The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (13 page)

That day he made a coat of silver silk, pleated at the hips and embroidered with a tangle of thorny branches and lapels of downy white fur. He knew it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever made.

"Who are you sewing that for?” Mary asked when she came in. “It's gorgeous."

He rubbed his eyes and gave her a tired smile. “It's supposed to be the payment a mortal tailor used to win back a lover from Faeryland."

"I haven't heard of that story,” his sister said. “Will it be a musical?"

"I don't know yet,” said Rafe. “I don't think the cast can sing."

His mother frowned and called Mary over to chop up a summer squash.

"I want you and Victor to come live with me,” Rafe said as his sister turned away from him.

"Your place is too small,” Rafe's mother told him.

She had never seen his apartment. “We could move, then. Go to Queens. Brooklyn."

"You won't want a little boy running around. And Mary has the cousins here. She should stay with us. Besides, the city is dangerous."

"Marco is dangerous,” Rafe said, voice rising. “Why don't you let Mary make up her own mind?"

Rafe's mother muttered under her breath as she chopped, Rafe sighed and bit his tongue and Mary gave him a sisterly roll of the eyes. It occurred to him that that had been the most normal conversation he had had with his mother in years.

All day Rafe worked on the sleeves of the garment and that night he, wearing the silvery coat, went back to the woods and the river.

The dancers were there as before and when Rafe got close, the faery woman left the circle of dancers.

"Your coat is as lovely as the moon. Will you agree to the same terms?"

Rafe thought of objecting, but he also thought of the faery woman's kiss. Maybe he could change the course of events. It would be better if he caught her off-guard. He shouldered off his coat. “I agree."

As before, the faery woman pulled Lyle from the dance.

"Lyle!” Rafe said, starting toward him before the faery could touch his brow with her lips.

Lyle turned to him and his lips parted as though he were searching for a name to go with a distant memory, as if Lyle didn't recall him after all.

The faery woman kissed him then, and Lyle staggered drowsily to the mattress. His drooping eyelashes nearly hid the gaze he gave Rafe. His mouth moved, but no sound escaped him and then he subsided into sleep.

That night Rafe tried a different way of rousing Lyle. He pressed his mouth to Lyle's slack lips, to his forehead as the faery woman had done. He kissed the hollow of Lyle's throat, where the beat of his heart thrummed against his skin. He ran his hands over Lyle's chest, feeling the way it rose and fell with a sigh. He touched his lips to the smooth, unscarred expanse of Lyle's wrists. Again and again, he kissed Lyle, but it was as terrible as kissing a corpse.

Before he slept, Rafe took the onyx and silver ring off his own pinkie, pulled out a strand of black hair from his own head and coiled it inside the hollow of the poison ring. Then he pushed the ring onto Lyle's pinkie.

"Remember me. Please remember me,” Rafe said. “I can't remember myself unless you remember me."

But Lyle did not stir and Rafe woke alone on the mattress. He made his way home in the thin light of dawn.

That day he sewed a coat from velvet as black as the night sky. He stiched tiny black crystals onto it and embroidered it with black roses, thicker at the hem and then thinning as they climbed. At the cuffs and neck, ripped ruffles of thin smoky purples and deep reds reminded him of sunsets. Across the back, he sewed on silver beads for stars. Stars like the faery woman's eyes. It was the most beautiful thing Rafael had ever created. He knew he would never make its equal.

That night he donned the coat and walked to the woods.

The faery woman was waiting for him. She sucked in her breath at the sight of the magnificent coat.

"I must have it,” she said. “You shall have him as before."

Rafael nodded. Tonight if he could not rouse Lyle, he would have to say goodbye. Perhaps this was the life Lyle had chosen—a life of dancing and youth and painless memory—and he was wrong to try and take him away from it. But he wanted to spend one more night beside Lyle.

She brought Lyle to him and he knelt on the mattress. The faerie woman bent to kiss his forehead, but at the last moment, Lyle turned his head and the kiss fell on his hair.

Scowling, she rose.

Lyle blinked as though awakening from a long sleep. Then, touching the onyx ring on his finger, he turned toward Rafe and smiled tentatively.

"Lyle?” Rafe asked. “Do you remember me?"

