The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(65)

“It might.”

“It might?”

“If I were really in charge,” Liesl said. “Then I agree it would disprove my point.”

“Mom,” Hannah said. “You know I’m not all of a sudden going to become a scientist just because you met some cool lady scientists. Right?”

Liesl thought of her daughter being made to feel unimportant. It made her stomach hurt.

“No,” Liesl said. “Of course not.”

“It’s nice that you were so inspired.”

The server dropped off the bill. Liesl hadn’t seen Hannah signal for it. Hannah’s bowl was empty, but Liesl wasn’t ready to go.

“More jealous than inspired, I think.”

“That’s fair,” Hannah said. “Though I always wondered what would have happened if you had put your name forward to be in a leadership position.”

“Didn’t I?”

“You kept your head down and did the work. It’s not the same.”

“I guess not,” Liesl said. She recognized the line of conversation from lectures she’d given Hannah through the years, about naming your goals and pushing toward them; an illusion dispelled for Liesl by the disappointments of participating in society for sixty years.

“You might have been the type of leader that you always said you wanted.”

Hannah wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and stood to leave.

“Thanks for the noodles, Mom.”

***

Liesl couldn’t get control of the paper in Christopher’s office. She’d been reading it and filing it and shredding it, but every time she opened another box, another drawer, another cupboard, there was more paper. The man had loved to print things. Essential things like the full donor list for the Plantin that she still hadn’t managed to find and trivial things like movie listings from the week of March 15, 2000. Every time she thought she had carved out some cleanliness, there was more aging paper.

“Call for you,” Francis said, poking his head through the door. “Percy on line two.”

Francis played with the buttons on what looked like a new cardigan. Too cozy-looking to fit with his image. She pictured him at the store, trying it on, wondering if it looked nice. She didn’t say anything about it.

“I’ll take it in here,” she said.

“I’ll close the door then.” And he did.

“How can I help you, Mr. Pickens?” Liesl said.

“I think you know, Liesl.”

“It’s been a hard month, Percy. Tell me, what can I do for you?”

“A hard month for me too,” Percy said. “My accountant is getting nervous.”

Liesl stood and stretched her back. She knew what he was after. She knew she couldn’t get it for him.

“A nervous accountant,” Liesl said. “That sounds ominous.”

“It’s November,” Percy said. “November is almost the end of the year.”

There were jokes she could have made, of course, about having learned the order of the months in kindergarten. She refrained.

“I need a tax receipt for the Plantin by the end of the year.”

“I’d like to give it to you,” Liesl said. “But I can’t do anything until it’s recovered.”

“Yes,” said Percy. “So my accountant tells me.”

“So how can I help?”

“You can recover the Plantin manuscript, or you can tell President Garber that the university has lost my funding support.”

In the library’s collection, there were a lot of bookplates with Percy Pickens’s name on them. Like most rich people, he loved writing his name on things. Hospital departments, university buildings, ancient texts. That’s what she was thinking about as Percy hung up on her. What the campus might look like if everything in it tagged with the name Pickens were to simply disappear.

It was raining outside, and Liesl decided to go for a walk in it. Her breath came easier as soon as she left the cluttered library and stepped into the rain under her purple umbrella. The sidewalks were her own as students hid under awnings or stayed inside buildings waiting for the rain to pass. No one else was willing to get wet.

The St. James Hotel was only a nine-minute walk from the library. Closer than the subway, so it only made sense to go in and get dry, and once she was inside, it only made sense to take a seat in a corner booth, and once she was seated, it only made sense to order herself a bottle of sparkling water, and once the water was ordered, it only made sense to ask for a whiskey, neat, as though it were an afterthought. Liesl hadn’t been sleeping. Miriam was making it impossible. Liesl was afraid that if she dozed off she’d be flooded with that image of the back of Miriam’s head, alone in the corner of the workroom, and in doing so she’d be immersed in her complicity in Miriam’s death, that she’d wake up drenched in sweat and guilt, bringing down the straw house built of the notion that Miriam’s death had been unavoidable. And now this, this threat from Percy and the knowledge that Liesl was going to undo what Christopher had spent decades building, and that when he woke up, if he woke up, he would be so disappointed.

The St. James Hotel had undergone a recent renovation, and the lobby bar banquettes were now upholstered with aquamarine velvet. Hideous. When she was younger, when Hannah was in preschool and Liesl would stay after work to have a drink rather than go home to an itinerant toddler, the room was mauve, and bartenders got your order right and weren’t judgmental. Liesl fished an ice cube out of the whiskey with her fingertips and cracked it with her teeth.