In the Night Room

“Sure,” she said. “Take as long as you like.”

Katherine Hyndman strode off.

Willy watched Underhill stare at the receding back of the peculiar book collector and wished that he would look instead at her. As if she had touched his mind with hers, Underhill turned slowly in his chair and gazed at her in a way that combined close observation with appreciation. He seemed to measure and weigh her, to calculate her age, nearly to count her teeth. His warmth and good humor turned what could have been objectionable or even insulting into a kind of affectionate, observant approval. It seemed to Willy that being looked at in exactly this way was one of the things she truly needed, and he had given it to her unasked.

Then she saw him take in the blurry bloodstains on her shirt. He understood what they were, and that final detail seemed to lock some other understanding into place. Willy moved forward, now beyond wondering what she might say to him, and saw an amazing series of expressions flow across his face: disbelief, shock, love, fear, and total recognition. He said, This can’t be happening. Is your name Willy?

He knew her name. By extraordinary, unrepeatable means, Willy had found her way to the one person who could both make sense of her life and save it, and when she spoke, it was from the center of her soul. “I think I need your help. Do we know each other?”

23

From Timothy Underhill’s journal

Cyrax told me yr gr8 moment comes 2nite, but he never said that it would scare me silly. Well, he added that I would have to do rite & b strong & brave, so I guess he knew what he was talking about. Two completely contradictory impulses fought for control of my body: I wanted to put my arms around her, and I wanted to scram, to get out of there as fast as possible. Then Reason intervened to inform me that I was being ridiculous. This, Reason insisted, was merely a coincidence, albeit a coincidence of a very high order. Willy, this Willy, if that in fact was her name, had slipped into the room at the same moment that “Lucy Cleveland” slipped into the pages of my book. And because I had never imagined my heroine’s face in specific detail, this woman’s resemblance to fictional Willy Bryce Patrick was all in my head.

Reason, of course, had no idea what it was talking about.

It’s 4:30 in the morning. Willy finally fell asleep about half an hour ago. As far as I can tell, we’re safe here. A discreet look around the motel’s parking lot found not a trace of Faber’s silver-gray Mercedes. (About this, more later.)

To go back to the bookstore: after our first words, Willy said, “You seem like someone I’ve known for a long time. It’s the strangest thing—as soon as I saw you, I felt that you were of enormous importance to me.”

This did nothing to support my shaky belief that her appearance, in both senses, was no more than a kind of coincidence.

“You know my name,” she said. “Willy. You said it.”

“Is that really your name?”

“Maybe you know me from my work?” she said. Her next words demolished all hope that the world was still ticking on in the old manner. “Willy Patrick. Willy Bryce Patrick?”

She looked utterly charming, which made things much worse. I could just about feel the earth separating beneath me. In a second I was going to be in free fall.

“This is very embarrassing,” she said, and hesitated. “I don’t usually go up to other authors and say crazy things to them. Actually, I hardly ever meet other authors. Except, well, for . . .”

Instead of a name, what came out of her mouth was a muffled whisper. “I’m sorry,” she said in a voice only slightly more intelligible, and raised her clasped hands to her eyes.

I guess that was my moment of decision, right then—when she stopped talking and let that name hang in silence before both of us. I could say what I did say, or I could have pretended that I didn’t know what she was talking about. In the end, though, I had no choice at all.

“Except for Tom Hartland,” I said. The building around me, the miles of books in that building, the cars and streetlamps on Broadway quietly held their breath.

Willy dropped her hands and gave me a look so overflowing with mingled relief and sorrow that it was all I could do not to take her in my arms.

“Did you know him?”

The walls of the building had not collapsed, the floor was still beneath my feet, and the traffic continued to move up and down Broadway. Everything and everybody breathed on, and so, with a breath of my own, I stepped deeper into the fiction I would eventually have to unmake.

“I knew Tom Hartland,” I told her. “And I know he was close to you.” For the moment, that was as far as I could go. “We shouldn’t talk about this here.”

She turned her head at the arrival within our charged perimeter of Katherine Hyndman, who broke in with an aggressive mimicry of harmless confusion that was clearly nothing of the kind.

“There seems to be some kind of problem,” she told Willy. “I can’t find your books. Nor can I find your name in our database. Where it ought to be, don’t you think?”

“I don’t understand,” Willy said. “Maybe you’re not spelling my name right.”

“B-R-Y-C-E P-A-T-R-I-C-K? Willy, W-I-L-L-Y?”

“That’s right, but—”

“And the title was In the Night Room? Which supposedly won the Newbery Medal?”

The expression on her face summoned Willy’s strength. “This is absurd. I have written three books. They’re all in print. The last one won the Newbery. If you don’t have my books on your shelves, you’re not doing your business very well, and if they’re not in your database, your computer needs to be brought up to date.”

Katherine turned to me. “I looked both in Books in Print and at the Newbery website—”

“I’m on the Newbery website!” Willy said. “What are you trying to say?”

“Ms. Hyndman looked in the wrong books,” I said. “We’re leaving.”

I grabbed the bag full of money with one hand and Willy Bryce Patrick’s elbow with the other.

When we reached the escalator, Willy a foot or two before me, she said, “I have to ask: how did you know Tom was dead? You said you knew him.”

I gestured for her to get on the escalator. When she did, she looked up at me and, both giving information and asking it, said, “You should know that the men who killed him are out there looking for me.”

“I know all about them,” I said. “You can pretty much take for granted that I understand what’s going on.”

“Tom called you on his cell phone, didn’t he? It’s so strange that he never told me he knew you so well.”

Instead of responding to that, I pulled out my cell phone, dialed 411, and asked for my publicist’s home telephone number.

“Who’s Brian Jeckyll?”

I shushed her. At home in Larchmont, Jeckyll answered. He was not entirely pleased to hear from me. Authors who call publicists, especially authors who call publicists who are at home in Larchmont, almost always want to complain about some fresh insult to their egos. Authors tend to be demanding, selfish, and easily wounded—just ask anyone in publishing. Brian Jeckyll became even less pleased with me when he heard what I had to say.

“You want to skip the reading in Boston and reschedule all those radio interviews? Are you out of your mind?”

“Probably,” I said. “And if I told you what is going on, you’d certainly think so. But what you have to know is that I’m going to drive to Millhaven, and I’m leaving tonight.”

In unison, Willy and Brian Jeckyll said, “Millhaven?” I was as surprised as they by what I’d said.

“I have that reading at New Leaf Books, remember, on Wednesday the tenth? My brother is getting married on Friday the twelfth, and I’ll stay over for that. Everything after the thirteenth can stay the way it is. And that’s about ninety percent of the tour you set up.”