It was hard to master, but she was eventually able to see both the adobe walls and blue door and the book-lined walls of the Carnegie Room, to stand simultaneously under the cottonwood tree and in front of the fire, carrying on a conversation about “Ode to Billie Joe.”
“The song was a huge hit,” C.B. told her, “and people came up with all kinds of theories as to why he jumped.”
“Why do you think he did it?” Briddey asked, trying to keep both C.B. and the courtyard in focus. “I mean if he and the girl were in love, why would he commit suicide?”
“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was just trying to get away from the voices.”
“Did you ever do that?” Briddey asked.
“Do what? Jump off a bridge or try to kill myself?”
“Either. Both. Did you?”
“Yeah, once, when things were going pretty bad. My stepdad had pretty much written me off—I don’t blame him. I couldn’t exactly explain why I was refusing to have a bar mitzvah or go to college. And the voices were…” He shook his head in disgust. “So, anyway, I thought taking a bunch of tranquilizers would be a good way out. But it just made the voices worse. That’s why I told you no alcohol or Xanax. Relaxants just make you more receptive to the voices—and less able to keep them out.”
Briddey thought of what that must have been like, the voices out of control and roaring over him, and him nearly unconscious and helpless to fend them off.
“Yeah, well, but it had its advantages,” he said lightly. “One, I learned that there are things even worse than the voices, stomach pumps being one. And two, it’s kept me from turning into a drug addict or an alcoholic, which just goes to show you that not all unintended consequences are bad.”
He grinned at her, but she didn’t smile back. She was busy following a different train of thought. “If relaxants make the voices worse, then wouldn’t stimulants—?”
“Nope, no effect. And every other kind of drug makes them worse, too. Defenses are the only thing that work for the long term.”
“But if you can visualize defenses that keep the voices out, why can’t you visualize something that shuts them off altogether?” she asked, and waited for him to tell her it didn’t work like that.
“You can,” he said.
“You can? Then why—?”
“Because you can only do it for brief periods, and it takes an enormous physical and mental toll. You can’t sustain it, and the minute your attention wavers, the voices come roaring back.”
“But there must be some way to…surgery or—”
He shook his head. “Surgery’s out. In the first place, it’s not like a blood vessel you can tie off. It’s a network of neural pathways, and there’s no guarantee that messing with it wouldn’t make it permanently worse. And in the second place, to get a doctor to do the surgery, you’d have to tell him about the telepathy—”
“And that’s out. I know. But couldn’t you make some kind of device—?”
“I’ve tried. That’s another reason I spend most of my time in the basement, because I’ve been trying to come up with a jammer.”
“And have you made any progress?”
“No. I thought interference—and crosstalk—might cancel the voices out, but they didn’t, and creating the voice equivalent of a spam filter didn’t work either. Or an electronic version of the safe room.”
“So you haven’t found anything that does work?”
“Yeah, Victorian novels. And frequency hopping.”
“Hedy Lamarr’s invention,” Briddey said, thinking, That’s why he’s got her picture hanging up in his lab.
He nodded. “The idea was to keep the voices from finding me instead of blocking them directly, and it works pretty well in the short term. But in the long term it requires an enormous amount of energy—far more than any device could ever generate.” He smiled apologetically at her. “Sorry, Briddey. If I had a way to shut the voices off for good for you, I would,” and she realized how ungrateful she’d sounded—as if his rescuing her and teaching her and protecting her weren’t enough.
“C.B., listen,” she began, but he was listening to something else, his head raised and a faraway look on his face, which quickly turned to a frown.
“What is it?” Briddey asked.
“It’s time to get out of here,” he said, pushing back his chair. He stood up and began clearing the table.
“But I thought the library didn’t open till eleven.”
“It doesn’t,” he said, scooping the Lucky Charms off the end of the table into one of the “a little bird told me” napkins and putting them both in the bag. “But the later it gets, the more people will be around. I don’t want anyone seeing us leave.”
He was lying. He’d heard something and he didn’t want to tell her. “There’s someone in the building, isn’t there?”
“No,” he said, and then, as if he realized lying wasn’t going to work, “not yet. But the person who left the phone here just realized she doesn’t remember having it when she got home, and unfortunately it’s Marian the Librarian.”
Who had the keys to the building. Briddey glanced nervously at the door. “Is she on her way back?”
“Nothing as dire as that,” he said, screwing the lid on the salsa jar. “In fact, she’s still home in bed. She hasn’t even figured out where she left it, but she’s mentally retracing her steps, so it’s just a matter of time before she figures out where it is. Besides,” he added, closing the top of the cereal box, “I’m guessing you don’t want to be seen coming home on a Sunday morning dressed like that.” He gestured at her green dress. “Especially since one of your neighbors is bound to be on Facebook.”
He’s right, she thought, gathering up the candy-bar and peanut-butter-cracker wrappers. And the neighbors weren’t the only ones to worry about. Her family had a habit of dropping by unannounced on their way to early Mass, and Maeve would be dying of curiosity after those mysterious texts from C.B.
