We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone

by Ronald Malfi

  He stood there staring down at the blank book and wondered if this was some kind of practical joke. On occasion, Tom DeLilly took great pleasure in secreting rubber spiders among the stacks or hiding the self-help books so that patrons would, ironically, have to ask for assistance in locating them. This, however, struck Pembroke as something beyond Tom’s wit or capability.

  Perhaps it is a journal, he surmised, or a sketch book. That would explain the lack of title, author, and text.

  Satisfied that was the answer, he closed the book and tucked it beneath the desk. Yet at the back of his head, he wondered about its mysterious arrival. If it was a journal or sketchbook, he hadn’t ordered it.

  * * *

  Pembroke went about his business for much of that morning, calling customers to let them know their books had arrived and answering the phone whenever it rang, inevitably, with a wrong number. At one point, during the late morning, he found himself reclining in a creaky wooden chair at the back of the shop, the strange new book splayed open in his lap. He turned from page to page, examining the paper as if willing the words to materialize before his eyes. At noon, he took the book down the block and pawed through it while he sat by himself at an outdoor cafe. However, when the young waitress arrived and looked skeptically at the blank pages at which Pembroke had been staring with studied attention, he quickly snapped the book closed and glared at the girl. Perhaps taking it out of the shop had been a mistake.

  He made a mental note to ask Tom about the book tomorrow; maybe he had ordered it for some reason. But when Tuesday arrived and Tom, cherry and bright-eyed, came bustling through the bookstore’s front door—ting! went the tiny overhead bell—Pembroke was overcome by a peculiar sense of unease.

  “Good morning, Arthur!”

  Pembroke nodded at Tom as the younger man scooted down the narrow aisle and tossed his jacket over a rolling cart piled high with paperbacks. Pembroke had been turning the pages of the mysterious book when Tom had entered; now, he quickly closed the book and secured it back beneath the desk. He even went as far as stacking another book on top of it, as if to hide it. Not that Tom ever went behind the counter.

  “Any new orders come in today?” Tom asked as he slotted paperbacks onto a nearby shelf.

  “No,” said Pembroke.

  “I ran into Mrs. Teatree at the Giant,” Tom said. “She’s still fawning over that copy of Mystical Methods from last month.” Tom snickered affably. “Strange old bird.”

  Pembroke nodded but said nothing.

  At around three o’clock that afternoon, as Tom was in the backroom attempting to assemble a bookshelf, a man entered the shop, his presence causing the small bell over the door to tinkle. Pembroke, who was seated behind the counter balancing the stores books in a large ledger, looked up and took inventory. The man, who stood impressively tall, wore a long ash-gray overcoat and a Humphrey Bogart fedora of the same color. Beneath the fedora, his face was long, gaunt, angular, with a chin that appeared chiseled into a perfect rectangle. He possessed the distorted nose of a prizefighter and a firm mouth that was nearly a lipless slash. His eyes were small but alert—rodent’s eyes—and they surveyed the tiny bookstore as the man stood unmoving in the entranceway.

  “Good afternoon,” Pembroke said, closing his ledger.

  The man turned to face him, apparently startled by Pembroke’s voice. His large, expressionless face creased into the approximation of a smile. Those rodent eyes twinkled like dollops of oil.

  The man removed his hat, stepped toward Pembroke’s desk, and said, “Good afternoon, sir. This is a lovely shop.” His voice was smooth as satin.

  “Thank you,” said Pembroke. “Was there something I can help you find?”

  “I hope so.” The man’s smile persisted. “I’ve got quite the specific request.”

  It was at that moment Pembroke knew what the man was looking for. A cool sweat broke out across Pembroke’s forehead.

  “It’s a Book of No Name,” said the man. “One of two, in fact. The yin and the yang, you might say.” Impossibly, the man’s smile widened, exposing teeth like a shark’s. “The one I am seeking is quite large, and bound in a very rare organic covering.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific,” Pembroke said.

  The man’s smile faltered. “Will I?” he said.

