Outside, the sun was shining, and the joggers were starting to come out. “Yoo-hoo! Justine!” someone called to her, and she looked up to see Freddie sitting in the grandstand, a few rows up on the aisle, waving at her.
“Hi, Freddie,” she said, shielding her eyes from the sun. He’d shed his white robes, and was dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt. “What are you doing here?”
“Warren sent me to lend a hand.”
She walked up the aisle and sat down beside him, slumping down in the chair, stretching her legs out. She was exhausted. “So how did you know where to find me?”
“Warren, of course. He knows where everybody is. He didn’t tell me you’d be crying your little eyes out, you poor thing.”
“Please, Freddie, no sympathy. I’m too tired.”
“Ha!” he said, stretching his neck out. “I like you, Justine. Your’re a stitch. Warren said you might need help getting information.”
“What information?”
“He didn’t say. He’s always been like that. You have to get used to it. Mr. Cryptic. It’s that genius thing, you know. I suppose he meant whatever information you want. It
is
my specialty. Warren says I’m the absolute best. Did you know they used to call it the Information Superhighway. Cute, don’t you think? Nasty things, highways. I’m glad we got rid of them.”
Justine smiled. She liked Freddie, his chatty exuberance. “You’ve known Mr. Menso for a long time?”
“We go way back to the Dark Ages. We were drearily real together in our little laboratories, designing our little circuits. That was long before he was St. Newman. Poor bastard.” He pointed at the banner over the speakers’ stand—He
walketh in the circuit of heaven
, it read. “He’s so pissed about that—you can’t imagine.”
“Why doesn’t he put a stop to it?”
Freddie put his hands on his hips. “Well, thank you. I ask him the same question every year, but does he listen? He doesn’t like to tamper, he says, throw everyone into a tizzy. ‘But Warren,’ I say, ‘does it have to be so
tacky
?’ There’s a big, soggy storm moving up the coast, with any luck they’ll all get drenched. Warren could help the storm along if he wanted, but he has his little scruples.”
“So how long have you known him?”
“You’re going to make me do the math, aren’t you?” He sighed. “Let’s see. He was twenty-five when I met him. I was twenty. His big hundredth birthday is tomorrow. So, that means about seventy-five years, give or take a few months. Ha! Seems longer.”
Freddie looked like he was in his late twenties, his skin smooth, no lines around his eyes or mouth. But he was ninety years old, give or take a few months. “You two were friends.”
“Oh, yes. We worked together, had lunch together, that sort of thing. Then he told our little international conglomerate to go fuck itself and started his own company. ‘Freddie,’ I said to myself. ‘Newman—I mean Warren—knows what he’s doing.’ So when he called me up and offered me a job, I went for it. Place was positively stuffed with geniuses, but he asks
me
—the little faggot programmer. No one shed a tear when I left, of course. They did that later, when the Bin put their tight little asses out of business.”
“Why do you call him Warren? He hasn’t always used that name, has he?”
“Oh no, he’s only insisted on it the last few years. I don’t blame him. I ask you—if every other runny-nosed little brat in the world were named after you, wouldn’t you want to change your name? I mean
Mr. Rogers
was bad enough. But you’re probably too young to remember him, aren’t you? Well, trust me. You missed a gruesome experience. He had this sincere little children’s TV show, cuddly platitudes and such. Well. All right. But he wore these ghastly cardigan sweaters. You cannot imagine.” Freddie quivered with disgust.
“Did you know that Angelina gave him the name Warren?”
Freddie groaned. “Oh God! He hasn’t been telling that dreadful napkin story again, has he?” He struck a forlorn face, his lip quivering—“ ‘I still have the napkin, the download, anyway.’ Please! Get a grip! The man has saved a
napkin
for eighty years!”
Justine had to laugh. “I think it’s sweet.”
“Ha! It’s positively diabetic.”
“So you actually knew Angelina?”
“In name only. For—what did we say?—seventy-five years, Warren’s been boring me to excruciating tears yammering about Ange
li
na, his
love
, his
sweet
heart! But I never met the woman. I came close a few times, but she always dropped him for some delicious Cro-Magnon or other before they got around to having lunch with his queer friend.
