Book of Dreams

by Bunn, Davis

  “That is not happening.”

  “I can’t guarantee your safety otherwise.”

  “We are not being secreted away. We have work to do.” Elena turned to the others. “Coming?”

  “With all due respect, Dr. Burroughs—”

  She said over her shoulder, “Today’s meeting will take place at noon. As usual.”

  A chalk-blue Ford was parked in front of Elena’s office building when their taxi pulled up. Elena had wanted to walk over but the police had nixed that idea. The Ford had an Enterprise sticker in the rear window. The passenger door yawned open, as though the car were unable to contain Lawrence Harwood’s wrath. He sat and glared through the front window as they approached.

  Sandra, however, rushed over and hugged Elena hard. “Nigel called. I’m so sorry to hear about your house.”

  “It’s good to see you.”

  She glanced worriedly back at her husband. “I wish I could say it was good to be here.”

  Elena nodded. There was no room in the day for false sentiment or empty words.

  Antonio walked over to Lawrence’s open door, leaned over, and said, “Come inside, friend.”

  “There’s nothing for me here. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “I’m sorry. But you’re wrong.”

  Elena felt as though they had all become spectators of something both tragic and wonderful. She watched Antonio take hold of the former ambassador’s arm and pull him from the car. Lawrence swatted futilely at the other man’s hand. “Let go of me.”

  “This is important, Lawrence. Vital.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m doing here. All this is finished.”

  “I’m sorry. But you could not be more wrong.”

  “I’m tired. I want a bath and a bed. My bed.”

  From behind her, Elena heard Shirley Wainwright murmur, “I know that tune.”

  Lawrence said, “I came because she said we had to. Do you know how this looks? Like I ran. I’ve never run from a fight in my entire life.”

  Antonio said, “You are precisely where you need to be.”

  Lawrence glared at the group clustered around Elena’s locked front door. “Who are all these people?”

  “The reason why we are gathered here.”

  “Are you deaf? There’s nothing we can do no matter where we are. It’s over. I’ve lost everything.”

  “Like Elena lost her home? Like Shirley lost her husband? Like I was fired?” Antonio waited long enough to be certain Lawrence was taking this in. “My friend, it has only just begun. Isn’t that right, Elena.”

  She took that as her cue and fished in her purse for her keys. “Let’s all go inside.”

  The families filed in behind them. Shirley set up the coffeemaker on the reception desk. The children raced into the former kitchen and pulled their toys from the cupboards. The families settled down on the sofas and chairs. Some of the men leaned against the side walls. They picked over the crates of books and old magazines.

  Lawrence stood in the doorway to Elena’s office. “What are they doing here?”

  “They have nowhere else to go,” Antonio said. “Come. It’s almost noon.”

  “But there’s no reason for us—”

  “You cannot imagine what has happened over the past twenty-four hours.” Antonio’s smile was enough to silence the former ambassador. “I have witnessed miracles.”

  In the space of time it took for them to gather in Elena’s office, the skies over Oxford turned the color of asphalt. Elena opened the rear windows. Her garden was filled with birdsong and the gentle patter of rain upon new leaves. The air was sweet. She turned off the overhead lights and let the shadows envelop the room. Noise filtered faintly up through the floor from the crèche below.

  Only when she was seated in the little circle did Elena realize this was the first time she had passed her former office and not stared at it in yearning. But she did not have time for that today.

  Nigel Harries entered three minutes before noon. He took a folding chair from the side wall and inserted himself into the group, silent and stiffly formal. They were then joined by Lawrence’s aide, still in Washington. Elena was very relieved to hear from them. She felt a burning need for them all to be a part of whatever was coming next.

  The book was still with the police. Her laptop had been lost to the fire. So there was no image for them to focus on. It did not matter. At all. When the others came on the line, Elena read the Bible passage she had landed upon the night before, from First Chronicles. “‘He answered their prayers because they trusted in him … The battle was God’s.’”

