by R.J. Ellory
‘Hi there.’
Annie looks up.
Doctor Jim Parrish stands over her and he’s smiling so wide she thinks his face might break in two.
For a moment she doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what to feel.
‘Your book,’ she says, her tone sharp, a little brusque.
‘Jeez,’ he replies. ‘It wasn’t that bad, was it?’
She smiles. Relax, she thinks. Relax goddamnit!
‘So how’re you doing?’ he asks, and sits down beside her.
She nods, tries to smile, but she’s aware of the tension in her face and knows how pained she must look.
She glances sideways at him.
He smiles. It is a good smile. A genuine smile. It isn’t the smile of a stalker or a serial rapist.
‘You don’t remember me from the last time, do you?’ he says.
Annie raises her eyebrows, she scans his functionally handsome face, wonders what he could mean.
‘Not here at St Luke’s,’ he says. ‘Not when you were the drunk falling over woman –’
Annie frowns. Now she feels embarrassed, really embarrassed.
‘I saw you another time as well,’ he goes on. ‘In Starbucks a while back, and obviously I made a very significant impression on you because you didn’t recognize me at all.’
‘That was you?’ she says, remembering the incident as if it were yesterday, suddenly relieved that something has managed to find its way out of her mouth.
Annie smiles more naturally, a little less embarrassed, though in all honesty she can’t think of any reason why she should feel embarrassed. Perhaps because she has earned herself a reputation – at least with one other human being in Manhattan – as the drunk falling over woman.
She counters the situation with an artful and spontaneous defence. ‘Well, I can imagine you can’t remember my name,’ she says.
‘Annie O’Neill,’ he replies.
She is genuinely surprised.
‘You have an easy name,’ he says. ‘It rhymes with Ally McBeal.’
She laughs again. It is a ludicrous moment, and yet somehow oddly life-affirming. There have been other moments like this recently – Sullivan appearing at two in the morning carrying a bucket of southern-fried chicken, a little kid on the porch stoop a week or so ago who asked her if she was looking forward to Christmas as much as he was …
‘You got me,’ Annie says, smiles, nods. ‘You get a cigar for that, but only a twenty-five cent stogie, none of those hand-rolled Havana babies.’
Parrish leans back on the seat. ‘So did you read the book?’
She shakes her head. ‘No, to be honest, I didn’t read it.’
‘So how come you brought it back?’
Annie doesn’t answer the question. She looks at the clock on the wall and feels herself blushing.
There is a stilted silence between them, brief – no more than a heartbeat – but she feels the tension with that moment.
‘How’s your store?’ he asks.
‘You remember that as well?’
He nods. ‘Sure I remember … told you first and foremost I was a reader. Actually planned to come down there and check the place out but never made it for some reason.’
Annie looks at him. There is something else here. And then she remembers the moment she saw him in Starbucks, the anecdote Sullivan had shared with her before. The moment. The moment. She shrugs it away.
‘So what you got there?’ he asks, pointing towards the copy of Breathing Space she is clutching.
Annie holds out the book. ‘Something called Breathing Space.’
‘The Levitt one?’ he asks, in his tone an element of surprise.
Annie frowns. ‘Yes … Nathaniel Levitt.’
‘Hell, I thought they stopped printing that years ago.’
Annie shrugs. ‘I don’t know … it was something my father left for me. It’s very old.’
‘You know who he was of course?’ Jim Parrish asks.
Annie shakes her head. ‘Some guy … some writer from the eighteen hundreds.’
Parrish smiles. ‘He was Old Hickory’s brother … Nathaniel Levitt was a pseudonym.’
‘Old Hickory?’
‘Andrew Jackson, seventh I think … yes, seventh president of the United States; served two terms between 1829 and 1837.’
‘How the hell d’you know this stuff?’ Annie asks.
Parrish shrugs. ‘Hell, I don’t know … maybe I really need a hobby.’
She laughs, holds the book in her hand, turns it over as if seeing it in a new light. ‘So this was printed when Andrew Jackson was president of the United States.’
‘Well, not actually printed of course, but at least written when he was president.’
