THE LIBRARY AT ORCHARD HALL

A NOVEL

BY

MICHAEL A. CRAME

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”

---John Milton, author of Paradise Lost

CHAPTER ONE

Isabella’s body was his desire every morning. It wasn’t sex. Reaching for her and knowing she was in their bed gave him comfort. But now there was nothing, only the empty horizon between his desire and the truth that she was dead. The ghost would disintegrate with daylight, the sound of an alarm clock or a phone call and Jack would remember the morning she was cold to his touch.

Today it was a phone call.

“Hello?”

The woman’s voice on the other end echoed, crisp and stark. “Mr. Montes?”

He cleared his throat. “Um…yes?”

“Jonathan Montes?”

“No…um…yes, but no one calls…It’s Jack, not Jonathan. Who is this?”

“Tereza LaFleur.”

“Sorry…you sounded different.”

“So did you,” she replied. “It must be the speakerphone.” There was static, and what Jack imagined was Tereza tapping the microphone before lighting a cigarette and releasing a deep exhale of smoke and frustration. “Tied one on last night?”

It was dark outside the window. “What? No,” he said. “What time is it?”

“Seven-forty-five, Thursday evening.”

Jack groaned, “Jeezus…”

There was a deliberate pause and more static over the line. “Did you forget about our appointment?”

He shut his eyes tight to keep the room from moving. “No. Not at all." He got up from the bed wearing the clothes he passed out in the previous evening. Within the waking hangover was the smell of himself and metabolized bourbon. He tossed piles of laundry over on the bedroom floor searching for a matching pair of socks and some shoes. "I haven’t been sleeping lately. I dozed off for a second.”

“Sorry to wake you but I’ve been downstairs for almost half an hour. I thought it best to call.”

Outside the bedroom window on the oily street below, a black Bentley hummed like an overgrown scarab. The car’s halogens buzzed clean, white light into the dim of the neighborhood. It seemed too much machine for this woman. He expected her to be shuttled around by a driver while she sat in comfort in the back of a perfectly manicured sedan, sipping a martini, smoking a cigarette and never spilling a drop or breaking an ash as it made its way around the city on whatever errand her employer had sent her.

“Give me five minutes.” Jack dropped the phone next to a pair of socks and jumped into the shower.

Two months ago they were in the lounge of Orchard Hall losing count of their drinks over a long conversation. Tereza LaFleur’s siren demeanor was ever present, and fair warning. Black, six-inch stilettos on wet, red-lacquered soles curved out from the nape of her ankles like talons. He remembered thinking she could easily stab him with a swift kick to his privates with her sling back pumps. She was petite, dark-haired, but rounded out in all the right ways to make a kick to the groin almost worth it.

“You’re staring at my legs,” she said. “I’m 5’2” but they go all the way up.”

“You said that with a straight face,” Jack replied. Her eyes didn’t show the slightest trace of self-consciousness or self-doubt. They were wide and unflinching like a cat.

“I wanted to acknowledge the cliché.”

Jack sipped his drink. “Cliché?”

“I’m not like any librarian you’ve ever met.”

He took this as an invitation to study her, not the observations of a casual glance he could steal as she stalked the labyrinths within Orchard Hall, but to really consider her; the way her lips parted slightly between pauses in conversation and accentuated the soft dimple beneath her nose. To absorb her gimlet stare breaking the horizon of smoke and twilight eye shadow like stars as she measured his replies.

“You had your hair up yesterday,” Jack said.

Tereza stared at him over the lip of her glass.

“I noticed.”

“What?” she asked.

“Your hair is much longer than I thought.”

“Than you imagined?”

Jack sat up in his chair. “It’s always been…you’ve just always had it up.”

“Anything else you noticed?”

“Where are you from? There’s a ghost of a dialect but I can’t place it. Slightly Southern but you’ve worked hard to bury it.”

“Louisiana.”

“New Orleans?”

“Sometimes.”

“Born and raised?”

“Creole.”

“Miss it?”

“Not enough to go back.”

“And gray eyes.” Jack continued his internal thoughts aloud. “They’re always behind glasses. You’ve got unusually colored eyes.”

“They’re not that unusual,” she said. “It’s probably the lighting and the alcohol.”

“There’s an old superstition about girls with gray eyes.”

“Flatter me.”

“They’re neither dead nor living. Maidens of the ‘in between’. Liminal creatures. Something about the colorlessness that mimics---“

“Death.”

“Yeah, but still alive.”

Tereza asked, “Speaking from experience?” She took his hand and placed it over her heart. It beat with a steady pulse. It was more than a year since he touched a woman and the warm sensation of her breathing against his hand made him feel vulgar. “I’m very much alive.”

She leaned into her chair. It was the only chair she sat in whenever she drank at the lounge and it enveloped her body like a gloved hand holding a spider. From the back the dark leather upholstery overlapped a naked skin. The skin revealed itself underneath silk cords weaved in and out of brass eyelets cinching the outer layer in a “V” over the secret flesh like a corset. Nobody else sat or came near the intimate area it created with the low circled table and the less dramatic chair Jack sat in. “What’s the matter Mr. Montes? Wife leave you?”

Jack composed himself and took a stiff drink from his glass. “Girlfriend. She didn’t leave. She died.”

Tereza let a small stream of blue escape her lips. “Isabella.”