  “What’s the author’s name?” Pembroke retrieved a ream of paper from beneath the desk, on which Tom had printed (from his personal computer) their inventory in alphabetical order by author.

  “There is no author,” said the man. The smile had completely vanished now. “Or, to be more precise, there are many authors. But I think, my friend, this book isn’t something you’ll be able to locate on your inventory list.”

  Pembroke slid the stack of pages aside. From the breast pocket of his tight-fitting oxford shirt, he removed a plain white handkerchief which he used to blot his brow.

  “It is my understanding,” said the man, “that this particular book may have mistakenly been delivered to this address yesterday morning.”

  Pembroke slowly shook his head. “We received no deliveries yesterday.”

  Almost imperceptibly, one of the man’s long, slender eyebrows arched. He cleared his throat and said, “Perhaps we’ve started off on the wrong foot, Mister...?”

  “Pembroke,” said Pembroke.

  “Pembroke,” the man repeated. “My name is Selwyn, Mr. Pembroke. I work for a conglomerate of well-to-do academic types who reside throughout the world and who trust me to see to their personal, ah...affairs. This book, Mr. Pembroke, was in transit from one of my clients to another. Typically, I would oversee the transfer personally, of course, but that was not how this matter was handled. Unfortunately.” He added that last part with unmasked disdain, as if somehow Pembroke was responsible for the book getting lost in the mail. “It would be most unfortunate for all parties involved, Mr. Pembroke, if I am unable to locate and reclaim that book.” Again, that slender eyebrow ticked toward Selwyn’s hairline as he repeated, “All parties.”

  At that moment, Tom came out from the backroom carrying the bookshelf. He paused as he saw Pembroke engaged with the man, a sudden look of surprise on Tom’s face. But then Tom smiled his college-boy smile and bellowed, “Hullo! Anything I can help you with, sir?”

  Selwyn’s eyes never left Pembroke’s. After a beat, Selwyn said, “No thank you, son. I was just leaving.” Then, to Pembroke, he said, “If you happen to come across this book, here is my card. I would appreciate a speedy notification. It would be best...for everyone...if this matter was put to rest sooner than later.”

  Selwyn set a small white business card on the counter, then placed his fedora back on his head and moseyed out into the daylight. Pembroke looked down. The only text on the card was the name SELWYN and an 800 number printed below that.

  * * *

  That evening, Pembroke could not get to sleep, his panic was so great. It was a mistake leaving the book overnight in the shop; he kept imagining that tall, gaunt stranger breaking in and stealing it. Around two in the morning, when his stress was causing his hands to shake, Pembroke dressed and slipped out onto the darkened street. At a quick clip, he covered the five blocks to the bookstore without incident, though he kept glancing over his shoulder, fearful that someone might emerge from the shadows and pursue him.

  When he arrived at the bookstore, he went immediately behind the desk and reached for the book...but it was no longer there. Terror seized him, and he hurriedly loosened his collar so that he could breathe. Dabbing his forehead with his handkerchief, he peered into all the little shelves and nooks beneath the desk, wondering if he had misplaced the book himself, his panic rising when he still couldn’t locate it. Yet the shop’s door had been firmly locked and none of the windows were broken. That strange man would have had to use...other means...to have come in here and escaped with the book.

  “I’ll call the police, report a break-in,” he said, pacing back and forth behind the counter, swipin
g that folded bit of handkerchief fitfully and repeatedly across his brow. He was unaware that he was speaking aloud. “Yes, yes—a break-in. An intrusion. And I can describe that strange fellow from earlier to one of their sketch artists.” But even in his desperation, he knew he couldn’t make such a call. The door hadn’t been jimmied, the windows hadn’t been broken. And nothing else was missing from the store except the stuff Pembroke had kept underneath the counter.

  And that was when it occurred to him that everything from beneath the counter was missing—the printed inventory list, the books on reserve for particular clients, the shop’s ledger. He took a moment to consider this. Unnerved by the strange man’s presence that afternoon, Pembroke had left the shop early, leaving Tom behind to close up.

