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  This morning, she parked and hurried to the nearest crosswalk; she’d slept badly, had finally dozed off and then overslept, so she was a few minutes late. She didn’t see any sign of her usual work partner Gabriel, though, so she decided to wait for the light to change rather than risk (as she often did) dodging across the wide street illegally.

  As she stood on the corner, she noticed a man standing in the doorway of the office building next to Java Jane’s. The man was backlit by a single overhead light in the entryway, so it was difficult to make out details, but he seemed to be wearing a long coat. A trench coat, in fact, like the ones in old movies. His head was bare, but something about his neck—was he wearing a bulky scarf? Did he have something draped around his neck?

  As she stared, he stepped forward, into the dull overhead light of a sodium lamp, and Julia saw what wound around his neck: tentacles. Or at least they were tentacle-like, long fleshy appendages about as thick as two of her fingers. And they were moving slightly, as if caught in a breeze, except they all moved independently of each other. There seemed to be six, or—no, eight.

  He was the man in the photo. The Human Squid.

  No, Julia thought, her heart picking up speed, that’s not possible. He’d be a hundred years old. This man isn’t even bent.

  His head swiveled slightly, gazing up and down the street—and then his eyes fixed on her.

  Julia’s pounding heart froze. She locked eyes with him—The Human Squid—as a rush of emotions coursed through her. Fear, yes, and dread, of what might happen next . . . what if he stepped into the street, came toward her? She imagined him pulling her roughly into an embrace, those writhing lengths of flesh against her neck, her face—

  Her paralysis broke when the rumbling of a bus sounded. It crossed between them, an early morning Metro already packed with riders, cutting off her view of the man. The bus slowed, only for a second, surely not long enough to let anyone off or on, but when it moved on down the street the man was gone. Julia let out a shaky breath and gulped in air, her eyes still on the bus as it headed into the heart of the city. Where would he go? How could he take public transportation? Had those really been tentacles, or had she been deceived by light and shadow, like any sucker who ever bought a ticket for the sideshow and soon realized the mermaid was nothing but a mummified dolphin?

  When her heart slowed again, the bus gone from view, she walked across the street and entered Java Jane’s, almost relieved to be back among the mundane concerns of obligation.

  ***

  When Julia returned home that afternoon, she tried to look up more information about LaRue’s Dime Museum, but her phone had stopped functioning. She’d recently replaced the battery and knew it was fully charged, so the only other alternative was to take it in for repairs. Irritated, she tried to turn on her laptop, but it also failed.

  What are the chances?

  Instead, she pulled out the two photographs, examining them closely for clues. There was the Human Squid, gawky and angular except for the mass around his neck.

  Julia was certain it was the same man she’d seen in the pre-dawn morning.

  Had she misinterpreted the age of the photos? Could they have been recent, perhaps even staged? A play, a piece of performance art, a Halloween attraction?

  No, she was sure they were authentic and decades old. They possessed the startling, harsh quality that cameras (and their flash bulbs) from the ‘40s had. The prices on the ticket booth (“Only 50¢!”) were obviously obsolete.

  In the photo, the Human Squid looked thirty years old. That would mean the man she’d seen earlier would have been a century.

  Julia didn’t sleep much that night.

  ***

  She awoke at her usual time of four a.m. As always, she showered, dressed, had a piece of fruit as she stood before her second-floor living room window, looking out on Wilcox Avenue.

  Julia was about to leave when two figures ambling along the sidewalk caught her attention. They were on her side of the street, moving toward her apartment building.

  One was tall, with something massed around his neck.

  The other man, smaller, wore a driver’s cap, a dark jacket, light shirt, and chinos. The two seemed to be chatting, leaning toward each other as they walked.

  When they reached Julia’s building, they stopped.

  She pulled back from the window, but not away. Moving to the side, she peeked around the vertical blinds.

