I caught the glimmer of white again, but this time it did not go away when I looked directly at it. It was a pearl someone had dropped. As I bent to pick it up I remembered the photograph, the pearl earrings the woman wore.
I'd memorized the photograph by this time, of course, but I went back to my office to look at it one more time. The earrings shone white as a shell, nacreous and pale.
No, it was ridiculous. Someone had dropped the damn thing; that was all. Despite my protests, though, I put the pearl in my drawer along with the photograph and the ticket stub.
The next evening, as I went through my usual routine, I swung between hope and something very like despair. I told myself not to expect much, either a maddeningly vague clue or nothing at all. What I found was a piece of paper partly covered in writing. I read a few lines, then had to sit at a table to stop my heart from pounding.
“Dear Selwyn—” it said.
“It's not like you to be so horrible. What I said was a joke, of course. I don't give a fig for your work, and I'm sure Edith doesn't either. And what you told us was hardly damning—unless, as you said, your boss should come to hear about it. And there's no reason he should, not if you're as careful as you say you are.
“I'll be at the Pearl on Tuesday night, as always. I hope I'll see you there. I never have as much fun without you—none of the others have your spirit and generosity.
“Lilyanna"
I thought a hundred things all at once. That now I knew her name. That her handwriting was bold and a bit old-fashioned, with more flourishes than someone would use today, especially in her headlong dashes. That she had written on creamy linen paper; she could afford luxuries, perhaps, or she cared about how she looked.
Most of all I wondered what it meant. What terrible thing did Selwyn do at work? Who was Edith, and who were the others? It was one of those frustrating stories that don't make sense if you come in in the middle, and it was dreadful to think that I might never know the answers.
There was a date at the top; I hadn't seen it in my rush to read the letter. October 12, 1938. I tried to remember the date today, and realized with growing amazement that it was also October the 12th.
All my doubts disappeared. I was meant to find this letter, and to find it now. In fact—and suddenly the notion seemed as clear to me as if it was written on the piece of paper I held—I could find her, Lilyanna, meet her at the Pearl on Tuesday. The only problem, of course, was that I had no idea where the place could be.
I went to the circulation desk, too much in a hurry even to go to my office, and turned on the computer. I searched for “Pearl” together with various cities around the Bay Area and got nothing but gibberish. There were, I was surprised to see, a few hits for “Lilyanna,” but the people mentioned were all too old or too young or in another country. So much for my thought that she might be a movie star.
A man tapped at the glass on the door; he'd seen me and thought the library was still open, despite the Closed sign and the dim lights. I ignored him. He knocked harder, and I waved him off impatiently. Finally he dumped his books in the outside bin and strode off, no doubt writing an irate letter to the library board in his head.
I turned back to the computer. It was Friday now; I had a few days yet to track her down. I clicked on another link for Lilyanna and found an office-worker's diary. But she was far too young, and Lilyanna would never work in an office.
Suddenly I realized just how old she had to be. If she was twenty in 1938, say, she would be nearly ninety today. Probably she was dead.
But of course I wasn't thinking of her as old. In my mind she was still the woman in the photograph, luminous, mysterious. What did that mean? Was she haunting me, haunting the library?
I got off the computer, stood up and stretched, and went through the library shutting off the lights. As I headed toward the front door I saw the swirl of white again, and I turned quickly. It took on shape, moving slowly in the shadows. The unfurling of a skirt, the turn of a pale leg...
The library seemed colder now, the shadows in the distant corners blacker. I stood still, my skin clammy. No, I was imagining the chill, the darkness—why would she want to frighten me? I groped for a light switch and turned it on, and she frayed into nothingness and disappeared.
I was trembling now. I went into my office and grabbed the photograph, the ticket, and the pearl. Then I left, locking the door firmly behind me.
Outside the moon shone from behind the clouds, but otherwise the street was dark. I walked quickly toward the bus stop, toward light and people. I got home very late; only then, when I looked at my bedside clock, did I realize that I'd been on the computer for hours.
In the morning the fear from last night seemed unreal. Lilyanna needed me; she had sought me out for some task she had left unfinished in life. She was remote in the picture, yes, and as regal as an effigy on a tomb, but she would never harm me.
What had prompted me to turn on the light again, to make her vanish like that? I could have seen her whole, talked to her, found out what she wanted at last.
I dressed and went to my computer. It sometimes seems odd to me that someone who distrusts change as much as I do should take to the Internet, but in fact I like it a great deal. It's like a library in many ways, a library built out of an infinity of knowledge. A library of the air.
As the morning waned, though, I began to think the whole thing was impossible. How could I guess what the word “pearl” meant to Lilyanna and her friends? In desperation I left the main thoroughfares of the search engines and headed down dirt roads and dim alleyways, sites tended by obsessives interested in movies or jewelry or the thirties.
I broke for lunch. Sun came through the kitchen window, and I began to wonder about my own obsessiveness. What was Lilyanna to me, after all? Why was I wasting all this time on someone I had never met? I sat in my kitchen, in the warmth and light, eating a chicken sandwich I'd made out of leftovers, and my mind strayed to other things: Nina, of course, and work I'd left unfinished at the library, and the book I was reading. Then the tattered clouds returned, shrouding the sun, and I went back to Lilyanna and the Pearl.
