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Hold it in your hand, and any door is every door.
Below those lines there was another message, written in a different script. Cassie gasped when she saw that it was a message to her:
Cassie,
This book is for you, a gift in thanks for your kindness.
May you enjoy the places it takes you to and the friends you find there.
John Webber
Cassie frowned, surprised and touched by the gift. She flicked through the pages again, stopping about a third of the way into the book where a single page had been given over to a sketch of a doorway. The doorway was penned in simple black ink, the door wide open, but through the opening Cassie saw what appeared to be a room in darkness, with a window on the far wall. Beyond that window was bright sunlight and a rich blue sky, the many colors of spring flowers in bloom among vibrantly green grass. Everything was sketched in black except the view from the window; that was drawn in full, glorious color.
Cassie closed the book, stroking the cracked leather.
Had she been so kind to Mr. Webber? Had he meant to give her the book that evening? Maybe he had taken it out of his pocket while she had been distracted by the snow, just before he had died?
She debated what to do for a moment, wondering whether she should call the cops and tell them about the book, both books. She could just see the younger cop rolling his eyes...“Some crazy person’s notebook he wanted to give to you...?”
“Stupid,” she muttered to herself.
Mr. Webber had wanted her to have it. She would take it as a memento of the nice man who had often kept her company at the end of the day. And she would take his copy ofThe Count of Monte Cristoas well; she would see that it got to a good home.
When she left the store a short while later, wrapped up in her old gray greatcoat and burgundy scarf and bobble hat, the sharp edges of the wind cut into her, but she didn’t notice, so distracted was she by the contents of the odd notebook. After only a few steps she stopped under a streetlight and pulled the notebook from her pocket, entirely unaware of the figure watching her in the shadows of a doorway across the street.
She flicked through the pages again: more text, lines seemingly drawn at random as if the pages could be taken out of the book and placed together in a different order to reveal some grand, secret design. In the very center of the notebook she saw that a hundred or more doorways had been drawn in neat rows right across the two pages, each of them slightly different in shape or size or feature, as varied as the doorways on any street. It was odd but beautiful, enigmatic and inviting, and Cassie wanted to pore over the pages and dream about whoever it was that had spent so many hours scribbling in the book. It felt like a treasure to her, this book, a mystery to occupy her mind.
She wiped snowflakes from the pages and slipped the book back into her pocket, then started on her way through the snow-silenced streets, heading for the subway three blocks away, her mind alive with images and strange words scribbled in black ink.
The figure in the doorway did not follow.
The Favorite Game
When Cassie reached home, she took Mr. Webber’s copy ofThe Count of Monte Cristoand found a space for it among the paperbacks on the bookcase at the end of her bed.
The bookcase was a map of her life: the books she had devoured as a child; books she had bought or picked up on her travels through Europe; the books she had read and treasured since living in New York. Her own battered copy ofThe Count of Monte Cristowas there, an old paperback that had originally belonged to her grandfather. Cassie remembered reading it in her grandpa’s studio back in Myrtle Creek, wedged into a beanbag in the corner as he had worked, the smell of wood and oil in the air as heavy rain beat the ground outside. She pulled the book off the shelf and flicked the pages, catching the ghost of a scent that made her heart crumple at the memories and emotions it conjured, the contentment and comfort of those days in her childhood.
She slid the book back into its place and pulled off her old sweater to dump it in the laundry pile. She caught her reflection in the mirror on the back of the door and regarded herself dispassionately. She was always slightly disappointed whenever she saw herself in reflections or photographs. To her own eyes she was too tall and too thin. She thought her hips were too narrow and her chest too flat, and her eyes were big and wide like a startled deer’s. She never wore makeup, because she hadnever really learned how to do it, and her blond hair was always flying off in different directions no matter how much she brushed it.
“You home, then?” Izzy called from the living area.
“Yeah,” Cassie said. She opened the bedroom door, pushing her reflection out of sight, and wandered through to find Izzy cross-legged on the couch, dressed for bed in an oversized T-shirt and pajama bottoms.
“How was the work thing?” Cassie asked. “Must have been good since you’re at home and in your pajamas.”
Izzy rolled her eyes wearily. “We went to a few places. Couple of guys tried to pick us up in the last bar we were in. This big guy tried to use his charm on me. He was horrible. All muscles and monobrow. He suggested that we go down to Times Square together and watch the lights.”
“Wow,” Cassie said.
“Right?” Izzy agreed. “Who the hell wants to go to Times Square? The only people interested in Times Square are tourists and terrorists.”
Cassie smiled, enjoying the sound of her friend’s voice and the distraction from her lingering sadness. The journey home on an empty subway train and through snow-smothered streets had felt long and lonely.
“I said that to him,” Izzy continued, as Cassie joined her on the couch. “‘Nobody cares about Times Square except tourists and terrorists.’ He acted all offended, like I’d said something awful.” She pulled a face, affecting a lower voice.“‘That’s so distasteful, you know terrorists kill people.’”
“That’s pretty special,” Cassie said, grinning.
“It kinda spoiled the mood, so we called it a night. Lucky too.” She nodded at the window, the snow still falling.
