Big Machine (32 page)

“What the hell are you doing?” she whispered.

I motioned with my head and we walked out the lobby doors. A news anchor came back on the screen and blabbered in an excited tone.

“That’s By the Bay” I said. “That light was me walking in on them.”

THERE WERE BENCHES ALONG
the curved driveway outside Highground Hospital. They were filled with men of various ages, but similar style: drained, tired, though not from work alone. Just worn-out with living. They stared at Ms. Henry openly as we passed. The Church of Clay. How many members did it have?

“We’re going to have to walk. I’ve fired Claude.”

I laughed when she said that, because the oxycodone I was on could only manage so many miracles. The fact that I wasn’t sweating much, wasn’t collapsing, that was really an achievement. It seemed ungrateful to demand more of this drug. Like walking farther than the car.

I need to break in and admit that oxycodone is not the kind of stuff a former heroin addict should be taking. But a doctor doesn’t know what a doctor isn’t told, and when Dr. France asked me if there was any reason I couldn’t take it, I suffered this odd, instant memory loss. Then suddenly, oh my, what’s this yellow pill in my hand? Well, okay, I’ll take it if you really think it’ll help. Swallowing it was like getting a postcard from a dear old friend: Missing You! XOXO.

Ms. Henry went up a set of steps, and I followed her using the handrail so I wouldn’t lose my balance. We’d walked about halfway down the block when I saw Claude’s car parked on the corner, across the street. The lights were off, but he sat in front.

“You don’t think we could ask Claude for one more ride?” I pointed across the way.

“He’s done with us,” the Gray Lady said. “And I’m done with him.”

But the daunting look of 14th Avenue, empty and looooong, made me insist.

“Maybe he’d at least give us some of my money back, so we could call a taxi.”

She shook her purse. “I’ve got the money here. And we need to conserve it.”

“I bet Claude wasn’t too happy about giving back that cash!”

“With a man like him, you can’t just ask.”

“So how’d you convince him?”

“There’s a pistol in my handbag.”

I laughed. “The fear of violence always works.”

She said, “I shot him three times. He died.”

I looked at his car again. Saw the figure at rest in the front seat, a body in the dark. His black Town Car looked like a casket now.

Claude.

“I thought you’d be happy,” she said.

I would’ve thought so too, but I only felt overwhelmed. I touched my jacket pocket. Left my hand there a moment.

I’d wrapped the syringe I found inside layers of paper towels. It had been used before, drops of dried blood visible inside the barrel, but I didn’t I care. I meant to use it, to kill that parasite. I tried to concentrate on that plan rather than Claude’s death. The only thing over which I had any control. I just needed privacy.

“We have to get somewhere safe,” I said.

The Gray Lady reached under her gold tam, scratched her scalp.

“I doubt those men have stayed at By the Bay. If they dropped off a tape, they must have a bigger plan. We have to get help,” she said. “The estate’s the only place.”

We walked.

I tried to act unimpressed. The exhaustion helped, but I was already imagining my finger on a copper doorbell. Maybe the Washburns had a brass door knocker. Or, even better, a braided cable attached to a gong. The idea of the Washburn family still held some clout with me.

No buses rolled by.

No taxis on the streets.

With the quiet came a memory. Being dragged into Claude’s Town Car. Kicking at his face. And then I wondered how much of that Town Car’s leather was saturated with his blood. Had he even known what was happening? Had Daphne understood when Rose shot her?

The Gray Lady said, “Steady, Ricky. Steady on.”

I moved beside her, but wouldn’t look her way.

“We’re going to use the rest of the bullets in my gun on Solomon Clay,” she said. “Are you prepared for that?”

“Prepared? Maybe. But you’re
eager
.”

“We finish him, and that’s that. We return to the Washburn Library.”

“Happily ever after, right?”

The Gray Lady watched me. I saw her do this even though I pretended to watch the stars.

“The Dean’s going to be pleased with you,” she said. “You’re tough.”

“The Dean will like me? Hot damn, my life is complete!”

“Okay, Ricky.”

“How about you tell me why you’re so loyal to that man,” I said.

