about you in the blink of the eye. Out with the old; in with the hot new thing, which is from what I can tell a pretty, fit, twentysomething debut writer named Kimmy Kai who spent her childhood doing acrobatics for a traveling circus in Hawaii and has now published a memoir about spending her childhood doing acrobatics for a traveling circus in Hawaii. I’m not starving. I’ve done the math. If I live modestly—“modestly” defined as staying in my current apartment and ordering takeout every other day instead of every day—I could survive the next ten, even fifteen years on my earnings from The Last Front alone. The hardcover of The Last Front has gone back for its eleventh printing. The paperback edition just came out, which has generated a nice sales bump—paperbacks are cheaper, so they sell a bit better. I truly don’t need the money. I could walk away from all of this and be perfectly fine. But, my God, I want to be back in the spotlight. You enjoy this delightful waterfall of attention when your book is the latest breakout success. You dominate the cultural conversation. You possess the literary equivalent of the hot hand. Everyone wants to interview you. Everyone wants you to blurb their book, or host their launch event. Everything you say matters. If you utter a hot take about the writing process, about other books, or even about life itself, people take your word as gospel. If you recommend a book on social media, people actually drive out that day to go buy it. But your time in the spotlight never lasts. I’ve seen people who were massive bestsellers not even six years ago, sitting alone and forlorn at neglected signing tables while lines stretched around the corner for their younger, hotter peers. It’s hard to reach such a pinnacle of literary prominence that you remain a household name for years, decades past your latest release. Only a handful of Nobel Prize winners can get away with that. The rest of us have to keep racing along the hamster wheel of relevance. I’ve just learned from Twitter that my mentee, Emmy Cho, has signed with Athena’s former literary agent, Jared, a hotshot shark known for six- and seven-figure deals. As her mentor I’m happy for her, but I also feel a spike of anxiety every time Emmy shares her good news. I’m afraid she’ll catch up to me, that her inevitable book deal will involve an advance bigger than mine, that she’ll sell film rights to a production company that will actually sell it to a studio, that her fame will then overshoot mine, and that the next time we see each other at some literary event she will merely greet me with a cool, superior nod. The only way to get ahead, of course, is to dazzle the world with my next project. But I’ve no clue what that might be. BRETT CALLS ONE MORNING, OSTENSIBLY TO CATCH UP. WE TRADE pleasantries for a while, and then he asks, “So, how are


a desperate breath. He pressed into the darkness of the building, into the clouds of smoke, and held out his hand. “Momo, I’m here!” he yelled. Even if the darkness never ended and swallowed him whole, he’d still run to her. * * * — The building was boiling Montserrat alive. Sweat drenched her forehead, and she stood in darkness. No answer came to her, no magic; whatever power she’d held now trickling out of her body. Montserrat was alone. Tristán had gone. She knew it. Her hand rested on a wall, and smoke swirled around her ankles, and the world was darkness. This was how Ewers must have felt when he died and was confined to oblivion; a part of himself trapped in the frames of a film and sealed in a can. This nothingness prickled her skin, suffocated her more than the smoke. Her bones were leaden, and tears trickled down her cheeks. She bumped into a door, ran her hands down the crumbling plaster of a wall. She felt a desperate, clawing force. Stay! it said, wordless, invisible, this something that clung to her, squeezing her tight, making her stumble. Their gaze, their voices, their will, had once revived Ewers, and he desperately yearned for that spark of life they’d granted him. With his gasping, last breaths he pulled at her, begging her to save him, follow him, grant him life…once again…this one time. Montserrat was tired, and in the darkness of the building, with nothing to anchor her, she thought perhaps she might heed that mournful call. Everything was dark, motionless. Then, she heard a couple of stumbling, heavy footsteps and squinted. “Momo, where are you?!” “Tristán!” she yelled back. “I don’t know where to go!” “Find me!” But where was he? His voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once. She coughed, pressed an arm against her mouth, and without thinking she moved toward him, even though he could be anywhere. “Tristán!” She felt his fingers on her arm, the pull of him. “I’m with you!” She wasn’t sure he knew where they were headed. In the past it had been Montserrat who guided him, who made him jump into the grain containers. But now it was her turn to follow him, to let herself be dragged, fast. Their fingers were laced tightly together, and they rushed forward. She followed him into the night, not Ewers, but Tristán. She shook off the sick pull of rotting magic and pressed onward. The darkness ruptured like a membrane. Breathless, they emerged into the startling prickle of cool air and an ordinary street, with its dim lampposts and businesses that were shuttered at that late hour. They could hear a siren in the distance and the barking of dogs. Montserrat winced as she walked, and Tristán thrust his arm around her, holding her steady. They headed nowhere, directionless, yet confident in their steps. FADE TO BLACK 28 “Don’t treat me like an invalid. I can get a refill when I want to,” José said, slapping Tristán’s hand away and sipping


with her last wishes. I had printed the necessary forms and brought them along on this trip, hoping that I could get her to fill them out and have them witnessed. They were sitting in the bag I’d looped over my chair. I couldn’t bring myself to mention them. When we both had only an inch or two of coffee left in our mugs, she brought up Dad. “I wish he were here,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder what he would say. It’s so hard going through all of this without him.” I had not considered my father an especially calm or steadying influence. When I was in high school and my mother got sick, I knew I couldn’t talk to Dad about it; he seemed even more fearful and agitated than I was. When he tried to teach me to drive, he made it as far as our neighbor’s mailbox before saying, I can’t do this, turn around, and never got into a car with me in the driver’s seat again. His temper could be unpredictable. He was not what I’d call good in a crisis. At times, though, he surprised me. I remembered his serene pride at my wedding, the only one of four parents who didn’t make me cry or lose sleep that week, and how much it helped to talk to him when I was homesick in my first semester of college. Tell me all about it, you know my hugs cure the blues. He was not my idea of a rock, but he was my mother’s constant. Her life, for nearly forty-five years. She shouldn’t have to fight for her survival without him. The bright colors in the paintings all around us blurred together. Blinking back tears, I did what I thought Dad would have if he were here: I tried to make her laugh. “You know, it’s not like he would have been much help.” I was rewarded with a faint chuckle. “That’s probably true. God, he’d be so upset.” “He’d be furious. Because this is bullshit, Mom,” I said. “I miss him terribly, and sometimes I still can’t believe he’s gone,” she told me. “A part of me—the part that was his wife for forty years—just wants to be with him.” I understood what she was saying. She had thought about halting her treatment. I knew that as long as there was any hope of gaining more time, she would seize it with both hands. In the months to come, she would fight with a fierceness that would surprise even me. I would watch her struggle and rail against her loss of mobility, independence, the ability to make hard decisions or follow complex conversations, and sometimes I would find myself thinking back to this moment in the diner, the only time she ever admitted to me that she had considered her death without dread. She believed that she would see my father again, and as much as she wanted to live, she longed for that meeting. “I still feel like I’m married to him, even


breath. The whip was tight around his windpipe. "Tell them I do not wish him harmed," Dany said. Irri repeated her words in Dothraki. Jhogo gave a pull on the whip, yanking Viserys around like a puppet on a string. He went sprawling again, freed from the leather embrace, a thin line of blood under his chin where the whip had cut deep. A GAME OF THRONES 205 "I warned him what would happen, my lady," Ser Jorah Mormont said. "I told him to stay on the ridge, as you commanded." "I know you did," Dany replied, watching Viserys. He lay on the ground, sucking in air noisily, red-faced and sobbing. He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been. "Take his horse," Dany commanded Ser Jorah. Viserys gaped at her. He could not believe what he was hearing; nor could Dany quite believe what she was saying. Yet the words came. "Let my brother walk behind us back to the khalasar." Among the Dothraki, the man who does not ride was no man at all, the lowest of the low, without honor or pride. "Let everyone see him as he is." "No!" Viserys screamed. He turned to Ser Jorah, pleading in the Common Tongue with words the horsemen would not understand. "Hit her, Mormont. Hurt her. Your king commands it. Kill these Dothraki dogs and teach her." The exile knight looked from Dany to her brother; she barefoot, with dirt between her toes and oil in her hair, he with his silks and steel. Dany could see the decision on his face. "He shall walk, Khaleesi," he said. He took her brother's horse in hand while Dany remounted her silver. Viserys gaped at him, and sat down in the dirt. He kept his silence, but he would not move, and his eyes were full of poison as they rode away. Soon he was lost in the tall grass. When they could not see him anymore, Dany grew afraid. "Will he find his way back?" she asked Ser Jorah as they rode. "Even a man as blind as your brother should be able to follow our trail," he replied. "He is proud. He may be too shamed to come back." Jorah laughed. "Where else should he go? If he cannot find the khalasar, the khalasar will most surely find him. It is hard to drown in the Dothraki sea, child." Dany saw the truth of that. The khalasar was like a city on the march, but it did not march blindly. Always scouts ranged far ahead of the main column, alert for any sign of game or prey or enemies, while outriders guarded their flanks. They missed nothing, not here, in this land, the place where they had come from. These plains were a part of them . . . and of her, now. "I hit him," she said, wonder in her voice. Now that it was over, it seemed


