First Interlude Gwen, Underfoot #5
“Shit,” Arthur said. “She won’t still have it. She got rid of all those books as soon as the news broke about the thefts at
Rackham. It was too hot to hold on to them.”
“Maybe it was too hot to unload them, ever think about that?”
“Shit.” He shut his eyes, tried to think. “I don’t even have a car.”
“I do,” Colin said, standing in the swinging door behind them.
“When do we leave?” Van asked, standing behind him.
12.
They were waiting in the driveway, breathing white smoke, when Colin steered the big red Caddy out of the carriage house and
down the lane to them. Once upon a time, some Wren of old had kept his barouche and Morgan horses in that carriage house . . .
and some Underfoot type had probably kept the nags brushed out and the axles oiled.
The five of them piled in, Arthur up front with Colin, the rest of them on the cream leather couch in the back. It should’ve been tight, but Allie was skinny as a boy, and Van was skinny as a scarecrow. Allie sat between Van’s legs and he put his arms around her waist.
“I hope you’re on the pill,” Van told her. “If we hit a pothole, we’re going to need protection.”
They hauled ass for Boston in the dying light, the sun burning a bronze pinhole in the cold, austere blue of the sky. When
the Caddy got up to sixty-five, the wind roaring over the canvas top was so loud, they had to shout to talk.
“I WISH WE HAD A GUN,” Donna shouted.
“THANK GOD WE DON’T HAVE A GUN,” Arthur yelled back.
“BARREL RIGHT IN HER FACE,” Donna exclaimed. “WE’RE THE LIbrARY POLICE, BITCH, AND YOU’RE SITTING ON OVERDUE BOOKS.”
“What do we need a gun for? We have a dragon,” Van said, in a normal tone of voice, which they were all able to hear, but
which allowed them to ignore his contribution to the conversation.
“I LOVE GOING ON ADVENTURES WITH MY FRIENDS,” Allie hollered. “AFTER WE ASSAULT THIS OLD LADY, WE SHOULD GET TACOS!”
Fleming Antiquarian Books was downslope from the Bunker Hill Monument, on a narrow one-way street. The big Caddy had to inch
along between the cars parked on either side, crowding the road. There hardly seemed room to thread a bicycle, let alone a
car, and there was no place to park. Nor could they be sure which was Bridget Fleming’s town house. There was no bookstore
awning, no words stenciled in gold on a window. Colin circled the block and, when no parking spot materialized, made a circuit
around the whole general neighborhood. Finally, he parked the Caddy in the lot beside a dark, closed Bank of Boston.
They walk-huddled close for warmth, a shuffling mass of Arthur-Gwen-Donna-Allie-Van-Colin, shoulders pressed together, breathing on their hands.
They got lost, couldn’t find the right street, and stumbled into a French patisserie to thaw out and reorient themselves.
It was crowded and Gwen’s glasses fogged over in the steamy heat.
They got coffees and golden, flaky croissants, and crowded around a marble-topped, chest-high table for two.
It was hard to take even a single step without bumping into someone.
Gwen knew when she was among her people: this crowd were townies, all of ’em.
The girls were painted into their jeans, cheap denim dazzled up with rhinestones on the back pockets.
The boys wore flannel jackets and watch caps and called each other dude.
“Where the hell is this fucking bookstore?” Donna asked. “Allie is freezing her tits off and she hardly has any tits to freeze.”
“I think I saw it,” Colin said, “the last time we went up Cordis Street. But I don’t know if Fleming is home. It looked pretty
dark.”
“Are you looking for Fleming Antiquarian?” someone said from over Gwen’s shoulder.
Gwen twisted her head and looked around at a scrawny gomer, a foot taller than she, his bony Adam’s apple right in her face.
His shirt was half-unbuttoned to show the Iron Maiden tee beneath. He smelled like pizza, and his glasses were so greasy he
had to squint to see through them. He was looking down Gwen’s top.
“Too true, son,” Van said. “Do you know where it is? Hey. Hey! My eyes are up here, babe.” Snapping his fingers, pointing
into his own eyes.
The gomer looked reluctantly away from Gwen’s bosom. “Fleming probably won’t see you if you don’t have an appointment.”
Allie said, “If you could take us over there, we’d love you forever. My date would pay for your coffee!”
“Which of us is her date?” Van murmured to his sister.
The gomer let the McBrides get him a coffee and led them back out into the bitter cold, along the crooked brick sidewalk toward
Bunker Hill. He lugged a brown paper bag of paperbacks. Gwen was struck with a sudden notion about who was leading them to
Bridget Fleming’s house.
“Did you say your name was Sheldon?” she asked, even though he hadn’t said.
