“We haven’t—we did it the old-fashioned way, with a chisel, removing just a small fragment from the end of one talon.”
“And what do you hope that will prove?” Ben asked.
“We sent it over to the medical sciences lab, and with carbon dating, maybe we’ll be able to get a fix on its relative age. The weird thing is, all the tests so far have come back with completely untenable readings.”
“What do you mean,” Abbie said, “untenable?”
“It means that the fossil predates every form of life that ever existed, anywhere in the world; it predates the dinosaurs, the lowest plankton or moss or amoeba. It existed, if you want to put it that way, before the dawn of time.”
There was a momentary silence in the car.
“Sounds like an X-Files case to me,” Ben finally said.
“Or an extraterrestrial,” Abbie added.
Carter leaned back. “It does, doesn’t it?” He looked out the window. “I’ve brought some books and reports to study this weekend,” he said, “so maybe I’ll crack it, once and for all, at your place.”
Beth’s heart sank; she’d imagined long walks in the woods, holding hands and sharing intimate thoughts, followed by cozy evenings in front of a crackling fire. But now, suddenly, she saw herself walking in the woods, alone, while Carter hunkered down in the house with his lab reports. That had not been part of the plan. Her plan was for time together, time outdoors . . . and time spent working on that little idea they’d had about starting a family. Still, unless Carter had changed utterly, there was one thing she could count on; the boy in him loved dinosaurs, but the man in him loved Victoria’s Secret. And she had picked up a few naughty little surprises there on her lunch break.
The score was going to be lingerie one, dinosaurs nothing.
When they got to the restaurant, it was just as Abbie had advertised it—dark booths, basic fare, and a mournful-looking moose head over the bar. But things between Ben and Abbie were going downhill fast; they’d started bickering in the car, and now, after Ben had thrown down a few too many drinks, they only got worse. Maybe it was the accumulated stress of buying the new house, driving out of the city in crazy weekend traffic, trying to start a family—Beth could understand where it was coming from, but it didn’t make it any more comfortable to be there to witness it. After dinner, Abbie insisted on driving the rest of the way, and after a little tussle with Ben over the car keys—which they pretended was playful, but wasn’t—she won.
The drive got darker and lonelier the farther they went, and the towns they passed through became more desolate and forlorn. Beth began to wish she’d never agreed to this plan—would Carter ever forgive her?—but it was too late to do anything about it now.
After they’d been on a winding, pitch-black, two-lane road for about fifteen minutes, Ben said, “Slow down—it’s right there!” and Abbie said, “Where? I don’t see it!”
“There, there, behind the big oak!”
She slowed the car. “What’s an oak? I can’t tell an oak from an elm, even in the daylight.”
“It’s the big tree you just passed,” Ben said. “I told you I should drive.”
Abbie slowed down even more, then turned the car on a dirt patch; there was a large open trench marked by orange highway cones running along the side of the road.
“They’re replacing all the water mains in the area,” Ben said. “The old ones were put in around the Civil War.”
Turning back, they found the driveway, which was partially concealed by the massive old oak and descended steeply from the main road. They bounced down it for a few hundred yards, and at the bottom stopped in front of a small, old-fashioned green and white house with a low-slung front porch and a high-pitched roof.
Beth got out first. “It’s great!” she said, with as much conviction as she could muster. But her heart wasn’t in it. In the photos she and Carter had seen that night at Minetta’s, the place had looked sunny and kind of cute. But here, at night, surrounded by barren trees and fields and bathed only in the cold glow of the moon, it took on a rather sinister cast. The front door, which even now Ben was struggling to get open, screeched and stuck.
“You have to turn the key all the way to the left,” Abbie said, and Ben shot back, “I did turn it all the way to the left. The lock needs to be replaced—that’s all I can tell you.”
Carter and Beth busied themselves with the bags, and pretty much kept their heads down. They toured the house—with only five or six rooms in the whole place, and most of them still unfurnished, it was quick work—and then went up the spiral staircase to their own room on the second floor. The walls had been stripped of their paint and the curtain rods were barren. When the door was closed behind them, Beth flopped down on the edge of their bed and mouthed the word Yikes. Carter nodded. Then he came and plopped down beside her, slinging one arm around her neck and kissing her on the cheek.
“Ever notice,” he said in a low voice, “how another couple’s marital difficulties can make you really appreciate what you’ve got?”
In the master bedroom, which was directly downstairs, they heard a drawer slam, and then the sound of lowered voices. Beth thought she heard Abbie saying something was “so embarrassing” (she could think of several things that might have qualified) and Ben saying, over and over, “Give it a rest.”
“Remind me never to buy a country house,” Carter said.
“At least not this one,” she whispered.
“Kind of spooky here, isn’t it?”
Beth smiled. “And kind of freezing,” she said, in a voice as low as his.
“Take a hot bath,” he said. “I’ll unpack.”
