The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(6)

“Yes. But I’d like to take a more…scientific approach.”

Liesl was standing in her coat now, ready to get off the call and out of the library. She was suddenly starving. A good day meant John might have cooked something.

“I look forward to hearing about it when we have a chance to meet.”

“So you’re open to the idea?”

“To what idea?”

Liesl had had few opportunities to be the decision-maker about the use of the library’s collections herself—unless one counted the dozen or so times that Christopher had agreed to the loan of materials to other institutions without bothering to arrange shipping or insurance and Liesl was left in the position of stopping the materials before they left the building. After four decades working with Christopher, she had risen to the rank of his assistant director, a title with a pleasing ring but a day-to-day reality of tasks that Christopher didn’t find especially interesting. When she approved expense reports or commissioned the creation of a website or found money in the budget for an interesting acquisition, she did so with the contented feeling of one who had done better than their peers, and it was only now, on this phone call, that she was coming to realize how seldom choice, real choice, had been a part of her work life.

“The Peshawar has been said to note the first use of the zero in mathematics,” Rhonda continued, “but no one really knows how old the Peshawar is.”

“Well, we have an idea based on the style of writing, the language. There’s a community of scholars who specialize in dating books.”

The catalog was for a collection of books and manuscripts from the collection of a prominent Iranian scholar. She doubted that Christopher was planning to bid.

“So you have a best guess.”

“A confident estimate.”

“We could know for certain.”

“How’s that?”

“I’m proposing we carbon-date the Peshawar.”

Liesl felt out of her depths and hungry. Neither state was conducive to a productive conversation. She knew little about how the manuscript had originally been dated, she knew nothing about carbon dating, and she was thinking of the macarons she had passed up earlier in the evening. “Let’s set a meeting and discuss further.”

“Wonderful,” Rhonda said. “I’ll email you to set it up. Liesl Weiss, is that you?”

What were the features of Lot 37 in the catalog that made it unique, lifted it out of the other ninety-nine? Liesl had the gold calligraphy on blue vellum burned into her retinas from the moment she saw it, estimated at ￡100,000, begging her to acquire it for the collection. But when this was all over, Christopher would be back or someone like him in his place and ￡100,000 would be desired for more appropriate purchases and Liesl would be back to settling invoices or strategizing to fundraise for what others felt was worthwhile. It was just that she had hoped that before the clouds parted and Garber or Christopher or the donors had time to question it, she would have the chance to do all of Christopher’s job, not just the miserable bits. To hunt down the treasure and to raise the auction paddle and to bring Lot 37 home to rest with the other treasures. She took a last look—gold calligraphy on blue vellum—and closed the catalog.

Liesl had set the alarm and locked the door and was halfway to the subway before she realized that she had never given the woman her name. She supposed it was easy enough to figure out by looking at the library’s website or the university’s staff directory, but she was unnerved that Rhonda had been researching her during their conversation. She smoothed her hair against the humidity as if she were being watched at that very moment, and with a last look behind her, she walked down the steps to the subway.

***

“Now don’t be upset,” John said when she walked through the front door. “But I’m afraid I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Telling me not to get upset almost assures that I will indeed get upset. You haven’t gone off your medication?”

“There is no reason to. And no. Of course, no.”

She walked past him, squeezing through the hallway that was narrowed, as were all their hallways, by canvases in various states of completion stacked against the walls. In the kitchen she poured herself a glass of wine and leaned against the counter to hear his news. “Is it about the commission?”

He looked back out into the hallway. When they had first moved into this house fifteen years ago, she took hold of the idea that the shabby streets could be brightened into an appropriate neighborhood for rearing a family through fertilizer and forsythias. Now, in the swell of late summer, when her garden was still in bloom and young couples walked labradoodles on the sidewalk past her front door, she could believe that the dirt under her fingernails had manifested the improved property values for the whole neighborhood. But after nearly a decade and a half here, even with friendly yellow flowers peeking up from a window box under her kitchen window, she had to concede that the interior of the house failed to match the picture of the open and uncluttered family home that she had conjured in that same imagination.

“Tell me what happened then.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have taken it,” he said.

“It was such a terribly generous lot of money,” she said. With understanding, not with regret. Something about John’s face—sturdy, bearded, blue-eyed—conjured for Liesl a sense of warmth in the very bottom of her belly, a warmth like good whiskey or strings of white lights at Christmas that made disappointments devilishly hard to cling to.