The Binding

by E. Z. Rinsky

  I reach down and scramble through my duffel bag.

  “Where is it . . .” I mutter, scared maybe I tossed it at some point . . . No. My hands close on it. The Advil bottle I confiscated at the red house. I open it, take out a blue pill and place it on the tabletop between us. Courtney frowns.

  “What is that?” he asks.

  “No clue. Took it off some kids who seemed to be enjoying it at the red house.”

  Courtney picks it up and holds it to the light, reading the identifying numbers on it. Then types it into his phone.

  “Dextroamphetamine,” he says.

  “What’s that mean?” I ask.

  “It’s a particularly potent amphetamine. Used to treat ADD. You may know it by its brand name: Adderall.”

  “Perfect,” I say. Courtney’s face falls.

  I snatch his phone and scan the article from the FDA website:

  Oral or intranasal use produces euphoria or high. Snorting dextroamphetamine will lead to effects within 3 to 5 minutes, whereas oral ingestion takes 15 to 20 minutes, with less potent effects.

  I grab my hammer from my duffel, pour six blue pills in the middle of the table and delicately tap them into powder with the hammerhead.

  “Frank!” Courtney scans around the Starbucks like a paranoid prairie dog, then back to me. “What the hell are you doing!?”

  “I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m grinding this into a snortable powder.”

  “In here?” he asks.

  I glance around the Starbucks. It’s mostly empty, and the only other occupants—a pair of nurses in lavender scrubs, a clearly distraught set of parents—appear to be dealing with their own shit. I shrug, then tear up a page from one of Oliver Vicks’s professional evaluations, roll it up to make a little snorting tube. Use another bit of the paper to form four bright blue lines.

  “Frank, this is not safe. I think that’s a huge dose. And you’ve been drinking—”

  “Correct.” I grin. “This isn’t for me.”

  Courtney’s eyebrows fly up so high that for a second they look like two little hairy worms crawling along his forehead.

  “I don’t think so,” he says.

  “You’re the one who can fit this stuff together,” I say. “I’ll supervise. Don’t discount the stress of being in the managerial role.”

  “I’m not touching that stuff,” Courtney says.

  “I’ve snorted it before,” I lie. “It’s not a big deal. You just feel more awake.”

  Courtney shakes his head adamantly, like a little kid refusing his Brussels sprouts.

  “Come on, man, it was prescribed by a doctor. It’s safe. What is there to lose? You’re so tired you can’t see straight.”

  Courtney stares at the blue lines, frowning intensely.

  “You do one first.”

  “One of us needs to stay sober.”

  Courtney crosses his arms defiantly.

  “I think that’s a pretty compelling argument for me to assume the supervisory role.”

  “Courtney,” I sigh. “I don’t claim to understand how your brain works. But I’ve seen you make connections that I never would have made in a million years. If we don’t figure out where those books are, I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life in jail. If this stuff can help you think . . .”

  He closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them, wordlessly takes the tube from me and—for quite obviously the first time in his life—snorts a line.

  Leans back into his chair, and his eyes go a little cross-eyed as the stimulant trickles down the back of his throat.

  “Good stuff, right?” I say, knowing full well there’s no way he feels anything yet.

  “I guess,” he replies. “It’s definitely subtle. Just feel a bit more energy.”

  “Yeah, that’s because you only did one,” I say. “Take another.”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “I don’t know, Frank.”

  “If you really fuck up, the emergency room is upstairs. Hell, maybe we should just check ourselves in anyways. There are worse places to hide from Sampson and Oliver.”

  Courtney obligingly snorts down his second line. Coughs a little. Then taps on the table.

  “I’m still tired,” he says.

  “Give it a minute . . .” I glance around the Starbucks again. Even if somebody had seen what we’re doing, I doubt they’d give much of a shit. I take the file back from Courtney and try to read it again. The words still seem to be moving around on the page. I’d take some, too, but I meant what I said: One of us needs to keep his wits about him, be the arbiter of reason.