"Rafael?” Lyle asked. He reached a hand toward Rafe's face, fingers skimming just above the skin. Rafe leaned into the heat, butting his head against Lyle's hand and sighing. Time seemed to flow backwards and he felt like he was fourteen again and in love.

"Come, Lyle,” said the faery woman sharply.

Lyle rose stiffly, his fingers ruffling Rafe's hair.

"Wait,” Rafe said. “He knows who I am. You said he would be free."

"He's as free to come with me as he is to go with you,” she said.

Lyle looked down at Rafe. “I dreamed that we went to New York and that we performed in a circus. I danced with the bears and you trained fleas to jump through the eyes of needles."

"I trained fleas?"

"In my dream. You were famous for it.” His smile was tentative, uncertain. Maybe he realized that it didn't sound like a great career.

Rafe thought of the story he had told Victor about the princess in her louse-skin coat, about locks of hair and all the things he had managed through the eyes of needles.

The faery woman turned away from them with a scowl, walking back to the fading circle of dancers, becoming insubstantial as smoke.

"It didn't go quite like that.” Rafe stood and held out his hand. “I'll tell you what really happened."

Lyle clasped Rafe's fingers in a bruising grip, but his smile was wide and his eyes were bright as stars. “Don't leave anything out."

Scissors

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When Justin started graduate school in library science, he tried to sit next to the older women who now needed a degree as media specialists to keep the same job they'd done for years. He avoided the hipster girls, fresh from undergrad, wearing black turtlenecks with silver jewelry molded in menacing shapes and planning careers in public libraries. Those girls seemed as dangerous as books that unexpectedly killed their protagonists.

He wasn't used to being around people anymore. He fidgeted with his freshly cut hair and ran shaking fingers over the razor burn on his pale skin. He didn't meet anyone's eyes as he dutifully learned about new user interfaces and how to conduct a reference interview. He wrote papers with pages of citations. He read pile after pile of genre novels to understand what people saw in inspirational romance or forensic mysteries, but he was careful to read the ends before the beginnings. He told himself that he could hold it together.

At night, when all his reading was done and he'd printed all the papers he needed for the next day, he tried not to open Linda's book.

He'd read it so many times that he should know it by heart, but the words kept changing. She was always in danger. She'd nearly got run over by a train and frozen on a long march to Moscow while Justin had sat on his parent's pullout couch in the den and forgotten to eat. While his hair had grown long and his fingernails jagged. Until his friends had stopped coming over. Until he'd remembered the one thing he could do to get her out.

One afternoon, Justin checked the notice board and saw a sign:

Looking for library student to organize private collection: 555-2164. $10/hour.

His heart sped. Finally. It had to be. He punched the number into his cell phone and a man answered.

"Please,” Justin said. He had practiced a convincing speech, but he couldn't remember a word of it. His voice shook. “I need this job. I'm very dedicated, very conscientio—"

"You're hired,” said the man.

Relief made him lightheaded. He sagged against the painted cinderblock wall of the hallway.

After, in Classification Theory, Sarah Peet turned half around in her chair. Her earrings swung like daggers. “Rock, paper, scissors for who buys coffee at the break."

"Coffee?” His voice came out louder than he'd intended.

"From the vending machine,” she said and made a fist.

One. Two. Three. Rock breaks scissors. Justin lost.

"I take it black,” said Sarah.

100—Philosophy and Psychology

The private collection that Justin was supposed to organize was located in the basement of a large Victorian house outside New Brunswick. He drove there in his beat-up Altima and parked in the driveway. He didn't see another car and wondered if Mr. Sandlin—the man he was sure he'd spoken with on the phone—had forgotten that he was coming. According to his watch, it was quarter to seven in the evening. He was fifteen minutes early.

When Justin knocked on the door, he was met by a gentleman in a waistcoat. He had a slight paunch and long hair tied back in a ponytail.

"Excellent,” the man said. “Eager. I'm Sandlin."

"Justin,” said Justin. He hoped his palms weren't sweating.

"Each year I hire a new library student—you'll pick up where the last one left off. Dewey decimal. No Library of Congress, got it?"

"I understand perfectly,” Justin said.

Sandlin led Justin through a house shrouded in white sheeting, down a dusty staircase to a cavernous basement. Masses of bookshelves formed a maze beneath swaying chandeliers. Justin sucked in his breath.

