A Slepyng Hound to Wake

by Vincent McCaffrey

  They may have both followed the same drummer in the end, but there was more difference between Eddy and himself than they had in common. Henry had been a difficult and reluctant student, while Eddy had been the favorite of almost all his teachers. Rejecting what little authority he could find, Henry had refused to go to college, or even into the army. Eddy had been stationed in Germany and received a scholarship to NYU. After three years of odd jobs in high school, it took Henry little time to know what he wanted when he found it. It was on the base in Germany that Eddy had really discovered drugs, not on the streets of New York. Eddy had flunked out of NYU in his second year, his mind numbed by heroin.

  Yet none of Eddy’s book was an apology. There were no excuses. Eddy had lived his own life and paid the bill. He was thankful. He was not bitter, or resentful, or jealous. He had his chances.

  The thought occurred to Henry that Eddy Perry was a better man than himself. It was a thought he could not shake.

  The brownstone of the building on Arlington Street was melting with the years of weather, every detail rounded like a sand castle. The front steps had been replaced with mud-colored cement in an attempted match, but were square and edgy in harsh contrast.

  The door to the building was locked. A nicely hand lettered sign above a wide brass-lipped slot commanded, leave all packages here. There were three buttons followed by names. Tremont Press was at the top. Henry went out to the sidewalk and looked up at the face of the small building again. There was nothing to see but decorative blinds. A thick clot of traffic from Storrow Drive gushed into Arlington Street behind him with the change of the traffic light. He heard a horn and turned.

  A UPS delivery truck had stopped a few doors away, and a driver in a Toyota was upset at getting caught behind.

  Henry went back to the door and pushed the top button. A voice cracked through a small brass grill.

  “Yes.”

  He said, “UPS.”

  The buzzer sounded and Henry opened the door. The first-floor offices were closed behind carved mahogany. Brass plates offered the name of a law firm Henry had heard of, Boyle and Doyle. He imagined this was the origin of many water-cooler jokes. He started up the stairs. Behind him he heard a noise. The brown shirt of a UPS driver was visible through the glass of the door. Henry moved faster. On the second floor, doors were open, but a plastic sign announced the offices of the Pine Comb Charitable Fund. A secretary looked suspiciously over her glasses at him and asked if she could help. He pointed upward and continued to climb.

  On the third floor a single door offered a name in small letters. tremont press.

  Behind him he could hear heavy steps on the stairs.

  Henry opened the door.

  There, facing him in a large room of unoccupied desks, each overflowing with manila envelopes and piles of correspondence, was the amazingly endowed redhead from Fenway Park.

  Chapter Eight

  “So what happened?”

  Della was impatient. He had begun the story at the wrong turn of events. He leaned back farther in his chair and switched the telephone to the other ear.

  “You’ve got to read it. I can’t tell you everything. But you know he ended up in Boston. You know that. And then I got this idea.”

  “You people are all weird. I think it’s the mildew. It’s the spores of the mildew in the old books that gets into your brains and starts rotting you from the inside out.”

  “A pleasant thought.”

  “You’re supposed to be a bookseller. You’re not Humphrey Bogart. If you want another job, you should get something that actually pays a salary.”

  Logic had no place in this, he thought. This was a matter of reason.

  “This way I can kill two birds with one stone.”

  He immediately heard his father’s voice in his head warning him about “a lazy man’s load.” Carrying too much was as bad a carrying too little. Della heard something else.

  “An unfortunate turn of phrase. The redhead will have you arrested. UPS will have you in jail.”

  “They can’t do anything. I told him I just said yes, not UPS. The redhead just misunderstood, with the truck sitting outside and the noise.”

  “I’ll bet she bought that. You look like a sneak thief to me.”

  She was being flip. This was important.

  “The problem is, you should see the place. The UPS guy was carrying in ten or twelve packages—I could tell they were all manuscripts. FedEx envelopes were stacked a foot deep on some of those desks. Eddy’s book would just get lost in there. But if Barbara’s idea about Duggan is right—”

  “Barbara has given you too many ideas already. I thought you were staying away from Barbara.”

  “—if Barbara’s right and Duggan is the money behind Tremont, it explains why they can publish so many new writers. That’s why they have such a backlist. They don’t depend on making much of a profit. And that’s why he was at the ballgame with Nora.”

  “I thought she just yelled at you. How did you get her name?”

  “The UPS guy. They know all the girls by their first names. He called her Nora when he came in.”

  “Maybe you should work for UPS. You could meet a few more girlfriends that way. … So what is your idea?”

  If she was not going to be serious, he wouldn’t either.

  “I don’t like to wear shorts.”

  “What kind of idea is that?”

  “The UPS guys all wear shorts.” She was not going to let him get away. “But my idea is to try to get Tremont to publish Eddy’s book.”

  She did not even pause at the revelation. “You have nice legs. You’d look good in shorts. But if this Nora stole the idea from Frankowski’s book and gave it to George Duggan, why would you want them to publish Eddy’s book?”

