Memory and Dream

“What’s his name?” she asked, keeping her tone casual.

When the girl lifted her gaze from the clothing and turned it toward her, Rolanda felt an odd sensation. It was as though the carpet underfoot had suddenly dropped a few inches, settling like an elevator at a new floor. It wasn’t worldliness that lay in the girl’s eyes, she realized, but she couldn’t put a name to it. Otherworldliness, perhaps.

“His name?” the girl said. “It’s, um ... Alan. Alan Grant.”

Rolanda recovered her equilibrium and gave her a sharp look. “Alan Grant the publisher?”

“That’s right,” Cosette said with a bright smile. “He does make books, doesn’t he?”

Rolanda was shocked. She knew Alan. Everybody at the NCF did. He was one of the Foundation’s biggest supporters. He was also old enough to be this girl’s father.

“And he’s your ‘boyfriend’?” she asked.

“Well, sort of,” Cosette said. “I only met him last night and I know he likes Isabelle better than he likes me, but she’s not interested in having a boyfriend and I am.”

Relief flooded Rolanda when she realized that it was the girl who was fixated on Alan, not the other way around.

“I think he thinks I’m too young,” Cosette added.

“Perhaps you are ... for Alan, I mean.”

“I’m much older than I look,” Cosette assured her.

She sat down on the floor and tried on various shoes.

“Are you hungry?” Rolanda asked.

Cosette shook her head. “I don’t really need to eat.”

More warning bells went off in Rolanda’s head. While Cosette was thin, it wasn’t the same sort of thinness that Rolanda usually associated with eating disorders, but looks could always be deceiving.

“Why’s that?” she asked, maintaining that studied nonchalance she always assumed with clients when she wanted information, but didn’t want to scare them off.

Cosette shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just the way we are. We don’t need to sleep, either, and we never dream.”

“We?”

Cosette ignored her for a moment. Having found a pair of clunky leather shoes that she appeared to like, she was now trying on sweaters. She finished pulling one over her head before replying.

“My ... family, I guess you’d call them.”

“Do they live in the city?”

“All over, really. I don’t really keep track of them.”

“Why’s that?” Rolanda asked.

Cosette gave her another of those odd looks that had so unsteadied Rolanda earlier. She took off the sweater she’d been trying on and hoisted herself onto the table, where she sat with her legs dangling and the sweater held against her chest.

“Why do you want to know so much about me?” she asked.

“I’m just interested in you.”

Cosette nodded with slow understanding. “That’s not really it at all. You think I’m like the other kids who come here, don’t you? That I’m in trouble and I need help.”

“Do you?” Rolanda asked. “Need help, I mean.”

“Oh, no,” Cosette said with a merry laugh.

Rolanda was struck with a sense of incongruity at the sound of Cosette’s mirth until she realized why the girl’s laughter sounded out of place: the laughter was genuine, unforced—an alien sound in this place.

When children laughed here, it was not because they were happy or amused. Theirs was a laughter that grew out of stress, or relief, or some combination of the two.

Cosette hopped down from the table. “Thanks for the shoes and the sweater,” she said. “I don’t really need them, but I like getting presents,” she added over her shoulder as she left the room.

“You’re welcome,” Rolanda began.

She was caught off guard by the girl’s sudden departure, but by the time she had followed her out into the hallway, Cosette was already at the far end of the hall, opening the front door.

“Wait!” Rolanda called.

Cosette turned to give her a wave and stepped outside. Rolanda broke into a trot, reaching the front door just before it closed. When she stepped out onto the porch, the girl was gone. She wasn’t on the walkway, or on the sidewalk, or anywhere up or down the street.

That eerie feeling returned, the vague sense of vertigo, as if the ground underfoot had abruptly become uneven or spongy, and Rolanda had to steady herself against one of the porch’s supports. It was as though Cosette had never existed in the first place, disappearing as mysteriously as she had appeared in the office a few minutes ago.

“Who were you?” Rolanda asked the empty street.

She wasn’t expecting a reply, but just for a moment, she thought she heard Cosette’s laughter again, sweet and chiming like tiny bells, echoing not in her ear, but in her mind. She stood there on the porch for a long time, leaning against the support pole, before she finally went back inside and closed the door behind her.

VI

I guess I really messed up this time, didn’t I?” Marisa said.

Alan was sitting at the kitchen table, staring off through the window at the patchwork row of backyards that the view presented. He hadn’t heard Marisa come in and he jumped at the sound of her voice, scraping the legs of his chair against the floor as he half rose from his seat. He sat back down again when he saw Marisa standing in the doorway, still wearing his shirt. It had never looked half so good on him. Her hair was a little more disheveled than it had been earlier. Her eyes were still swollen, the rings under them darker. Alan’s heart went out to her.

“Pull up a chair,” he said. “Do you want something to drink? Coffee, maybe, or some tea?”

“Tea, please. Coffee would just make me feel even more jangly than I already am.”

Alan filled the kettle and put it on the stove. He rummaged around in the cupboard and came up with a box of Bengal Spice that still had a couple of bags left in it. Marisa sat at the table, hugging herself, her hands lost in the long sleeves of the borrowed shirt. Neither of them spoke until Alan finally brought two mugs to the table, steam wafting up from the rims of each. Alan wanted to say something to show his support for what Marisa was going through, but nothing had changed since he’d sat with her in the living room earlier. He couldn’t promise that things were going to get better. And while he was certainly willing to give her a place to stay, he couldn’t promise her anything else beyond his friendship. Even if Isabelle hadn’t been in the picture, thinking of Marisa as a friend for so long had eroded his desire for their relationship to become something more. At least he thought it had. Seeing her sitting there across from him in his shirt, barefoot and without any makeup, stirred something in him that he hadn’t felt for a while, but he didn’t feel right about bringing it up now. It wouldn’t be fair—not unless he was sure.

Marisa was the one who broke the silence. “What did Isabelle say about the project?” she asked.

“She’s going to do it.”

“That’s great. Did you call Gary to give him the news?”

Gary Posner was the editor at the paperback house who was interested in acquiring the rights to the omnibus. Thinking of him brought up a whole other set of worries for Alan.

“I called him while you were sleeping, but he’s not exactly thrilled with the news.”

“How can he not be?”

“Oh, he loves the idea that Isabelle’s on board,” Alan explained. “It’s Margaret Mully that concerns him. He’s afraid that if she appeals, it’ll put the whole thing on hold again. He says he can’t afford to commit until we have something from her in writing that says she won’t interfere with the project—preferably something notarized.”

“But you’ll never get that from her.”

Alan nodded glumly. “Tell me about it.”

“So what happens now?”

“We go ahead with our edition.”