She sighed. “It’s not
that
man who earned my loyalty.”

“Well, which man was it, then?”

Her mind flittered off to a memory or a feeling. I watched it happen. I couldn’t follow and didn’t want to. I counted my steps instead, which became monotonous, but it was still better than focusing on how cold and empty my right calf felt. Or my numb right foot.

It got hard to see because my vision blurred occasionally.

I’m breaking down. That’s what I admitted to myself.

And just then I felt a hot jolt in my back. A knot in the middle. A mass, a form. A life. I thought of that parasitic wasp, the ichneumon, turning from egg to larva, sucking the fluid right out of its host. Would it kill me before I had a chance to stop it? This anxiety made me snap.

“There’s not one person alive who’s on your side, Adele.”

Ms. Henry crossed her arms as she walked. “And you’re surrounded by friends?”

“The closest you ever came to having company in Vermont was when the guards took your garbage on Tuesdays.”

“I didn’t want visitors.”

I said, “No one trusts you, Ms. Henry. Can’t you see that?”

She patted her chest with one hand. “It has occurred to me.”

“The despised become despicable,” I said.

She spat on the sidewalk. “Solomon told you that.”

“How do you know?”

“I heard him say it once before.”

“Look, Adele,
I
don’t trust you. But I’m here. And I’ll march with you all the way to the Washburn estate. I’ll face down Solomon Clay.
If
you’ll be honest with me now.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Then your only friend is the Dean.”

Adele dropped her arms, grabbed the fronts of her slacks.

“Two years ago,” she began, but stopped.

Adele squeezed her eyelids shut and blew out a deep breath.

She said, “Two years ago I destroyed the Washburn Library.”

This is the story she told me.

EVERY WINTER MORNING
in the Northeast Kingdom is like the dawn of mankind. The world turns so frigid at night that all the living
must’ve
died. So when the sun rises, it bears witness to ten thousand resurrections. People wake, and the first thing they do is compare thermometers with their neighbors. “My house was down to thirty below last night, how about you?” And the one who had it worst gets to be the proudest. You’re bound to learn something true about yourself in that environment; the wind blows off all your covers.

Adele Henry figured out two things after a few months in Vermont: she liked research and she loved drinking. (She may already have been aware of the latter.)

Each morning she’d start the day by spreading her paperwork across the dining table, then preparing a pitcher of manhattans. She’d spend the afternoon draining it. But never to the detriment of her work at the Washburn Library. Really. She loved the job too much to do it poorly. She would’ve been the last to guess how much joy research could bring her.

The only thing she wouldn’t do was walk over to the Library every day. Enter those glass cages they called offices? Please. So while the other Unlikely Scholars left their homes each morning and marched into the building, she got down to business in her dining room.

She worked alone. If she needed anything, she just had the staff deliver it. Sometimes, if she was feeling too tipsy, she wouldn’t even open up for them, just shout to “leave it on stairs.” And yet the Dean didn’t fire her, not in the first month or the third or the sixth. And that’s because
her dedication was clear. If she lost an hour because she’d napped in the afternoon, she made up for it with two more hours’ work during the night. And she didn’t just snip articles like those other chumps. She sent page-long explanations too, detailing her reasons for picking each one. Sometimes she heard the other Unlikely Scholars throwing dinner parties in their cabins, but when she felt a stab of loneliness, she just endured it, set her head down, and returned to the files.

That particular morning, in November of 2003, Adele had already sipped half a pitcher of bourbon and sweet vermouth (and a dash of bitters), so it seemed like nap time would arrive soon. When Lake came for her, knocking lightly on the cabin door, she didn’t even register the sound. Not until it was over. She listened to the heavy scrunch of Lake’s boots in the snow.

Adele finally got up and went to the door, but she had a funny way of walking. Kind of slow and wobbly. It’s possible she had to hold on to the furniture as she moved. But she wouldn’t say she was drunk.
She
wouldn’t.

When Adele finally opened the front door, she saw Lake was already far away. Even from twenty feet off the man was large. Bigger than a breadbasket. Bigger than the truck that delivered breadbaskets.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Calling me?”

