Том Светерлич - Tomorrow and Tomorrow

“Have you tried the Kucenic Group or one of the other research firms? They’re set up for work like this—”

“I trust Timothy about you,” he says. “When I talked with Kucenic, he wanted to transfer me to a sales rep, someone who handles accounts. He rattled off the names of awards and bragged about his U.S. News & World Report ranking, but when I asked if the person assigned to my case would be as skilled as you, he told me that he has a capable staff that can handle any query. He went on to tell me that your drug habit ruins you as a worker—”

“I’m clean,” I tell him.

“Good—”

“But it’s not difficult work. This is the type of research grad students are doing all over the country, that librarians are doing—”

“The cream rises to the top, Dominic. I don’t want ‘capable staff.’ I don’t want salesmen, I don’t want account representatives, and I certainly don’t want graduate students. I want someone with your skills, someone working for me. Someone with discretion—”

I scan the photograph of Albion, save the image to my Adware. Maybe the caffeine’s strafing my nerves but I feel sick and want to run from here, to hole up in my apartment and powder myself into oblivion, but something Timothy said snags my thoughts— you don’t want to die .

“You want me to find your daughter? Recover the files?”

“I want you to restore her to the Archive,” he says. “I want you to track down who is doing this to me, to my family, so that I can prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law, or at least protect us from similar future threats. I want you to find out who has deleted her so that I can have my daughter back. Please. I’ve already lost her once—”

“I’ll help you—”

Qualia Coffee on my way home. Checking e-mail: Gavril’s written several times—all marked “high importance,” of course. Attachments of photos from fashion houses he wants me to caption—Anthropologie, House of Fetherston, Tom Ford—and his friends’ artist statements to translate into colloquial English, the usual odd jobs he lets me do. I mark them all as unread.

I ping Kucenic and when he doesn’t answer, I text him: Met with Waverly. Hard sell. What’s this all about?

A new message from Waverly’s secretary pops up as I’m pouring creamer into my coffee—he’s set up a per diem for direct deposit and negotiated with Kucenic so I can retain access to my archival security codes. I respond with my checking account number and PIN and within seconds the first deposit’s made—a rate substantially higher than Kucenic ever offered. Another file hits my in-box—a brief dossier about Albion.

Kucenic texts back: I’m sorry, Dominic. Please don’t contact me—

The heat’s off in my apartment again. Kucenic’s reply stings, but I try to understand—all the trouble I’ve caused him. Getting colder, so I wrap up in my comforter and watch a doc called A Round of Fiddles about Objectivist poetry but my mind wanders. Waverly’s daughter, Albion. By evening, another storm front’s dusting DC with snow and I shut off my lights and watch the encroaching winter—the weather here’s an odd mix of extremes, like Pittsburgh once. Warm enough in the afternoon to walk without a jacket yet snowing by nightfall. What would Gavril make of that photograph of Albion? What would he make of the clothes she wore—would he have recognized the gown? Maybe the whole production was something local to Pittsburgh, something amateurish. Scanning the dossier: Albion was twenty-four when she died, just shy of graduating from the fashion design program at the Art Institute. Images of her designs: tweeds and plaids, a prep fantasia. Other images of her: I’ve never seen a woman in real life who looks like these photographs, and I wonder how much of this imagery is false—camera tricks to make her seem tall, postproduction effects on her green eyes, coloring to make her hair that particular shade of blood red?

“Theresa Marie Blaxton—”

I say her name out loud, using her name the way Flagellants would have lashed themselves to remember the Passion of Christ.

“Theresa Marie Blaxton—”

I may be the only one on earth who remembers her, who remembers to speak her name.

Paperwork for Simka to sign, to transfer my care to Timothy. Visiting him, this morning, I actually wear a suit—to impress him, I think, even though it’s been years since I’ve worn this suit and the fit isn’t quite right anymore. Out of style now, or just too tight over my waist and rear, the jacket shoulders pinched, the collar like a stranglehold. Up the central stairwell to where his secretary, a cousin of his, a plump woman with a thatch of cranberry-red curls and heavy blue eye shadow, buzzes me into the reception room.

“Domi!” she says, “I don’t recall having an appointment for you today. Here, have a brownie—”

“It’s just a social call,” I try to explain, but take a brownie anyway. And another.

Nervous. Twenty minutes or so, drinking a complimentary Keurig. Simka escorts a patient from his office, a teenage boy—fourteen, maybe fifteen—studded with a Mohawk of pins and pierced with chains through his face. They’re talking about woodworking, Simka going on about his Zen theory of the lathe. He has the boy working on a project, a chair it sounds like.

“Excellent, excellent,” says Simka, “but remember, too, that you had trouble making picture frames at first, but now—”

Simka gives the boy his full attention—he asks about something the boy was to have read, The Woodworker’s Guide , Amazon portals linking Add to cart , but when the boy fesses up that he hasn’t yet read the chapters, Simka smiles and nods and says, “Next time, next time—”

Simka’s secretary mentions that I’ve been waiting. He’s surprised to see me, saying, “I didn’t recognize you in the suit!” He shakes my hand and asks how I’ve been. He tells me I look suave, stroking his mustache and grinning, asking if the suit’s new, complimenting the fabric. I tell him the last time I wore this suit was when I eulogized my wife.

“Well, you look good,” he says.

He invites me into his office—the familiar room—and I take my usual sofa seat. Simka doesn’t sit in his usual seat, though, a leather recliner near the sofa, but rather wheels around the ergonomic chair from behind his desk. There’s a potted ficus, but otherwise the room’s bare. Comfortable, though. The furniture’s oversize leather—I’ve been so tired recently I feel I could curl up on the sofa and sleep. He asks how I am and I answer. He offers me more coffee. He asks about Timothy and I tell him everything’s fine. Awkward gaps stud the pleasantries until I realize I’m hesitant, that I’ve been waiting for him to pick up his notebook and pen, the usual signal that our session has started. I’m not his patient anymore—

“I just brought some paperwork for you to sign,” I tell him.

“Oh, yes,” he says, and I hand the sheets over. “You know, you didn’t have to hand deliver these forms—”

He takes them to his desk, flattens out the creases I’ve made in them and reads them over. Everything’s standard, I’ve been told—but Simka is thorough. He removes an ink pen from a small box he keeps on his desk, shakes it twice, then signs in his looping official script. One page and the next. The third. He looks over what he’s done—ending an almost eight-year relationship with a few swipes of his pen.

“Since you’re here, though, I wanted to show you something,” he says, pulling a file from his desk. “When you transferred to Dr. Reynolds, I went through your old paperwork to pass along anything relevant and found some drawings you made. Do you remember these?”