More Bitter Than Death

by Dana Cameron

  “He’s okay?”

  “Strutting like a peacock.”

  “Good for him.” Chris nodded approvingly.

  “He’s bleeding, and that’s good?” Sue said, dropping all pretense of not listening.

  “Oh, he’s stopped bleeding,” I assured her. “He was just messing around with a friend.”

  “Some friend!” She looked put out with Kam, and outraged with me for not being more indignant on Brian’s behalf. “And you’re all right with this?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not psyched he got hit, but what are you going to do?”

  “Teach him to duck,” Chris suggested.

  “Well, there’s that.”

  Sue shook her head and told Chris she’d see him later.

  “Sue seem out of it to you?” Chris said, watching her practically run across the lobby.

  “Maybe it’s still the fallout from yesterday,” I said. Or maybe she was still freaked out with me, for whatever reason, I thought. I was going to have to corner her, and ask her, ASAP.

  He glanced over at me. “I’m surprised you’re okay with it. You aren’t usually this laid-back.”

  I shrugged. “Hey, if Brian’s fine with me in contact sports, I owe him the same thing. Just gotta pray his reflexes get faster, that’s all.”

  But he knew I was dodging his question. “Actually, I meant with Sue so on edge with you, but the thing with Brian too.”

  “Where you off to?” I changed the subject and thumbed through the marked-up program. As always, I’d made many plans of where to be when, and then missed about half of what I wanted.

  “I’ve got to get to the—hey, Kenny!” he greeted a guy I knew by sight, but not by site, if you will. “Emma, can you give me a minute—?”

  I waved him off. “I’ll let you get going. See you later.”

  Chris turned to speak animatedly with Kenny, and I moved off to consult my schedule. It was at that moment that I was targeted by the entirely too eager Mr. Widmark. Standing on point, his face lit up in recognition, and waving enthusiastically, he practically loped toward me. Abandoning all pretense to cordiality, I did an abrupt about-face and slipped into the darkened ballroom closest to me.

  I closed the door gently, and relying on instinct until my eyes could adapt, I hugged the wall and followed it around until I found an empty seat on the aisle. Actually, there were a lot of empty seats, and I didn’t recognize anyone else around me. I slid down into my seat, hoping that even if Widmark had the lack of grace to follow me, he wouldn’t struggle too hard to find me in the dark. I ducked down and buried my face in the schedule.

  This was a session on farmsteads, something I ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered with. Just too far off my radar and usually conflicted with the sessions I needed to see. Now I found myself prepared to be riveted by it.

  When after a few minutes I wasn’t presented with that smiling face and villainous breath, I began to relax and take in a bit of the paper.

  There was one thing, however, that gave me a quick jab in the memory, when the reader was talking about work done in northern New York State by an amateur, Josiah Miller, in the nineteenth century. A recently discovered copy of Miller’s work was shedding new light on the material in the area. I usually have a good brain for this sort of thing—references and the like—and kept thinking about it. I got nothing, so then I tried the trick of changing contexts. If you meet someone on the street whose face you remember knowing but whose name isn’t coming, you try envisioning them behind a counter or in running clothes, to see if you know them from the lunch place or from the gym or something like that. It usually works pretty well. With references, it’s a little different. You try and remember if it was a paper you read—and if so, was it in the library, online, or at home? What color was the cover, what was the font?—or was it something that someone was asking or telling you about? Etcetera.

  It vexed me so much that I dropped the slender thread of concentration I had reserved for the paper and devoted it to chasing it down in my mind. I had it narrowed down to something I knew from the distant past of undergraduate rather than graduate school or my present work and eventually gave up, half thinking about the paper as it wandered on and on and on and on…

  I felt my head nod again, but snapped it back up as soon as I realized I was falling asleep. For about thirty seconds, I was alert again, determined not to drift off, but then the conversation that was being whispered somewhere behind me was more than enough to keep me awake.

