Brad Meltzer: The Inner Circle

The archivist paused a moment, looking at the two men. “What’re you talking about? Why’d you mention Beecher?”

“Relax-we’ve got something a lot better than a spooky chocolate factory,” President Orson Wallace said as he closed the door to the Vault, once again keeping his Secret Service agents outside. “Welcome to the Culper Ring.”

There are stories no one knows. Hidden stories.

I love those stories.

And since I work in the National Archives, I find those stories for a living. They’re almost always about other people. Not today. Today, I’m finally in the story-a bit player in a story about…

“Clementine. Today’s the day, right?” Orlando asks through the phone from his guardpost at the sign-in desk. “Good for you, brother. I’m proud of you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask suspiciously.

“It means, Good. I’m proud ,” he says. “I know what you’ve been through, Beecher. And I know how hard it is to get back in the race.”

Orlando thinks he knows me. And he does. For the past year of my life, I was engaged to be married. He knows what happened to Iris. And what it did to my life-or what’s left of it.

“So Clementine’s your first dip back in the pool, huh?” he asks.

“She’s not a pool.”

“Ooh, she’s a hot tub?”

“Orlando. Please. Stop,” I say, lifting the phone cord so it doesn’t touch the two neat piles I allow on my desk, or the prize of my memorabilia collection: a brass perpetual calendar where the paper scrolls inside are permanently dialed to June 19. The calendar used to belong to Henry Kissinger. June 19 is supposedly the last day he used it, which is why I taped a note across the base of it that says, Do Not Use/Do Not Change.

“So whattya gonna say to her?”

“You mean, besides Hello ?” I ask.

“That’s it? Hello ?” Orlando asks. “ Hello ’s what you say to your sister. I thought you wanted to impress her.”

“I don’t need to impress her.”

“Beecher, you haven’t seen this girl in what-fifteen years? You need to impress her.”

I sit on this a moment. He knows I don’t like surprises. Most archivists don’t like surprises. That’s why we work in the past. But as history teaches me every day, the best way to avoid being surprised is to be prepared.

“Just tell me when she’s here,” I say.

“Why, so you can come up with something more mundane than Hello ?”

“Will you stop with the mundane. I’m exciting. I am. I go on adventures every day.”

“No, you read about adventures every day. You put your nose in books every day. You’re like Indiana Jones, but just the professor part.”

“That doesn’t make me mundane.”

“Beecher, right now I know you’re wearing your red-and-blue Wednesday tie. And you wanna know why? Because it’s Wednesday .”

I look down at my red-and-blue tie. “Indiana Jones is still cool.”

“No, Indiana Jones was cool. But only when he was out experiencing life. You need to get outta your head and outta your comfort zone.”

“What happened to the earnest you’re-so-proud-of-me speech?”

“I am proud-but it doesn’t mean I don’t see what you’re doing with this girl, Beech. Yes, it’s a horror what happened with Iris. And yes, I understand why it’d make you want to hide in your books. But now that you’re finally trying to heal the scab, who do you pick? The safety-net high school girlfriend from fifteen years in your past. Does that sound like a man embracing his future?”

I shake my head. “She wasn’t my girlfriend.”

“In your head, I bet she was,” Orlando shoots back. “The past may not hurt you, Beecher. But it won’t challenge you either,” he adds. “Oh, and do me a favor: When you run down here, don’t try to do it in under two minutes. It’s just another adventure in your brain.”

Like I said, Orlando knows me. And he knows that when I ride the elevator, or drive to work, or even shower in the morning, I like to time myself-to find my personal best.

“Wednesday is always Wednesday. Do Not Change. ” Orlando laughs as I stare at the note on the Kissinger calendar.

“Just tell me when she’s here,” I repeat.

“Why else you think I’m calling, Dr. Jones? Guess who just checked in?”

As he hangs up the phone, my heart flattens in my chest. But what shocks me the most is, it doesn’t feel all that bad. I’m not sure it feels good. Maybe it’s good. It’s hard to tell after Iris. But it feels like someone clawed away a thick spiderweb from my memory, a spiderweb that I didn’t even realize had settled there.

Of course, the memory’s of her. Only she could do this to me.

Back in eighth grade, Clementine Kaye was my very first kiss. It was right after the bright red curtains opened and she won the Battle of the Bands (she was a band of one) with Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ’n Roll.” I was the short kid who worked the spotlights with the coffee-breath A/V teacher. I was also the very first person Clementine saw backstage, which was when she planted my first real wet one on me.

Think of your first kiss. And what it meant to you.

That’s Clementine to me.

Speedwalking out into the hallway, I fight to play cool. I don’t get sick-I’ve never been sick-but that feeling of flatness has spread through my whole chest. After my two older sisters were born-and all the chaos that came with them-my mother named me Beecher in hopes that my life would be as calm and serene as a beach. This is not that moment.

There’s an elevator waiting with its doors wide open. I make a note. According to a Harvard psychologist, the reason we think that we always choose the slow line in the supermarket is because frustration is more emotionally charged, so the bad moments are more memorable. That’s why we don’t remember all the times we chose the fast line and zipped right through. But I like remembering those times. I need those times. And the moment I stop remembering those times, I need to go back to Wisconsin and leave D.C. “Remember this elevator next time you’re on the slow line,” I whisper to myself, searching for calm. It’s a good trick.

But it doesn’t help.

“Letsgo, letsgo…” I mutter as I hold the Door Close button with all my strength. I learned that one during my first week in the Archives: When you have a bigwig who you’re taking around, hold the Door Close button and the elevator won’t stop at any other floors.

We’re supposed to only use it with bigwigs.

But as far as I’m concerned, in my personal universe, there’s no one bigger than this girl-this woman… she’s a woman now-who I haven’t seen since her hippie, lounge-singer mom moved her family away in tenth grade and she forever left my life. In our religious Wisconsin town, most people were thrilled to see them go.

I was sixteen. I was crushed.

Today, I’m thirty. And (thanks to her finding me on Facebook) Clementine is just a few seconds away from being back.

As the elevator bounces to a halt, I glance at my digital watch. Two minutes, forty-two seconds. I take Orlando’s advice and decide to go with a compliment. I’ll tell her she looks good. No. Don’t focus on just her looks. You’re not a shallow meathead. You can do better , I decide as I take a deep breath. You really turned out good , I say to myself. That’s nicer. Softer. A true compliment. You really turned out good .

But as the elevator doors part like our old bright red curtains, as I anxiously dart into the lobby, trying with every element of my being to look like I’m not darting at all, I search through the morning crowd of guests and researchers playing bumper cars in their winter coats as they line up to go through the metal detector at security.