  Expelling a gust of sour breath, Pembroke hunkered down and peered into the shelves beneath the counter more closely. When he saw something small and dark—a spot of black within the shadow of a cubbyhole—he reached for it, plucked it out. It was one of Tom DeLilly’s silly rubber spiders.

  A second bout of panic took hold of him—what if Tom had taken the book?—but then his gaze fell upon the rolling cart, and on it was the ledger, the printout, the patrons’ reserved books, and the Book of No Name.

  Relief washed through him. He rushed to the cart and yanked the book free, knocking several others to the floor. Carrying it against his chest in an embrace, he went to the small reading table at the back of the shop, turned on the museum light over the desk, and opened the book.

  He spent the next few hours occupied with the book—it couldn’t rightly be called “reading,” for there were no words, but for all intents and purposes, that was exactly what Pembroke was doing. Because there were words on those pages, weren’t there? There were stories, at least. Even without seeing the words, he could tell they were there.

  Then he noticed two very strange things, back to back, as if one had been the product of the other. The first thing he noticed was that the tops of his fingers, the palms of his hands, and the underside of his wrists had gone smudgy and gray. Having handled old books for three decades, Pembroke recognized what this was immediately, though he was perplexed to think it had come from the book splayed out in front of him: it was the smudging of ink from the text printed on a book’s page. Had he been reading any other book, it would have made perfect sense. With this book, however...well, there was no text to leave smudges. Yet here they were.

  The second thing he noticed was a dark brownish stain along the edge of one of the pages, near the lower right-hand corner. It was small, and may have been unnoticed by anyone other than Pembroke, who could not help but scrutinize every page, every nuance of the book. He had gone through every page of this book several times since he’d received it Monday morning, and he knew with certainty that the stain hadn’t been there before. To Pembroke, it looked like blood.

  * * *

  The following day—Wednesday—Pembroke struggled to stay awake at the shop, having spent the previous night puzzling over that strange bloodlike stain on the book’s page while also trying to clean the smudgy newsprint from his fingers, hands, and wrists. The smudges did not want to come off; in fact, they only seemed to grow denser and more pronounced, almost to the point that they resembled bruises. He tried to convince himself that the smudges had come from something else, but there was no denying what he believed in his heart—that they had come from the mysterious book.

  When the bell over the door tinkled, Pembroke looked up from the counter—he had been examining that bloodlike stain on the page—worried that it was the man in the fedora again. Selwyn. But it was only Mrs. Teatree, red-faced and robust in a garish floral dress and rhinestone-studded handbag. They exchanged some pleasantries, much as they always did. Pembroke noticed the vast darkened pores in the flesh of Mrs. Teatree’s face for the first time, each one glistening with its own tiny pool of perspiration. She had never repulsed him before, but now he was practically overcome by a discomfort at her proximity. It was all he could do to hand over her reserved books without touching her fat, short-fingered hands. As she waddled out of the shop, Pembroke unleashed a shuddery breath.

  When the bell tinkled over the door an hour later, Pembroke looked up again. Selwyn came into the store, peering studiously at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves much as he had done the day before, as if this was the first time he’d entered the store. When he turned and faced Pembroke, he removed his ash-colored fedora and delivered that sinister shark’s smile.

  “Well,” Selwyn said, approaching the counter.

  Pembroke had been in the process of wiping his hands with a damp rag. At Selwyn’s approach, Pembroke tucked the rag under the counter, covering the Book of No Name which, thankfully, had been down there when Selwyn entered the store.

  “Good afternoon,” Pembroke said. His voice sounded jittery. “Mr. Selwyn, wasn’t it?”

  “Just Selwyn,” said the man. He held his fedora in leather-gloved hands, running his long fingers around the brim. “I was hoping we might be able to approach yesterday’s subject from a different angle.”

  “Oh?” said Pembroke. When Selwyn turned his gaze toward the smudgy marks on Pembroke’s hands and wrists, Pembroke instinctively stuffed his hands in the pockets of his corduroys.

  “You are a man who can get any book, no matter how rare,” said Selwyn. “Is this correct?”

