by Alan Glynn
They’ll talk tomorrow.
Sipping coffee, standing at her desk, Ellen then glances over the stuff she printed out last night.
Hundreds of uppercase A’s.
Which was only a small sample of the literally tens of thousands she could have printed out if she’d wanted to. She’d still be doing it, of course, and that was the main reason she stopped.
Because what was the point?
The first half hour or so she spent researching the difference between a typeface and a font, then between serif and sans-serif, then the general history and development of typefaces, after which she just started banging them out, in different point sizes, five or ten to a page, all uppercase.
It took her another few hours to identify what specific typeface the A was.
Blackwood Old Style, apparently.
It was a meticulous examination and comparison process—tricky, hard on the eyes, exhausting—but she was pretty sure about it in the end. Reaching a conclusion felt good, too. But of course that was deceptive … because what did it mean? What did it tell her?
Absolutely nothing.
The typeface itself was designed in the 1920s by a former San Francisco newspaperman whom a local foundry had commissioned to come up with something they could sell to ad agencies. Not long after that, Blackwood Old Style made its first appearance—on a public billboard advertising the Culpepper Union Brewing Company—and over subsequent decades the typeface proved to be very popular.
But what was she supposed to do now? With drowsiness and near-paralysis taking hold, it occurred to her—as it should have done before she went off on this obsessive tangent—to make a list of categories where a typeface like Blackwood Old Style might be used in more recent times and then to search for examples. The most obvious one, given how young the two guys appeared to be, was colleges. Beers and breweries maybe? Rock bands. What else? Trucks? Automobiles?
But she was hanging on by her fingertips here, because even if she found something—a recent example of Blackwood Old Style—it would still most likely prove to be a dead end. The guy was just wearing a printed T-shirt, and the design on it was probably something totally random. It didn’t have to be significant. It didn’t have to be a coded message.
Conceding defeat, she went to bed.
But now this morning, feeling fresher, and spurred on by a desire to avoid getting caught up in this preposterous Twitter controversy, she reengages. She sits at her desk and reviews the categories she came up with for her search.
And then it all happens in what feels like a flash.
Because again, the category most likely to yield results, it seems to her, is colleges. So she generates an initial list, confining it to ten East Coast states and eliminating anywhere that doesn’t begin with the letter A.
Nineteen colleges.
She starts logging on to the Web sites for each of these, one after the other … and at number seventeen, she hits pay dirt.
Atherton College.
There it is, clear as day. Blackwood Old Style.
She stares at the screen for a few moments—at the typeface, at the initial letter—and it slowly dawns on her.
Fuck.
This is significant. It isn’t random. It’s a real lead. And why the hell didn’t she do this last night?
After a moment, she hears the ping of an incoming e-mail. The subject line is “Ratt/Twitter.” She ignores it.
The thing is, the guy was wearing a specific T-shirt. He was wearing a T-shirt with the name of a college on it.
Was it his college?
Before she starts shooting holes in this, which she could do pretty easily, something else occurs to her—or, to be more accurate, she remembers something.
ath900.
Holy shit.
The phone rings. She ignores it.
That was the name attached to the comment in that blog post she found, the one that talked about “popping the top guys.”
In shock, Ellen leans back in her chair.
Those two things combined … that’s more than a lead, that’s a …
Staring at the screen, she swallows.
That’s a …
She’s afraid to say it, or even think it, but that’s a grade-A, gilt-edged scoop right there.
Seriously.
She slides forward again and starts examining the college website, and as she’s doing this, over the next half hour or so, two things become clear to her. One, she’s going to keep getting phone calls and e-mails about this Ratt Atkinson situation, overtures that will only get harder and harder to fend off (especially if she remains here, in her apartment). And two, phone calls or e-mails to Atherton College simply aren’t going to be enough, not given the gravity—not given the delicacy—of the situation.
There is a logical conclusion to this, and she reaches it pretty fast. Atherton is in upstate New York, probably less than three hours away. She could get a train to Albany and rent a car from there.
She looks down.
She’ll probably need to get dressed first.
The phone rings again. As before, she ignores it.
Instead, she logs on to the Amtrak website.
9
LIZZIE BISHOP IS RELUCTANT TO ADMIT IT, but this shit is addictive.
Beforehand, she’d have assumed that watching live coverage of a murder trial on TV would be like watching paint dry. Okay, more than likely there’d be occasional ripples of drama, but the sheer tedium of it, day after day—the proceedings, the lingo, all that ipso facto shit, not to mention the endless analysis—just, No, I’m sorry … no way …
Who could possibly be into that?
Well, as it turns out, she could.
Because as it turns out, there’s something sort of creepy and hypnotic about it, and from her curled-up perspective here on the couch—remote in one hand, can of Red Bull in the other—she’s finding it hard to look away, to take her eyes off this prosecution guy, for instance, Ray Whitestone … who’s not cute, or anything, Jesus, he must have type 2 diabetes, at least, but he also has a commanding presence. And weirdly enough, too—it seems to Lizzie—the more banal the questions (and answers, of course), the more hypnotic the whole thing tends to become.
