Box Nine

by Jack O'Connell

  [End of tape]

  It’s dusk before she feels free of the drug’s effects. She’d driven north, passing out of her native state and jumping on and off all the eerie New England highways that were cut through solid granite hills. The highways have smooth rock walls running on either side of them, rising up thirty feet high so that nothing can be seen but the road ahead. Over a period of time, they can cause a subtle claustrophobia. Lenore noted this as a secondary concern.

  For lunch, she’d grabbed french fries from a drive-through burger chain visible from the road. By dinner, she felt safe enough to stop in at a small, lazy diner in a town she’d never heard of. She ordered soup and tea with milk, thinking this would soothe a nervous system so pushed beyond its liberal limits that a shutdown was not out of the question.

  By seven, she’s back in Quinsigamond. She drives by the green duplex, but finds it in darkness. At ten, she’s still seated in the Barracuda, staring up at the back of the Hotel Penumbra, waiting until the top floor’s lights go on. She thinks about writing some kind of note and securing it to the steering wheel. An apology to Ike, begging him to forget the past week, maybe the past year, stating flat out her inability to explain both last night and this morning.

  She thinks about leaving several notes: Instructions on what to do with any of her belongings that Ike doesn’t want. A word of encouragement to Shaw and Peirce. Advice to Zarelli to accept his shortcomings and learn to find pleasure in his family again. And something for Fred. What could she say to Fred?

  The possibilities make her too uncomfortable to continue, so she scraps the note idea entirely and climbs out of the car. The Magnum is in the trunk, but she’s still got the .38 strapped near her ankle. She walks around the block to the front of the building and stops at the revolving door as a parade of Cortez’s women file out for the evening. They’re all dressed like it was Halloween and everyone chose the same costume.

  Looking through the doors into the lobby, she sees Jimmy Wyatt trying to act stone-faced to the last of the women’s comments. When he sees Lenore, his hand instinctively jumps to the inside of his biker jacket, but when she doesn’t move, it stays there. They stare at each other for a while until she feels he’s assured she’s not an immediate threat, that this isn’t some bizarre assault, then she pushes her way inside.

  She gives Wyatt a small smile, tries to make it look like she’s been unsuccessful at suppressing it. She holds her arms out and up slightly, like a bored version of halting for the police. But he’s not biting. Nothing about her being inside the hotel is going to be playful. His eyes are narrowed on her. She looks away from him to the rest of the lobby. It’s been restored beautifully. Everywhere there are Ionic columns shot through with veins of deep green marble. The lobby has a wonderful, slightly freezing feel to it. There’s a small rise of three stairs beyond Wyatt that opens out into an empty rest area where people once checked in at the front desk and then waited for the elevators. Huge Persian rugs of dark reds and greens cover the marble floor that’s been worn into shallow bowls in spots. Against the walls are couches and chairs, foreign-looking, experiments in furniture that went wrong. And hung above them are these out-of-place pastoral paintings hung in ornate thick gilt frames.

  It’s not like a real place, Lenore thinks. Then she turns her eyes back to Wyatt and says casually, “I’m here to see the boss.”

  His eyes narrow and she wonders if he’s got a pad of paper tucked away somewhere to communicate.

  “Could you tell him I’m here?” she says.

  He shakes his head no.

  They stare at each other. She hadn’t counted on this.

  “Okay,” she says, “I don’t want you to take this wrong, you know, I want to be clear here. You can’t tell him, meaning you’re physically incapable, which I’m aware of? Or you just won’t tell him, as in you don’t want to or you’ve got instructions not to or something like this?”

  He waits until she’s finished and simply shakes his head no again.

  “Mr. Cortez would want to see me,” she says, lowering her voice. “It would be in his best interest to see me.”

  Now he just folds his arms across his chest.

  “I don’t want to tell you your job, but I think the thing to do here would be simply to check in upstairs. I’ll wait right here. I won’t budge.”

  It’s a standoff. He makes no movement at all. They just continue to look at each other.

  “You’re limiting my options,” she says. “You understand that?”

  He nods.

  “So I’m only left with one avenue here.”

  He raises his eyebrows slightly.

  “I’m going to have to shoot you in the fucking head.”

  He gives a big smile, but she sees his shoulders shift under his jacket and she knows it would be close as to who got to who first.

  Then a voice from nowhere: “That’s enough, Jimmy. Show her the elevator.”

  It’s Cortez. And he’s been watching and listening to the whole scene. She should have realized that. Cameras and microphones. Probably in every wall.

  Wyatt pivots backward and extends a hand forward like the perfect bellman. She waves him off and says, “I can find my way up, thanks.”

  She moves past him up the three small stairs to the main lobby and turns left to find a wall of three old-time elevators with the traditional arrow pointers mounted above each door to indicate which level the car is at. The door is already opened on the middle elevator and she steps into the gilded cage and looks to press for the top floor, but there are no buttons. Then it dawns on her that this is the express car, the private car for use by Cortez only. Straight to the top, no stops.

  The car bucks slightly, then starts to rise and Cortez’s voice fills the air.

  “What a delightful surprise.”