  I close my eyes and try to concentrate.

  Oliver Vicks. Oliver Vicks.

  Fakes his architecture credentials, refuses to do paperwork, but gets hired anyway and is very successful until he gets found out at the hearing and shamed, starts writing these books, kills Becky’s family, goes to prison, walks right out, sends Rico to steal the books, kills Rico . . .

  I feel something on my wrist. My eyes snap open—I fell asleep. It’s Courtney’s hand. His pupils are huge and he’s blinking extremely rapidly.

  “I think I feel it,” he says. “I can feel like, my heart, inside my chest. I can feel each palpitation against my ribs. My heart feels like, really really big.”

  “Uh huh,” I say.

  “Yeah, like, my heart is so powerful,” Courtney says. “But okay, let’s work.”

  He snatches the file back from me and starts combing through pages rapidly, muttering to himself. “Yeah, good medicine, Frank. I think you were right. I’m gonna figure this stuff out. Shoulda used this before. Shoulda used this stuff years ago . . .”

  I close my eyes again. Enter that nether zone between sleep and real life. The flickering lights of the Starbucks flash on the insides of my eyelids.

  Fakes credentials, failed school, genius, megalomaniac . . . Thinks he’s Joseph . . .

  “Frank.” Courtney is tapping on my wrist again, this time a bit more urgently.

  “Figure it out?” I ask.

  His head less shakes than spasms back and forth.

  “My mouth is dry.” He opens his mouth wide and massages his left jaw. Then closes it, cracks his knuckles in rapid succession, then starts doing what I can only describe as a sitting salsa dance—like a single move that’s all clenched fists and elbows running on a loop. “My mouth is dry,” he repeats.

  “That’s normal,” I guess.

  “Okay.” He nods. “Okay. Good. I’m not worried, just checking.”

  “Okay,” I say. “So. What do you think? Why would he—”

  “The questions first,” he says, reaching a finger into his mouth to poke at the inside of his cheek. “First we need to organize all the questions. We’ll make a list. A . . . A very organized list. Then we’ll just check off the answers one by one. That’s our problem is we’re not organized.”

  “No, our problem is we keep going in circles. We keep gathering information without understanding it.”

  “Because we’re not being organized.” Courtney leans in close. “We’re not being thoughtful and patient enough. We’re not paying attention to subtlety.”

  “Dude, those are just words. We don’t understand jack shit. Putting this in a spreadsheet isn’t suddenly gonna change that.”

  “Okay, okay.” He nods. “So we’ll just read through everything. Carefully. Start to finish. Should only take like four hours if we go fast. So that takes us to the morning—”

  I tune out Courtney. Something’s dawning on me, but it’s elusive. Not a fact, but a feeling, a common thread winding its way through everything we know about Oliver Vicks.

  Drops out of school, fakes his degree, writes the books in his own language, writes his own notes on the wall in his own language . . .

  “I’ll read each page, then you’ll read it, then we’ll summarize it—”

  “Courtney,” I snap. “Stop talking. Let me think.”

  I think about Oliver in the
cellar of the red house, writing on the walls, developing his language.

  Why? Why not just write in English? Or Ancient Hebrew? Or Latin?

  So that nobody but him could understand it?

  As sophisticated as Mindy claimed the language was, it sure looked kind of childish to me. Maybe the meaning is complex, but the drawing of the cow reminded me of the drawings Sadie used to bring home from kindergarten . . .

  I sit up straight.

  I think I know where the books are.

  “Let me see the phone,” I say.

  Courtney eyes me, as if suspicious of this request, but he slides it across the table to me. I go to our text message records. Most recent is Sampson, then Mindy, then the phone Rico used to text us from the aquarium. That’s all. The recent calls history is entirely consumed by Sampson . . .

  “There was a phone number Oliver called us on, when we were at Sampson’s,” I say. “He used the voice transformer, and we thought it was Rico.”

  Courtney nods.

