The Forgers (23 page)

“Ten o'clock?”

“See you then,” and I turned and headed for the door, threading my way past tables that were all set and readied for the dinner crowd.

Slader called out, “You didn't even have a bite of the mackerel. It's delectable.”

I glanced back over my shoulder and saw that he had carved a piece for himself and had tucked it into his mouth. As he slowly chewed, his face wore the look of a gourmet's deep satisfaction, his eyes half-closed in a kind of sensual, secular ecstasy.

M
EGHAN DREW HERSELF UP
on one elbow in bed when I came into the room to check on her.

She looked a little paler than usual and her normally lustrous hair was matted and dull in the vesper light. Out the window I could see Venus winking above the highest limbs of the trees, beautiful and totally indifferent to human affairs. “How'd the meeting go?” she asked, after clearing her throat.

“In a minute. First, how are you feeling? Not much better, doesn't look like.”

I sat down next to her on the bed and moved my pillow under hers so she could half sit up. Her forehead was no warmer than before but small beads of sweat glistened on her skin. Removing the thermometer from a water glass on the side table, I took her temperature, using the brief silence to collect my thoughts about what and what not to share with her. I wasn't used to Meghan being sick, as she was usually the very picture of health. Back in her old bookshop she had posted a broadside near her desk that quoted the words of another favorite of her poets, Ezra Pound, who had been Yeats's intimate back when Pound was young and aspiring. I could picture that poster as clearly as if it were right here before me. It read in large letters,
The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.
Once, early in our relationship, just about this time of evening after the shop had closed, Meghan and I were sitting across from each other chatting over coffee when I quipped, “You're a ball of light yourself, you know.” At that moment I knew without question that I loved her. She came back with a quip of her own, “Like a book, I'll be brighter in your hands,” which only strengthened the conviction of my affection.

Here, tonight, knowing I was at a crossroads, I felt that abiding love for her anew, not that it had ever left, not really, even in my saddest, most delirious, deranged hours. Seeing her dim like this, her usual incandescence dulled by what would prove to be a passing flu that didn't adversely affect her pregnancy but just slowed her daily pace a little, I knew that I must do everything within my power to protect her. If that meant becoming a forger again, so be it, I thought. But more likely it meant turning Slader down.

“Your temp is around a hundred, about the same as this morning. Let me bring you some more broth, something to eat?”

“Sure, that would be great,” she answered, settling back down into the pillows. “How about the meeting, though? My boss called to see how I was feeling, said he saw you talking with someone at the hotel across from Eccles's this afternoon. So it went well? I've been thinking what a wonderful opportunity it would be for everyone involved.”

Struggling to hide from my expression the utter dismay I felt at that moment, I fudged, “Yes, that was one of Eccles's contacts. Look, I can't really tell how it went. Too early to say. One thing, though, is we all agreed to keep it under wraps until we decide to either go ahead with it or not. That way, there'll be less disappointment if it falls through.”

“And more excitement when you do announce. Makes sense,” she said, not having noticed the pang of regret I felt at lying to her.

Having brought her some supper, I kept Meghan company for a while until she fell asleep again. Quietly as I could, I closed the bedroom door and slipped downstairs into a corner study off the living room, then discreetly shut that door, too. Uncomfortable as the call might be given the things I would have to confess in order to get the soundest advice, I needed to talk to Atticus. I hardly knew what time it was in Providence, my mind aswim, but wasn't overly surprised when he answered. He'd likely have picked up no matter what the hour.

“Always good to hear from my foreign correspondent,” he said. “How is all and everything?”

“Most all and everything is fine. Meghan's got a cold, nothing horrendous.”

“And you?”

“I'm generally okay.”

“You don't sound okay at all,” he told me without the slightest pause. Atticus knew me well, I thought, better than nearly anybody. No need to obfuscate, and besides, the whole purpose of this awkward gesture was to seek counsel.

“You remember Henry Slader.”

“Of course.”

“I don't know how to explain this, but I've got a real problem with him.”

“Problem of what kind? He owes you money?”

“No, the other way around. I owe him money and he's flown all the way here to Kenmare to demand I pay.”

“Seems pretty extreme,” Atticus said. “What did he sell you, a first folio?”

