Vigil (8 page)

Now why, he wondered, vaguely disappointed in himself, had he done that?

“
It must be difficult for you, coming back home after
years away,” Dr. Neumann said, touching her fingers together and studying Ezra with her carefully neutral gaze. “How is that going for you?”

How was it going for him? Fine, Ezra thought, just fine—as long as everyone stayed out of his way and left him alone to do what he had to do. “It’s an adjustment,” he said, figuring that was a perfectly okay response, neither negative nor positive.

“I’m sure it is.” She smiled and stayed silent, but he knew that trick—it was one of her psychotherapeutic smiles, designed to bring you into her confidence, and the silence was supposed to become so awkward that you leaped in to fill it, revealing all sorts of secret stuff in the process. Nope, not much had changed, he reflected; even the abstract prints on her office walls, the low hum of the radiator unit, the positions of the two chairs they were now sitting in. He felt like he’d gone back in time, twenty years, to when he’d first had to see her. Right after the headmaster at the Horace Mann School had informed his parents that Ezra, despite his astronomically high scores on the IQ and standard achievement tests, was not, well, fitting in. Academically or socially.

“How are you getting along with your father? Has that improved any?”

“We keep out of each other’s way,” Ezra said, “as much as we can.” Which was true—his father was either at his offices on Madison Avenue, wheeling and dealing for some small portion of the city that he didn’t already own, or off at some society function that Kimberly had dragged him to.

“And you’ve got a stepmother, too, now, don’t you? I think I remember reading in the paper that your father had remarried.”

Now, Ezra thought, she was being disingenuous. Of course she knew his dad had remarried. She probably knew more about his comings and goings than he did; in all his time in Israel, Ezra had scrupulously avoided the New York newspapers, and he’d never let on to anyone, unless he had to, that he was Sam Metzger’s son.

“Yes, he has got a new wife. Her name’s Kimberly,” he said, his fingers nervously twisting the top of the plastic bag in his lap. When, he wondered, would be the opportune time to broach the real reason he’d made this appointment?

“What’s your relationship with her like?”

Ezra almost couldn’t answer at all; he was so weary of all this, he didn’t want to have to go through this drill, answer all these pointless questions about his family and his feelings and his future. He’d made this appointment because he was running out of his medications, and unless he could get the prescriptions refilled, he was going to have a very hard time concentrating on his work. Or getting to sleep. Or controlling his mood swings. He just needed some refills.

“She’s all right. I don’t see much of her, either.” Then, because he thought this might go over well with the good doctor, and because he felt he had to show just a little more interest, he added, “It’s more like having an older sister in the house. She’s just a few years older than I am.”

“Is that so?” Dr. Neumann said, nodding her head slowly. “How interesting.”

Damn,
Ezra thought.
She’s interested.
Now he’d inadvertently opened up a whole new can of worms; Neumann would be able to milk that remark for several sessions. And when would he ever get her around to the point of
this
one?

“How do you think that’s affected your relationship with your father? If you had to characterize Kimberly’s effect on that, would you say that she’s provided a bridge, or created a dam, between the two of you?”

“I’ve never thought of it in either of those terms,” Ezra said, trying to keep the disdain out of his voice. He could see no end to this avenue of thought. Neumann could keep on coming up with dumb metaphors and pointless questions indefinitely. He fingered the bag on his lap once more, and this time Neumann deigned to take notice.

“I feel you’re distracted, Ezra,” she said with some asperity, “that there’s something else we need to address and get out of the way. What’s in the bag you’re holding?”

Ezra tried not to appear too eager as he hastily untied the loop on the plastic bag. “These are the bottles from the medications I’ve been on while I was living in Israel,” he said, taking out the bottles, their labels written in Hebrew on one side and English on the other, and putting them on the little table next to her chair. “All I need, I think, are some refills.”

Dr. Neumann took her reading glasses off the table, put them on, then started picking up the prescription bottles. “Your doctor over there was named Stern?”

