He pulled open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet in the corner of the office.
“Spirit and strength. Dewar’s Scotch whiskey,” he said. He pulled the bottle out of the cabinet and a couple of glasses from the same hiding spot. “Chris and I did plenty of working late in this office.”
The smooth hair, the dark shirt, the Scotch bottle held by the neck. Liesl reckoned he did look a little bit like a spy.
“I’d have thought his tastes would be more refined than Dewar’s,” she said.
“You mean the bottle in his desk? That was for his private consumption,” Francis said. “The filing cabinet whiskey was for when he entertained. When Chris was paying, it was Dewar’s.”
“To Christopher’s health,” she said, glass in the air.
“To his health.”
“Let’s bring it downstairs and get to this.”
“Bringing liquids down to the stacks,” said Francis. “Maybe I’m the one who should call the police.”
“I recently lived with a teenager,” she said. “So I know if you’re going to break the rules, best to do it all the way.” Liesl had eyes on the bottle now and a hand came to her mouth, an immediate self-rebuke at having brought up Hannah.
“I won’t tell John you said that,” said Francis, brushing past the mention for both their sakes.
“We should get started.” She was blushing.
“Yes, Boss.”
“You start at 541, and I’ll go over to 560?”
“Meet in the middle again?”
“Meet in the middle.”
“Good. I’ll see you there. Somewhere in the middle.”
“Call them out when you’re done. I’ll hold the list and write them down.”
“Yes, Boss.”
“Please stop calling me that.”
He went over to his stack and she to hers. Though they weren’t standing close to one another, they could each hear the other breathe. Liesl was aware of it. She inhaled and exhaled with intention so that nothing could be read into the quickness of her pulse. When he came over to fill her glass, she didn’t say no.
“Makes the work go quicker,” he said.
“Someone once told me it gives you spirit and strength.”
“That’s right.”
He liked that. She could tell by the length of the look he gave her when she said it. He liked that she remembered.
“Back to work then,” Liesl said. “Or we’ll be here all night.”
They were very nearly there all night. There was work to do and whiskey to drink. And eventually they gave up on the work but not the whiskey. If they had been younger, they would have sat cross-legged on the cement floor, but old bones being what they are, they perched on rolling library stools until the bottle was empty.
“Let me walk you home,” Francis said.
He watched Liesl as she punched in the alarm. There was nary a squirrel nor a security guard that could see them at this hour.
“I can take care of myself, Francis. You should get home too.”
“I can’t very well send a woman off alone into the dark. My mother would kill me.”
“Your mother’s dead.”
“So let her rest in peace,” he said. “And let me walk you home.”
“I’m an old woman,” Liesl said. “I’m pretty well invisible when I walk down the street. It’s excellent armor.”
“You’re not old.”
“You keep saying that. Of course I am, Francis. You are too.”
“It’s hard for me to fathom.”
“Really? I find it impossible to forget how old I am. My body is always reminding me.”
“This stuff with Chris. That’s when I remember.”
“He’s scarcely older than us. It’s a selfish point of view, but I’ve thought about that a lot. That it could have been me.”
“I haven’t thought that at all,” Francis said.
“How can you avoid it? Christopher’s only five or so years older than us.”
A sushi shop they were passing had its neon sign turned on. It cast a red glow on Francis’s face, drawing shadows in every line and crevice that defined the topology of its surface. But then the shop was behind them, and his face went dark again.
“I’ve always looked up to Chris,” he said. “So he’s always seemed somehow older.”
Her steps swayed down Harbord Street, loose and unselfconscious in her whiskey-aided gait. Every few feet she half turned her head at her companion, trying to catch sight of his intentions out of the corner of her eye.