"There's a desk somewhere that way,” Sandlin said. “A computer. Some books still in boxes. I used to run a bookshop, but I found that I wasn't suited for it. I didn't like when people bought things. I like to have all my books with me."

It was a vast, amazing collection. Justin could feel his pulse speed and a smile creep onto his face.

"Best to get started,” said Sandlin, turning and walking back up the stairs. “You have to leave before midnight. I have guests."

Justin couldn't imagine that there'd been many visitors entering through the front door, considering how thick the dust was upstairs. The wooden planks under his feet, however, were swept clean.

Sandlin stopped at the landing, gesturing grandly as he called down. “It is my belief that books are living things."

That sent a shiver up Justin's spine as he thought of Linda.

"And as living things, they need to be protected.” Sandlin walked the rest of the way up the stairs.

Justin rubbed his arms and bit back what he wanted to say. It was readers that needed to be protected, he thought. Books were something that happened to readers. Readers were the victims of books.

He'd considered this a lot at the bookstore, once Linda was gone and before he'd lost the job altogether. Grim-faced women would come in, dressed sensibly, pleading for a sequel like they were pleading for a lover's life. Children would sit on the rug and cry inconsolably over picture books where rabbits lost their mothers.

The desk—when he found it—was ordinary, gray metal rusted at the corners and the PC sitting on top was old enough that it had a floppy drive. The keyboard felt sticky under his fingers. Justin opened his backpack and looked in at Linda's book; when packing the night before, he found that he couldn't bring himself to leave it behind.

200—Religion

Justin had always opened new books with a sense of dread, but no dread could compare with opening Linda's book. Sometimes the
militsiya
were arresting a member of her new family, or she was swallowing priceless rubies so that she could smuggle them out of Russia. Occasionally she was in love. Or drinking strong tea out of a samovar. Or dancing.

He remembered her with ink-stained fingers and a messy apartment full of paperbacks. He'd lived there with her when they both worked in the bookstore. She was allergic to cats, but she couldn't resist petting the stray that the owner kept and her nose was always red from sneezing. She made spaghetti with olives when she was depressed.

He remembered the way they'd curled up together on the futon and read to one another. He remembered his laughing confession that he opened new books with a sense of dread akin to jumping off a cliff with a bungee on. He knew he probably wouldn't hit the rocks, but he was never really sure. Linda didn't understand. She read fearlessly, without care for how things turned out.

Things, she said, could always be changed.

She told him that she knew how to fold stuff up and put it in books.
In
the books, inside the stories themselves. She'd proven it to him. She put a single playing card into a paperback edition of
Robin Hood
. The Ace of Spades. Little John had found it. He'd become convinced it was a sign that they would be defeated by the Sheriff of Nottingham and hanged himself. The Merry Men were less merry after they found his body. Justin had looked at other editions of
Robin Hood
, but they were unchanged.

After that, he'd believed her. He'd wanted her to alter other books—like fix
Macbeth
so that no one died. She said that
Macbeth
was unlucky enough without her tampering.

They'd fought a lot in their third year together. Linda had heard that there was a man named Mr. Sandlin who could take things out of books as well as putting them in. She wanted them to give up the lease on their apartment and their jobs at the bookstore. She wanted them to enroll in library school. Early one morning, after fighting all night—a fight that had started out about moving and wound up about every hateful thing they'd ever thought about one another—she folded herself up and put herself into a fat Russian novel.

"Ohgodohgodohgod,” Justin had said. “Please. No. Please. Oh God. Please.” He'd opened the cover to see an illustration of her in pen and ink, sitting in a group of unsmiling characters.

After that, he couldn't tell her that he was sorry or that her bolshie-sympathizing uncle was going to expose her in the next chapter or that she was going to regret leaving him now that she was stuck in an ice storm with only a mink cloak and muff to protect her. He was just a reader and readers can't do anything to make the story stop—except close the book.

300—Social Sciences

The next time that Sandlin opened the door, he was dressed less impressively, in pajamas with blue stripes. He greeted Justin with a huge yawn.

"Am I early?” Justin asked, although he knew he wasn't.

Sandlin shook his head and waved Justin in. “Time I got up anyway."

"Right. I'll be downstairs,” said Justin as Sandlin dumped out the coffeepot and filled it with water from the tap.

