The Cookbook Collector

double-trunked pine. “That’s Hegel.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s convoluted and full of obfuscations and …”

“Eat,” George said. And he served her apples that he’d brought from home, and figs, and even some comté cheese, which she devoured despite her vegan prohibitions because she was so hungry.

He cleared sticks and branches to pitch his tent with its arching supports. He took a rock and hammered the tent stakes into the ground. When he was done, he spread a fly sheet for rain. He smoothed his open sleeping bag and then a heavy blanket on the nylon floor.

“Come in.”

She bent down to enter, and he followed.

“Is it true that they spin fleece from soda bottles?” she asked, as he unzipped her.

“I think so.”

“That’s alchemy then.”

“Are you warm enough?” He pulled off her T-shirt.

“That’s a funny thing to ask when you’re undressing me.”

“Are you warmer now?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Yes.”

They didn’t know under the trees what day it was, or how the market closed, or how the sun rose bright on the East Coast where Jess’s father woke early, to run and glower at the McMansion abutting his property. They didn’t know it was September 11, but no one else did either.

The McMansion’s three-car garage opened, and Mel drove away in his black Lexus, while Barbara stood as usual in her bay window, with her black prayer book in her hands. On Alcott Street, Rabbi Zylberfenig’s little boys were dressing, pulling out all the clothes from their shared bureau onto the floor.

In Cambridge, by the Charles, Jonathan went running, even as Orion and Sorel sat together on a bench on the riverbank and talked of Fast-Track. The team was combing every line of code before the October rollout.

“Last night was pretty smooth,” Orion said with pride.

And Sorel agreed. “Fast-Track is the Second Coming for this company!”

Breathing deep, Jonathan ran along the river, because he could not fly cross-country without exercise. He kept up his quick pace and thought of the day ahead at Tech World, the night he’d spend with Emily, the news he’d bring her, that ISIS was nearly ready to ship its new product, the surveillance system inspired by electronic fingerprinting. He had waited to tell her, but convinced himself that he was right to wait. He recognized that the conversation might be tricky, given his long silence, but he had to prepare her for the rollout. Emily, he told her in his mind, if we’re together, then we share success. What you do and what I do are almost the same. Emily, he rehearsed for her, if we have a life together, then your money and mine, your company and mine, your decisions and mine—we hold them all in common. Admittedly, he had not kept her secret. Admittedly, he had not confided in her about the flaws in Lockbox that winter night she’d asked. But that had been almost two years ago. Running on the riverbank, he envisioned a life with no barriers or limits. Marriage without borders. He saw the future, as he ran to the Eliot Bridge and back again, under the allée of sycamores with their silvery trunks and their green-gold leaves. Orion and Sorel could not have been farther from his mind. Nor did he consider Mel Millstein, who was driving in from Canaan to Logan Airport, bad back and all, to show the flag for ISIS, and to do his bidding. Jonathan thought about his day, not other peoples’. He meted his own stride.

Mel drove along the river to Logan, and he had no idea how close Jonathan was at that moment, nor did Sorel and Orion. They didn’t see Jonathan coming. No one ever did.

“I’m thinking of writing a dot-com opera,” Sorel said, leaning against Orion, head on his shoulder.

“How would that work?” he asked.

“It would be sort of Tommy meets Ring of the Nibelung.”

They heard Jonathan’s voice first. “What are you guys doing here?” And then they saw him, bright-eyed, sweaty, jogging in place.

Sorel sat up straight.

“Jonathan,” Orion said heartily. “How’s it going?”

Jonathan looked at the two of them with his dangerous smile. “Come here often?”

“Bird-watching,” Sorel said, gesturing toward the fat black geese waddling and honking on the bank.

“Not much to look at,” said Jonathan.

“I’m quite nearsighted,” Sorel explained, embracing the absurdity of the situation. “I can’t see the smaller species, so we come here for the … large-print birds.”

Humor helped. Jonathan’s smile softened, and he shook his head ever so slightly. Then Orion knew he wouldn’t tell. He was never sure which Jonathan he would meet, but this morning he lucked into his old friend, the joker and the rugby player; the boy, not the tycoon.

Under the redwoods, the early-dawn air was chilly, and George tucked the blanket around Jess. “You were tired, after all.”

Jess didn’t answer. She was still asleep, even as Leon and the Tree Savers camped in Wood Rose Glen, and Daisy shielded Galadriel, and Emily called Jess’s cell phone, which was now lost, forgotten in the tree along with her waterlogged Thoreau. Emily left messages. “You said you were coming home on September 11. I’m just wondering where you are, Jess.”

At ISIS, programmers drifted to work with cups of coffee. In Central Square, Molly was arriving home, postcall from Beth Israel Deaconess. She was winded, climbing the stairs. She had no time for the gym. She had no time for anything. She had eaten a blueberry muffin for dinner. Blinking in the bright sun, she thought of babies, because all night she had been assisting in deliveries. She had worked for a day and a night inside the hospital, and now it was morning again, and as she walked, she thought of tiny bodies, eyes opening in surprise, mouths opening to cry, forming perfect little Os.

Part Seven The Bottom Line September and October 2001

27

Years later, they remembered where they had been. At their desks or in their beds, indoors or out. Driving, walking, working, alert, or half asleep. Each recalled momentary confusion. An airplane hit the World Trade Center. Pilot error? Technical glitch? And then the shock. A second plane. No accident. No mistake. The flames were real, as everyone could see on television. The Twin Towers burning, again and again. Bodies falling, again and again. The same towers, and the same bodies, and the Pentagon in flames. The scenes played constantly, at once heartbreaking and titillating, their repetition necessary, but also cheapening. Who, after all, could believe such a catastrophe after just one viewing? And who, after viewing once, could look away?

Finishing the night shift at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Mrs. Gibbs saw the fire on every TV, in every patient’s room.

Waking early in Los Altos, Laura found her children staring at the giant television in the den. She stood transfixed with her three little ones in their pajamas, until she began to understand what they were seeing, and snatched the remote control away.

Across the country, Chaya Zylberfenig was running on her treadmill in the bedroom, and she called her husband. “Shimon! Come quick!” even as her feet kept moving under her.