The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(29)

He liked that. She could tell by the length of the look he gave her when she said it. He liked that she remembered.

“Back to work then,” Liesl said. “Or we’ll be here all night.”

They were very nearly there all night. There was work to do and whiskey to drink. And eventually they gave up on the work but not the whiskey. If they had been younger, they would have sat cross-legged on the cement floor, but old bones being what they are, they perched on rolling library stools until the bottle was empty.

“Let me walk you home,” Francis said.

He watched Liesl as she punched in the alarm. There was nary a squirrel nor a security guard that could see them at this hour.

“I can take care of myself, Francis. You should get home too.”

“I can’t very well send a woman off alone into the dark. My mother would kill me.”

“Your mother’s dead.”

“So let her rest in peace,” he said. “And let me walk you home.”

“I’m an old woman,” Liesl said. “I’m pretty well invisible when I walk down the street. It’s excellent armor.”

“You’re not old.”

“You keep saying that. Of course I am, Francis. You are too.”

“It’s hard for me to fathom.”

“Really? I find it impossible to forget how old I am. My body is always reminding me.”

“This stuff with Chris. That’s when I remember.”

“He’s scarcely older than us. It’s a selfish point of view, but I’ve thought about that a lot. That it could have been me.”

“I haven’t thought that at all,” Francis said.

“How can you avoid it? Christopher’s only five or so years older than us.”

A sushi shop they were passing had its neon sign turned on. It cast a red glow on Francis’s face, drawing shadows in every line and crevice that defined the topology of its surface. But then the shop was behind them, and his face went dark again.

“I’ve always looked up to Chris,” he said. “So he’s always seemed somehow older.”

Her steps swayed down Harbord Street, loose and unselfconscious in her whiskey-aided gait. Every few feet she half turned her head at her companion, trying to catch sight of his intentions out of the corner of her eye.

“Luckily that’s not an issue with your new boss,” she said.

“I’ve told you already.”

“You’ve told me what?” she said.

“I can’t look at you and see anything but the thirty-year-old Liesl I first met. So you’ll never be old to me.”

She tried to imagine being back in her thirty-year-old skin, sliding a slender arm against an almost unfamiliar body just to feel the electricity of it, but she couldn’t get the picture of their current anatomy, of the lines and crevices, to go dark for long enough. The red light kept bringing them forward.

“Perhaps,” she said, “that’s a way of making sure that you never seem old to yourself.”

“Maybe. Wouldn’t I be clever if that were the case?”

“I think we’re drunk,” Liesl said, slipping an arm through his even if it wasn’t slender and thirty years old. Touching him because the whiskey gave her an excuse and because she wanted to see what it felt like with this body.

“I know,” he slurred. “It’s great. What about you, Liesl? Where do you fix me in time?”

“Ask me tomorrow when my head is clearer.”

“I’d prefer to know now when you’re not thinking straight.” He ran a hand across the knuckles that were holding onto his arm, and Liesl saw a flash of hunger register across his face, or maybe she saw a reflection of her own ravenousness. But only a flash, because the sight of her front door, of her chrysanthemums, shook her loose. She pulled her arm free of his.

“This is me.” Liesl pointed at the third house on the street where they were standing. “Thank you for the walk home. And for the help.”

“Come on. I’ll walk you to your door,” Francis said.

He stood next to her as she unlocked it. The city stretched around them, empty. But the doorstep was crowded, intimate.

“Good night then,” Liesl said. “Get home safely.”

***

Liesl had the feeling of swimming through gelatin when she arrived at work the next morning.

Dan, looking impossibly athletic in his too-tight jeans, looking like he and his combat boots could go chop down a tree or build a house at a moment’s notice, caught Liesl and her saggy under-eye skin as soon as she came in. “No Miriam again today.”

“It’s not yet nine.”

“She usually arrives by eight thirty.”

“I know. But she doesn’t have to arrive until nine.”

Dan shrugged and pushed an empty book truck, the constant prop, toward the elevator.

“Who’s scheduled to work the desk this morning?”

She had a growing sense of anxiety about Miriam’s absence. A heaviness that started in her stomach and rose through her throat like acid after a heavy meal.

Dan turned back around. Slowly, always slowly.

“How would I know?” he said. “I just shelve the books.”

Then again, the heaviness in her stomach could have been all the Dewar’s.