“I’ve told him a million times: Get over it! Be creative! Use your imagination! Go out on a date!‘ Ha! I hardly had you in mind. No offense, Justine, but it’s all a bit obsessive, don’t you think?”
She supposed it was, but even so, part of her was touched by it all. “But he didn’t make me for himself.”
“Oh, I know. I said, ‘Warren, why not? Live a little! Eternity is a
long
time.’ Not the thing to say, I can tell you.”
“So why
did
he make me?”
Freddie arched an eyebrow and gave her a knowing look. “I have a theory about that. He says it’s because he can’t bear the thought of Angelina being gone forever, that he only wants her happiness, and all the rest of that romantic drivel. But
I
think he did it to prove that he could. Once he latches onto a problem, he simply has to solve it. He’s really quite proud of you, you know. His own little miracle. The most brilliant programming I’ve ever seen.”
She looked at the gleaming grandstand, the huge memorial, like a domed temple. Tomorrow, there’d be people for as far as you could see in all directions, come to sing his praises. “So you think he made me just to satisfy his ego? To play at being God?”
“He doesn’t play, Justine. He is. In here, anyway. He doesn’t like me to say it, but face facts.
Somebody’s
got to have access to the code. The man wasn’t likely to lock himself out of his own program. Trust me, you wouldn’t want any of those assholes who put up the money to be running things.” He shuddered at the thought.
“Is he running me?”
“Oh, goodness no. He has this thing about free will. Do yourself a favor, don’t ever ask him about it.” Freddie pantomimed a yawn.
She had to stifle her own yawn. “I think I’m going to head on back to my room, Freddie. I’m pretty beat. Thanks for the information. I wish you’d known Angelina. She’s the one I’d really like to know about.”
Freddie rolled his eyes. “Justine, don’t be so linear. I
find
information; I don’t
have
it, for goodness sakes. For instance, if I were you, I’d visit granny’s house again. Just like Little Red Riding Hood—little cape, short skirt.” He moved his shoulders as if he were flouncing through the woods. “Your boyfriend with the cute little butt had a bunch of her things in his boudoir, as I recall?”
She gave him an accusing look. “You were watching us?”
“So sensitive. Only for a little tiny while. I didn’t watch you
doing
it, if that’s what you mean. Warren would’ve killed me.” He made a face and cocked his head, hanging himself with an imaginary rope.
THIS
TIME
FREDDIE
TOOK
HER
IN
THE
FRONT
DOOR
AND
FOLlowed her in. “Hope you don’t mind, but I just want another little peek.” He squinted in the shadows and wrinkled up his nose. “Smoky in here.” He held up a battery-operated lantern. “Plan ahead, I always say.” He turned it on and played the beam around the foyer, up the stairs. “How deliciously dreadful. Love the banister.”
“Thanks Freddie.”
He cupped a hand to his ear. “Could that be my exit line? I believe it is. You’re welcome, Justine.” He opened the door, and the lobby of Real World Tours lay on the other side. “I’ve set it up so that you exit through the front door. You didn’t want to see the whole ugly thing again, did you?”
“No, this’ll be fine.”
“Here you go.” He handed her the lantern and winked. “Hope you find an honest man—with a cute butt.”
“Thank you, Freddie.”
Freddie closed the door behind him, and she stood for a moment in the foyer, listening, but there was only the wheezing creak of an old house. She looked out the window. It was raining—Richmond rain, small and steady, nearly silent—nothing like the driving rains she remembered in Dallas, so loud sometimes, you had to shout to be heard over the racket. She climbed the stairs, and the smoke was stronger up here, burning her eyes and nose.
In Nemo’s room, the refrigerator stood open, completely empty. The earth poster had been torn from the wall, a corner still dangling from a pushpin. All the photographs were gone. The bedclothes lay on the floor. She noticed a tapping noise and saw that the pan on the refrigerator was no longer under the leak. A small pool of water stood on the floor, inching its way toward the outside corner of the room.
She tried to tell herself it was some kind of mistake, that she should go downstairs and tell Freddie to fix it, or that somebody’d broken into Nemo’s house and did this to his room. But she knew Nemo had done it. As far as he was concerned, she was dead and buried, an unwelcome ghost. She closed her eyes, fighting back tears, and Sarah’s death came back to her again, and she remembered the packet of letters tied up with green yarn. It had to be the old woman’s memory. “Where are they?” she asked her.