at him. He stared at me. It was always like this. He’d never once raised a hand to me, but we couldn’t stop ourselves tearing into each other. When he was around and conscious, which wasn’t often. Anyone would have had a hard time knowing how to help a scared, wounded girl or the scared, angry teenager she turned into. Maybe Dad had never had a chance, but he hadn’t even tried. The only emotion that got any reaction from him was anger, and so I’d clung to it. At least if we were fighting, it meant he was paying attention. “You’re my father,” I said. “I care. Can’t help it, apparently, and God knows I’ve tried.” He popped the tab on his beer and took a long sip. “I don’t need charity.” “You need help,” I said. “You can’t clear this place out on your own. Please, Dad. Let me call someone, or—” “What, you want to pay someone to take all my stuff? Throw it out like it’s garbage?” “It is garbage,” I said, and knew immediately it was a mistake. There’d been the tiniest sliver of light under that door, but now it slammed shut. “It’s good stuff. Just needs some fixing up. Organizing,” he said. “It’s not—” I stopped. There was no point. There had never been any point, any of the times I’d tried. “They’re going to make you leave. You won’t have a choice.” “We’ll see,” he said. “What are you doing back here, anyway? You didn’t just come to see me.” “Cass and Liv and I wanted to get together,” I said, letting the subject change, knowing it was the same as admitting defeat. “Mark the occasion, that kind of thing.” “You mean Stahl dying. Yeah, I heard about that. Cancer. Huh.” He said it like he was commenting on the weather. I made a sound of disbelief. “That’s all you’ve got? The guy who almost killed your daughter is dead, and you’ve got ‘Huh.’” He took another swallow and sat with it a moment. “I’m glad if it gives you some kind of peace. That’s something you’ve had in short supply. So I suppose I’m grateful he’s dead.” I didn’t know what I’d expected. Some sign, at least, that he gave a shit about what had happened to me. But it had always seemed like he just didn’t understand what the big deal was. I wasn’t dead. The wounds healed. Why was everyone still making a fuss about it? “It was good to see you, Dad,” I said through gritted teeth. “We should do this again sometime.” “See? Sarcasm. No variety,” Dad said. His laugh had a raspy rattle to it. “Is that all you wanted? To give me a hard time and go?” “Apparently.” “You need a place to stay?” “I’m good,” I told him. I started to leave, stopped. “I … I’ll come back tomorrow, okay? Before I leave town.” “Don’t go out of your way for me,” he said. He turned his back on me, shuffling over to one of the


straight before my nose till I stood one of the hills, with two quaint, craggy peaks shining could run no longer. Contents vividly in the sun. I now felt for the first time the joy of exploration. The isle was uninhabited; my shipmates I had left behind, and noth- Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 112 113 ing lived in front of me but dumb brutes and fowls. I turned the nearest live-oak and squatted there, hearkening, as silent hither and thither among the trees. Here and there were flow- as a mouse. ering plants, unknown to me; here and there I saw snakes, Another voice answered, and then the first voice, which I and one raised his head from a ledge of rock and hissed at me now recognized to be Silver’s, once more took up the story with a noise not unlike the spinning of a top. Little did I and ran on for a long while in a stream, only now and again suppose that he was a deadly enemy and that the noise was interrupted by the other. By the sound they must have been the famous rattle. talking earnestly, and almost fiercely; but no distinct word Then I came to a long thicket of these oaklike trees— live, came to my hearing. or evergreen, oaks, I heard afterwards they should be called— At last the speakers seemed to have paused and perhaps to which grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs cu- have sat down, for not only did they cease to draw any nearer, riously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket but the birds themselves began to grow more quiet and to stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, settle again to their places in the swamp. spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the And now I began to feel that I was neglecting my busi- margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest of ness, that since I had been so foolhardy as to come ashore the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh with these desperadoes, the least I could do was to overhear was steaming in the strong sun, and the outline of the Spy- them at their councils, and that my plain and obvious duty glass trembled through the haze. was to draw as close as I could manage, under the favourable All at once there began to go a sort of bustle among the ambush of the crouching trees. bulrushes; a wild duck flew up with a quack, another fol- I could tell the direction of the speakers pretty exactly, lowed, and soon over the whole surface of the marsh a great not only by the sound of their voices but by the behaviour of cloud of birds hung screaming and circling in the air. I judged the few birds that still hung in alarm above the heads of the at once that some of my shipmates must be drawing near intruders. along the borders


cut from his right ear to his left, without his ever knowing it."' Here, all eyes were turned upon Brittles, who fixed his upon the speaker, and stared at him, with his mouth wide open, and his face expressive of the most unmitigated horror. 'I tossed off the clothes,' said Giles, throwing away the table-cloth, and looking very hard at the cook and housemaid, 'got softly out of bed; drew on a pair of--' 'Ladies present, Mr. Giles,' murmured the tinker. '--Of SHOES, sir,' said Giles, turning upon him, and laying great emphasis on the word; 'seized the loaded pistol that always goes upstairs with the plate-basket; and walked on tiptoes to his room. "Brittles," I says, when I had woke him, "don't be frightened!"' 'So you did,' observed Brittles, in a low voice. '"We're dead men, I think, Brittles," I says,' continued Giles; '"but don't be frightened."' 'WAS he frightened?' asked the cook. 'Not a bit of it,' replied Mr. Giles. 'He was as firm--ah! pretty near as firm as I was.' 'I should have died at once, I'm sure, if it had been me,' observed the housemaid. 'You're a woman,' retorted Brittles, plucking up a little. 'Brittles is right,' said Mr. Giles, nodding his head, approvingly; 'from a woman, nothing else was to be expected. We, being men, took a dark lantern that was standing on Brittle's hob, and groped our way downstairs in the pitch dark,--as it might be so.' Mr. Giles had risen from his seat, and taken two steps with his eyes shut, to accompany his description with appropriate action, when he started violently, in common with the rest of the company, and hurried back to his chair. The cook and housemaid screamed. 'It was a knock,' said Mr. Giles, assuming perfect serenity. 'Open the door, somebody.' Nobody moved. 'It seems a strange sort of a thing, a knock coming at such a time in the morning,' said Mr. Giles, surveying the pale faces which surrounded him, and looking very blank himself; 'but the door must be opened. Do you hear, somebody?' Mr. Giles, as he spoke, looked at Brittles; but that young man, being naturally modest, probably considered himself nobody, and so held that the inquiry could not have any application to him; at all events, he tendered no reply. Mr. Giles directed an appealing glance at the tinker; but he had suddenly fallen asleep. The women were out of the question. 'If Brittles would rather open the door, in the presence of witnesses,' said Mr. Giles, after a short silence, 'I am ready to make one.' 'So am I,' said the tinker, waking up, as suddenly as he had fallen asleep. Brittles capitualated on these terms; and the party being somewhat re-assured by the discovery (made on throwing open the shutters) that it was now broad day, took their way upstairs; with the dogs in front. The two women, who were afraid to stay below, brought up the rear. By the advice of Mr. Giles, they all talked very loud, to warn any evil-disposed person


a sign, and if it’s a sign, then it is the gamemakers’ way of signifying that Calaphas is one kill away from being the next champion to earn a life in the higher reality for which he has yearned since childhood. He feels like breaking into song. He’s not one who sings along with music on the radio. In fact, he doesn’t have a good voice for singing and never indulges in it. He feels so good, however, that he wants to sing, and he might do so if it would not draw attention to him at a moment when he needs to be stealthy. Even if breaking into song weren’t likely to jeopardize his mission, he couldn’t do so because he’s so disinterested in music that he doesn’t know the lyrics to any songs. He is hyper alert and feeling more wonderfully aggressive even than he was at Vince and Colleen’s house; he is exhilarated. Before he comes to the imposing gate, he climbs the white board fence and drops into the yard at the Chandra place. He isn’t going to make a bold approach on the lighted driveway, but he likes the cover of the California oaks marshalled along its length. Because the trees are year-around shedders, the ground is mantled with small, dry, oval leaves like beetle shells that crunch underfoot. The sound isn’t loud enough to draw the attention of anyone in the house, and Calaphas likes it so much that he takes shorter and more steps than necessary; the sound makes him feel powerful, like a giant scoring points by stomping through the puny structures of elves, like a massive dragon under whose taloned feet the bones of vanquished knights are crushed to splinters and dust. Killing is always satisfying work. The pathetic plea for mercy, whether spoken or unvoiced. The desolate last cry of pain and fear. The pale clouding or else the sudden bloody brightness of the eyes. The rattle in the throat, the stuttering of a last word that can’t quite be pronounced. The final flexing of the hands as they grasp at what they may no longer have. The terminal cascade of fluids. The spasms and shudders before the long stillness. As rewarding as it is to execute and witness any murder, by far the best experiences are those in which the labor is as hands-on as possible. Recently, with events moving at roller-coaster speed, Calaphas has been required by circumstances to use only a gun and finish the task expeditiously. He theorizes that advancement through the game occurs more rapidly when the killings are intimate and the thrill is therefore greatest: strangulation with bare hands, bludgeoning either with fists or a hammer, stabbing and slashing, a good long smothering with a pillow, a wire garrote applied with such measured force that the victim is able to hold on to false hope for an agonizing minute. If Michael Mace is the game-winning kill toward which Calaphas’s life has been directed, perhaps a disabling gunshot wound can be only preliminary to a more protracted