And it’s not just Ray Whitestone, either. The witness on the stand at the moment, this doorman guy, Joey Gifford—he’s something else. Curiously compelling is what one of the talking-head commentators has called him a few times, and that about sums him up. He’s like a person you’d see on some ultra-tacky, cringe-inducing reality show, only more so.
Because this actually is reality.
“The awning, the one outside that covers the sidewalk,” Ray Whitestone is saying, “the canopy, that’s … that’s supported by four brass poles, am I correct?”
“Yes, brass … brass poles. I’m assuming it’s brass, that’s what it looks like … brass. It’s the right color.” Joey Gifford clears his throat. “I mean, I’m no, what’s the word, metallurgist, but—”
“Indeed, Mr. Gifford, thank you.”
Not that Lizzie ever really watches reality shows, or daytime TV for that matter.
But—
A commercial break comes on and the spell is broken. She looks around, studying the apartment, these unfamiliar surroundings, for the hundredth time this week.
The place is small. In this room there’s the couch she’s sitting on, the TV, a shelving unit, a desk in the corner, and a longish rectangular table on which she has her study things laid out, textbooks, laptop, notebooks, pens. There’s a window that looks down over a concrete yard with some scrubby trees in it and a dilapidated wooden fence that backs onto the yard of another, similar building. There’s one bedroom, the door of which is always locked—during the day, at any rate. The kitchen and bathroom are tiny, really tiny, their poky windows giving onto the building’s cramped air shaft, where all you can see is other mostly shuttered windows and red brickwork, darkened now and flecked by a century’s deposit of bird shit
and soot. There doesn’t seem to be much soundproofing between the apartments, either, because she can hear muffled voices, noises, random thuds, as well as the incessant clanking and hissing of the steam radiators.
Lizzie doesn’t like it here. She doesn’t feel comfortable on her own all day.
Not that it’s much better in the evenings.
But to be honest, what she’s really feeling right now is out of her depth.
And also a little stupid.
She takes a sip from her Red Bull.
The commercial break comes to an end, but instead of going back to the live feed from the courtroom, they start into a quick recap of the proceedings so far.
Most of which she has just watched.
She raises the remote control and flicks forward a few channels, stopping for a moment at a rerun of House.
“Sarcoidosis,” she shouts at the screen, then flicks forward again.
Nature documentary, insects.
She stares at it, not paying attention.
Out of her depth?
She takes another sip of Red Bull.
Stupid?
Why?
Because she doesn’t know what the fuck is going on, that’s why. And there’s only so much of this crap that she can put up with. It’s insane. No Internet access? No going out or talking to people? No using her cell phone? No TV?
It’s only supposed to be for a week—until tomorrow, in fact, and she did warn her friends about the impending radio silence.
But still.
Even the fact that she has slipped a bit—that wobbly call to her dad on the first night, putting the TV on this morning, and keeping it on—is surely telling her something.
That maybe she just doesn’t care as much anymore.
What she can’t believe is that she actually felt disloyal this morning turning on the fucking TV.
For almost a week now—in what has admittedly been the most productive period she’s ever spent as a student—Lizzie has been cooped up here in this apartment, reading, studying, but also assiduously abiding by these house rules, by this fucked-up paranoid off-the-grid communications blackout. And the thing is, she gets it, at least in regard to cell phones and social media. There’s a real danger there of personal data being monitored, sure. So don’t have them on.
Fine.
Being a fairly slack user of Facebook and Twitter herself, that aspect of it hasn’t actually been hard at all.
But Jesus H. Christ … the fucking TV?
This morning it just seemed too ridiculous. She’d finished a long paper and prepared a detailed set of notes for her next one, and …
Enough was enough.
She was only doing it, in any case, to keep her boyfriend’s asshole of a brother happy. So she turned on the goddamn TV, and started watching the first thing she came across, which happened to be live coverage of the Connie Carillo murder trial.
But now maybe she’s had her fill of that. For the moment, at least. Now maybe—and for the first time since last Saturday—she’s going to find a cable news channel and plug into what’s going on outside in the wider world, the one beyond this shithole of an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
* * *
Frank Bishop arrives in the small town of Atherton just before noon. The college is situated about a mile north of the town, so he decides to stop first and find a cheap restaurant or diner where he can sit for a while over coffee and gather his thoughts.
Atherton itself is pretty short on charm, mainly consisting of car dealerships, strip malls, fast food joints, and sports bars. He parks on a side street off Main and wanders around in search of what he soon realizes is probably an elusive dream—the classic small-town diner with its chrome fittings, soda fountain, and tabletop jukeboxes.
The nearest thing he finds is either a Wendy’s or a Chicken Pit. Two years ago when he came here with Lizzie they had lunch at the Great Lakes Grill and Bistro, an indulgence he can no longer afford.
He chooses the Chicken Pit.
The coffee is undrinkable, the blueberry muffin he got to go with it inedible, but at least he can sit in his little booth, staring out the window, undisturbed.
