At last Tess was right next to the exit. Thankfully, no one seemed to have noticed her peeling off from the group. She was completely hidden from most of the others by the angle of the stacks. From far across the long room she heard Vanna say, “Okay, people, let’s continue on …” Tess took a deep breath, grabbed the metal doorknob and went through the door. The staircase was similar to the first one—narrow and dimly lit. Her heart beating quickly, Tess, counted down four more floors until she got to the very bottom.
When she opened the basement door, the first thing that struck her was how dark and quiet it was. She could not even hear the faintest of hums. It was like being inside a vault—a book vault. What if she got locked in? Groping with both hands, she located the light switch and, with great trepidation, flipped it up. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling went on one at a time, like a falling line of dominoes. The huge room of books seemed empty, but the bright light was as much frightening as it was comforting. Were there security videos or motion alarms down here?
The only sound Tess could hear was her own heart pounding violently against her chest. What if she had a heart attack? No one would be able to find her. Then she told herself, Just get this thing done. The longer you stay here, the harder it will be to claim you are lost. Walking quickly, she made her way through the shelves. At the opposite end from where she had entered, she spotted the file cabinet. She knew it had to be the one. It was huge, covering practically the an entire wall. When Tess got closer she could see the rectangular labels on the small drawers. Numbers and letters only. She dug into her purse for the call number of Fix Your Silk Stockings with a Wyoming Walking Beetle, which she had gotten from the computerized catalog. The back of her neck and top of her head tingling in fear, she scanned the labels and located what she figured would be the right drawer.
Tess reached out and opened it, feeling with every passing second more like a criminal. There was a large index card for each book. With trembling fingers, she flipped through the cards; all the corresponding call slips were attached to the cards with paper clips. The cards were in alphabetical and numerical order: Vos 29,838 … 29,841 … 29,843! Jesus—there it was: Fix Your Silk Stockings with a Wyoming Walking Beetle, by Donna Mearing and Sue Bastings.
Suddenly she heard a soft noise, like a dull thump. She spun around, panic rising up in her throat, but she did not see anything, and though she held her breath for a full ten seconds, she heard nothing further. She turned back to the card. There were only a few call slips attached. She pulled out the last one, dated November 20, 2010 and looked at the name written under “requested by.”
Alfred Hassenbach.
Tess blinked. No, she had read it right. Alfred Hassenbach.
“Hey! What are you doing there?” came a loud male voice right behind her.
***
“So then what happened?”
Katie had stopped in mid-deal; she was too excited about hearing Tess’s story to continue placing the cards down on the green felt-covered table. Everyone had their hole cards but there were no up cards yet. “I mean, did they put you in library jail for the night or something?”
“Katie, keep dealing,” said Ginny.
“No, wait, this is great, I have to hear this,” protested Katie.
Tess found that just telling the story was pumping her body with adrenaline again. “Well, I couldn’t really claim I was lost, what with me standing there next to the open drawer. The guard asked to see what was in my hand, I guess to make sure I wasn’t stealing the first edition of Hamlet or something, and so, I mean of course I handed him the slip. But then all of a sudden I remembered the old saying ‘Never apologize, always appeal.’”
“That’s not how that saying goes,” said Liz, carefully stacking her chips from the winnings of the last hand. “Katie, deal.”
“I know,” Tess smiled, “but my mother always said it that way. Anyway, so he’s standing there all stern and suspicious, and he takes the call slip from my hand and looks at it, and of course it’s the slip for Fix Your Silk Stockings with a Wyoming Walking Beetle, and that’s when I catch him kind of smiling! Well, the hint of a smile anyway. So suddenly I get this flash of inspiration out of nowhere, and I find myself telling this guy that my recently dear-departed father had owned a pantyhose company—”
“A what?”
“No, Tess you did not.”
“You’re kidding!”
The women were all talking at once.