  They’d stopped beneath a street light that painted them in yellowish hues. The tall man had a circle of narrow, fleshy appendages around his neck. The other had dark red skin above his white shirt. After a few seconds, Julia realized it wasn’t a shirt at all but bandages, wound horizontally around his torso. His wrists and fingers were similarly bound.

  They didn’t look up toward her. The one in the bandages was patting the pockets of his jacket. He found what he wanted, pulled out a package of cigarettes, shook one out, returned the rest to the pocket, and lit up. He sucked the smoke in, tilting his head up.

  His face gleamed, as if moist. It was a deep crimson color.

  The Inside-Out Man.

  When he exhaled, his companion coughed in disapproval. The tentacles around his neck rose to wave the smoke away. The Inside-Out Man laughed and blew out more smoke.

  He waved the cigarette in Julia’s direction. Then both the Inside-Out Man and the Human Squid turned and looked up.

  Julia had to stifle a scream. She stumbled back, certain they’d seen her. She started to move toward her phone, thinking to call the police, anyone, but remembered the phone didn’t work. Should she rush to a neighbor’s, ask for help? She realized that she didn’t know any of her neighbors, only the manager, who was rarely around. And what would she say? That two human oddities from eighty years ago were looking up at her as they smoked in the street?

  She waited for several minutes, willing her pulse to slow. At last she crept, slowly, back to the window and risked a look out.

  The crimson man was just stubbing out the cigarette with a foot. He and his friend turned and walked away down the street, nonchalant, as if they were completely at home in a world where they shouldn’t exist.

  Before heading down to the parking garage, Julia walked to the front of the building, where the two men had just been standing. If she’d needed proof that what she’d just seen hadn’t been a dream or hallucination, there was the lingering scent of tobacco in the air. She looked down and saw something on the sidewalk. She knelt to see what it was, and only the short, tan end showed it to be a cigarette butt, flattened into the concrete—and covered in blood. Julia poked it with a finger and immediately regretted the act—the blood was warm and sticky. She wiped her finger tip on her pants leg, and, resisting an urge to rush back to her apartment, lock the door, and spend the next hour scrubbing her hands, she headed for her car in the building’s parking garage. When she pulled out onto the street she looked for them, but they were gone.

  She knew she’d see them again.

  ***

  That afternoon she drove to the phone store, located in a strip mall, where she’d bought her phone.

  Every space in the strip mall was vacant. It looked new, as if it had just been renovated. There was a liquor store next to the mall that Julia remembered going into for a bottle of water. She went in, picked out a cheap bottle of wine, and asked the clerk when the phone store had moved out.

  “I don’t know anything about a phone store,” he said in a thick Middle Eastern accent.

  Julia didn’t pursue it. The only person who ever called her, aside from robot salesmen, was her mother, who wasted the data charges complaining about her life or Julia’s. Julia decided she could live without that for a few more days.

  ***

  She spent that evening with the wine, gazing at the photos. The photographer’s skill at capturing the scenes captivated her, caused her to fall into the world of LaRue’s Dime Museum all over again. It was a world she felt comfortable and happy
in.

  By the end of the evening she’d decided (albeit drunkenly) that the photographer was the key. But how could she find out more? Was it “Greta”?

  In college, Julia had been on exactly two dates (neither had led to a second). One had been with a young man named Ivan who had been obsessed with photography. He’d taken her to an exhibit at the Mulholland Museum that she’d found thoroughly boring, but which he found so fascinating that Julia began to suspect there might be something wrong with him.

  The next day was her day off. By 11 a.m. she was waiting in an office at the Mulholland Museum, a chic modern structure located in the hills above Westwood, to speak to the museum’s associate director of collections.

  Catherine Deane turned out to be an affable fortysomething whose natural elegance was so unattainable to Julia that she couldn’t even feel envious. Catherine (and Julia knew instinctively that no one ever called this woman “Kate” or “Kathy”) met her in the museum’s lobby and led her to an office cluttered with bookcases and photos spread out across a long work table.

