Rhonda was waiting by the elevator when Liesl arrived.
“I’m so sorry,” Rhonda began.
“You’re sorry?” Liesl said. “Why on earth are you sorry? Do you moonlight as a journalist? Did you write the story?”
Liesl was exasperated by the reactions to the story; she wanted help, not anger, not empty apologies. The mathematician’s open face pinched into a wince, and that made Liesl want to apologize, but that seemed even worse, the idea of an endless cycle of expressions of regret. Rhonda’s face reassembled—back to its familiar friendliness—and Liesl saw then that the woman knew something about finding oneself in the woods without a map. She would not judge Liesl for any lack of grace in handling impossible circumstances.
Max was sitting at the reference desk, watching them. His unconcealed fury at her gave Liesl a chill that no sweater could remedy.
“We can reschedule,” Rhonda said.
“We’re not going to reschedule.” She said it loud enough for Max to hear.
“I’m sure this is an overwhelming day.”
“It’s an overwhelming year. But that’s no one’s business but my own. I made a commitment to you. To your research.”
“I really don’t mind coming back another day.”
“There’s no saying that things will be better on any other day. Come downstairs. Let’s get the Peshawar.”
“Am I allowed down here?” Rhonda stood just outside the elevator door looking like she might genuflect before the thousands of volumes that lined the aisles. “I don’t need to be security-screened or baptized or disinfected or something?”
Liesl hallucinated the smell of flesh even though the animals that had donated their skins to cover the books had been dead for hundreds of years. She looked to see if Rhonda was wrinkling her nose, but she was agape, trailing her fingers over gilt on green spines and hand-scratched titles on vellum.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” she said.
“It’s where the book is kept.”
“Liesl? Will you be all right?”
Liesl smiled as though she would be, although of course that wasn’t true.
“The next few days will be long. Here it is.”
“The Peshawar. Do I just carry it out?”
“We’ll wrap it like we would for shipping. But then, yes.”
“I’ll keep it safe.”
“Can I be honest with you?”
“You don’t trust me with it, do you? Not fully.”
Liesl shook her head. “I don’t. It’s not you,” she said. “I have a feeling. Like the last blow hasn’t yet been delivered.”
“The lab has excellent security.”
Liesl pulled the book off the shelf.
“So does the library.”
***
Liesl stood in the moldy staff bathroom, eyes on herself in the spotted mirror, watching drops of water wind their way through the cracks in her face and drip back into the sink that was in need of a good bleaching. She left that way, water clinging to her earlobe, wanting to feel purified on the way to her dreaded next stop.
“I guess I should have expected you,” Vivek said when he opened his office door.
“I called. All morning. There was no answer.”
“Right.” Vivek wasn’t polite about it. “Not the day to be answering my phone.”
He sat down in the Vivek-shaped divot on his office couch.
“Have people been harassing you?”
“About my missing wife, the master thief?”
It was clear he had been crying all morning. Perhaps he had been crying since Miriam disappeared. Liesl had no way of knowing whether or not that was true. But the bloat of the face and the lines around the eyes and the tint of the nose didn’t lie. Vivek had been crying all morning. Back on his tearstained couch, he resumed his business. Liesl was not embarrassed for him that he was crying in front of her; she was embarrassed for herself that she could not comfort him. She did not sit down on the couch beside him. She did not move from her spot by the door. She stood there and waited while a grown man cried.
The office had a 1950s stink. Vivek had been dumped among the dusty deceased houseplants and dog-eared academic journals of his predecessor. Scuffed, ink-stained, wobbly furniture that had been used by the generation before Vivek and would be used decades after he was gone. In this case, it fit. Vivek’s despair would have been out of place had the room been furnished by IKEA.
Behind the couch, closer to the heavy wooden desk, was a red duffel bag. Liesl didn’t think that Vivek had been taking breaks from his bouts of weeping to go swim some laps. A blue shirt, similar to the blue shirt Vivek was already wearing, peeked out of the red bag.