The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (14 page)

A party with guests that were already in the house. Guests that were
inside the books
.

He shuddered then laughed a little at himself. This was what he'd been hoping for, after all. Now he had to just count on the fact that Sandlin wouldn't notice one more book.

That night Justin called out his usual farewell to Mr. Sandlin, before sneaking back down the library stairs. He climbed one of the old ladders along the far wall and cracked open a high, thin window. Then he rolled onto the very top of the bookshelf and flattened himself against the wood. Something banged against the glass.

"Wow. We're pretty high up,” said Sarah as she slid inside. Her foot knocked a stack of papers and a bookend shaped like a nymph crashed to the floor. “Shit!"

"Careful,” whispered Justin. He knew he sounded prissy as soon as it came out of his mouth, but Sarah didn't seem like a very careful person.

"So,” she said. She wore a tattered black coat covered in paint stains and a new hoop gleamed in her eyebrow. The skin around it was puffy and red. “Here we are. This is it."

"What's it?"

"This is where Richard hid. My friend. Pretty genius, right? He could see everything from up here. And who ever looks up?” She answered her own question with a nod. “Nobody."

"Did he say what happens now?"

"
The books come to life
.” Her voice was filled with awe, like she was about to take a sacrament from the Holy Church of Literature.

Justin looked at his bag where Linda's Russian novel rested. He had a sudden urge to pitch it out the window. “How do you think that happens? There are so many?.?.?.” He wasn't sure how to end that sentence. Characters? Settings? Books?

A footfall kept him from finding out.

"Shhhh,” said Sarah, completely unnecessarily.

Sandlin appeared, walking down the stairs with a crate. Justin crawled forward to see him begin to set up bottles and a cheese platter. He removed red grapes from their plastic-covered package and set them carefully on one end of the tray, then stepped back to look at his arrangement.

He appeared to be satisfied because when he turned around, he made a motion with his hands and a ripple went through the shelves. The books shuddered and then, one by one, the room began to fill with people.

They climbed out of the stacks, brushing themselves off, sometimes hopping from a high place, sometimes crawling out of what seemed like a very cramped low shelf.

Justin looked over at his backpack in time to see women in high-necked dresses and men in uniforms scamper down. He looked for Linda, but from the back, he wasn't sure which one she was. He started to follow, but Sarah grabbed his arm.

"What are you doing?” she hissed. “You said to be careful—remember?"

He leaned over the side, scanning all the faces for Linda's. He tried to remember what she looked like; he kept thinking of lines of description instead. Her hair was “thick chestnut curls like the shining mane of a horse” in the book. He was pretty sure he'd read a passage about her eyes being “amber as the pin at her throat,” but he remembered them as brown.

Women with powdered cones of hair and black masks on sticks swept past knights decked out for jousting and comic book heroes in slinky, rubbery suits. A wolf in a top hat and tails conversed with a wizard in a robe of moons and stars as faeries flew over their heads.

He thought he saw Linda near the grapes, whispering behind a fan. He strained to hear what she said, but all he heard were other conversations. Without quite meaning to, he realized what he was hearing.

"Sarah.” Justin pointed to a large-shouldered man decked out in lace, with a slim sword at his hip and a small reddish flower in his hands. He was lazily chatting up a skinny, red-headed young woman in jeans and a t-shirt.

"Demmed smart you are,” said the man. “Pretty, too. I've been assured my taste is unerring so there's no need to protest."

"Sarah,” said Justin. “That's the Scarlet Pimpernel!"

"Oh my god,” Sarah whispered back, wriggling closer. “I think you're right. Percy Blakeney. I had such a crush on him."

"I think he's hitting on that girl."

"Isn't that?” She paused. “It can't be . . . but I think the girl is Anne of Green Gables."

Justin squinted. “I never read it."

"I heard her say something about there being no one like him in Avonlea,” said Sarah. “What's she doing in jeans? Anne! Anne! Don't do it!"

"Shhh!” Justin said.

"He's married! Marguerite will kick your ass!"

Justin tried to put his hand over her mouth. “You can't just—"

Sarah pulled away, but she seemed a little bit embarrassed. “Chill out. She couldn't hear me anyway. And I wasn't the one who almost climbed down there."

