But it was a gift because it was information. Freely given, at last. Although, mused Jill, she obviously could have given a hell of a lot more. She could have sat at the kitchen table and just told her in plain English what was going on, and how to find her way to her lost mother and father.
She used a thick-nibbed fountain pen and a precise hand to write, on the bottom of the card, “The work is never finished.”
What work?
She took a thoughtful sip of the martini and then a drag of her cigarette. Brian settled next to her.
“Great party, sis.”
“Thanks to you guys.”
He put his arm around her and gave her a quick hug. “You okay?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice roughened by the cigarette and singing. She nodded once, decisively. She felt strangely ready.
For what, she had no idea.
But her readiness took the form of lines of light. She would draw it from above.
A small, foreshortened figure in a pink dress, head a mop of dark hair, face unseen. Thin ephemeral lines extend into the night-fragrant yard in front of the woman, behind her, into the many-storied house, and into other dimensions, those she could not see, but which the reader would nevertheless infer because of the way she would draw them: the future.
And the past.
Megan sat on her other side, out of breath. “I couldn’t find him.”
“Find who?” asked Jill.
“The Walking Man.”
“The Walking Man was here?” asked Brian.
“Who the hell is the Walking Man?” asked Jill.
“He’s been following me and Abbie around at Tall Oaks,” said Megan. “He wears a fedora.”
“Oh,” said Jill. “What else does he look like?”
“Well … he’s medium-tall. Solid-looking; not thin, not fat. Reddish beard.”
“Cindy said that the cornet man was wearing a fedora,” Brian said. “Whoever he was, he was good!”
Megan said, “It’s not funny! Who is he? How did he know there would be a party here?”
Jill said, “He wasn’t your guy. He only had a bit of stubble.”
“A man can shave. What’s that in your hand?” Megan took the card from Jill. “Eliani Hadntz? You know her?”
“Do you?” asked Jill, amazed.
“Yes, of course. She works in memory research.”
“Like hell,” said Brian. “She designed the Game Board. The Device. It’s all in Dad’s papers.”
“She’s Gypsy Myra,” said Jill.
“Who?” they both asked.
Bitsy yanked at her father’s arm. Brian lifted her into his lap, where she writhed. “I’m hot. My tummy hurts.”
Megan felt her forehead. “My God, she’s burning up.”
At the emergency room two hours later, as everyone waited, miserable and anxious and quite tired from the party, Bitsy was wheeled to surgery to have her appendix removed.
And Bette, toward dawn, walked to Union Station through the still-dark, rain-cooled city. It would take her days to get there, but to her, it seemed like an hour.
Jill
THE COLLECTED POEMS OF ROSA HADNTZ
July 11, Serendipity Books
J
ILL READ A FEW
of the poems in the book Dr. Koslov had translated. They were evocative; rich; tragic, and joyful. Rosa Hadntz, Eliani Hadntz’s mother, had written them.
She closed the slim book thoughtfully, slid it beneath the counter, and made a note to order five more copies; she could easily hand-sell them to some customers she already had in mind.
Brian claimed that Dr. Hadntz had designed the plan for the Device, and thus the Game Board.
Jill had translated
her
Eliani Hadntz, whom she had seen twice—once, in Texas, in her previous timestream, and now, in this one, at her party—into Gypsy Myra.
Megan said she had met Hadntz. In person, in Cuba, with graying hair. They couldn’t all be the same person. Could they? Jill had not actually considered Hadntz as someone’s daughter before, as someone human. But Rosa was heartbreakingly human.
Jill had just returned from the hospital, where they had all taken shifts at Bitsy’s bedside to give Brian and Cindy breaks. They had caught Bitsy’s appendicitis in time, and she was recovering nicely. Whens was with his dad for the week.
Now, they were all playing catch-up. Brian was already juggling three behind-schedule jobs. Megan had gone to California on Monday morning and would not return until Thursday—tonight—and she had to go to New York for another meeting on Saturday. So, by default, Sunday was the day they’d all agreed they could Get Together and Talk.