And now that he’s here, of course, he feels like an idiot. Because how uncool is this going to be for Lizzie … her old man turning up unannounced, and even—if he’s not careful, if he can’t keep a lid on recent developments—presenting as borderline unhinged?
At the same time, though, when he looks down at his cell phone on the table between his keys and coffee cup, Frank is reminded of why he decided to come up here in the first place.
It’s perfectly simple.
Lizzie doesn’t go this long without returning a call. It might be a chore, and he might be a pain in the ass—but she doesn’t go five days, not when her old man is so clearly anxious to talk to her. And that’s what he should have pressed home to Deb yesterday when they spoke.
That this has never happened before.
Not like this.
Formulating the thought makes Frank’s insides turn.
He shuffles out of the booth and gathers up his keys and phone.
Out on Main Street, it occurs to him that he could have just called the college administration people and had them check up on her, but he’s also pretty sure that Lizzie would have regarded that as a serious breach of trust.
Considerably worse than what he is about to do.
Because just showing up won’t necessarily compromise or embarrass her. Anyway, he doesn’t care, he’s here now, and at this stage he actually needs to see her. It’s an imperative. It’s become that way.
He drives north out of Atherton and within a couple of minutes is approaching the sprawling campus. To the left there are residence halls, three of them, known locally as the Projects, and to the right there is the more severe, clean-lines administration block. Get past these and you enter a sort of sylvan grove, mostly single-story buildings arranged on scenic, grassy quads and tree-lined courtyards that house the various academic departments, dining halls, libraries, and student health and community centers.
He parks in a visitor’s space in front of the Administration Building and gets out of the car. But standing there, he realizes something. He feels weirdly self-conscious. It’s as though he’s guilty of something, or is about to be.
He looks around.
Where should he go first?
The easiest thing would be to wander the campus for a while and just randomly bump into Lizzie. Then he could be out of here in five minutes.
But that’s a pretty unlikely scenario.
He looks over toward the residence halls, focusing on the middle one.
Is she in her rooms?
Maybe, but he can’t just go in there, not without a security pass.
He needs to take this slowly. No one else is in a panic here. So he shouldn’t be. Besides, it’s lunchtime. Everywhere he looks, people are … having lunch.
On benches, on lawns.
He decides to wander around for a while anyway. He passes the Science Building and the main dining hall. He crosses the central quad, walks along by the Van Loon Auditorium, and then makes his way over toward the tennis and basketball courts. At this point he stops at a bench himself and sits down.
But what is he doing?
Almost immediately he stands up again and walks back the way he came—quickly, straight toward the Administration Building.
He goes into the main office. There are two women working behind a high reception counter.
He feels he’s blurting it out, but the information seems to get across, and within a minute the woman he’s dealing with is on the phone. There’s a brief exchange, and then some waiting. Frank starts drumming his fingers on the counter, but stops himself almost immediately.
“There’s no response from her room. I’ll—”
The woman cuts herself short and hits another number. There’s a second brief exchange, which Frank finds it difficult to hear, beca
use a separate conversation is now taking place next to them.
When the woman has finished, she looks back at Frank. “There’ll be someone over to see you in a moment.”
“Who?” Franks says, a little too quickly.
“It’s the house RA. She’ll be able to help you.” The woman pauses. “If you’d care to take a seat?”
Frank takes a few steps backward and sits down.
She’s not in her rooms.
That doesn’t have to mean anything. She could be anywhere. In the library. At a lecture. Having lunch, like everyone else.
After a short while, Frank looks up and sees a young woman approaching. She’s tall, thin, and pale, with long red hair. She’s dressed … half like a hippie and half like a corporate executive. This weird, mix-it-up dress code seems to be de rigueur on campus.
“Mr. Bishop?” she says, extending a hand.
“Yes.”
They shake.
“I’m Sally Peake, the resident assistant in Lizzie’s house.” She holds up her cell phone. “I’ve just spoken with Lizzie’s roommate, Rachel, and … she says Lizzie is away for the week.”
Frank looks at her. “Away? I don’t understand. Away where?”
“Er, I don’t know, Mr. Bishop. Just away. That’s all she said.”
“But—”
“Would you like to speak with Rachel yourself? I could take you over there right now.”
Frank pauses. “Yeah. Okay.” He nods. “Thanks.”
A few minutes later they enter the third-floor hallway of Lizzie’s residence. When they’re about halfway along, a door opens and Rachel Clissmann appears, a good-looking, sun-blushed, sporty type in a floral-print dress and thick black-rimmed glasses. Frank met her once before, in the city, at some celebration. She looked different then, and he barely recognizes her now.
“Mr. Bishop.”
“Rachel.”
She shows them in. Frank feels slightly out of place here, standing in this small room, with these two young women. But he glances around nevertheless, taking everything in—the bookshelves, the Shaker table and chairs, the candles and crystals and cushions, the implausible neatness, the scented atmosphere of wellness and moderation. He’s prepared to bet that not all of the rooms on the third or any other floor here are like this.