Perversity. The word reminded him of Daisy. She was racing up the steps ahead of him as if she were in training for a track meet. He caught up with her on the third floor. “What’s your hurry? The place stays open until 5:30.”
“I like to move fast.”
“So do I, when someone’s chasing me.”
The library was at the end of a long, elaborately tiled corridor. It was rumored that no two tiles in the entire building were alike. So far no one had gone to the trouble of checking this, but the rumor was repeated to tourists, who relayed it via postcard and letter to their friends and relatives in the East and Middle West.
In the small room marked library, a girl in horn-rimmed glasses was seated behind a desk pasting clippings into a scrap-book. She ignored Daisy and fixed her bright, inquisitive eyes on Pinata. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Pinata said, “You’re new around here, aren’t you?”
“Yes. The other girl had to quit. Allergic to paste, broke out all over her hands and arms. A real mess.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“She’s trying to get workman’s compensation, but I’m not sure it applies to allergies. Can I help you with anything?”
“I’d like to see the microfilm of one of your back copies.”
“Year and month?”
“December ’55.”
“One roll of film covers half a month. Which half are you interested in, the first or last?”
“The first.”
She unlocked one drawer of a metal filing cabinet and brought out a roll of microfilm, which she fitted into the projection machine. Then she turned on the light in the machine and showed Pinata the hand crank. “You just keep turning this until you come to the day you want. It starts at December the first and goes through to the fifteenth.”
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Pull up a chair if you want.” The girl for the first time looked directly at Daisy. “Or two chairs.”
Pinata arranged a chair for Daisy. He remained standing, with one hand on the crank. Although the girl in charge had returned to her desk and was presumably intent on her work, Pinata lowered his voice. “Can you see properly?”
“Not too well.”
“Close your eyes for a minute while I turn to the right day, or you might get dizzy.”
She closed her eyes until he said crisply, “Well, here’s your day, Mrs. Harker.”
Her eyes remained closed, as if the lids had become calcified and too stiff and heavy to move.
“Aren’t you going to look at it?”
“Yes. Of course.”
She opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times, refocusing. The headlines meant nothing to her: CIO and AFL merged after twenty-year split. body of unidentified man found near railroad jungle. federal school aid plan backed. youth confesses dozen burglaries. bad weather may close airport. seven hundred to participate in Christmas parade tonight. crash injures pianist Gieseking, kills wife. more snow predicted for mountain areas.
Snow on the mountains, she thought, the kids driving down State Street, the dead jasmines. “Could you read the fine print to me, please?”
“Which fine print?”
“About the snow on the mountains.”
“All right. ‘Early risers were given a rare treat this morning in the form of a blanket of snow on the mountains. Forest rangers at La Cumbre peak reported a depth of seven inches in some places, and more is predicted during the night. Some senior classes of both public and private schools were dismissed for the morning so that students could drive up and experience, many of them for the first time, real snow. Damage to citrus crops—’”
“I remember that,” she said, “the students with the snow piled on the fenders of their cars.”
“So do I.”
“Very clearly?”
“Yes. They made quite a parade out of it.”
“Why should both of us remember a little thing like that?”
“Because it was very unusual, I suppose,” Pinata said.
“So unusual that it could only have happened once that year?”
“Perhaps. I can’t be sure of it, though.”
“Wait.” She turned to him, flushed with excitement. “It must have happened only once. Don’t you see? The students wouldn’t have been dismissed from class a second time. They’d already been given their chance to see the snow. The school authorities surely wouldn’t keep repeating the dismissal if it snowed a second or third or fourth time.”
Her logic surprised and convinced him. “I agree. But why is it so important to you?”
“Because it’s the first real thing I remember about the day, the only thing that separates it from a lot of other days. If I saw those students parading in their cars, it means I must have gone downtown, perhaps to have lunch with Jim. And yet I can’t remember Jim being with me, or my mother either. I think — I’m almost sure — I was alone.”
“When you saw the kids, where were you? Walking along the street?”
“No. I think I was inside some place, looking out through a window.”
“A restaurant? A store? Where did you usually shop in those days?”
“For groceries at the Fairway, for clothes at Dewolfe’s.”
“Neither of those is on State Street. How about a restaurant? Do you have a favorite place to eat lunch?”
“The Copper Kettle. It’s a cafeteria in the 1100 block.”
“Let’s assume for a minute,” Pinata said, “that you were having lunch at the Copper Kettle, alone. Did you often go downtown and have lunch alone?”
“Sometimes, on the days I worked.”
“You had a job?”
“I was a volunteer for a while at the Neighborhood Clinic. It’s a family counseling service. I worked there every Wednesday and Friday afternoon.”
“December 2 was a Friday. Did you go to work that afternoon?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t even know if I was still working at that time. I quit because I wasn’t very good with chil — with people.”
“You were going to say ‘with children,’ weren’t you?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might.”
She shook her head. “My job wasn’t important anyway. I’m not a trained social worker. I acted mainly as a baby-sitter for the children of the mothers and fathers who came in for counseling, some of them voluntarily, some by order of the courts or the Probation Department.”
“You didn’t like the job?”
“Oh, but I did. I was crazy about it. I just wasn’t competent enough. I couldn’t handle the children. I felt too sorry for them. I was too — personal. Children, especially children of families who reach the point of going to the Clinic, need a firmer and more objective approach. The fact is,” she added with a grim little smile, “if I hadn’t quit, they’d probably have fired me.”
“What gave you that idea?”
“Nothing specific. But I got the impression that I was more of a hindrance than a help around the place, so I simply failed to show up the next time.”
“The next time after what?”
“After... after I got the impression that I was a hindrance.”
“But something must have given you that impression at a definite time or you wouldn’t have used the phrase ‘the next time.’”
“I don’t follow you.”
He thought, You follow me, Daisy baby. You just don’t like the bumps in the road I’m taking. Well, it’s not my road; it’s yours. If there are potholes in it, don’t blame me.
“I don’t follow you,” she repeated.
“All right, let’s skip it.”
She looked relieved, as if he’d pointed out to her a nice, easy detour. “I don’t see how a little detail like that could be important when I’m not even sure I was working at the Clinic at the time.”