by K. Ryan
"Hey," Jack jerks around in his seat just long enough to slice me through with his sharp grey eyes. "Don't talk about me like you know me. Two words for you, princess. Dennis. Lehane."
"What?"
"You know, Mystic River? Shutter Island?" he shrugs as he turns back around in his seat. "I like the local guys."
Bennett makes the smart choice, at least in terms of avoiding another confrontation, and bangs a right just like Jack told him to. For the first time since we all piled in Bennett's little Prius, a blanket of uneasiness settles over the atmosphere. I should've stayed out of it, but with him, I couldn't help myself.
It's a miracle we're even all in this car in the first place. As luck would have it—or maybe bad luck, I still haven't decided—Bennett just happened to be in Southie earlier visiting his grandma on his dad's side and since Jack doesn't have to be at Na Soilse until later tonight, Bennett just 'swung by and picked him up', as he so nonchalantly put it when they both arrived at my apartment. It all worked out a little bit too easily.
Maybe I'm the bitch to end all bitches, but I never wanted Jack to know where I lived. It's just one more reason not to trust him and one more reason to keep as much distance between us as possible. Because at the end of the day, how do I really know this isn't all some big set-up to humiliate me, punish me, or a little bit of both?
Sure, he may seem sincere now, but he also practically spit in my face when he called me a liar and that wasn't too long ago. The only reason he's in this car right now is because I need him along when we talk to Father Lindsay again. After that...I guess I haven't really planned that far ahead, which just makes me even more anxious.
The awkward silence just grows heavier when the seminal pop classic, "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)", comes on, but it isn't until Bennett shuffles his music that the two of them finally find some common ground.
"You used to call me on my cell phone," Bennett sings along softly, still tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel to the rhythm. "Late night when you need my love..."
It's only then that I notice Jack's bobbing his head to the beat too, even though he's still staring out the window like a sulking child. Ah, Drake. The great equalizer.
I can only watch helplessly from the backseat as the two silently accept this musical truce. They're getting along better than I thought they would. And once again, I'm the odd woman out, riding in the backseat, and observing from the sidelines.
A MASSIVE ROW of arcaded windows and aged brick greets our little motley crew of would-be detectives and I tilt my head up to take it all in. This sight never gets old. It doesn't matter that the 21st century bustles around us with car exhaust, honking horns, and crowds of people walking around buried in their phones. On the steps of this library, you're transported to another world, surrounded by language, knowledge, and mountains and mountains of musty books.
If I could live here and not get arrested for trespassing, I totally would.
Five American flags wave over our heads as we take the steps to the main entrance. Even though I've done this walk a million times, my steps feel heavier this time. I want to sprint through the entrance, but there's an invisible hand jerking me back, filling me with a dread that's as unsettling as it is disarming.
At least I've got it together enough to have this all planned out already: I move through the lobby with Bennett and Jack right on my heels and then we take the stairs to the lower level of the library.
"Now we're approaching the elusive bookworm in her natural habitat," Bennett's voice floats out from behind me in the worst Australian accent I've ever heard. "Watch how she sniffs the air—it's a tell-tale sign that she's about to cross into her territory. Don't get too close or she might bite."
I throw an exasperated glance over my shoulder only to find Bennett glinting impishly at me and Jack rubbing his mouth to hide his grin.
"Har har," I retort dryly. "You two idiots know where you're going?"
Jack just holds up his phone and lifts a shoulder. "I've got all the call numbers you sent me. Seeing as how this isn't my first time in a library, I'm sure I can figure it out."
This is going to be a long day.
Since I'd rather indulge in some much-needed solitude here, I head off toward the fiction section in the lower level and now I'm really regretting assigning Jack the poetry call numbers because he's trailing right behind me. His closeness has me on edge and little pricks of awareness sneak down my arms.
He's given me at least six feet of personal space as we trek to the back of the fiction section, but it might as well be six inches. I don't like the way my heartbeat spikes or the way my chest rises and falls just because he's right behind me.
Desperate for a distraction, I swipe through the postcards on my phone to remind myself what numbers I'm looking for. Because most of the call numbers were from the same books, I grouped them together in the most logical way I could: poetry, drama, and fiction. And while Dracula isn't the first call number I need to find in the fiction section, I just need to find that one first. Maybe it's because that was the first postcard I stumbled across, but there's also the fact that at least ten of the postcards have that exact same call number, too. My feet just gravitate there and I find myself taking a sharp turn when I finally find the right stack.
That quick movement almost causes a collision and a pair of strong, too-familiar hands dart out, colliding with the side of my hip.
"Shit," Jack curses under his breath as he catches his balance. "Watch it."
Just as quickly, his hands jerk back like they'd been burned and when Jack continues down the hallway, he shoots me a vicious glare over his shoulder.
Right. Like I'd pull something like that on purpose. If looks could kill...
But as I wander down the aisle in between the stacks, all those unpleasant feelings Jack tends to conjure up in me vanish. I drag my fingers down the bindings, skimming the call numbers of each one until I finally find it.