The prospect of this discussion felt like a forty-pound weight on Jill’s chest. She couldn’t, simply couldn’t. They didn’t even suspect what she had done. From their point of view, if it were a business meeting, it would be called “Let’s Share Information and Hash This Out.” It would not be called, as she thought of it, “The Unfortunate Sequence of Events in Which Your Sister Jill Deprived You of Your Mother.”
But she had to do this, now that things seemed to be coming unglued for Brian and Megan too.
Lev Koslov, according to whatever Megan had overheard at the party, was involved in some kind of conspiracy. This conspiracy was probably at the heart of Jill’s life. She could ask Koslov about it, but that would probably only put him and his coconspirators on guard.
Jill didn’t think that the delicate translations in Rosa’s
Collected Poems
could be the work of an evil man. But, on the other hand, perhaps that was precisely what he wanted her to think, so that she would let down her own guard.
Koslov had said that Rosa had died in a concentration camp. So Hadntz had that burden too. According to some of these poems, Hadntz had, evidently, been saving people in Europe, when her own mother was murdered.
For all of its immense powers, the Infinite Game Board had its failings, and they too were immense.
Perhaps, if linked to human consciousness, it just reflected human failings.
Sighing, Jill locked the front door, tidied up, turned off the lights, and found a zip car at the kiosk on the next block that she could use to drive home in immediately. She was too tired to take the Metro, and tomorrow, Friday, was another big day at the Bank. If Bitsy’s recovery was on track, they’d planned to have their talk on Sunday, and wind up with a cookout.
Yeah,
thought Jill, turning onto her street, as the moon peeked through the treetops.
A nice little chat.
Brian
BRIAN’S NEW TOY
July 12
B
RIAN, UNCOMFORTABLE IN
his summer-weight linen suit and tie, drove around the block of Connecticut and M Street three times before he found a place to park. As he quickly fed the meter, he noticed that the driver who had been following him in a black sedan tried in vain to squeeze in thirty feet back from the opposite corner, failed, and turned off his engine anyway. Brian was impressed to think that he was important enough for the fellow to risk a pretty sure ticket. His tail wasn’t exactly subtle either. Who wore hats anymore? In fact—he looked again—he wore a homburg, not a fedora. Sam hadn’t worn hats, but had once explained the fashion difference to Brian. Homburgs were more formal, and their top crease and brim were fixed, unlike the more flexible fedora.
It was Friday afternoon, and it had been an exhausting week, made worse by his desire to glean everything he could from the notes before Sunday’s meeting with his sisters.
Brian reached behind the seat for his portfolio of drawings—the rest of the truck was so perpetually heaped with tools and trash that he always kept his portfolio there—slammed the door, and locked it. It was almost four, and he hated to be late for an appointment. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, and the roar of traffic and the smog he’d seen building in a gray band on the horizon earlier that day—less than precarbon-watch days, but still extensive—had now expanded and was gathering into a dark cloud, making it a familiar summer afternoon. He saluted in the general direction of the man in the hat and hurried down the street to the building that held the office of this project’s architect, J. M. Hamlin, AIA.
Precisely on time, he arrived in her cool, austerely impressive reception room. Jane, a small, trim woman, who wore the same pair of gold earrings every time Brian had seen her, stood, came around her desk, and shook his hand. They laid the plans out on the large table in her office and went over the changes. Brian pointed out that the three new cloister-type windows accompanying a wide, curving staircase would necessitate rather expensive structural changes, and Jane said she would discuss that with her client before finalizing that particular change. She smiled, walked him to the door, and Brian was back on the street precisely twenty minutes after he had gone in.
The short man in the homburg was standing next to the driver’s door of his truck, reaching up, pushing something or other into the place between the top of the door and the truck body. His car was no longer double-parked, but was down and across the street, still illegally parked too close to the end of the block. He must have driven around in vain all that time trying to find a parking place.
Brian broke into a run. The man looked up, and briskly walked down the sidewalk. Brian reached his truck and saw a rubber wedge on the pavement next to his door. That’s right, wedge the door open, stick in a wire, unlock it. And steal—what? Empty potato chip bags?