might still be here. But none of it was done with intent. I was defending myself, and things just got out of control. She basically did it to herself. You can understand, though, how bad it would be if this came out. I can’t prove that I didn’t mean to hurt her. I could lose everything. Gabriella, the kids—they can’t know about this.” He looked at me desperately. I nodded. “Jessi’s death was an accident.” “Yes,” he said, as if relieved I understood. “But Liv’s wasn’t,” I said, ragged as a scream but so soft I could barely hear my own voice over the hiss of the rain. He pulled his hands from mine. He stepped back, his face settling into a hard kind of sorrow. His hand went to his back, lifting up the edge of his jacket. The jacket he’d never offered to me, as I shivered in the rain. He took the gun from his waistband. It looked like the one Mitch bought me. Nine-millimeter, I thought. Close enough to the Barneses’ gun that you couldn’t tell the difference just from the wounds they left. And they’d never recovered the bullet. My fear was cold and still, the surface of a lake in winter. I could sink forever under it, all sound and sense distant. Shudders racked my body, and I couldn’t look anywhere but the perfectly round, perfectly black barrel of the gun. I tried to take a breath. All that came was a short, shallow gasp. “It wasn’t me,” Cody said. “Stahl’s son—he must have found out that you lied.” “It wasn’t Ethan. He wanted his father in prison,” I said. “And how exactly do you know he found out we lied? Who told you that? It was Liv. Wasn’t it?” Cody looked down at the gun like he wasn’t sure what it was. “You think you know what happened, but you don’t,” he said. “You didn’t mean for it to happen.” Echoing again and again and again. Because nothing was our faults; the universe conspired against us, weaving tight the threads of fate. I’d known the names of the Fates once: Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. How could I remember that, when I’d forgotten so much? “I only wanted to talk to her,” he said hoarsely. “But she wouldn’t listen to me. She wouldn’t—she attacked me. I was only defending myself.” “Unarmed? Half your size?” “She would have destroyed my whole life,” he said, voice strangled. “I was just trying to find a way out. That’s all I’ve been doing, all along.” “Was it you in the woods?” I asked him. “I thought you might lead me to Jessi. I wasn’t going to hurt you. I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, but he sounded like he was trying to convince himself of it as much as me. “Then let me go,” I said, one last futile thrash of hope as the snare’s wire tightened. I want to live, I realized, even as survival became impossible. For the first time I wanted more than to outrun the


is obvious to everyone else. He is an aggressor.’ ‘Can I ask you a question?’ ‘Anything.’ ‘Are you possessive of me?’ Though she posed the question without any hostility, Tetu faltered in his reply: ‘Not anymore.’ She studied his face. ‘I was made to serve you, to work outside in the cold while you kept warm inside. You’ve never asked what I want. No one has.’ ‘What do you want?’ ‘I’ve never thought about it until now.’ ‘Now you’ve been given a choice?’ ‘Yes, now that I’ve been given a choice.’ MCMURDO CITY NAVAL QUARTER USS KENNEDY SAME DAY ARRIVING AT THE COAST, THE mystery of the abandoned old town was explained. The citizens of McMurdo had retreated to their only defensible positions – the ageing armada. Lined up along the decks of the aircraft carriers were rows of armed sentries, adopting the fortress tactics of a medieval castle, soldiers manning the outer walls where ordinary people would try to hold their own against the cold creatures that they’d created. The ramp connecting the Antarctic mainland to the USS Kennedy had been blown up, so that the only way to reach the flight deck, forty metres above the sea ice, was by climbing chain ladders unfurled for them. Echo was too heavy; the rungs buckled under her feet and, forced to improvise, she clambered up the thirty-tonne anchor, her palms gripping freezing steel which would’ve torn the skin off an ordinary person’s hands, inadvertently demonstrating how easy it was to breach their defences. On deck they passed through the hastily constructed perimeter, crude compared to the once cutting-edge sophistication of this flagship warship. There were barrels of flammable oils ready to pour onto attackers whose only weakness was warmth, rolls of razor wire to tangle their limbs and trenches of white phosphorous to ignite as soon as the cold creatures scaled the ship’s steep sides, which they, like Echo, would manage with ease. Sniper rifles were stationed on the command tower to target anything that broke through the defences, although how effective bullets were against the creature’s armoured exteriors remained unclear. Regardless, the colony of cold creatures would surely attack under the cover of a storm with minimal visibility in freezing conditions so hostile ordinary people would be unable to venture outside, let alone repel an attack. The truth was that after twenty years of peace, people had neglected the art of war; they had allowed their stash of weapons to be depleted and repurposed. The deck of the Kennedy was no longer a runway with the most advanced fighter jets in the world. Instead, it was lined with rows of terrace houses, including homes built from the recycled wings of Hornet fighter jets, creating the most expensive shanty town of all time. The advanced tactical machine guns which once defended this carrier had been turned into pots, pans and pipes, while the computers which operated the Phalanx canon had been picked clean of components to repair the supercomputers used for genetic engineering. What was once the most powerful warship ever constructed


Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor’s good opinion. Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins, my avocations had been largely increased. The good old office, now extinct in the State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon me. It was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly remunerative. I seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages; but I must be permitted to be rash here and declare, that I consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery, by the new Constitution, as a—premature act; inasmuch as I had counted upon a life-lease of the profits, whereas I only received those of a few short years. But this is by the way. My chambers were up stairs at No.—Wall-street. At one end they looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom. This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters call “life.” But if so, the view from the other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more. In that direction my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes. Owing to the great height of the surrounding buildings, and my chambers being on the second floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square cistern. At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons as copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an office-boy. First, Turkey; second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut. These may seem names, the like of which are not usually found in the Directory. In truth they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each other by my three clerks, and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or characters. Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman of about my own age, that is, somewhere not far from sixty. In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o’clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—till 6 o’clock, P.M. or thereabouts, after which I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with


of immense strength, and absolutely uncontrollable in his anger. "Last week he hurled the local blacksmith over a parapet into a stream, and it was only by paying over all the money which I could gather together that I was able to avert another public exposure. He had no friends at all save the wandering gypsies, and he would give these vagabonds leave to encamp upon the few acres of bramble-covered land which represent the family estate, and would accept in return the hospitality of their tents, wandering away with them sometimes for weeks on end. He has a passion also for Indian animals, which are sent over to him by a correspondent, and he has at this moment a cheetah and a baboon, which wander freely over his grounds and are feared by the villagers almost as much as their master. "You can imagine from what I say that my poor sister Julia and I had no great pleasure in our lives. No servant would stay with us, and for a long time we did all the work of the house. She was but thirty at the time of her death, and yet her hair had already begun to whiten, even as mine has." "Your sister is dead, then?" "She died just two years ago, and it is of her death that I wish to speak to you. You can understand that, living the life which I have described, we were little likely to see anyone of our own age and position. We had, however, an aunt, my mother's maiden sister, Miss Honoria Westphail, who lives near Harrow, and we were occasionally allowed to pay short visits at this lady's house. Julia went there at Christmas two years ago, and met there a half-pay major of marines, to whom she became engaged. My stepfather learned of the engagement when my sister returned and offered no objection to the marriage; but within a fortnight of the day which had been fixed for the wedding, the terrible event occurred which has deprived me of my only companion." Sherlock Holmes had been leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and his head sunk in a cushion, but he half opened his lids now and glanced across at his visitor. "Pray be precise as to details," said he. "It is easy for me to be so, for every event of that dreadful time is seared into my memory. The manor-house is, as I have already said, very old, and only one wing is now inhabited. The bedrooms in this wing are on the ground floor, the sitting-rooms being in the central block of the buildings. Of these bedrooms the first is Dr. Roylott's, the second my sister's, and the third my own. There is no communication between them, but they all open out into the same corridor. Do I make myself plain?" "Perfectly so." "The windows of the three rooms open out upon the lawn. That fatal night Dr. Roylott had gone to his room early, though we knew that he had not


least dig harder. I had ridiculous visions of finding a rusty bike in the woods, Robbie’s fingerprints and Thalia’s blood still on the handlebars. The image I kept returning to was of a tangled necklace chain. In one of the more normal moments of my later childhood, my mother taught me to rub a chain with olive oil, then take a long, straight pin and start working on the tiniest of gaps, the place with the most give. Once one thing loosened, another could loosen, another. I always felt claustrophobic at the start. But over time I’d learned patience, learned the reward of breathing through my discomfort. What I knew was that we’d found a gap in the knot. I didn’t know what else it would loosen up, and I didn’t want to pull too hard, but I knew if we finessed it, wiggled it gently, other things would follow. Midday, Geoff and I took our laptops to Aroma Mocha and sat looking through the 1995 interview records for any details of the mattress party timeline, any mention of Robbie being there the whole time or of who walked together. The kids who’d been there listed all nineteen students at the mattress party, confirmed that they’d been drinking, talked about when they’d last seen Thalia. Nothing about how scattered they’d been on the trail. The only time it came up, either as a question or an answer, was the State Police asking both Sakina and Bendt Jensen whether Robbie had been there the whole time. Sakina said that to the best of her recollection, he was. Bendt said that he assumed so. They asked Sakina if he could have left early and she said no, because she remembered him helping Stiles walk home on his bad leg. Mike Stiles, in his own interview, talked about Robbie and Dorian helping him back. “It’s amazing,” Geoff said, “that they thought to ask if he left early, but not if he got there late.” “Right. Because bad stuff happens late at night. Bad stuff happens after you’ve been drinking, not before.” Alder texted: LOL, Amy was like, uh, thanks for the theory. She at least agreed it looked like bike mud! Just as we were leaving, setting our empty cups on the counter, Fran texted back: Nine minutes for Jacob, twelve for Max w/ training wheels, if I got the spot right. J says he could do it faster if it weren’t so wet. 25 I deployed myself that night as a weapon. A spy, in the grand tradition of women who trade sex, or the promise of sex, for secrets. Only I was wearing pajama pants and a USC sweatshirt, and all I did was text Mike Stiles. I’m stir-crazy, I wrote. Need to talk to someone not on the fucking witness list. Drinks on balcony? It’s not too cold! When I opened the door he looked composed, but as he stepped inside he flushed. He was aware, at least, that he was a married man entering a woman’s hotel room at night. We


by

traveling to its end. I’d already been to the North Pole. Now I’d walk to the

South.

Another trek in the company of Walking With The Wounded.

People warned me that the South Pole was even colder than the North. I

laughed. How could that be possible? I’d already frozen my penis, mate—

247

https://m.facebook.com/groups/182281287 1297698 https://t.:me/Afghansalarlibrary

wasn’t that the very definition of worst-case scenario?

Also, this time I’d know how to take proper precautions—snugger

underwear, more padding, etc. Better yet, one very close mate hired a

seamstress to make me a bespoke cock cushion. Square, supportive, it was

sewn from pieces of the softest fleece and...

Enough said.

66.