  “I don’t remember, but I think that’s the same number he called us from when we were at Wendy’s. It doesn’t matter actually. My point is that he never texted us. He wanted the pictures of the bonds faxed to him instead of just good old text. Why?”

  “Maybe because he was in prison so long he was unfamiliar with cell phones. When he was locked up fax machines were all the rage.”

  “Fine, could be,” I respond. “But Becky’s restaurant. The Rocky Mountain Bar and Grill. Did you happen to look at their menus? I did.”

  Courtney squints.

  “Uh, maybe glanced at one. Why?”

  “The deaf owner . . . He wanted to make sure the place was handicapped-friendly. Wheelchair ramps. And Braille on the menu.”

  Courtney nods ever so slightly.

  “Okay . . .”

  I grin broadly.

  “That’s why he didn’t go to architecture school. That’s why he writes in his own language. Courtney,” I say. “I think Oliver Vicks can’t read.”

  Courtney’s frown turns to stone as he considers this.

  “He’s dyslexic,” I say. “I remember there were a few weeks when they thought Sadie might be dyslexic, because she was really slow starting to read. Turned out she just needed a little more time to get started, but at the time I was really worried and spent like a month reading all about dyslexia. There are studies where dyslexic people can read Braille far more effectively than written language. I think that’s why Oliver was at the grill before Becky ever started working there—it was the only place he could read the menu.”

  “Dyslexic . . .” Courtney’s eyes are narrow, his shoulders clenched expectantly, breathing hard—he looks almost predatory.

  “That’s why he wrote in his own made-up language that’s pictographic—he’s really uncomfortable writing in English. Or maybe he can’t at all.”

  Courtney taps his fingertips on the table like he’s a stenographer taking notes on an invisible typewriter.

  “Okay. I’m with you,” he says. “Because even if maybe he can read a little bit, slowly, he’s sensitive about this. Ashamed. He avoids any forum where he could possibly humiliate himself by making a mistake. Like text message. Or university.”

  “Right,” I say. “And at this point, of course, he’s far more comfortable writing in his own language.”

  He stops tapping his fingers.

  “But so what?” he says. “Fine. Oliver can’t read. That doesn’t help us figure out where he is, or where the books are.”

  I lean in closer.

  “Oh, I disagree.”

  Courtney fidgets.

  “What. Tell me.”

  “Rico was locked up in that room for years right? He didn’t have anything to do with himself but claw at his chain and look at the walls, and observe Oliver Vicks. Now even if he wasn’t the sharpest guy, I think it’s a reasonable assumption that after years in there he came to the same conclusion I just did. That Oliver Vicks just wasn’t comfortable with written English. So he’s running away from the aquarium wanting to stash the duffel somewhere, somewhere Oliver Vicks would never stumble upon them.” I smile. “Somewhere where books belong.”

  Courtney lunges for his briefcase, combs through it frantically, until removing a map of Downtown Denver. Lays it flat on the table. Scans it desperately, until jabbing an index finger at a spot just a few blocks from the aquarium.

  Something magical spreads across his features, bathing each one in turn in a shimmering glow. He forms a little O with his mouth and makes a sound that’s disturbingly similar to one I heard last night.

  “There it is Frank. The Denver Public Library,” he whispers. “The public freaking library.”

  Part Four

  Friday

  Genesis 11:4

  Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

  The Denver Public Library doesn’t open until ten. We sit down on a bench outside and wait. I wonder who designed this place . . . the exterior is like fifteen differently shaped and colored towers, from fifteen different eras, all sewn together into one architectural Frankenstein monster. I think maybe it’s supposed to look industrial, a sort of parody of a massive, multitiered brick factory.

  In the courtyard in front of the building are all kinds of weird sculptures; some sort of obelisks that are like enormous stone tentacles protruding from the ground, an amalgam of thick red pipes that might be fun for kids to play with during the day, but at this predawn witching hour it looks more like a trap, a web of bloodstained pipes and distended shadows.