Jack froze. The way Tereza LeFleur said her name was too comfortable. Too familiar; like a stranger at a bar who nods their head because they don’t understand you but agrees with you because you’re a drunk and they’re in control. He was thrown. Amongst the bourbon, the conversation and the hour he was spell bound. To hear her name spoken outside his head by someone else was like hearing a song long unsung and in his drunk state, Isabella was a dream.

Tereza smiled and drained her drink. “I’m not here to make you feel shitty so I won’t ask what happened. I’m sorry. You were both invited but you were the only one who used the invitation. Out of respect for your privacy we didn’t ask. Maybe getting back to work and focusing on something else will help you bury that body.” Not a trace of pity in her gray eyes, just a sterile, objective, clinical suggestion. She motioned to a server standing at attention in the far corner of the lounge who hustled to their table. “Shelia, tell Joseph to change this music. It’s late and I’m not in the mood for this spa mix.”

She handed an empty glass to Sheila without looking at her. “You’d think this new age stuff would relax you but it doesn’t. How about a little Beth Gibbons?”

“Yes ma’am,” Shelia replied and began to slink away.

Tereza grabbed her arm and smiled at her. “That syrupy, desperate, scratchy voice of hers really massages my brain.”

“Yes ma’am,” she replied again.

“And another round of drinks.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Tereza retrained her eyes on Jack. “That should help don’t you think?”

Jack spent the last three hours reading in the library, and the hour was late.

The room wobbled.

“Maybe I should go,” he said.

She brushed an ash off of the chair’s armrest. “I’ve seen you around here with your head stuck in the books. You don’t talk to anyone. I like to get to know our patrons and guests.”

“Ms. LaFleur…You were saying something about a job?”

She nodded.

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know yet. But you seem to have a lot of time on your hands.”

“I’m in between things,” he said.

Her eyes finally blinked. “Perfect.”

Jack looked around the lounge. When he sat down there were at least two other members lurking about. They came in, ordered a few drinks at the bar and requested a deck of cards. When Tereza entered they left. She sat down in her chair and had the server summon him from an out of the way corner in the lounge to join her. Now it was just the bartender, the server standing at attention near the entrance and Tereza LaFleur. “I appreciate the offer,” he replied, “but I’m not a bartender.”

“Is that what you think?” She was about to laugh but stopped herself. “I was asked by The Man himself to see if you’d like to consult for him. Research.”

“What kind of research?”

“He didn’t say,” she replied, “but he did ask for you.”

“Not to be crass but how much money are we talking about?”

“It’s a six figure neighborhood,” Tereza said.

Jack finished the bourbon in his glass. “Nice neighborhood. I guess I’ll stick around for one more drink.”

It was autumn now and enough time had passed for Jack to believe whatever Tereza LaFleur proposed to him weeks before was off the table. It was never brought up again.

On the street, Tereza drove the Bentley hard, shifting the clutch and stick like someone who had broken a wild horse. Jack sat in the passenger seat watching the life in the city through his window blur from one still life to the next like television channels. He considered the moment and how for longer than he cared to remember he was just an observer to everything around him. The city was haunted for him now…

After Isabella died the library was a refuge for him once he had to learn to be alone. An ornate envelope appeared in the mail from “The Library of Orchard Hall”. It was addressed to Isabella and Jack. At first and from the weight and maroon color of the paper he thought it was a wedding invitation and let it sit on the kitchen table along with the most recent unpaid bills and final notices. A few weeks after the funeral Isabella’s sister, Alessandra, stopped by to pick up some things Jack felt she should keep. Alessandra was compelled to put some order back into the home Jack shared with her sister and left the envelope on the barren table. Jack and Isabella had a love affair with books and Orchard Hall was a notoriously secretive vault of gathered and collected works by an avid bibliophile known only as “Gerald”. They tried to enter its massive bronze doors once, but were turned away by a security guard who stated it was a private library for members only.

Jack admired the wax seal of a tree on the flap. He broke the black seal and opened the envelope. The note card was stiff and matte black on one side and a textured ivory on the opposite. The dark side was embossed with a copper tree spreading branches throughout the emptiness. On the lighter side, a handwritten note:

Mr. Jonathan Montes and Ms. Isabella Baez,

It is with great pleasure that we extend an invitation to read at our library. As you may know, Orchard Hall is a private collection of books that has taken a lifetime to amass. Our membership is limited to a select number and this membership never grows or diminishes. When a vacancy becomes available we invite a few individuals for consideration to fulfill our roll call. Please join us at your convenience at any time to enter our hall and enjoy the benefits of our hospitality and the wisdom this extraordinary collection of works provides. We look forward to meeting you.

Ex Umbra in Solem,

Gerald

Since that moment Jack spent his days and sometimes nights reading at the library, consumed by the subject most pressing on his heart and mind, death.

The first time Jack saw death was from afar. He did not see it, but heard it broadcast over the television when he was seven years old. In the kitchen his mother was preparing lunch when word came from Iowa that the youngest son and mother of a local family were crushed and burned to death at a stoplight. The noise in the kitchen, the running faucet, the hissing grill pan and Jack’s mom dropping spoons and forks into the sink went silent. The lone sound was a hollow voice traveling from the television to all corners of the house in the warm air. There was a moment of recognition from his mother and the whispered tones she made with his father before they turned the television off and sat Jack down in the living room. The boy was Brian Martin, Jack’s classmate and best friend. The Martins were visiting relatives when their station wagon was rear ended by a semi. Mrs. Martin survived the collision but died two days later from the trauma. Brian was asleep in the back seat. Mr. Martin and a stranger pulled his wife and Brian’s older brother out before the fire became too violent to overcome. Of some comfort to anyone as they spoke about the tragedy was an unfounded belief the impact killed the child long before the body was rendered to ash.

