Box Nine

by Jack O'Connell

  Woo finally finds the right key on his chain and unlocks the loft. Lenore has a tremendous need to stretch, to push out the muscles of her arms and shoulders, arch her back, roll the whole trunk of her body in a great circle. But she represses the urge and simply huddles inside her coat.

  A lot of people have moved into rehabbed sections of all the old Quinsigamond mills in the past decade or so. His apartment is a middle floor, above a tool and die outfit and below a printing firm. Both shops are out of business, and it appears that Woo might be the only person using the building. Lenore thinks this must give the place a mausoleum-type feel. It doesn’t help that the place is so huge. He’s got about eight hundred square feet of living space, all of it wide open, undivided.

  “The rent is cheaper than what you might think,” he says to Lenore as he pushes two enormous, reinforced metal doors open. They’re like barn doors for housing mechanical horses of some smoggy future. But once she steps inside, she sees a different story. She’s impressed. The room is void of any of the dimness and griminess that always seem to haunt converted lofts. There are three trackways of recessed lighting hidden high in the steel I-beams of the twelve-foot ceilings.

  “Your electric bill must cost a fortune,” Lenore says, staring upward.

  “Not so bad,” Woo answers, locking and bolting the doors with levers and chains. “And it’s well worth it. Gives it a much warmer feeling.”

  Lenore can’t agree with this, though she nods her head. The place is immaculate and scrupulously stylish. It could be the centerfold of some aggressive new architectural magazine for well-educated musicians. But warm is not a word that comes to mind. The ceilings are so high, the gulf of open space so huge, that there’s a hint of a gymnasium feeling. Despite herself, Lenore smells for sweat and old towels.

  “You must have sandblasters come in weekly,” she says, and Woo looks at her, smiling and cocking his head to show he doesn’t quite understand the comment.

  “I mean it feels so clean. So fresh,” she explains. “I’ve been in a few of these redone places and there’s always this feeling. Like there’s a century of grit and brick dust hanging in the air that no amount of scrubbing can get rid of.”

  Woo nods wildly, seeming thrilled with her comment. His arm sweeps upward and his hand waves toward the ceilings. “I had an air quality control system installed when I bought the place. Essential. I’m very happy with it.”

  “You own. So it’s a condo setup.”

  “Something like that,” he says, starting to walk toward a long wall unit of high-gloss black cabinetry made of some material Lenore can’t identify. It doesn’t look like either metal or plastic. There’s a double sink set into the middle of a countertop that juts out, slopelike, wavelike, from below the cabinets. Its faucet is black and bizarre, rising maybe a foot and a half into the air before the head curves over and faces downward. It’s like some sleek water-spewing rattlesnake. Rising out of the floor a few feet in front of the sink is a cutting-block island that holds what looks like a customized built-in espresso maker.

  “I’ll make some tea,” Woo says, and starts to work.

  Lenore follows him to this kitchen area, leans on the island, and studies the rest of the room. Though the walls are all classic red brick, you can’t see much of them. They’re almost all lined, as high as the ceiling supports, with endless sections of bookshelves. It’s all constructed out of the same weird high-tech black material as the kitchen. After every few shelves, up near the top, is an arcing lamp, resembling a streetlight, with its industrial, metallic housing and its War of the Worlds, lined, wide-eyed bulb. Every other lamp is lit and they give off an eerie bluish gleam. Lenore notices one of those old-fashioned wrought-iron rolling ladders found in old libraries. Though she can’t see from this distance, she’s sure it’s workable and she flashes on an image of a naked Woo riding the ladder across his enormous collection of books, arching his body outward away from the walls, letting out a war whoop, possibly drunk, acting like an ass in the privacy of his own factory-home.

  She knows she’s probably seen more books gathered together in one place. But never like this. The local library, for example, must have more books. But they’re arranged in short spurts, aisles, around corners, divided up into separate rooms. Here it feels like Woo has actually used books as his primary building matter, that books make up the walls, house him, keep him safe from the elements. No matter what happens here tonight, she’ll find a way to look at a run of spines, commit a bunch of titles to memory.

  “Did you decorate yourself?” she asks.

  “Mostly,” he says.

  Steam starts to rise out of a kettle built in the shape of a perfect triangle.

  “Let me ask,” she says, “though I know it’s not the case with you, let me ask anyway, all right, you know how you go to some old Colonial restaurants, any of them, there are a dozen around here, five minutes outside the city. You know how you go and they seat you in, say, ‘the library room,’ ‘the study,’ right, they always call it something like that. And they bring you into this big, high-ceilinged room lined with natural-wood bookcases. And your table sort of comes right out from the bookcase. So that while you’re eating you can look at the titles, right? And then there’s that moment, right after you’re seated and they hand you the wine list and leave you alone, and you put the wine list down and turn your head to the bookshelf.”

