April 3
THE AIR IS SHARPER at the Poughkeepsie station than it was at Grand Central Station, but the sun is out and melting the last of the winter-long snow on the platform. With a cohort of students discussing skiing trips to Europe, internships at the Guggenheim, and viral zoonoses, I walk over the footbridge and through the turnstiles, the churchlike 1920s waiting room, and out to the curbside, where a woman a few years older than I is waiting in a black bodywarmer by a hybrid Chevrolet and holding a board for DR I. FENBY. Her foamy hair is dyed auburn but the gray is showing through, and her turquoise-framed glasses only heighten her sickly pallor. An unkind describer might refer to her face as like a party nobody’s turned up to. “Good morning,” I tell her. “I’m Dr. Fenby.”
The driver tenses: “You’re Dr. Fenby? You?”
Why the surprise? Because I’m black? In a campus town in the 2020s? “Ye-es … There’s no problem, I trust?”
“No. No. No. Climb in. That’s all the luggage you got?”
“I’m only a day-tripper.” Still puzzled, I get into the Chevrolet. She climbs in behind the wheel and puts on her seatbelt. “So it’s up to Blithewood campus today, Dr. Fenby?” Her voice is stippled with bronchial issues.
“That’s right.” Did I misgrade her reaction just now? “Drop me off by the president’s house, if you know it.”
“Not a problem. I must’ve driven Mr. Stein up and down a hundred times. Is it the president you’re visiting today?”
“No. I’m meeting … someone else.”
“Right.” Her driver ID tag reads WENDY HANGER. “Off we go, then. Chevrolet: ignition.” The car turns itself on, the indicator blinks, and we pull away. Wendy Hanger looks jumpy on her ID photo, too. Maybe life’s never allowed her to lower her guard. Maybe she’s just clocked up a fourteen-hour shift. Maybe she just drank too much coffee.
We pass parking lots, a tire-and-exhaust fitters, a Walmart, a school, and a plastic moldings unit. My driver is the silent type, which suits me fine. My thoughts go back to last night’s meeting held in the gallery at 119A. Unalaq, the local, arrived before me; ōshima flew up from Argentina; Arkady, able to travel more freely now that he is eighteen, came over from Berlin, Roho from Athens, and L’Ohkna from Bermuda. It’s been years since we were all gathered in the same place. Sadaqat submitted to an Act of Hiatus and we began. My five colleagues listened as I set out the facts of Elijah D’Arnoq’s visit two nights ago to my Kleinburg house, his wish to defect, and the proposed Second Mission. Naturally, they were all skeptical.
“So soon?” asked Roho, peering over a canopy of interlaced fingers as slim, dark, and bony as the rest of him. Smooth-shaven, Egyptian-bodied Roho looks designed to slip through narrow spaces nobody else would even think of. He’s young for an Horologist, on only his fifth resurrection, but under ōshima’s tutelage is becoming a formidable duelist. “The First Mission was five years in the planning, and it ended in disaster. To plan a Second Mission in a matter of days would be …” Roho wrinkles his nose and shakes his head.
“D’Arnoq makes it sound all too easy,” remarked Unalaq. Her first life as an Inuit in northern Alaska dyed her soul indelibly with the far north, but her current midthirties body is pure Boston Irish redhead, though with skin swarming with so many freckles that her ethnicity is far from obvious. “Far too easy.”
“We appear to agree,” said ōshima. ōshima is one of the oldest Horologists in both his soul, dating back to thirteenth-century Japan, and body, dating back to 1940s Kenya. He dresses to accentuate what Roho calls his “unemployed jazz drummer” look, in an old trenchcoat and shabby beret. In a pyschoduel, however, ōshima is more dangerous than any of us. “D’Arnoq’s proposal has the word ‘trap’ written all over it. In flashing neon.”
“But D’Arnoq did let Marinus scansion him,” remarked Arkady. In stark contrast to his last, East Asian self, Arkady’s soul now occupies a big-boned, gangly, blond, acne-prone, Hungarian male body whose teenage voice is not quite settled. “And the self-disgust, the grief about the Brazilian kid,” Arkady double-checks with me, “you did locate them, in his present-perfect memory? And you’re sure they were genuine?”
“Yes,” I conceded, “although they could be implanted memories. The Anchorites would know that we wouldn’t take a defector at face value without a frame-by-frame scansion. It’s perfectly possible that D’Arnoq volunteered to be turned against the Shaded Way by Pfenninger himself, so that D’Arnoq is a true believer in his own false defection …”
“All the way to another firing squad in the Chapel,” agreed ōshima, “where Pfenninger would redact D’Arnoq’s artificial remorse and psychoslay the Horologists it lured there. I have to admit, it’s clever. It sounds like a Constantin ploy.”