“I did. I don’t know what happened to me … . I suddenly had chutzpah, chutzpah beyond my wildest dreams. I am telling you it was a chutzpah miracle! I told the guy that everyone used to call my dad the Pantyhose King … . I know, I could not believe this was coming out of my mouth, who would believe this? And I said I was still grieving and I was trying to find this book, because he had always wanted to see it, and he loved old books about stockings and panty hose”—the women were all roaring now—“and the librarians wouldn’t help me and so I just did this on an impulse, and I was well aware it was not proper procedure and couldn’t he please just let me go with a warning?”
“And he bought that?” said Katie.
“Oh my god. He probably just thought you were nuts, and was humoring you,” said Jessica.
“’Let me go with a warning’? You actually said that?” asked Liz. “Did you think you were on the highway with a speeding ticket?”
“If she hadn’t been on the donor’s invite list, if she’d been just a regular everyday peon, they would have called the police for sure,” said Ginny.
“And you did this for some newspaper story about a lost book?” Katie was incredulous.
Tess and Ginny exchanged a quick glance. That morning on the phone Ginny had convinced Tess not to tell the rest of the poker group about Alfred or the NSA “plans” (“Tess,” Ginny had scoffed, “it’s still just the word of an unbalanced ex-librarian and a weird guy on a boat with dirty hair”) for the simple reason that they would think she was out of her mind, and would therefore spend the whole night lecturing her about getting therapy or going on Paxil. So Tess had told the poker gals only that she’d become interested in the missing book because she had witnessed a librarian freaking out about it—that in fact the librarian had actually quit over it—and Tess thought if she could find out why, it would make a good human interest story for an article.
“That was an insane thing to do, Tess,” said Liz, who had never so much as jaywalked in her whole life. “You could really have gotten in trouble, or have been stuck there all night. And in the end you never even got the information you wanted.”
“Well, anyway, here I am safe and sound,” Tess said, purposely not looking at Ginny. “All’s well that ends well.”
“That’s fine,” said Jessica, rapping on the table with her fingertips, “but I’d like this hand to end well too. Katie, deal!”
***
Tess sat in the WOOSH reception area, looking out the window at the rain and listening to the rhythmic gurgling of the water sculpture, thankful for the surprising absence of Enya music. She was going over in her mind what she should say to Dakota Flores. She would have to be very careful. The whole incident about Alfred and the book could still be nothing. True, Alfred could have found the NSA papers, but he might just have them stuck to his refrigerator, or filed them away in a box marked “Government Conspiracies,” along with his favorite photos of Area 51. And, Tess reminded herself, there may be no papers at all. They could, as Ginny was fond of saying, be a figment of Betty’s and Frankstein’s imaginations, or a fraud, or even a practical joke. Let’s face it, this kind of thing did not really happen in real life. Plus WOOSH had been preparing for the end of the world way before November 2010, when Alfred had obtained the book.
So what, if anything, should she say to Dakota about it? “Dakota, here’s the thing. I have reason to believe that Alfred Hassenbach may have some top-secret plans for destroying all the computer systems in the world.” Oh, yeah, Tess, that sounds so
possible. And no matter how she said it, there was a very good chance Dakota might just give Tess her usual saintly smile and say something like “Everything happens in its own time; it’s all as it is supposed to be”—the New Age version of “Don’t worry your pretty little head.” And what if, in spite of Dakota’s apparent naïve good intentions, she was secretly in cahoots with Alfred? Maybe all that loving kindness was just an act. After all, these are the people who hired her to write a book for the end of the world. Don’t these types usually think computers and technology are the enemy, the devil’s tools?
“Miss Eliot?” Miss. How nice the receptionist was. She had been getting “Ma’am” way too often these days.
“Yes?”
“I’m so sorry—Dakota had to go into an important meeting, but Alfred Hassenbach will see you.”
Alfred? Uh-oh.
“May I take your coat?”
Tess, her brain scrambling for a new foothold, handed the young man her raincoat, which he hung up in a small closet behind his desk.
