Double Image by David Morrell

on them. He had done his best to replicate the texture of Packard’s photographs, down to the slightest shadows and subtlest streaks of light. Juxtaposed, his images and Packard’s evoked powerful emotions within the viewer, creating the illusion of being in two time frames simultaneously.
    Jennifer and Daniel seemed spellbound, moving from photograph to photograph, studying them while Coltrane didn’t say a word but merely sat on a stool at the entrance to the living room, sipping wine, studying
them
.
    But the project was devoted to more than just Packard’s houses. Interspersed among the time warps were other mounted photographs, which — beginning with the heartbreaking depiction of Diane — recorded the emotional encounters Coltrane had experienced while retracing Packard’s steps.
    Jennifer shook her head in wonder.
    Daniel looked at Coltrane, as if seeing him with new eyes.
    “This is the best stuff you’ve ever done,” Jennifer said. “I have a hunch you won’t mind talking about
these
pictures.”
    “No,” Coltrane said, relief ebbing through him. “I won’t mind talking about them at all.”
    “Well, I was wrong about one thing,” Jennifer said. “I thought this would be suitable for a feature in the magazine.”
    “You’ve changed your mind?”
    “Definitely. There’s too much here, and I don’t want to leave anything out. For the first time, there’s going to be a special issue.”
    “. . . I don’t know what to say.”
    “I do,” Daniel said. “Where’d you put the wine?”
    Coltrane laughed.
    Jennifer kissed him. “I’m so proud of you.”
    As she and Daniel returned to the photographs, Coltrane noticed the red light blinking on his answering machine. He pressed the play button.
    His stomach tightened when a chorus sang mournful classical music.
    “Again?” Jennifer looked up from a photograph he had taken of the elderly black woman at the trailer court. “This is annoying.”
    “I can think of less polite ways to put it,” Coltrane said. “I wish I had one of those machines that shows the number of whoever’s calling. Then I could phone the jerk back and play music to
him
— except I’d have trouble finding music as weird as this.”
    “Verdi isn’t what I’d call weird.” Daniel didn’t glance away from the photo of the young black woman pushing a boy in a swing. Coltrane had juxtaposed it with the faded photo of his mother pushing
him
in the same swing twenty-four years earlier.
    “Verdi?”
    “You ought to get more culture. If you listened to something other than jazz, if you went to those classical concerts I invited you to . . . The music on your answering machine is by Verdi.”
    “Italian. That’s why I can’t understand what they’re singing.”
    “Well, in this case, what they’re singing isn’t Italian — it’s Latin. Let me hear the music again.”
    Coltrane pressed the repeat button.
    “No doubt about it,” Daniel said. “That’s from the Requiem.”
    “The music for a funeral mass?” Jennifer asked.
    “Hear what they’re singing? ‘
Dies irae
.’ ‘Day of wrath.’ That’s definitely from the Requiem.”
    Coltrane gestured in frustration. “But why would anybody phone me every day and play music for a funeral?”
    “A prankster with a sick sense of humor.”
    “‘
Dies irae
.’ What’s that mean?”
    “Something about a day,” Daniel said. “If you’re really curious, I can go next door and get my copy of the Requiem. The liner notes have a translation.”
    It was a vinyl LP, Coltrane saw when Daniel returned. Daniel was fond of lecturing that vinyl had a richer, more lifelike sound than the CD format. “Bernstein conducting. Domingo soloing. This is one of the best—”
    “Just tell us what the Latin means, Daniel.”
    “Right.” Daniel looked mischievous, as if he knew he was making them impatient. “It should be . . .” He unfolded the double-platter album and ran his index finger down the translation on