The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“What?” he calls.

“Let’s go!” I’m gathering all the newspaper printouts in my arms and dropping them everywhere instead. “Can I print this out real quick?”

“Sure,” the librarian says, voice mild with amusement. She clicks the mouse and the printer spits out a poorly scaled, fat-pixelled image of the spindle engraving. It’s from some outdated blog about the history of anarchism in Britain and the United States.

While I’m doing that, Tyler’s come over and is looking curiously at me.

“All right, there you have it.” The librarian grins. “Good luck.”

“Thanks!” I say, stuffing the image of the spindle engraving into the sheaf of papers under my arm and steering Tyler away with me.

I’m preoccupied as we scurry to the elevator. I have to tell Annie not to get on the barge. Anarchists are going to blow it up and kill her parents. I have to figure out how to find her again, but how?

“Wes?” Tyler interrupts my train of thought.

“What?” I say, irritated.

He looks surprised and hurt, like he’s not used to being the one to follow along behind me, rather than vice versa.

“Just,” he says, “I was looking at your camera. There’s nothing wrong with your focus. It works totally fine. It holds the settings and everything.”

“Are you sure?” I say, surprised.

“Positive.” He gives me a long, strange look.

The elevator dings open, startling us both. We step in and punch the button for the main floor. There’s no one else in the elevator, and we both stare up at the floor numbers lighting up one at a time over our heads.

“I watched some of your footage, while I was waiting,” Tyler says, without looking at me.

“Yeah?” I say, glancing at him sidelong.

He laughs once, through his nose. “Yeah,” he says.

The elevator arrives at the ground floor and whooshes open.

“Typical,” Tyler says before we step out.

“What’s typical?” I ask.

“You, you jerk,” he says with a lopsided smile. “Leave it to the documentary guy to film a truly transcendent state. I should’ve known.”

I eye him to see if he’s angry, or teasing me, but I can tell that he’s not. I think he’s just begrudgingly impressed.

“Well,” I point out. “She showed up for you first.”

He nods, unconvinced. “Shuttered Eyes,” he agrees. “Yeah, well, whatever. But if you’ll notice, each time, she was really there looking for you.”

My cheeks flush. I don’t know what to say to this. All I know is that if I don’t see her again, I’m going to . . . I’m going to . . .

I cannot accept the idea that I might not see her again.

“I can’t believe it,” Tyler continues. “All the time, I thought it would be the people there who’d be the most interesting for my film. I never once thought of catching a real—”

“Don’t say it,” I cut him off.

“Don’t say it? Why not?” he asks.

“Just don’t. It really bothers her.”

He laughs, tossing his head back.

“It bothers her! Oh, man.” Tyler is marveling at my weirdness, I can tell.

“What?” I say. “It does. She’s very sensitive about it. Wouldn’t you be?” I ask him as we weave our way toward the security desk.

“I guess I would,” he admits.

We open our bags for inspection, and the guard pages through my Xeroxes to make sure I don’t have any stolen copies of the Bill of Rights tucked in there or whatever, and then we’re outside in the summer afternoon sunshine.

“If I help you find her, will you tell me how you figured out what she really was?” Tyler asks me quietly. “Will you let me talk to her?”

“Um,” I demur.

It’s not that I don’t want him to meet Annie, it’s just that I’m not sure it’ll work. Will he be able to see her? Other than on film, I mean. Or through a mirror.

While I’m waiting for a response to come out of my mouth, my cell phone vibrates in my cargo shorts pocket with a text message received. I pull it out and squint at the screen in the glare of the sunshine.