I: BETWEEN PREPARATIONS for the assault on the Pole I sat down with my

new private secretary, Ed Lane Fox, whom we all called EIf.

November 2013.

A onetime captain in the Household Cavalry, Elf was trim, smart, sleek.

He often reminded people of Willy, but that was down to his hairline more

than his personality. He reminded me less of my older brother than of a

racing dog. Like a greyhound, he wouldn’t ever stop. He’d chase that rabbit

to the end of time. In other words, he was wholly dedicated to the Cause,

whatever it might be at any given moment.

His greatest gift, though, might’ve been his knack for seeing to the heart

of things, for sizing up and simplifying situations and problems, which

made him the perfect man to help enact this ambitious idea of an

International Warrior Games.

Now that some of the money was in hand, Elf advised, next order of

business was finding someone with the uncommon organizational skills, the

social and political connections, to take on a job this size. He knew of just

the man.

Sir Keith Mills.

Of course, I said. Sir Keith had organized the 2012 Olympics, in London,

which had been such a


metal interests in the Congo. At Number 9 there was Lord Danvers, a distinguished but weak-looking man whose francs were presumably provided by his rich American wife, a middle-aged woman with the predatory mouth of a barracuda, who sat at Number 3. Bond reflected that they would probably play a pawky and nervous game and be amongst the early casualties. At Number 1, to the right of the bank was a well-known Greek gambler who owned, as in Bond's experience apparently everyone does in the Eastern Mediterranean, a profitable shipping line. He would play coldly and well and would be a stayer. Bond asked the huissier for a card and wrote on it, under a neat question mark, the remaining numbers, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, and asked the huissier to give it to the chef de partie. Soon it came back with the names filled in. Number 2, still empty, was to be Carmel Delane, the American film star with alimony from three husbands to burn and, Bond assumed, a call on still more from whoever her present companion at Royale might be. With her sanguine temperament she would play gaily and with panache and might run into a vein of luck. Then came Lady Danvers at Number 3 and Numbers 4 and 5 were a Mr and Mrs Du Pont, rich-looking and might or might not have some of the real Du Pont money behind them. Bond guessed they would be stayers. They both had a business-like look about them and were talking together easily and cheerfully as if they felt very much at home at the big game. Bond was quite happy to have them next to him - Mrs Du Pont sat at Number 5 - and he felt prepared to share with them or with Monsieur Sixte on his right, if they found themselves faced with too big a bank. At Number 8 was the Maharajah of a small Indian state, probably with all his wartime sterling balances to play with. Bond's experience told him that few of the Asiatic races were courageous gamblers, even the much-vaunted Chinese being inclined to lose heart if the going was bad. But the Maharajah would probably stay in the game and stand some heavy losses if they were gradual. Number 10 was a prosperous-looking young Italian, Signor Tomelli, who possibly had plenty of money from rackrents in Milan and would probably play a dashing and foolish game. He might lose his temper and make a scene. Bond had just finished his sketchy summing-up of the players when Le Chiffre, with the silence and economy of movement of a big fish, came through the opening in the brass rail and, with a cold smile of welcome for the table, took his place directly opposite Bond in the banker's chair. With the same economy of movements the thick slab of cards which the croupier had placed on the table squarely between his blunt relaxed hands. Then, as the croupier fitted the six packs with one swift exact motion into the metal and


be?” an actor declares, and I realize I’ve missed something crucial in the play. I try to pay attention. I really hope Ben sends a text instead of calling. Chapter Four Ben doesn’t call or text, and I endlessly alternate between relief and disappointment, until an actual piece of life-altering news occurs. I think I may have found the perfect flat. With my current salary and atypical lack of a social life, I’m hoping to rent a room in London for a maximum of eight hundred pounds a month with bills included, so I spend my free evenings and entire weekend at viewings until I meet Jo Bowen (whose name is actually Joseph because her mother believes free speech can’t exist if any words remain gender-assigned. Jo has a sister called James who goes by Jamie and a brother called Elizabeth who goes by Eli). Jo has a room available in a three-bedroom flat in Wandsworth located a ten-minute walk from two stations. Hi Maddie, Yes, the room is still available! You’ll be living with me and another flatmate called Cam, who moved in last week. She works as a primary school teacher’s assistant and I work in the charity sector. Are you free to view the room and meet us Sunday afternoon? x The ground-floor maisonette is an old build and the landlady, Winnie (Jo’s mum, and possibly short for Winston?), bought this house in the seventies. The kitchen has white panel cupboards, an old-fashioned oven and linoleum floors; the fridge is the most modern fixture. The corridor is long but narrow, Cam’s room is next to the kitchen, and the living room is bright and colorful, with a red sofa in the middle and a teal armchair with a tartan blanket draped over it in the corner. A painted tapestry of a rural village hangs on the wall and two tall bookcases are slotted into opposite corners. Like the kitchen, it has enough room for three people, and there’s even a small garden out the back. Upstairs, Jo shows me a separate toilet and bathroom. I picture myself in the tub, lights off, candles lit, bubbles, music, seltzer in a wineglass and bath bombs that change the color of the water pink. Then we walk into what would be my room. It’s bigger than the box room I currently reside in at home, and I briefly consider what I’d do with the space if it were given to me. The room comes with a double bed, a large wardrobe, wide windows, and a small desk and chair. The rent is more than I hoped to pay, but this is the best flat—and residents—I’ve found by far. Before Jo, I’d spent an entire day wishing the opportunity to move out had been presented to me earlier. Only a day before my search began, Shu messaged to say Lydia had agreed to them living together and they were now looking for a place for just the two of them. Since then I’d met shared-bathroom-nightmare Carrie, who’d left two used tampons floating in


away. Or tell the police what you know, and let them handle it.” I shook my head. I had to finish the work Liv had started. “I’m not going to stop now,” I said. “I’ll call him.” * * * Cody picked up right away. “I was so sorry to hear about Olivia,” he said as soon as I told him who it was. “Are you back in Seattle yet?” “No, I’m staying in Chester for a while,” I said. I sat in my motel room, alone, too conscious of Ethan’s presence two rooms away. “I’ve got to head back to Seattle for the weekend for work, but otherwise I’m planning to stick around. Until the funeral, at least.” “Have they set a date?” “They’re still waiting for the body to be released,” I said. “I see.” He paused. “I didn’t know Olivia very well. She didn’t talk to me like you did.” “I don’t remember talking to you. I remember trying to talk and stammering a lot,” I admitted. He gave a low chuckle. “You were a sweet kid. Too smart for your own good. All three of you, really, each in your own way.” There was an intimacy to talking like this, just Cody’s voice and mine, like the world had narrowed down to the reality we shared. Those brief moments where our lives had intersected, which it seemed like no one else would really understand. I didn’t want to break that sense of shared reality, but I had to. “Cody, I’m hoping you can help me with something.” “Anything you need,” he said immediately. “Did you know a girl named Jessi Walker?” I asked. There was silence on the other end of the line. “I think she was friends with Oscar.” “Yeah,” Cody said finally. “I know Jessi. Knew her, I guess. I haven’t seen her since— God. Must be almost twenty-five years. Why are you asking about Jessi?” “There’s a chance she might have been one of Stahl’s victims,” I said. “Jessi’s not dead,” he said. “Is she?” Uncertainty made his voice crack. “She was reported missing. After she left town no one ever saw her again,” I told him. “My dad said she hung around with Oscar, and I figured if she spent time with Oscar, she must’ve spent time with you.” “We were friends,” he said, sounding disturbed. “What can you tell me about her?” “I’m not sure. I don’t think she ever talked about herself much. I got the sense she came from a bad background. She hitched into town and charmed Marsha into offering her a shift. Inside a week she had a second job at the diner and she was even helping out in the office at the mill on the weekends, which is where Oscar and I met her. She was—the word that springs to mind is vibrant. Funny and brash. She had these moments of sweetness, too. You really think she’s dead?” “Yes. I do.” I didn’t say how I knew. Let him think it was instinct. He let out a


thank you throughout. “First, let me introduce myself. Most of you know me as Alante’s Police Commissioner or Mayoral candidate, and I don’t doubt you’ve heard the rumors about my past. Yes, I do come from a rich family from Nanzy. Yes, I did join the Iceberg Corps against my family’s wishes. And yes, I did come back with a horrible spinal injury and an addiction to opioid medicine. After a hard two years of rehabilitation, I enrolled in law school, graduated with honors, and, at age thirty-four, was appointed Commissioner of Alante. Many say being sent to the Sunken City was a test from my superiors, and I agree; this is the kind of city that can destroy you. It certainly destroyed the fury-born.” Deep in her seat, arms crossed over her chest, Io scowled. All those fancy Nanzy folks thought they knew Alante, but more often than not they knew the newsies’ malformed version of it. “In the year since I was appointed Commissioner, we have managed to shut down more than half of the city’s chimerini betting fights, pleasure houses, dream palaces, and gambling dens. Dozens of outlier gangs have been disbanded. Our fine police officers and judges have managed to prosecute and win against factories breaking pollution laws, companies mistreating employees, notable city officials mismanaging city funds.” A pointed silence followed, a reference to something Io had missed. Hill politics rarely reached Silts ears. Who cared about upper-class riffraff when the Aeneas gang was tolling the Rosemary Bridge again? With the election in just a couple of days, rumor was that every mob boss in the Silts was throwing all the spare coin they had in supporting Saint-Yves’s opponent, the conservative but more pliable current Mayor. “For centuries,” Saint-Yves continued, “we have trusted the other-born to police their own. The fury-born could spot crimes on your skin like dirt. They could extract a confession and deliver punishment with their mighty whips. Such were their powers. But the once-glorious Order of the Furies is no more. The Nine have become hermits, reclused in their precious House. There is no one to oversee the other-born criminals of Alante, and, boy, have they taken advantage.” A series of numbers and graphs was projected on a white sheet behind him. “In the past decade, crime rates in most city-nations—but predominantly in Alante—have grown significantly. What’s more worrisome, however, is the fact that indictment rates have acutely dropped. Only one in ten other-born is found guilty. To put it quite simply, we can’t prove the other-born did it.” But that was just hypocritical bullshit. If only one in ten were found guilty, it was because only one in ten was guilty. Other-born were constantly accused of crimes they didn’t commit, just because they had the ability to commit them. “And here is where the Initiative comes in,” the Commissioner went on. A new slide appeared, listing the Initiative’s goals and methods in a neat diagram. “We need other-born to catch other-born. Let’s imagine a simple scene: it’s summer, the city’s humidity is through


ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore. We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says: "Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood." Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never men- tioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever. Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it. Some thought it would be good to kill the FAMILIES of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers says: "Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout him?" "Well, hain't he got a father?" says Tom Sawyer. "Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he


warned when they’d all sat down together at Blue State after Dean Sandow’s funeral. “That would be way too dangerous. Think of the Gauntlet as a secret passage that appears when you say the magic words. But in this case, the magic words are a series of steps, a path you have to walk. You take your first steps in the labyrinth, and only then does the path become clear.” “So we’re hunting for something we can’t even see?” Alex had asked. “There would be signs, symbols.” Michelle had shrugged. “Or at least that’s one theory. That’s all hell and the afterlife are. Theories. Because the people who get to see the other side don’t come back to tell about it.” She was right. Alex had only been to the borderlands when she’d made her bargain with the Bridegroom, and she’d barely survived that. People weren’t meant to move between this life and the next and back again. But that was exactly what they’d have to do to get Darlington home. “There are rumors of a Gauntlet on Station Island in Lough Derg,” Michelle continued. “There might have been one in the Imperial Library of Constantinople before it was destroyed. And according to Darlington, a bunch of society boys built one right here.” Dawes had nearly spit out her tea. “Darlington said that?” Michelle gave her a bemused look. “His little pet project was creating a magical map of New Haven, of all the places where power ebbed and flowed. He said some society members had done it on a dare and that he intended to find it.” “And?” “I told him he was an idiot and that he should spend more time worrying about his future and less time digging into Lethe’s past.” Alex found herself smiling. “How’d that go over?” “How do you think?” “I actually don’t know,” she’d said at the time, too tired and too raw to pretend. “Darlington loved Lethe, but he also would have wanted to listen to his Virgil. He took that seriously.” Michelle studied the leavings of her scone. “I liked that about him. He took me seriously. Even when I didn’t.” “Yes,” Dawes had said quietly. But Michelle had only returned to New Haven once over the summer. All June and July Dawes had been researching from her sister’s place in Westport, sending Alex into the Lethe House library with requests for books and treatises. They’d tried to come up with the right series of words to frame their requests in the Albemarle Book, but all that came back were old accounts of mystics and martyrs having visions of hell—Charles the Fat, Dante’s two towers in Bologna, caves in Guatemala and Belize said to lead to Xibalba. Dawes took the train from Westport a few times so they could sit together and try to find someplace to start. They always invited Michelle, but she only took them up on it that one time, on a weekend when she was off from her job in gifts and acquisitions at the Butler Library. They’d spent


feet. "We'll have rules!" he cried excitedly. "Lots of rules! Then when anyone breaks 'em--" "Whee--oh!" "Wacco!" "Bong!" "Doink!" Ralph felt the conch lifted from his lap. Then Piggy was standing cradling the great cream shell and the shouting died down. Jack, left on his feet, looked uncertainly at Ralph who smiled and patted the log. Jack sat down. Piggy took off his glasses and blinked at the assembly while he wiped them on his shirt. "You're hindering Ralph. You're not letting him get to the most important thing." He paused effectively. "Who knows we're here? Eh?" "They knew at the airport." "The man with a trumpet-thing--" "My dad." Piggy put on his glasses. "Nobody knows where we are," said Piggy. He was paler than before and breathless. "Perhaps they knew where we was going to; and perhaps not. But they don't know where we are 'cos we never got there." He gaped at them for a moment, then swayed and sat down. Ralph took the conch from his hands. "That's what I was going to say," he went on, "when you all, all. . . ." He gazed at their intent faces. "The plane was shot down in flames. Nobody knows where we are. We may be here a long time." The silence was so complete that they could hear the unevenness of Piggy's breathing. The sun slanted in and lay golden over half the platform. The breezes that on the lagoon had chased their tails like kittens were finding their way across the platform and into the forest. Ralph pushed back the tangle of fair hair that hung on his forehead. "So we may be here a long time." Nobody said anything. He grinned suddenly. "But this is a good island. We--Jack, Simon and me-- we climbed the mountain. It's wizard. There's food and drink, and--" "Rocks--" "Blue flowers--" Piggy, partly recovered, pointed to the conch in Ralph's hands, and Jack and Simon fell silent. Ralph went on. "While we're waiting we can have a good time on this island." He gesticulated widely. "It's like in a book." At once there was a clamor. "Treasure Island--" "Swallows and Amazons--" "Coral Island--" Ralph waved the conch. "This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun." Jack held out his hand for the conch. "There's pigs," he said. "There's food; and bathing water in that little stream along there--and everything. Didn't anyone find anything else?" He handed the conch back to Ralph and sat down. Apparently no one had found anything. The older boys first noticed the child when he resisted. There was a group of little boys urging him forward and he did not want to go. He was a shrimp of a boy, about six years old, and one side of his face was blotted out by a mulberry-colored birthmark. He stood now, warped out of the perpendicular by the fierce light of publicity, and he bored into the coarse grass with one toe. He was muttering and about to cry.


he get sight of it, as many have done, upon the moor? I said it in London, Watson, and I say it again now, that never yet have we helped to hunt down a more dangerous man than he who is lying yonder" -- he swept his long arm towards the huge mottled expanse of green- splotched bog which stretched away until it merged into the russet slopes of the moor. Chapter 15 A Retrospection It was the end of November, and Holmes and I sat, upon a raw and foggy night, on either side of a blazing fire in our sitting- room in Baker Street. Since the tragic upshot of our visit to Devonshire he had been engaged in two affairs of the utmost importance, in the first of which he had exposed the atrocious conduct of Colonel Upwood in connection with the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club, while in the second he had defended the unfortunate Mme. Montpensier from the charge of murder which hung over her in connection with the death of her step-daughter, Mlle. Carere, the young lady who, as it will be remembered, was found six months later alive and married in New York. My friend was in excellent spirits over the success which had attended a succession of difficult and important cases, so that I was able to induce him to discuss the details of the Baskerville mystery. I had waited patiently for the opportunity for I was aware that he would never permit cases to overlap, and that his clear and logical mind would not be drawn from its present work to dwell upon memories of the past. Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer were, however, in London, on their way to that long voyage which had been recommended for the restoration of his shattered nerves. They had called upon us that very after- noon, so that it was natural that the subject should come up for discussion. "The whole course of events," said Holmes, "from the point of view of the man who called himself Stapleton was simple and direct, although to us, who had no means in the beginning of knowing the motives of his actions and could only learn part of the facts, it all appeared exceedingly complex. I have had the advantage of two conversations with Mrs. Stapleton, and the case has now been so entirely cleared up that I am not aware that there is anything which has remained a secret to us. You will find a few notes upon the matter under the heading B in my indexed list of cases." "Perhaps you would kindly give me a sketch of the course of events from memory." "Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in my mind. Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed. The barrister who has his case at his fingers' ends and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all


class="p3">

I rolled down the window, watched the countryside fly by. My eyes

couldn’t quite absorb all that color, all that green. I breathed in the fresh air

and wondered which was the dream, the months in Afghanistan or this trip

in the car? The guns of Dwyer, the beheaded goats, the boy in the

wheelbarrow—was that reality? Or was reality these soft leather seats and

Pa’s cologne?

22.

I WAS GIVEN A MONTH OFF. I spent the first part of it with mates. They heard I

was home, rang me up, asked me out for a drink.

OK, but just one.

A place called the Cat and Custard Pot. Me: sitting in a dark corner,

nursing a gin and tonic. Them: laughing and chatting and making all sorts of

plans for trips and projects and holidays.

Everyone seemed so loud. Had they always been so loud?

They all said I seemed quiet. Yeah, I said, yeah, I guess so.

How come?

No reason.

I just felt like being quiet.

I felt out of place, a bit distant. At times I felt sort of panicky. At other

times I felt angry. Do you folks know whats happening on the other side of

the world right now?

After a day or two I rang Chels, asked to see her. Begged. She was in

Cape Town.

She invited me to come.

Yes, I thought. That’s what I need right now. A day or two with Chels and

her folks.

After, she and I ran off to Botswana, met up with the gang. We started at

Teej and Mike’s house. Big hugs and kisses at the door; they’d been worried

sick about me. Then they fed me, and Mike kept handing me drinks, and I

was in the place I loved most, under the sky I loved most, so happy that at

one point I wondered if I might not have tears in my eyes.

