The Third Person

by Emily Anglin

  I looked at her, hoping she would give me more anchoring information before I’d have to respond.

  “Last year, Russel tried to move out into his own apartment, but when the landlord checked his credit he was refused. And then he started getting calls from collection agencies about overdue balances on credit cards from banks neither of us had ever even heard of. I was glad he ended up staying here with me, but I also want better for him than this life framed by debt.”

  At that moment, I heard a bumping sound from the direction of the dark hallway.

  “Hi,” a low voice said. “You must be Lois. Hi. I’m sorry I missed dinner.”

  Jolene threw me a glance that said our conversation about Russel was over. “Russel!” she said. “Hi!”

  A man about a year younger than me came into the room. He wore a rumpled T-shirt and a pair of black track pants. He had dark circles under his eyes. His hair was so short it must have been freshly shaved within the last few days. He looked exhausted.

  “Russel. Can I get you something to eat?”

  “No, thanks,” he said. He reached for the bottle of wine on the table and filled a glass. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one. At first I saw it as a sign of indulgent tolerance that Jolene didn’t tell him to go outside to smoke, but then he held the pack out to her and she took and lit one for herself.

  “Are you sure you want to drink, Russel?” Jolene asked.

  “I’m very sure,” he said to Jolene. He looked at me. “My mom worries about me too much.”

  “Oh, you’re mother and son,” I said, barely able to conceal my surprise. I’d expected a husband.

  “Did you think she was my live-in lawyer?” he asked me, laughing. His eyes looked sleepy.

  “Oh, no. I just wasn’t sure.”

  “My brilliant and cheeky son, Russel. Russel, I was just telling Lois about how much you read,” Jolene said. “How you can read anything.”

  “You must be really impressed,” he said to me, laughing. “My mom thinks it’s not bragging if it’s about me, rather than herself.”

  “Russel. Actually, Lois is impressed, and interested. Lois has a letter she’s hoping you’ll have a look at. A historical document. Lois, do you have the letter?”

  I went to my purse, where the printout of the photograph of the original Manning letter was folded. I laid it on the coffee table and smoothed out the creases. I explained to Russel who Manning was, and told him about the previously unexamined papers I was transcribing, and their significance to the history of the period.

  “Jolene tells me you’re a good reader,” I said to Russel. “This is the sentence I’m having trouble with. Here.” I pointed at the line in question.

  Russel pulled a candle toward him across the table, and held the letter up in front of it, so that the light shone through the paper from behind it.

  “‘My planet’s orbit is now not only quick but has also become in its travel cross biast, hurtling not warmly about but in its crooked way headed straight for the fire of its centring star,’” Russel said.

  “‘Cross biast’?” I said. “Are you sure? Not ‘blast’?”

  “No, it’s definitely ‘biast.’ It’s a metaphor from the game of bowls. A ball in motion was ‘cross-biased’ when it was knocked off its straight course by another ball. She’s comparing her planet to a ball that’s been knocked off its course by another ball—knocked out of its regular orbit around the star that kept it warm. It’s now headed straight for that star, to be burnt up by its heat.”

  How did he know so much about this topic? If he was an expert in my bosses’ field and Jolene hadn’t thought this fact worthy of mention to me, then—what? Then, maybe anybody could do what I did, and do it better. I became aware that I felt threatened by his casual expertise. I was at a loss for words, but needed to respond.

  “You’re definitely a good reader. An amazing reader. How did you learn to read like this?”

  He shrugged with one shoulder. “I have an interest in forensic handwriting analysis. I’m self-educated and it’s one of the areas I’ve focused on. One of the benefits of opting out of formal school is that you can learn how to do things that no one else knows how to do.”

  “Well, you’re indispensable to me right now,” I said. “I was about ready to give up and quit.”

  “Quitting is usually a bad idea,” he said. “But it can be fun, if you have the means and opportunity. Speaking of which, I think I’m going to have to go back to bed. I wanted to at least say hi, but it’s been one of those days. I hope you’ll come again when I can stay up.” Russel stood up and retreated to bed, leaving Jolene and me alone in the room.

  Jolene went to pour me another glass of wine, but as politely as I could I covered the top of my glass with my hand.

  “Well, then, I hope you won’t mind if I have just one more half-glass on my own. It’s been good talking to you tonight. There are some things that are better kept between two people,” said Jolene. “But sometimes only an outside perspective can break open a bad pattern. I don’t keep secrets from my Russel. But I do try to protect him from isolation. And I think maybe you can help. You can be a friend to him, I think; the kind of friend I can’t be. Do you think it would be okay if he visits you once in a while? You said yourself at dinner that you miss your brother. Maybe Russel could be company for you too.”

  If I’d known that the price for the letter’s translation would be accepting a stand-in version of Mark, I would have thought twice about accepting the insight. Jolene was looking at me too closely, like we were coming to an agreement. I thanked her for the dinner and said I had to go because I was feeling tired. I went downstairs, out onto the street, where the cool air soothed my hot forehead and spinning head. Upstairs in my own apartment I fell into bed and was asleep within minutes.

