Ted Kosmatka - Prophet of Bones

“So it would seem,” she said, raising a glass of pink liquid to her lips.

“Thanks for meeting with me.”

“I didn’t think I’d hear from you again. You look like shit, by the way.”

He smiled. “Thanks.”

“It must be something pretty important that has you out here again. Something tells me it’s not my good looks.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself.”

“But?”

“But no,” he said. “There have been some recent developments.”

“More of your photographs?” she said, then sipped.

“A drink,” Paul said. “A drink first.” He waved down their waitress, who came to their table carrying a glass carafe of clear liquid.

“Sparkling water?” she asked.

“I’d like my water to sparkle, yes,” Paul said. “And I’ll have a Coors.” He turned to Lilli. “You want another?”

“I’m good,” she said, holding up her tall glass. “This is my second.”

When the waitress had left, Paul pulled a small plastic bag from inside the pocket of his hoody. “I brought something for you.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

He set the baggie on the table. “You might be more right than you know.”

“Is that what I think it is?”

Paul nodded. “That depends. Do you think it’s a bone sample?”

“The way to a girl’s heart. Where did you get it?”

“The shipping department at Westing. It’s a sample that was on its way to that address you gave me.”

“Why bring it to me?”

“This is what you said you needed, right? Bone collagen, to tell more about the bones in the photo.”

“There are certain tests, yes, in regard to ecological niche. So this is a sample from those bones?”

“Maybe not those bones exactly, but I suspect it’s from the same dig.”

“You suspect? Something tells me that you came by this sample by less than legitimate means.”

“If you want to back out, I understand.”

“Back out? Nobody ever said I was in.”

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a maybe.”

Paul looked at her closely. “If you want to walk away from this, I wouldn’t blame you at all. I’m probably crazy to bring it to you. You don’t owe me anything.”

“I know,” she said. “Just tell me this: is it important?”

“Yeah,” Paul said.

“How important?”

“I’ll put it this way. I’m not going back to my job after this.”

“I’ll do it.”

“You’re sure?”

“I wouldn’t say I was sure, but I’ll still do it. I can get it done in an afternoon. Besides, this cloak-and-dagger stuff is way more interesting than my usual day-job bullshit.”

“What’s your usual day-job bullshit?”

“Working with specimens. Paperwork. Dealing with interoffice headaches.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It’s not.”

“Is that angst I detect?”

“Angst is psychological lupus,” she said. “It’s the mind’s immune system turning on itself.”

“You’ve thought that out.”

She smiled. “Angst is what’s wrong when there is nothing wrong.”

“I thought that was depression?”

“No, most people who are depressed are depressed because their lives suck. Don’t look at me like that—it’s true. My sister was depressed. She was doing a job she hated, in a relationship with a guy she hated. Voilà, depression. She quit her job and now she’s a broke, happy lesbian. Depression is the mind’s way of telling you that you’re not doing what you should be doing. Can I see the sample?” She held out her hand.

Paul gave her the baggie. It held a small disk of bone, wrapped in plastic. “So this is enough to test?”

She weighed the baggie in her hand and made a quick inspection of the contents. “Yeah, this should be enough.”

The waitress came with Paul’s beer. “Thanks,” he said.

“Do they know you took it?” Lilli asked once the waitress had left.

“Not yet. How soon before you’ll have your results?”

“Depends when I can get lab time. A few days, probably.”

Paul took a long pull of his beer. Behind him, the restaurant noise rose in pitch, a rowdy group entering the room. Drunken college kids fresh from a bar and now looking for food before resuming their bar crawl. He’d never been them. That carefree. He lowered his eyes back to his beer, noting the bubbles rising in the amber liquid.

“You’re not going to get in trouble for this at work?” Paul asked.

“No, it’s a small thing,” she said. “Nobody will notice. I practically run that part of the lab.”

“I don’t want to cause you any problems.”

“I work in a lab where nothing happens. My life didn’t turn out exactly how I’d wanted it to. This is as adventurous as I get.”

“Your life turned out pretty well, I think.”

“So what about you?”

“What about me?”

“How’d your life turn out? Other than theft, or illicit dealings in ancient remains, or whatever this is.”

“Three-quarters of a master’s degree, then on to Westing. Four years in the field, then back and forth to the lab.”

“You like it?”

“I did.”

“But not now?”

“No, not now. Now I wish I’d stuck with mice. Your turn.”

“Ah, me.” She sipped her drink. “Graduate studies, then Sri Lanka for a year. A disastrous marriage. A divorce. Teaching. Then lab work.”

“Marriage?”

“We wanted different things.”

“What did he want?”

“A virgin.”

Paul choked on his beer.

“Well,” she said, “among other things.”

Despite himself, Paul smiled. Back in college, he’d made the mistake of asking if her name meant anything in particular in her native language. For the next year she’d given different answers according to her mood, warning him once, during a mock wrestling match, that her name meant “great vengeance.” Another time, during a study session, she’d declared him the beneficiary of a study partner whose name derived from a word that meant “supernatural patience toward fools.” And once, after a particularly coquettish display of feminine flexibility in her dorm room, she’d offered “virginal” as the literal translation of Lillivati.

“Ah,” he’d told her. “Like when a bald guy is named Harry.”

She’d tackled him for that one.

A few months after they’d broken up, he’d looked her name up on Google. It meant “free will of God.”

“I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you and your husband,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“You said what he wanted. What was it that you wanted?”

“Never what I thought I wanted, it turned out.”

Paul nodded softly. He understood the feeling.

“So what’s next?” she asked.

“For me? Unemployment, probably. At best.”

She raised her glass. “To unemployment.”

“To discovery,” Paul said. They clinked glasses and drank.

Paul finished his beer in three long gulps. “You never asked about my eye.”

“I was waiting to see how important it was to you.”

“I haven’t decided.”

She looked at him quizzically. “It suits you,” she said finally. “Like the weight.”

“What does that mean?”

“You were too Abercrombie before. Too pretty, back in college.”

“You never told me that then.”

“Well, of course not.” She drained the last of her drink and slapped the glass down on the table perhaps a bit too hard. “Are you ready?”

Paul dug his keys out of his pants pocket. “Ready if you are.”

He laid cash down on the table, and they stood and made their way out of the restaurant.

When they were outside in the chilly night air, she asked him, “Feel like sightseeing?”