“Oh, I know so,” Frank said. “I don’t suppose you and I will have much time together after she comes back. I expect you and Mr. Vargas will go back to New York.”
I made my hands into such tight fists my nails cut into my palms. “That’s the plan.” I hesitated, then said, “You know that I love you, Frank. No matter what happens. No matter where I am.”
“I love you, too,” Frank said. “We’ll always have Paris.” He pressed his face to my shoulder and we sat there listening for what seemed like a hundred years. “Can I ask you something, Alice?” he said at last.
“Sure thing, Frank.”
“My mother hasn’t known you long and yet she named the only female character in her book Alice. There are a number of male characters and though she has known me for a decade, not one of them is named Frank. Why?”
( 26 )
FRANK ROLLED BACK the Oriental runner in his closet—the only nice rug in the whole house really—to show me the trapdoor underneath. It had hinges sunk flush with the floorboards and was fitted with a brass ring in a square brass housing like they use building yachts and Frank’s closet and maybe even the Titanic. Here’s where I confess that I never once rolled that rug back to vacuum underneath it.
“This is my place for special treasures,” Frank said. “I think it was built as a bomb shelter or somewhere to store sweaters or the family jewels or a place to hide out from the Nazis.” He opened the trapdoor and locked the hinges so the door wouldn’t come crashing down on our heads.
The cedar-lined cavity had a five-step ladder leading down to it and deep shelves full of boxes and bundles and things, all laid out with a curator’s zeal. “Can I borrow your flashlight?” I asked. Frank shook his head and flipped a switch under the lip of the space. A system of bright spotlights and footlights came on inside. I recognized it as the beacon from Frank’s closet that Mr. Vargas and I saw that night in the yard.
Frank and I peered into the cavity, our craniums almost touching in the middle. There was a low wooden stool at one end with a lidded cardboard manuscript box resting on it. I couldn’t quite make out what was scrawled across its top.
“That’s her book,” Frank said. “There, on the stool I stand on to reach things on the top shelves. Sometimes I sit on it, too, while contemplating the relics of my ancestors’ pasts and my own.”
“I’m not sure I believe it,” I said. “How did it end up down there?”
“You may remember that the night of the fire I’d been looking all over for my mother. That’s how I happened to find Xander’s box.”
“Yes.”
“Well, before that I tried my mother’s office door and it was unlocked. While searching for her I stumbled onto that box. I tucked it under my arm to investigate later and planned to return it the next day, but by the next day there was no desk to return it to. So I put it in here for safekeeping.” He hopped down into the space and I climbed down the ladder after him. During our six-step journey from one end of the cavity to the other Frank gestured to its laden shelves. “This is the top-secret repository of my childhood,” he explained. “As you are a student of all things Frank Banning, I give you carte blanche to examine whatever interests you.” He handed me the box Mimi had labeled Draft 2/11/10. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed now.”
“Going to bed? Where?” We were, after all, standing shoulder-deep beneath his closet floor, which was serving as Frank’s current bedroom while I slept in his bed.
“In your bed. Which is actually my bed. With your permission. Feel free to come to me with any questions.”
“I will,” I said. “Thanks.”
In less than a minute he was asleep and I was on that stool with the box in my lap. I took the lid off and saw the real title of Draft 2/11/10 typed on its cover sheet. Alice and Julian.
I turned the page over and read the paragraph: “My IQ is higher than 99.7% of the American public, but you’d have no way to know that since I fell against the curb. I’m a smart kid made dumb in the classic sense of the word: speechless, not thoughtless. Alice is a lovely person who isn’t much to look at, so my accident has made us perfect companions. I never had a friend before Alice.”
There I stopped. I took the box to Mr. Vargas.
MR. VARGAS RACED through the first few pages on the love seat in his room that used to be my room, then put the manuscript down and went to the bathroom. He came back with his eyebrows dripping.
“Are you okay?” I asked.