  What is with this city?

  Staring at the building, my eyelids grow heavy, and I manage to doze off for a few hours.

  Wrapped up in a jacket—it actually gets cool in the early hours before dawn—I have nonsense dreams. Sadie is in many of them, and even from inside of the dream I’m disturbed by how hard it is to picture what she looks like now. There’s a moment where I’m walking side by side down a red velvet hallway next to Oliver Vicks, who’s wearing the wax mask of Rico’s face.

  Concealer of faces.

  I reach for his mask, take it off his face, and beneath there’s a smiling headshot—that twenty-five-year-old photo that Mindy found on the internet. One of only two pictures I’ve ever seen of his real face.

  The alarm on Courtney’s phone jars me awake. Not him—he’s out cold, lying flat beside me on the bench, his knees tucked into his chest, and everything enveloped by a flannel shirt. I’ll bet he crashed pretty hard from that upper. I shake his spindly leg.

  “C’mon Court,” I say. “Library’s open.”

  We’re not the only ones waiting for the library to open. Lots of kids. Summer vacation. Some are with parents, some are in daycare-type groups. When the guards open the doors, kids swarm toward the opening, like they’re worried the place is gonna run out of books.

  The front doors open into a long, open hallway. An American flag and a Colorado state flag hang prominently from the ceiling, three stories up. Around the second floor stretches a panorama depicting the Denver skyline and Rocky Mountains. Archways along the length of the hallway have signs that indicate the Western Legacy collection, African-American Research Library, exhibition spaces, a place to research your genealogy . . .

  Then there’s the book listings: computer science & information, philosophy and psychology, religion, social sciences, language, literature.

  “This place is enormous,” Courtney says. “We could spend days looking through here. There are a million places he could have stashed those books.”

  “Let me see the text again,” I say.

  Courtney raises an eyebrow.

  “You don’t know it verbatim yet, Frank?”

  I reach into the pocket of his jeans and pull his phone out. Scroll until I find it:

  Left Boks wher they belong, where Soph never goes. Ya

/>   “Ugh. ‘Hey, I left the needle in the haystack for you guys.’”

  “I think we’re in the right place though,” says Courtney.

  “Me too . . .” I say, looking around to absorb the immensity of this building. “Where do the books ‘belong’? Religion?”

  “Sure.”

  We shuffle through a few rooms: galleries of Western landscapes, empty this early in the morning, until we get to the religion stacks. Countless rows of books.

  “Would he just slip them into the stacks?” I ask.

  “I don’t think so,” Courtney replies. “They don’t have stickers on them. They’d be found out pretty quickly.”

  “So then what the hell are we looking for?”

  Courtney doesn’t say anything.

  “We don’t have time,” I say. “It’s ten fifteen. Sampson is expecting the books at four. It would take us a week to search this whole building. At least.”

  Courtney licks his lips.

  “Let’s go to the information desk,” he says. “And show them the text. Maybe there’s something we’re missing.”

  “There’s nothing we’re missing,” I hiss. “It’s like fifteen words. And the librarians don’t know who ‘Soph’ is.”

  “What if he’s talking about a different Soph . . .” Courtney says. “Sophocles . . . Should we check philosophy?”

  “That’s ridiculous. Fine, let’s go to the desk.”

  The woman at the info desk is in her forties, and plump and butchy.

  “Hi,” I say, sidling up and smiling. “I was wondering if you could help us. Our friend wants us to find a book somewhere in here—kind of a scavenger hunt type thing.”

  “Alright.” The librarian’s face betrays no signs of comprehension.

  “He sent us this kind of cryptic text. Was hoping you could make something of it.”

  I hold the phone out to show her. She slides a pair of reading glasses out from behind the counter—dunno why she doesn’t just keep those on constantly, seeing as how she works in a library—and takes an inordinate amount of time to read the text.

  “I think Boks is a misspelling of Books,” she says finally.

  I swallow the biggest eye roll of my life.