On Sunday I visited a few of the places I'd seen on the Internet, restaurants and bars and businesses with the word “pearl” in their names. I had no car, which had never seemed like a hardship before; I enjoyed taking the bus to work. But I soon found out that many of the routes were slower than my usual bus, and that the Bay Area Rapid Transit line didn't run anywhere near where I wanted to go. I planned to go to Oakland first, because of the connection with the Paramount, but as time passed I realized that just the places in Oakland would take the whole day.
The first three sites I tried had not even existed in the thirties. I continued on, growing discouraged as I saw business after business dating from the eighties or nineties.
It was near midnight when I finally quit and headed for home. The streets were cold and silent; I heard nothing but my own footsteps. Every so often a car drove by, its lights glowing out of the darkness and then passing on. My bus stop was dark as well, the street lamp next to it burned out.
A pale shape came toward me out of the shadows. I jumped back, but it was only a man in a white T-shirt, strange clothing for such a cold night. He was saying something, but I was filled with such a mixture of terror and excitement I could barely hear him. “What?” I said.
“Very few buses this late on Sunday,” he said. He seemed unconcerned, and as I came closer and could smell him I realized that he had been drinking for a while. “Take a half hour for the next one."
It proved to be over an hour. I felt nervous standing near someone so unpredictable, but he did not make any more sudden moves. The town I lived in was so small, and I was usually indoors so early, that I had forgotten how to deal with people like him, had lost whatever edge I'd once had.
It was after midnight when I finally got home and went to bed. I could not sleep, though; when I closed my eyes I saw wisps of white gathe
ring in the darkness, and I would come awake, my heart pounding.
On Mondays the people who work in the library always ask each other how their weekends were. I don't know why they continue to ask me, since my days off are horribly dull; I usually spend them gardening or reading or listening to music. Today they joked about how tired I looked, what a wild weekend I must have had. Amy said nothing, but I saw her eyes on me a few times, as if she wanted to ask me a question. To be honest, I wouldn't have known how to answer her; anything I said would have sounded crazy. Would have been crazy, for all I knew.
I worked on the circulation desk that day, giving each returned book a surreptitious shake before putting it away, trying not to scowl at the patrons when they asked for information or directions. But there was nothing in any of the books, not even the scraps of torn paper people use for bookmarks. I kept glancing at my watch, willing the time to pass; I was almost certain that I would find the next clue only after everyone had gone home.
Finally the library closed, and I locked the door and made my usual rounds. For a long time I found nothing, and I grew more and more discouraged as I went on. Then one of the books surrendered a piece of paper: a napkin with an address printed at the bottom. In the blank space someone had drawn a row of beads, curving upward like a smile. A pearl necklace.
The place was in Oakland; I'd been right about that, at least. There was no zip code, of course; they hadn't existed in 1938. I hurried to the computer and looked up the address, then linked to a site that showed me which bus to take.
Something glimmered near the history shelves, as pale as snow. I turned, and in that moment I saw her plain, a woman made of pearl and paper, coalescing out of the darkness. A cold wind came up, bringing the smell of old books.
I could feel her need, her desire to be avenged. I took a step toward her, trying to ignore the thrill of terror that ran through my veins. She vanished slowly, like mist.
Thoughts of her intruded as I tried to sleep that night. What had Selwyn done? Perhaps he had joined the Communist Party, like a lot of people in the thirties. Or maybe he had embezzled money; it was the Depression, after all, and he needed to pay for all those theater tickets and drinks at the Pearl. Hadn't Lilyanna said she liked his generosity?
I had a dark thought then. Had she blackmailed him? You could certainly read the note that way, as Lilyanna asking for money. “Unless your boss should come to hear about it,” she'd said. And “if you're as careful as you say you are."
I got up and studied the photo again. No, I couldn't believe it—no one who looked like that could stoop to blackmail.
I set out all I had of Lilyanna: the photo, the pearl, the note, the napkin. For the first time I noticed a stain at the corner of the napkin, a small spot of red. Was it blood? No, of course not. It was much more likely to be food, or lipstick.
But I couldn't stop thinking about the two of them, what they had done. Had Selwyn grown tired of her demands for money and finally killed her? Or had she killed him? Either would explain her urgency, and the fear I sometimes felt in her presence. Her story was darker than I had supposed.
When I got to work the next day I put the photograph on my desk before I did anything else. I couldn't stop staring at it, drawn over and over again to that pale face, those imperious eyes.
The sun came out in the afternoon, that strange California weather that refuses to relinquish summer, even in October. It relaxed me for a moment, and when Amy knocked at my office I looked up, glad of the distraction. I was not so relaxed, though, to forget the picture, and I eased it under a magazine as she stepped inside.
“Are you busy?” she asked.
“No, no,” I said. “What is it?"
“A kid just asked me for The Lying Bitch and HerWardrobe,” she said.
I laughed. “What did you say?"
“Well, I took him to the C.S. Lewis section, but that wasn't the book he wanted. I think he was expecting something else."