“You said you explained the situation to Maeve when you texted her,” Briddey said. “What exactly did you say?”
C.B. licked the last of the frosting from the paper plate, folded the plate over on itself, and stuck it in the pizza box. “I just told her you and I were in the middle of an emergency.”
“You didn’t tell her anything else?”
“Only that it was a matter of life and death,” C.B. said, cramming the laden pizza box into the bag, “and she was the only one I could trust to keep our secret safe. She said I could count on her.”
Of course she did, Briddey thought, crumpling up the wrappers and putting them in the bag. She’s obviously got a huge crush on you.
“Yeah, well, I think she’s pretty great, too,” he said. “Listen, Briddey, about Maeve, there’s something I—” He stopped.
Briddey looked up at him. He was listening again. “What is it?” she asked. “Is Marian on her way?”
“No,” he said after a long minute. “But she just remembered she left her phone in the copy room. We need to go. Hand me the olives.”
“Wait, you were going to tell me something about Maeve.”
“It can wait,” he said, taking the jar of olives from her and screwing on the lid. “Turn off the fire.” He handed her the remote and began wiping down the table.
Briddey switched off the fire and the lamps, put the remote back behind the checkout desk, and then folded the cashmere throw, draping it over the back of the sofa like it had been when they first came in. The book C.B. had been reading was on the floor beside the wing chair. “What about the books you left in the stacks?” she asked, picking it up and putting it back on the shelf. “Do we need to go back and get them?”
“I already did,” he said, pointing toward the door, where they sat on top of the card file. “Before I went out foraging for food. Oh, and before I forget, here’s your phone.” He handed it to her.
She stuck it in her pocket and picked up the box of Lucky Charms. C.B. handed her the bag of Dori
tos and the salsa, then jammed the rest of the trash and the empty soda cans into the grocery bag. “Have we got everything?” he asked.
“I think so,” she said, taking a last look around at the darkened room, at the no-longer-cozy hearth and the now shadowed bookshelves—and the wing chair where C.B. had sprawled, asleep. She felt suddenly bereft at the thought of leaving. I wish we could stay here forever.
“Yeah, me, too,” C.B. said, and she looked over at him, but he was turned away from her, picking up the bag and the olives. “This is the only warm room in the building. It’s going to be like a deep freeze out there.” He picked up the flashlight and opened the door. “And now I’ll never find out how The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ends. Does it? Decline and fall?”
“I’m sure Marian knows,” Briddey said, trying to match his light tone. “And if we don’t hurry, you’ll be able to ask her.” But as she followed him out the door and down the stairs, she wished more than ever that he’d taught her how to audit individual voices so she could tell what he was thinking.
They reached the foot of the stairs. C.B. stopped to listen before opening the door, and he was right, it was cold out here. She shivered, and C.B. must have interpreted it as a sign of fear because he said, “If it’s the voices you’re worried about, you’ll be fine. It’ll be light by the time we get out of here, and you’ve got your defenses now.”
“Has Marian left home yet?” she asked.
“Nope, she’s still fretting over whether it’s worth it to get up and come all the way back here,” he said, opening the door to the corridor. He held out the books and flashlight to her, and she shifted the Lucky Charms and salsa into her other arm so she could take them.
“Shine the flashlight on the door so I can see to lock it,” he said, and as he inserted the key into the lock, “Having to listen to squirrel caging’s another charming aspect of telepathy.”
“Squirrel caging?” Briddey asked, watching him lock the door.
“Yeah.” He took the flashlight back from her, and they started down the hall toward the staff lounge. “You know, going around and around in circles wondering whether you should drive back to the library to get your phone or wait till morning, or worrying…hang on,” he said, stopping to dump the grocery bag into a trash can. “Or worrying about how you’re going to pay the bills or whether that funny pain in your side is cancer.”
Or whether Commspan’s going to lay people off, Briddey thought, remembering Art Sampson, and then thinking about her own fretting over why she hadn’t connected to Trent and what he’d do if he found out she was talking to someone else. Which poor C.B. had had to listen to.
“They should probably call it gerbil caging,” C.B. said, opening the door to the staff lounge. “Or hamster caging. I mean, how many squirrels have you ever seen on an exercise wheel?”
He switched on the light, and she was relieved to see that, in spite of the pieces they’d eaten, the cake looked exactly the same. C.B. stuck the key back under the coffee can and put the salsa and olives in the refrigerator.
“Won’t they notice the jar’s nearly empty?” she whispered.
“Nope,” he said, taking the box of Lucky Charms and the Doritos from her and sticking them in the cupboard. “They’ll assume one of the TAs ate them.”
“We should at least put some money in the donations jar,” she said, pointing at the can marked COFFEE FUND.
“We can’t. Then they’d know somebody was here. When’s the last time anybody at Commspan chipped in for coffee? And the best defense against our being caught is them not even suspecting we were here. Besides, the Doritos aren’t theirs. I found them up on S–V.”
“But won’t they wonder—?”
“No. Do you want another piece of cake? They’ll never miss it.”
“No,” Briddey said, making a face.