I read them every day, so I wouldn’t forget. Wade told me it was like wearing a path through the woods, so that I wouldn’t get lost so soon. He felt awful for leaving me
.
“Do you remember where they are?”
What, dear
?
“The letters.”
In a little box. A green metal box, behind the little door
.
Justine searched the room, but there was no metal box, green or otherwise, no little door. The old woman’s memories were a hopeless jumble.
It’s not in here. It’s in my room. Why would I keep my letters in here?
“Show me.”
She left Nemo’s room and headed for an open doorway at the other end of the hall. The smoke was stronger here, the room dark and shadowy.
That’s my room
.
Justine hesitated, then stepped inside.
There was no furniture, nothing on the walls. A sheet lay on the floor in front of the fireplace. Justine shone the light on the ashes. Dangling from the grate, was a strip of red leatherette—all that was left of the diaries. A chill went up her spine, and the lantern slipped from her grasp and clattered to the floor. She imagined him kneeling here, just where she stood, feeding her to the fire, page by page, hating her. She kicked savagely at the grate. Clouds of ashes rose up around her. “I’m not Angelina! I’m not! Goddamn you, Nemo!”
She knelt on the hearth, cursing and crying, wishing she could burst into flames. But she couldn’t. She’d never lived, had no life to give up, no soul to surrender. She twisted the sheet around her hands and buried her face in it, but it smelled of him, and she threw it across the room. “I love you, goddamnit!” she screamed, as if he were there to hear her. Screamed it again louder, knowing that he wasn’t.
And then she saw, in the corner, a tiny door, an access door to a crawlspace, no more than two feet high. She groped for the lantern and crept over to the door on her hands and knees. She tugged at the knob, but the door had swollen shut, so she planted a foot against the wall and tugged harder. It popped open, and she almost fell over backward.
She shone the light inside. Nothing but dust and cobwebs. She reached around and felt above the door and on either side. She started to crawl through the doorway, when the plywood beyond the threshold slid under her hand. She lifted it up, and there was a small green box. Inside, a bundle of some thirty or forty letters written on thin, plain stationery.
I didn’t want Elizabeth to find them and take them away from me
.
Justine took the bundle into her lap and untied the green yarn. They fanned out like a deck of cards. The handwriting on the envelopes was just as she remembered. They were already arranged in chronological order. Propping the lantern on top of the access door, she read them one by one.
They began in 2002 just before Angelina left St.Catherine’s. Angelina had evidently initiated their correspondence, tracking down Sarah’s address and inviting her to her graduation. Sarah couldn’t attend, but she thanked Angelina for remembering her and urged her to write again. Angelina did, telling Sarah all her problems apparently, for Sarah’s letters were full of sympathy and understanding.
Newman sounds like a very good friend
, she said more than once.
The letters were one or two years apart, longer lapses in the years when Sarah urged her to get drug counseling. In 2019, Sarah congratulated Angelina on her marriage and her son, and wished her every happiness. The very next letter, she told Angelina to ask God’s forgiveness, that His mercy was infinite.
Wade has forgiven you, and it’s now between you and the Lord
. Sarah didn’t tell her, Justine noted, to forgive herself.
And then, for a while, the letters were just the gossipy exchanges of old friends, all the crises past. Sarah was posted to the Vatican, and she talked about the politics of her job, asked questions about Wade and the kids, and told Angelina that she was delighted her life was going so well after all the trouble she’d been through.
In the late forties, however, the letters became more frequent, and the tone abruptly changed.
I shouldn’t be telling you any of this
, she said repeatedly, but told her anyway, because she needed to talk to someone, someone who wasn’t in the Church, for she couldn’t trust anyone inside. The Pope was holding mysterious, secret meetings, sheilded from the press. There were rumors he was diverting huge sums of Church money into something called
ALMA
, but no one was certain what it was, or what it meant, though there were many theories.
And then, of course, came the first public announcements of the Bin, and everyone knew. Sarah couldn’t believe that the Pontiff was actually involved in such a thing, that he was dragging the Church into it, though his involvement was still only a persistent rumor. Sarah’s letter of December 2049 concluded—
I have requested an audience with His Holiness. Pray for me. Pray for us all
.