The collection, which had looked so grand at first sight, was, on closer inspection, quite odd. None of the books seemed to be first editions. Many were not even hardcover. Tattered paperbacks nestled up against reprinted hardcover editions of classics with their spines cracked. Some books even appeared to be galleys from publishers, marked, “for review purposes only—not for resale."

Most of the books were easy to classify. They were almost all 800s, mostly 810s or 820s.

He glanced at the backs of their covers and the copyright pages and then typed their titles into the database. On the spines of each, he taped a label printed in marker.

After he finished a dozen, Justin decided that he should start shelving. He lifted the stack, inhaling book dust, and headed into the aisles.

The problem with everything being in the 800s is that the markers on the ends of the shelves blurred together. Justin took a few turns and then wasn't sure he knew where he was going or where he could find the places for the books in his arms.

"Sandlin?” he called, but although his voice echoed in the vast room, he doubted it was loud enough to carry all the way upstairs.

He turned again. A plastic drink stirrer rested on the floor. Bending to pick it up, he felt panic rise. Where was he? He'd thought he was retracing his steps.

By the time he found his way back to the desk, he felt a faintly ridiculous but almost overwhelming sense of relief.

Sarah leaned back in her seat and sat a roll of twine in front of him.

"I heard you got the Sandlin job,” Sarah said. “My friend used to work there, said it was like a maze. This is his Theseus trick."

” That's smart,” Justin said, thinking of Theseus picking his way through the Minotaur's lair, unwinding Ariadne's string behind him. Thinking of how his heart had pounded when he was lost in the stacks. It wasn't just smart, it was
clever
, even classical. He wished he'd thought of it.

"Rock, paper, scissors to see if I can come with you."

"No way,” Justin said. “I could lose my job."

"My friend said some other stuff—about what happens after midnight. Come on. If you win, I'll tell you everything I know. If I win, I get to come."

"Fine.” Justin scowled, but Sarah didn't seem cowed. She raised a brow studded with tiny silver bars.

Rock. Paper. Scissors. Her rock smashed his scissors.

"Best two out of three,” Justin said, but he knew he was already defeated.

"Tomorrow night,” said Sarah, with a smile that he couldn't interpret. In fact, the more he thought about it, the less he knew about why she'd started talking to him at all.

400—Language

That night, Justin tucked the string and Linda's book into his backpack and drove to Sandlin's house. He worked his way through cataloging an entire box of books, when, on impulse, he flipped a thin volume open.

The spine of the book read
Pride and Prejudice
so Justin was surprised to find Indiana Jones in the text. Apparently, he'd been sleeping his way through all the Jane Austen books and had seduced both Kitty and Lydia Bennett. Justin discovered this fact when Eleanor Tilney from
Northanger Abbey
showed up to confront Indy with his illegitimate child.

He looked at the page and read it twice just to be sure:

To Catherine and Lydia, neither Miss Tilney nor her claims were in any degree interesting. It was next to impossible that Miss Tilney had told the truth, and although it was now some weeks since they had received pleasure from the society of Mr. Jones, they had every confidence in him. As for their mother, she was weathering the blow with a degree of composure which astonished her husband and daughters.

He closed the book, set it back on the shelf, and opened another.
Peter Pan
. In it, Sherlock Holmes deduced that Tinkerbell had poisoned Wendy while Watson complained to the mermaids that no one understood his torrid romance with one of the shepherdesses from a poem. Wendy's ghost flitted around quoting lines from
Macbeth
. Peter wasn't in the book at all. He'd left to be a valet to Lord Rochester in a play of which no one had ever heard.

Justin shut
Peter Pan
so quickly that one of the pages cut a thin line in his index finger. He stuck his bleeding finger in his mouth and tasted ink and sweat. It made him feel vaguely nauseous.

500—Natural Sciences & Mathematics

Scrambling over to his backpack, Justin started unrolling the string. It dragged across the floors, through the aisles as he wound his way though the maze of shelves. At first, it was just books, but as he moved deeper into the stacks, he discovered a statue of a black-haired man in a long blue robe and eyes that glittered like they were set with glass, a velvet fainting couch, and a forgotten collection of champagne flutes containing the dregs of a greenish liquid beside a single jet button.

He glanced at the shelves, thinking of Sandlin's pajamas and Sarah's words:
My friend said some other stuff—about what happens after midnight
. A party happened here, a party with guests that never disturbed the dust upstairs, that never entered or exited through the front hall.