Beth fished a few things out of her bag, then crossed to the bathroom. The window in there didn’t have any curtain or blind either, but it looked out on an endless expanse of black fields, withered trees, and off in the distance, what looked like the hulk of an abandoned barn. She turned the hot water on full and listened as the pipes groaned and gurgled. The water came out brown at first, then cleared up, and felt like heaven when she stepped into the deep old porcelain tub. She put her head back and let the heat soak into her bones. God, she hoped that Abbie and Ben would be getting along better the next day. There was nothing so awful as being marooned in the middle of someone else’s marital spat—especially as she had been so looking forward to an intimate and romantic weekend. She and Carter had a good life in the city—a great life, she knew most people would say—but they’d both had to work hard to get it, and they were still working hard to maintain it. It was time they kicked back and enjoyed themselves a little.
When she got out of the tub and opened the door to the bedroom, Carter was doing exactly what she’d imagined—sitting up in bed, his nose buried in a bunch of papers.
But when he looked up, and saw her modeling her new Victoria’s Secret outfit—she might not be Heidi Klum, but she didn’t look half bad in it, even if she did say so herself—the papers dropped into his lap and his jaw nearly went with them.
“Don’t let me disturb you,” she purred.
“Too late for that now.”
Nice to know, she thought as she crossed to his beckoning arms, that she could still beat out any fossil on earth.
FOURTEEN
In retrospect, Joe thought, a cruise was probably not the best idea. But he’d already bought the ticket, and he thought the fresh air might do him good.
He’d had too much to drink at the party last night. The minute he’d walked through the door and into the crush of bodies, Bill Mitchell had appeared and pressed a glass of Halloween punch into his hand. He still didn’t know what was in it. Then Mitchell had introduced him around as if he were the most noted paleontologist in all of Europe. “He’s in New York on some top-secret project,” Mitchell had exclaimed, “and if anybody here can find out what it is, please tell me!”
Russo had done his best to downplay the publicity, and he’d had a pretty good time—the party guests were a mix of
young faculty members, doctoral candidates, and even some undergrads. He met that student, Katie Coyne, who’d asked him some questions in the lecture hall; she was a very beguiling and opinionated young thing. Even at the party she wanted to know all sorts of stuff about how he got where he was today, what kind of excavations he’d been on, where he thought the next great discoveries were likely to be made. He’d seldom met students her age so focused.
“When you graduate,” he’d told her, “come and see me in Rome. I think you are going to do great work one day.”
He’d stumbled home after midnight and got up the next morning, late; he didn’t even bother to fold up his blankets, as Carter and Beth wouldn’t be back till Sunday night. And he was determined to take that Circle Line Cruise; he wanted to do something touristy, and today was the perfect opportunity. But he hadn’t counted on still feeling queasy. Nor had he realized just how many people would be crammed onto the boat, or how many of them would be boisterous children, some of them already in their Halloween costumes. He’d tried staying in the inside cabin, but between the heat and the commotion, he’d decided to try his luck outside on the open deck.
Over the loudspeaker, the ship’s captain announced the various points of interest as the boat chugged past them—the South Street Seaport, the Brooklyn Bridge, Hell’s Gate, Gracie Mansion. Russo took special note when they passed a tiny island in the East River where the city’s smallpox hospital had once stood; now it was just a pile of broken bricks and dust. The patients had been ferried there and marooned, as it were, to keep their contagion from infecting the rest of the city. Charles Dickens, the captain said, had once sailed past this place, Blackwell’s Island, and the patients—along with the inmates of the neighboring lunatic asylum—had waved their hats and handkerchiefs in salute. In America, Russo was always surprised to find anything, even ruins, that had been there for more than a century.
When the boat docked again, Russo waited for most of the other passengers to disembark, then walked off himself. Even though the cruise had been fairly steady, it still felt good to be back on land, to no longer feel the thrumming of the engines under his feet. It was getting dark fast, but he thought the long walk home might give him some exercise, which would in turn help him get to sleep that night. He still wasn’t sleeping well, and even last night, when he’d fallen onto the sofa half-drunk, he’d awakened several times from bad dreams. Tonight, he wanted to try to wear himself out.
The closer he got to the West Village, the wilder the street scene became. Girls dressed as vampires, guys in cowboy gear, and in what he assumed was a tribute to Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, a whole group of people made up to look like medieval penitents, in brown robes, waving smoking censers, and flagellating themselves. All day long, he hadn’t really felt like eating, but now he realized he was getting weak. When he found himself outside some kind of Italian trattoria, he suddenly thought that what he’d really like right now was a hot bowl of pasta fagiolo. In Rome, he lived above a place where the cook made the best he’d ever tasted.
What he got here was barely recognizable; he could have counted the kidney beans in it on the fingers of one hand. He knew Americans were supposed to love Italian food, but if this was what they were getting, what on earth were they so fond of? He paid the check with cash, left what he hoped was the right tip, and went outside again. Things had definitely heated up in the last hour or so. There were more people than ever on the street, dressed in all kinds of weird costumes—three bald men painted blue were walking with a woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty—and the streets were clogged with cars and taxis blaring their horns and struggling to make some progress. As far as Russo could tell, walking—though not easy—was still faster than any other way of getting around.
