The first time she’d ever seen Max, he had still been wearing the collar of his chosen profession. He removed it for the last time shortly thereafter. But he still had posture like a priest. The sweater vest and shirt buttoned to its very top button, this was a man you could tell your sins to. Perched at the edge of his chair, he didn’t notice that Liesl was watching him, because he was watching the room. That Liesl could see, there were three tiers of people in Max’s eyes. Those at the convention who, upon sight, warranted a light nod. Those who warranted a wave and a hello, and in very special cases, those who got Max out of his chair for a handshake and a conversation with heads tilted toward each other. She wondered about these hushed conversations. She reached the front of the line and ordered more coffee and two biscuits. She crossed back to the table with the purchases, interrupting one of Max’s tilted-head conversations.
He didn’t offer the identity of his guest, and she didn’t ask. He might have thought that she wasn’t interested. He might have thought that he was entitled to his secrets. He oohed over the cookies, saying he rarely gave in to temptation. That brought about an awkward pause. They had been off the floor for forty-five minutes, which was too long. There were still hundreds of people in need of a nod, a wave, or a handshake.
When they returned to the show floor, Liesl looked at Max for signs of nervousness. If he was lying about the Plantin, the fair would be a place for him to meet a potential seller or to cross paths with an accomplice. Max’s perpetually perfect posture made him undecipherable.
There was a display of Lutheran ephemera. A collector, to whom Max said hello, was writing a check for $25,000. The exhibitor noted the amount on a scratch pad and pocketed the check. The rules of modern commerce did not apply here.
“What if the check doesn’t clear?” Liesl said. They were walking away from the Lutheran.
“No one here is a stranger,” Max said.
Liesl nodded to an exhibitor who had once sold her a Gatsby with a perfect dust jacket.
“Don’t want to go say hello?”
“No.”
“You sometimes act as though you’re new to this, or outside this somehow,” Max said. “The book world is a small world.”
“We take care of our own, is that right?” Liesl said. “And that’s why I shouldn’t go to the police about the Plantin? I’ve heard it already.”
“That isn’t at all what I was talking about,” Max said. “And if it were, I’d tell you that I think you should go to the police about the Plantin.”
“What are you talking about?” she said. “All I’ve been hearing is that I shouldn’t do that.”
“You haven’t been hearing that from me,” Max said.
Liesl pulled him away from the table, away from where others could hear. “What do you mean?”
“That I agree you should go to the police.”
For a long moment Liesl considered throwing her arms around Max, who still looked as warm as a light pole as he expressed solidarity with her. Liesl thought she finally had a partner, but then gradually she calmed and led him to the corner of the exhibition floor where there were two chairs set up at an empty table, a vacant booth that had been set aside for an Italian seller who had canceled due to a bout of the flu. Liesl waited until they were seated and private, her tongue clenched between her teeth all the while.
“The book world is an insular place,” she finally said, using his own words against him. She was arguing against her own position.
“The Plantin was stolen. I’m sure of it now,” he said. “Whoever did this has broken the rules of our community.”
Why she had assumed he was the enemy she didn’t know. Or she did, but the reason made her ashamed. It was a kind of prejudice that came with not understanding the choices that someone had made. But they were not competitors. She knew he assumed himself to be next in line after Christopher, and that in no way interfered with her plan to retire.
“Well,” she said. “You ought to have told me that earlier. I’ve been the only one arguing this position.”
A dealer of regional literature interrupted their private session. Shook hands, reminded them of the location of his booth and that there was good money to be spent there.
“It wouldn’t make a difference,” Max said when they were alone again.
“The more on the side of reporting the theft, the better.”
“The other voices are louder,” Max said. “Louder and more influential.”
Liesl was waiting for a sign, hoping that the question of the missing books would resolve itself in her mind, but with every day that passed, with every conversation she had, the knot got more tangled. Liesl was dismayed at how uncertain she still felt, about the police, about all of it, her opinions so unused to having weight that they were still just vapor. Liesl and Max left the imperfect privacy of the empty booth and took a walk to the outer ring, deciding they would spend some time digging through the disorganization.
The pair were up to their elbows for forty-five minutes, Liesl passionately digging, become more and more consumed with finding a treasure for the library and less consumed with the troubles of the library as the time went on. Meditating on how that library had the power to shake her and soothe her in the same moment, Liesl smiled at a thousand-page recipe book for marmalade from 1909 which wasn’t appropriate for the library’s collection but made her fingers tingle nonetheless. Max came up with a copy of Der Eigene, a German-language magazine said to be the first gay periodical. Liesl was having fun. Christopher’s illness, the missing Plantin, the disappearing Miriam, it all receded when they shared congratulations on the addition to the library’s collection.
“There will be questions at the reception tonight,” Max said. “About Chris, about the Plantin.”
And then it all came back.
“I hadn’t intended to go. For that very reason.”
“Won’t look good.”
“Neither will the answers to those questions. In this case, people’s assumptions are less damaging than the truth.”
“What truth is that?”
“Let me ask you, what do you think of the theory that it was Miriam who took the Plantin?” Liesl said.
“Our Miriam? In the ill-fitting sweaters?” he said. “Is that your theory or Francis’s?”
“Why would you think it came from Francis?”
“You two have been talking a lot.”
“We have. But why can’t it be my theory?”
“Well. Is it?”
She was jumpy again; she was on the opposite side of the argument again.
“If I had to theorize,” he said, “Miriam is not where my mind would go.”
“Why, then, did she disappear into thin air?”
“How would I know?” said Max. “Perhaps she’s taken a lover.”
“Why do all men immediately leap to that?”
“Did Francis suggest that too?”
“He did at first, but he talked himself out of it.” She began to explain but stopped herself from going deeper on Francis’s theory. It felt like a betrayal of his confidence.
Max made a face like he was chewing on an especially sour lime. They had all worked together for decades, but it was the first time she sensed something broken between the two men.
“And this lover, is that why Francis told you not to report Miriam missing?” Max asked.
“You just said the same thing. That you think Miriam ran off with someone.” She was getting too worked up defending Francis. “Are you now saying that you think I should report her missing? What are you saying?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not. You’re trying to imply something.”
“That I don’t think it was Miriam.”
The books Liesl was carrying were getting heavy. Max didn’t offer to hold them.
“Yes, you’ve made that clear,” Liesl said. “A meek woman in ill-fitting sweaters could never be a thief.”
“Tell me,” Max said, “but don’t get upset. Have you wondered at all why Francis is so resistant to the idea of the police?”
“Because Christopher would be.”
Max looked around, and when he was sure there was no one within earshot, he went on.
“He doesn’t know what Christopher would do any more than you or I do. A piece of religious history is missing. A woman is missing. And Francis’s daily focus is making sure you don’t call the police.” He picked at an invisible speck of dust on his immaculate sleeve.
“You can’t suspect Francis.”
“Oh, yes I can. I can if he can suspect Miriam. I can be suspicious of someone who is acting suspicious.”
She waited before responding. Smiled at a woman who walked past, close enough to hear.
“He is not acting suspicious,” Liesl said.
“He’s impeding the investigation.”
She laughed.
“Then so is President Garber,” she said. “He insists, louder than anyone else, that we shouldn’t call the police. Are they in cahoots?”