“Yes, Herschel Stern.”

“I’ll want to get in touch with him, and see his records.”

“That’s fine. I can give you his numbers.”

“But I can probably refill these for now,” she said, glancing at what he recognized was his Xanax bottle, “and we’ll make any adjustments that we have to, once we’ve made some progress with our therapy.”

As far as Ezra was concerned, they’d already made all the progress he was interested in. But now was not the time, he knew, to say so. As she reached for her pad and began to scrawl the new prescriptions, his heart soared.

 
Outside, Uncle Maury was leaning against the parking
meter, having a smoke. “How’d it go?” he asked, tossing the cigarette into the gutter. “You finally sane?”

“I will be,” Ezra said, brandishing the sheaf of prescriptions.

On the way home, they stopped at the first pharmacy they passed, and while his order was being filled, Ezra roamed around the store picking up all the other things on his list, from surgical gloves and isopropyl alcohol to Q-tips and talcum powder. The rest of the supplies he’d need—a drafting table and computer chair, acetates, X-Acto knives and sable brushes, a magnifying glass—had all been delivered that morning, and had only to be properly arranged and put to use. He could barely wait to begin.

At home, Ezra was delighted to discover that everyone was out; even Gertrude was grocery shopping or something. He hurried down the hall, locked his door behind him, and then immediately got to work rearranging the place. Aside from clearing away some things from the nightstand to make more room for his reading matter, he left the actual bedroom pretty much as it was.

The adjoining chamber, which had once been his play-room, was where he’d decided he’d do his actual work. First he emptied out the bookcase, which still contained most of his books from high school and college, everything from
Catcher in the Rye
to the
Norton Anthology,
and then he dragged the empty bookcase over to the window. When his reference collection arrived from Israel, he’d put it there.

Then, where the bookcase had been, he set up the drafting table; fortunately, it didn’t take too much work: attaching the legs, getting the top elevated to just the right angle, clamping the lamp on. The drafting table and chair now stood away from the windows, as far from the natural light as they could be—and that was good. Sunlight could do a lot of damage to materials as ancient as the ones he would be working on.

Finally, he’d need something to hold his tools and things, and his eye alighted on an old wooden chest that had once contained his toys, next to the closet. He bent down to open it and wasn’t at all surprised to find his old model planes and comic books and bongos—how he’d driven his parents crazy with those!—still stuffed inside. He closed the chest and dragged it over to the side of the drafting table, put the bags of brushes and rubbing alcohol and surgical gloves on top of it, and then stood back to assess his handiwork.

Not too bad, he thought. In fact, more than serviceable.

Now there was nothing standing in his way. He could begin again on his work.

He went into the closet and reached up high on the top shelf, behind the extra blankets. His fingers found the cardboard tube he’d hidden there and drew it down. Although what the tube contained weighed very little—measurable in ounces, not even pounds—that’s not how it felt as he cradled it in his arms. It felt as if he were holding something of unimaginable weight and significance. It felt as if he had climbed to the very summit of Mount Sinai, and he was holding in his hands the stone tablets once entrusted to Moses himself.

For all he knew, he was.

Even though Carter’s call wasn’t due for another hour,
Giuseppe Russo wasn’t taking any chances; he was going to wait by the phone. Not that venturing outside right now would have been a very appealing prospect, anyway. It was dusk in Rome, and from the narrow windows of his office, on the top floor of the Hall of Biological Sciences, he could already see a huge bank of billowing clouds, dark and angry, buffeting the olive trees and sweeping over the ancient ruins on the Palatine Hill. The storm front had been blowing west from the Adriatic Sea for days, and now it appeared ready to unleash its fury.

Russo settled himself into the rickety desk chair—not an easy task, given his size and the frailty of the old oak chair—and lighted another Nazionali. God, he was tired. It was all he could do to trudge to his lectures every afternoon, and then back home at night. He couldn’t even remember when he’d last had a decent night’s sleep. No, that wasn’t true. He could remember. It was the night before he’d ever laid eyes on the fossil from the cave. The fossil that now resided in the courtyard downstairs. And even though part of him believed that this find would make his reputation, another part, growing all the time, wished that he had never so much as heard of it.

