The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(74)

“Bollocks you don’t,” Francis said, hunching over his knees.

“I don’t,” Liesl said. “You’ve had too much to drink, and so have I. We almost made a mistake, and then we didn’t.”

“You’re lying,” Francis said. “When you call this a mistake, I know you’re lying.”

“You don’t know a lick about what I’m thinking. If I say this is a mistake, then it is.”

“Then why haven’t you brought up your husband,” Francis said. “Such a mistake, you and I, but your marriage is nowhere on your mind.”

Liesl helped herself to a long breath before responding. Tried to be as serious as a woman balancing on one foot could be.

“You don’t know what’s in my head.”

“Of course I do. I’ve been in a marriage.”

“You haven’t been in mine.”

“You’re not worried about adultery all of a sudden. You’re worried about proximity to a criminal.” Francis’s face went dark and disappointed.

“You’re calling yourself a criminal now?”

“No. You are. Or you may as well be. This suspicion is typical coming from Max, but I expected better from you.”

“That’s not fair.”

Wine-woozy, Liesl watched Francis go slack, saw the anger slide right from his body and the sadness, cold and low, come in to fill the cracks that were left.

“There was something happening between us, I know there was,” Francis said. “You’re right; this isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to me.”

“Max and his suspicions have nothing to do with me.”

“There it is. You admit he suspects me.”

“He’s a rare-books librarian, not Hercule Poirot,” she said. “What do you care if he suspects you?”

“I do if it’s changed the way you think of me.” Francis reached up for her.

“I’m thinking of my marriage,” Liesl said, pulling her hand away from him.

“Darling,” he said, looking at the space where her hand should have been. “I don’t believe you.”

“All right. It’s not my concern if you do.”

“Hannah is out of the house. You’re about to retire. People around you are dying, for Christ’s sake.”

“Stop it, Francis.” She pulled her arms around herself by reflex, a flash of anger that he had invoked Hannah in the heat of the argument. Hannah was out of bounds.

“You’re not thinking of life changes, of opportunities? Darling, I don’t believe you.”

“Francis,” she said, thawed now that he had moved away from talk of her daughter. “We’ve had so very much to drink.”

“Don’t I know it. But not enough to make you shake off your suspicions of me.”

Francis was miserable, and Liesl was cold. She looked at the door, at her shoe propping open the door, and wanted terribly to go home.

“We should go home, Francis.”

“No, darling. We should keep drinking.”

He took another gulp from the chardonnay and held it out to her. She didn’t take it.

“People our age shouldn’t drink like this,” Liesl said. “Bad for the heart.”

He was still holding the bottle, and finally she took it from him and placed it on the stair.

“Come on,” said Liesl, and she finally extended the hand that he’d been looking to grasp earlier and helped to pull him to his feet.

They went inside through the fire exit. At the end of the corridor, Max was leaving the restroom, straightening his tie.

“I should kill him,” Francis said.

“He’s as protective of the library as you are.”

“He’s a liar.”

“Enough of this now. Enough of the name-calling and accusations.”

“I only called him a liar,” Francis said with a slur. “But that liar called me a thief.”

***

Liesl walked home through the rain, her umbrella forgotten on the coatrack in her office. The rain was a mist now, and though it clung to her hair and to the threads of her coat, she let it cover her since it was doing the work of turning the cells in her neck from rubber back to flesh and bone. She took her shoes off on the doormat outside the front door so she wouldn’t wake anyone with her footsteps.

“It ran quite late,” John said. Didn’t ask, but said it as a fact.

“You’re awake?”

John stood in the cluttered hallway. There were canvases resting against the baseboards on either side of him, and he couldn’t lean against the wall without disturbing them. So he just stood in the center of the hall. Fully dressed in the middle of the night. Watching his rain-soaked, barefoot wife.

“I thought you’d want a chat,” he said.

“It’s been a day,” Liesl said. “Chat tomorrow?”

He didn’t move from the center of the hallway. Nor did he turn on any lights. The canvases guarded the hallway like little soldiers. John approached her, and she tensed. He pulled the wet coat off her shoulders, kissed the top of her head, and hung the damp garment off the closet door to dry. He turned and walked toward the kitchen. She followed him.

“I’ll make you some tea.”