They put me up in a nice hotel and had me scheduled to do so many things I didn't have time to think about my problems. There were interviews, book signings, a visit to an advanced creative-writing class. Fine.
The night of my speech, I was sitting in the hotel room watching television. Suddenly I had such a panic attack that I ran out of the room, went downstairs and bought a pack of cigarettes to get me through the rest of the evening.
The problem was they had put me in a no-smoking room at the hotel and that was the only place I wanted to smoke. America has been so cowed by health Nazis in recent years that lighting up I felt as guilty as a fifteen-year-old. The guilt got so bad that I went to the window and tried to open it, thinking I'd stick my head out and blow the poisonous Winston into the already-ruined Jersey air. Unfortunately, the hotel was ultramodern and the room had all-but-sealed windows. The management thought it best to control your environment, whether you liked it or not. But I wanted real air. I managed to wrestle the window open enough inches to get my head and my hand out. Feeling quite accomplished, I smoked the cigarette down to the butt and flicked it, sparks flying, toward the parking lot. I slid my hand back into the room but not my head. It – I – was stuck. Tonight's feature speaker, full of wisdom and insight into the plight of the contemporary novel, was stuck halfway out a window on the fifth floor of the Raritan Towers Hotel.
In my terror, I kept thinking about all those people downstairs waiting. People who had come to listen and consider. If they only knew where the featured mouth for the evening was. Then I thought about someone coming up to get me and seeing me half-guillotined in that window . . .
The trapped rat inside took over and I battled until I was able to make it budge an extra few inches. When all of me was back in the room, I looked in a mirror and saw an angry red line down the side of my neck, the window's souvenir. Rubbing it hard, I tried to get some blood flowing there again, but then someone was knocking at the door and it was time to go.
The lecture hall was full – there must have been three hundred people there. Totally flustered by my war with the window and now all these attentive faces, I raced through the speech. There was a question-and-answer session afterward that I handled a little better. When it was over, what seemed like half the audience came up to get their books autographed. I left my notes on the podium and stood at the front of the stage, signing. It took about an hour.
When I was done, I went back to the podium to pick up the papers. Another green Post-it was stuck on top of them.
"Hi, Sam! What happened to your neck?"
The package arrived almost simultaneously with Ivan's next report. It was a small orange envelope addressed to me in Veronica's memorable handwriting. Inside was Stephen Mitchell's translation of The Book of Job. Nothing else.
It was the first time I had heard from her in days and I didn't know what to think. Life had been quiet since my return from Rutgers. I spent most of the time working on Pauline's book. Frannie and I spoke on the phone almost every day, but he hadn't been able to turn up anything of importance. The only fingerprints on the videotape were his and mine. The same with the Post-it notes. Because there were so few written words on them, clone in block letters, no graphologist could do an analysis. Frannie's friends with the Los Angeles police had canvassed Cadmus's neighborhood, but no one had seen a person on the front porch the day we were there.
When I told Frannie about what had happened after my speech, all he could say over and over was "Asshole!" Home seemed the best place to be, and other than a couple of visits from Cassandra and Ivan, I saw no one. Aurelio called once to ask how the book was going. The only thing I could think to say was, "It's movin' along." I wasn't about to tell that loudmouth what had been happening. If McCabe was right, I was relatively safe so long as I continued writing. I assumed Mr. Post-it was aware of what I was doing. But did he peek in the window to keep tabs on me? Sneak into the house when I was out and read what I had written?
I read Veronica's book in one afternoon and was awed by the beauty of the language, Job's brilliance at verbalizing his fears and anger in front of the Almighty. But why had she sent it to me? What was she trying to say? Besides loving the story, I couldn't help thinking she was using it as some kind of Trojan horse to sneak up on me. I wasn't wrong. A few days after it arrived, I received a postcard from her. The only thing written on it was a quote from the text, which I remembered immediately.
Remember: you formed me from clay . . .
Yet this you bid in your heart,
this I know was your purpose:
to watch me, and if I ever sinned
to punish me for the rest of my days.
You lash me if I am guilty,
shame me if I am not.
You set me free, then trap me,
like a cat toying with a mouse.
Why did you let me be born?
Did she see herself as Job? And I as God? I couldn't even coax my dog off a chair! The thought made me pick up the phone. She wasn't home. I left a message, saying, please call because we have to talk. Nothing. I waited two days and called again. Instead of her voice, she sent another card with another quote:
Is it right for you to be vicious,
to spoil what your own hands made?
Are your eyes mere eyes of flesh?
Is your vision no keener than a man's
Is your mind like a human mind?
For you keep pursuing a sin,
trying to dig up a crime,
though you know that I am innocent
and cannot escape your grasp.
Job or no Job, we had to talk. I left another message on her machine, saying I'd be at Hawthorne's bar in the city at a certain time and would she please meet me. All other things aside, I missed her. She had more secrets than the Turkish ambassador, and what little I knew now of her past gave me the willies. Still, I missed her. I sincerely hoped by talking we could find both common ground and reason to connect again.
The day I was to go into the city, Cass and Ivan showed up, both of them looking serious. When I asked what was up, Cass made a sign to Ivan. He handed her some papers and walked back outside.
"Dad, don't get mad, but I asked Ivan to do this." She held out the papers to me.
"What's this?"
"Have a look and then you can ask anything you want. If you want."
Veronica's name was at the top of the papers. Ignoring Cass, I read quickly. I had been chewing gum but my mouth stopped moving halfway down the first page.
"Why did you do this? Where did Ivan get it?"
She cringed, but her voice was defiant. "It's my fault, Dad. I asked him to find out whatever he could. Ivan's a good hacker – he can get into a lot of places."
"You're not answering my question: Why did you do it, Cassandra? It's none of your business."
"I don't care about her, Dad. I care about you, I've never, ever messed in your life. But . . ." Tears came to her eyes. Her face softened and for a moment she looked seven years old. "I don't like her, Dad. The minute I met her, I thought something was really wrong. Something was really off. You know me. I like most people. I don't care what they do. I don't care what they are. But I just really didn't like her, so I –"
"So you did this? What if I didn't like Ivan and did this to him after the first time we met? Would you have been angry? Would you have thought I was out of line? It's very wrong, Cass. If you don't like her, fine, we could have talked about it. But this is absolutely wrong."