Had she slurred her words?

Lake turned around. “Thought you weren’t there.”

“Just sunbathing,” she told him. Her hands and face already felt frosty in the open air.

“Better get your coat,” he said.

“I’m fired,” she said.

Lake laughed, and the sound rumbled like an avalanche.

“You’ve been called up,” he explained.

“To meet the Dean?” she yelled, even as Lake walked closer.

“Yup.”

In response to this momentous news Adele Henry went into the bathroom and threw up.

AFTER SHE’D BRUSHED HER TEETH
, dressed, wrapped, bundled, and put on a scarf, she was prepared for the short march from her cabin to the side door of the Washburn Library. Hard to believe the other Scholars did this every morning when they could’ve been like her, stayed in and enjoyed a glass of port with their eggs and toast. How did she get all this liquor? That’s easy, she drove to Burlington and bought it. It’s not like the Library asked to see her receipts.

“You’re as calm as anyone I’ve ever seen,” Lake said as they walked.

“I’ve got a lot of courage.”

He smiled. “About five pints of it. That’s my guess.”

Adele looked down and wondered if she’d been weaving as they walked. Did she smell? How had he known she was so tipsy?

Lake looked at her and said, “You’re talking a little loud.”

She nodded. “Is this better?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Thank you, Lake.”

They were almost to the Library door. The roof of the enormous building cast a shadow across them that took the shape of a great hand.

“Does the Dean just say hello and send me back to my cabin?” she asked, speaking but listening to herself as well. Monitoring the volume and clarity of each word.

Lake shrugged. “Heard they just bought a pair of tickets. You’re off on a trip. You’re going to meet the boss man, that’s the rumor.”

“What rumor? You’re taking me to him right now.”

Lake held the door open for her and hitched his slacks with the free hand.

“Not the Dean,” he said. “Mr. Washburn.”

ADELE TOOK THE WOODEN STAIRS
that led to the Dean’s office two at a time, treating this like a school yard race rather than a holy climb. She skipped so quick that she tripped when she reached the top. Fell flat on her chest. An echo they must’ve heard in Massachusetts.

No one came to help her up. Lake stayed hidden around the corner, at the bottom of the stairs, or maybe he’d even walked off by then. But someone was there. She heard giggling as she pushed herself up, and realized it was the other Unlikely Scholars, laughing in the lobby. They must’ve known she’d been called up even before she did. Maybe one of them had seen Lake making the trip toward her cabin.

So she heard them down there, cackling about her fall, and while she did feel some humiliation, there wasn’t any pain. That’s one benefit of a few strong drinks, you’re invulnerable. So Adele picked herself up, steadied herself, walked to the Dean’s oak door, and pushed it. When it didn’t open, she rattled the handle. Then she kicked.

“Just wait for the buzzer!” the Dean shouted from inside.

“Well, hurry up and buzz it, then!”

Finally she stepped into the darkened room, didn’t even hesitate, swung the door closed behind her.

“Do you hear my voice?” the Dean said solemnly.

“Course I do,” she said.

“Follow it.”

She moved much faster than she should have, and in no time she smashed right into a table. Its edge clocked her clear in the belly. But did that stop her? No. In fact, she climbed right on top of the table and walked the length of it. The wood wobbled beneath her. The legs creaked, but she didn’t care. Being drunk made her just fearless enough, and when she reached the edge, her step hardly faltered. She hopped down and landed clean. She smiled in the dark.

The Dean turned on the small lamp sitting on his desk.

“You got footprints on my table,” was all he said.

The Dean looked at his shirt and brushed away dust that wasn’t even there. It had been six months since the welcoming banquet, the last time she’d been this close to him. He still seemed rigid in the way small men can be. Anticipating disrespect from all directions.

Maybe Adele was being too hard on the man, but she didn’t think so. The Dean gave her this feeling because of his crisp clothes. They were so freshly pressed. Not ironed each morning, but hourly. The Dean probably thought wrinkled pants were a sign of bad breeding. Nonsense. And yet, Adele ran hands over her own dress. Smoothing out the fabric before she realized what she was doing.