At the funeral Jack wore the only suit a seven-year old boy owns, the one from his First Communion. It was stiff like construction paper and the cold metal edge of the clip-on tie pressed against his throat the way it did on the same day he and Brian stood in line to receive communion. To Jack, Brian’s Father and brother now seemed empty, suddenly strangers without Brian. The familiarity of those two people was gone, replaced with vacant stares. Whoever they were to young Jack was poured into the small casket, closed and adorned with Brian’s last school photo. Jack didn’t cry when his parents told him what happened and he didn’t cry at the funeral. But Death finds a way to exact its sorrow from children who don’t weep like it’s expected, and when Jack returned from the funeral later that night he found the family’s German Shepard hard with lifelessness. This dog terrorized Jack since he could remember. Her massive jaw and forceful eyes were the stuff of his nightmares and he never could love the dog as much as his father tried to match them. But lying on the floor of a dimly lit hallway in his construction paper suit, Jack realized Death does not discriminate between the things you love and the things you hate. The undeniably fragile randomness of living made him weep until he was down to stuttering sobs and without breath, refusing, despite his Mom’s tearful pleas, to let go of his dog’s coarse, wiry fur.

As he got older, Death was ever present, but became the shadow behind the scenery of life and not the vacuum of nothingness appearing out of nowhere when he was seven. Old relatives would pass on as they were supposed to. Childhood friends he hardly knew anymore expired at distances away from his life through drugs, violence, or suicide. But the swift and terrifying suddenness of Death’s reach remained blunted with age and for the most part forgotten for a long time until the morning Isabella died. On that day he felt the familiar horror of his slowly sinking heart as seven-year old Jack sobbed and screamed inconsolably, holding Isabella’s head and refusing to let go of her soft, perfumed hair.

CHAPTER TWO

Orchard Hall sat on the corner of Emerson and Hawthorne and consumed almost the entire city block. Diagonal to and across from the building was the public park where Isabella and Jack would spend picnics and read on warm summer days. In the park a fountain dripped for as long as the seasons would permit. On sun filled days while he rested his head on Isabella’s lap, Jack would close his eyes and listen to the breeze shuffling the trees, birds singing among their branches and the fountain mimicking the sound of rain. On one of those occasions Isabella caught the gleam of the setting sun shining off the bronzed doors of the building across the park.

“What do you think is in there?” she asked.

Jack with his eyes still closed, an ear pressed close and against her stomach could hear her heartbeat and the imagined heartbeat of their five week old, unborn child. “In where?”

“That old building across the park.”

“They’re all old buildings around here,” he said. “This is a high rent neighborhood. It’s probably a mansion.”

“Looks more like a mausoleum, or a prison.”

Jack opened one eye, lifted his head slightly to survey the land. “Around here? Honey that would be the nicest prison I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t mind doing time there.”

Isabella laid her book down. “Oh really.”

“Would you wait for me?”

“I don’t know.” She asked, “How long would you be in for?”

“Um…let’s say five years, two and a half with good behavior.”

“Okay. But with good behavior it’s 85 percent for felonies.”

“How about ten years?”

“Eight and a half years? Nope.”

He opened both eyes. “Really? Five is the max?”

“That’s almost a decade. 85 percent of the max. Would there be conjugal visits?”

“In a place like that?” Jack smiled. “Absolutely. And I’m sure the bedrooms would be much more lavish and elegant than our tiny boudoir.”

She leaned down into him and planted a soft kiss on his forehead. “I like our boudoir. It has an unspoken intimacy and comfort to it.”

“That’s because all those giant pillows on the bed fill up more than half the room. If you took those pillows out you’d realize we have a very spacious sleeping arrangement.”

“Spacious enough for three?”

He watched a leaf float off of the tree and kissed her belly.

“The pillows are for decorative purposes,” she said. “Don’t you like coming home to a nice, fluffy, well-made bed?”

“Always. Especially if you’re in it.”

“Okay.” Isabella placed a hand on Jack’s face and squished his cheeks. “Maybe eight and a half with conjugal visits. That way I could stop by, get off, and go about my business.”

He squeezed out through pinched lips, “Tramp.”

“Criminal.”

Jack bit Isabella’s hand.

“Ouch, you cannibal. What crime would you commit to end up in a place like that?”

“Don’t you know I’m an international jewel thief?”

“Really?”

Jack gave her a toothy smile. “I’ve just been able to hide it so well under the guise of my poverty.”

“You’ve done a very good job convincing me.”

“Ouch.”

“That’s okay. I don’t love you for your money,” Isabella said.

“Thank God…’cause I don’t have any.” Jack closed his eyes and buried his head into her lap. The wind blew stronger in the park, more leaves fell and a small flock of tiny birds leapt off the ground and flew away. Her body warmed the left side of his face. “Jeezus…Why do you love me?”

“I’m still trying to figure that one out. Hormones?”

The massive, cast iron street lamps surrounding Orchard Hall came alive and winked in the looming night.

Jack asked, “Don’t you need to be married to have conjugal visits?”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“They don’t teach you that in law school?”