Annie shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says, opening the book. ‘It says inside … printed in 1836 by a company called Hollister & Sons of Jersey City, bound by Hoopers of Camden …’
Parrish leans forward, his face intent. ‘No shit,’ he says, almost under his breath. ‘Can I see?’
‘Sure,’ Annie says, and holds out the book.
Parrish takes it carefully, reaching for it as one would reach for the hand of a baby.
He looks it over, opens the cover and reads the handwritten inscription, touches the print with his fingertips.
‘Your store?’ he asks. ‘You sell rare and antique books?’
‘No,’ Annie replies. ‘Just your regular paperbacks and stuff.’
‘And you know what you have here?’
She shakes her head. ‘A book called Breathing Space by Andrew Jackson’s brother?’
‘Right … right,’ Parrish says, his manner really quite distracted. ‘But you know what this is?’
He looks at her, in his hand the book, on his face an expression of such intensity that Annie wonders what is going on.
‘So?’ she asks, holding out her hand for him to return the book.
‘They printed maybe three, four hundred in all,’ Parrish says. ‘And as far as literature goes it isn’t a great deal to write home about … but the historical significance.’ He pauses for a moment, looks directly at Annie. His expression is like a parent having serious words with a child. ‘Don’t take this out again Miss O’Neill –’
‘Annie,’ she says. ‘Call me Annie … anyone who knows me well enough to refer to me as the drunk falling down woman can call me Annie.’
‘Well, don’t take it outside your house again Annie, I’m serious. Take it back and wrap it up and go stick it in a security deposit box someplace.’
Annie frowns.
‘Six, seven years ago,’ Parrish says. ‘Sotheby’s, here in New York … they sold one of these, a first edition by Levitt, for something in the region of a hundred and twenty-five grand.’
Annie looks at Parrish. Looks down at the book. Her mouth is open, her eyes wide.
‘You didn’t know?’ Parrish asks.
Annie shakes her head. ‘Give me that again.’
‘That book you have … a copy of that book sold for a hundred and twenty-five grand at Sotheby’s about six or seven years ago.’ Parrish shook his head. ‘Now? Well now I don’t know, but I figure maybe you’d fetch something closer to two hundred.’ He smiles, wide like a kid. ‘What did your father write in there?’
Annie shakes her head. She looks down at the book.
Slowly, almost cautiously, she opens the cover. She can feel the weight of it in her hand.
Never has it felt so heavy.
Like the weight of my heart, she thinks.
She traces her finger slowly over the words her father wrote –
Annie
– a father she believed she would never know the truth of –
for when the time comes
– and now – finally – realizes that the truth has been almost too much to believe.
Dad. 2 June 1979.
She is in denial. Her mind cannot stretch far enough to take this in. She stands up, starts to walk away f
rom the chair where she was sitting, and then she stops, turns back.
‘You doing anything?’ she asks Jim Parrish.
‘Right now?’
‘Right now.’
Parrish shakes his head. ‘No, nothing special … why?’
‘Come see the store … come see the store and have some dinner with me.’
Parrish raises his eyebrows. He’s still got his kid-grin all over his face. ‘You asking me out?’
Annie smiles, starts laughing again. ‘Sure I am … why the fuck not? You only get one chance at this kind of thing, right?’
‘I s’pose you do,’ Parrish says, and catches her up. ‘Okay … I don’t remember the last time I was asked out, but I’m coming … and before anything else is said I want you to know I’m not coming because of the money, right?’
Annie O’Neill starts to laugh, and then he is beside her, and she is putting the book back in her purse, and together they walk out of the E.R. and into the street.
She turns left, Jim Parrish alongside now, Annie smiling, starting to laugh, and the wind that catches her – bitter and resentful though it is – carries that sound all the way down to Cathedral Parkway.
R.J. ELLORY is the author of eleven novels, including the bestselling A Quiet Belief in Angels, which was The Strand Magazine’s Thriller of the Year, shortlisted for the Barry Award, and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He is also the author of City of Lies, Candlemoth, A Quiet Vendetta, The Anniversary Man, A Simple Act of Violence, Saints of New York, and the e-book original series Three Days in Chicagoland.
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Jacket design by Anthony Morais
Jacket photograph © / Alamy
Author photograph © Les Pictographistes
Printed in the United States Copyright © 2015 The Overlook Press
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