165


Sir Charles I had learned that there was a prospect of my regaining my freedom if certain expenses could be met. It meant everything to me -- peace of mind, happiness, self-respect -- everything. I knew Sir Charles's generosity, and I thought that if he heard the story from my own lips he would help me." "Then how is it that you did not go?" "Because I received help in the interval from another source." "Why then, did you not write to Sir Charles and explain this?" "So I should have done had I not seen his death in the paper next morning." The woman's story hung coherently together, and all my questions were unable to shake it. I could only check it by finding if she had, indeed, instituted divorce proceedings against her husband at or about the time of the tragedy. It was unlikely that she would dare to say that she had not been to Baskerville Hall if she really had been, for a trap would be necessary to take her there, and could not have returned to Coombe Tracey until the early hours of the morning. Such an excursion could not be kept secret. The probability was, there- fore, that she was telling the truth, or, at least, a part of the truth. I came away baffled and disheartened. Once again I had reached that dead wall which seemed to be built across every path by which I tried to get at the object of my mission. And yet the more I thought of the lady's face and of her manner the more I felt that something was being held back from me. Why should she turn so pale? Why should she fight against every admission until it was forced from her? Why should she have been so reticent at the time of the tragedy? Surely the explanation of all this could not be as innocent as she would have me believe. For the moment I could proceed no farther in that direction, but must turn back to that other clue which was to be sought for among the stone huts upon the moor. And that was a most vague direction. I realized it as I drove back and noted how hill after hill showed traces of the ancient people. Barrymore's only indication had been that the stranger lived in one of these abandoned huts, and many hundreds of them are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the moor. But I had my own experience for a guide since it had shown me the man himself standing upon the summit of the Black Tor. That, then, should be the centre of my search. From there I should explore every hut upon the moor until I lighted upon the right one. If this man were inside it I should find out from his own lips, at the point of my revolver if necessary, who he was and why he had dogged us so long. He might slip away from us in the crowd of Regent Street, but it


end up with a foot problem, wear orthotic shoes. What you do not get is a man in his tenth decade looking like his fifth. That is not within the bounds of the normal human healthspan. The only way you get from there to here is T7 therapy, so even if Roddy is in the wrong part of town, in the wrong kind of apartment and wearing the wrong clothes—even if he’s so very much not gossip magazines and sturgeon sushi and private planes—he is what he is. Going by age and size it’s just one dose, but in policing terms it doesn’t make much difference. This is an entire rain of shit for the department. Titan cases by definition involve frightened rich people calling the politicians they socialise with, who call the police chief, who then wants to know everything before the cops themselves do until it’s like two guys running in clown shoes, except that when they fall over one of them gets to fire the other. Meanwhile the Titans think the cops don’t really give a shit if they die, which is somewhat true. They think every tabloid hack in the world wants a photograph of a naked Titan with a knife between her ribs, which is entirely true. I don’t hate Titans, cops or journalists. I also don’t love Titans, cops or journalists. I do what I do and I try to do it right. * * * — I poke around some more, open the box of bric-a-brac and find…stuff. Old train tickets; a branded baseball cap from a diner somewhere in flyover country; work gloves and a tool belt, but no tools. Receipts from everywhere, a pair of hiking boots and a bag of moss. I give the moss to Musgrave, who says thank you, she has always wanted some. I tell her I thought maybe it was important. But I didn’t, really. Roddy didn’t think any of this was important enough to do anything with, and for that matter nor did his killer, assuming there was one, who had plenty of time if they wanted his box of things he couldn’t bring himself to throw away. Figure maybe that was all it was: stuff in a holding pattern between being useless and being refuse. Old people get like that, and Titans are old even if they look young. They also get fragmentary amnesia sometimes, if the dosing process was particularly traumatic, if there was a lot of pain. The brain puts itself back together, but not always completely, and it’s not unknown for Titans to have little files of the details they can’t quite remember, or a desk drawer filled with things that ought to matter, but they don’t know why. The cost of immortality is losing part of who you were, and perhaps that’s not a bad bargain anyway. After twenty minutes it’s clear the gold butterfly fixture is all I’m getting from the apartment unless I want to question the fish. I do not, so I tell Musgrave I’ll see her later at


the detail of his profession. Routine precautions were to him no more unreasonable than they would be to a deep-sea diver or a test pilot, or to any man earning danger-money. Satisfied that his room had not been searched while he was at the casino, Bond undressed and took a cold shower. Then he lit his seventieth cigarette of the day and sat down at the writing-table with the thick wad of his stake money and winnings beside him and entered some figures in a small note-book. Over the two days' play, he was up exactly three million francs. In London he had been issued with ten million, and he had asked London for a further ten. With this on its way to the local branch of Crdit Lyonnais, his working capital amounted to twenty-three million francs, or some twenty-three thousand pounds. For a few moments Bond sat motionless, gazing out of the window across the dark sea, then he shoved the bundle of banknotes under the pillow of the ornate single bed, cleaned his teeth, turned out the lights and climbed with relief between the harsh French sheets. For ten minutes he lay on his left side reflecting on the events of the day. Then he turned over and focused his mind towards the tunnel of sleep. His last action was to slip his right hand under the pillow until it rested under the butt of the .38 Colt Police Positive with the sawn barrel. Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold. CHAPTER 2 - DOSSIER FOR M Two weeks before, this memorandum had gone from Station S of the Secret Service to M, who was then and is today head of this adjunct to the British Defence Ministries: To: M. From: Head of S. Subject: A project for the destruction of Monsieur Le Chiffre (alias 'The Number', 'Herr Nummer', 'Herr Ziffer', etc.), one of the Opposition's chief agents in France and undercover Paymaster of the 'Syndicat des Ouvriers d'Alsace', the Communist-controlled trade union in the heavy and transport industries of Alsace, and as we know, an important fifth column in the event of war with Redland. Documentation: Head of Archives' biography of Le Chiffre is attached at Appendix A. Also, Appendix B, a note on SMERSH. We have been feeling for some time that Le Chiffre is getting into deep water. In nearly all respects he is an admirable agent of the USSR, but his gross physical habits and predilections are an Achilles heel of which we have been able to take advantage from time to time and one of his mistresses is a Eurasian (No 1860) controlled by Station F, who has recently been able to obtain insight into his private affairs. Briefly, it seems that Le Chiffre is on the brink of a financial crisis. Certain straws in the wind were noticed by 1860 - some discreet sales of jewellery, the disposal of a villa at Antibes, and a general tendency


the emptiness. And when we ride up to the twelfth floor, the faces of all the tributes who will never return flash across my mind and there’s a heavy, tight place in my chest. When the elevator doors open, Venia, Flavius, and Octavia engulf me, talking so quickly and ecstatically I can’t make out their words. The sentiment is clear though. They are truly thrilled to see me and I’m happy to see them, too, although not 346 like I was to see Cinna. It’s more in the way one might be glad to see an affectionate trio of pets at the end of a particularly difficult day. They sweep me into the dining room and I get a real meal — roast beef and peas and soft rolls — although my portions are still being strictly controlled. Because when I ask for seconds, I’m refused. “No, no, no. They don’t want it all coming back up on the stage,” says Octavia, but she secretly slips me an extra roll un- der the table to let me know she’s on my side. We go back to my room and Cinna disappears for a while as the prep team gets me ready. “Oh, they did a full body polish on you,” says Flavius en- viously. “Not a flaw left on your skin.” But when I look at my naked body in the mirror, all I can see is how skinny I am. I mean, I’m sure I was worse when I came out of the arena, but I can easily count my ribs. They take care of the shower settings for me, and they go to work on my hair, nails, and makeup when I’m done. They chatter so continuously that I barely have to reply, which is good, since I don’t feel very talkative. It’s funny, because even though they’re rattling on about the Games, it’s all about where they were or what they were doing or how they felt when a specific event occurred. “I was still in bed!” “I had just had my eyebrows dyed!” “I swear I nearly fainted!” Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena. We don’t wallow around in the Games this way in District 12. We grit our teeth and watch because we must and try to 347 get back to business as soon as possible when they’re over. To keep from hating the prep team, I effectively tune out most of what they’re saying. Cinna comes in with what appears to be an unassuming yel- low dress across his arms. “Have you given up the whole ‘girl on fire’ thing?” I ask. “You tell me,” he says, and slips it over my head. I imme- diately notice the padding over my breasts, adding curves that hunger has stolen from my body. My hands go to my chest and I frown. “I know,” says Cinna before I can object. “But the Game- makers wanted to alter you surgically. Haymitch had a huge fight with them over it. This was the


from our history that decidedly disprove this. But I can’t. I can remember what the arcuate fasciculus does for the human brain but not exactly how to use it to make words. “Here,” he says, reaching for the cooler. “I can get that.” “So can I,” I say, lifting it against my shins. “Harriet.” I shuffle sideways. He laughs. “So we’re back to this?” “Back to what?” I say. His brow scrunches against the sun, his full upper lip inching up like there’s a string tied to his Cupid’s bow. “Fighting about every tiny thing.” “Is this fighting?” I say. “Harriet,” he says. “Compared to the rest of our relationship, this is a brawl.” I glance down the shore. Parth has his arm around Sabrina and they’re climbing the rotting wooden steps from the beach to the forested hill, catching up with Kimmy and Cleo now. I fight an urge to sprint after them, to take up the role of buffer or referee. “Don’t,” Wyn says gently. I look back at him, my low back aching. “Don’t what?” “Go after them,” he says, drifting closer. I swallow. “Why not?” He pulls the cooler out of my hands and sets it on the bench. “Because we’re talking.” “You mean brawling,” I say. His lips twitch. “Shouldn’t we be done fighting,” I say, “now that we’re broken up?” The corners of his mouth twist downward now. “Harriet, we never fought when we were together. If we had . . .” He trails off, doesn’t land that final blow. I feel it all the same, a knife twist in my heart. From the shore, an air horn blasts, three times in rapid succession. Neither of us moves, or even looks away. The wanting is palpable. “Shit,” Wyn says, shaking his head. “I don’t like not touching you.” I look away. Now my heart feels like one giant blister, too tender, too delicate. If only he’d felt that way sooner. If only I had any clue what went wrong, how I lost him. If only I believed there were some way to fix it. But he’s not the only one who’s done things he can’t take back. And revisiting what’s happened will only make the pain worse. The air horn blows again. I clear my throat. “You get the cooler, and I’ll grab the picnic basket.” He nods for several seconds, then hoists the ice chest into his arms and turns away. 23 UNHAPPY PLACE AN HOUR OUTSIDE INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA A QUIET BI-LEVEL at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. A place where everything is familiar but nothing belongs to me. Trees standing too still in the stiff humidity. Mosquitoes buzzing, moths gathering around the streetlights, the screech of cicadas emanating from the woods. I managed to put this off for a long time, but I couldn’t anymore. It meant too much to him. At the doorstep, I ask, “What if we leave? We can pretend our flight got delayed.” “Delayed for what?” Wyn says. “It’s June.” “Too sunny,” I say. “The pilots couldn’t see with