Orchard Hall’s buzzing lights filled the air. “We haven’t reached the part of the curriculum dealing with conjugal visits, but I’ll make a mental note.”

“You do that.”

The summer air began to lose its heat with the vanishing daylight.

He asked, “What are you reading?”

“An anthology with myths about babies.”

Jack squinted and raised a hand to shade his eyes from the setting sun.

“I’m looking for interesting names.”

“Any favorites?”

“Not yet,” she replied. “But a lot of interesting stories. Ever read about The Chamber of Guf?”

Jack shook his head.

“The Hall of Souls?”

“Nope.”

“In the Garden of Eden is the Tree of Souls. It blossoms and produces all the souls that have ever been and that will ever be. The souls fall like leaves into The Guf, which is a treasury. The souls are held there until the Angel Gabriel reaches into it and takes out a soul. This soul is then placed into an embryo and watched over by Lailah, the Angel of Conception, until it is born into the world. It’s said that birds can see the souls descending from heaven and that’s why they chirp.”

He smiled. “That’s a beautiful story. Can’t wait for you to tell it to our kid.”

She grimaced. “Well, it’s not that beautiful. Once the last soul descends from The Guf the world comes to an end.”

“Oh.”

Isabella shuddered. “Honey, you mind getting the blanket from the car? I’m getting a little chilly.”

Jack sat up and stretched his arms. A black Bentley was now parked at the entrance to the building. Its halogen lights cast trees at the edge of the park into silhouette. “You sure you want to stick around?” he asked. “It’s almost eight. The light is starting to fade and you won’t be able to read a thing.”

Isabella tucked her book into a paper grocery bag. “I’m done reading. I just want to sit here awhile and stare at your prison. You know, contemplate ways to break you out of there before you even get in.”

“Ah…you clever girl,” he said and brushed some grass off of his jeans. “That’s why I love you. You have the sexiest brain I’ve ever met. You’re always thinking ahead.”

Jack stood up and walked towards their car, parked on a side street half a block away from the park. He was a few feet away from Isabella when he turned around to say something he had considered saying to her but in his mind was planning for at a more deliberate time and a more memorable place. “Isabella?”

“Yeah?”

“I…need your keys.”

“Oh, sure.” She reached into her handbag and tossed them to Jack. With her arms wrapped around her knees tight, she sat and turned her attention back on Orchard Hall. Her body seemed to shrink and the outline of the building in the background began to take shape and engulf that corner of the park as Jack walked away. By the time he reached the fountain she could not be seen at all within the long creeping shadows of trees.

CHAPTER THREE

It was a rare meeting. Gerald was a notorious recluse and eccentric. Nobody was even sure what he looked like. His identity and life predated the modern world so that for most people his very existence was a delicious local legend, a myth. Or maybe that’s what happened to wealthy people who had more than enough zeros in their bank account. They bought isolation and insulation from society and an army of go-betweens to interact for them so they would not be troubled by people.

Orchard Hall was well suited to this isolation. Although it was in the city, its space remained unmolested by the urban world surrounding it. It rose six stories high from the street; a massive fortress of gray stone slabs, its face a solid stoic expression of French Renaissance architecture. A semi-circled stairway recessed into the building above a smaller tabernacle and entrance sitting at the street level. At the top of the stairway was a colonnade screening the formidable bronze doors. At night, a light above the main entrance revealed the doors tucked deep within the portico and the pair of columns on either side could not be seen. The doors appeared to create themselves out of nothing. The doorway was set within the frame of half a scallop shell at the top. Below the shell was a lintel spread across and above the doorway’s horizon. Inscribed on the slab were the words:

Ex Umbra In Solem

“From the Shadow into the Light”

At the center of the entrance was a relief of a large and ornate tree between the two doors and a series of smaller trees in the background. On the few occasions when Jack came through the main entrance the tree would split in two and reveal Orchard Hall’s inner secrets. But this grand and dramatic admission was more trouble than it was worth because there were no handles to pull or bells to ring and he would have to wait for someone to notice him on the security camera before letting him in. It was easier to pass through the smaller doorway at the street level or, as Tereza called it, “the servants’ entrance”. There was always someone waiting inside that doorway to valet cars or shoo away the persistently curious.

The Bentley pulled up alongside the curb in front of the library. Tereza put the beast in park, left the engine running and stepped out leaving the door open to the street. A wet and cool night air swept up into the car. Jack unlocked his seat belt and opened the door. Tereza was halfway up the stairway by the time he was on the sidewalk.

He asked, “No servants’ entrance for us tonight?”

Tereza, her back to the street, said nothing and motioned for him to follow her.

Jack stared at the dark and empty park across from the library. He could hear the trees bending and whispering to themselves in the wind. He turned up to look at the building. Its presence towered over him. “Shouldn’t we wait for the valet?”

“We’re late as is,” she said when she reached the break in the colonnade. “Someone will take care of it.”

Jack rushed up the stairs just as the tree on the face of the doors broke apart. A blade of light as long as the doors were tall stretched from inside Orchard Hall into and across the street. It opened a brief wound in the night.

Leaves blew in, twirled, and settled on the cumbersome red floor mat brought out since the season change. The doors shut closed. Jack stared at the polished expanse of marble beyond the mat. Black and gray spread over the cool white stone like old veins towards the soft lights and the smell of paper in the library. Tereza watched him draw closer to its threshold. She unbuttoned her double-breasted black coat and handed it to a doorman waiting on the mat on the right side of the foyer. She was smartly attired in a fitted white blouse, cuff links, a silver-black patterned tie with tie pin, and black plaid skirt.