“This way, please,” he said. “She followed him out of the sunlit waiting room through the dark corridor and into the by now familiar conference room. She forced herself to take some deep calming breaths. Alfred was the last person she wanted to meet with.
He was sitting at the end of the table farthest from the door. His iPad and a stack of papers were placed neatly in front of him.
“Hello!” Tess said gaily—actually, much too gaily, she realized. She sounded like a person on a boat hailing someone on shore.
Alfred darted a furtive look at her. “Have a seat, Tess,” he said in his soft, rushed monotone.
He had been sitting to the side of Tess in the first meeting. Now, seeing him full on, Tess thought his head seemed stuck onto his body haphazardly. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a neck, but everything looked … kind of glued on somehow.
After she was seated, he got up, came over to her side of the table, and plopped the sheath of papers down in from of her. With some surprise, she saw that it was a copy of her own manuscript—the chapters she had done so far, about seventy pages.
“You’ve never written a book before, have you? It’s kind of obvious from this … your … material.” He oozed the word “material” out as if he were expelling a rotten piece of meat with his tongue.
Tess felt her face go hot and her heartbeat quicken.
“Take a look at the changes I have made,” he said, his mouth uncomfortably close to her ear. “I think you will notice—you should notice—somewhat of a major improvement. Peter did not really provide you with much direction, did he? Much? Oh, it’s all right, it’s not your fault.” She turned to look at him and he smirked down at her. She could make out the tiny scratches on his glasses. Tess suddenly wanted Dakota Flores as much as she had wanted her mother when she was eight and the boy next door threatened her with a garden hose.
Tess swallowed and began to leaf through the pages, which were marked up with a thick, black felt-tip marker. She felt anger boiling up from her stomach. From what she could see, he had cut out all the humorous metaphors; indeed, he had eradicated her voice entirely and made her sentences short and simple—and boring.
Her nervousness supplanted by irritation, Tess fixed Alfred with a cold stare.
“I can’t help asking, Alfred: has Dakota seen this? Last time we spoke, she was quite pleased with what I had done. Very happy, in fact.”
Alfred moved back a few feet from her, crossing his arms. “Dakota doesn’t concern herself at this level, I am … ah, taking care of these details.”
Tess wondered fleetingly why she cared what he did to her pages, as long as she got paid and her name was not on the book. But the fact was that she had put real effort into this guide. All at once she realized it was no longer just a paying job to her. Somewhere along the line she had begun to feel that in many ways the advice she was writing in Etiquette for the End of the World was more “true” than her newspaper column had been. She looked back down at the pages and saw that Alfred had completely scribbled out the entire section she had done called “Hosting When Your House is Just a Haystack.” The page now looked like a poorly-filled-in coloring book. Tess’s veins filled with fury.
In her mind’s eye, she saw her hand holding the library call slip with Alfred’s name on it, and unable to stop herself, she said frostily, “So, what do you do, anyway, Alfred, when you are not at WOOSH? Do you work in publishing? Wait, haven’t I seen you listed somewhere at the research library at Forty-Second Street? Are you on staff there?”
She knew she had gone too far. Alfred’s face twitched and his nose and ears reddened.
“Why are you asking that? About the research library?” he said sharply, staring at her.
“Nothing, no reason,” she said, now flustered, feeling exposed, “except since you line-edited my pages, I just thought … you know … you were using your real-world skills.”
He was still watching her closely, as if he were x-raying her brain. Oh, why had she mentioned the library? She never did well when she was feeling criticized.
“I have many interests in what you call the real world,” he said with a small stiff smile. “Film, graphic novels …”
“Entomology perhaps?” Tess ventured airily. Shit! Somehow she had not been able to resist, even though she knew she was swimming in dangerous waters.
He was silent for a moment. “I happen to share our founder’s … ah … interest in beetles, yes.”