  “I understand you have some interesting material,” she said, after they were seated.

  Julia handed her a manila folder with the photos. “I hope so.”

  Catherine opened the envelope, withdrew the photos, eyed them critically for a few seconds, turned them over—and gaped. “Oh my God,” she said, softly.

  “What?”

  “I’m sure these are Greta Hoffman’s work.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know her.”

  Catherine rose, scanned her bookcases, and plucked out a hefty coffee table book she handed to Julia. The book was labeled Greta Hoffman: 1943-1956. The cover showed a photo of old downtown L.A., when the theaters were vital and hadn’t yet become flophouses or abandoned curiosities, when men wore fedoras and women stylish dresses. The image centered on a little girl, eating a chocolate ice cream cone, her chin and cheeks smeared, while her mother stood over her, looking down with a mixture of disapproval and amusement; behind and around them was Broadway Avenue, packed with pedestrians and old cars, the whole scene bursting with life.

  Even though the subject matter was completely different, Julia recognized the similarity to her photos immediately. The slightly off-kilter framing, the contrast between the little girl’s pale face and the chocolate, the excitement and glamour of the city . . .

  Julia flipped through the book, seeing page after page of extraordinary shots, many of L.A. in the ‘40s and ‘50s, but nothing else showing LaRue’s. As she scanned the book, Catherine moved up behind her. “Greta Hoffman is one of photography’s great unsung heroes, or I guess we should say unsung heroines. We don’t really know much about her: she was born in Germany, left when Hitler rose to power and found her way to New York, where she got work as a nanny. She’d only been there for a few months when the couple she was working for relocated to Los Angeles. She came with them and ended up spending the rest of her life here. When she died in 1962, they cleared out her apartment and found thousands of photos; it turned out that Greta, who never married, had a secret passion for photography. The photos were boxed and stuck away for fifty years, but found in an attic a few years ago and brought to us. Now Greta’s a cause célèbre more than half a century after her death.”

  Julia flipped the book to the back. On the rear dust jacket flap was a grainy photo of a plain-looking woman dressed in a severe black dress and matching hat. The photo was captioned Greta Hoffman in 1952.

  Catherine leaned over her desk, picked up Julia’s photos—almost tenderly—and examined them again. “I know Greta’s work very well and I’ve never seen these before. Where did you find them?”

  “I bought them in an antiques store downtown. They said they’d found them in a box when they took over the space.”

  Squinting at the photos, Catherine shook her head. “Extraordinary. Greta almost never even showed her photos to anyone, let alone gave them away.” Looking up at Julia, she added, “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in selling these? I’ll make you an offer right now, if you’re interested. Five thousand.”

  Julia blurted out in surprise, “Five thousand?”

  “That’s for each photograph, of course.” When Julia didn’t answer, Catherine added, “I’ll be frank with you: you could probably get more if you go to auction—a lot more. But I would love to have these as part of our collection, and I can write you a check right now.”

  Julia sat back, trying to wrap her thoughts around what she’d just been offered. Ten thousand dollars? More if she went elsewhere? Why? Did other people experience the same thing she did when she looked at the photos—the sense of being drawn into another world?

  She didn’t want to live without that.

  Reaching for the photos, Julia said, “Can I think about it?”

  Catherine nodded, but not without a hint of resignation. “Of course.”

  Julia left with a business card, an astonishing offer, the photographer’s name, and a renewed sense of the power of Greta Hoffman’s art.

  ***

  When she got home, she idly turned on the television, but none of her favorite channels was working. Only a few of the local channels came in, showing images blurred with lines of static. She’d have to remember to call her cable company from work tomorrow.

  ***

  The next day at Java Jane’s, she asked her co-worker Gabriel if she could borrow his phone. He gave her an odd look before passing her the handset from an old black dial phone mounted to the wall. Its presence didn’t surprise her; it gave her only a moment of panic before she accepted it as the real, natural order of things.

