Lynn became an account manager for Demo Research. She was the one who held the clients' hands and "interfaced" between them and the numbers crunchers back in Princeton. A dog-eat-dog Real Money job if ever there was one. Though she kept her finances to herself, Simon had lived with her long enough to know that her Princeton condo, her BMW, and her periodic safaris to Fifth Avenue had to be backed by at least seventy thousand a year. For two years they had split the expenses of basic necessities, shared a bed, a bathroom and even his bathrobe, but he knew that he would have to make Real Money before she shared her fiscal bottom line or his last name (the latter definitely with a hyphen). That's what this was all about. Biological clock ticking; need even at seventy thou for a second income to buy the "mid-$300,000" house, then add the in-ground pool to the backyard; enough left over to board Lynn's clone or clonette at the right private school. Past time for Simon to shoehorn himself into the Real Money game unless he wanted to be jettisoned.
"At least advertising's lively," Lynn persisted. "You work in a mausoleum."
"Some interesting people I know disagree," Simon answered. " 'I shall not wholly die. What's best of me shall escape the tomb.' "
Lynn again appeared manifestly unimpressed. "Which one of your dead friends wrote that?"
Simon looked at the front door, as if for escape. "Horace."
"Catchy. Too bad they didn't have advertising agencies in Horace's day." Not expecting a reply, Lynn plunged on. "You've got to start somewhere." She intensified the admonition with her fork.
"I will," Simon promised, "as soon I grow up."
"You're already too old to grow up," Lynn replied, icily. "I suggest you fake it."
They ate in silence. Her exhortation was almost a year stale, but Lynn continued to chew on it stubbornly, despite constant rebuffs. After each episode, Simon expected that she would give up and that he would find his things on the curb in front of her place the next day. But it had yet to happen.
The dessert was a yogurt sorbet. One scoop. The whole meal added up to less than eight hundred calories. Not that either of them was overweight. It was just that Lynn ate half of her meals with clients, all over the United States. Big power breakfasts, lunches, and dinners in the most chic restaurants from Boston to San Francisco. Large meals at home would jeopardize her trim figure. She was short but well proportioned, with rosy cheeks-suggesting that she got her health and shape from outdoor athleticism. In truth, she hated exercise, extremes of temperature, and anyplace where insects teemed.
"You want to go out and get a tree tonight?" Simon suggested as they cleared the table.
"Can't," Lynn answered. "I already took a Valium; I'll be asleep by nine."
"Something important tomorrow?" Simon asked.
Lynn shot him a vexed expression. "I told you last week: I'm in Chicago for three days. It begins tomorrow with a ten o'clock meeting."
"I don't remember your telling me," Simon murmured.
"It's also on the calendar. Your life is the same from day to day, but mine changes. Check it once in a while, okay?"
"Right. Let me finish the dishes then," Simon offered.
"Thanks." Lynn picked up the latest copies of Forbes and The Atlantic and started toward the bedroom. "Simon."
He turned with dishes in his hands.
"If you fill the dishwasher, don't run it tonight, huh?"
Simon nodded.
"What are you gonna do?" she asked, as an afterthought.
"Take a walk," he replied. Down on Witherspoon Street, Haagen-Dazs had all the fixings for a hot fudge cookies-and-cream sundae.
"It's raining," Lynn observed. "Probably turn to sleet before long."
Simon continued clearing the dishes.
"Well, at least dress warmly and take the doorman's umbrella." Lynn continued toward the bedroom. "It's a lucky thing you have me."
Simon fetched his rain gear. As he tugged it on, he reflected that Lynn's parting words had become the leitmotif of their relationship. But Lynn was not the only person who looked upon Simon as a lost soul. His parents and two sisters had all but given up on him. He had left Zanesville, Ohio, with such promise. Even after he had declared philosophy as his major at Princeton, his family members assured one another that it wasn't important. What would get Simon into a prestigious law or business school were high grades, the cachet of Princeton's name, and great GREs. Simon had gotten the high grades, the bachelor's degree, and good GREs. But, at thirty, he had not yet gotten around to applying to any professional schools.
