A Slepyng Hound to Wake

by Vincent McCaffrey

  The day Benny had finished with the truck, Henry had driven it over to Brookline for a visit. His father had looked at it long and hard. There was no irritation, only bemusement. Then he had criticized it for being a toy. He had said, “Your mother would get a kick out of it, though. She always loved that old truck of Mac’s.”

  Henry parked the truck at the garage with Benny and went home. There were book orders waiting, and he answered some email. The afternoon heat had softened him, and he had begun to feel sleepy.

  When Sasha knocked lightly on the door, it startled him. She appeared wide-eyed and worried.

  “Hello …” She took a deep breath, as if trying to calm herself. “Can you help me, please? I’m sorry. I should call the police. But I don’t want to if I don’t have to.”

  Henry motioned for her to come in, but she remained at the door. He asked her what the problem was.

  “Frank, my ex-boyfriend, is stalking me.”

  Henry shook his head to sober himself. “Where? When did it happen?”

  Her eyes widened further to the whites all around. “Last week. Yesterday—there’s someone outside now. He’s watching. I can feel it.”

  “Frank?”

  “Or someone else. He has friends. He’s angry I left him. He’s afraid I’ll start seeing someone else. He is very jealous.”

  Henry imagined a jealous Frank barging into his apartment and finding the picture on the wall.

  “But you said now. Is he watching you now?”

  There was still sunlight mixing into the leaves of the trees beyond the window. It seemed an unlikely time for stalking.

  She nodded.

  Henry went down the steps as quickly as he could, barely getting the latch on the screen door open before he burst through. The street was as empty as it had been when he came home. Most people were still at work or on summer vacation.

  He walked around the corner and then back through the gate and around the house. The mother of one of the kids he had once waged an hour-long snowball fight with during the winter was pinning laundry up on the line on her back porch.

  “Excuse me, have you seen anyone hanging around?”

  “Just you.”

  “Thanks.”

  He turned to go.

  “And the guy in the big blue car. He sat over there near the corner for at least an hour. He’s gone now.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “Like a guy in a car.”

  “Thanks.”

  Henry asked Sasha what color car her ex-boyfriend had. She told him it was blue. He told her to call Frank and tell him to stop or she would call the police. She promised she would after protesting that she never wanted to speak to him again.

  With that interruption over, Henry spent the next hour researching some titles he had noticed at Alcott & Poe. At least one was a nice item—signed by the author. It had seemed under-priced, and there was no entry for it on the store website.

  Another knock on his door was quick, almost sharp. Unfamiliar. He wondered who it was and had already decided it was Sharon before he saw her standing there with a oversized box in her arms.

  Her lips parted and bowed, as if unsure of her words, before she spoke.

  “There are two more in the car. Can you get them?”

  Her earlier scowl was gone. Henry reached for the first box, which appeared much too heavy for her, but she walked past him instead, and Henry went down the stairs. When he returned she was standing in front of Sasha’s picture.

  “Do you know her?”

  Henry stacked all three boxes by his desk.

  “Neighbor.”

  “Oh.”

  The sound of the “oh” carried something more in content.

  “Just a friend,” he added.

  “Oh.” She said it again, and sighed as if tired from her effort, but there was no sign of sweat.

  “Would you like something to drink? I’ve got—orange juice. Beer. Milk .…” His mind ran over the short list of things again, looking for something he had forgotten.

  “Thank you. Water would be good.” Her lips parted in a half smile.

  He put ice in a glass and ran it from the tap.

  When he returned, she was fingering the odds and ends he had collected on the windowsill near his chair.

  “What are these?”

  Henry picked one up. “Chestnuts. They lose their shine when they dry out.”

  “What are they good for?”

  He put it back with the others. “Memory.”

  “Do you grind them up?”

  “No. I mean, they’re just there to remind me of something.”

  “A girl?”

  “… Yes.”

  She smiled and sniffed. “Men are sentimental over the oddest things.”

  Only when she sat down on the couch did he realize he had forgotten to ask her to sit. Henry sat in the relative safety of the Morris chair. What he had immediately noticed was that the top of her dress was barely supported by the slight rise of her breasts. She was not wearing a bra. He was sure she had been wearing one at the store. Perhaps the heat had its effect.

  He said, “Thanks for bringing the books over. You didn’t have to. I told Barbara I’d come back tomorrow.”

  She laughed at his words as if he’d made a joke. “I wanted to do it. I felt bad about this morning. I growled at you when you were trying to find the books. I know you were just trying to help. I’ve been a little too touchy. I’m sorry.”

  He said, “It’s okay.” But he was not sure of that.

  She smiled now as if slightly ashamed and adjusted herself on the couch, shifting in his direction. He noticed her lips again. Why did they appear to be so soft? The color had changed. And he could smell perfume he had not noticed in the office at the bookstore—something French, he guessed—not at all flowery. She looked down at her glass of water, giving him free rein to see what he wished.