“My vote would be no.” L’Ohkna is residing in a pale, balding, and puffy Ulsterman’s body in its midthirties. L’Ohkna is the youngest Horologist, having been found by Xi Lo in a New Mexico commune in the 1960s during his first resurrection. While L’Ohkna’s psychovoltage is still limited, he has become the principal architect of the Deep Internet, or “Nethernet,” and his dozens of aliases are being fruitlessly hunted by every major security agency on earth. “One misstep and Horology dies. Simple as.”
“But isn’t the enemy taking a big risk, too?” asked Unalaq. “Turning one of their own strongest psychosoterics against the Anchorites and the Blind Cathar?”
“Yes,” agreed ōshima, “but they know what they’re doing. They need to offer us a shiny prize and a juicy bait. But tell us, Marinus: What are your thoughts about this unexpected overture?”
“I think it’s an ambush, but we should accept it anyway, then, between now and the Second Mission, engineer a means of ambusing the ambush. We’ll never win the War by force. Every year, we save a few, but look at Oscar Gomez, snatched from a secure unit headed by one of my own students. Social media flag up active chakras before we can inoculate them. Horology’s drifting towards irrelevance. There aren’t enough of us. Our networks are fraying.”
Arkady broke the gloomy silence: “If you think this, so must the enemy. Why would Pfenninger risk giving us access to the Blind Cathar when he can stalemate us to death?”
“Because of his cardinal vice: vanity. Pfenninger wants to annihilate Horology in one glorious act of slaughter, so he’s offering us, his desperate enemy, this trap. But it’ll also give us a narrow window of time inside the Chapel. It won’t come again.”
“And what do we do with that narrow window of time,” countered L’Ohkna, “apart from being butchered, body and soul?”
“That,” I confessed, “I cannot answer. But I heard from someone who may be able to. I didn’t dare refer to this outside 119A, but now we’re all here, lend an old friend your ears …” I produced an ancient Walkman and inserted a BASF cassette.
WENDY HANGER’S FINGERS drum on the wheel while four lanes of traffic cross the intersection. She has no ring on her finger. The light turns green, but she doesn’t notice until the truck behind us blasts its horn. She pulls off, stalls, mutters, “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Chevrolet, ignition!” We drive off, past a big Home Depot, and soon we’ve left Poughkeepsie behind. I ask, “How long to Blithewood?”
“Thirty, forty minutes.” Wendy Hanger puts a nicotine gum stick into her mouth and her sternocleidomastoideus ripples with every chew. The road winds between and under trees. Their buds are on the cusp of opening. A sign says RED HOOK 7 MILES. We overtake a pair of cyclists, and Wendy Hanger musters the courage: “Dr. Fenby, could I … uh, ask you a question?”
“Ask away.”
“This might sound like I’m outta my freaking tree.”
“You’re in luck, Ms. Hanger. I’m a psychiatrist.”
“Does the name ‘Marinus’ ring any bells?”
I hadn’t seen that coming. We don’t hide our true names, but neither do we advertise them. “Why do you ask?”
Wendy Hanger’s breathing is ragged. “Dunno how I knew it, but I knew it. Look, I—I—I’m sorry, I gotta pull over.” Around the next bend there’s a timely rest area with a bench and a view of woodland sloping down to the Hudson River. Wendy Hanger turns around. She’s sweating and wide-eyed. Her dolphin air freshener swings in diminishing arcs. “Do you know a Marinus—or are you Marinus?”
The cyclists we passed not long ago speed by.
“I go by that name in certain circles,” I say.
Her face trembles. It’s scarred with childhood acne. “Ho-ly crap.” She shakes her head. “You could hardly’ve been born yet. Jeez, I really need a smoke.”
“Don’t take your stress out on your bronchial tubes, Ms. Hanger. Stick to the gum. Now. I’m overdue an explanation.”
“This isn’t”—she frowns—“this isn’t some kinda setup?”
“I wish it was, because then I’d know what was happening.”
Suspicion, angst, and disbelief slug it out in Wendy Hanger’s face, but no clear winner emerges. “Okay, Doctor. Here’s the story. When I was younger, in Milwaukee, I went off the rails. Family issues, a divorce … substance abuse. My stepsister booted me out, and by the end, moms were, like, steering their kids across the road to avoid me. I was …” She flinches. Old memories still keep their sting.
“An addict,” I state calmly, “which means you’re now a survivor.”