“Not that way,” she said.

He turned around and walked back to her. He looked to his left at a few people in the lounge.

“Not there either.”

He shrugged.

She pointed to his right to a pair of columns and a permanently cloaked archway. The red curtain was now drawn back and cinched off behind the columns. Jack glimpsed a silhouette of half of a man’s body beyond the curtain.

He joked. “The forbidden hallway?”

The doorman said nothing but extended his free arm to Jack.

Tereza replied, “Library personnel only.”

“Love the tie.” Jack smirked and handed his coat to the doorman.

“I’m on the job,” she said. “You should try wearing one. It sets a tone for your workday. But you don’t have a job so what’s the point?” She walked across the marble and rolled the fingers in her hand at him to follow.

He caught up to her. “Maybe I can meet with your haberdasher.” As they drew closer, the shadow stepped away from the entrance and moved down the hallway.

“You can’t afford him,” she said without batting an eyelash. “Not yet.”

She parted the curtain a little more to reveal a dim passage and urged Jack in.

Beware, he thought to himself, here be monsters. He insisted, “Ladies first.”

Tereza sighed, rolled her eyes and walked. Damask wallpaper ran the length of the hall. The Rorschac pattern’s fluted blacks and floral whites repeated themselves to infinity. In the low light the corridor appeared to have no end.

He rubbed his eyes and asked, “You don’t go for chivalry?”

“I don’t think you’re motivated by chivalry.”

“You don’t?”

“No,” she replied. “I think you just like to watch me walk.”

Tereza turned a corner and approached an L-shaped bar. A man behind the desk stood up and nodded. A silver bowl of apples was on top of the counter. She picked one up and brought it to her nose, touching the yellow and red mottled skin against her own. She took a bite. A stream of juice leaked from the corner of her mouth. “You want one?” she asked with a mouthful of fruit. “I didn’t eat dinner because I was waiting for you and I’m fucking starving.”

“Nope. I’m good.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing. They’re Honey Crisp and they’re only in season this time of year.”

“I could use a drink.”

The man behind the counter stood up and picked up a phone. Tereza shook her head slightly and took another deep chunk out of the apple. The man put the phone back into the cradle.

Tereza continued past the bar and turned left into a foyer. At the end was a birdcage elevator. She stepped up to the cage, fruit in hand but now wrapped in a handkerchief. She pulled out a key and unlocked the doors. The latticed door slid into itself with a series of metal clicks like an accordion. “You get to drink with The Man tonight.” She stepped through the door, holding the gate against itself with her free hand and motioned him inside with a nudge of her head. “You can have a drink with me later if you stick around.”

He looked up at the elevator’s crisscrossed dome. Light from the car cast a checkered spiral into the black void above. There were no other floors, only cables that hung onto the cage from beyond the darkness like a hook and lure. No buttons on the control panel. He tugged at the brass frame surrounding them. “This thing safe?”

She slammed the gate shut and inserted a different key into the panel. “Of course. You can sit on the bench if you want, but it’s a short trip.” She pushed the lever up and the car jolted.

He couldn’t tell how many floors they passed and not knowing disrupted the comfort of his inner geography. He was thrown off balance.

Tereza turned around with her hand still on the lever. “You alright?”

“Just a little disoriented,” Jack said. “Can’t tell if we’re going up or down in this thing.”

“This place can do that to you. Took me a while to get used to the building’s quirks.”

When the cage arrived at its destination Jack was relieved to step out onto a narrow red carpet running the length of a black marbled hallway. The same damask wallpaper stretched to the vanishing point, a red door at the end. Tereza led Jack through the long corridor. The skin of her legs was olive and laced underneath fishnet stockings and peeked ever so slightly between the tight hem of her skirt and the curve at the lip of the calf on her leather boots. “You’re staring again.”

“How do you walk on those things?”

“I can do a lot in these things.”

“Are you always put together?”

“Dressing the part gets you what you want.”

“And what do you want?”

“Well, you’re here aren’t you?”

“I would’ve taken this meeting even if your personal dress code weren’t so… persuasive. How many people get to meet Gerald? People say he doesn’t even exist. I couldn’t pass that up.”

“You wouldn’t.”

He asked, “Why do you say that?”

“Because you’re the curious type, and easily distracted.”

They reached the end of the corridor. There was a small end table with a telephone and a chair. Tereza picked up the phone and laid the apple on the tabletop. The door had no handle. “Yes sir, Jonathan Montes…I mean Jack Montes is here. I will. One moment.”

Tereza placed the phone down and turned to face Jack. “When you enter the room, walk through the curtain and sit down on the chair to your immediate left. There’s a side table with leather coasters, ice bucket, glasses and an unopened bottle of Twenty-three year old Pappy Van Winkle. Pour yourself a drink at your leisure. You’ll be facing Gerald and be in the same room but it will only be his reflection in a mirror directly opposite you. That’s as close as you’ll get. Get it?” Tereza pulled up her skirt to reveal a small caliber silver pistol tucked in a holster wrapping her inner thigh.

He hesitated at the sight and let the gravity of her new lethality sink in. “I got it.”

“Good boy.” Tereza tugged the skirt back into place and picked up the apple.

