In winter, with the trees bare, the narrow paths through the park were open and one could see at a great distance. Tess found this comforting-no one, woman or beast or both, could sneak up on her here- and she walked farther than she had planned, all the way to the lacrosse museum on the edge of the Hopkins campus.
Cold and hungry by the time she made it back to her neighborhood, she stopped at the Daily Grind for a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin, sharing the latter with both dogs while perched on the curb. Well, she shared it with Esskay. Miata appeared to be like one of those well-reared cloistered children who know nothing of sweet treats, who have been conditioned to clamor for carrots and regard chocolate with suspicion. She sniffed the muffin and turned her head. Esskay valiantly ate Miata’s piece as well.
So she estimated that thirty minutes-no more than forty-five-had passed by the time she arrived home, to find a piece of white paper under one of her Toyota’s windshield wipers. It couldn’t be a flyer, given its almost origamilike folds. Besides, her car was the only one along East Lane that had been so leafleted. Tess plucked the note from its resting space with her gloved hands, wondering why she no longer rated the fancy stationery. Could she have more than one helpful stalker? But rose petals drifted from the letter’s folds when she opened it, and the old-fashioned computer-generated font was the same as on the previous note.
From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were; I have not seen As others saw; I could not bring My passions from a common spring. And all I loved, I loved alone. Then-in my childhood, in the dawn Of a most stormy life-was drawn From every depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still: From the torrent of the fountain, From the red cliff of the mountain, From the sun that round me rolled In its autumn tint of gold, From the lightning in the sky As it passed me flying by, From the thunder and the storm, And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” Crow said apologetically, when she spread the note in front of him on the dining room table.
“Well, you didn’t get in until late last night, because you were at the Point.”
Crow booked the occasional music acts that played at her father’s restaurant-bar, and last night’s entertainment had featured some minor legend of a blues-man whose name Tess kept blanking on. Tess liked music, but she never quite got what it was with boys and guitars. Just as little boys would reach for a toy truck if offered an array of things to play with, big boys’ hands automatically grabbed guitars. Crow had at least three; Tess had even caught him in bed with his favorite, a 1963 Strat, one memorable night. Not playing it, just spooning it.
“Yeah, but”-he yawned, wrapping himself around her and enveloping her in the warm, yeasty smells of recent sleep-“I do feel as if I’m supposed to fill at least some of the stereotypical masculine roles around here.”
“I’ll settle for you telling me what this means.”
“I’m afraid it means your visitor is getting wordier yet more mysterious. The last note gave you a nice, explicit instruction. This one… I don’t know. He’s telling us he’s not like other boys, but I think we could have figured that out on our own.”
“”The mystery which binds me still,“” Tess murmured. “ ”A demon in my view.“ Tell me I should turn this over to Rainer. Tell me I shouldn’t worry about the Pig Man’s threats-funny, even now I know his name I can’t help thinking of him as the Pig Man. Tell me what to do, if you want to be the stereotypical alpha male in my life.”
“Tess, I don’t want to be the alpha male, and I gave up a long time ago trying to tell you anything. You’ll do what you want, when you want. You’ve got good instincts, when you don’t think so much. What’s your gut say?”
She gave his question careful and literal consideration. “That a blueberry muffin is not enough to keep me going until lunch. And that I’m lucky to have a friendly librarian in my corner.”
“Kitty?”
“No, I was thinking of my newfound connection in the Poe room.”
Daniel Clary agreed to meet with Tess, but not at the library.
“I’m flattered to be your consultant, but I don’t think I can rationalize doing this on the city’s time,” he told her over the phone later that morning. “It will have to be in the evening.”
“Should I come to your home, then?” Tess asked. When he hesitated, she realized how thick she was being-Daniel, scrimping on a librarian’s salary, was probably counting on another free meal, maybe even a few Morettis. “I’ll bring takeout. Pizza or Thai food or Chinese, or even Afghan: whatever you like. What do you like?”
“Pizza, I guess. Anything fancy would be wasted on me.”
“I’ll bring some beer, too.”
“That would be nice,” he said, in the artless tone of a child who’s trying not to reveal how much he wants a certain treat, and Tess resolved to procure something truly special, perhaps the winter lager from the Baltimore Brewing Company or a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Daniel lived in lower Charles Village, in a carriage house behind one of the few detached homes in that genteel-shabby neighborhood near the Johns Hopkins campus. The owner landlord, who lived in the Victorian-gingerbread main house, had lavished much attention on his domain, using a cunning combination of unexpected colors-peach and beige and pale yellow, with touches of violet and green-to great effect. The carriage house was meant to be a duplicate, not unlike a custom-made doll’s house, repeating the color scheme of its parent. But the work here had been hastier, the colors layered with less subtlety. The result was a small sheepish place, a little boy tugging at the collar of his Sunday best and yearning for his blue jeans.
Inside, the carriage house appeared much too small for broad-shouldered Daniel, who seemed to stoop when he stood to relieve her of the pizza boxes and lager. But the one-room house might not have felt so small if it hadn’t surrendered a foot of wall space on every side to shelves, which reached from the floor to the ceiling. The effect was of a book-lined box, with additional shelves visible through the small archway that led to the kitchen alcove. Tess wondered if there were books in the bathroom as well. The books felt like three-dimensional wallpaper, the endless lines of shelves broken only by a small fireplace on the south wall. The rough pine floors appeared to buckle, just a bit, under the weight of all those volumes, and Tess could see gaps in the floorboards, revealing a dirt floor a few feet below. There was very little else in the room, just a table, two chairs, and a sofa, presumably one that opened up into a bed.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a librarian has so many books, but this is a little overwhelming,” Tess said, drawn instantly to the shelves, studying the spines of the books. Many of the titles were unknown to her, but those she did recognize were all nineteenth-century novels and histories: Dickens, Melville, Austen, Thackeray, Cash, Olmsted. Poe had his own shelf, as did Hawthorne and Longfellow. “In a good way, I mean.”
“Well, you’ll notice I don’t have many contemporary novels,” he said. “Working at the library, I have easy access to the newest books, the minute they arrive. Why are you smiling?”
“You just reminded me of one of my favorite writers, Philip Roth. In Goodbye, Columbus , the fatuous fiancée says something like, ”Oh, but you must get all the bestsellers first‘ to the librarian-protagonist. The one who’s romancing Ali MacGraw.“
“Ali MacGraw?”
“In the movie,” Tess amended. “It’s not much good-the movie, I mean. But the story is exquisite. He wrote it at some unforgivably young age, twenty-three or something like that.”