  The next morning, I typed out an email to the professors, explaining what I’d learned, and telling them about the sentence. When I checked my email fifteen minutes later, they had both already responded, commending me and saying how thrilled they were.

  I’d already known why the information Russel had given me about the planet metaphor was important: the planned subtitle of Manning’s unpublished novel was “The Crooked Orbit.” I’d discovered that information in one of her earlier letters. The sentence in the letter was clearly a verbal link to the unfinished novel, shedding new light on the context. As I interpreted it, the central man depicted in her novel was a fictional version of Manning’s personal patron, the man her letters show was more to her than simply a patron.

  I sat on my bed, pressing my temple to stop the pulse of pain that moved up and down the side of my head. I pictured a planet circling its star, and then being knocked out of its orbit by an errant planet or asteroid hurtling out of nowhere from space. How had Manning known so much about astronomy?

  My doorbell rang. I pulled on some clothes, and went downstairs and opened the door. It was Russel.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “I came to say sorry for the state I was in last night. I hope I didn’t ruin your night. I know it can be strange moving into a new building, not knowing anyone, and we do want you to feel welcome.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say yet.

  “Have you had coffee yet?” he asked.

  “Can you come in for a coffee?” I asked. I needed to sit down and didn’t want to stand in the door talking.

  Upstairs, he sat on the futon that served as my couch. I dumped some ground coffee and water into my coffee maker and it started dripping. I sat down across the room from him on a footstool by the door and left the door open.

  “My bosses are thrilled about the letter,” I said. “The sentence you figured out.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not like I have that much else going on. Happy to help.”
r />   “Your mom said you work freelance. You should let me know what I owe you for your services.”

  “No, of course not,” Russel said. “It was no trouble.”

  “But without you I would have been stuck,” I said. “I’d like to pay you.”

  “Don’t worry about that. This isn’t what I came to talk to you about. I came for another reason, a more important one. That is, I wanted to ask you something. Can I see one of Manning’s other letters?”

  “Okay,” I said. I went to my desk and got the folder of print-outs of the digital pictures Mark had taken of the original letters in New England, and handed it to Russel. He opened the folder and leafed through them, starting with the early ones, frowning, and then moving quickly forward to the set of more hurried letters that I’d separated from the pile with a paperclip—the ones the professors had asked me to view as the potential climax of Manning’s papers.

  Russel set the paperclipped letters aside on the table.

  “You’re good with Manning’s handwriting yourself, right?” he asked.

  “Pretty good,” I said. “Very good.”

  “Then you must have wondered the same thing I’m wondering—were these messier letters written by the same person as the other letters? Are they even genuine?”

  I paused and chose to let him continue.

  “It does say ‘cross biast.’ I interpreted the sentence like I saw it. I just did what I was asked.”

  “I think I know what you’re saying, but please go on.”

  “It’s hard to describe my process. I’m not sure what you find, but for me, when I transcribe, it’s like I hold my mind’s breath. I let seeing take over for a second. I know for that moment through my eyes only, like the optic nerve is all I have. You can only do it if you accept the knowledge whole, whatever it is, and take it on its own terms. And what I’m saying is that part of what I saw in those letters is that the lines on that page are young, not old. They were written recently. I don’t know how else to put it, but there was too much effort there: in the handwriting, in the words themselves. I felt them trying to be rather than being. I felt that as clearly as I read the words of the sentence.”

  I paused again. “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “We don’t have to go into it. I shouldn’t have raised it. I just wondered if you had ever considered the possibility that these letters, or some of them, aren’t genuine. That someone might have forged them.”

  I thought of Mark and his camera. How easy it would have been to slip forgeries in with the other letters and take pictures of them. But that was ridiculous. Why would he change her letters? And how could he think he wouldn’t be caught? And besides, he wouldn’t do that.

  “It’s not possible,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s stupid.” I was aware that I sounded rude, but I needed the line of thought running uninvited between me and this stranger to stop.

  “Okay. I think I must just be paranoid—I guess that happens when someone steals your identity. I know my mom told you about that. It’s okay. But I’ll just say one thing. Keep a close eye on your mail. And keep an open mind when it comes to fraud. It really happens. And when it does, you never have the luxury of being just one person again. My mom and I will never be on our own again. There’s always a third, joining us from an invisible dimension. One that doesn’t keep us company but won’t leave us alone.”

  He looked like he was going to go on. But I stood up. He did too, and I told him about the work I still had ahead of me for the day. I asked him to thank his mom for the dinner. He said he would, and then he left.

  I started getting ready to go to work, setting out the things that I use as anchors at each corner of my desk: mug, waterglass, magnifying glass, cluster of three pens. I planned to work all day on the rest of Manning’s letters; they needed to be typed out, and not only because I needed the job—but because the job needed me, Manning needed me, and she and I had a bond now: I’d help her to talk no matter who had written the words she was saying.