Huff, and he loves me. My past never has and never will have a bearing on my future because I will never go back to where I was. I can’t believe that I have spent all this time stressing and worrying about possibly losing my career for a person who doesn’t even think I’m good enough to be with her brother. I have always thought of Lanier as my family. So it breaks my heart in a million ways to realize that she could never really see me as a part of hers. Lanier TRUE BLUE IT’S HARD TO TELL WHO’S an addict in college. Because at mixers and cocktail parties, Tuesday DJ nights and football game days, Thursday nights—a sacred going-out night—and weekends, there is always an excuse for drinking, drugs, and general debauchery. Daphne and I went to different colleges, so the first time I was with Daphne on her new turf in Wilmington, I wasn’t worried when she and her three suitemates snorted lines off the counter in their bathroom before we went out. I didn’t partake, but I wasn’t there to be Officer Bradley either. Drugs were a part of college, right? That night, dancing in a crowded, smoky bar, I was happy about the adorable boy dancing with Daphne, watching her like she made the earth turn on its axis. We drank and danced and laughed and drank and danced and laughed. Daphne seemed wild and free and, best of all, happy. When I asked her about the boy, as she continued sipping vodka sodas as the sun came up back at her house, she said, “Oh, he’s precious, but I can’t hang out with him anymore.” “Why not?” “He wants me to be his, like, actual girlfriend. And what’s the point?” she answered, shrugging. “I’m never going to get married anyway.” The only consistent in Daphne’s dating life was Huff. They were at different colleges, so they only saw each other on breaks and random weekends. When they were apart, they were apart. But when they were together, they were… together. I didn’t love that they were always casually dating, but I knew it would pass. Sometimes I wondered how I would fit in if they got serious. But when Huff got accepted to Johns Hopkins for medical school, I figured any relationship they had would end. He would be studying all the time. Daphne loved Wilmington, and she was never going to leave the beach, even though, by that time, I honestly wished she would. There was always drinking, always drugs. I felt like the very uncool friend among her very cool ones, but I still worried. I’m not saying it was her friends’ faults, but I knew that sometimes it was harder to change a behavior when you were in the same place with the same group and the same habits. When I walked through the back door of my childhood home spring break of our senior year, Huff and Daphne didn’t see me at first. They were sitting at the dining room table


her room, full of worry. She had thought they were ready to exchange names at last. But perhaps she had somehow misinterpreted their communication. An hour later, he replied. Iris snatched the paper off the floor and read: Then you already know all the important facets of me. I don’t feel as if my name is worthy to note, but you can call me Carver. That’s what Del used to call me, and I miss it some days. —C. Carver. Iris let his name wash through her before she whispered it into the shadows of her bedroom. “Carver.” A name that was hard and unforgiving, cutting the air with its sound. A name she never would have thought belonged to him. She typed: Hi, Carver. I’m Iris. He sent a message back: “Little flower.” I see it now. The name suits you. P.S. Hi, Iris. Iris chuckled, uncertain what to make of him. Gods, she wanted to know what he looked like. She wanted to know the cadence of his voice. What sort of facial expressions did he make when he typed his postscripts? Dear Carver (I confess, it’s so nice to finally be able to address my letters to you!), Most people instantly think of an eyeball when they learn my name. It bothered me so greatly when I was younger in school. Some boys relentlessly teased me, so that’s why Forest nicknamed me “Little Flower.” Even then, I disliked my name, and asked my mother (whose name was Aster, by the way) why she didn’t name me something fashionable, like Alexandra or Victoria. “The women in our family have always been named after flowers,” Mum said. “Be proud of your name.” Alas, I’m still striving to be. —Iris He replied: Dear Iris, I have to say that an eyeball is the furthest image from my mind. Even the fierce flower that inspired your mother to name you wasn’t the first thing I thought of. Rather: iris: transitive verb: to make iridescent. Let us make our names exactly what we want them to be. —C. Dear Commanding Officer of the E Brigade, My name is Iris Winnow, and I am currently seeking the whereabouts of my brother, Private Forest M. Winnow. I was informed by the Brigadier-General’s second assistant that my brother was sorted into Second E Battalion, Fifth Landover Company, under Captain Rena G. Griss. I haven’t heard from Forest since the day he enlisted nearly six months ago, and I am concerned about his well-being. If you could provide me with an update on the Fifth Landover Company, or an address that I may write to, I would be deeply grateful. Sincerely, Iris Winnow War correspondent for the Inkridden Tribune Stationed at Avalon Bluff, Western Borough, Cambria {23} Champagne & Blood Roman had told Iris his middle name, and he winced every time he thought about it. He thought about it as he rode the lift to the Gazette. He thought about it as he prepared his tea at the sideboard, wishing it were coffee. He thought about it


here, but Iris had the place memorized. She set the dented loaf of bread and the half carton of eggs down on the counter before reaching for a paper sack and returning to the living room. She gathered up the bottles—so many bottles— and it made her think of that morning, and why she had run late. Because her mother had been lying on the floor next to a pool of vomit, in a kaleidoscope of glass, and it had terrified her. “Leave it,” Aster said with a wave of her hand. Ash fell from her cigarette. “I’ll clean it up later.” “No, Mum. I have to make it to work on time tomorrow.” “I said to leave it.” Iris dropped the bag. The glass chimed within it, but she was too weary to fight. She did as her mother wanted. She retreated to her dark room and fumbled for her matches, lighting the candles on her bedside table. But she was hungry, and eventually had to return to the kitchen to make a marmalade sandwich, and all the while her mother had lain on the sofa and drunk from a bottle and smoked and hummed her favorite songs that she could no longer listen to, because the radio was gone. Back in the quiet of her chamber, Iris opened the window and listened to the rain. The air was cold, brisk. A trace of winter lingered within it, but Iris welcomed its bite and how it made her skin pebble. It reminded her that she was alive. She ate her sandwich and eggs, eventually changing out of her wet clothes for a nightgown. Carefully, she laid the sopping Inkridden Tribune on the floor to dry, the monster illustration more smudged now after being carried in her pocket. She stared at it until she felt a sharp tug within her chest, and she reached beneath her bed, where she hid her grandmother’s typewriter. Iris pulled it out into the firelight, relieved to find it after the radio’s unexpected departure. She sat on the floor and opened her tapestry bag, where the beginnings of her essay now sat crinkled and damp from the rain. Find something good to write about, and I might consider publishing it in the column next week, Zeb had said. Sighing, Iris fed a new page to Nan’s typewriter, fingers poised over the keys. But then she glanced at the ink-streaked monster again, and she found herself writing something entirely different from her essay. She hadn’t written to Forest in days. And yet she wrote to her brother now. The words spilled out of her. She didn’t bother with the date or a Dear Forest, as she had with all the other letters she had typed to him. She didn’t want to write his name, to see it on the page. Her heart felt bruised as she cut to the chase that night: Every morning, when I wade through Mum’s sea of green bottles, I think of you. Every morning, when I slip into the trench coat you left


me, softly, and I shut my eyes and told myself that my father was right and none of it meant anything at all. Ethan passed out sometime around two p.m. I got dressed quietly so I wouldn’t wake him up. There was no chance of me getting any sleep. My thoughts were caught in an endless loop, cycling between Jessi and Liv and that summer twenty-two years ago. I was ready to accept that Stahl hadn’t been the one who attacked me. He wasn’t the thread connecting the three of us. Except that Liv and Cass had seen him. Unless they hadn’t. There was only one person left who could tell me exactly what they’d seen. At two o’clock on a Friday, Cass would be at the lodge. The sensible thing would be to call or to go by her house later, but instead I drove out of town, along the winding road that led farther into the moss-draped trees. You came upon the lodge suddenly—rounding a thickly wooded turn to discover it right in front of you, nestled against a backdrop of a hundred shades of green and brown. When we were kids it was a single building, sagging and waterlogged, with scratchy sheets and stained carpeting. It had closed completely the year before Cass bought it. Two years after that, she’d transformed it. Huge, rough wooden beams supported the roof, artfully primitive, while the all-glass front entrance added an elegant modern touch. Inside, works by local Native artists decorated the lobby, and the front desk sold tiny packets of salted caramel popcorn for four bucks a pop. “Can I help you?” chirped a tiny brunette from behind the counter, her cheeks rounding with her perfect customer-service smile. “I’m looking for—” I started, but I didn’t get any further. “Naomi! What are you doing here? Is something wrong?” Cass asked, striding across the lobby. Belatedly, I realized that I hadn’t changed or brushed my hair, and I probably looked terrible. “I just need to talk to you,” I said. Cass’s eyes darted past me. Her expression was tight with discomfort. This was her space, and I was intruding on it. Causing chaos. But she only waved a beckoning hand and marched down the hall. I trailed behind as she made her way to one of the conference rooms on the ground floor and opened it with a keycard. As soon as we were both inside, she shut it and turned to me, spots of pink high on her cheeks. “You’ve been avoiding me,” she said. I winced. I couldn’t say anything in my defense, because she was right. “I’m sorry.” It was utterly inadequate. One of her friends had died, and the other disappeared on her. Her lips thinned. “It’s fine. What do you need?” she asked, her voice strained. I tensed. Maybe coming here had been a bad idea. But it was too late now. “I need to know exactly what you saw the day I was attacked,” I said. She let out a groan, covering her face with one