“I wish it was a laughing matter, but I'm going to have to ask you to give him all the rest of the proceeds from whatever's left of the books I consigned you. If you don't mind, I'd rather you paid him directly, as he and I don't get along and I know he trusts you. Is that a problem?”

There was a pause at Atticus's end of the line before he said, “All right. But I'll need to have a letter of authorization from you, if you don't mind.”

In all our years of business, he had never asked for such a document before, although we had done millions of dollars of transactions.

“You'll want a final accounting, when the last of the inventory is sold?”

“I suppose so, but it won't make any difference. Slader's due the money whatever the amount, and I would just as soon get this damn monkey off my back.”

Atticus's voice shifted into a different register, more grave, even stern. “I don't like the sound of this. A while ago you mentioned that some dealings you had with Slader had gone off track. You care to share what happened?”

If not Atticus, then who could I talk with? Before plunging into what would have to be the partial truth, I hesitated—no way was I going to tell him that there were two copies of that Baskerville archive, one superior to the other but neither of them by Arthur Conan Doyle, son of Mary Foley and the terminal drunkard Charles Altamont Doyle, may they all rest in peace. Further, there was the matter of what Slader felt he held over my head regarding Diehl and why he believed it plausible to blackmail me, none of which I could broach with Atticus. This was dangerous ground I now proposed to traverse, and for a moment I considered backtracking. Then the image of Slader consuming his mackerel with a look of infinite self-satisfaction returned to me, and that settled things.

“I may not be able to answer some of your questions as to the whys and wherefores, Atticus, but the bottom line is, Slader wants me to start forging again.”

“That seems easy enough. Just tell him no.”

“Not only that,” I continued, aware that I skipped right past his rational advice. “He wants me to get involved in print forgery, not the calligraphic stuff.”

“But since when do you even know how to print?”

Sensing that Atticus was somehow missing the main point, I said, “I don't really know how to print, obviously. All right, so I've learned a little here in Kenmare working at the shop. I think I mentioned to you we have a lovely old Vandercook and I'm getting to use it more and more. Still, that does not make me a printer.”

Almost as if he hadn't been listening to me, Atticus said, “That's really quite a wonderful skill to learn.”

What, this was Atticus? I couldn't believe it. “You're sounding like Meghan now,” I said. “She's all for it, thinks I should start a small publishing business for local poets and such, but I might add she emphatically doesn't want me even to think about using it to forge anything.”

“And Slader, you're saying, does. Interesting.”

Here, just here, a strong uneasiness about what I was hearing on the other end of the line began to settle in over me. First, I was sure I had mentioned Eccles's Vandercook proof press to Atticus at Thanksgiving and even recalled him asking if I thought it would be at all practicable for us to letterpress print a ream of new letterhead for his shop on some heavy Crane's paper. “Something I'd use for snail mail correspondence with customers who would be appropriately impressed,” he had said, or something to that effect. Maybe he had simply forgotten. No, very likely he had forgotten, but his response to my damned predicament with Slader confounded me. Was it paranoia on my part to think he was sidestepping, like one admiring the pretty scrub flowers that grew on the lip of a volcano while ignoring the orange lava below? I decided to plunge ahead.

“And Slader, I'm saying, does,” I echoed, needlessly.

“Well, you know how I feel about it. I hardly need to remind you how I stuck by you when you went through all that hell when you were exposed—”

“And you know I'm forever grateful for that.”

“You'd do the same for me any day of the week, I'm sure.”

“Of course I would,” I said, as was expected.

“Because friends have to stick by friends, even when they may not understand why one or the other has made certain decisions, taken certain steps.”

Why was he saying this? I swallowed. “That's how friendship works. But let me remind you, Slader may be your friend. He's not mine.”

There was a silence on the line before Atticus said, “I hate to see friends quarrel.”

A melancholy ache—how else to describe it?—began to seize my neck and shoulders, as if I had been pummeled there with a truncheon wrapped in dampened newspapers, an old-time method corrupt police used when questioning recalcitrant prisoners when they didn't want any bruises to show on the skin. Ridiculous, I thought. Slader had obviously so upset my purposely narrow and provincial world with his toxic ideas that I now found myself suspecting one of my oldest, most revered friends—one who, as he rightly said, stood by me through my toughest of times.