  She feels uncomfortable not being able to project her words in a particular direction, but she doesn’t want to make Cortez aware of this.

  “In the neighborhood. You know how it is.”

  “Actually, no. I don’t get out too often.”

  “Is that by choice?”

  “Actually, that would be hard to say.”

  “You’ve done wonders with this old building.”

  “It was a crime. The way I found it. Left to decay.”

  “Some things need constant attention. Continual upkeep, you know?”

  There’s no response. The elevator comes to a stop with a jerk and the doors slide open. She steps out into a small foyer. The doors immediately close behind her, but she doesn’t hear the car move. She stands still for a minute and takes in the surroundings. It feels about ten or twenty degrees warmer than in the lobby, and yet it’s not uncomfortable. The ceiling hangs a good twelve or more feet high. It’s antique—scrolled tin plating covered with a glossy enamel. The walls are natural mahogany, divided every three or four feet into carved panels. The floor is a burnt-rust-colored tile covered by a large, oval, oriental rug. She stares down at the rug, it draws her attention. It’s filled with an intricate pattern, a confusing weave that works like an Escher print—it shows a pattern of books that, when viewed from a different perspective, become fat-bodied geese in flight.

  “Come, please.” Cortez’s voice sounds from nowhere. “Join me in the library.”

  The foyer opens into a large hall. Midway down, there are two sets of double doors facing each other. She faces one set, reaches out, and tries to turn the gold lever-handles. They’re locked. She turns around to face the second set and they open for her, revealing an enormous room.

  “This way,” he says, and this time she can tell the sound of his voice is coming directly from his mouth, not a hidden speaker system. She enters the library. It’s an enormous room, probably consists of more square footage than the entire green duplex, her place and Ike’s combined. All four walls are made of built-in bookshelves, floor to ceiling. All of the shelves are empty and covered with dust.

  The rest of the room is almost empt
y. The floor is covered by two gigantic braided rugs. There are no windows. There is one break in the shelving to allow for a small fireplace and mantel. The remains of a fire are smoldering on the andirons. There’s a single, low-to-the-ground, overstuffed rocking chair, covered in a faded, soft-grey material. The chair sits facing and to the left of the fireplace. It looks a bit out of place in the room, like it came from a garage sale or had been passed down through several generations.

  The only other piece of furniture is something big and bulky that’s been covered by a plain white bed sheet. It’s pushed up against a wall to the left of the rocker. Hung on the wall above the mantel is a large, iron-looking crucifix, a grotesque-style Christ figure, bent and broken, iron droplets and running lines of blood covering the body. Below the crucifix, resting on the mantel itself, are small wooden boxes standing upright to reveal their contents—a mishmash of pebbles, shells, watch faces, string, eggs, shards of a broken mirror, a doorknob. Lenore has an urge to walk over to them and study them more closely.

  “My own feeble attempts,” Cortez says. “An old hobby of mine.”

  He’s standing at the top of a wrought-iron platform that rises from a tiny spiral staircase mounted in the very center of the room. Lenore approaches the miniature stairway and looks up. There’s an open skylight cut into the ceiling of the building. Cortez is peering into a telescope that juts out of the skylight. He’s being pathetically careless, Lenore thinks. Could he actually trust me?

  “Come up, please,” he says. “I want to show you something.”

  She looks around the room, then climbs the seven stairs and joins him on the circular platform. He brings his head up from the telescope and stares, then, slowly, smiles at her. “Which one of us can resist saying it?” he asks.

  “Excuse me,” she says.

  He tilts his head back slightly, puts a theatrical and self-mocking hand on his chest, and says, “We meet at last.”

  “Had to happen sooner or later,” she says.

  Up close, he’s a little more breathtaking than Lenore was prepared for. He’s tall, probably about six five or so, with large eyes that contain blue and grey and green and dominate the face. He has the most ingratiating grin she’s ever witnessed, with a small gap between his two front teeth that enhances rather than detracts from his attractiveness. He has a thick, woodsman beard that covers the whole second half of his face, black with random strands of grey starting to break through here and there. His hair is jet-black and a bit too long, she thinks, and he parts it to the left in a big sweeping arc. He speaks in a rich, almost echoing baritone, like a well-trained actor with a natural sense of timing. There’s a strong hint of a Spanish accent, but also something beyond that, something clearly more foreign, distant, impossible to place.

  “Just like in the movies,” he says.

  “What happens when it rains?” she asks, pointing upward with her thumb.

  “There is a cover,” he says, not raising his head from the eyepiece. “What the architect called a bubble. I’ve always liked that. ‘A bubble’.”

  She looks down at the telescope, and though she knows nothing about the equipment, she’d bet it was a state-of-the-art model, probably costing more than she makes in a year.

  “So,” she says, “is this for real? Is this some kind of prop or are you really into astronomy?”

  He can’t seem to get away from the self-mockery. “I’m a man of many interests and many talents.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’ve got to pump you up a little.”

  “The problem is, the sky in Quinsigamond is so obscured by all the light. Cities are horrible places, don’t you think?”

  “I’m a hometown girl, you know. I’ve got a soft spot. I’m a city girl.”