Simon had paid for his room and board throughout college by working in the library. During those four years the brain center of the great academic institution had beguiled him. He had always held a scholar's reverence for books. The more he worked within the miles of stacks, browsing indiscriminately and voraciously, becoming ever more amazed by what wonders could be captured on paper, the less he wanted to work anywhere else. His resolve to secure a full-time position in the library became firm once he landed a temporary job in the Rare Manuscripts Preparation section. Over the decades, generous alumni had donated such rarities as a Gutenberg Bible, original opera scores of Richard Wagner, and original manuscripts from the estates of Emily Dickinson and the Bronte sisters. Simon's skills with Latin and Greek made him valuable for working with the ancient manuscripts that were slowly being added to the collection.
But Simon's constantly expanding store of esoteric knowledge and typical academician's salary left both the Penn family and Lynn Gellman unimpressed.
"It's a lucky thing you have me." The timbre and inflection of each syllable was etched in his mind.
He had met Lynn at the annual Bryn Mawr Book Sale, in the old gymnasium behind Town Hall. She had wondered aloud if a certain book was worth the price, and Simon had offered a quick critique of it. Looking back to those days, he deduced that her attraction to him was one of complements. Although she felt a need for exposure to the arts and letters, her single-minded drive toward business success had left little time for such subjects. Simon was an instant right brain, a living Trivial Pursuit game at her side, no matter in which direction the party conversation drifted. He knew, for example, the real reason why Citizen Kane's sled was called Rosebud, that the Eskimos in fact did not have twenty-two words for snow, and the name of the little indentation between the nose and upper lip. On those rare occasions when Lynn had leisure time, Simon was always free to attend McCarter Theatre or the University Guest Lecture Series. He was also appreciated and liked by the powerful people behind the scenes and, from part-time literary and theatrical pursuits, frequently ended up rubbing shoulders with the famous. Simon was sufficiently good-looking-fairly tall and wiry, with an intelligently attractive face and a head of thick, sandy-colored hair. He was four years her junior. He was also mild-mannered and malleable. Except in the matter of taking just any job to leave the library.
Simon stepped into the rain and raised the oversized orange and black umbrella. Across the street, the fortresslike redbrick walls of Princeton High School glistened in the streetlamp light. He started briskly toward the center of town, a quarter-mile away.
It was not that Simon anticipated working at the library for the rest of his life. He ached to be what he called "productive instead of just reproductive," perhaps to write books that others would catalogue and analyze. Or maybe he would enter a totally unrelated profession that uniquely served mankind in an enduring way. Whatever it might be, someone surely had written about it, and he was counting on serendipity and all those miles of book-filled shelves to lead him to the answer. Once that happened, he would shed the library like a chrysalis. Perhaps he could begin his metamorphosis sooner than that. He had become inured to Lynn's same old song to the point that he all but tuned it out, and yet lately he had become so personally dissatisfied with his life and so melancholic that even he had noticed it. Maybe tomorrow he'd leave Lynn's townhouse carrying more than an umbrella in his hand. Her absence was the perfect opportunity. That way he wouldn't
have to hear how unlucky he was about to become.
The shortest path to Haagen-Dazs was through Princeton Cemetery. As American burial grounds figured, it was an old one. Pre-Revolutionary War by decades. It was also fairly impressive by dint of its inhabitants-a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a pair of governors, and one U.S. president lay under the rough grasses. It occupied five square blocks, bounded by an oft-painted black wrought-iron fence. Simon passed through the back gateway, still thinking about leaving Lynn.