  Then she waited.

  It was Antonio who said, “God spoke to me this morning. I have never known such a communication. It was silent, yet as loud as anything I have ever heard with my ears. It was also unmistakable. And for the first time, I understand. This is not about the banks. Or finance. Or the economy. Those are all just man-made concepts. This is about his people.”

  Elena sat and surveyed the group. In the front rooms there must have been two dozen adults and twice as many children. The din was enormous. The building’s high ceiling and hard walls and absence of drapes turned the space into echo chambers.

  Antonio said, “Those people out there are why God brought us to this place. This is why we have failed, or at least thought we did. Why we have been forced to give up everything. Why we have been brought low. So we can understand. So we can feel.”

  Elena felt as tired as she had ever been in her entire life. Yet she was also more satisfied and fulfilled than she had been since Jason’s death. Here before her was the true reason for it all. She felt as though she surveyed the scene with both her own and heaven’s eyes. The needs and noise and love and healing grace, the ability to serve the one over all, the chance to fill their vacuum, just as hers was filled. Elena felt overwhelmed with the wonder of it all.

  Antonio said, “God has not called us just to lead a commission. He has given us a holy duty, a divine task. We must do what we can to heal these lives and hopes and dreams and families. That is why we are here. To serve.”

  Elena waited long enough to be certain Antonio was finished. Then she said, “A transformation is taking place in us. We do not understand a great deal of what is happening. Even so, it is vital that we remain steadfast. Our eyes and hearts are becoming open. We see what we have successfully avoided. How vast the repercussions are. The toll this tragedy is taking on relationships and families and hope. We see the battlefield. We see the enemy.”

  Lawrence said, “I have not succeeded.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “I don’t know about you. But I didn’t start down this road to fail.”

  “You set the groundwork in place. You have readied yourself. Now God will give us …”

  Elena stopped. She had no choice. The ability to speak was suddenly stripped away.

  She felt as though every one of her senses was heightened to the point where every sensation arrived in exquisite precision. She heard the children’s laughter and a phone ringing and a rumble of male voices. She smelled the rain and the earth and what seemed like the fragrances of individual wildflowers. She heard the creak of a chair, the quiet intake of breath. But what was most intense about that moment was the sense of moving beyond.

  Elena felt as though the room became utterly removed from the rain and the birds and the children’s faint din. A wind swept in and through them, one that did not enter through the open window.

  Elena’s heart blazed in her chest, a great molten surge of force and love and peace. It was impossible that peace could carry the power to strip away her ability even to think. But this peace came and dominated. This love. This certainty.

  There was a gasp from one of the others there with her. And perhaps a sob from another. Elena could not be sure. Perhaps the sound had come from herself. Otherwise the room was silent. And yet, at some level far beyond mere sound, the rushing wind continued. Elena did not need
to hear this to know it was with her, a cleansing flame, a surging rush of power so great it could remain silent, yet dominate everything.

  40

  Throughout her day’s appointments, Elena continuously returned to the moment of revelation. The certainty that she had experienced the divine presence only grew stronger with the passing hours.

  Elena compressed her schedule so there was time to see all the patients she had missed earlier. Each time she ushered one family out and called to the next, she observed an office being transformed.

  Lawrence Harwood was, put simply, a new man. Gone was the latent rage, the regret, the frustration over the choices he had made and those he’d turned away from. All of it so totally vanished that they might as well have never existed. In their place was a leader.

  He and Antonio operated like a pair of generals. They sketched out new duties in terse bullets. They interviewed the families before and after Elena’s sessions. Together they helped the couples more clearly define the problems they faced. They cut through the regret and blame with sparse words and no volume. Lawrence remained quiet and precise and powerful enough to have even the most resentful visitors willing to follow their lead.