  “Where I come from, a town called Banfield, you could go into the fields at night and the sky would be infested with the stars. ‘Infested with the stars’—plagado de las estrellas.”

  “Sounds like a disease.”

  He sighs. “I have an evil talent for making the beautiful sound horrid.”

  She shrugs. “That could come in useful. Dissuade people from things that you don’t want them to go near.”

  “There’s no need for that. I’ve always been a man willing to share.”

  Lenore doesn’t know how to respond. She pauses and then says, “That’s a chapter in the myth that I’m unfamiliar with.”

  He laughs, peers down into the eyepiece. “That I’m a generous man? You’ve been misinformed. You can’t always believe what you hear.”

  “Or what you see. Or touch.”

  “Or taste.”

  He looks up from the telescope and they stare at each other in silence for a moment.

  He clears his throat and says, “By the time I was ten, I knew the surface of the moon better than most children know the village they live in. At twelve I could name most of the constellations. I once asked my mother if heaven was near Orion.”

  “What did she say?” Lenore asks, genuinely wanting to know.

  “I honestly don’t remember. It was so long ago.”

  “I would think that would be the type of thing you would remember.”

  “Memory is a pathetic tool. It never works the way it should. It’s rarely useful. It brings more pain than pleasure.”

  “Memory has never brought you comfort?” she asks.

  He lets a slow but huge smile grow on his face, then says, “Not that I recall.”

  She rolls her eyes and says, “Bring out the big hook.”

  “Do you want to take a look?” he asks, motioning to the telescope.

  She nods, leans down over the eyepiece, and squints. At first she can’t see a thing.

  “It’s not very clear,” he says. “Too much cloud cover.”

  She brings her head back up, unsuccessful. “What should I have seen?”

  “Surface of the moon,” he says. “Sea of Vaporum. Wonderful name.”

  He turns and starts down the stairway and she follows.

  Back on the floor, they stand facing each other. He puts his hands on his hips and says, “You’ll have to excuse the way I’m dressed. I believe in comfort at home. And, of course, I wasn’t expecting company tonight.”

  He’s got on a pair of grey sweatpants that bunch around the ankles, a black crew-neck cotton sweater, and a pair of ratty, five-and-dime-store slippers.

  “You look fine,” she says, and feels a wince of embarrassment.

  “Could I offer you a drink?” he says. “I’m allowed a single nightcap, myself, due to my condition.”

  “Your condition?”

  “Addison’s disease. I believe your President Kennedy suffered from this also, yes?”

  “I really don’t know. I’m sorry to hear—”

  “Please take a seat,” he says, cutting her off and extending a hand toward the rocking chair. He starts to move toward the fireplace. She follows, and remains standing behind him. He grabs a short poker from the brick patch of flooring that extends a few feet out from the hearth and begins to jab and stir the embers and charred remains of wood.

  “Sit,” he says in a soft voice, and she hesitates and then eases herself into the chair. She sinks into its cushions. It’s tremendously comfortable and she can see why it would be hard to part with or even alter.

  “Because I am usually the only one in this room,” he says, “there is only the one chair. But I will sit on the floor. Good for me, for a change.”

  “You need some books for your shelves,” Lenore says.

  Cortez smiles, then says, “I’ve often thought this is the main reason people buy books. To fill empty shelves. But these shelves were once quite full. Bursting with volumes, as a matter of fact.”

  “Let me guess,” Lenore says. “You donated them to the literate poor.” She’s immediately unsure of the wisdom of her remark. She thinks it’s the chair that’s given her the comfort to be a joker.

  But Cortez enjoys the comment. “Not quite,” he sa
ys. “I sold them. To a dealer here in the city. Ziesing Ave. A Mr. Beck. Fine store. You should go sometime.”

  “My brother’s a big book-guy. Loves mysteries.”

  “They say that indicates a love of logic. Until recently, I suppose. I read mysteries when I was young. Now they just confuse me. I’ll tell you an awful secret about myself.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I came very close to burning every book in this room.”

  “And why was that?”

  “They were driving me out of my mind.”

  “Was someone making you read them?”

  Cortez puts the poker down and eases onto the floor facing her, close to the relit fire. Half of his face is left in shadow by his position. He sits cross-legged, with his long arms draped over his knees.

  “Now, that,” he says, “is a very good question. No one was holding a gun to my head, no. Of course not. But I felt compelled just the same. By my own nature. I’ve been a voracious reader since I can remember—”

  “But then, we can’t trust memory.”

  “Again, very true. But still there are feelings. Instinctual feelings. Whether or not our memories hold a great deal of what we’ll call ‘historical truth’ matters very little in terms of these feelings. I loved Jules Verne. Did you read Jules Verne?”

  She shakes her head no.

  “Oh,” he says, closing his eyes and frowning, his head swaying slightly. “Around the World in Eighty Days. From the Earth to the Moon. Filled me with pure joy. My father abandoned the family when I was a child. I like to think of Jules Verne as my father now.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me why you wanted to burn your books.”

  He unclasps his hands and looks up at her as if the answer were obvious. “The joy started to leave. I don’t know why. It just began departing. What I had felt since childhood, what I had felt for books, I started to no longer feel. And it became too painful to keep them around.”