Chapter 27

      Halfway around the world, another dark moment was coming into focus as the screening room of the Profile Magazine came alive with one projected image after another of Samantha Turner. 

     “What am I supposed to do with these? Asked Harrison.

     “Your call, Boss,” answered Tony, Harrison’s always faithful, always willing to work overtime print specialist.

      “Jesus,” quipped Harrison. “Ice cave backgrounds for this woman just don’t fit.  Am I crazy, or does the public not want to see this woman surrounded by red or some other less frigid color?”

      Tony got up and activated another file of images into the computer. “Maybe these will do it for you… and I might remind you that this is the….” He checked the index of uploaded files… “fifty-first file of sixty images you’ve gone over this past…”

     “Thirty-two hours, Tony.  Thirty-two and counting.  I know how much time.  Start the file.”

     Harrison squirmed as the images became more and more abstract, projecting Samantha less and less definable.  From image to image, colors swirled, shapes clashed, faded, etc. 

     When the screen went almost a pure white, Harrison turned to Tony, “For Christ’s sake, Tony, fix that!”

     Tony looked at the screen, then rebooted the file.  He checked the index and said, “Ah, that’s labeled as number 708, Harrison. 

     “What do you mean, labeled.  It’s an overexposed or fogged print.  Get on with it!”

He rose and quickly moved to the back of the screening room. “A white picture?  Good God!  He’s flipped… no, wait a minute.  Let me close my eyes try to see it like our readers might.”  He opened his eyes.  “Christ.  No different.  What the Hell is happening to this guy?  The only thing that’s missing is a subtitle saying ‘ART ll’  At least Alda in his performance saw some texture in the play’s painting.” 

     Tony glanced at his boss and then calmly mouse-clicked to the next frame. “Actually, there’s a gargoyle like creature barely visible.”

     Harrison turned on his heels, “No jokes, Tony.  No, jokes.  Just not in the mood.”

     Tony walked up to the screen.  “Check it out.  Right here… see.  It goes across the frame and out the other side.”

      “A fuckin’ gargoyle so God damn light, you can’t see it?”

      “I just saw it, and…”

      “Shut up Tony.  This guy’s flipped and I don’t need you trying…”

      The door burst open and Eddie Ryan entered, unable to contain his excitement.  His new bow tie picturing the solar system hung untied around his neck.

     “Harrison, God Damn if this isn’t it, I don’t know what is!”

Harrison’s focus would not be broken as he stared at the image on the screen.

     “What… what is… it?” Harrison said with gaped mouth.

     Eddie whipped out a layout of the pages he had just finished arranging for the inside story of the Samantha Turner.  As he laid them down in front of Harrison, he finally glanced at the screen.  “Good Christ… what the hell is that?”

     Harrison got up and walked to another part of the room and looked back at the screen.  “You see something there?”

     “Yeah,” said Eddie.

     “You really see something there?” repeated Harrison.

     “Yeah.  I think I see something like a monster with Samantha’s face.

Harrison wavered, paced forward, and then back.  “Jesus… That… that… that…”

     “Spit it out Harrison” whispered Tony.

     “…is either the creation of a genius we haven’t even dreamed of meeting, or the work of a colossal fraud…” Harrison walked back to his seat and sat down.  “…or somebody that is very sick and doesn’t have a clue.”

     Eddie took a closer look at the screen and sat down.  “I’d say more genius.” 

     Now all three fixed on the image of a sleeping half angel, half gargoyle like creature, but all female.  A female barely resembling anyone the average reader might recognize, but for the three men who had looked at hundreds of digital renderings of Samantha, it was unmistakable.  The face suggested a look of discontent at best and total terror at worst.  Chunks of her skull were hollowed out and other bizarre images appeared in the distance like a work-in-progress of Dali.  The balance of the textured, almost embossed like image, suggested the quality of an angel.  On closer look, they all stared at the faintly suggested smoke and dying embers around her heart area.  The smoke coming from beneath the sheet partially covering the suggested Sam images of past Ari renderings that Harrison had seen, some of which he owned.  As his eyes followed their dissipation into the top of the frame, he became aware that these were variations on images he knew… some of which he owned.  He couldn’t help but think these were Ari’s impressions of the old Samantha… the Samantha that might not exist any longer?  And of course, he was familiar with all of them.  What he was a stranger to, as were Tony and Eddie, was the suggestion that Samantha was a…

     “Okay, Harrison… cat got your tongue?  Your take.  Come on.”