  Janine and Sandra set up files and worked the phones, bringing in others required to work through the tangled morass holding the families down—bankers, lawyers, accountants, tax authorities, parole officers, social services. Shirley Wainwright took over the front desk. Nigel Harries hovered on the periphery, patrolling with Gerald and fielding calls of his own. Elena found great comfort in this combined strength. As though her team was forming an entirely new unit of force. A measurable power with the capacity to withstand whatever struck them. Even an eviction notice. Which came at midafternoon.

  Detective Mehan arrived two minutes after the bailiff, who brought four police officers of his own. Mehan had the decency to look ashamed. He explained, “The bailiff’s office received an urgent request via the university, who hold the building’s lease. My office has your name and this address flagged for obvious reasons. Soon as we heard, my chief lodged an official objection, both to the manner and the timing.”

  Lawrence said, “It’s all right, Detective.”

  Antonio said, “There was nothing you could have done.”

  Mehan said, “Our objections were overruled. By whom precisely, we have no idea. All we know is, strings are being pulled in London.”

  Lawrence said, “We’ve been expecting this.”

  “Not this exactly,” Antonio said. “But an obstruction of some form. It was inevitable.”

  Mehan’s head swiveled from one man to the other. They stood just outside the doorway, on a rain-spackled front walk. “Sorry. I’m not following you.”

  “They have to shut us down,” Lawrence said. “And fast.”

  “It’s as much about how this appears as the act itself,” Antonio said.

  “Brutal and sharp,” Lawrence said. “That’s what they’re after.”

  “It sends a message,” Antonio said.

  “Go against them and they’ll crush you,” Lawrence said.

  Elena and Sandra and Shirley and Janine stood crammed together in the doorway. The families clustered behind them. Still more hovered behind Mehan and the bailiff, or farther out where Nigel watched and spoke on his phone. At least, the adults were there. Most of the children had vanished. For them, the bailiff was the boogeyman. Even the littlest ones squirmed in their mothers’ arms and hid their faces.

  The bailiff was a stodgy gentleman in a three-piece suit and steel-framed spectacles. His pudgy cheeks were masked by a walrus mustache that almost met his sideburns. He stamped his feet on the pavement. “I’m not used to being kept waiting, Detective.”

  Fiona chose that moment to step through the next doorway and demand, “What’s going on here?”

  “None of your concern, madam.”

  Elena took one step through the doorway. “It’s all right, Fiona.”

  “I just heard about your house. It’s terrible. Where are you staying?”

  “Kindly go back inside where you belong.” The bailiff had the sonorous drone of a man who enjoyed the sound of his own voice. He turned to Elena and demanded, “Would you be Dr. Elena Burroughs?”

  “I am.”

  “By the powers invested in me through the Oxford Crown Court, I hereby serve you—”

  Fiona protested, “You can’t be evicting her!”

  “Madam, I told you to return—”

  “But her house burned down! Last night!”

  The bailiff motioned to one of the police officers who had accompanied him. “Show her inside. If she resists, detain her.”

  “You are insane. I’ve had loads of experience with your kind. You’re the one needing to be detained! And I know just the place!” The door slammed so hard that it rattled the bailiff’s spectacles.

  At that moment a van weaved through slower-moving traffic halted by the police cars. The van was white and had no rear windows. The BBC News logo was painted in fluorescent shades on the sides and rear door. A radar dish with motor drive lay folded flat against the roof.

  Mehan sighed. “How do those clowns manage to hear so fast?”

  “It’s to be expected,” Lawrence said.

  “They need our humiliation to be as public as possible,” Antonio said.

  “Maximum exposure for maximum effect,” Lawrence said.

  “Otherwise the warning lacks bite,” Antonio said.

  The same newscaster who had interviewed Antonio at the station’s London headquarters emerged from the front passenger seat. Nigel drifted over and inserted himself between the newsman and the bailiff. “That’s quite far enough.”

  “It’s all right,” Lawrence called over. “Let him come.”

  “Most kind,” the newsman said. “I’m Andrew Kerr. We met recently. Might I have a word?”

