Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

“The old man would like to see you,” Don said in the same subdued voice.

Sure, Bill thought, knowing damn well why.

“Okay,” he said aloud, and entered his office, whereupon he received his second jolt of the morning.

Sitting at Darlene’s desk was a sec-temp replacement, a swarthy girl with stubby figure and eyes that were slightly crossed behind thick tortoiseshell glasses. Darlene, she told him nasally, was at home with the flu. Wow! He was really fielding them this morning.

Her name was Abby, and she couldn’t quite get the drift of what Bill was asking her to do—couldn’t understand what newspapers he wanted contacted and what accident he wanted verified.

Bill made legible notes on a yellow legal pad and hoped.

Stepping out of Pel Simmons’ office an hour later, Bill had the hunched-over, totally drained look of a man carrying a hod of bricks. Not only had Pel asked him to sub for Jack Belaver on the Hawaiian adventure, but he had instructed him to stop off in Seattle on the way back and look in on another of Jack’s accounts, DeVille Shipping, which was making funny noises of late.

“Sorry to load this on you, Bill, but with a backstop like Don, you’re the only man who’s sparable.”

“Sure, Pel,” Bill said. “I’ll plan to leave on Friday.”

“Make it Thursday. You’ll need the time there to brief up.”

Back in his own office, his message sheet told him that Hoover had called twice during his absence. Sinking wearily into the Eames recliner, Bill heaved a sigh of profound hopelessness and softly uttered, “Shit.” A box of paper clips was close at hand. Singly and with studied deliberation, he extracted them one by one and shied them across at the Motherwell, aiming at the black deltoid shape in the center. Of all the rotten luck. Of all the rotten times to be leaving town. How would he break the news to Janice? She was in semishock as it was. Oh, by the way, honey, I’m going to Hawaii for a week, how does that grab ya? Probably send her over the edge.…

Unless! Unless!

Yes, why the hell not? They’d all go. They could take Ivy out of school for a week and fly to Hawaii as a family. The trip would do them all good. He’d be on the company’s expense account. They could manage the rest of the money. It would, of course, be unique, a man in his position, taking his wife and child on a ball-buster of this kind, but hell! The alternative of leaving them alone and unguarded.…

His spirits buoyed by pleasant thoughts of sun, surf, and safety for all of them, Bill quickly rose and walked across to the Motherwell, reclaiming the paper clips scattered over the sofa and floor. When Abby stuck her head into the room, she found Bill down on his knees, picking “things” out of the carpet.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered, “but I flashed.…”

“What is it?” Bill said sternly.

“Mr. Hoover is on the line.”

“I’m at a meeting and won’t be back till late this afternoon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wait,” Bill ordered, as she was about to duck out. “What about the Pittsburgh newspapers?”

“They’re checking. They’ll call back later, collect.”

“Okay. Call Mr. Harold Yates, that’s Y-A-T-E-S, you’ll find it in the Rolodex, and ask him if he’s free for lunch.”

“Yes, sir.” Abby gulped and disappeared.

Harry, as it turned out, was in court and wouldn’t be able to see Bill until three o’clock, please confirm. Bill did, then put in a call to Janice through the Des Artistes house line. Janice answered after a great number of rings, and Bill listened as Dominick announced him.

“Anything new there?” Bill asked.

“No,” Janice said.

“Any phone calls?”

“A couple, on the other line. But I didn’t answer them.”

“Good.”

Bill was about to tell her of their impending trip to Hawaii when Janice suddenly remembered: “A package came.”

“A what?”

“A package. Mario brought it up a few minutes after the mail. It was delivered by hand.”

“Well, what’s in it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t opened it.”

Bill paused a moment, then quietly asked, “Why not, Janice?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m afraid.”

“All right.” Bill softly sighed. “Why don’t you open it now?”

“Just a minute.”

The light on Bill’s number two line flashed, then stopped, remaining alight, as Abby took the call at her desk. In a moment, it went dark. Hoover again, Bill surmised, knowing that Abby would hardly have hung up that quickly were it anyone else.

The sound of paper tearing preceded Janice’s voice. “It’s books. Four of them.”

“Who from?”

“I suppose from Mr. Hoover. They seem to be religious books. Very old. One is called The Annotated Koran . Then there’s the Upanishads —I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it right—A Modern Translation . There’s also a diary.”

“Is there a letter? A note or something?”

“There’s an envelope in Dialogues on Metem … psychosis, by J. G. von Herder.…” Again the sound of paper tearing as Janice opened the envelope. “It’s from Hoover, a list of page references for each book, handwritten and signed, ‘Sincerely yours, E. Hoover.’”

“Okay,” Bill said after careful consideration. “Keep them. They may be useful as evidence.”

“Has he called there?”

“Yeah, a couple of times, but I’m not taking his calls till I’ve spoken to Harry Yates.”

There was a pause.

“Bill?” There was a childlike tremor in her voice.

“Yes, honey?”

“Will he be at school when I pick up Ivy?”

“No. He wasn’t there this morning.”

“What if he is?”

“If he annoys you, call a cop.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered in a choked voice.

A few minutes after Bill hung up the phone, he remembered he hadn’t told her about their Hawaiian fling. He considered calling her back, then decided against it. It would only add to her state of confusion. He’d tell her tonight in bed.

The books, partially exposed in their torn wrappings, remained on the dining-room table the entire morning. Janice walked past them at least a dozen times but conscientiously refrained from noticing them. The little game was self-defeating, however, for at ten past two, after having loitered over her hair and clothing far too long to justify the simple expedition to the school and back, she still found herself with better than thirty-five minutes and nothing to do.

Fully dressed in coat, rain boots and white fake-fur hat, she fixed herself a cup of instant coffee and stood drinking it in the kitchen, the edge of the books, sliced by the frame of the doorway, just within range of her vision.

Standing above the stack of books, cup in hand, her fingers tracing the battered embossed cover of the one on top, she had no memory of having walked up to them, nor could she stop herself from turning back the cover and revealing a hardly legible inscription at the top of the frontispiece. Handwritten in a pale mauve ink was the inscription “R. A. Tyagi, ’06,” and beneath it, in a brighter, bolder hand, “E. Hoover, ’68.” The book’s title, printed in a delicate floral design, was The Bhagavad-Gita—An English Translation . The publication date was: “1746—London.”

Janice gently grasped a sheaf of the yellowed pages and allowed them to riffle slowly through her fingers, causing a small eruption of powdery dust to drift upward from the heart of the ancient volume. The pages seemed to fall in clumps, signifying the more studied portions of the text. At one such point, she read. “As a man, casting off worn-out garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth into others that are new.…”