He gazed at her, his eyes now narrowed to malevolent slits, like a reptile’s. Then he walked over to the wall where most of the maps were. He had his back to her now. “I’m sure you miss Peter … . Everyone always found him so charming. How is he? Have you heard from him? Too bad he had to go away so suddenly. Life is so funny, you never know when someone is going to suddenly disappear.” Alfred turned and smiled widely—a creepy, sneaky smile, a smile that bragged of secrets and power. Tess felt her insides freeze.
She remembered Peter that night after the risotto in Gramercy Park, saying something like, “I will let them know about the computer bug angle at the WOOSH dinner.” That was the last time she had seen him. And Alfred, of course, would have been at that monthly dinner meeting on December 21. Alfred had something to do with Peter’s leaving, Tess thought with certainty. And now he knows that I know about the beetle book. He will put it together and realize that I also must be aware of those NSA papers.
After a long moment of silence Alfred left the room, telling her to take her time looking at his “corrections,” and then she could show herself out. She should leave his manuscript behind until he could have a copy made.
Tess stayed all of five minutes more. She would check in with Dakota later about the manuscript. She could not believe Dakota would be on board with what he had done.
She was relieved to get home to the safety and familiarity of her apartment. She petted Carmichael hello and was hanging her green raincoat on the coat rack when she noticed something odd near the lapel. It was a tiny, neat slit, about half an inch long.
Just like Peter’s jackets.
Chapter Eleven
It was not until Tess had passed the Five Points intersection on Delaware’s Route 1, only a few miles from Rehoboth Beach, that she began to have serious second thoughts about her decision to go see Stuart. She had not spoken more than a few words to him in the last year, so why was she now so convinced that her brother was the only person who could make her feel safe, or at least sane?
During the week after her unsettling meeting with Alfred, she had exchanged several emails with Dakota, who assured her that her manuscript was not Alfred’s purview; it was going to be edited and proofed by someone in England. Dakota said she’d had a careful talk with Alfred about staying out of the project entirely. “Alfred is a longtime acquaintance of Wayne Orbus and I’m afraid we sometimes have to humor him,” she wrote. Tess didn’t mention anything about the slash in her coat, or beetles, or missing books or secr
et NSA papers. She was not sure whom to trust or what was going on. But she could not shake her conviction that Peter had been somehow “disappeared.”
After texting Peter’s phone (she still had the number in her contacts) several times without getting any reply, she tried to put the whole weird NSA thing out of her mind. After all, what could she do about it anyway? She tried to focus on day-to-day things. Every morning she pulled back the carpet in the living room to practice her tai chi. The week after she’d gotten back from Mexico, she found a class to take, held in the basement of a church just two blocks from her apartment. She had only learned the first seven of the thirty-seven postures, but found she always felt calmer after doing them.
However, by the second week in May she began to have dreams about her brother. She dreamed there was a major earthquake—New York was filled with vast canyons, and Stuart was one of a group of people clinging to a far-off rock as debris rained down. She had another dream that she and Stuart were swimming in the ocean and all of a sudden there was a tsunami, looming and towering up in front of them like a mountain. Terrified, she looked over at a sixteen-year-old Stuart and heard him saying “Dive! Dive down as deep as you can, Tess!” the way he would when they were braving big surf when they were young.
She knew Stuart and Nancy would be in Rehoboth on May 21 for the annual golf tournament. He never missed this event; he always took a long weekend for it. So on the morning of Saturday, May 19 Tess had packed a bag and taken the train to Wilmington, where she rented a car for the two-hour drive to the beach.
She hadn’t remembered the traffic on Route 1 being this bad. If she could only just get there! Why did people keep trying to change lanes in bumper-to-bumper traffic? Whole studies had been done showing that changing lanes did not work. It was like trying to alter the laws of physics, and it only made things slower. These drivers needed to learn the serenity prayer: God grant me the courage to change lanes when I can, to accept the lanes I can’t change into, and the wisdom to know when I am in a traffic jam.
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