  “Yes,” Woo says, eyes squinting at her, intrigued.

  “And you see that all the books, every one of them, are like these Reader’s Digest Condensed volumes, or like old high school trigonometry textbooks. And you know, again, that they just bought these things gross, right, bought them in carton loads from furniture stores or something. Bought them by the pound. And it just takes something away from the whole place.”

  Woo stares at her while he fills two triangular-shaped mugs to the brim with boiling water, then he smiles and says, “I’ve not had this particular experience, but I assure you, Lenore, every book you see here was purchased with my own hand. Nothing bought by the pound.”

  “Must have cost you a small fortune.”

  “Spread out over a period of years. I follow the wisdom of Gertrude Stein. ‘If you have money buy books, if you have any left over buy food.’ Or something like that.”

  “Most of them on language? Linguistics?”

  “The majority, yes.”

  He pushes the mug in her direction. “Best to drink it just after boiling,” he says. “It’s a special blend from the homeland. I have cousins who are kind enough to ship it over.”

  Lenore takes a sip. The tea tastes a little bland after all the coffee she’s had, but it’s warm and she thinks it might settle her stomach.

  Woo holds one hand on the side of the mug and places the other over the top. Lenore thinks this must be burning him and she starts to wonder if he’s some sort of fellow control freak, ready at all times to go beyond the limits of pain and good taste in order to prove a point. Or it could just be that he’s got a chill and has a high tolerance for tactile heat.

  He stares down into the black of his utility island and says in the low voice of an actor, “You know, Lenore, I was more than a bit surprised when you agreed to come back here.”

  Lenore stares at him, lets a few long seconds drag by, then, sucking back any sarcasm or anger, she says, “Yeah, well, don’t count your chickens, you know, Freddy?” She takes a sip and shrugs. “I was feeling way too closed in in that cellar. We’d gotten what we needed off the tap. I had to get out of there, come down a little. And I really didn’t want to go back to my place.”

  “I see.”

  “You see what? Besides, I was pretty curious how a guy like you lived, what your setup would be and all.”

  “And do you approve?”

  “Beautiful place, if you can afford it. St. Iggy’s must be paying sweet these days.”

  “I have to say there have been a few grants. But I can’t believe in all these years no one�
��s ever told you it’s rude to inquire about someone’s income.”

  Lenore lets out a sharp bark of a laugh that almost echoes at the other end of the loft.

  “Give me a freaking break, Freddy. This is America. Twentieth century. Income is all we fucking talk about now that sex is dead.”

  “My mistake. I thought it was God that was dead.”

  “What do you think killed him?”

  Woo smiles, takes a deep breath, finally takes his hands off the mug and sips his tea. “Lenore,” he says, “you are truly unlike any woman I have ever known.”

  “You’ve got to get out more, Freddy.”

  “You want to know what I think? I think you have a problem turning off, what shall we call them, certain police traits, investigator’s characteristics—”

  “—Gestapo tendencies, Nazi reflexes.”

  “No, no, no. That’s not what I said.”

  “Comes pretty damn close.”

  “I apologize, then. I should have been more clear. What I meant was that you look at me and you see a typical academic—”

  “You’re not so typical, Freddy.”

  “—and you see my home and a spark goes off, a little buzz sounds, and your brain is already ahead of you, doing the math, saying ‘teacher’s salary, great big loft, something is wrong,’ and you’re off and running the possibilities.”

  “So which one is it?”

  “Which?”

  “Possibility?”

  “Oh. Yes. The most obvious one, of course.”

  They stare at each other, mouths closed, shoulders squared.

  Woo smiles first and says, “My parents had some money.”

  “First guess,” Lenore lies. She’d had an offbeat suspicion that Woo had twenty over-the-limit credit cards in his desk drawer and a shaky and stupid mortgage destined to fall on him when the first grant ran dry.

  “So, now, let me invade you for a while,” Woo says.

  “Excuse?”

  “This man, Zarelli, when did things start to go wrong with you and him?”

  “Ooh, I’m impressed. Let me guess, you did body-language seminars in the seventies.”

  Woo is genuinely thrilled and amused by her comment.

  “Closer to the truth than you’d think.”

  “I think I’m pretty close. We Nazis are like that.”

  His smile fades. “Lenore, honestly, I’m sorry if you misinterpreted—”

  “C’mon, Freddy,” she says, calm, still friendly, “I didn’t misinterpret a thing. But there’s no need for an apology. Really. I know the truth about my beliefs. You know me for a matter of hours and make a judgment. You know I’ve done the same about you. Big deal. Happens every day. It’s how adults live. It’s practically our right. So enjoy your opinion. It doesn’t change the truth. I’m the one who knows the truth. There’s no fascist inside of me, Freddy. No way.”

  Woo gives up on apology and says, “Confident woman.”

  “Oh yeah. Read ‘bitch.’”