Bible incessantly, and just then he cloyingly remembered an image of her at the kitchen table, reading her Bible, holding onto it for dear life, her lower lip trembling, while his old man, drunk in the living room, cursed her out at the top of his lungs. And she plumbed the Bible for personal forgiveness when she too turned to the bottle for release. He wouldn't be reading the Bible anytime soon.
'The next book going to be as profound as this one?' Will asked.
'Yes. It's going to be a good book for you to read.'
He couldn't wait.
They went down another flight of stairs to the lowest level, an area that didn't look like it saw a lot of foot traffic. Donny suddenly stopped on a dime and dropped to his knees at a shelf filled with older leather-bound books. He triumphantly pulled one out. 'This is a good one for you.'
Will was keen to see it. What, in this poor soul's view of the world, would match the Bible? He braced himself for a revelatory moment.
NY State Municipal Code-1951.
He put the Bible down to examine the new book. As advertised, it was page after page of municipal codes with a heavy emphasis on permitted uses of land. It was probably a minimum of half a century since anyone had touched the volume. 'Well, this sure is profound, Donny.'
'Yep. It's a good book.'
'You picked both these books randomly, didn't you?'
He nodded his head vigorously. 'They were random, Will.'
At five-thirty he was sound asleep in the reading room with his head comfortably perched on the Bible and the Municipal Code. He felt a tug on his sleeve, looked up and saw Nancy standing over him. 'Hi.'
She was checking out his reading material. 'Don't ask,' he pleaded.
Outside, they sat in her car talking. He figured if he was going to be taken down, it would have happened already. It looked like no one had connected the dots.
She told him that back in the office all hell was breaking loose. She wasn't in the loop but the news was spreading fluidly within the agency. Will's name had been added to the TSA's no-fly list and his check-in attempt at LaGuardia had triggered multiagency pandemonium. Sue Sanchez was feverish-she'd spent all day behind closed doors with the brass, emerging only to bark a few orders and generally be a pain in the ass. They'd questioned Nancy a few times about her knowledge of Will's actions and intent but seemed satisfied that she didn't know anything. Sue was almost apologetic at having forced Nancy to work with him on the Doomsday case and assured her repeatedly that she wouldn't be stained by the association.
Will sighed deeply. 'Well, I'm grounded. I can't fly, I can't rent a car, I can't use a credit card. If I try to get on a train or a bus I'll get picked up at Penn Station or the Port Authority.' He stared out the passenger-side window, then put a hand on her thigh and patted it playfully. 'I'll have to steal a car, I guess.'
'You're absolutely right. You're going to steal a car.' She started the motor and left the parking lot.
They argued all the way to her house. He didn't want to involve her parents, but Nancy insisted. 'I want them to meet you.'
He wanted to know why.
'They've heard all about you. They've seen you on TV.' She paused before finishing, 'They know about us.'
'Tell me you didn't tell your parents you're having an affair with your partner who's almost twice your age.'
'We're a close family. And you're not twice my age.'
The Lipinski abode was a compact 1930s brick house with a steeply pitched slate roof on a stubby dead-end street across from Nancy's old high school, its flower beds brimming with cascades of orange and red roses that made it look like the structure was being consumed by fire.
Joe Lipinski was in the backyard, a small man, shirtless with baggy shorts. There were sprouts of silky-white hair everywhere-sparse on his sunburned scalp, tufted on his chest. His round, impish cheeks were the fleshiest part of his body. He was kneeling on the grass, pruning a rosebush, but shot up with a youthful spring to his legs and yelled, 'Hey! It's the Pied Piper! Welcome to Casa Lipinski!'
'You have a beautiful garden, sir,' Will offered.
'Don't sir me, Joe me. But thanks. You like roses?'
'Sure I do.'
Joe reached for a small bud, pruned it off and held it out. 'For your button hole. Put it in his button hole, Nancy.'
She blushed but complied, threading it in place.
'There!' Joe exclaimed. 'Now you two kids can go to the prom. C'mon. Let's get out of the sun. Your mother's got dinner almost ready.'
'I don't want to put you out,' Will protested.
Joe dismissed him with a what-are-you-talking about look and winked at his daughter.
The house was warm because Joe didn't believe in air-conditioning. It was a period piece, unchanged since moving day, 1974. The kitchen and bathrooms had been updated in the sixties but that was it. Small rooms with thick mushy carpets and worn lumpy furniture, a first-generation escape to the suburbs.
Mary Lipinski was in the kitchen, which was fragrant from simmering pots. She was a pretty woman who hadn't let herself go, although, Will noted, she was on the thick-hipped side. He had an unpleasant habit of divining what his girlfriends might look like in twenty years, as if he'd ever had a relationship that lasted more than twenty months. Still, she had a tight, youthful face, lovely shoulder-length brown hair, a firm bosom, and nice calves. Not bad for her late fifties, early sixties.
Joe was a CPA and Mary was a bookkeeper. They had met at General Foods, where he was an accountant, about ten years her senior, and she was a secretary in the tax department. At first he commuted up from Queens; she was a local girl from White Plains. When they married, they bought this small house on Anthony Road just a mile away from the headquarters. Years later, after the company was acquired by Kraft, the White Plains operation was closed down and Joe took a buyout. He decided to open up his own tax business, and Mary took a job at a Ford dealer doing their books. Nancy was their only daughter, and they were thrilled she was back in her old room.
'So that's us, the modern day Joseph and Mary,' Joe said, concluding a brief family history and passing Will a plate of string beans. A Verdi opera was softly playing on the Bose radio. Will was lulled into a contented state by the food, the music, and the plain conversation. This was the kind of wholesome shit he never provided for his daughter, he thought wistfully. A glass of wine or beer would have been nice but it appeared the Lipinskis weren't serving. Joe was zeroing in on the punch line: 'We're just like the originals, but this one here, she was no immaculate conception!'
'Dad!' Nancy protested.
'Would you like another piece of chicken, Will?' Mary asked.
'Yes ma'am, I would, thank you.'
'Nancy tells me you spent the afternoon in our fine public library,' Joe said.
'I did. I came across a real character there.'
Mary grimaced. 'Donny Golden,' she said.
'You know him?' Will asked.
'Everyone knows Donny,' Nancy answered.
'Tell Will how you know him, Mary,' Joe prodded.
'Believe it or not, Will, Donny and I went to high school together.'
'She was his girlfriend!' Joe shouted gleefully.
'We dated once! It's such a sad story. He was the most handsome boy, from a nice Jewish family. He went off to college, normal and healthy, and got very sick during his freshman year. Some say it was drugs, some say it was just when he developed his mental problem. He spent years in institutions. He lives in some kind of supervised house downtown and spends all his time in the library. He's harmless but it's painful to see him. I won't go there.'
'He doesn't have such a bad life,' Joe said. 'No pressures. He's oblivious to all the bad things in the world.'
'I think it's sad too,' Nancy said, picking at her food. 'I saw his yearbook pictures. He was really cute.'