“Neither do I. We need something more substantial. Man cannot live by Lucky Charms alone.” He looked tentatively at her. “Remember that deli I told you about with the great lox and bagels? It’s only a few blocks from here. We could get some breakfast, and I could teach you those auxiliary defenses.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It does.”
He motioned her out of the room and turned off the light, and she followed him down the hall, refusing to analyze why her heart felt suddenly so much lighter. You’re hungrier than you realized, that’s all, she told herself, going past the storage closet they’d hidden in to the end of the hall and into a stairwell.
“This isn’t the way we came,” she whispered.
“That’s because the front door’s got an alarm on it, and so does the staff entrance. And all the emergency exits.”
“Then how are we going to get out?”
This way, he said, pointing down the stairs.
He’d reverted to speaking silently. Does that mean Marian’s here? Briddey asked.
No, she’s still trying to make her mind up about coming to get her phone, but there’s no point in making more noise than we have to, and this way we’ll be sure to hear anybody in the building before they hear us. That’s one of the advantages of being telepathic. You can talk to your cohort in crime and still hear the cops coming.
I thought you said there weren’t any advantages to telepathy, Briddey said, tiptoeing after him down the steps.
Oh, no, there are lots. I never once got caught by the jocks and stuffed into my locker in high school, and there was no such thing as a pop quiz.
But you also heard every taunting and cruel thing people thought about you.
And some nice things, C.B. said. Nothing’s all bad.
Except that horrible deluge of voices.
True, C.B. admitted. Though who knows? Even it might come in handy for something. Last step.
He waited for her to come down it and then switched off the flashlight. She heard him open the door and look out, then the flashlight came on again, and he led the way down another hallway, this one with bare concrete walls, which had to be in the library’s basement. It was almost as cold as his lab.
C.B. stopped in front of an unmarked door and switched off the flashlight. There are windows, he explained, opening the door, motioning her through, then shutting it behind them.
There might be windows, but they must have curtains over them because the room was nearly as dark as the storage closet had been. C.B. put his hand on her arm and said, Are you okay?
Yes, except that I can’t see anything. She took a cautious step forward.
Wait, he said, pulling her back. This place is an obstacle course. We need to let our eyes adjust first, and held her there by the door while they waited.
Shapes became visible, but only dimly. The rectangles high up on the walls, which had to be the windows, were only a fractionally lighter shade of charcoal. I thought you said it was supposed to be light by now, she whispered.
It should be. What time is it?
She turned on her phone to see and then was sorry. The light from the screen undid all the adjusting their eyes had done. Sorry, she said. It’s six forty-five.
Hmm, he said, and she could sense his puzzlement. He was silent a moment and then said, Oh, that explains it.
What? Are we in the wrong place?
No. Come on, this way, and led her deeper into the room.
Her eyes had finally adjusted, and she could see long rows of bookcases in the gray dimness. He was right, it was an obstacle course. There were plastic bins everywhere and rolling carts filled with books and papers. C.B. led her through them toward the back of the room, occasionally glancing up at the high windows.
I hope you don’t expect me to climb out one of those, she said.
Only if we can’t get to the door. He led her to the very back, where the bookcases were filled with a jumble of boxes, ledgers, folders held together with rubber bands.
If there was a door here, she had no idea where it could be. The bookcases went nearly all the way t
o the wall, and more boxes and shopping bags full of papers were piled halfway to the ceiling at their ends, but C.B. said, Good. This isn’t bad at all, and began pulling out boxes and bags.
Arthur Tellman Ross’s archives, he explained, reaching for a shopping bag crammed with papers. The library had to promise to preserve them, too—all of them, including his grocery lists. And some very bad love poems. Can you put this over there? he asked, pointing.
Yes, Briddey said, setting down C.B.’s books, putting the shopping bag next to a stack of metal file boxes, and taking another bag from him.
He pulled out another box. What were we talking about before?
You were telling me the many joys of being telepathic.
Oh, yeah, he said, setting it down on top of the first. It’s great. You can avoid traffic jams and bores and being stuck in line at the grocery store behind somebody who’s got six hundred coupons and can’t remember the PIN number of her debit card. He lifted out another box. And you don’t have to find out the hard way that someone’s a jerk and/or a liar.
He set the box down next to the others and dragged out the last one. Or have brain surgery to find out whether somebody loves you. You already know.
So no hopeless crushes, Briddey said lightly.
I didn’t say that. Hand me the flashlight.
She did, and he switched it on. And there was the door, painted the same color as the wall and set in from the edge of the bookcase, which was why she hadn’t been able to see it.
Is it locked? she asked.
No, unless somebody’s been here since the last time I came out this way. Which, he said, opening it outward a crack, apparently they haven’t. He peered out. Good, the coast is clear. Come on.
Briddey retrieved C.B.’s books, and he helped her over the boxes. Then he reached past her for the shopping bags, set them on the boxes again, and opened the door, and she saw why it had been so dark in the room: it was raining. The sky was a leaden, lowering gray, and the steps outside the door, leading up to the parking lot, were wet. The parking lot was even wetter.
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