“You probably know a lot about me,” she says.
“Not a lot, no,” I tell her. “Some—”
“Sherrod told me about you,” she says. “I wouldn’t say he was worried, but he said you might be able to find me. He said you worked in the City-Archive, that you knew how to research and could see through his methods. He figured you might—”
“You have to believe me that I didn’t know he would be killed. I never knew what was happening, what is happening—”
Her building’s run-down. Floral wallpaper in the elevator, peeling along the seams, exposing the brown metal beneath. We ride in silence, listening to the mechanics and pulleys until we drift to a stop and the doors screech apart. She unlocks the dead bolts to her room and leads me in, flicking on the light switch as we pass through the main hall. Her apartment is a loft, a lot of space but there’s not much furnishing other than twin sofas and a coffee table. Most of the space is set up as a studio, outsized canvases propped up against the brick walls, rolls and bolts of fabric, two sewing machines, oversize art books bowing shelves homemade from boards and bricks. She has a drafting table near the window with pens and ink and brushes in ceramic mugs, and several pads of paper.
“Is this where you make your fascicles?” I ask.
“Over there, yeah,” she says.
“The canvases?”
“I bought those a while ago, thinking I might try something different,” she says. “I haven’t, yet—”
A lace curtain’s thumbtacked to the doorframe that leads to the kitchen. She says, “I’ll make tea, if you’d like—”
“That sounds perfect—”
I follow her into the kitchen, asking where she keeps her plates. I work around her, dishing out our Thai food while she fills her kettle with tap water and lights the stove.
“Earl Grey?” she asks.
I take our plates to the main room and set them on her coffee table. She’s hung one of those cheap We will never forget souvenir clocks of downtown Pittsburgh. The water of the three rivers, through some trick, looks like it’s rippling—it’s the only reference to Pittsburgh I can find. It’s already after ten. Albion brings in the tea on a tray and sets it next to the food.
“You should have started eating,” she says. “It’ll get cold—”
She pours each cup—she’s been crying again, in the kitchen. She puts on music, Etta James, and we eat largely in silence, listening to the music. Her radiators cough and sputter and eventually heat the room. She asks about DC. I ask about San Francisco and she says it’s a paradise that has seen better times. I tell her DC’s much the same, except it was never a paradise. After dinner I wash our dishes while she makes a pot of coffee. She sets out a box of lemon cookies she’s had in her cupboard and pours me a cup, setting out sugar and milk. I indulge in both. I take a sip of coffee.
“I’ve found some information about Timothy that has put my friends and family in jeopardy,” I tell her. “I don’t know who they are, really, or what their connections are to you—but I know that Timothy and Waverly are dangerous—”
“Yes,” she says.
“I need you to help me,” I tell her. “That’s why I’ve found you. I need you to tell me about him, so I can put together a case, put together some protection from him—”
“You can’t protect yourself from them,” she says. “Nothing I can say will protect you—”
“Who are you?” I ask.
She speaks:
5, 3 IBID.—
“My name was Emily Perkins,” she says.
“What about ‘Albion’?”
“Dr. Waverly is influenced by William Blake. There’s this poem called Visions of the Daughters of Albion. I believe he named a sailboat after that poem,” she says. “He ran a house in Pittsburgh that took in lost girls and once you agreed to stay on, you adopted a new name to signify the beginning of your new life. He suggested I take the name Albion—”
“Down in Greenfield?” I ask. “The house with the words painted on the side?”
“We were affiliated with the King of Kings parish, but all the financial support came from Waverly. Mrs. Waverly ran the house—”
Talking like this dredges up heartache for Albion, I can tell—she brings her coffee to her mouth but holds it there, shivering without sipping.
“How young were you?”
“Young,” she says. “I never knew my parents. Foster homes all my life—eventually Mrs. Waverly took me in. When I was fifteen, sixteen, I was homeless—I did pills back then and meth, this was with a bunch of kids I fell in with, we’d take drives down into Washington County and West Virginia to these old houses we’d squat in for weeks just blown out of our minds, sometimes in old barns or just camping out in the woods. I was picked up for drug possession and pled guilty but was still a minor so was referred to child services. I lived in a halfway house but started cutting myself—they said I was a suicide risk. I turned eighteen and was moved to a different facility, part of Western Psych. I was recommended to psychological services and that’s when I met Timothy—”
“He was your doctor?”
“We’d have these sessions once a week. The first time I met with him, he just looked at me—he has those blue eyes. It was like he was sizing me up, forming a whole opinion of me in just those few seconds. I told him I didn’t try to kill myself, that I didn’t know what I was doing, that I just cut into my arms, and he smiled and said, ‘It’s all in the past now, it’s in the past,’ and I felt forgiven. Just hearing those words—
“Two years in detention like that, but seeing Timothy once a week and then three times a week when he started prepping me for a GED. He shared an office and whenever we’d meet he’d tell one of his colleagues before closing the door.
“There was only once he locked the door and after he did, he just sat there like he was deciding something. He said, ‘Emily, what I’m about to tell you could get me fired. I could lose my job—my entire career. But I need to say this, and my need to say this is greater than my need for employment. I want to tell you about Jesus Christ—’
“I forget what I did—rolled my eyes, maybe, I don’t remember. All I remember is Timothy grabbing my neck and squeezing. I couldn’t even scream. I felt the edges of my vision blacken and he must have seen my face turning because he let go and let me breathe, but he was gasping for breath harder than I was. It took him a minute or two before he calmed down and apologized.
“‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.
“He told me he still struggles, but he knows that his soul is pure, that we all have pure souls that are untouched no matter how much we’ve abused our own bodies. He told me that despite my own failings—how I cut myself, the drugs—that Christ could save me as well, that I could transcend my limitations because the body is corrupt but the soul is pure. He told me that we’re born into sin, that our bodies trap us in sin, but to never forget that our souls reflect the true God—
“He presented a Bible to me, a printed Bible with a blue leather cover that had my name embossed in gold. He told me to read the Gospels. He pointed them out to me. He told me to pay attention to the words printed in red. This was part of the new curriculum, he told me. He unlocked the door and told me that he’d see me the day after tomorrow.
“I could have said something to the guard who escorted me back to my room. I could have told one of the nurses at dinner or check-in what he’d done to me, but I didn’t. I was terrified. I was terrified that whoever I told would ignore me or wouldn’t believe me and that it would get back to him. I kept quiet.