  “You’d look better in shorts than me. Why is it only the UPS guys that wear shorts? I never see the women drivers wearing shorts.”

  Della blew a breath of exasperation. “I’ve never seen a woman UPS driver. Just the ones for FedEx. Is that because the FedEx packages are smaller?”

  “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t let Tremont have Penny Candy, if that turns out to be what happened. It just gives me a good excuse to try to talk to them. And if it’s all some kind of mistake, then Eddy’s book might get a chance.”

  “What kind of mistake?”

  “I don’t know. I told you Duggan doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would steal somebody else’s ideas.”

  “But, you said you only saw him once before.”

  “Yeah. Well. That was the impression I got.”

  “You trust a guy you only saw at a distance once before. Kind of like love at first sight?”

  A sudden change of tone in her voice worried him.

  “No. He just seemed like a decent guy. Didn’t you ever see somebody you liked right off?”

  “Yes. But it’s causing me a lot of trouble.”

  Henry ignored the remark. “Besides, I don’t have any better ideas.”

  “We could go someplace for dinner.”

  There was a knock at the door—a knock he knew but could not identify.

  “Hold on.”

  He put the phone down and opened the door to the small figure of Sasha. Dressed in what appeared to him to be thin black pajamas, she was carrying a suitcase almost half her size. Her violin case was strapped across her back.

  “I’m locked out. Can I go through your window to the fire escape? I left my kitchen window open. … Mrs. Murray can’t find her key.”

  “Sure.” That was easy enough.

  She had been crying. He could see the puffiness around her eyes. From the telephone he could hear the small thin voice of Della.

  “Who is it? Henry, who is that?”

  Henry opened the kitchen window and moved the plants away. Sasha scampered through with the nimbleness of a child. When he went back to close the door, he lifted the suitcase she had left behind. It seemed far too heavy for her to be carrying. He found h
imself grunting as he pulled it up the stairs to her door. She opened her door as he arrived.

  “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. … It has been a very long day. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He had never seen her apartment before. He stepped forward unconsciously. It was stuffy from lack of use, and sparsely furnished. The polished wood floors were bare except for a large pillow at the center of the living room. Sasha was half Japanese, and the minimal decor was clearly in that direction.

  Astonishingly, on the wall was a life-size photograph of a nude—Sasha—holding her violin to play while seated on the very same pillow now at the center of the floor. With one leg folded beneath and the other extended, her back arched, small breasts almost touching the bottom surface of the polished wood, face tilted to the side toward the camera, mouth open just enough to force her jaw against the edge of instrument, elbows up and out, the fingers of one hand grasping the end of the bow and the fingers of the other curved around the thin neck toward the strings, the pose could have been stolen from a ballet. It had to be the most erotic photograph Henry had ever seen.

  She asked, “You like it?”

  She was smiling, not happily, but showing no embarrassment.

  He said, “It’s beautiful.”

  “I am going to burn it. It was taken by my ex-boyfriend. Ex-Ex-Ex. He is a cheat. He is a creep. I don’t ever want to see him again. And I don’t ever want to see this picture again.”

  She was still smiling. It unsettled him.

  “But it’s so beautiful.”

  “He is a great artist. But he is a creep. You take it.”

  “What?”

  “You take it. It’s yours. I never want to see it again.”

  She lifted it from the wall, her arms spread to full width, and presented the picture to Henry, her smiling face peeking over the top of the frame.

  He took it in both his hands, as if grasping her body, while looking down at the face in the picture with the violin propped hard against the jaw, and then he looked back at the artificial smile on Sasha’s face before him. Then he remembered Della.

  He thanked Sasha several times as she shut the door behind him, took the stairs carefully with the frame tilted to fit the narrowed space, and set the picture upright on the floor against the open wall of his living room wall. The phone was silent when he picked it up.

  He said, “Hello?” There was a moment more of silence before Della answered.

  “What was that all about?”

  “Sasha. The girl on the third floor. She was locked out. I had to help her.”

  “Really. … You are a very helpful sort of person.” Her voice turned on edge. “Do me a favor, will you?”

  “What?”

  There was a pause. Finally a sigh.

  “Never mind. You can’t help yourself. You want to go out to dinner?”

  Henry thought he had better say yes.

  Chapter Nine

  They had first played chess together in 1979. Little had changed since. Then it was on Thursday nights at the small second-floor chess club on Newbury Street where they had first met; a place long since gone. Now it was usually at the Blue Thorn, and any night that Albert needed to get away from Alice, which was often once or twice a week. Then Albert had just graduated from high school and Henry still had two difficult years left. But their strategies had remained the same. Albert always plotted to kill the queen, with the assumption that the king would follow. Henry always took the shortest path to the king.

  “Why did Hannibal wait so long to attack Rome?”

  Albert had asked the question without preparation as he moved his bishop forward, perhaps because of their conversation the week before about James Frankowski’s book, but probably only to distract Henry, because it was just the kind of question that got him going.

