Accusation by Catherine Bush Page A

down from the western housetops as the sun slid low in the sky. A crease quivered between Juliet’s brows, and strands of her hair, most of it clipped back, wisped about her face. In a black dress and little turquoise cardigan, she led Sara up the flight of stairs, through another door, past a small seating area where two sofas were set in an L, and down a corridor of closed doors to the one marked Suite C, which Juliet, shoulders hunched, unlocked. Inside the edit suite, the walls were covered in black felt, and metal shelves climbed up one wall, and there were two monitors, one set upon a metal cart, the other on a desktop. A blue-white tube of fluorescent lighting trembled overhead.
    It had been a long time, Sara thought, since she and Juliet had been alone in a room together. In the early years after their separate moves to Toronto, they had met in bars and restaurants or galleries, and a couple of times, at Juliet’s invitation, had gone to see dance together, although in those days Sara was often out of town. The last time they’d been alone in a room with this kind of privacy had been when Sara had come to live with Juliet and her roommates in the apartment on avenue de l’Esplanade in Montreal, after she had walked out on Graham or Graham had thrown her out, and Juliet had bumped into her one February afternoon as she sat near the campus in a Van Houtte coffee shop, a knapsack bulging with her belongings at her feet.
    It was strange to think of Raymond Renaud as the agent of their new proximity, and uncomfortably strange to find herself once more wanting something from Juliet. As Juliet tucked her keys into the leather handbag that hung from a hook on the back of the door, Sara tried to determine if Juliet seemed resentful of her, given that the circus story had altered so radically since she’d first told Juliet about it. Not noticeably. Juliet must have considered how Sara’s history would shape her interest in Raymond Renaud’s predicament, although neither of them had mentioned this.
    How’s Max?
    Great, Juliet said. He’s working on a new show. Actually, he’s kind of gone off in a new direction. He’s using images from surveillance cameras broadcasting on the web, so capturing pictures from a stream of images rather than taking them but still choosing them or creating them?
    Sometimes Sara found herself wondering what kept confident Max and anxious Juliet together: Juliet’s loyalty and admiration and adoration? Something sexual? They’d been together for around five years. These days, Max’s photographs of derelict urban landscapes and ruined industrial sites sold for far more than she could ever contemplate paying for a piece of art. No doubt Juliet had hoped her film would be her own way to step forward artistically. Now this had happened.
    Juliet, I am so sorry about this whole business.
    With a grimace, Juliet took a seat in front of the monitor on the desk, wrapped a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and, aiming for a smile, patted the chair next to her. A black bound notebook lay on the desk, a pair of speakers to either side of the monitors, some papers scrawled with what Sara thought were called time codes, and, beside an ordinary keyboard, a contraption with a joystick on it, presumably for manipulating the tape. Businesslike, Juliet plucked a mini cassette tape, small enough to fit in her palm, from a pile on the desk and slid it into the mouth of the videocassette player, which swallowed it with a mechanical gurgle. I wasn’t sure what you’d want to see, and there are a lot of rushes, and I could have shown you the rough cut I’ve been working on, but now I feel too weird about it, so I’ve cued up a few other things.
    Weak air-conditioning attempted to cool the room, stuffy with odours of dust and sweat. A small plastic fan clamped to the side of one metal shelf waved some air across them. Juliet reached to switch off the overhead light as an image flared onto the monitor