He looked back into the crowd, tamping down both rising panic and chaotic glee. Characters shouldn't be able to meet like this, to mix and converse anachronistically and anarchically in the basement of a house in Jersey. It seemed profane, perverse, and yet it was the perversion itself that tempted him to dangerous joy.

"Okay. Jeesh,” said Sarah, mistaking the reason for his silence. “I'm sorry I got carried away—hey, who's that in the gold armor? Standing near. Oh.” She stopped. “Is that Wolverine talking to a wolverine? In a dress?"

"Which one's wearing the dress?” Justin asked, but the grin slid off his face when he saw Linda move away from the refreshments. She was talking to a man in a doublet.

Sarah put her hand on his arm. “Who are you staring at? You look really weird."

"That's my girlfriend,” said Justin.

"A character in a book is your girlfriend?"

"She put herself there. We had an argument—it's not important. I'm just trying to get her out again."

Sarah stared at him, but her expression said:
I don't believe you. You did something bad to your girlfriend to make her put herself in a book.
Her earrings swung like pendulums, dowsing for guilty secrets. “You knew what was going on when you applied for this job, didn't you?"

"So?” Justin asked. “Oh, you wanted it too, didn't you? I just called first."

"Well, she's out from the book now. You don't look too happy."

Justin scowled and they said little to each other after that. They just rested on their stomachs on the dusty bookshelves and watched the crowd swirl and eddy beneath them, watched Little Lord Fauntleroy piss in a corner and an albino in armor mutter to the black sword in his hands as he headed for one of the more private and shadowed parts of the library.

And Justin watched as Linda flitted among them, laughing with pleasure.

"Oh, you doth teach the torches to burn bright,” the man in the doublet told her.

What a line
, Justin thought ruefully.
I hope she knows he's quoting Shakespeare.
Then an unpleasant thought occurred to him.
Who was Linda talking to?

"Lo, John Galt hath eaten all the salsa,” said a knight in green armor adorned with leaves.

” Oh, how awful,” said Dolly Alexandrovna from
Anna Karenina
. She smoothed her gown, looking exactly like a painting of her Justin had seen. “I won't forgive him and I can't forgive him. He persists in doing this every night."

Justin wondered why none of them spoke in Russian or French or whatever, but then it occurred to him that all the books were in translation. The logic made him dizzy.

"Who's John Galt?” growled Wolverine around the cigar in his mouth.

Anne of Green Gables danced a waltz with a man that Justin failed to recognize and wasn't going to ask Sarah about. Stephen Daedalus got into a fistfight with Werther. Hamlet shouted at them to stop, yelling, “it is but foolery,” but they didn't stop until Werther got hit hard enough that his nose bled.

Justin thought that after being punched, he looked weirdly like the guy on the cover of the Modern Library reprint edition of
Werther
, where his whole face is wet with tears.

"How can I, how can you, be annihilated?” Werther spat. “We exist. What is annihilation? A mere word, an unmeaning sound that fixes no impression on the mind."

Stephen's knuckles looked bruised. “Whatever,” he said.

Linda sunk down beside Werther, silky skirts billowing around her, and dabbed at the blood on his face with a handkerchief. What was she doing? It made no sense! She didn't even like Goethe! She'd complained that Werther was a coward and whiny, besides.

Justin started to climb down the bookshelf.

Sandlin shouted something at that moment and then a great gust of wind blew through the library and when it had gone, so had all the party guests.

Gone. Linda was gone. Justin looked out the small window and, sure enough, the sky was beginning to lighten outside. Reaching for his pack, he opened Linda's book and flipped frantically, scanning each page for her name.

Nothing.

Gone.

600—Technology (Applied Sciences)

The next day at the break, Sarah brought a cup of coffee from the machine and set it on the desk in front of him without resorting to rock, paper, or scissors. He still wore the same clothes from the night before and when he looked down at his notebook, all he had written was “faceted classification” with several lines drawn under the words. He had no idea what that meant.

"I should be mad at you,” she said, “but you're just too pathetic."

He picked up the coffee and took a sip. He was glad it was warm.

