She and Woo are in the basement of the Sapir Street Postal Station. Miskewitz, through Mayor Welby, had the postmaster let them in during the night so they could get in position and set up operations before any of the mail carriers, or even the branch supervisor, knew of police presence below their feet.
They brought with them two sleeping bags, a bag of convenience store food — potato chips, candy bars, packaged donuts — a double thermos of coffee, and all the electronics needed to listen to and tape any phone calls coming into or leaving the Bach Room. At 2 A.M., Miskewitz had a lineman setting the tap on the pole behind the bar. Lenore and Woo moved into the basement just before four.
Now Lenore is kicking herself for not bringing something to read. Woo brought a small paperback, without any cover illustrations, titled Aztec Tongue in big white block letters. She’d like to ask him if it’s fiction or some difficult textbook but she knows she won’t. She hasn’t given any thought to the question of why she allowed this dorkwhite, whom she doesn’t even like, to unbutton her blouse, control the situation. The fact that she didn’t set an initial, unforgettable example — inflict some physical punishment, draw a little nose blood — bothers her tremendously. Had it been Zarelli, his index finger would be in a splint right now and he’d be explaining to the wife and the lieutenant how he slammed his desk drawer on it.
She’s set things up in a tiny alcove at the back of the basement, away from the sidewalk-level windows covered with black wire grilles. There’s a small semi-room, set off from the rest of the cellar by two brick partitions, housing the old furnace, the water main, and the electrical board that’s updated with a box of circuit breakers. Lenore and Woo pulled an abandoned worktable into the alcove, dusted it off, and placed on it the receiver and tape machine.
Though the alcove is much roomier than the inside of the Barracuda, Lenore would much rather be in her car. She feels slightly claustrophobic in the cellar and she hates the thought of breathing in years of dust and soot. The idea of rodents doesn’t thrill her, but it’s below the cooped-up feeling on the list of things that annoy her. Ike, she thinks, would probably love it here, secluded, forgotten, dim, an extreme version of his side of the duplex. Ike dislikes bright lights, and, she suspects, has some latent agoraphobia brewing in his psyche. They’re exact opposites in this regard and she wonders if anyone has done a study of this in twins. We’re dizygotic, she thinks, two different eggs, and then she envisions herself and Ike as small grey rectangular magnets. Turned one way, they repel away from one another. Ends reversed, they slide together helplessly and mesh. She considers the fact that some days she dwells for hours on Ike’s lack of a girlfriend and considers women that she could introduce him to. Other days, she knows, his singleness pleases her and she wants him to stay forever alone, on the opposite side of her walls.
She’s dressed in her oldest black jeans, a teal cotton turtleneck over a light-thermal undershirt, black Reeboks, and a secondhand leather bomber jacket that she bought off a Cambodian with an eye patch at the refugee flea market one Sunday morning. The market was set up weekly out at the old train lot on Ironhouse Ave. It wasn’t until she got the jacket home that she found a small 3 x 5-inch drugstore notebook in the breast pocket. The notebook contained only three pages, all the others had been torn out. The pages were filled with foreign writing, Oriental-like, and from the way it was set on the page she guessed that it might be poetry. She debated for three weeks whether or not she should return it to the merchant. Her biggest argument against its return was her reasoning that he was just a salesman, just a broker, that he’d gotten it elsewhere and the notebook didn’t belong to him any more than her. She never discussed what to do with anyone. Not Zarelli, not even Ike. After a month, she went back one Sunday morning to the flea market and managed to locate the booth where she’d gotten the jacket. But the Cambodian with the eye patch was gone. In his place was a Nicaraguan selling old eight-track tapes. She purchased Vic Damone’s Greatest Hits for a quarter and gave it to Zarelli at work the next day. Zarelli shrugged and said, “He’s not Tony B, but he’s okay.”
She wishes she’d brought the notebook with her to the cellar. Most likely, Woo could translate it for her. Then she changes her mind and is pleased she didn’t think to bring it. Whatever her imagination has made those obscure symbols into would be wiped out the second Woo opened his mouth and changed them into English.
Woo’s eyes begin to flutter a bit, tiny mutant birds, and then they go into a series of full blinks. He stares up out of his army-green sleeping bag and Lenore thinks he looks like he’s been swallowed up to the neck by a sentient vegetable that’s invaded the planet.
“How long was I out?” he asks.
“Just a couple of hours,” Lenore says. “Sleep well?”
“Strange dreams,” he says through a yawn, and pulls his arms free from the bag to stretch.
“Join the club,” Lenore mumbles.
“What time is it?”
“Little before seven. Want some coffee?”
He nods, shimmies out of the bag, and climbs to his feet. “Yes, please.”
Lenore unscrews the thermos cap and pours a cupful. “It’ll have to be black,” she says.
“I normally drink it black,” he says, taking the cup, sipping, and burning his lips.
“It’s steaming,” Lenore says too late. “Sometimes these thermoses work too well, you know?”
Woo nods and dabs at his singed lips with his fingers. He’s dressed in a pair of old pleated chinos with slightly flared legs, a too-thin brown leather belt, a cotton baseball shirt with blue three-quarter-length arms and a picture of Ezra Pound silk-screened on the front, a fraying navy cardigan, and low-cut white sneakers void of a brand name anywhere on them. Lenore thinks he’s an illustration for a men’s magazine on “how not to dress for a date.”
“For breakfast,” she says, unrolling the top of a paper bag on the table, “we’ve got a choice of cream-filled chocolate cupcakes, mini sugar donuts”—she rummages—“chips, licorice, graham crackers …”
“Excuse me for saying so,” Woo says with a guilty smile on his face. He blows on his cup of coffee and continues, “But it surprises me that you eat these things. I mean, you’ve got such a stunning figure—”
She cuts him off. “It’s all metabolism. Don’t listen to any of the experts on this. Trust me. It’s metabolism. I’ve got a digestive system that won’t quit. I burn up food like you read about. It runs overtime. Just really aggressive.”
She pulls out a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips, tears it open, puts one in her mouth, and offers the bag toward Woo. He reaches in, takes a chip, bites into it, and, after a beat, makes an awful frowning and squinty face.
“So sour,” he says, his tongue caked with small pieces of chips. “And this early in the morning.”
“I thought you people loved sour-tasting food.”
Woo makes an exaggerated, gulping swallow and says, “Where did you hear this?”
“Just one of those things you hear.”
Woo makes small, pecking sips at the cup of coffee.
“That book you brought with you,” Lenore says, “that Aztec tongue book? What is that? That’s not a textbook, is it?”
“Not exactly, no,” Woo says. “It’s a very obscure novel from the early 1900s, I believe. Written by an Argentine who chose to remain anonymous. It’s been out of print for years. I picked this edition up, used, last year, and never got to reading it. It’s really a mystery novel, of a sort.”
“My brother loves mysteries. Reads them all the time. Nonstop. Like peanuts, one after another. I can take them or leave them.”