Enraged, he was climbing into the cab when a policeman, who had evidently been behind him, grabbed his arm.
“Not so fast.”
“What?”
“It’s too late.”
“That guy was trying to break into my car.” Brian shouted, pointing at the man, still walking fast toward the corner. Of course, he couldn’t risk running across the street in traffic—that would attract immediate notice, and a heavy fine for jaywalking. Brian knew, he’d gotten a ticket for it.
“Right,” said the cop.
“Look—”
“You look,” the officer said, getting out a ticket book. “The meter’s expired.”
“No it’s not. I put in enough for two hours.”
“Read the fine print on the meter. A twenty-minute limit after three
P.M.
, except on weekends and holidays. I marked your tire.”
“Okay, give me the ticket already.” The man was crossing the street with a mob of people.
The policeman wrote it up and slapped it in his palm.
Brian jumped into his truck, as the man got into his car. Ha! He couldn’t move; the light was red.
From his high vantage point, he followed the car.
He managed to get a little closer at the next light, and decided to hang back.
The car did not follow any kind of circuitous route, which rather disappointed Brian. Instead, he remained steady on M Street through Georgetown, passing Jill’s bookshop, and took a right on Foxhall Road. Although Brian still stayed well behind the car, there was not much traffic. The guy certainly must know he was being followed.
The car turned left on Reservoir Road, then hung a sharp right.
Brian found himself, to his great surprise, in the parking lot of the German embassy, a classy steel-and-glass structure, six stories high.
The car disappeared into an underground parking garage. Brian had no pass with which to open the gate. He backed up, pulled over to one side, jumped from his truck, and ran through the gate.
There was no sign of any activity in the dark, cool garage.
Brian trudged back to his truck. A security guard approached him. “Can I help you?”
“Yes. I was following a car whose driver tried to break into mine. He went into the garage. What can I do?”
“Turn around and leave.”
“I guess I can call the police.”
“You’re technically in Germany. Your police have no jurisdiction here. And frankly, I don’t like your attitude.”
“Are there surveillance tapes? I’d like to see who just drove in here.”
“Forget it,” said the guard, and walked away.
Cursing, but quietly, Brian got back into his truck and sat there, brooding. Absently, he reached over to see if he could find the bag of half-eaten potato chips he knew was there, somewhere.
He pushed yesterday’s jacket aside and was flabbergasted. That was what the guy was after. But how did it get here?
It was the Infinite Game Board.
He looked on his phone and saw that Jill was calling.
Jill
THE BREAK-IN
July 12
I
T WAS SIX-THIRTY
on a hot July Friday. Jill was weary when she stepped off the bus around the corner of her block. She set her mother’s old, scuffed leather briefcase on the sidewalk and closed her eyes for a moment to collect herself. She’d had a rough day. A lot of meetings, a lot of details, two important missed phone calls from Kumasi that she would have to follow up on this evening from home. Maybe the schools were making a difference, and they wanted to let her know?
Fat chance. More likely they were going to cause a civil war or something.
A whisper of air brushed her cheek and rustled the leaves of the oaks that lined the street. It was safe now to breathe in the scent of the Millers’ new-mown lawn and Alice Jenkins’s full-blooming Eleanor Roosevelt roses.
When she rounded the corner, the sight of a Metro police cruiser parked in front of her house broke her brief tranquility. Five or six neighbors stood on the lawn. Emmie’s au pair pointed at the house, then at the street, while the cop took notes.
She loped in awkward, sweaty haste toward her house. Manfred was lying on the front porch in front of the door, which was odd; Jill had left her in a fenced area of the backyard this morning. She jumped up and ran to Jill.
The officer turned when the au pair pointed and said, “That’s Jill.”
“Oh.” He was one of the joggers she’d met the day she moved in. This time he was in uniform, with a name badge. “
Detective
Kandell. Daniel, right?”
“Bad news, I’m afraid. Someone broke into—”
“I called the police,” said the au pair. Jill couldn’t remember her name. “It was only an hour ago. Really, I couldn’t believe it at first. Broad daylight, and—”