Abruptly the man sprang from the curb and sprinted, dodging cars. His eyes were on the box in Charles’s hands. A car squealed but the young man, lithe and quick, was already across.
Charles waited. The predator came to a halt, inches away.
“Hey, boss,” he said, in a low voice.
“Don’t cause a wreck, Angelo.”
He shrugged. “You got that?”
“Twenty-seven thousand.”
“For a little box.” His accent was urban Hispanic and so were his black hair and shadowy face.
“You take it,” Charles said.
“Back to the shop?”
Charles handed him the box.
“Take it to the shop. I’ll be right there.”
“Okay, boss, I’ll take it, it’s not any problem.”
“Be careful.”
“You are worrying for me, boss, or you are worrying for that box?”
“The box isn’t going to do anything foolish.”
Angelo smiled, a tiger showing its teeth. “I am smarter than that little box.”
“Try to be.”
With no other words he turned away, only walking but very quickly. Charles continued on his own way to a Metro station, and descended into the ground.
“King Street. Next stop Eisenhower Avenue.” The doors whirred and Charles was on the platform, looking out at the streets of Alexandria. The escalator took him down to them.
The pocket around the station was in giant twelve-story scale, of offices and plazas, tied to the rest of the city only by it being brick. Beyond, though, a few blocks of King Street brought Charles to the three-story scale of real west Alexandria, authentic and shabby from a century of pawn and secondhand existence, now getting better but still not good.
Then another five blocks east and the buildings were solid and many were very good, and rents were high and the shop windows cleaner and the doors were appealing instead of simply peeling.
Charles crossed noisy Washington Street and into the heart of crowds and crowds. At Market Square he turned right into quiet streets, then one more block, and finally up two steps, and into a place that was very, very quiet.
The first impression was always the quiet. It was the special calm silence of books aging, books that were very practiced at aging.
“Hello, Alice.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Beale.” Alice had a way of speaking that did not disturb the silence. “Mrs. Beale was just asking if I’d seen you.”
The second impression was the quiet of color. Only the part of any color that could last decades was left in the room. Even loud colors were quiet.
“Is she upstairs?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Then the smell, which was faintest, half like a forest and half like old linen, but sharp.
“And have you seen Angelo?” he asked.
“No, sir.” Her dress was the russet of a bright red cover faded over forty years.
“I didn’t think he’d be back yet.” The counter stretched across the right side of the room and stairs went up the left side, and a rail ran across the back.
“And have we sold anything?”
“A 1940 Gone With the Wind.”
“I can empathize with Scarlet,” he said. “I feel like I’ve just come from the burning of Atlanta.”
He opened the gate in the middle of the rail and climbed the steps.
“There you are.”
Her voice was quicksilver and light and everything peaceful.
“Here I am,” Charles said. “Dorothy, it was worse than I’d expected.”
“I’m sorry.” Her hair was slow silver, short and easy, and lovely. “Were you there long?”
“Twenty minutes. But I sat beside Norman Highberg.”
“Oh, dear.” She smiled, which was the moon at its brightest. “Did you get the books?”
“Yes, for twenty-seven. I had to outbid Jacob Leatherman just at the end. Oh, he scowled!”
“He’ll get over it, and you will, too. I’m glad you got them. It helps to close the circle with Derek.”
“It does help. And I have to tell you about Derek’s desk.” His own desk was at the front window, and he sat and pushed aside newspapers and magazines and catalogs to make space for an elbow.
“I suppose there was something special about it?” Anything would be special if she only spoke its name.
“Everything he had was special. But this was more than just ordinary special.”
“It was auctioned today?”
“Yes, and sensationally.” Now that he was sitting, he stretched his back, and put his hands behind his head. “I came in right in the middle of it. It should have gone twenty-five thousand, and it was about to go for thirty-four, and whoosh, two people bid it right up to a hundred and five thousand. There was a riot.”
“A very calm one, I’m sure.”
“People actually turned in their chairs and looked around. It was that drastic.”
Her blue eyes widened in her own calm amazement. “Why would it sell for so much?”
“It’s a complete mystery.” He stared out the window at the street. “Poof.”
“What?”
“A lifetime. Three hours and it’s gone.”
“Selling off all his things?”
“His world. Everything he was, all scattered.” With his hands behind his head, the space on his desk he’d cleared for his elbow was empty now, abandoned.
“Life is more than what you own,” Dorothy said. Her own desk was perfectly ordered, with a computer screen, a neat pile of papers, and two photographs. She put her elbows on the empty middle and looked at him.
“Oh, I know,” Charles said. “But that’s what’s left at the end.”
“He was an important person, wasn’t he?”
“He was a bureaucrat in the Justice Department. Yes, he was important.” He glanced at the newspaper. The first page was rancor in Congress, and the president refusing to cooperate, and officials denying any wrongdoing. “What would the Post print if there were no scandals?”
“Hollywood divorces, like everyone else.”
“I guess that would be worse. Every story on the front page is about someone’s failing.”
The sun was overhead, in the west, full on the townhouses across the street. The shadow of his own building was creeping toward them.
He read a paragraph. “This poor man,” he said. “A highly respected federal judge. Ten years on the bench. Then it comes out that he cheated on his exams back in law school. Over thirty years ago! First he was forced to resign, and now he’s being disbarred.”
“It does seem severe.”
“There is more to life than what you own. There’s also what you’ve done wrong.”
“And what you’ve done right. Charles, you’re getting moody. Did you bring the books home?”
“Angelo has them, speaking of lives lived questionably.”
“I didn’t know you took him.” The two pictures on her desk were of Charles and of a teenage boy.
“I just decided at the last minute.”
“Was he dressed all right?”
“No, he was not. There wasn’t time. He wouldn’t have come inside anyway.”
“We have a delivery for him to make this afternoon in Arlington. And I was thinking we should get him a suit for his next probation review.”