  Eidolon

  I work for a tech company that recently launched a new iteration of an employee-monitoring software. The software’s brand name is Eidolon, a name almost as melodious as that of my boss—Iris Mirabello. One drizzly recent morning, Iris and I boarded a plane together to go to a professional conference in New York, as part of promoting the improved version of Eidolon, our company’s most important new product. The plane sat on the runway, and we sat in it, side by side, waiting for takeoff. We were both writers in the company’s communications department, and we’d been chosen to go to the conference because we knew how to make Eidolon’s functions sound as compelling as its name. I was nervous about spending this time with Iris—interested to see her in this new dimension, but also afraid of what she’d see in me. She was probably twenty years older than me, and since I’d met her I’d sensed that she’d lived her life in chapters, and that the current one had opened only relatively recently. She seemed to know a lot.

  Iris had been gazing for some ten minutes out the airplane window, past the runway and into the rainy airfield. This was the first time we’d been in each other’s company outside of the office. The back of her head, with its long, dark auburn curls, partly blocked my view of the grey morning. The relief from the chill and awkwardness that would come with takeoff couldn’t come soon enough.

  I’d attributed Iris’s abstractedness that morning to the early hour: she’d picked me up in a cab at 5:30 a.m. and had said only four words to me on the way to the airport: “Julie. Don’t be sorry,” when I’d apologized for knocking her with my carry-on bag. Her statement had been neither reassurance nor rebuke, but hung in the air, caption-like, before dissolving into the fog as we drove off toward the highway to the airport. “Easy for you to say,” I’d thought, linking her statement to Iris’s defining trait—the policy of never apologizing, never explaining, and never having any cause to.

  But now, as she stared silently out the window, turned to face away from me, her hair a kempt mantle, cape-like, on her shoulders and down her back, I thought maybe I was seeing a new side of Iris, and not just literally.

  On our way to the airport, we drove past the shiny black building where we worked together, and I thought about how much my life had changed since I was first buzzed up into its noiseless, carpeted interior. I’d started working for a different boss before I worked for Iris, in a cubicle down the hall from Iris’s office. I’d first met her in an idea-generating meeting about the company’s mission statement. She was the director of communications and a manager of other technical writers. I was included in the meeting as an admin, to take minutes. It was the first time I’d been in the large conference room on the building’s top floor with its tall windows and rectangular ship of a table in the centre of the room.

  Iris was the first person I saw when I walked into the conference room; she sat like a backward-facing masthead at the prow of the table, even though it turned out she was a participant rather than the leader. The meeting’s facilitator, surely no more than half Iris’s age, stood behind her at a white board, writing down words; soon, Iris’s words were circled and underlined as everyone returned to them, agreeing on their quality. As the meeting’s business wrapped up, Iris began to speak off the cuff. She talked about why she’d joined the company. Iris’s background, she explained, was in finance—she’d come from another company where she was a CFO, a position she loved. But her respect for the power of words had led her to pursue the writing side of business.

  She ended the session with a broad comment outlining a new way forward for our company—a new vision for the role we could play. “We’re the leaders, ladies,” she said, as she closed out the meeting. “The improved version.” I wrote this in the minutes and then deleted it, assuming it was meant for our ears only.

  Afterward, I stood in the kitchen of my floor with a co-worker who had also been at the mee
ting, talking about Iris. This co-worker had started at the company shortly before I had. “She’s great with words, but she seems a bit lonely to me,” this co-worker said. “You never see her just chatting with other people, relaxing; she’s always working when she talks. Once I heard her refer to her team as ‘knowledge brokers.’ I’ve never heard anyone talk like her before.”

  That comment seemed slightly unfair to me, a jab framed as sympathy. Intense professionalism in a woman invites the most intense form of physical scrutiny, a search for the break in the performance; not without unease, I had felt my own eyes begin to watch Iris too closely. Her jackets were linen or silk, her scarves bronze, muted silver, or cream, her pants tailored. Her hair flowed without movement. She answered the demand for beauty with an intelligent radiance whose understatement shone like an honest but appealing answer to a question no one else could face without years of practice. There were rumours about her, and about why she had left her last job, but it was hard to remember or think of these when she was talking.

  When I applied for a job under Iris, she seemed willing to take a chance on me. Since then, I’ve worked as a technical writer under her supervision. The interview for the job went well; I mentioned my dictionaries in an answer to one of the first questions, and I could see that Iris was impressed. As a professional writer, I keep not just an electronic, but also a hard copy, of the Oxford English Dictionary on hand wherever I work. The many old leather volumes of it that were the one thing I’d inherited from my grandfather line my office wall, in any office I work in, in any job I hold. The volumes not only help me in my work; they’re also my own personal employment insurance. I’d had the books appraised—if I were ever to fall on hard times, selling them would help.