  “I’ve had just about enough of this.” The bailiff tugged his vest tight over his bulging middle and used the folded papers as he might a sword. “Dr. Burroughs, consider yourself served.”

  The lanky newscaster with the young-old face did quick stand-up interviews with both Antonio and Lawrence while the bailiff cleared the building of families. Kerr’s producer was a tightly wound young woman who hovered around the periphery near Gerald. She flitted forward to whisper instructions to the cameraman, then retreated to the trees and vanished in plain sight. She tried to speak with Sandra, then Elena and Shirley, wanting to know if Andrew Kerr could interview them in hopes of adding background to the story. All three women refused point-blank. The producer slipped back out of range. Clearly she had a lifetime’s experience of being rebuffed.

  Janine spent the entire period on the phone. The only time she paused was when Fiona returned for another blistering exchange with the bailiff, which the cameraman caught on tape. Then Janine walked over and announced, “Everything is arranged. We’re moving our offices into the shelter’s top floor. And Brian says we can all lodge in the vicarage.”

  Sandra Harwood said, “I suppose I should be astonished.”

  “Not today,” Elena said. “Please thank Brian for us all.”

  Elena and Shirley sat on the news van’s rear fold-down seat and followed the others in a taxi. Brian was waiting for them when they pulled up in front of the shelter. He glanced once at the news crew, then ignored them. The defunct store had a full third floor that had been turned into offices and storage. He led them upstairs, introduced them around, got them settled, and stood and observed for a time. Then he had a quiet word with Janine and returned to his office. Whatever he had said left his fiancée glowing.

  Elena caught the late afternoon in ninety-second snatches. Every one of her appointments had transited over from the building on Saint Giles to the derelict store. No one complained about the move, just as none had commented on their hour-long appointments being shortened to twenty minutes. Eighteen and a half, actually, with ninety seconds of downtime between sessions.

 
The store’s creditors had stripped the former offices, kitchen, staff room, and conference areas. Elena could see where wall panels had formerly been bolted into the floor. The creditors had taken the carpet but left the underlay. The gray felt material served as a decent sound baffle. Elena was tucked into a cubby near the storerooms at the back of the vast open chamber. Her space was rimmed by shoulder-high fiberboard panels. The front was open, forming a human stable. Across from her, Antonio occupied another stable. When she finished with her last appointment, she watched him hold a young woman who wept in his arms while an infant bounced a rattle by her feet. Antonio stared over the woman’s shoulder at Elena, his dark eyes glittering. Elena thought the man had never looked more handsome.

  They stopped at half-past six. Brian and Janine and the producer arrived bearing crates of sandwiches and soup and drinks. They ate around a trestle table used for sorting donations. The news crew joined them. As did Gerald, who had lost his jacket and tie and pulled out his shirttail to mask the equipment strapped to his belt. Elena knew she should be exhausted. But her sense of peaceful resolve remained strong enough to defy even this long day.

  When they were done, the newscaster asked if he could do another round with Lawrence. Elena could see the man was about to refuse, and that Sandra wanted to object. But the newscaster cut in with “Here’s the thing, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “We’re still in need of one brief hook to draw all this together. A short sentence that people will carry away with them. Something they will talk about for days to come. Because I must tell you, sir. This afternoon has affected me like few things have.”

  Lawrence bowed his head. Elena found herself swallowing against a constricted throat. It had been such a natural response. Eventually Lawrence lifted his gaze. “All right.”

  They positioned him down by the cubicles and the storeroom. The bare upper floor stretched out behind them. At the far end, Brian and Janine and several helpers from the church began to set out folding chairs and put a white tablecloth on a table by the windows. Brian had decided to hold the evening service in the shelter instead of the church. Between them and the makeshift chapel, a dozen or so people still worked at forms and sorted donations. A male nurse in hospital blues spoke to a mother while her child whimpered on a padded examination table. The rain had cleared, at least momentarily. Late-afternoon sun illuminated the west-facing windows and their paper covers.