“I didn’t think it was possible to be turned on and scared shitless at the same time.”

She looked Jack square in the eyes and took a bite. “What? You’ve never been madly in love?” Tereza tossed the apple core into a trashcan underneath the table and wiped her hands with the handkerchief. “Make a good impression. I doubt you’ll get a chance to meet him again. Most people don’t get a second meeting.”

“Why not?”

“Because once is usually enough for Gerald to make his point.” Tereza picked the phone up once more. “Yes sir,” she said and pushed the door open. “Okay…you’re on.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The first thing Jack saw when he walked through the door were red folds of fabric descending from the cavernous dark above and down into the center of the room. He stepped towards the floating curtain, walking on what sounded like a marble floor. He parted the curtain. To his immediate left was a dark leather chair similar to the ones in the lounge and the thick wood table Tereza directed him to. At a distance away, a fuzzy, dark red square floated in black space. A dim light brought the square into focus until it grew out of the darkness and Jack was facing the reflection of another red curtain. On the table was the drink, a stack of coasters, a bar towel, an ice bucket and two glass tumblers. Next to the bottle of Bourbon was a small silver statue of a grinning monkey, squatting and holding a long grooved platter above its head. He examined it for a moment and upon seeing a box of matchsticks and red humidor behind the primate realized it was a cigar ashtray.

“I apologize for the mirrors,” Gerald said.

The red curtain was drawn back.

“It’s an old superstition I can’t seem to shake.” Gerald was seated, his legs crossed, and the dim light cast long and soft shadows down his face from above. “And it doesn’t help that I’m a recluse. But this is the only way I’m comfortable meeting someone for the first time, ‘face to face’ so to speak.” He was dressed in black pants and a white tuxedo shirt with a bow tie undone. His cuffs were free of cuff links. His own chair was high backed, winged and enveloped him perfectly as if he was molded out of its dark skin. The chair’s legs were capped with monstrous brass claws that sunk into the floor. From Jack’s sight Gerald appeared to be a man in his late eighties, a full head of gray hair and clean shaven. “I’m also very sensitive to light. Too much glare makes my eyes water so I like to keep it low. Just enough to read. I suspect that will be the next thing to go, my eyes. When you get to my age the body revolts against you more quickly. But luckily enough I’ve been able to keep my hair.”

On the table next to Gerald lay a book, a glass of bourbon and a cigar. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all,” Jack said. “It’s your house.”

Gerald took a cigar from his table and snipped the cap off with a silver cutter. He put the circumcised end to his nose and inhaled deeply. “I like a nice cigar with a good book. Reading and smoking are slow and deliberate pleasures. And simple ones. This one seems a good one.” He struck a matchstick. It crackled and primed the cigar’s foot before he drew a breath and blew out a puff of blue-white smoke. “When you’re as old as me you’ll find simple and deliberate pleasures are the best and you don’t need loads of money to do either, just a good eye for an interesting story and a well-made cigar, and time. Lots of time. Would you like one?”

“Sure.”

Gerald motioned to Jack. “There’s a 1924 Padron Anniversario in the humidor on your table. Help yourself. I’d offer you one of these but they’re a bit robust.”

“The Padron is fine. Thank you.” Jack opened the humidor and pulled out a cigar.

“You’re welcome. How do you like our little club?”

“Very much.” Jack fumbled with the cutter and pinched his middle finger with it after cutting the Padron. He examined his finger for blood but saw none. “Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to read here. I don’t suppose I have the bank account to petition for permanent membership?”

“Jack. The fact you were invited the first time makes you a permanent member. Your bona fides were satisfied the moment Ms. LaFleur introduced herself to you in the lounge that night. You wouldn’t be here if she didn’t believe you belonged.”

“Well thank you again. Really.” He picked up the bottle of Bourbon and examined the label. “You’re hospitality is unrivaled.”

“Please, pour yourself a glass.” Gerald drew a breath and let the smoke escape his open mouth. “I’d recommend only one ice cube for that. Anything more would dilute its spirit.”

Jack laid the cigar on the ashtray and broke the seal on the bottle. “You have a grand collection of books and I guess the world should be thankful you let a few of us in here to read at our leisure----“

“—that which has taken a lifetime to amass,” Gerald said and chewed the smoke in the air.

“Yes.” Jack stared at the book next to Gerald. “What are you reading now?”

“The Rubaiyat of Omar Kahyyam. Are you familiar with it?”

“Yes.”

Gerald placed his cigar on a silver ashtray that looked like a Griffin. “This is the Edward Fitzgerald translation from 1884. I’m very fond of Elihu’s Vedder’s renderings for this poem. The illustrations are beyond anything at the time and I like his artistic interpretations of Kahyyam’s words more than Fitzgerald’s take. Sometimes an artist’s voice can say more than any text can about the spirit of a book. I’ve read this a thousand times maybe and find some small comforts in the narrator’s pain in the transience of all things---especially of being human and The Almighty’s apparent indifference to human suffering.” Gerald paused to swirl his glass of Bourbon and stared at its color in the light. He asked, “Are you a church going man?”

“On occasion,” Jack replied and tried to light his cigar before the flame went out. “But it’s been a while.”

“True believer?”

“Agnostic.”

“Ah…a fence sitter.”

