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With my hood pulled tight and no makeup, I have a good chance of not being recognized.
We slide into the cab in front of the hotel and I pull my feet up onto the seat to hug my knees. It’s freezing out here and this cab is not much warmer.
‘You cold?’ Crush asks as the cab makes a sharp left on Park Plaza, pulling me toward him. He laughs as the inertia holds me against him. ‘I guess that’s a yes.’
I roll my eyes as I scoot back to my side of the seat. ‘You wish,’ I reply, my teeth chattering.
He smiles. ‘It would be my honor to keep you warm.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Why?’
The driver takes the curve onto St James Street and I hold onto the door handle to keep from sliding. ‘Because you’re making me feel weird.’
‘Weird? Like you may start discussing your toe jam at any moment or weird like you’re uncomfortable with this conversation?’
I narrow my eyes at him. ‘Both, and . . . weird like my insides are all tangled up.’
‘I know that kind of weird. I like that kind of weird.’
‘Of course you do.’
He smiles and my insides become even more knotted. The driver makes a right at Dartmouth then another quick left on Newbury, and I don’t bother fighting gravity. I allow myself to be pulled toward him and his expression is serious as he wraps his arm around my shoulder to keep me from sliding back. I hold back my tears as I lay my head on his shoulder and he lays a soft kiss on my forehead.
Ten seconds later, the cab pulls up in front of the McKim Building entrance on Dartmouth and I don’t want to get out. Reluctantly, I push myself up so Crush can pay the driver. Once we’re on the sidewalk, I’m feeling weird again, like I can’t look at him.
He places his gloved hand on the small of my back, then leans over and whispers in my ear. ‘I want to kiss you, but I want to do it when you’re least expecting it. Is that okay?’
I nod, pressing my lips together to suppress my grin. He plants another kiss on my temple and I try not to melt into the sidewalk. How sick is it that I love knowing he killed someone for me? I don’t know the answer to that question. All I know is that I’m feeling pretty high on Crush right now. I just hope I don’t crash any time soon. At least, not before that kiss.
The pavement in front of the library has been cleared and most of the snow is piled up around the curbs, street lamps, the steps leading to the library doors, and the concrete platforms holding up the statues on either side of the entrance. A pathway has been cleared down the center of the six steps and Crush grabs my hand as we ascend.
‘Watch your step. It could be icy.’
‘You could be icy.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
I shrug. ‘Just sticking up for the stairs. Somebody has to.’
There are three sets of glass entrance doors and he holds my hand tightly as he leads me toward the one in the center. Maintaining his grip, he uses his other hand to open the door for me. I enter first and he scurries ahead of me again to pull me farther inside, but I’m rooted in place.
‘Holy shit,’ I whisper as I stand in wonder of the entrance hall.
The floor, the walls, the ceiling, everything is covered in marble. On our left are a large bronze statue and a marble staircase leading up to another level. Directly in front of us is a marble staircase leading down through a marble archway into a vestibule, which, by the looks of it, is also covered in marble. On each side of the top of the staircase is a marble statue of a lion, each bearing a bronze dedication plaque.
‘This place is epic.’
Crush chuckles and I realize I said that aloud.
‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ I continue.
‘It’s a book lover’s paradise,’ he says with a proud look on his face.
‘Can we live here?’
‘Only if you do all the cooking.’
‘Fine by me, as long as you don’t mind eating muffin stumps for the rest of your life.’
He smiles and nods toward the staircase on our left. We climb the steps up to the mezzanine level and I pull him toward the marble railing so I can peer down on the entrance lobby from this level. The space is bursting at the seams with silence. If I get recognized and whisked away from this library today, it will have been worth it.
‘When was the last time you came here?’ I ask, ogling the mural on the wall opposite the railing.
‘A long time ago,’ he says, pointing at the mural. ‘This mural has been here since eighteen ninety-five. It’s a replica of a painting by a French painter whose name I can’t remember right now. But even the door in the center of the mural is a replica of the door in the painting.’
I follow him toward the archway on our left, trying not to roll my eyes. ‘Are you trying to avoid my question? How long has it been since you last came here?’
He sighs as we pass through the archway. ‘I haven’t been here since before I gave you the book?’
‘Why?’ I ask as he presses the call button for an elevator.