  “For the most part,” Pembroke said.

  Selwyn’s sharp smile flashed then vanished just as quickly. “I am trying to locate a book that has gone missing from one of my clients. It went missing en route to another client, and both are very upset. They are also very wealthy. I assure you they would pay any price if one were to locate the book and, say, sell it to them.”

  “I’d need an author’s name and book title. Publisher’s information, too, presuming they’re looking for a particular edition. But of course,” Pembroke added quickly, “I can’t promise anything. Some books, I’m afraid to say, choose to remain elusive.”

  “That would be unfortunate, in this case,” said Selwyn. And then Selwyn’s eyes narrowed. He turned his head slightly to the left and, like a bloodhound on a scent, proceeded to sniff the air.

  He smells the blood, Pembroke thought. The blood on the page! It was impossible, of course...but for some reason, Pembroke couldn’t shake the certainty of it.

  “Mr. Pembroke,” said Selwyn, his voice lowering as he leaned closer to Pembroke over the counter. Pembroke could smell the man’s cool, crisp aftershave...and was suddenly certain that the perfume was there to mask some headier, earthier smell. “We are playing a game with each other, yes? Allow me to assure you that there are other methods by which I could...obtain...what it is I am looking for. Those ways are much more difficult than a man’s willingness to comply. What I mean to say, Arthur, is that it is possible for me to take the book from you by force. However, that would require certain...shall we say, ‘policies’?...be violated. And my clients tend to frown on such tactics. Therefore I will leave you with this.”

  From within his overcoat, Selwyn procured a folded stack of paper money. He tugged several bills from the stack and placed them down flat on the counter. Ten hundred-dollar bills.

  “Consider this as incentive,” said Selwyn. “You will be able to name your actual price once the book is procured and turned over.” Selwyn’s thin lips pulled back from his teeth, and Pembroke could see without question that each tooth had elongated into a sharpened fang. There was something patchy and reptilian about the fleshy pockets beneath Selwyn’s eyes, too. As if the skin there had turned to snake scales. “Because,” finished Selwyn, “we are playing a game, yes?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand...”

  “You’ve already been tainted,” Selwyn said, his gaze shifting down at Pembroke’s hands, which were still stuffed into the pockets of his pants. “It still may not be too late for you.”

  Pembroke said nothing as Selwyn replaced the fedora atop his head and, pivoting sharply
on his heels, began whistling as he headed out of the door and onto the sidewalk.

  * * *

  He planned to take the book home that evening, but instead Pembroke wound up sleeping in the store, snoring loudly in one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs at the table near the back of the bookstore, the side of his face pressed against one of the open pages of the book.

  * * *

  “Mr. Pembroke?”

  It was Tom DeLilly, shaking him awake.

  Pembroke snapped up in his seat, his stiff back jolting with pain, his eyes bleary and still muzzy with sleep. When he glanced down at the desktop, he was mortified to see that the mysterious book was right there, its blank pages splayed open for Tom to see. He quickly slammed the book shut.

  “Did you sleep here last night?”

  “I guess so, Tom.” He attempted to climb out of the chair but his back screamed in protest so he remained seated.

  “I brought you a coffee,” Tom said, setting the cardboard cup down beside the book. Steam wafted from the tiny opening in the lid. “Looks like you could use it, if you don’t mind me saying.” Then Tom’s eyes narrowed. He leaned closer to examine the side of Pembroke’s face.

  “What?” Pembroke barked, suddenly repulsed by Tom’s proximity. It was an invasion of his personal space. “What is it?”

  “You’ve got a...I guess a bruise on the side of your face, Mr. Pembroke.” Tom straightened up. He looked concerned. “Did you get in a fight?”

  Pembroke laughed forcibly. “A fight?”

  “Or maybe fall down from one of the ladders again?” Tom suggested.

  “Nonsense.” He touched the side of his face but felt nothing.

  “Oh,” Tom said. It came on the intake of air, as if Tom were suddenly prodded by something cold and pointy at the base of his spine. “Your hands.”