  She said, “We haven’t had a chance to talk more about James’ book. I wondered what you might have found out.”

  As she spoke, she shifted again, but this time she had reached the end of the couch, in the full light of the window. She did not look like she had recently come from a room full of dust and leather rot. She might have just dropped by from a shopping trip to Bloomingdale’s.

  He said, “Not a lot. Nothing new. I’ve written several people in New York. Emailed them, actually—editors who may have seen the work. No one seems to keep reading lists more than a few months at most. No one has any correspondence with James that they can locate. I contacted the people on the list you gave me, using my own company name, to see if I might get more of a response from them than you got. Nothing—actually, a couple of people are annoyed that we’ve contacted them more than once.”

  She responded quickly to that. “That’s just too bad …” then her eyes raised toward the ceiling as the sound of Sasha’s violin edged the silence with a squeal of bowing.

  “Sasha.” His eyes went to the picture.

  “Oh,” she said.

  Sharon crossed her legs. As thin as she was, her legs were her best asset after her face, and he could see most of them now. He cleared his throat. He was annoyed with himself for feeling so tense. His voice was a little too loud for the distance between them.

  “I’ve spoken twice with Boyle. He’s getting more and more protective of Mr. Duggan. I think he figures we want to wear them down. He wants to put an end to it sooner than later. He’s pushing for depositions.”

  “I received one of those letters,” she said.

  “But without an actual legal proceeding pending, there’s no reason to go along with that.”

  She shook her head. Her short hair flared in the light. “I told him no.”

  “Good.” Henry said. He was not sure the word actually made it beyond his throat.

  “I am very appreciative of the help you’ve been giving me.” Her voice had changed now, lowering so that he expected her to reveal something he must keep
to himself. The violin picked up its tempo, repeating the same notes over and again. “I know you’re taking the books on to be helpful … I really am grateful.”

  It was the pitch of her voice which had changed, like the low notes on the violin.

  Henry worked at keeping his focus. “I’m planning to talk to Duggan soon. I’m going to try to see him without Boyle. I think Boyle is holding things up. Duggan would just as soon make some kind of offer and have it over with.”

  “You’ve given this a lot of your time.”

  She sat forward on the couch, her bare leg close enough to his now for him to feel the warmth, even on this hot afternoon. Her blouse gaped.

  He was sure he could see the tip of her tongue at the edge of her teeth. He said, “It hasn’t been a problem. Business has been a little slow for me as well.” He knew for certain he was under attack again. And an odd thought made him smile. He thought of reading the Hornblower novels when he was younger, and the Patrick O’Brian books just a few years ago. He was thinking about how they brought the ships in close for battle, fired a broadside and then closed enough to board the other.

  The pale blue of her eyes was unreadable as she answered. “Anyway. I apologize for the way I acted today,” she said.

  She touched his hand where it folded over the end of the armrest.

  Henry looked for something to say. “Things don’t seem to be getting any easier with time.” He was unsure of exactly what he meant.

  Sharon shifted forward just a bit more. “No. I’m wearing a little thin. I need your support. I need someone to help … I don’t know how Barbara puts up with me.”

  Barbara! The safety of a reachable shore presented itself. He said, “She’s a rock.”

  Sharon offered a hint of pity in her voice. “She is, but even she’s starting to show signs of wear.”

  Henry answered with a little more confidence. “She’ll handle it.”

  Sharon sat back just an inch or two. The delicate blond hairs of her eyebrows arched. “Why are you so sure?”

  “Positive. I know her pretty well.” Henry felt his footing.

  Sharon shrugged. “People change.”

  Henry started a laugh. It sounded like a nervous laugh to him, and he swallowed it.

  “That’s exactly what Barbara and I were talking about. But, maybe, change is too strong a word. People grow. Most people grow,” he said. “I’m not so sure about myself.” He head shook once as if to deny his comment.

  “And you’re not worried about Barbara?”

  “No.”

  The bow was drawn slowly over the strings of the violin in one small moan.

  Sharon moved away just a bit more. “She has made remarks lately … It’s difficult in my position to be as sympathetic as I want to be. Everything I have is in her hands.”

  Henry straightened himself with the opportunity. “Good hands. She’ll pull it out. She might have to recreate the store a little—”

  Sharon shook her head at him. “You mean move it.” Her voice had risen with the violin to the middle strings.

  “Yes—”

  “It would cost too much.” The note was flat. She straightened now.

  He tried to sound reassuring. “Not if it’s planned well.”

  She sat back again as if the thought exhausted her. “It would be a disaster. It would break us.”

  He was curious at her certainty. “What would you do instead?”

  Her answer was ready, as if already spoken many times.

