“That’s you, isn’t it?” the guard asked, pointing to her younger self. Isabelle nodded. “Where ...
where did you get this?”
“It was in your friend’s locker.”
Isabelle gave the older guard a confused look, but he was obviously as much in the dark as she was.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I was a big fan of Katharine Mully’s writing,” the younger guard said. “I recognized her when she came in. I wanted to get her to autograph one of her books for me, but I didn’t have any of them with me. So I slipped a note into the locker, asking her to stop by the security desk the next time she came in.
But then she ... well, died.”
“Mark,” the older guard said. “If you’re telling me you went into that locker, I’m going to—”
“No way. I waited the ninety days. But then I stashed what was in the locker. I figured someone was going to come for it someday. It was like one of her stories,” he added, looking to Isabelle for support.
“You know the way she talked about everything being a part of a pattern and how it all comes together someday? Like in the story ‘Kismet,’ when the two pen pals finally meet, even though one of them’s been dead for twenty years.”
“Kismet,” Isabelle repeated.
He nodded. “Fate. That’s what this is, my hanging on to that stuff and you finally showing up here five years later to collect it. Kismet.”
“You mean, you’ve got what she left for me?” Isabelle said.
Mark nodded. “It’s in my own locker. Hang on a sec and I’ll get it for you.” When he left the office, the older guard turned to Isabelle. “I want to assure you,” he said, “that what Mark did is completely against company policy.”
“You won’t hear me complaining,” Isabelle told him.
She realized that the younger guard would have gone through this mysterious legacy that Kathy had left her, but she was so relieved to actually be getting whatever it was that she couldn’t muster up any anger against him.
“He’s not going to get into trouble, is he?”
“Well, strictly speaking, he should have turned in whatever he found in that locker. Our policy is quite clear on that.”
“But then I wouldn’t be getting it now.”
“Yes, well ...”
The conversation didn’t go any further because the other guard returned at that moment, carrying a plastic shopping bag. From it he took two flat parcels, each wrapped in brown paper and taped closed.
Neither appeared to have been opened.
“This is all there was in the locker,” Mark said. “These two packages and the photograph lying on top of them.”
Isabelle ran a finger along the seam of one of the pieces of tape, unable to believe that he’d kept them as long as he had without ever looking inside. “You didn’t open them?” she asked.
“I couldn’t bring myself to. It’s like she entrusted me to take care of them.” He shrugged. “I know that sounds stupid, but you have to understand. I was going through a really rough time when I first started reading her work. I never got the chance to meet her, but those stories pulled me through. It’s like she was my friend, and you don’t pry into your friends’ private concerns; you wait for them to share them or not.”
Isabelle moved her hand across the surface of one of the parcels. She could tell what they were, simply from their shapes. One was a book. The other, the parcel that lay against her palm, was a painting. She could feel the give of the canvas under the weight of her hand.
“You’re really amazing,” she told the younger guard. “I think you’ve just restored my faith in the basic goodness of humanity.”
“See?” Mark said. “It really is fate. That’s what Mully’s stories did for me.”
Isabelle turned to the older guard. “So it’s okay if I take these with me?” He hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Oh hell. Why not. Just don’t tell anybody how you got them.”
“Thanks—both of you.” Isabelle replaced the parcels in the plastic bag. “Don’t forget this,” Mark said, handing her the photograph.
Isabelle looked at it. Her memories didn’t need keepsakes to jump-start them.
“Why don’t you keep it,” she said.
“Really?”
“It’s the least I can do for you. Thanks again.”
She shook hands with both of them and left the office, the plastic bag clutched against her chest. It was an incredible coincidence how things had worked out, she thought as she walked across the bus terminal toward the exit. Or maybe it truly had been kismet and Kathy’s magic hadn’t entirely deserted her after all.
XI
Rolanda couldn’t stop dreaming about the strange young girl who had appeared so mysteriously in the Foundation’s office yesterday evening, appeared and then just as mysteriously vanished. The dream was as odd as the girl herself had been. It consisted solely of Cosette sitting on the edge of Rolanda’s bed, staring at her. Whenever Rolanda woke up and looked, the end of the bed was empty—which was how it should be, of course. Yet no sooner would she drift back into sleep again than the dream would return.
Finally Rolanda got up and decided to finish the financial report she’d been working on last night. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well make herself useful.
She brewed herself a strong cup of coffee in her own kitchen, then took it downstairs. She froze at the door of the office, and not simply because of the odd smell in the air. Her gaze fixed on the small figure curled up on the sofa. Cosette was still wearing the sweater and shoes she’d gotten from Rolanda earlier and she was using the arm of the sofa as a pillow. Her hands were clutched close to her thin chest, her torso and lower limbs forming a tight Z.
Rolanda slowly walked over to her desk and set down her coffee. Her hands were trembling and she spilled some of the dark liquid on one of the file covers, but she didn’t bother to mop it up. All she could do was stare at her mysterious visitor and wonder at the odor that permeated the room. Finally she went into Shauna’s office, where she collected a blanket. Returning to where Cosette was sleeping, she laid the blanket over the girl.
“I’m not asleep,” Cosette said.
Rolanda’s pulse skipped a beat. Slowly she sat down on the coffee table in front of the sofa. What are you doing here? she wanted to ask. How did you get in? But all she said was “I guess the sofa’s not all that comfortable, is it? I’ve got a bed upstairs that you can sleep in if you like.”
The girl regarded her with a solemn gaze. “I can’t dream, you know.” The abrupt shift in conversation didn’t phase Rolanda. She was used to it in this place.
“Everybody dreams,” she said. “You just don’t remember yours, that’s all.”
“Then why can’t I paint?” Cosette asked.
“I’m not sure I get the connection.”
Cosette sat up and pulled a still-wet canvas out from under the sofa. Turpentine, Rolanda thought when she saw it. That was what the odd smell was that she’d noticed earlier. She hadn’t been able to place it before because it was so out-of-place here.
“Look at this,” Cosette said. “It’s awful.”
Rolanda would have chosen the word primitive to describe it. In darkened tones of blue and red and purple, Cosette had rendered a rough image of a woman sleeping in a bed. The perspective was slightly askew and the proportions were off, but there was still a power about the simple painting, a sense of brooding disquiet that was completely at odds with the artist’s obvious limitations in terms of technique.