White Apples by Jonathan Carroll Page A

was always there to meet her wherever in the world they chose to rendezvous.
    Isabelle invariably brought a camera with her to photograph whatever person she had come to meet as they came through the gate. She loved looking at these arrival pictures and had literally hundreds of them.
    Ettrich had his camera—the beautiful digital Leica she had given him for his birthday two years before. When he had opened the present, she asked him to take pictures every day of his life and send them to her via e-mail. Nothing special or arty, just whatever interested him enough to want to show her. From the first it sur•prised him how much he liked doing this. Liked e-mailing her his photographs of a puppy jumping over a puddle, or three bums eating popcorn from big yellow tubs, and of the little girl who could not have been more than five years old sticking out her tongue and giving him the finger at the same time. He sent Isabelle so many pictures. Sometimes she would comment on them, usually not. Sometimes he was disappointed when she said nothing because he really wanted to hear what she thought.
    The worst was when she left and he stopped sending her his pictures. He kept taking them and many were stored on computer discs. But they were for Isabelle and now she wouldn't see them. So there was a strange deadness to these photographs when he looked at them. Stillborns. It made him resent and miss her even more.
    Walking into the terminal he asked himself if he felt nervous. He had to take a wicked piss which always meant some part of him was nervous. But which part was it? Some of him was nervous, some delighted, a large chunk still simmered with anger... Ettrich was a tossed salad of emotions. And he was dead. He was dead, dead, dead. Or had been before he was back in his life. But no one seemed to notice a difference, including himself, until Coco had enlightened him with her slide and snapshot show. Would Isabelle see any difference? Did his return to life have anything to do with her? How would he appear to Isabelle Neukor? Would she see a sullen man, a happy one, hopeful, or only a fool?
    Worst of all, would she be the one to see a dead man? What did she want to see? The thought "Why is she coming here now?" galloped across his mind. Followed closely by "She's pregnant with jour child, stupid. That's why." But it really didn't make sense. Because as far as he could figure, the last time they had slept together was almost three months before. Isabelle had a very regular period so she must have known for over sixty days that she was pregnant. Why hadn't she contacted him then? Why had she waited so long? And why tell him about it in such a roundabout way via Margaret Hof? Why hadn't she just called him and said this has happened and we must talk about it?
    Because she was Isabelle. Her line, often repeated, only she usually phrased it "That's just me." Over time it had become both the most endearing and infuriating sentence he'd ever heard a woman say. She used it to explain her intelligence, perception, and consummate generosity. But she also used it to explain her neuroses, disappearances, and selfish silences. At the beginning of their rela•tionship he had begged her to say more about what this phrase meant. "That's just me." What was just her? But Isabelle shut down hard and cold when he persisted in asking. Ettrich quickly realized it was a place in her he was not meant to go.
    On the afternoon of the day she was to arrive, after pissing six thousand nervous times and otherwise trying to keep himself busy until it was time to go to the airport, he took down a photograph of her from the mantelpiece.
    Turning it over, he read again what she had written on the back:

    Like a hand on your face that puts my blood next to yours
    I want you so much. You tick in my chest. All the seconds.
    My heart is a clock.

    He never fully understood what those mysterious lines meant but nevertheless they touched him deeply. He read them