“She do something somebody doesn’t like?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“So why does someone look for her?”
“It’s business. It isn’t a street gang or a drug ring.”
“That is business. Hey, boss, you be careful if you get into people looking for someone.”
“I will be. But this is a different world than the street, Angelo.”
He replied with two seconds of silence. “You want anything else?”
“No, that was all.”
“Whoever said that it was the Chinese who were inscrutable? I think Angelo is made of concrete.”
Dorothy smiled, quite scrutably. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Yes, which turned out to be nothing.”
“And now what are you going to do?”
He selected a catalog from his desk and leaned back in his chair. “I’m going to run my bookstore.”
“Oh, how nice that you can spare us the time.”
EVENING
The sun traipsed across the sky; hours that had once been future became past. Charles rambled up from the basement to the office and looked in on his wife.
“Is it time, Mrs. Beale?”
“It is, Mr. Beale.”
“I was hoping so. And I believe it has chanced to rain.”
He held her jacket, standing close to her, and stayed close down the stairs.
“Have we sold anything, Alice?”
“A Madeleine L’Engle.”
“Just now?”
“Earlier.” Alice frowned. “I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Perhaps time has wrinkled a little. Have a good evening.”
“Yes, sir. Good night, Mr. Beale, Mrs. Beale.”
“Good night, Alice,” they both said, while Charles opened the door, and the umbrella, and they both walked out under it.
Only April could have such gentle rain. The colors of the watercolor streets ran together from the slate roofs, down the dun and brick buildings, picked up the bright daubs of flower boxes and dark brilliant doors in every joyful hue that was respectable, spread across the footways in their own hard solid wet colors, and pooled into shining reflections in the streets. These were the old buildings’ hidden colors that only came out in the rain, the shades of their youth buried under the dulling of their years.
“Do you remember…?”
They knew every square of the pavement, which ones held puddles, which ones had root-lifted corners.
“Remember what?” Dorothy’s voice was as soft as the rain.
“The open window.”
“Of course I do.”
The rain whispered.
“The rain makes me think of it,” Charles said. “I would take you back there.”
“It wouldn’t be the same.”
“It probably wasn’t even then.” They waited at a corner. The strolling water didn’t wait but passed on.
“Sometimes I wonder if it really was the way I remember,” she said. “But I would rather have the memory whether or not it’s true.”
“It is true. It’s not what actually happened, the memory we have of it is truer than that.”
“It’s an irony, isn’t it, Charles? Edmund Burke and now Thomas Paine, together on the shelf.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t put them too close, Derek.”
“No, side by side. Two men, two revolutions, and what different and radical reactions they had.”
“ ‘Radical reaction.’ That’s a clever turn of phrase. Paine would have liked it.”
“He had no humor, Charles. Radicals don’t. Burke did. One of many contrasts between them.”
“They make a good contrast. Burke was such a strong voice in the British Parliament in favor of the American Revolution, but so strongly against the French.”
“And Paine never saw a revolution he didn’t like, even when it almost cost him his own head.”
“And I doubt, Derek, that you ever saw a revolution you did like.”
“Never, except that they make good literature. I was reading Pasternak the other night.”
“I agree that stable times are much more comfortable. But revolutions created the modern world.”
“You sound like Jefferson, Charles. A little blood, now and then, to keep liberty fresh?”
“Maybe just a bit of personal revolution, as a fresh start. Do you have anything in your life that you would want overthrown, Derek?”
“A personal revolution? No. Besides, it’s not a revolution unless there’s blood.”
WEDNESDAY MORNING
“Mr. Beale, Ms. Liu will see you now.”
“Thank you.”
Just 7:48.
The congresswoman liked flowers. They filled the waiting room in paintings and fresh-cut arrangements and pastel furniture.
The outer office was filled with people, at least photographs of them. It was an impressive cult of personality. Hundreds covered the walls, most of them of her and star-struck constituents, and hundreds of thank-you cards.
For surely the minuscule woman in the pictures celebrating the success of representative government service was the force driving the office and everyone in its fifty-yard vicinity. The face was a striking mix of features, Asian and African, which did not peacefully coexist but were proudly distinct.
The pictures hardly captured the vibrant energy that met him full force as he entered the inner office. The room was a sherbet bowl of lime, raspberry, orange and lemon, but the real brightness glowed from the dazzling smile and glittering eyes fixed on him.
Charles blinked.
“Mr. Beale! I am so glad to meet you.”
With both perfect dignity and thorough eagerness, Karen Liu strode forward from her desk toward him, her hand extended at about the level of his waist. He leaned a little down, bowing before the queen, to reach her.
“Ms. Liu. I’m honored.”
At this lower altitude he was chin to indomitable chin with her, and eye to mesmerizing eye.
“I am, too,” she said. “Sit down.”
Disobedience was unthinkable. He sat.
She did also, and they reached a middle-ground compromise to their vertical differences. It was a sign of favor; she didn’t seem likely to compromise often.
“You were a friend of Derek Bastien,” she said. “And that means you must be intriguing.”
Charles was momentarily stunned.
“Well, I’m not,” he said. “Not very.”
She didn’t believe him. “You must be. How did you know Derek?”
“I sold him books.” He was beginning to get his breath back.