through the night, which was why she was taken upstairs to her room instead of to the hospital.” She tips back her glass and empties it before filling it again and taking another sip. Steeling herself for the rest of the story. Because despite being horrible already, I know much worse is about to come. “Dr. Walden, the family physician, was summoned,” she says. “He said Virginia was brain dead and that the rest of her body would soon follow suit. Only it didn’t. She hung on for days, weeks, months. It turned out Dr. Walden was wrong in every way. Virginia’s mind was very much alive. She seemed to comprehend whatever was said to her. It was her body that had died. She was paralyzed, motionless, unable to talk, unable to do anything.” “So what you told me about the strokes and the polio were—” “All lies,” Lenora says. “To cover the fact that the hanging had damaged her larynx, leaving her unable to speak, and snapped her spinal cord, leaving her mostly paralyzed.” “Why lie about that?” I say. “Why go to all that effort to cover up everything?” “You don’t understand what it was like for me. I was only seventeen, scared and alone. I had no other family and no one to guide me. My parents were dead. My sister was basically comatose. And suddenly I was in charge of Hope’s End, my father’s business, everything. My father’s attorney came to tell me the market crash had reduced the family business to ruins. My mother’s attorney then came to tell me I’d inherit millions from my grandparents when I turned eighteen and that Virginia would, too, if she managed to live that long.” Lenora stares into her glass like it’s a crystal ball. But instead of the future, all she can see is the past. “Meanwhile, the police kept coming around with their suspicions and insinuations,” she says. “The servants quit in droves. I had the others fired, worried they thought the same way as the police and might take matters into their own hands. My friends dropped me immediately. As did Peter.” “Peter Ward?” I say, picturing the portraits in the hall, black silk crepe now hanging from three of them like party streamers. “The painter?” “We were in love,” Lenora says. “At least, I was. After the murders, he wanted nothing to do with me. I never saw him again. Then there was my sister to care for and an estate to run and no one to help me but Archie, who did it solely out of devotion to Virginia. I knew he didn’t give a damn about me. And all I wanted was to be somewhere else—and someone else.” Lenora looks up from her glass, seeking sympathy. “Certainly you can understand that. You know what it’s like to be accused of something you didn’t do. To have everyone leave, to grapple with fear and grief alone. In the past six months, haven’t you wanted to change everything about your situation?” I have. And I did.


years past; the severity with which he had frowned upon, and finally cast off, an expensive and dissipated son, delaying forgiveness until within the final quarter of an hour of the young man's life; his prayers at morning and eventide, and graces at meal-time; his efforts in furtherance of the temperance cause; his confining himself, since the last attack of the gout, to five diurnal glasses of old sherry wine; the snowy whiteness of his linen, the polish of his boots, the handsomeness of his gold-headed cane, the square and roomy fashion of his coat, and the fineness of its material, and, in general, the studied propriety of his dress and equipment; the scrupulousness with which he paid public notice, in the street, by a bow, a lifting of the hat, a nod, or a motion of the hand, to all and sundry of his acquaintances, rich or poor; the smile of broad benevolence wherewith he made it a point to gladden the whole world,--what room could possibly be found for darker traits in a portrait made up of lineaments like these? This proper face was what he beheld in the looking-glass. This admirably arranged life was what he was conscious of in the progress of every day. Then might not he claim to be its result and sum, and say to himself and the community, "Behold Judge Pyncheon there"? And allowing that, many, many years ago, in his early and reckless youth, he had committed some one wrong act,--or that, even now, the inevitable force of circumstances should occasionally make him do one questionable deed among a thousand praiseworthy, or, at least, blameless ones,--would you characterize the Judge by that one necessary deed, and that half-forgotten act, and let it overshadow the fair aspect of a lifetime? What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil which were heaped into the other scale! This scale and balance system is a favorite one with people of Judge Pyncheon's brotherhood. A hard, cold man, thus unfortunately situated, seldom or never looking inward, and resolutely taking his idea of himself from what purports to be his image as reflected in the mirror of public opinion, can scarcely arrive at true self-knowledge, except through loss of property and reputation. Sickness will not always help him do it; not always the death-hour! But our affair now is with Judge Pyncheon as he stood confronting the fierce outbreak of Hepzibah's wrath. Without premeditation, to her own surprise, and indeed terror, she had given vent, for once, to the inveteracy of her resentment, cherished against this kinsman for thirty years. Thus far the Judge's countenance had expressed mild forbearance, --grave and almost gentle deprecation of his cousin's unbecoming violence,--free and Christian-like forgiveness of the wrong inflicted by her words. But when those words were irrevocably spoken, his look assumed sternness, the sense of power, and immitigable resolve; and this with so natural and imperceptible a change, that it seemed as if the iron man had stood


to go to the office and hunt up-" "Mr. Finch, do you think Jem killed Bob Ewell? Do you think that?" "You heard what Scout said, there's no doubt about it. She said Jem got up and yanked him off her- he probably got hold of Ewell's knife somehow in the dark... we'll find out tomorrow." "Mis-ter Finch, hold on," said Mr. Tate. "Jem never stabbed Bob Ewell." Atticus was silent for a moment. He looked at Mr. Tate as if he appreciated what he said. But Atticus shook his head. "Heck, it's mighty kind of you and I know you're doing it from that good heart of yours, but don't start anything like that." Mr. Tate got up and went to the edge of the porch. He spat into the shrubbery, then thrust his hands into his hip pockets and faced Atticus. "Like what?" he said. "I'm sorry if I spoke sharply, Heck," Atticus said simply, "but nobody's hushing this up. I don't live that way." "Nobody's gonna hush anything up, Mr. Finch." Mr. Tate's voice was quiet, but his boots were planted so solidly on the porch floorboards it seemed that they grew there. A curious contest, the nature of which eluded me, was developing between my father and the sheriff. It was Atticus's turn to get up and go to the edge of the porch. He said, "H'rm," and spat dryly into the yard. He put his hands in his pockets and faced Mr. Tate. "Heck, you haven't said it, but I know what you're thinking. Thank you for it. Jean Louise-" he turned to me. "You said Jem yanked Mr. Ewell off you?" "Yes sir, that's what I thought... I-" "See there, Heck? Thank you from the bottom of my heart, but I don't want my boy starting out with something like this over his head. Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open. Let the county come and bring sandwiches. I don't want him growing up with a whisper about him, I don't want anybody saying, 'Jem Finch... his daddy paid a mint to get him out of that.' Sooner we get this over with the better." "Mr. Finch," Mr. Tate said stolidly, "Bob Ewell fell on his knife. He killed himself." Atticus walked to the corner of the porch. He looked at the wisteria vine. In his own way, I thought, each was as stubborn as the other. I wondered who would give in first. Atticus's stubbornness was quiet and rarely evident, but in some ways he was as set as the Cunninghams. Mr. Tate's was unschooled and blunt, but it was equal to my father's. "Heck," Atticus's back was turned. "If this thing's hushed up it'll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I've tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they've got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him...


top of a long hill. Do you know I lived there for sixty years? Can you believe I’m ninety now?’ ‘You look well on it, Miss Hamilton,’ Josie said kindly, looking around. The room was simple but pristine. An acoustic guitar stood on a stand in the corner. ‘Please – we’re not at school now. Call me Cecily.’ Lin sat down awkwardly, then she stood up. ‘Can I make us all some tea, Cecily?’ ‘Would you?’ Cecily eased herself into an armchair. ‘That would be so nice, Linda. And you married Neil Timms. Who’d have thought it, that handsome little boy – he was so good-natured.’ ‘He still is.’ Lin moved to the small kitchen, and filled the kettle. ‘He’s perfect.’ ‘I did so enjoy sharing lunch with you. I’ve never forgotten Euripides’ words…’ Cecily said. ‘“We share lunch as friends.”’ She turned to Josie. ‘What a pity Minnie couldn’t come back with us.’ ‘She had to get the train to Oxford, Miss – Cecily.’ Josie hid a smile beneath her hand – old habits were hard to shake. ‘She’s done so well. Classics at St Hilda’s.’ Cecily leaned back in her seat, stretching slim legs. ‘I’m so pleased I argued with her father about her education. He was a difficult man.’ She frowned. ‘What happened to her sister… Tina, wasn’t it?’ ‘She’s fine, she lives just down the road. She has an allotment. Years ago, she used to be an ambulance driver. She’s very down to earth, a lovely woman.’ ‘Is she married?’ ‘Not now.’ Josie shook her head. ‘I think the ambulance job cost her dearly – her husband was the sort of man who wanted his wife at home. He left years ago.’ ‘Loyalty is everything in a relationship…’ Cecily paused. ‘Josephine, I’m sorry to hear about your husband passing.’ Her eyes were kind. ‘Tell me about him.’ ‘He was called Harry.’ Josie took a breath. ‘I met him at a dance when I was twenty-one. I was working as a hotel receptionist and Harry had a job in a bank. We clicked. I knew he was the one straight away. He was lovely – nothing was too much trouble. We were…’ Josie put a knuckle to the corner of her eye. ‘We were happy.’ Cecily sighed. ‘“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you… I could walk through my garden forever.”’ ‘That’s beautiful,’ Josie said sadly. ‘Alfred, Lord Tennyson.’ Cecily had a faraway expression. ‘Did you not ever think of marrying…?’ Josie tried to make her voice compassionate; she didn’t want to intrude. ‘Once,’ Cecily whispered, then Lin was in the room carrying a tray. ‘At least I can make tea… although I could burn water.’ She grinned, placing the teapot and three delicate cups on a low table. ‘This is a lovely home you have here, Miss Hamilton.’ ‘Cecily,’ Cecily insisted. ‘Do you still play?’ Josie indicated the acoustic guitar on the stand. ‘I do. My fingers aren’t as nimble as they were.’ ‘Shall I pour then?’ Lin asked politely. ‘I think you