‘I used to come here almost every weekend with my grandfather before he died when I was ten. After he died, I didn’t have anyone to bring me. So, once I turned sixteen and got my driver’s license, this was one of the first places I visited.’ We step inside the elevator and he pauses to press the button for the third floor. ‘I saw the exhibit with the books my grandfather donated and there was no key in the display. That didn’t surprise me since his will said I could retrieve the key when I was eighteen. But . . . Jordan died a few months after that, and I never came back.’
We arrive on the third floor and the silence is even heavier now. I want to say something to lighten the mood, but all I can think is, That fucking sucks, and I’m sure he already knows that. When we enter the rare books lobby, I’m surprised to find that it looks like it hasn’t been updated since the fifties. The room is long and narrow, with oak study tables and card catalogs running the length of the space. There’s only one patron sitting at the far end of the row of tables. Midway down, a woman sits at a desk reading a hardbound book and I can’t help but smile. This is a place where books are treasured – books that hold the sweetly magical smell of history; books that crackle when you open them and sigh when you close them; books that weigh heavy in your hands, not just your heart.
‘Stay close to me and don’t touch anything,’ he says, pulling me toward a doorway that appears to lead into a very dark room. ‘There are surveillance cameras everywhere and you will be severely reprimanded if you touch something you’re not allowed to touch.’
We pass through the doorway and my breath catches in my chest. The room is dimly lit, probably to protect the books from UV damage. There are two levels of bookshelves surrounding the room, all enclosed in glass and dimly lit from within. A couple of glass cases in the center of the room display ancient books and manuscripts.
‘Many of the books in here are bound in animal skin.’ He lets go of my hand as he wanders toward the smaller display case on the other side of the room.
This gets me breathing again, and that’s when I smell it. It smells like the first time I opened up Black Box. My stomach clenches and suddenly the messenger bag I have strapped across my chest feels as if it’s holding lead bricks instead of a book and a wooden box.
‘It’s not here.’ Crush’s voice is barely louder than a whisper, but it’s so quiet in here, the sound of it instantly pulls me back to reality.
‘What’s not here?’ I ask, going after him to see what’s inside the glass case he’s peering into.
‘The entire exhibit. It’s been replaced . . . with original music scores by Mozart.’
‘Let’s go ask that lady out there about it.’ I grab his arm and gently pulling him away from the glass case.
Crush approaches the woman at the desk and she looks up from her book with a smile. ‘May I help you?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Can you tell us what happened to the . . . Slayer ex
hibit?’
Slayer? Is that his grandfather’s last name? Is that his last name?
The woman narrows her eyes at Crush, as if she’s sizing him up, and I wonder if she recognizes him. ‘The Slayer articles are part of the Jordan collection. They were rotated out two and a half years ago.’
I watch Crush to see his reaction to this news. He appears confused, and I think I know why. His grandfather told him to view the exhibit after his eighteenth birthday, but it’s not here. Not to mention the fact that the stuff his grandfather donated is now part of the Jordan collection.
‘Can you show us where the articles are now?’ Crush replies.
Again, she looks Crush up and down for a moment, then she turns her attention to me. ‘They’re no longer on display. Slayer requested the exhibit be put away on July 28, 2011.’
His eyebrows scrunch up in despair at this news. ‘The day after my eighteenth birthday,’ he whispers to himself, and the woman behind the desk narrows her eyes at him again.
‘Are you his grandson?’
‘Yes,’ I reply for Crush.
The woman smiles. ‘Just show me some identification and I’ll have a guard take you there.’
Crush shakes his head. ‘I don’t have identification. Well, nothing that will have my real name on it. I changed my name three years ago . . . the day after my eighteenth birthday.’
My mind draws back to the first day I returned to school after Jordan died. The whispers filled the corridors and followed me everywhere; how fitting my name was considering I was responsible for his death. I got in a lot of fights and my parents were forced to get me a private tutor for the remainder of my junior year and my entire senior year. It worked out in the end because the one-on-one attention helped me bring my grades up after Jordan’s death and it gave me more time to focus on music. Even with mediocre grades, I still would have gotten into Harvard by flashing my dad’s alumni status and donations. But I wanted to make it in on my own merit, which is just one of the reasons why I changed my name before my freshman year.
Mikki looks crushed by the prospect of not being able to see the articles in my grandfather’s exhibit. But the woman behind the desk makes no move to call a guard to take us to it.