“Atticus, listen. Bottom line is, I think I may have to go public on this guy if he keeps after me like this. You know I've already paid my dues. And I'm willing to pay him his money. But I have a child coming soon, and Slader's world isn't one I can live or work in anymore.”

“You've got to do what's best for you and Meghan,” Atticus said. “I know it's a platitude, but platitudes are often the truth.”

That made me feel relieved, the old Atticus I had known, serving up warm bromides when a situation called for just such simple fundamental truths. But he went on.

“I wonder what good would come of going public, as you say, on Slader, though. Some things are best kept among colleagues, even enemies sometimes, right?”

Relief abruptly turned to distress. Was Atticus, my gold-standard, arrow-straight friend, playing a Janus game? No, I told myself. It couldn't be. Like mud on polished patent-leather shoes, any accusatory thoughts I felt must have been a desperate attempt to soil him through his association with me and Slader.

Then he said, “Besides, why risk raking up your past again, and maybe bringing a lot of negative attention to you and your family, just when you've gone out of your way to retreat from everything?”

With this I understood our conversation was over. I wasn't speaking with the same Atticus Moore I'd been confident I had spoken with a thousand times before. Any hints of mistrust I felt during the call now solidified into fact—insofar as any fact was real, or anything real was a fact. I thanked my Providence friend, careful to betray none of my mistrust even while sensing that I might never speak to him again, and hung up the phone, shattered.

Most of the night was spent replaying, ad nauseam, my talk with Atticus. Maybe I was being overly suspicious about everything and anything related to Henry Slader. So I tried to reason as I turned on my right side, settled, then rolled onto my left, resettled, before lying on my back. Perhaps I misconstrued Atticus's comments and concerns, I strived but failed to convince myself. Mostly I listened to Meg breathe and cough lightly from time to time, hoping she would feel better in the morning but, selfishly, not quite better enough to go into town with me. When I met with Slader to give him my decision and, while I was at it, a piece of my mind, I didn't need to be squinting out the window in case she herself passed by this time and saw me in the restaurant with this unknown man. Enough pressure sat on my chest as it was, like one of those neolithic stones at the Shrubberies. I couldn't handle a pebble's more.

Daybreak was unusually radiant. Not a cloud confiscated an acre of the sky. The air, when I cracked our window to clear away the stuffiness in the bedroom, was soft and savory. Outside, birdsong rang in the woods, a mockingbird, I believe, or one that loved rehearsing its call over and over. It was as if we had slept through winter and had magically awakened on the first day of spring. For a blessed few minutes, Diehl and Slader and Atticus and every forgery and transgression I had ever been involved with didn't exist, had not happened. I could never remember the word for this half-asleep, half-awake state of being—hypnagogic, was it, or hypnopompic?—but a deep part of me wished I could remain caught in its sweet limbo longer than life allowed.

Meghan was feeling better, as it turned out. Her fever had broken and her appetite returned. She came downstairs in her robe and we had oatmeal together. Still, we agreed, to my great relief, that she ought to stay home one more day.

As I drove into town, the weather held. But my worries about Slader—about how he would respond to my refusal to proceed as his partner, his lackey, or whatever he construed my role as in his harebrained scheme to produce printed nineteenth-century forgeries à la T. J. Wise—threw a thick pall over everything. Eccles was indulgent, giving me another couple of hours off work to meet with my American friend—I told him we'd be saying our farewells, which I rather assumed we would—so after I parked the car, I went straight to the hotel and entered the restaurant. This morning several tables were occupied, two couples and a French family on late-season holiday, I presumed. The same waitress who had served us the day before escorted me to the table that it seemed Slader had booked for us. I ordered a coffee and sat, nervously glancing out the windows that gave onto Henry Street. Since Slader had been half an hour late before—he apparently liked making a dramatic entrance, damned diva—the fact that minutes ticked by without him joining me was more a relief than an annoyance. After a second cup was finished and I waved the girl off when she came by the table with the heavy silver pot, offering me a third, I began to worry. What in the equation of our dialogue had I miscalculated yesterday? Had Slader made some demand or statement I hadn't understood? Not likely, as our exchange was as hard-edged and finite as bones set side by side, this claim a femur, that response a tibia, the whole chain of mutual hatred like some petrified spine of a beast that should never have lived.