  “—and typical of him, he never bothered showing. I mean, if he wasn’t going to bother, he should have called and let me know, right?”

  “He wasn’t usually like that about private meetings, he was always happier with them. It’s the more public stuff he was shy of.”

  They—two men—were talking about Garrison. I tried to ease myself into a more comfortable position, the better to hear, without drawing attention to myself. I drew out a notebook and began to doodle.

  “Shy? Him?”

  “Pathologically. Poor guy, he was really troubled by it—”

  Maybe they weren’t talking about Garrison after all; shyness never seemed to be one of his many personal shortcomings…

  “—I guess I had better luck. He showed up right on time to meet me.”

  “What time was that?”

  “About ten, in the hospitality suite. What time was yours?”

  “Close to midnight. Jules said he didn’t mind, as he didn’t sleep much anymore.”

  Jules? Right, Julius Garrison. I kept thinking of him as being an entity defined by his last name only. So they were talking about him.

  “Huh. Figures. Maybe he did fall asleep.”

  Now there was hesitation. “Possibly.”

  “You’re not going to tell me what happened, are you?”

  “I’m just trying to be discreet. You understand.”

  “Maybe. I guess I would too, in your position. Fortunately, I’m not that hard up.”

  “It’s not as bad as people make out” came the curt reply. The voice was familiar, but the strain in it was disguising it from me still.

  A few people angrily shushed them. I wished they hadn’t because I wanted to hear more of the two men’s conversation.

  Then there was a creak of chair, and someone struggling to get out in a hurry and more protesting shhh’s. I turned around to see who it was, but when I saw Widmark’s shiny suit at the side of the room, I snapped my head around forward again and lost my man.

  I waited until the end of the paper and then eased my way out of my seat. Just as I turned around, I realized I was facing Widmark, who was also leaving. Dang.

  “Hi, I was wondering whether you had a moment now?”

  I hated lying to him, but I couldn’t face his questions just now. “I really don’t. What if we decide that we’ll chat at the reception before the business meeting?”

  “Uh, great. If you’re really in a rush now—?”

  “I really am.” I craned my neck around, but my quarry, the second whisperer, had gotten away already. “I’ll catch you later.”

  Even though I joined the leaving throng as quickly as I could, I lost whoever it was who might have been sitting behind me in the shuffle out the door. I only felt marginally sorry for the next person presenting; I consoled myself that there was an equally steady stream of folks fighting their way into the room as we were leaving.

  I ran into Duncan, Jay, and Scott in the hallway.

  “Didn’t expect to see you in that session, Emma,” Duncan said. “What was the draw in there?”

  I shook my head and looked down the hall as I answered. “Nothing in particular. Why do you ask?”

  His voice sharpened, causing me to face him. “What are you being so bitchy about?”

  At that point, Jay and Scott exchanged uncomfortable looks, excused themselves hastily, and moved off to the side.

  “Me, bitchy?” I hadn’t been really, not this time, so there was something else on hi
s mind.

  “Or is it that you resent that I spoke up on your behalf with Mark Church last night?”

  There it was, that little half-smile that couldn’t be completely smothered by his serious expression. It always happened, when he was probing someone’s Achilles’ heel.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Perhaps I missed exactly what you think it was you were doing for me.”

  “I guess I think that putting in a good word for you with the cops is significant, like I might have been saving you some trouble.”

  That was the word, right there. “Saving. You think you were saving me from them. Just what is it that you think I was doing that meant I needed saving from? I was talking to the cops, but I don’t have anything to hide, so why should I need saving?” Especially by you.

  He pressed his lips together, the way that he always did when he was digging in, but didn’t want to look as though he’d been put out by anything. He looked me straight in the eye, and let the corner of his mouth turn up ever so slightly. “Emma, everyone’s got something to hide, haven’t they?”

