The Impossible Fortress(29)

“What about you?” I asked. “What’s your type?”

“I like confident people. I like guys who know what they want.”

“Like Tyler Bell?”

I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t believe any of the things Tyler had said about Mary: I had to beat her back with a stick, all right? She couldn’t keep her hands off me. I knew Mary would never really fall for a goon like Tyler—but suddenly she looked like I’d slapped her.

“You know Tyler Bell?”

“Everyone knows Tyler Bell.”

“How do you know Tyler Bell?”

“He goes to my school. He has a Harley.”

“What did he say to you?”

“Nothing. I mean, I barely know him. I just know he worked here.”

“Tyler Bell is an asshole,” she said. “The worst employee we ever had.”

“So not your type?”

“It isn’t funny, Will. Don’t even joke about him.”

“What’s wrong?”

And then Zelinsky was standing over us, his apron covered with wet black ink. At the time, I didn’t know how many of our conversations traveled to the front of the store. But looking back, I’m pretty sure he heard most of them.

“Is everything all right?”

He stated the question like a fact, strongly implying that no, everything was not all right.

“We’re fine,” Mary said.

“Maybe Will should go home now.”

“We’re fine,” Mary repeated. “I just want to get back to work.”

Zelinsky hesitated, then turned and walked back to the cash register. For the next hour, I didn’t dare say anything. We read from our respective books and typed on our respective computers. There were no further customers in the showroom and the only sounds came from All Your Favorite ’80s Love Songs—Joe Cocker and Willie Nelson and Phil Collins. From time to time I’d look at Mary, but she was typing furiously and avoiding eye contact.

Sometime around six o’clock I realized there were sirens blaring, and a police officer came into the store to tell Zelinsky that Crenshaw’s Pharmacy was on fire. We rose from our desks and went outside to take a look.

There were two fire trucks parked in the middle of Market Street and the volunteer firefighters were scrambling to unload their gear; Tackleberry and two other cops were routing traffic away from the train station. Mr. Crenshaw himself was pacing up and down the sidewalk, shaking his head. Gray smoke was venting from the second-story windows of his building; the fire appeared to be coming not from the pharmacy but the apartment above it. We craned our necks for a better view but we were standing at the wrong angle.

“Come on,” Mary told me. “I’ve got an idea.”

We went back inside and walked past the showroom to the cramped narrow staircase in the rear of the store. I followed Mary up to the second floor, and we entered a labyrinth of wire shelves and corrugated cardboard. All around us were boxes and shelves. The passage twisted and turned, and the lighting was dim, but Mary obviously knew every inch of the place. She stopped beneath a massive wooden hatch. “I just need to unlock it,” she explained.

I watched as she reached in her pocket for a key chain. Tyler Bell hadn’t exaggerated the sorry state of the woodwork; the door looked like something you’d see on a sunken pirate ship. A white wire stretched from the base of the hatch to a small crack in the ceiling, where it disappeared behind the wall.

I pointed to it. “Is that an alarm?”

“Yeah, my dad’s pretty paranoid. Like crooks are going to scale our walls and steal our envelopes, you know?”

The wooden door was so heavy, we both had to push. It opened outward, pivoting on two ancient hinges that shrieked with surprise. Then we ascended three steep steps and clambered out onto the roof. It was wide and flat but still a little dizzying; seeing Market Street and the train station from this new perspective was disorienting. The sun was setting and the sky was aflame with a crazy pink-and-orange glow. Up on the roof, it seemed close enough to touch.

We walked toward Market Street, stopping four feet short of the edge. This new vantage point gave us a full view of Crenshaw’s building; we could see firefighters moving around through the windows but no one was hurrying anymore; the smoke was thinning and it seemed the worst of the drama was already contained. Down on the street, a crowd of kids on dirt bikes had assembled to watch the action, and I could see Alf and Clark standing among them. Alf had the Beast balanced on his handlebars, and they both appeared to be lamenting the lack of destruction.

“I’m sorry about before,” Mary said. “About Tyler. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat.”

“That’s all right,” I said.

“He stole from the store. Or tried to, anyway. It’s still a sore subject for me and my dad.”

At once, her behavior made a lot more sense.

“What did he take?”

“You know those antique lighters near the register? Some of them are two or three hundred bucks. Tyler tried to steal one, and I caught him.”

“What happened?”

“My dad was pretty mad. He trusted Tyler. We both did. So he fired him, and that was that.” She turned away from Crenshaw’s, turning west to face the sunset instead. It was a much better view. “This was all last year, right when school was starting up. But like I said, we’re both still angry about it, I guess.”