  Looking up from the phone, she glanced out the shop’s front window and saw a woman waiting on the sidewalk, her back to the store. Something about her was familiar. Julia stepped from behind the front counter, curious. She ignored Gabriel when he asked, “Where you going?”

  She stopped just past the counter. The woman was moving—or at least her head was, turning to look back into the store . . . and turning . . .

  Her head turned all the way until it was aligned between her shoulders. She was blandly pretty, like a forgotten film ingénue. She saw Julia, smiled, and winked.

  Julia stumbled back. As she turned, clumsy from shock, to move behind the counter, she barreled into her co-worker, who reached out to steady her. “Whoa, you okay?”

  She looked up at Gabriel, a dark-skinned young man with a face that betrayed a losing battle with acne—and saw that her co-worker was now completely covered with tattoos. Every square inch, including his throat and the back of his hands, demanded attention with swirling, colorful designs. As she staggered back, he asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

  She fled the store, using the back door to avoid Conundra, the World’s Greatest Contortionist.

  ***

  On her drive home, she sensed that something was missing. Looking around the landscape of downtown Los Angeles, she finally pinpointed it:

  The new skyscrapers—the bank buildings, all gleaming metal and glass—were gone. City Hall’s iconic spire now loomed above everything. She saw nothing but old-model cars, men and women in out-of-style suits and dresses. She drove past the longstanding Clifton’s Cafeteria, but it was Polynesian-themed.

  She pulled up to a stoplight at the intersection of Seventh and Figueroa. The light was a strange design, with a sign that read “STOP.” As it moved from red to green, the sign slid down while one reading “GO” slid up. When a car behind Julia honked, she hit the gas too sharply and her car lurched forward, slamming her back into the seat. She nearly rear-ended a 1943 Packard in front of her before braking, throwing her forward.

  A few seconds later the car’s engine died.

  Julia coasted to the side of the street, pulling into a red zone. She tried turning the key three times while hitting the gas, but the car didn’t even grind or click. It was simply incapable of functioning, like her phone or television.

  She sat in the driver seat, gr
ipping the wheel tightly while anxiety held her in a strangling grip.

  What’s going on? Am I crazy? What do I do now?

  Looking around, she saw that the car had stopped almost in front of the Pantry, a restaurant she’d eaten in many times. The historic eatery was the one thing in the street completely recognizable, a rock standing against the river of time. Julia went to it, a desperate traveler seeking an oasis.

  Inside, she was seated and handed a menu. The items listed were what she was used to—but they were offered at a fraction of the price.

  When the waiter returned, Julia ordered coffee. Maybe it would help her sort things out, decide on a plan.

  The coffee arrived—strong, black, reassuring. Julia wrapped both hands around the sturdy cup and stared down into the contents, as if she’d find an answer there.

  “Excuse me . . . ” A feminine voice with a slight accent interrupted. She looked up.

  A woman with a black coat and hat stood over her, holding an old-fashioned, bulky camera, the kind with a fat glass lens and no LCD screen on the back. She spoke again, gesturing with the camera. “ . . . would you mind if I took your picture?”

  Julia set the coffee down and said, “You’re Greta Hoffman.”

  The woman blinked in surprise. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

  “No, but . . . I’m a fan of your work.”

  Greta frowned. “My work? How do you know my work?”

  “I own two of your photos. In fact, someone just offered me a lot of money for them.”

  Emotions flickered across Greta’s features—skepticism, hope, pleasure—and after a second she motioned at a chair across from Julia. “May I sit here?”

  Julia nodded. Greta took the chair, placing the old-fashioned camera to one side of the table. Up close, without the confines of a blurry photograph, Julia saw that she’d been wrong to judge Greta Hoffman as plain-looking; her eyes in particular were extraordinary, creased lightly with humor and worry, the pupils ringed with rich hazel irises.