We talked for a while about the odd requests we had gotten (The Four Horsemen of the Acropolis, Color MePurple), and I asked her how the dog was, and we discussed library business. When she left I realized with a start that an hour had passed, and that I had barely thought of Lilyanna. How could I have forgotten her? I felt horrified, guilty. I felt like a knight who had been sent out on a quest by his lady-love and who had strayed from the path, diverted by pleasures of the flesh or good company.
But my fear was growing, fear of what I might find, and of Lilyanna, too. I was out of my depth, had stumbled into a quarrel not my own. What if she had murdered someone, what then?
I started to shiver. But I was sweating too; my palms were damp with it. What had I gotten myself into? Who was Lilyanna to come into my life like this? She had snared me with a photograph, beguiled me with trinkets—with the dead past, things that never changed. She had seen how steadfast I would be, that I would never change. Amy's doors had never closed for me; they had never been opened.
I welcomed the anger; it drove out the terror I felt. Perhaps I wouldn't go to the Pearl that night. Why should I be the one to revenge her? I had my own life to live, after all.
One of the aides came through, shouting that the library would close in fifteen minutes. The hell with it, I thought. I stood, my heart pounding, and went to the children's section. My fear rose again and I pushed it away, tried to ignore it.
I waited until Amy finished helping a kid with her homework; then I said, “Would you like to go to dinner with me tonight?"
She looked surprised, and a bit wary. “All right,” she said.
The room grew colder. The children fell silent for once, as if they felt it too. A blur of white moved in the corner and took on shape.
Amy was saying something, and I forced myself to pay attention. “Oh, wait. Don's going to be late tonight—I have to feed the kids."
“I could meet you when you're done. How about seven?"
“That would be good."
Lilyanna turned toward me, her face filled with sorrow. She faded slowly and disappeared.
“Seven, then,” I said, and went back to the circulation area.
The aides folded up the newspapers, straightened the chairs, and went home. The last patron left; then Amy came out from the children's area, and I held the door open for her, smiling.
What would I do until seven? I locked the door and walked through the empty rooms, shutting off lights as I went. I could feel Lilyanna's absence throughout the library. I picked up a pile of books, brought them back to the bin.
I felt as if I had been living in a lurid nightmare the past few days, and that I had finally woken up. Lilyanna had seduced me with beauty and mystery, but in the end I had chosen life over death. I would never find out who Selwyn was, what had happened between him and Lilyanna, and I knew I would always wonder about it, but at the moment it seemed a small loss.
I turned out the last light and headed toward the door. A shape flew at me out of the darkness, white as a shroud, its mouth red as blood. I ran for the door, but it was locked. I fumbled for my keys.
Copyright © 2007 Lisa Goldstein
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
DISTANT REPLAY
by Mike Resnick
"Congrats to Asimov's on its thirtieth birthday. It's been a pleasure to be associated with the magazine as a reader, and an honor to be associated with it as a writer. Here's to another thirty years!"—Mike Resnick
According to Locus, Mike Resnick has won more awards for short science fiction than any other writer, living or dead. His last Asimov's story, “Down Memory Lane” (April/May 2005), was a Hugo nominee and recently won Spain's Ignotus Award. His latest novel, from Pyr, is Starship: Pirate.
The first time I saw her she was jogging in the park. I was sitting on a bench, reading the paper like I do every morning. I didn't pay much attention to her, except to note the resemblance.
The next time was in the supermarket. I'd stopped by to replenish my
supply of instants—coffee, creamer, sweetener—and this time I got a better look at her. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. At seventy-six, it wouldn't be the first time that had happened.
Two nights later I was in Vincenzo's Ristorante, which has been my favorite Italian joint for maybe forty years—and there she was again. Not only that, but this time she was wearing my favorite blue dress. Oh, the skirt was a little shorter, and there was something different about the sleeves, but it was the dress, all right.
It didn't make any sense. She hadn't looked like this in more than four decades. She'd been dead for seven years, and if she was going to come back from the grave, why the hell hadn't she come directly to me? After all, we'd spent close to half a century together.
I walked by her, ostensibly on my way to the men's room, and the smell hit me while I was still five feet away from her. It was the same perfume she'd worn every day of our lives together.
But she was sixty-eight when she'd died, and now she looked exactly the way she looked the very first time I saw her. I tried to smile at her as I passed her table. She looked right through me.
I got to the men's room, rinsed my face off, and took a look in the mirror, just to make sure I was still seventy-six years old and hadn't dreamed the last half century. It was me, all right: not much hair on the top, in need of a trim on the sides, one eye half-shut from the mini-stroke I denied having except in increasingly rare moments of honesty, a tiny scab on my chin where I'd cut myself shaving. (I can't stand those new-fangled electric razors, though since they've been around as long as I have, I guess they're not really so new-fangled after all.)
It wasn't much of a face on good days, and now it had just seen a woman who was the spitting image of Deirdre.
When I came out she was still there, sitting alone, picking at her dessert.
“Excuse me,” I said, walking up to her table. “Do you mind if I join you for a moment?"
Asimov's SF, April-May 2007 Page 20