It was a full moon tonight, no doubt contributing to the craziness, and the city seemed ablaze with light—traffic lights, headlights, neon signs, the flashing red beacons of police cars, glowing green necklaces that dozens of the revelers wore around their throats or foreheads. As Russo made his way through the throng, it felt more and more like Mardi Gras to him, with the noise, the elaborate costumes, the pushing and shoving; the very air seemed to be filled with a sense of excitement and expectation, of suspense and sexual heat, of forced merriment and even, truth be told, of menace. As a newcomer to the city, it was interesting for him to see, but he could well understand why Carter and Beth had wanted to get out of New York for the weekend.
By the time he got close to Washington Square, the crowds on the sidewalk were so thick he could hardly get anywhere at all; he was forever colliding with people, apologizing (not that they could hear, or cared), getting tripped and jostled and shoved. A guy with a plastic cup of beer banged into him and spilled most of it down the front of his raincoat, then whirled away without a word or even a glance back. Russo brushed off as much of it as he could. Maybe, he thought, if he got off the main streets, he might be able to wend his way back to the apartment a little more easily. When he neared the bio building he took a side street, and decided to go around behind.
He came around the side of the massive old building—yellow brick that had long since turned brown—and the mobs immediately thinned out. There were revelers, but they were bent on making their way back to the action. By the time he turned the corner and was crossing behind the loading area, there were just a few stragglers—and the ever-present transvestite, a tall black man in a red suede coat, leaning into the rear window of an idling limousine. Working even on Halloween night, Russo thought; there was something laudable in that.
His eyes turned inevitably to the loading doors, which were all the way down and locked. And he had almost looked away again when something caught his eye. At first he wasn’t even sure what had gotten his attention, but then he realized that under the side door, the one on the loading ramp level, there was a very thin sliver of light.
He stopped. Had he left the lights on when he closed the lab on Friday?
No. He distinctly remembered turning them off, and looking back, just before he closed the door, at the brooding shapes of the laser and the slab.
Could the janitor, Hank, be in there? It certainly didn’t seem likely—especially at this hour, almost ten o’clock on a Saturday night.
He wanted to walk away, to just pretend he’d never seen it, but he knew he couldn’t do that. He had to see what was going on. He felt in his pocket for the keys, then walked up the concrete steps to the loading ramp. At the door, he looked down again—yes, light was spilling out from the thin crack at its base. He put his ear to the cold metal surface and he could hear, faintly, a radio playing.
Could Carter have come back early, unannounced? Now that, he suddenly thought with relief, was a possibility. Russo knew that Carter, down deep, thought this fossil might turn out to prove some kind of connection between the birds and the dinosaurs, and maybe, now that he was so close to finally proving his pet theory, he’d come rushing back. Maybe he’d been bored, even by one day in the country, and couldn’t wait to get back to work.
Cheered by the thought, Russo unlocked the door and stepped into the makeshift lab. His first conclusion was that he was right. The radio was blaring rock and roll, all the overhead lights were on, and the plastic sheath he’d thrown over the laser was now lying on the desk.
But to his immense surprise, the laser itself was on—and emitting a steady, high-pitched whine. It had been moved so that its barrel was positioned right up next to a portion of the stone—almost touching it, in fact. Had Carter decided to go ahead and try it on his own? Russo was a bit taken aback; it seemed like the kind of thing they would have done only together. There was so much preparation to go through, so many precautions to take, so many steps to ensure the safety and efficacy of the procedure. He and Carter had agreed, right at the outset, that this was a terribly fragile and volatile specimen that had to be treated with the utmost deliberation. But now, as Russo looked into the lab, he saw Carter come around from the other side of the st
one with a pair of heavy green goggles on his eyes and walk confidently to the laser assembly.
Only it wasn’t Carter, he suddenly realized.
This guy was too short, and his hair was long and lank, and when the guy looked over and saw Russo he pushed the goggles onto the top of his head and sheepishly said, “Wow—I never expected to see you here tonight.”
“Mitchell?” Russo said, in amazement. “What are you doing in here?”
Mitchell looked at a loss for words. But the humming laser answered the question for him without his having to say a thing—and he knew it.
“How did you get in here?” Russo said, striding into the lab.
“Through the storage rooms. I mean, I didn’t have to pick any locks or anything.”
“This is a private lab. You have no business in here.”
Mitchell looked like he was casting around for an answer to that one, too. “Hey, you can’t keep a secret this big under wraps for very long.” He offered a weaselly grin. “A private lab, an overseas delivery, a laser on requisition—hey, I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but this was kind of hard to miss.”
“How do you know about any of this?” Russo said, indignantly.
“I know plenty,” Mitchell said, his own temper starting to flare. “And in case you’ve forgotten, I’m an assistant professor here. I think I’m entitled to know what’s going on.”
“You are not entitled to come in here and . . . mix with our experiments.”
“I’ve got to say, Joe, you’ve got some nerve.” He pulled the goggles off the top of his head and threw his lanky hair back behind his ear. “You’re not even on the faculty here, and I am, and you’re telling me what I can and can’t do in the department? I’ve been nice to you, I invited you to my party, I’ve gone out of my way to be friendly. And what have you done for me? Other than not tell me one single thing about why you’re here, or what you’re doing, or what”—he said, gesturing toward the black slab—“the incredible thing is that’s buried inside this rock?”
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