     “Samantha Turner is changing,” stammered Harrison.

     Eddie took another glance at the screen.  “Yeah… not hard to accept if you accept Ari.  Big question is, changing from or to a gargoyle or an angel?”

     “And that is a rhetorical statement if ever I heard one,” grinned Tony. 

     Harrison whipped his head around.  “Meaning?”

     Eddie squirmed then gathered his composure.  “Harrison… just like you, we all believe the crazy mother fucker is special, maybe even crazier than that Samantha character.”

      Harrison turned back to the screen.  “Good… the right answer, because even for those who don’t give a shit about who the woman floating in that tub, lying on that bed is supposed to be… even for those… they’re gonna think…. Jesus.  This is the Profile, and no one looking at the cover is going to rest who can’t figure out who that image is supposed to be.”

     Tony leaned back in his chair, a smile to rival a Barnum and Bailey clown said,  “Does that mean this is the one?”

     Harrison had a strange smile on his face as the words crept out ever so quietly.  “The magazine, the photographer, the subject, or… the reader?

     The note with this VPN upload from Ari said he didn’t want me to be judged too quickly… that even he was confused as to what he was doing.  Harrison leans closer to the perplexing image.  “So… yes, I think this is the one, but let’s give it 24 hours and I’ll take a look at the balance.”

     Tony advanced to the next photo. “Some people might think that last photo was the tip of the iceberg.” 

     “If that’s what readers think, it’s a home run,” said Harrison as he picked up the phone and dialed his secretary. “Some Tums or something, Mary.  Something quick.”  He hung up and gazed back at the screen.  It was now filled with a collage of images showing Samantha wearing different types of dark, tinted and clear eye wear.  Interlacing the collage were manipulated photos of various scenic locations from Rome, the Riviera,  and cobblestone streets of Mykonos, Greece.  All had the air of darkness, as if coming from the residual smoke swirling sideward, not going anywhere, as if pressurized from above.   Harrison’s eyes squinted and blinked as if trying to bring focus to his perception.  “Where in Hell is he going with this?” he muttered to himself.  Then, after a moment, smiled. “Yeah, where in Hell?”

***

     “She what?” said Max’s partner, as he cradled the phone and navigated the WhatsApp keyboard. 

      Max’s voice on the other end was weak and depressed.  “She’s really gone.  Off somewhere in the Aegean.  She’s island hopping.  I just got a bundle of touristy cards she’d written and hadn’t sent in the last 3 weeks.  Came FedEx.  Thirty cent postcards in a sixty-dollar air package.” 

     Max rose from his bed.  Postcards lay strewn about the hotel room, some with their writing visible, some only with the typical tourist picture facing him.  He leaned down and turned the cards over that faced him with their pleas to be understood.  Always ending with, Love you… He flipped them over like discards in a game of 5 card draw. “She’s gone too far, Jerry.  Too far.”

     “Look, Max, I don’t know what’s going on but you sound like shit.  What do you mean she’s gone too far?”

     Max picked up one card and stared at the picture showing a Greek fisherman pulling in his nets.  He turned it over and said his goodbyes to Jerry.  “There’s nothing more to tell for now, Jerry, I just don’t know how long I’m going to be here or where I’ll be.  The group hasn’t turned up anything on her for weeks now, so I’m sending them home.  They could all use a good stunt gig after this boring time, so see what you can do.  I’ll keep in touch.” He hung up the phone and reread the last few lines of the short note on the back of the postcard.

     “…not that you will or should be expected to understand, Max.  You know so much about human behavior and what chemical ingestion can do.  But what about the altered state that comes from dreams?  Dreams while sleeping and dreams while awake?” 

     Max paused, rose up from his Zermatt hotel bed.  He wasn’t used to Sam playing with words this way.  Oh, he knew her propensity for role playing; for testing him with scenes from some imaginary corner of her mind, but verbal gymnastics of this sort were foreign to him.  He abruptly moved to a bookshelf, taking down a stack of tourist materials.  He quickly retrieved a map of Europe and opened it up full, laying it down on the floor.  Finishing the turning over of the postcards so the pictures were all facing him, he began to draw a line on the map connecting the cities represented by the cards.  “Oh, God.  Where is your head now?  Sam?  Samantha?”