She sat on the edge of his desk. “Okay, so tell me about your girlfriend. What happened?"

"I don't know. We just started fighting. She wanted to meet Sandlin, but I wanted to stay at the bookstore. Then this."

” And by
this
, you mean that instead of locking herself in the bathroom or throwing a vase at you, she put herself in a book and didn't come out."

"Yeah,” Justin said, looking at the desk.

"You might seriously consider that that translates to breaking up with you."

He scrubbed his hand over his face. His skin felt rougher than his stubble. “I don't think she knew how to get out.” But, as he thought back on it, he couldn't recall reading that she wanted to; characters in Russian novels are big on bemoaning their personal tragedy. It seemed that wouldn't have been left out.

Sarah shrugged. “You said that she wanted to meet Sandlin. You brought her to him. You're done."

"I never got to say I was sorry."

"Are you?” Sarah took a sip from her cup and made a face.

Justin scowled. “What kind of question is that?"

"Well, you don't even seem to know what you did, or if you did anything."

He looked down at the laces of his sneakers, the dirty knots that he hated untangling so much that he'd just pulled the things off and on. Now they were hopeless. The knots would never come out. He sighed.

"Do you even like books?” Sarah asked. She waved her hand around. “Was all of this for her?"

” Of course I like books!” Justin said, looking up. He didn't know how to explain. He'd started library school to get Linda to Sandlin, but he actually liked it. It felt good to carefully organize the books so that other people would know what they were getting themselves into. “I've always liked books. I just don't
trust
them."

"What about people?” Sarah asked.

He looked at her blankly.

"Do you trust people?"

"I guess. I mean, sure. Within reason. I don't think people usually have terrible secrets the way characters do, but people often aren't as amazing, either. We're watered down."

"I have a secret,” Sarah said. “I compete in rock, paper, scissors tournaments."

He laughed.

"I'm serious,” Sarah said.

"Wait a minute. You mean you cheated me out of all that coffee?” For a moment, Justin just looked at her. She seemed different now that he knew she had secrets, even if they were kind of lame ones.

"Hey,” she said. “I won fairly!"

"But you're like a pool shark or something. You have strategies."

Sarah shook her head. “Okay, you want my RPS secret? It's about understanding people. Rock's basically a weapon. Like something an ogre might hurl. It's an angry throw. Some people shy away from it because it seems crude, but they'll use it if they're desperate."

"Okay,” Justin said.

"Now, scissors. Scissors are shiny and sharp. Still dangerous, but more elegant, like a rapier. Lots of people make their first throw scissors because it seems like the clever throw. The rakish throw. The hipster throw."

"Really?” Justin frowned.

"
You
threw it the first time. And the second."

He thought back, but he couldn't recall. He wondered which play Sarah usually opened up with. Was it always rock?

"Now, paper. Paper's interesting. Some people consider it a wimpy throw and they use it very infrequently. Others consider it the most subtle throw. Words can, they say, be more dangerous than rocks or scissors.

"Of course, scissors still cut paper,” Sarah said.

"Oh,” said Justin suddenly, getting up. “They do. You're right.” He could cut Linda out like a paper doll.

700—The Arts

Justin pulled book after book from the shelves, not caring about their spines, not caring about the mess he made, scanning each one for a mention of Linda. They piled up around him and the dust coated his hands, ink smearing his fingers as he ran them down countless pages.

Heavy metal scissors weighed down the pocket of his coat and sometimes his hand would drop inside to touch their cool surface before emptying another shelf.

"What are you doing?” Sandlin asked.

Justin jumped up, hand still in his pocket.

Sandlin was dressed in another waistcoat. A single silver pin held a cravat in place at his neck. He sneezed.

"I'm looking for my girlfriend. She got out of her book, but I don't know which book she got into."

"The girl with all the piercings I saw you hiding with last night?"

” No,” said Justin, trying not seem as rattled as he felt.
If Sandlin knew
. . . No, he couldn't dwell on that. “That's Sarah. Linda's my girlfriend, or she was, and she knew how to put things into books. She put herself in a Russian novel, but last night you took her out and I don't know what book she's in now."