But he didn't finish. His editor had abruptly moved in very close.
"You're in no position to quibble, Joey."
"What does that mean?"
Nugent's thin lips were tightly compressed. "The management's not happy
with you." Joey's laugh was brittle. Nugent walked slowly back to his
desk. "I've had more and more complaints about your work."
Joey was close behind him. "I take the assignments you hand me. And
there's no one on the staff gets a sharper shot."
Nugent waved this aside. "It's your manner." He pushed a glossy eight by
ten print toward the photographer. "You play up the grisly, the
macabre."
Joey stared down at the picture. A slow smile narrowed his eyes. "I
photograph what I see. I figure it's what your readers want to see,
too."
Nugent sat heavily. "We had a hundred phone calls about that picture.
Brutal ... sadistic ... morbid."
The print fell face up before Nugent. He turned it over. Joey laughed.
"Sure. It's all those things. And they loved it." He leaned very close
to Nugent. "You didn't have to print it."
"It was the only shot I had. It was print it or be scooped on one of the
big stories of the year."
Joey's outward nonchalance failed to mask entirely his inner tension.
"When I take a picture, they remember it."
"There's a difference between memorable photography and cheap
sensationalism." The editor picked up the memo with Ewing's address.
"All things considered," he said, "I think you'd better get this
interview for me."
Joey stared at Nugent for an insolent second. Then, he took the memo. He
checked the address, jammed the paper into his pocket, and moved quickly
to the door. Hand on the knob, he paused.
"Oh, Nugent," he called, "if you can't see the story I bring back, just
remember: it's in another dimension."
He slammed the door on Nugent's anger.
* * * * *
Early evening traffic was heavy as he pulled into the quiet,
old-fashioned street where Ewing lived.
Sober brownstone houses, their front steps rising steeply to stain-glass
paneled doors; heavily curtained bay windows; weather-stained and
rotting gingerbread; an atmosphere of reluctant decay and genteel
senescence. Ewing's house was like a dozen others in the same block.
Joey was not a man given to hunches, and yet, as he climbed out of his
car and stood staring up at the silent house, he could not repress a
shiver of apprehension.
He looked up the street. Nothing marred the quiet. A middle-aged woman
hurried home with her armload of groceries. A man paraded an ancient dog
on a leash.
Slowly, Joey climbed the steps. His apprehension was no more than the
resentment he felt for the assignment. He yanked the old-fashioned bell
and listened for its echoes dying deep in the house.
He fidgeted impatiently. Perhaps old Ewing wasn't at home. Or, maybe he
was so eccentric he no longer answered the bell. Joey jerked it again.
On the traffic-noisy boulevard a block away, he heard a raw squealing of
brakes.
Joey sighed and turned away. He'd wasted an hour. He started down the
steps. And the door opened.
Jason Ewing was very old. His incredibly blue eyes seemed alien in the
yellow parchment face. His clothing, his manner, even his speech were
archaic.
As Joey shook the bony hand, Ewing was apologizing for the delay.
"I was in my dark-room," he said--the voice strangely resonant to come
from so frail a chest--"and I had to get the developer off my hands."
Joey nodded and stepped inside. The atmosphere of the house was a
curious mixture of chemical and decay. There was a layer of dust on the
bric-a-brac, and as Joey followed the stooped figure from the entry-hall
into the living-room, he saw Ewing as a kind of insubstantial ghost,
moving through the deserted rooms so carefully that the dust was not
disturbed.
Ewing gestured to a chair which looked prim and uncomfortable in its
yellowed antimacassars. "Sit down, please, Mr. Barrett." He switched on
an ornate table lamp. "It's most kind of you to be interested in my
work."
Joey gave him the automatic smile. The room was a combination studio and
parlor. A bulky, antique camera lorded it over the conventional
furnishings. Its unblinking eye regarded Joey coldly.
There was a fireplace, with massive brass andirons cast to resemble
griffon-heads; purple draperies at the window were faded by sun and
time; the heavy furniture was defiantly shabby; even the antique
photograph album with its plush cover and gold-plated clasp and lock was
right for the room. This was Jason Ewing's world and Joey felt himself
to be an alien.
* * * * *
Ewing hovered nervously, white fingers clenching and unclenching,
reaching out, now and then, to touch the album on the dusty table-top.
"I know you are a busy man, Mr. Barrett," he said, "so I'll come at once
to the point."
Joey relaxed as much as he could in the old chair. "I should tell you
first, Mr. Ewing, that I'm not a writer. I'm a photographer. My editor
thought maybe you and me would talk the same language."
Ewing bobbed his head up and down. "Excellent. Excellent." He pulled up
a small chair. "Believe me, Mr. Barrett, I hesitated a very long while
before I decided to make my discovery public."