  I flinched, but recovered quickly. It was another old trick, I reminded myself. “Yeah, well. It is a truism, but it doesn’t mean that whatever one wants hidden is illegal or anything else.” And trust you to pick up on that small bit of universal human frailty and exploit it.

  He saw that he’d struck close to the bull’s eye, that time. “You’re right, but to tell the truth, Emma, I think you’ve got more going on with you right now than you’re willing to admit.”

  I felt my face fix, the way it had a long time ago when I’d been at Penitence Point and had a gun pointed at me: don’t give him anything to react to, don’t rise to the bait, wait your time. And suddenly it occurred to me that this was just like what Nolan was teaching me about self-defense and game faces and watching your opponent’s moves. Duncan had mastered the art of getting in close to his opponent to make the most of his own power while keeping them off balance, years before I knew such a thing could be applied in purely social situations. I relaxed, let him bring it to me, let him think he still had it over me.

  “You’re right, Duncan.” I shrugged a little and nodded. I realized how tight my shoulders were. He wasn’t worth that, he wasn’t worth my anger, not anymore. I took a deep breath and tried to make my face relax; I was rewarded by seeing him narrow his eyes as he did when he was wary or disconcerted. “You’re right.”

  If you’re going to make a move, you have to be willing to back it up, so I went out on a limb and tried to make human conversation. “I hadn’t told you that I was sorry to hear about Garrison,” I said. Mostly because it was another one of those polite, humanizing fictions. “I know he meant a lot to you.”

  “You were never his biggest fan,” Duncan said uncertainly after a moment. “So thanks.”

  We both nodded. A silence ballooned between us and I realized that part of not giving in to my baser instincts and being snappish or storming off meant that I’d again be faced with instances just like this one, the same way they turn up in ordinary conversation.

  Damn.

  “You know,” he said, rushing in as though he’d read my mind, “I didn’t mean anything back there. With Mark,” he said, and I thought he seemed a little too eager about explaining—what happened to his composure? Or is he just reiterating something because it’s untrue? “I honestly thought I was helping, that it wouldn’t hurt to have a little, uh, you know, backup or support or a kind word in the right ear, or whatever.”

  “I get that now, I was just a little flustered back there,” I said. That’s okay: I know how much you like getting those words into those ears, how much both parties appreciate it and think well of you later. “You knew him growing up?”

  “Yeah, since grade school. Really nice guy, does a good job. We get together every once in a while, when I’m visiting Mom. Usually hometown friendships don’t make it through college.”

  I nodded again. This was better, seemed more neutral. And it didn’t actually hurt me, this gesture, and I might even discover that he had no other ulterior motive in being nice to me, much as I doubted it. Better this way, I decided; I shake it off, he keeps wondering what’s up. I groped about for something to keep this going, just another moment or two, to seal the deal of me being the bigger person.

  “Actually, that reminds me of something. I heard a reference to Josiah Miller, and something about it is familiar. I just can’t place it.” I rifled through my bag to retrieve my schedule and find out where I was supposed to be heading next. “It’s nothing too recent, and I figure it was something I ran across back in undergraduate. Does it ring any bells for you?”

  I looked up, and saw that Duncan had gone positively ashen under his winter tan. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t mean anything. I’m just asking whether a nineteenth-century amateur named Josiah Miller means anything to you.” A little temper resurfaced now that things were suddenly turning weird.

  “Okay.” His face was still whiter than white, but he was angry now, like I’d never really seen before; he was always too slick for that. “Okay, what is it you want?”

  “Duncan. It was a simple question.” I felt my hackles raising in response, all pretense at politeness gone.

  “Well. At least we know where we really stand,” he said at last. Jay and Scott hovered on the periphery of our discussion. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  He joined the other two, and they stood together in a tight little knot.

  That’s what you get for trying to be adult and letting bygones be bygones, said the snarky little part of me that is usually against these things. Sometimes those immature parts of us aren’t entirely wrong. Sometimes they’re there for a good, self-defensive reason.

