CHAPTER 8 #4
The pencil is gone. The pencil is in the pocket of a man with a scar at his upper lip, who is somewhere in this city tonight, with my mother's photographs on his phone and my father's address in his head.
The pencil will come back to this building.
It will be placed on the writing desk by hands that are not mine.
I will pick it up. The pencil is on its way back to me.
The pencil is, like me, in the building's slow circuit, and the building's slow circuit is — I begin to see this clearly now, on the bed in the guest suite with the door open six inches — the building is a circuit.
The building is moving things from outside to inside, from inside to outside, on a timetable nobody questions.
The building is what Julian built in 1854 with a rail concern in Devonshire, what he kept in 1924 when the Concordat was signed, what he retrofitted in 2008 and again in 2019 with biometrics and a steel ladder in the pantry.
The building is a body. The building moves things through itself. I am inside the body of the thing now.
I name what I have refused, for two days, to name. I am not afraid of him. I am afraid for him.
The phrase resolves like a column footer.
I am afraid for him because Konstantin Voss has been alive for six hundred and twenty-two years and has been doing this for seventy-six, and the chair in the library and the writing desk and the worn place on the rug and the saber on the wall of the office on floor thirty-five and the brand on the inside of his left forearm are all of them, every one, things that Konstantin would take from him because Konstantin is the kind of man who takes a worn place on a rug.
Konstantin would burn the rug. Konstantin would melt the brass clasps off the ledgers.
Konstantin would, given the chance, put his foot on the worn spot, and the rug would not yield, and Konstantin would feel the not-yielding as an insult, and Konstantin would, by his own slow tidy logic, burn the rug.
I am also, I admit to myself for one beat, afraid for me.
I am afraid because the man in the parka has my father's address.
I am afraid because the brass pencil is in the wrong pocket of the wrong man in the wrong city.
I am afraid because my hands, when I look at them in the lamplight, are not quite steady, and they were steady yesterday at fifteen-forty-five when I gripped a brass radiator behind me to stand.
I have been audited by my own body and the variance is a small one but it is a variance.
The fear for me is the smaller column. The fear for him is the larger.
I do not sleep. I lie on the duvet, wool trousers and silk blouse, the bar of corridor light steady on the cream wall above my head, my right hand at my hip where the pencil is not, and I listen.
The building speaks in low units.
At twenty-two-fifteen Henrik returns from Hawthorne.
I hear the elevator. I do not get up. I hear his boots cross the foyer and stop at the kitchen island.
I hear him set down a soft canvas bag — the photographs, the coat, the shoes, the books, the brochure.
The brochure is in this building now. The brochure is across the hall in the kitchen.
I do not get up to bring it to the guest suite. I will see the brochure tomorrow.
Henrik will hand it to me. I will fold it into the inside pocket of the leather memo cover, where it will live until I can fold it into the cushion of a chair I will buy in January.
At twenty-three-oh-six the elevator descends again. I do not know which of them. I do not stand to check.
At midnight the building is quiet except for the climate cycle and the small wooden creak of the greenhouse stair. I am still in my clothes. I am still on the duvet. I am still not afraid of him. I am still afraid for him.
I count what I have, the way I count what a client has when the client cannot count.
Adrienne, on my side, silently. Helene, kissed-cheek-warm, on Italian-English orders.
Henrik, three words. Sebastian, the chess player at the wall opposite the elevator, his Sig undrawn.
Julian in the library, his right boot on the worn spot, the considering line at the corner of his mouth, the saber on the wall of the office downstairs. Konstantin out there.
Atticus Wren somewhere doing his small treacheries in Marcus Hale's bullpen.
Marcus, who I have to trust because I have nothing else to trust, on Vance's payroll without knowing.
Pippa, whose first promise to me was whatever happens do not pull any more 1948 data without Adrienne's hand on the keyboard, and who I trust the way you trust a junior who is louder about caffeine than fear.
Cora, asleep on Hawthorne two floors below my own empty apartment, with a brass pencil missing from a desk that she will not, thank god, notice for another four days. The brass pencil, on its way back. The Tabriz, with the worn spot.
The columns balance.
At oh-one-thirty I close my eyes. The bar of corridor light is still on the cream wall. The door is still open six inches.
I do not sleep until two.
I am not afraid of him. I am afraid for him.