He nodded lazily and shook a Golden Light free from its box. He put it in the corner of his mouth . . . and then lit it with a handheld butane torch in a blast of blue flame. Van cried out in delight.
“He’s got a goddamn flamethrower!”
“Do you always walk around with an incendiary device in your pocket?” Colin asked.
Sheldon shrugged. “I wash dishes at the Radisson. The dessert chef uses it for the crème br?lée. I keep it with me because
I like it.” The coal of his cigarette bobbed in the corner of his mouth. “What’s your name, kid?” he asked Gwen.
She told him and then nodded at his bag of paperbacks. “What’s that?”
“These books made me sick,” Sheldon told her. “Some books carry illness in them. Did you know that? Some books, they damage
you.”
“Yes,” Gwen said. “I think that’s true.”
“I wish it wasn’t,” Arthur added. “But if you believe a book can change the world for the better, you have to be open to the
possibility they could also change it for the worse.”
“Mein Kampf,” Colin said.
Arthur nodded. “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Van stroked the red wisps of mustache at the corners of his mouth. “Don’t forget those books about fuckin’ Garfield the cat.
Garfield is a cancer.”
“Ms. Fleming got me addicted to these novels and now she has to take them back,” Sheldon said. “I borrowed money to buy them.
From my mother. Only I didn’t ask, so that’s stealing. My stepfather will have me arrested again if I don’t get the money
back, and I’m too old for juvie now. Ms. Fleming was wrong to sell them to me in the first place. She knows I’ve got compulsions.
She took advantage. And these goddamn books, they put some bad ideas in my head. This is it. We’re here.”
They had arrived at a brownstone with a grand black door under a stone arch, at the top of three granite steps.
Only Sheldon led them past the front door to a steep flight of stairs leading below the street.
A second, very narrow door, like the lid of a coffin, waited at the bottom.
Sheldon let them pile past him, and Gwen gave him an inquisitive look when she saw him lingering on the sidewalk.
“It’s better if you all stand in front of me,” Sheldon said. “She’s got a beef with me because I want my money back and she’s
a cheap rhymes-with-witch. Last time I tried to talk to her, she almost broke my foot.”
Gwen didn’t get a chance to ask how she had almost broken his foot. Colin was using the knocker, a blackened iron owl. Gwen heard bronchial coughing from within.
“What is it?” came a voice Gwen recognized from the answering machine.
“Fleming Antiquarian?” Colin asked. The door remained shut.
“Closed! Call for an appointment!”
“Fed Ex, just need a signature. Something from Charing Cross Road, London?”
“From—what the hell? Who’s gonna spend a fortune on postage now when I’m there in April for Firsts? Are you—”
The door opened on the chain. Colin smiled at her. She tried to close it and he jammed a foot into the opening.
“Get your foot out my door or I’ll call the law,” said a short woman with severe black bangs. Gwen could see past her into
a little mudroom. A collection of walking sticks stuck out of the brass casing of a bazooka shell. There was a marble end
table, with a sloppy pile of mail on it.
“By all means, give the police a ring. We can all talk about Jayne Nighswander together.”
Fleming hesitated for a beat too long. “I don’t know any Jayne Nighswhatever.”
“We just want it back,” Colin told her.
“Get your foot out my door, Kojak, or you’re gonna develop a real bad limp.”
Donna said, “Give us what we want, lady. We can be reasonable! We can also be unreasonable. Just ask Jayne.”
“I don’t know what you want!” Fleming squawked.
“The Crane journal,” Arthur said. “That book is all kinds of trouble.”
“I have nothing to hide. I’m not afraid of cops.”
“I was talking about trouble worse than cops,” Arthur said. “I was talking about us.”
Gwen hardly recognized the dull, almost clinical calm in his voice. This was a different Arthur, an Arthur who knew what he
could do, how far he could go, and had accepted it. Fleming retreated ever so slightly, took a half-step backward, and had
to steady herself by placing a hand on the side table piled with mail.
“I don’t have any fuckin’ idea—” Fleming sputtered, then added, “I never—okay, okay, wait. Wait. There was a fuckin’ skank bitch from down Portland, tried to sell me some books last year. Yeah, I remember now. She said it was stuff
from her grandfather’s library . . . like she come from a family where any of them fuckin’ read books. I don’t deal in hot
goods and I told her where she could fuckin’ put ’em.”
“You can tell when she’s lying,” Sheldon muttered. “That’s when she starts throwing around the F-word.”
He spoke in a low voice, but Fleming heard him and her eyes widened, staring past them, up the stairs.
“It’s you! The little masturbator! I should’ve known! I’m not buying back your fuckin’ John Norman first editions! Those Gor
books got cum stains in them now! I can’t resell something with the pages stuck together! I told you, Sheldon, if you come
back again, I’ll call your goddamn mother.”