Diffused light cast an eerie pall across the densely ranked headstones. The rain had softened to a cold mist. From the verdigris mottling of the copper-clad cathedral spire to the burnt green of the close-cropped grasses, the cold fog had stolen all color from the town and bleached it into a Steichen monochrome. The fog muffled the fall of Simon's feet and the sudden beating of a surprised dove's wings. Simon paused, to watch the bird vanish into the gloom. As his eyes drifted back toward the earth, his gaze fixed on a white figure. For an instant his mind believed it to be a memorial statue, a beautiful weeping angel he had once admired on a sunny day. Then his eyes told him the figure was not of stone but of flesh, and wrapped within an ankle-length white robe. The robe had arm slits on either side and a capuchin hood which hid the face within its shadows. From the shape and length, Simon judged the wearer to be a woman. Whoever it was, the figure stood statue-still, focused on one particular, massive gravestone. The flight of the dove had failed to distract her.
Simon sensed that the encounter held the potential to make a melancholy night memorable. Forgetting the hot fudge sundae, he moved forward with stealth and eased into a crouch. As soundlessly as he could, he collapsed the umbrella and propped it against the tombstone that concealed him.
The figure stretched a slender hand toward the gravestone in front of it. Fingertips brushed the granite as if with fear, then inched across its upper surface until the palm rested flat. The other hand appeared, rising to brush the hood back.
Simon held his breath. He knew the profile well. It was indeed a worthy model for an angelic statue, one to which a Michelangelo's skills would do justice. She pivoted in slow motion, straining to pierce the gloom and assure herself she was alone. Once she had turned a full circle, she stooped in front of the stone. From his vantage point, Simon could not see what she was doing. A soft noise accompanied her activity, too faint for him to identify. A minute later she stood and began working her way through the markers toward the walk. Her arms were again within the cloak, drawn up so that her elbows winged the material out on either side.
If she turned right, Simon could not help but be discovered. He knew where she lived, however, and he held his place, betting that her destination was home. She turned left and glided away until her white robe was lost in the fog.
Simon waited a moment, then stood up and raised his umbrella. He had lost the exact location of the gravestone that had held her interest. He was fairly certain, though, that he would find it by the carved name. As he scudded forward, he watched the sea of grass undulate over his shoetops, dropping dew and soaking through to his feet. Suddenly, he found the grassy carpet vandalized. A large divot had been torn out of the lawn and thrown aside. The hole beneath the spot was deep enough that Simon could not see its bottom. He considered plumbing it with his hand, then realized with real apprehension that this would put part of his anatomy into the world of the dead.
Simon peered up at the gravestone. The name was expected-another of the cemetery's noteworthy residents.
FREDERIK A. VANDERVEEN III
6/28/29-9/25/79
STATESMAN, PEACEMAKER
REQUIESCAT IN PACE
The stone was flanked by Vanderveens. Although many were too ancient and weatherbeaten to read, half the row's markers had the same last name. So did a street several blocks away and a wing of one of the university's halls. Among Simon's eclectic readings had been a history of Princeton. He knew that the Vanderveens were one of several Dutch families whose settlement predated and made possible the incorporation of the town. A long and venerable family tree, and the last living member of this particular branch had just left the cemetery.
Simon looked again at the hole. The strange sound he had heard was digging. He found an abandoned flowerpot and dropped it into the hole; it was only a few inches deep. There was no sign of the dirt. Simon had hoped for an interesting incident when he had first spotted her. He had gotten his wish. But now he expected to be eternally haunted by the mystery, because he knew he could never bring himself to ask Frederika Vanderveen why she stood cloaked in the cemetery, digging dirt from her father's grave in the dead of a December night.
***
The next morning, as Simon stepped off the curb at the corner of Jefferson and Wiggins, he was nearly crippled by a Mercedes. The driver had made a token gesture of stopping at the red sign, then used his engine's impressive horsepower to speed around the corner and beat the pedestrian to Wiggins Street's asphalt. Simon jumped back, but not far enough to avoid the spray of water puddled from the previous night's rain.