  “Change the mix. Add remainders. Get rid of all the older novels that no one reads anymore. Put in some sidelines. We’re on Newbury Street, for heaven’s sake. Everyone has side-lines. More cards. T-shirts, CDs, DVDs.”

  Her lips had thinned and pressed together. Henry let a second of silence pass as he studied her face.

  “Barbara is a bookseller. She can’t do that very well if she’s ordering games and posters.”

  “It’s what people want.”

  “She’s not interested in giving people what they want. She wants to offer them the best she can. She wants them to discover something better. If they don’t buy it, so be it. She’d rather fail at doing what she thinks is right.”

  “That’s foolish. We could lose everything!”

  The top strings of Sasha’s violin could be heard, played softly, as if at a great distance.

  Henry sat forward now. “It’s idealistic. But it’s worked for her in the past. It’s what she knows. What she loves. And she wants to find a way to keep doing it. That’s the only future she wants.”

  Sharon shook her head only once, but without doubt. “It won’t work. It’s a slow suicide.”

  Henry answered. “Barbara will work it out. She’s a survivor.”

  The violin suddenly screamed. It sounded like a cry from the street.

  Chapter Sixteen

  He was hungry.

  He had hit several of his favorite book haunts and found nothing. With most of the students gone for the summer, fewer books were showing up. No book auctions. No calls to look at an estate in more than a week.

  And now Della was not answering her phone. He had left a message. He was in the mood for a hot pastrami at Michael’s Delicatessen, but it was a long trek to Brookline by himself. It would be a lot more fun if Della wanted to go to the Coolidge for a movie, so they could grab some food at Michael’s on the way. He wanted a hot pastrami. He did not care what the temperature was in the sun. And he wanted to see Della. And keep it simple.

  Henry turned toward Harvard Square. There was always Ellen. He could stop by and see Ellen at the Widener Library about de-acquisitions. He had been meaning to do that for weeks. They were always disposing of something they should be keeping. The rumors of rare volumes and alumni gifts buried in warehouses for years only to end up in auctions to raise more money for some new expansion were a reality he had often benefited from. Public announcements were often limited. The auction listings seldom gave the source in cases like that, lest it raise a protest from an alumni family. They always assumed their gifts would be kept. Year after year.

  He usually did better at those sales, because he was not always going against collectors with deep pockets. His inside source was Ellen. Ellen was a sweetheart. It was too bad she was married.

  The wall surrounding Harvard Yard shut out the noise of traffic as suddenly as the old trees cooled the air. As much as he would always be just a visitor to those precincts, he liked them. It was the one area of Harvard University that still carried the ghost of a past devoted to books, and perhaps some remnant of a present devotion to learning. The Widener, a great granite twentieth century mausoleum amidst the quaint brick buildings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was even yet, at least for the most part, a library, and a home for books, and a place for study.

  He was stopped at the desk and then directed to a phone. The old days of making his own way downstairs to Ellen’s office were over. Just another change since September 11th. On the phone a recording told him she was on vacation.

  The feeling of being at loose ends was suddenly overwhelming. Maybe he would stop at Bartley’s instead and get a burger. Della could be anywhere. She could even be out somewhere with Bob. There was no use in starving to death. He was not anxious to be home by himself, and this thought upset him as well. He usually enjoyed being by himself.

  Remainders displayed in the window of the Harvard Bookstore were the same as the week before. He walked on, his irritation filling his stomach.

  A small gathering of tattooed self-mutilators and lost souls clung to the shade at the edge of the brick-lined pit near the subway entrance. One passed a small joint to a friend, the smell of the grass reaching beyond the haze around them. In the quiet of the heat, no cops were within sight. Henry’s mood worsened.

  At the corner Japanese tourists holding maps pointed to the brick wall of Harvard Yard and asked him to take their picture. Traffic was light. The air had taken on the baked smell of an oven, the sk
y was a soiled blue of haze.

  And now he was thirsty as well. But he wouldn’t be going to the Blue Thorne today. Albert had called to say that his old boss Myron had passed. Albert would be busy for a couple of days. There would be no fun in drinking beer alone. And Tim might take the chance to tell Henry some other tale of woe. There was always some other tale of woe to tell. Henry had had enough woe.

  He dropped down the steps to grab a program at the Brattle Theatre, and then kept walking as he read through a disappointing line-up of shows repeated once too often over the years. The last fragments of the happy disposition he had begun the day with crumbled. At an empty intersection, he looked with sour impatience at a red light, waiting for the change instead of taking advantage of the lack of traffic because it used just a little more time. Perhaps Della would be back from where she had gone by the time he got home.

  Still a block from the apartment, his eyes picked up on the dark blue of a car just beyond the turn to his own street, parked in the shade. He did not recognize it as belonging to one of the neighbors. A Ford Crown Victoria. He walked on as casually as he could, his eyes scanning the area for Sasha’s boyfriend. He wondered what her Frank would look like.