There it is.
PR6037.T617.D7
My trembling fingers tug it off the shelf and for a moment, it just sits there in my hands, stagnant and alien. At the end of the day, it's just a book. A thick, musty, yellowed book. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing I haven't encountered before.
But this is so much more.
I close my eyes and my mom's auburn hair and emerald eyes flood my mind. She rounds the corner to head right toward me and for a moment, I almost reach out to touch her, to see if she's real. Her lips curl up in a beautiful smile and her entire face is flushed with excitement as she clutches one of those familiar, ghostly postcards to her chest. Then she reaches up and tugs Dracula off the shelf, glancing at the postcard before flipping through the pages.
My eyes fall to the picture on my screen one more time:
PR6037T617D7
241
Aibrean 8
The first and last lines make sense now. And as for the second line? I think the number 241 can only mean one thing and my fingers thumb through the pages to put that theory to the test.
When I land on page 241, all I feel is deflated. It's just the same as any of the other pages. I don't really know what I was expecting to find, but—and then I see it: a faint pencil mark etched into the margin.
And the text highlighted by that pencil mark?
"There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights."
The light of all lights.
Even for a book about a blood-sucking, ancient vampire, it doesn't get more romantic than that.
Then I flip to the next page indicated by one of the postcards and find a similar, barely-there pencil mark next to the line, "I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air."
The next passage correlates to page 326 and is just as achingly poetic as the ones before it: "No man knows till he experiences it, what it is like to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the woman he
loves."
There are only three pages without those tell-tale pencil markings—they must've either been erased or rubbed away with age. All the others point to specific lines in Dracula and adrenaline seizes my senses in all it's heart-pounding, breath-taking power. This book isn't typically known as a classic romance, but maybe it has nothing to do with Dracula at all. When one piece of the puzzle slides into place, another one presents itself.
Now I just have to show someone. This is just too exhilarating not to share.
But after scouring the drama section, there are no sightings of Bennett. It's possible he just wandered off somewhere—it's easy to get lost here—and I don't want to disrupt the equilibrium of this place by calling him. That leaves me no choice and I turn on my heel to head back through the fiction section until I find the poetry stacks. The long trek from one end of the floor to the other isn't enough to deter me. I just have to show this to someone and I don't care that it has to be him.
Finally, I find him with a book of poetry by Edna St. Vincent Millay in one hand and his phone in the other. His eyes lift to me from over the page and narrow just as quickly. Without a word, he abruptly shifts so that his back is to me with his hip resting against the stack.
Let's see. What have I learned about him so far? Oh right. He's mean and judgmental. He always has to be right. He doesn't really want to be here with us right now. And, the kicker: he holds a grudge like nobody's business.
But yet, here I am. Sad, but true.
"Jack!" I whisper.
He doesn't budge.
"Jack!"
Still nothing. What a dick.
Now I just want to smack him.
"Jack!" I whisper again, but this time, my voice is harsh with frustration.
At least that gets his attention. He whips around to face me, his face a hard, impenetrable mask. It's almost enough to send me scurrying back the way I came with my tail in between my legs, but not even Jack's abrasiveness will be enough to pop the air out of my discovery. I'm going to show him what I found whether he likes it or not.
"What now?"
His voice is just as venomous as his words, but who cares?
I thrust Dracula right up to his nose and point at the pencil markings. "See? I told you! I freaking told you these were page numbers!"
He just cocks an eyebrow at me and flips the book in his hand around so he can point to the exact same marking inside the book. "Yeah. Already figured that out."
My face falls in disappointment and whatever Jack finds there makes him frown, as if he's finally realized that his words and his actions do actually have an impact. He squints at me for just a moment and his lips pull to the side of his face as he rubs the back of his neck.
"But, yeah..." he trails off like he's conjuring the will to say these next words: "You were right. I guess."
Part of me wants to pat him on the shoulder and say, See? That wasn't so hard. The other part of me just wants to smack him in the face. Maybe it won't be so difficult to look at anymore that way.
Now he cranes his neck to get a better look at the passage in Dracula and his lips dip into a frown.
"This is bizzah," he mumbles under his breath and points to a line with that pencil mark next to it: "Into the darkness they go/The wise and the lovely."
"Yeah," I nod.
He thumbs through a few pages before pointing to yet another passage: "More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world."
We compare notes for a few minutes, sharing each passage we've found and getting no closer to figuring out how they're connected to my parents, Father Lindsay, and Sean. When we part ways, I leave him to his own devices to head back to the fiction section where I pull down Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, Ulysses by James Joyce, and The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.
By the time we've reconvened in the courtyard armed with our documentation on our phones, all the postcards have been illuminated. At least, as illuminated as they can be since they're all still shrouded with these heavy unknowns.