“Yes.” Jack paused and finally drew some smoke. His mouth and nose filled with black coffee, leather and peat. “But sometimes it’s difficult to escape your upbringing and you find yourself in church.” He let out a deep breath. A column of light appeared in the smoke between him and the mirror. Within moments, nicotine lifted his head like a balloon and he felt at ease. “And you? Being ‘superstitious’ probably lands you in the category of old gods.”

Gerald sighed. “There are no old gods or new gods. They’ve always been the same. They just look different now. In any case I’m a monotheist so it’s all God to me. Do you think being a fence sitter makes you an open mind---or a coward?”

Uneasy silence. Gerald observed Jack in his chair before picking up his cigar. “Forgive my bluntness. Sometimes I think Ms. LaFleur has rubbed off on me. We shouldn’t always say what we think. But let’s talk plainly.”

“Okay.”

“I only ask because I need someone with an open mind to help me in this matter. And you seem like the right fellow.”

“No hard feelings.” Jack took a sip from his glass. “I am curious though. Why me?”

Gerald smiled. “You seem driven by something but I don’t think you have the faintest clue what that is. It’s just a drive, like hunger, this unfocused curiosity of yours. You’ve been spending a lot of time in our library reading up on some heavy afterlife, ‘what’s the meaning of it all?’ tomes.”

Jack put his glass on the table. “I didn’t know my reading habits were being monitored.”

“Don’t be offended. There’s nothing Machiavellian going on here.” Gerald waved the cigar in his left hand creating swirls in the reflection. “This library is pretty exclusive and with such a small membership it’s not hard to keep track of what everybody is reading or checking out. So if you don’t mind telling me a story. What’s yours? What’s to do with your soul searching?”

“A woman.”

“Ah…a lot of interesting stories begin with just that, ‘a woman’. I’d say perhaps the greatest story ever told really doesn’t begin until Adam’s Rib shows up in Genesis.” Gerald pinched the cigar between his thumb and forefinger and pointed the end at Jack. “So tell me…who is your ‘Eve’?”

The Bourbon relaxed Jack’s eyes. “Isabella. She died a little over a year ago. She wasn’t my wife. I was hoping for it and one morning she was gone.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Gerald poured more Bourbon into his glass and sipped it neat. “There is hardly anything more shocking to your faith in all things than a life being extinguished for no apparent reason. Have you found any answers from the books you’ve been reading?”

“No. Not really. But I have enjoyed coming here and getting away from my apartment. I like the feel and smell of old books and the accommodations are first class.” He was about to say something but withdrew his admission. Orchard Hall was a place of mystery and wonder for Isabella and having gained access to its secretive heart made him feel close to her memory. He continued, “I enjoy the method and process of one bit of information leading you to the next bit of information, of one book or work leading you towards the next and so on.”

Gerald took a deep draw of his cigar and exhaled. “Not very efficient in this day and age, such a deliberate climb towards truth.”

“True enough. But the texture of that climb can offer its own revelations,” Jack said.

“Then that, my friend, may be good enough for you for now. A moment’s peace from whatever is ailing you.” Gerald looked away from Jack and tilted his head towards the light coming from above. He squinted and rubbed his eyes with a free hand. “It’s a shame. The world doesn’t seem to need libraries anymore or want them. Not when information and the answers you seek can be instantaneously grasped with a few keystrokes. We’ve made The Delphic Oracle out of thin air. I’m not that old fashioned but this place is probably more of a museum than a source of knowledge to most people. And as you’ve acknowledged in your own time here sometimes the journey is more important and nourishing than the reward.”

They looked at one another and acknowledged a shared sentiment for older times.

“What exactly can I do for you, Gerald?”

“Ah…to business then.” Gerald uncrossed his legs, leaned back into his throne and folded his hands across his chest. “Well, Jack. This may seem very odd to you but I need you to find a girl.”

“Okay. Anyone in particular?”

“Yes. An angel.”

“I don’t follow.”

“She’s out there,” Gerald’s eyes looked at and then beyond Jack, “…somewhere.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. I’m quite serious. For the sake of argument what if I told you I needed you to find a girl. If I were to give you as much information as I could…give you a path to follow. Would you be able to find her for me?”

“Probably.”

Gerald asked, “Would it matter to you if she was an angel?”

“I suppose only because I would think you were nuts.”

“Because for you angels don’t exist.”

“Because you’d be asking me to find something that doesn’t exist.”

“Then let’s just say I need you to find a particular girl. Could you do this for me?”

“I wouldn’t want to insult you by inquiring if this was some strange sexual thing but tell me Gerald, is this some strange sexual thing?”

“Ha!” Gerald unlocked his fingers and reached for the Griffin. “I think Ms. LaFleur is rubbing off on you too.” He drew a breath from the cigar. “But to answer your question Jack the answer is ‘no’. Do I look like the type who couldn’t afford myself such things without your help? Besides, I’m too old for that.”

“There are pills now.”

“Yes, but I don’t need a pharmacist I need someone to find this girl, or to be more specific, a kind of girl.”

“Angel.”

“Whatever makes it easier for you to grasp.”

Jack laughed. “You are nuts.”

“Maybe. That doesn’t really matter does it?”

Jack asked, “And what do you want to do with this angel?”

“That’s not relevant.” Gerald pulled another deep draw from his cigar. “And for your purposes not necessary to accomplish the job.”

“And let’s say I find this angel. I’m just supposed to bring her to you?”

Gerald replied, “No. Just find her. Tell me where she is and I will take care of the rest. Meeting her and so forth.”