  “Do you have a minute?”

  I turned around, exasperated, wishing Widmark would just go away. But to my surprise, it was Church. “Just wanted to see how you were doing this morning. No more notes, no noises in the night, or anything?”

  I took a deep breath, trying to regain my composure after my run-in with Duncan. The guys had moved off down the hallway. “No, nothing strange.”

  “Good to hear,” he said. “Just wanted to let you know that I’m keeping an eye on you, that’s all.”

  And although his smile was as beguiling as ever, it really sounded like he was less concerned for me than suspicious.

  Chapter 9

  CHURCH LEFT AS QUICKLY AS HE’D APPEARED, AND I decided that if I hustled, I could actually see some of the session I’d originally planned to see. Discussions of identifying early earthenware were soothing, and soon I was lost in the discussion of paste, inclusions, glazes, and surface decorations, so much of which you can see with the naked eye. And there’s something about the curve of whole pots that is incredibly sexy. Finding fragments of dull red earthenware—essentially the same material as a plain flowerpot—is exciting because not only can you imagine what vessel it was—and once you know the shape, you know the vessel, and from there you can get into use, trade, the whole world from a potsherd—but sometimes there are marks on the pottery that have nothing to do with its manufacture. Fingerprints are wonderful, and while there have been some attempts to link prints with a particular potter, I’m happy just to make the connection that these were manufactured by hand, that a person was responsible for this coming into being. Paw prints, too, are common enough, and it is so easy to imagine a dog running across a floor where a milk pan, fresh off the wheel, had been set for a moment. Blades of grass in the bottom of a vessel, burned away by the kiln, also reveal a pause in the potter’s day, the space between finishing work and setting it to dry to leather hardness before its introduction into the kiln. All of these things remind me of the people involved, maybe not named, but individuals who lived in the past. It’s too easy to talk about “back then” and lump everyone all together. It’s more fun to think of someone yelling at some dumb mutt causing chaos outside of the shed where the wheel sits
, chickens squawking and hustling out of the way, feathers ruffled, than it is to think of a faceless entity responsible for a kiln site designated with numbers and letters.

  So the pottery session was exactly what the doctor ordered, and two hours later, nerves calmed and spirit refreshed, I decided to reward myself with a trip to the book room. I’d actually remembered to make a shopping list and bring it with me this time, and though I seldom needed assistance in buying books, this expedited things nicely. My credit card got whipped through so many readers so fast that I could smell scorched plastic, and in no time at all I was basking in the afterglow, a cross between the warm, secure feeling of having met my legitimate professional needs and the triumph a hunter must feel coming back with the kill.

  After I spoke with the publisher’s rep from the press that was handling my artifact book, I was lingering over a gorgeously illustrated volume of late medieval glassware from Venice that I didn’t really need. Someday, I argued with myself, I might be working on a site that was high enough status and early enough to have such a thing and anyway, wouldn’t it be good to brush up on glass-fabricating techniques?

  A stray thought occurred to me. I put the yummy volume down, much to the chagrin of the bookseller, who’d been hoping not to have to carry the heavy thing home with him, and went over to the table that had been the scene of the other thefts.

  There was still a display there, and it had been obviously rearranged to accommodate the missing pieces. What was left of the display, which had been a mockup of an underwater site, was some broken pottery and the sand and aquatic weeds that had been arranged to resemble an underwater site.

  “Too bad you didn’t see it before,” the guy behind the table said to me. “It was really gorgeous.”

  I gestured toward the case. “Are you in charge of this table?”

  “No, I’m just watching it while the other dealer takes a break. It’s been nutty here.”

  “Yeah?”

  “People buying Garrison’s books like crazy, even more than before he died. And plus, everyone’s all, I don’t know, bleh, because the cops won’t tell them anything about what’s going on. Shots fired, dead keynote speakers…people want books to comfort them.” He rubbed his hands together. “You gotta love it.”