She looks down at the telescope, and though she knows nothing about the equipment, she’d bet it was a state-of-the-art model, probably costing more than she makes in a year.
“So,” she says, “is this for real? Is this some kind of prop or are you really into astronomy?”
He can’t seem to get away from the self-mockery. “I’m a man of many interests and many talents.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’ve got to pump you up a little.”
“The problem is, the sky in Quinsigamond is so obscured by all the light. Cities are horrible places, don’t you think?”
“I’m a hometown girl, you know. I’ve got a soft spot. I’m a city girl.”
“Where I come from, a town called Banfield, you could go into the fields at night and the sky would be infested with the stars. ‘Infested with the stars’—plagado de las estrellas.”
“Sounds like a disease.”
He sighs. “I have an evil talent for making the beautiful sound horrid.”
She shrugs. “That could come in useful. Dissuade people from things that you don’t want them to go near.”
“There’s no need for that. I’ve always been a man willing to share.”
Lenore doesn’t know how to respond. She pauses and then says, “That’s a chapter in the myth that I’m unfamiliar with.”
He laughs, peers down into the eyepiece. “That I’m a generous man? You’ve been misinformed. You can’t always believe what you hear.”
“Or what you see. Or touch.”
“Or taste.”
He looks up from the telescope and they stare at each other in silence for a moment.
He clears his throat and says, “By the time I was ten, I knew the surface of the moon better than most children know the village they live in. At twelve I could name most of the constellations. I once asked my mother if heaven was near Orion.”
“What did she say?” Lenore asks, genuinely wanting to know.
“I honestly don’t remember. It was so long ago.”
“I would think that would be the type of thing you would remember.”
“Memory is a pathetic tool. It never works the way it should. It’s rarely useful. It brings more pain than pleasure.”
“Memory has never brought you comfort?” she asks.
He lets a slow but huge smile grow on his face, then says, “Not that I recall.”
She rolls her eyes and says, “Bring out the big hook.”
“Do you want to take a look?” he asks, motioning to the telescope.
She nods, leans down over the eyepiece, and squints. At first she can’t see a thing.
“It’s not very clear,” he says. “Too much cloud cover.”
She brings her head back up, unsuccessful. “What should I have seen?”
“Surface of the moon,” he says. “Sea of Vaporum. Wonderful name.”
He turns and starts down the stairway and she follows.
Back on the floor, they stand facing each other. He puts his hands on his hips and says, “You’ll have to excuse the way I’m dressed. I believe in comfort at home. And, of course, I wasn’t expecting company tonight.”
He’s got on a pair of grey sweatpants that bunch around the ankles, a black crew-neck cotton sweater, and a pair of ratty, five-and-dime-store slippers.
“You look fine,” she says, and feels a wince of embarrassment.
“Could I offer you a drink?” he says. “I’m allowed a single nightcap, myself, due to my condition.”
“Your condition?”
“Addison’s disease. I believe your President Kennedy suffered from this also, yes?”
“I really don’t know. I’m sorry to hear—”
“Please take a seat,” he says, cutting her off and extending a hand toward the rocking chair. He starts to move toward the fireplace. She follows, and remains standing behind him. He grabs a short poker from the brick patch of flooring that extends a few feet out from the hearth and begins to jab and stir the embers and charred remains of wood.
“Sit,” he says in a soft voice, and she hesitates and then eases herself into the chair. She sinks into its cushions. It’s tremendously comfortable and she can see why it would be hard to part with or even alter.
“Because I am usually the only one in this room,” he says, “there is only the one chair. But I will sit on the floor. Good for me, for a change.”
“You need some books for your shelves,” Lenore says.
Cortez smiles, then says, “I’ve often thought this is the main reason people buy books. To fill empty shelves. But these shelves were once quite full. Bursting with volumes, as a matter of fact.”
“Let me guess,” Lenore says. “You donated them to the literate poor.” She’s immediately unsure of the wisdom of her remark. She thinks it’s the chair that’s given her the comfort to be a joker.
But Cortez enjoys the comment. “Not quite,” he says. “I sold them. To a dealer here in the city. Ziesing Ave. A Mr. Beck. Fine store. You should go sometime.”
“My brother’s a big book-guy. Loves mysteries.”
“They say that indicates a love of logic. Until recently, I suppose. I read mysteries when I was young. Now they just confuse me. I’ll tell you an awful secret about myself.”
“I’m all ears.”
“I came very close to burning every book in this room.”
“And why was that?”
“They were driving me out of my mind.”
“Was someone making you read them?”
Cortez puts the poker down and eases onto the floor facing her, close to the relit fire. Half of his face is left in shadow by his position. He sits cross-legged, with his long arms draped over his knees.
“Now, that,” he says, “is a very good question. No one was holding a gun to my head, no. Of course not. But I felt compelled just the same. By my own nature. I’ve been a voracious reader since I can remember—”
“But then, we can’t trust memory.”
“Again, very true. But still there are feelings. Instinctual feelings. Whether or not our memories hold a great deal of what we’ll call ‘historical truth’ matters very little in terms of these feelings. I loved Jules Verne. Did you read Jules Verne?”
She shakes her head no.
“Oh,” he says, closing his eyes and frowning, his head swaying slightly. “Around the World in Eighty Days. From the Earth to the Moon. Filled me with pure joy. My father abandoned the family when I was a child. I like to think of Jules Verne as my father now.”
“That still doesn’t tell me why you wanted to burn your books.”
He unclasps his hands and looks up at her as if the answer were obvious. “The joy started to leave. I don’t know why. It just began departing. What I had felt since childhood, what I had felt for books, I started to no longer feel. And it became too painful to keep them around.”
“Why do you think this happened?”
He just shakes his head.
“It occurs to me,” she says, “that we know almost nothing about each other.”
“I think,” he says, “that we both suspect a great deal.”
“This might be a golden opportunity to clear up those suspicions,” she says.
“You’re sure you wish to do that?”
“I don’t know about you,” she says, “but at this point I honestly, absolutely, have nothing else to lose.”
He rubs his eyes and breathes heavily.
“Tell me something,” she says.
“You tell me what it is you suspect,” he snaps back, not angry, but suddenly very serious.
She wishes she were on the floor with him, at the same level, and that the lighting in the room were different so she could see his face more clearly.
“Okay,” she says. “I suspect that everything they think about you is wrong—”
“They,” he interrupts.
“The department. And the Feds. And the DEA. And Interpol.”