In some ways, the reading room might be a more productive place to put our heads together, but you can't really talk in there without getting shushed. The courtyard, with its lush foliage, Greek arches, marble columns, and peaceful water foundation, is easily my favorite place on earth. There is no better place to sit with a book than right here, in this garden of quiet knowledge, surrounded by some of the most intricate and epic architecture in American history. I just hope I haven't sullied it now by bringing Jack here.
First things first, we take turns sharing what we've found.
"Ladies first," Bennett smirks, gesturing to me at our table and I swipe through each picture I took of the pages I was able to find so I can read them out loud.
"Okay, this one is from Ulysses by James Joyce: 'What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours.'"
"Ugh," Bennett grimaces. "Lame."
"There's more," I grin and move on to the next passage from that book. "'But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.'"
"Good Stefani Germanotta," Bennett shakes his head.
Jack's attention shifts to me, but it's only to ask a silent question with his eyebrows knitted together in confusion. I guess it's better than the alternative.
"Benn also has a tendency to swap out God's name for Lady Gaga's," I explain easily. Bennett and I are so used to each other's ticks that I forget just how ridiculous they are sometimes.
"She is God," Bennett tells us defiantly and gestures to his phone. "Back to the point. This is like a literary sex tape or something, Clamato. Seriously. I think I'm having a hot flash just thinking about it. Listen to this nonsense," he thumbs through his pictures before reading out loud, "'You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.'"
"Who wrote that one?" Jack asks.
"Oscar Wilde," Bennett tells him and then his face crumbles even deeper into disgust. "And this one: 'Who, being loved, is poor?' I mean, come on. My gag reflex isn't immune to drivel, you know. And there's this little gem: 'I can resist anything but temptation.'"
"What?" Jack leans forward in his seat, almost tipping over the table.
"'I can resist anything but temptation'," Bennett repeats with shrug. "Temptation for what? Corsets and crumpets?"
"I don't know," I laugh. "Oscar Wilde was from Ireland, I think, so it's probably not crumpets. I think that's more of a British thing than an Irish thing. And I'm pretty sure he was gay, so probably not corsets either."
"How do you know?" Bennett waggles his eyebrows at me. "Maybe he liked to play dress-up. What do you think, Jack?"
He nudges Jack with his elbow, but Jack doesn't move. His eyes bore a hole into the table and his eyebrows are knitted together in a disturbed frown.
"Hello?" Bennett waves a hand in front of his face. "Anybody in there?"
Jack responds by rubbing his mouth harshly with his free hand. His eyes never leave that spot on the table.
"Okay," Bennett just shrugs it off and moves through the rest of the passages on his phone. But when it's Jack's turn to share, he just pushes his phone at Bennett and falls back against his chair. Bennett and I exchange glances, but given what I already know about him, Jack's moodiness doesn't really surprise me.
As Bennett flips through the pictures to read them out loud, Jack stares mechanically into the fountain. His eyes never move from the statue with her arm stretched out to meet the sun and spouts of water cascading from the sides. It's the most peaceful image inside an entire library brimming with undisturbed quiet, but I don't think it brings Jack any peace.
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye before turning my attention back to Bennett. "Okay, so we got to everything that was still in circulation and foun
d all the pages that still had those pencil markings on them. Where do we go from here?"
The question hangs in the air for too long. So after all this, we're stuck at another dead-end? Sure, we could take everything we've found back to Father Lindsay, but unless we have some idea of what this means—even if we're wrong—I doubt Father Lindsay is going to be very willing to sit down and explain his connection to all this. It wasn't like he was exactly forthcoming the first time and even with Jack in tow, glaring at him like he's glaring at the fountain right now, I wouldn't put it past the priest to bolt like he did last time.
"Well," Bennett muses and scratches his chin in thought. "What's the common denominator, my little math nerd? It's gotta be something...I just don't know what."
He said the magic words and I pull my iPad from my purse to que up another list. The first thing I do is enter all the author names and their corresponding works. If I really wanted to, I could upload all the passages into the list as photos, but that would definitely take some time to put it all together. For now, we focus on what we know and what we can easily research.
"So," Bennett continues. He leans forward to see my screen, but not before casting another quick glance at Jack, who still hasn't moved. "We know Oscar Wilde was Irish, probably gay, and pretty much just wrote plays, right? Didn't he write that story about the guy in the painting who never gets old, too? Anyway, it's easy enough to figure out where all the other ones were from, so maybe we start there?"
That seems like the best course of action for now and we get to work, pounding away on our devices, thanking Stefani Germanotta for wifi, and mapping out general stats on all the authors including where they were born, where they lived, what genre they wrote, and the literary movement they were most associated with. Jack, on the other hand, chooses not to participate. Shocker.
In the end, we just find more stray threads.
"I think we just dug ourselves yet another hole, Clamato," Bennett shakes his head and leans back in his chair. "So Louisa May Alcott's from Philly, but died in Boston. Emerson was born in Boston, but died in Concord. Edgar Allan Poe was from Boston, but died in Baltimore. Hey, was he murdered? Why doesn't anyone know that for sure?"