“Okay. How do I find this girl?”

“She’s most likely a musician of some kind.”

“Age?”

Gerald paused for a moment. “I’m not sure. Young. Maybe? To be honest I don’t know.”

“Black? White?”

“I don’t know.”

Jack asked, “How do you know she’s a musician?”

“Because that’s what God told me.”

Jack ran his hands through his hair and scratched his head. “God spoke to you?”

“No, I’m teasing. God hasn’t spoken to me in years.”

Jack shook his head. “Gerald, try to see this from my perspective. Wouldn’t you think you were nuts?”

Gerald crossed his legs and rubbed an ash off his knee. “Alright. This girl is not a girl. She may think she’s a woman but she’s not. She’s an angel.”

“Seraphim or Cherubim?”

“No. Just a regular run of the mill angel. Of the lowest order---‘Angel’.”

Jack asked, “And this facility with music?”

“She would have to be musically gifted. Angels deliver prayers to God and the ability to speak to The Almighty would manifest itself in its human form as music or song. Although she may not be aware of it, her talent is the reflection of what she really is. She…it…is an angel trapped in a human body.”

The alcohol was beginning to mellow in Jack’s brain. “And how did that happen?”

“I can’t say,” Gerald replied.

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.”

Jack swirled the bourbon in his glass and drained it into his mouth. The sweet caramel warmth rested on his lips and he began to feel its wondrous effects. “Anything else you can tell me?”

“She was born blind.”

“Why?”

Gerald uncrossed his legs and stood up from his chair. His reflection was there for one moment and then disappeared into shadow. Outside of Jack’s sight he spoke, his voice echoed from somewhere in what Jack could only imagine was a cavernous room. “You’ve read Bickleburns’ work on science and religion?”

“You know I have,” Jack said. “It’s in your library. ‘Physics and Spirituality’.”

Gerald’s disembodied voice asked, “What did you think?”

“A novelty but hardly groundbreaking. Bored academics are always publishing compare and contrast books with ideas better suited for cocktail parties.”

“True enough,” Gerald said. “But if there was anything I took away from his work was a poetry to light. Have you ever noticed that light is the one constant in the universe? Its speed and makeup is eternal…unchanging…constant.”

“I seem to recall that from my reading.”

“Bickleburn’s description of light,” the voice echoed, “‘eternal…unchanging… constant…’.”

“Like God,” Jack said.

Gerald returned from the shadow and his reflection was once again directly before him.

The heat from Jack’s cigar had gone out and he relit it with another matchstick on the table. “I’m quoting Bickleburn,” Jack said.

“If you say so. And if the Bible is to be believed, then all those bad angels were cast out of heaven, away from the light, away from God. That was their punishment for their betrayal.”

“So she’s blind because…”

“Because Hell, Jack, is not made up of fire and heat and pitchforks. Hell is the absence of light. Hell is darkness. Hell is to be outside of The Light. To be outside of God’s sight. To be ignored and abandoned.”

“So this angel is in Hell.”

“Of a sort, yes. She’s trapped in a body somewhere out there.”

“Trapped or born?”

Gerald laughed. He looked into the light above his head. “What’s the difference? Trapped or born, she, it, experiences the same things you and I do. Not knowing what she is but assuming she is human but having doubts about the meaning of it all just like us.” Gerald held up The Rubaiyat. “Just like the narrator of this poem. Tortured by the apparent meaninglessness of it all. That my friend would be Hell, especially for an angel don’t you think?” Gerald’s gaze was stronger now and intense. Jack felt uneasy. His pulse raced. For a moment the alcohol wore off. “To know God exists but not be able to ever be in The Light again, ever.”

“I suppose,” Jack said. “But she doesn’t know God exists.”

“She doesn’t remember.”

Jack shook his head.

Gerald asked, “Is this all too much for you?”

“No.” He stopped and stared at his drink and took a deep breath. “No, I enjoy a good tale. Maybe this girl isn’t an angel at all and you’re creating this entire pretext for my benefit or to keep up your reputation as an eccentric kook.” He looked at Gerald for a reaction but found none. “In any case you want me to find a blind girl who likes music. I’m sure I can accommodate you.”

“Not just any girl.”

“Right. Okay. Do I need to find this songbird by a certain date?”

“I’ll leave that to your discretion. I find once you pay someone upfront the amount of money I am paying you, that the diligent man sets a reasonable clock for his work and the fool doesn’t. So don’t waste your money by wasting your time.”

Jack laid his cigar down on the ashtray. The silver monkey no longer seemed to be grinning at him but looked weary and struggling with the weight of the silver tray upon its head. “I think I understand.”

Gerald nodded. “Good. You have the full resources of the library at your disposal and Ms. LaFleur can assist and nudge you from time to time as is her way. If you need to contact me you can do this through her. She is my mouth, ears and eyes to your progress. And I will know whether or not I’ve made the right decision in asking for your help and paying you so well.” Gerald stood up and placed his drink onto the table. He drew one more breath from the cigar and placed it on the Griffin before fixing his bow tie. “Don’t disappoint me Jack,” he said and smiled. “I won’t be so cliché as to tell you that there are consequences for destroying my expectations. But there are.” The smoke dripped slowly from his lips and he walked out of the mirror and vanished back into the room.

“And if I don’t find her?” Jack asked.

Gerald’s voice echoed from somewhere in the distance, “Just find the girl.”