Wendy Hanger chews her gum a few times. “I guess I am. New Year’s Eve 1983, though, the holiday lights all pretty—Jeez, I was no survivor then. I hit rock bottom, broke into my stepsister’s house, found her sleeping pills, swallowed the entire freakin’ bottle with a pint of Jim Beam. That movie The Towering Inferno was on, as I … sank away. You ever see it?” Before I can answer, a sports car storms by and Wendy Hanger shudders. “I woke up in the hospital with tubes in my stomach and throat. My stepsister’s neighbor had seen the TV on, come over, and found me. Called an ambulance in the nick of time. People think sleeping pills are painless, but that’s not true. I’d no idea a stomach could hurt that much. I slept, woke, slept some more. Then I woke in the geriatric ward, which totally freaked me out ’cause I thought I’d aged,” Wendy Hanger does a bitter laugh, “and been in a coma for forty years, and was now, like, ancient. But there was this woman there, sitting by my bed. I didn’t know if she was staff or a patient or a volunteer, but she held my hand and asked, ‘Why are you here, Miss Hanger?’ I hear her now. ‘Why are you here, Wendy?’ She spoke kinda funny, like with an accent, but … I don’t know where from. She wasn’t black, but wasn’t quite white. She was … kind, like a … a gruff angel, who wouldn’t blame you or judge you for what you’d done or for what life’d done to you. And I—I heard myself telling her things I …” Wendy Hanger gazes at the backs of her hands, “… I never told anyone. Suddenly it was midnight. This woman smiled at me and said, ‘You’re over the worst. Happy New Year.’ And … I just freakin’ burst into tears. I don’t know why.”
“Did she tell you her name?”
Wendy’s eyes are a challenge.
“Was her name Esther Little, Wendy?”
Wendy Hanger breathes in deep: “She said you’d know that. She said you’d know. But you can’t have been more than a girl in 1984. What’s going on? How … Jeez.”
“Did Esther Little give you a message to give to me?”
“Yes. Yes, Doctor. She asked me, a homeless, suicidal addict whom she’d known for all of, like, two or three hours, to pass on a message to a colleague named Marinus. I—I—I—I asked, ‘Is “Marinus” like a Christian name, a surname, an alias?’ But Esther Little said, ‘Marinus is Marinus,’ and told me to tell you … to tell you …”
“I’m listening, Wendy. Go on.”
“ ‘Three on the Day of the Star of Riga.’ ”
The world’s hushed. “Three on the Day of the Star of Riga?”
“Not a word more, not a word less.” She studies me.
The Star of Riga. I know I’ve known that phrase, and I reach for the memory, but my fingers pass through it. No. I’ll have to be patient.
“ ‘Riga’ meant nothing,” Wendy Hanger chews what must now be a flavorless lump of gum, “back in my hospital bed in Milwaukee, so I asked her the spelling: R-I-G-A. Then I asked where I’d find this Marinus, so I could deliver the message. Esther said no, the time wasn’t right yet. So I asked when the time would be right. And she said,” Wendy Hanger swallows, her carotid artery pulsing fast, “ ‘The day you become a grandmother.’ ”
Pure Esther Little. “Many congratulations,” I tell Wendy Hanger. “Granddaughter or grandson?”
She looks more perturbed by this, not less. “A girl. My daughter-in-law gave birth in Santa Fe, early this morning. She wasn’t due for another two weeks, but just after midnight, Rainbow Hanger was born. Her people are hippies. But, look, you gotta … I mean, I thought Esther maybe had on-and-off dementia, or … Jeez. What sane person’d beg such a wacko favor off of anyone, least of all an addict who’d just swallowed a hundred sleeping pills? I asked her. Esther said the addict in me had died, but that the real me, she’d survived. I’d be fine from now on, she said. She said the ‘Riga’ message and its due date were written in permanent marker, and on the right day, years from now, Marinus’d find me, but your name’d be different and—” Wendy Hanger’s sniffling and her eyes are streaming. “Why’m I crying?”
I hand her a packet of tissues.
“Is she still alive? She’d be, like … ancient.”
“The woman you met has passed on.”
The newborn grandmother nods, unsurprised. “Pity. I’d’ve liked to thank her. I owe her so much.”
“How so?”
Wendy Hanger looks surprised, but decides to tell me. “By and by, I fell asleep, and didn’t wake until morning. Esther had gone. A nurse brought me breakfast, and said they’d be moving me to a private room later. I said there must a mistake, I didn’t have insurance, but the nurse said, ‘Your grandmother’s settling your account, honey,’ and I said, ‘What grandmother?’ The nurse smiled like I was concussed and said, ‘Mrs. Little, isn’t it?’ Then, later, in my private room, a nurse brought a … like a black zip-up folder. In it was a Bank of America card with my name on it, a door key, and some documents. These,” Wendy Hanger heaves an emotional sigh, “turned out to be the deeds to a house in Poughkeepsie. In my name. Two weeks later I was discharged from the hospital in Milwaukee. I went to my stepsister’s, apologized for trying to kill myself on her sofa, and said I was heading east, to try to, y’know, make a fresh start, where no one knew me. I think my stepsister was relieved. Two Greyhound bus rides later, I walked into my house in Poughkeepsie … A house that a real live fairy godmother had apparently given me. Next thing I knew, forty years or more flew by. I still live there, and to this day my husband believes it was a gift from an eccentric aunt. I never told no one the truth. But every single time I turned my key in the lock, I thought of her, I thought, ‘Three on the Day of the Star of Riga,’ and pretty much every hour since I learned my daughter-in-law was pregnant, I’d wonder if I’d run into a Marinus … This morning, holy crap, was I a mess! The day I become a grandmother. My husband told me to stay at home, so I did. But Carlotta, who runs the cab company for us these days, deviced to say that Jodie’d twisted her ankle and Zeinab’s baby was running a fever, so please, please, please, would I go to the station and pick up Dr. I. Fenby? And, y’know, there’s no reason why you’d be Marinus, but when I saw you I …” she shakes her head, “… knew. That’s why I was kinda spooked. Sorry.”
