the narrow two-lane it had replaced. At dusk, in late November, the beach itself was almost deserted, cold waves crashing onto the sand. When Packard had photographed the area, he had made it seem an unoccupied paradise. But if the viewer looked closely at Packard’s most reproduced depiction of the beach, Horizon, 1929, the telltale imperfection, the poignant regret for time passing that was typical of Packard’s work, became evident: distant smoke belching from a passing freighter.

Coltrane managed to find a parking space on Forest Avenue across from the beach. He slung his Nikon single-lens reflex around his neck and took a deep breath, surveying the lights of art galleries along the tree-canopied street. When he reached back into his car to get his copy of Packard’s Reflections of the City of Angels, he suddenly felt light-headed and almost collapsed across the seat. His side in pain, he grabbed the steering wheel, took another deep breath, and straightened. Sweat chilled his face.