He blew a cloud of smoke toward the faded velvet curtains; a few preliminary raindrops spattered the window. He couldn’t understand it. He had been to dozens of dig sites; he had handled thousands of fossils and bone fragments, many of them human; but he had never felt anything like this. A nagging unease, a palpable sense of dread. Ever since his fingers had touched the wet talons, if that was indeed what they were, in the grotto of the Lago d’Avernus, his mind had been troubled and his spirits had fallen. At night, he tossed and turned in his bed, and his dreams, when they came at all, were nightmares. Several times he had walked in his sleep, something he hadn’t done since he was a child—awakening once, curled up like a dog, under a table.

With a kitchen knife clutched in his hand.

He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray on his desk and closed his eyes for just a second. He had to consider how he was going to make his case to Carter, how he was going to persuade him to join in this vast but curious endeavor. The mounting wind rattled the windows in their lead casements, and the red velvet curtains rustled in the draft. Like a boat unmoored, his mind began to drift. The radiator in the corner hissed, giving off more noise than heat, but under these sounds he thought he heard something else: a distant, irregular clanging. The sound of metal striking stone. He tried to ignore it, but the sound was so persistent he knew he’d never be able to rest or concentrate until he’d found out what it was and put a stop to it. Where, he wondered, was Augusto, the custodian, and why hadn’t he taken care of it?

Weary and annoyed, Russo went to the top of the stairs and listened again. The sound was definitely coming from below. The stairs were worn marble and elegantly curved, a reminder that the building, now a part of the university, had been erected centuries ago as a private palace for a Medici descendant. Right now as darkness fell on a Saturday night, it was deserted and only a few overhead lights were left on; it would be Russo’s job—or Augusto’s, if he was even still here—to turn them off before leaving.

Russo hated to stray so far from the phone, but the clanging sound came again, and he had to make sure it was nothing serious. He lumbered down the stairs, one hand on the finely wrought iron railing, and into the large vestibule on the ground floor. There was no sign of Augusto, or anyone, but the great arched doors that led to the courtyard were open and creaking in the wet wind.

The clanging came again—and from within the courtyard.

Russo buttoned his cardigan, noticing he had left some cigarette ash on its front, and pushed one of the heavy doors open wider.

The massive black block of stone brooded in the center of the interior courtyard, resting on half a dozen steel sawhorses. A huge blue plastic canopy hung above it, flapping and whipping in the wind. One of the cable lines holding the canopy in place had come loose and it was blowing wildly, banging its metal clip against the side of the stone.

At least the mystery had been solved.

But Russo knew that he couldn’t let the cable remain loose, especially as it could cause some damage to the stone.

He stepped reluctantly into the courtyard, the cold wind scouring his face, and approached the block. As he did, he had the unmistakable sense that he was not alone, that there was someone else in the empty courtyard, and his eyes swept the gloomy colonnades on either side.

“Augusto?” he called out. “Are you there?”

But no one answered.

The cable smacked against the cobblestones so hard it threw off a bright blue spark. He reached to grab it, but the wind picked up and the line flew away from his hand. He’d have to be careful. He waited a few seconds, bending down, then reached out again and this time snagged it. He was reminded of a snake charmer he’d once seen grabbing a hissing cobra by its throat.

“Rompi . . . la pietra.”
Break the stone.

He froze in place, still bent over, the cable in his hand. His head was just a few inches from the fossil, and the words, he could have sworn, had emanated from inside the stone.

But that was impossible.

He secured the metal clip of the cable line to a bolt in the cobblestoned floor, then pressed his foot down hard on top of the bolt to make sure it was deeply rooted.

The rain had begun to fall, pattering on the plastic canopy and driven sideways by gusts of wind captured in the courtyard. The stone grew damp.