"Bastard!" Simon yelled, with anger but not surprise. Such get-out-of-my-way-I-own-the-road driving was commonplace in Princeton. If it wasn't a Mercedes, it was a BMW, Porsche, Jaguar, or perhaps even a Rolls-Royce. Princeton not only boasted the highest per capita percentage of Ph.D.s in the country but also had the densest concentration of millionaires. It was among a handful of chic commuter enclaves within reasonable distance from New York City. It was also surrounded by enough university-spun-off think tanks and research labs to make it a big-salary town in its own right. Though the town proper had only about five thousand residents, it offered a Laura Ashley shop, an outlet of The Nature Company, three bespoke tailor establishments, and seven investment firms with seats on the New York Stock Exchange. Businesses ten miles away borrowed its cachet, calling themselves Princeton Photo, Princeton Supplies, Princeton Park. Businesses twenty miles away used Princeton post office boxes for the same reason. People walked through the town wearing the zip code-08540-brassily silk-screened across their sweatshirts. At a New Year's Eve party a decade before, actress Julie Christie had remarked to Simon, "It's a snooty little town, isn't it?" When he asked her to elaborate, she said, "You'll never find a McDonald's on Main Street, will you?" Powerful financial pressures had eventually resulted in a Burger King invading Nassau Street (the town's "Main Street"), but it operated behind understated brown tile, and the only outward sign of its existence was the name, spelled out in restrained, ten-inch letters.
To the ancient regime, anyone not born in the town could never be considered a True Princetonian. That did not seem to daunt the influx of New Yorkers or the French industrialists, Iranian oligarchs, and Hong Kong plutocrats who poured in, driving the price of housing so high that Princeton was among the ten most expensive places to live in the United States. They needed another sweatshirt, Simon thought acerbically: PRINCETON: HOME OF THE ATTITUDE PROBLEM.
"Merry Christmas!" Simon yelled at the disappearing Mercedes, which had a wreath tied to its front grille. Even though he knew that preoccupied Princeton pedestrians were potential emergency-room candidates, his mind continued to ponder leaving Lynn, as well as to puzzle out the strange occurrence in the cemetery the previous night. Both subjects had kept him awake past midnight and were responsible for his waking up late. He had solved neither by the time he reached the front doors of Firestone Library. In spite of his hurry, as he crossed the yawning entrance area he slowed his pace and turned his head expectantly to the left, where a two-story wall of glass separated the foyer from the reference room like a modern-day cathedral screen. Frederika Vanderveen stood, engaged, on the opposite side, bathed in a wash of morning light.
Frederika's enthralling beauty emanated from more than the perfect features, figure, coloration, and carriage which made both men and women stop in the street and stare at her passing. Through his adult years, Simon had seen perhaps a score of women with her caliber of physical attractiv
eness. The others, however, seemed to radiate an aura of self-assurance that made common men call them bitches in their despair. These others knew their worth in the dating and marriage market. Their stares were challenging and assessing, while Frederika's eyes were usually unfocused in thought or downcast; their smiles were calculated and hard-edged, while hers were gentle and unsure; their dress was smart-hers was merely in style. The others were distinctly unapproachable, yet every man could imagine that his undying affection and sincere attentions could rescue Frederika from the sadness beneath her gentle smile. Other exquisite women worked at their allure; Frederika just didn't. Which made her the deadliest man-eater in Princeton.
A dark figure walked into Simon's line of sight and stopped. Simon could see that Frederika had captured another eye. He glanced at the man and found him, in his own way, almost as riveting as the woman. He was about five-ten, elegantly thin, and looked to be about forty-five. He wore L. L. Bean boots, tailored brown wool pants, a classically beat-up leather jacket, and a scarf that matched his pants. His large-pored skin was unnaturally pale, even more incongruous when Simon noted the blackness of his hair, except where gray tufted his temple. Simon angled himself for a better view. The man's eyes were hidden by silver-coated sunglasses. Long, thin fingers held a Dutch-boy cap in one hand and a European men's purse in the other. He radiated an aura no less potent than Frederika, except that his was one of power, pride, and intense force of will.
The Book of Common Dread Page 3