Michael Gruber - The Book of Air and Shadows

“Jake, is there something wrong?”

Honestly, I can’t remember what I was saying that made her say that; I must have been babbling in an uncharacteristic fashion. And it brought me up short, because Miri is rarely interested in what is wrong with her loved ones, there is so much wrong with her that she prefers to talk about.

“Nothing,” I lied. “Look, Miri, have you, like, discussed this whole manuscript thing I’m involved in with anyone? Shvanov? Or Dad?”

“What manuscript thing?”

“You know, I told you about it that night at Amalie’s…Shakespeare, death by torture?”

“Oh, that. I don’t think so, but you know, I don’t keep a meticulous, like, transcript of everything I talk about. Why? Is it supposed to be some big secret? No, don’t leave it there! Move it over by the piano!”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, they’re delivering something. Look I have to go, darling, these people are going to totally destroy my living room. Bye-bye.”

With that she was gone, leaving me to deal with the probability that my sister had spread the amusing story of how her brother had found the key to a fabulous treasure throughout her wide circle of friends, including quite a few in the demimonde between business and crime. Miri had never much worried about the distinction, which meant that Shvanov might possibly be telling the truth-the city was full of Russian thugs for hire, and those who had attacked me might not have had anything to do with Shvanov’s outsourced violence. But perhaps they did. Perhaps it was a vast conspiracy, watching, waiting to strike, and why had I been so stupid as to come to a gym full of tough Russians? Panic does not really stick in the mind, I believe, it is as transient as smell, although it can be brought back Proust-like by a recurrence of the original stimulus. I am a little batty now, and so I can recall fairly well my irrational desperation sitting half-naked in that wintergreen-smelling locker room. I had the cell phone in my hand and almost without thinking, I dialed Mickey Haas’s number. I left a message demanding that he contact me immediately and I must have sounded crazed because he rang me back about twenty minutes later, while I was waiting at the curb for Omar to bring the car around.

“Lunch?” I said when he was connected.

“This is a lunch call? You sounded like your pants were on fire.”

“It’s a desperate lunch call. I’m being chased by Russian gangsters. I really need to talk to someone.”

“Okay. I had something with my publisher, but I can cancel. You’ll send Omar?”

“I’ll come up. We’ll go someplace new.” Of course they would be watching my usual haunts…

We went to Sichuan Gardens on Ninety-sixth, somewhat to Mickey’s amusement. The place is dim and on the second floor of a commercial block, and I sat with my back to the mirrored wall where I could watch the entryway. To fine my alertness to an even higher degree I had a martini.

“So, Lefty,” he said when we had ordered, “you think Big Max got a contract out on you?”

“This is not funny, man,” I said. “This is not supposed to be my life.”

“No, your life is supposed to be long dull days at the office doing work you don’t particularly like, whose purpose is to render the creative act even more of a commodity than it already is. And chasing pussy in your off hours, looking for the romantic fix that will stay fixed, even though you already found it years ago, and if you did once again convince yourself you found Miss Perfecto, you’d go off chasing pussy again as soon after the wedding as you possibly could, a dreary cycle that will end only when you locate someone sturdy, reliable, and mercenary who will stick around to nurse you through your final illness and collect all the chips.”

“Thank you for your support, Mickey,” I said as icily as I could. “And fuck you very much.”

“Whereas now,” he continued, undismayed, “you’re living the life of a man, every moment rich with import, with danger and excitement. A Shakespearian life, you could say, a life worthy of Richard Bracegirdle. Would you want Hamlet to go back to college and join a frat? Get drunk and party and get a B minus in Scholasticism 101?”

“Doesn’t he get killed at the end of the play?”

“He does, but don’t we all? The choice is only how we live in the previous five acts. Have you come any closer to finding the Bracegirdle original, speaking of spine-tingling excitement?”

“No, and I don’t intend to,” I snarled, since I was being frank with Mickey and did not require any sympathy from him, did not care if he thought I might be in danger, which is why I had mendaciously suggested this possibility to my wife. “I want to have nothing to do with Bracegirdle apart from insuring that Russian gangsters or whoever is after the ciphers leaves me the fuck alone. What about you? Have you penetrated the mysterious manuscript any since I saw you last?”

“No, and I don’t intend to,” he echoed. “Giving something like that to a scholar is like giving a glossy photo of a roast beef dinner to a starving man. It’ll make his mouth water but is devoid of nourishment. Without the original, as I think I’ve said, the text itself is a nullity. Never mind a putative letter from a guy who spied on the man, I could whip up a convincing facsimile of Shakespeare’s personal diary in a spare afternoon, answering questions that have plagued scholars for years. What Russian gangsters?”

Now the whole thing emerged in a rush-Miranda, Amalie, Russians, the law firm, and all. Mickey chopsticked up his spicy beef with buckwheat noodles and listened quietly, as for years I have depended on him to do, as he has on me. When I ran out of words, I asked him for his opinion and suggested that he not just tell me I was fucked up, because I already knew that.

He said, “You’re going to see this Crosetti kid with the ciphers?”

“Yeah, but they think I’m going there to dicker about returning the original that Bulstrode screwed him out of. I have absolutely no leverage on him, except money.”

“That’s always seemed to be a decent enough lever to me. Meanwhile, what do you intend to do with your life? Do you think it’s likely you’ll really be disbarred?”

“Maybe, if there’s a complaint from the heir. I’d have to make restitution, obviously…”

“You ought to go see him.”

“The heir? I can’t do that!”

“Why not? Have a chat, tell him what happened, beat your breast and cry mercy. You know the trouble with you lawyers is that sometimes, in your efforts to be absolutely legal, you forget ordinary human intercourse. What can he do to you? Call you an asshole? You already know that. And maybe you’ll find out something about you-know-what. Maybe Andrew confided in his longtime companion. Anyway, you’ll have a nice talk. You were probably one of the last people to see his boyfriend alive-he’ll probably be grateful for the meeting. And you can return the personal effects. It’d be a nice gesture after your various peccadilloes.”

Yes, it was definitely Mickey who first put it into my head to go to England and talk with Oliver March. Whether I would have gone or not was still in doubt when I left Mickey at the campus, but later events changed that. I felt somewhat better after my lunch. For some reason, virtually every Chinese restaurant in New York has a full bar, even joints that look like they don’t sell a martini a month. I had three, something I had never done at lunchtime before in my life.

The remainder of the afternoon is somewhat blurry. Perhaps there was a discussion of marriage with Omar, me quizzing him on Muslim practices in this area. Was fidelity easier if you had two or three? I can’t recall his answer exactly. We went back to my loft and I had another drink, a scotch, and then a nap. From which I was awakened by the merry dinging of my cell phone, upon which I was sleeping. I punched the green button and it said “You jerk!” in my ear, by which I knew it was my brother.