  Henry studied the board, hesitating a few times as he stopped himself from making moves he thought better of, and finally answered with the advance of his bishop and his own question.

  “Why did I wait so long to try my luck with Miss Stinson?”

  Albert frowned, grunted, and moved to block the bishop’s next advance with a pawn.

  “I’m serious, now. I’ve always wondered that. … Thousands of miles across rough terrain—this is before the Romans had built their marvelous system of roads, remember—across countless rivers, through the Alps, with elephants—defeating one army after another. He is now at the very gates of Rome. This was the dream of his father’s life, as well as his own—if Hannibal had taken Rome, he would have ruled the world. Scipio would never have been able to organize his troops in Spain in time. And we’ll never know what went on in Hannibal’s head, because his enemies wrote the history books.… You have to take my pawn. You can’t just ignore it.”

  Henry moved quickly in response.

  “I’ll take your knight instead. Your diversion did not work. … But I’m serious too. I’ve thought seriously about Miss Stinson for almost fifteen years. Usually at night.”

  Albert’s frown was frozen in place as he studied the board. Finally he moved his bishop forward again.

  “Miss Stinson … She was the teacher at the Harvard Extension course you took that time. Why didn’t you make a move on her? That wasn’t ancient history. That was Pre-Raphaelites or something, wasn’t it?”

  Albert seemed annoyed now. Henry smiled.

  “Very good. I’ll take your other knight for that.… It was ‘The Conflict and Influence of Carlyle and Emerson on the Pre-Raphaelites and William Morris and the Beginning of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England and America.’ ”

  Albert’s frown broke.

  “Your queen is in check.”

  “Only if you don’t mind losing your king.”

  The frown came back and he grunted.

  “Right … so, what does one thing have to do with the other?”

  “Rome.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ve been there, Albert. I haven’t. According to the books, it’s gorgeous. It was the greatest city in the world. The New York of its age. You think Carthage was so fine? Carthage was a great city, but it was a city of merchants. It was a port city, built by the Phoenicians. It probably looked like any other stinky port city of the time, only bigger. Do you think another city on Earth was so beautiful as Rome in 217 B.C.? This is before the urban sprawl and the hordes of immigrants. This was the Rome of the Republic.”

  Albert sat back from the board without making his move.

  “Hannibal was in awe? You’re saying he was spellbound? He couldn’t bring himself to the final assault because he was agog? He was dazzled? After working that hard all his life to fulfill the dreams of his father and avenge the honor of his country, it wasn’t the walls that held him back, it was awe?”

  Henry could make no move on the board and sat back as well.

  “Miss Stinson—You saw her. That one time you went over there to meet me before the movie. Tell me you can’t still remember her. Tell me you can’t see her in your mind at this very moment.”

  “Right … Maybe you’re right.” Albert shook his head and sat forward to study the board again. “So what happened to her?”

  “She married a hot-shot doctor who was never in awe of anything in his life. I heard somewhere later on that she was engaged again. A lawyer this time… . And I’ll always wonder why I held back. Just like Hannibal.”

  “I think he’s stopped wondering a couple of thousand years ago. … Now your queen is in check.”

  The gloat in Albert’s voice trailed off as Henry moved quickly again.

  “I’ll take your bishop in trade.”

  There was bravado without confidence in Albert’s answer. “Bad trade.… With all that drooling, did you learn anything in her class?”

  Henry leaned back just far enough now to display satisfaction with the eventual outcome of the game.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, but not the point of the class. I got a glimpse of why
the younger generation of 1850 were all rebelling against that hero-worship the Germans were exporting through Carlyle. It was a bag of bones. It was just another religion. All the secular idealism of the eighteenth century—Carlyle was a Scot, you know, a product himself of the Scottish Enlightenment—all of that was being sold down the river by another religion. Hero worship!” Henry kept a straight face. “Hand me that pawn please.”

  Henry moved his knight. Albert sat back with a jerk of his chair. “Crap. How did you do that?”

  “The same way I did it last time.”

  “Last time I beat you,” Albert objected.

  “That was two times ago. That was Thursday. That was after Alice threw the fit ’cause I kept you out all night.”

  “Right … you want another game?”

  “No. I want another beer… . So, what did you do about Alice?”

  “What about Alice?”

  Henry sat back now. “You gonna tell her about every bit of extra money you make under the table? She’s not just upset with me. I don’t even pay you. It’s the other jobs. You’re working too much.”

  Albert rolled his eyes.

  “You know. You don’t give a damn ’cause you don’t have kids. You’ve got no responsibilities. You die, and they’ll dig a hole and dump your stinky books in on top of you and that’ll be that. I have to put something away for a rainy day.”

  Henry persisted. “So. Are you going to listen to her? If you die from overwork are the boys better off?”

  Albert tilted his head at the thought, and then dismissed it.

  “It’s the principle. She’s right about that. I told her. No more under the table.”

  “And you’ll be okay if you lose a few jobs? Some people won’t bring you in, if you won’t work off the sheet. You’ve told me that.”