Dappled sunshine shivers. “Forget it. Thank you.”
“The Riga message. Does it make sense?”
I should be careful. “Partially. Potentially.”
Wendy Hanger considers criminal networks, the FBI, The Da Vinci Code—but smiles, shyly. “Way, way over my head, hey? Y’know, I feel … lighter.” She dabs her eyes with her wrists, notices the splodges of makeup, and checks in the mirror: “Holy crap, it’s the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Can I just, like, fix myself?”
“I’ll take the air, you take your time.” I get out of the car and walk over to the bench. I sit down, gaze over the stately Hudson River at the Catskill Mountains, egress, transverse back to the car, and ingress into Wendy Hanger. First I redact everything that’s happened since she pulled over. Then I trace the memory cord back forty-one years to a Milwaukee hospital. Redacting memories of Esther hurts, but it’s for the best. The messenger will forget the message she’s carried for so long, and everything else she just told me. At odd moments she may fret over a blank in her memory, but soon a Pied Piper thought will come dancing along and her untrained mind will follow …
WENDY HANGER SETS me down at the daffodil-clustered roundabout on Blithewood’s campus, just below the president’s ivy-veined house. “That was a pleasure, Iris.”
“Thanks so much for the guided tour, Wendy.”
“I like to show the place to folks who’d appreciate it, specially on the first real day of spring.”
“Look, I know my assistant paid by charge card but”—I hand her a twenty-dollar bill—“buy a bottle of something silly to celebrate your life as a granny.” She hesitates, but I press it into her hand.
“That’s generous of you, Iris. I will, and my husband and I’ll drink to your health. You’re sure you’re good for the trip back?”
“I’m good. My friend’s driving us back to New York.”
“Have a great meeting, then, and an excellent day, and enjoy the sunshine. The forecast’s patchy for the next few days.” She pulls away, waving, and is gone. I hear myself subaddressed in ōshima’s plangent tones: Looking for your Sorority House?
I try to spot him, but see only students crossing the well-tended lawns with armfuls of folders and bags. Four men are carrying a piano. ōshima, I just received a sign from Esther Little.
The front door of the president’s house opens and ōshima, a slight figure with hands buried deep in his knee-length mugger’s hoodie, emerges. What sort of sign?
A mnemocrypted key, I subreply, walking towards the house. Wet catkins fur the twigs of a willow. I haven’t solved it yet, but I will. Is anyone at the cemetery? I unbutton my coat.
Only squirrels, humping and jumping, ōshima flips back his hood and angles his white-whiskered, septuagenarian Kenyan face to soak up the sun, until a quarter-hour ago. Take the path leading up to your left from where I’m standing.
I pass within a few yards. Anyone we know?
Go and see. She’s wearing a Jamaican head-wrap.
I follow the path: What’s a Jamaican head-wrap?
ōshima shuts the door behind him and walks the other way. Holler if you need me.
UNDERFOOT, OLD LEAVES crackle and squelch, while overhead, brand-new leaves ooze unbundling from swollen buds and the wood is Bluetoothed with birdsong. At the base of a trunk the girth of a brontosaurus’s leg, I find a gravestone. Here’s another, and another smothered by ivy. Blithewood’s campus cemetery, then, is not a regimented matrix of the dead but a wood whose graves are sunk between, and nourish the roots of, these pines, cedars, yews, and maples. Esther’s glimpse was precise: Tombs between the trees. Rounding a dense holly tree I come across Holly Sykes, and think, Who else? I haven’t seen her since my visit to Rye, four years ago. Her cancer is still in remission but she looks gaunter than ever, all bone and nerve. Her head-wrap is the red, green, and gold of the Jamaican flag. I scuff my feet to let her know someone’s coming, and Holly slips on a pair of sunglasses that conceal much of her face. “Good morning,” I venture.
“Good morning,” she echoes neutrally.
“Sorry to bother you, but I was looking for Crispin Hershey.”
“Right here.” Holly gestures at the white marble stone.
CRISPIN HERSHEY
WRITER
1966–2020