 CHAPTER 3 (section 3) copyright © 2001, S. Y. Affolee The only way anyone could get to the second floor of the library was by climbing the narrow spiralling staircase to the balcony that rimmed the upper shelves like an unsteady wooden catwalk. The very top shelves could be reached by climbing the rolling ladder that was attached to the shelves. The tract for the ladder ran through all the shelves, completing itself into an oval. Simone climbed on the ladder, looking down from the top near the ceiling. It was a long drop to the bottom. She felt slightly dizzy and turned her head back to the shelves. “It’s a long way down,” Adrian said unnecessarily. He was on the balcony examining the bottom shelves. The kittens had bravely followed them up and now they were playing in the empty shelves by pouncing in and out and chasing each others’ tails. “Tell me about it,” Simone replied, clutching one of the shelves and pushing herself over. The ladder rolled onto the next empty shelf. The black kitten who had grown quite attached to Adrian tugged on his pant leg again and was rewarded with a lift to his shoulder. He looked up at Simone with curious yellow eyes and meowed. “You got that right,” she muttered to the animal, but mostly to herself. “This is crazy. It’s going to take a while.” They worked for a little while, peering into dusty empty wooden shelves. Simone was bored easily. She began humming under her breath a tuneless song. They had only turned on half of the lights in the study. The rest streamed from the window as the sun rose higher in the sky toward noon. Simone took a brief break to glance out the window. The back yard looked a little different, the trees no longer frightening sentinels but tired old men that lounged around the bean shaped pool. No one was out there, but in the sunlight, she could now make out a few yellow plastic lawn chairs and a white table. A lonely beach ball was slowly rolled into the pool by the outside wind. It bobbed on the surface like a multicolored beacon. She looked back at the current shelf she was sweeping and for the first time noticed something peculiar. It was a white envelope. Or rather, it was yellowed, especially from age. The address was to a particular Mr. Hannibal Pynchon in Lancaster, a city nearly fifty miles away. There was no return address. The envelope flap was unsealed. Inside she found a letter dated seventy years ago. But it wasn’t the content that drew her. It was the seal at the bottom where there was supposed to be a signature. It was a snake lying in a bed of black roses. “Simone, I think I found something,” Adrian called out from across the room. She hastily stuffed the envelope into the back of her jeans pocket and scrambled down the ladder, all the while careful not to look down and get vertigo. “What is it?” Her partner made a disgusted sound. “It’s a volume of ‘War and Peace’. No wonder Greenville left it here. It’s heavy and boring. There are a couple of other books here too. Novels, all of them. There’s ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘Tales of Chekhov’, ‘Anna Karenina’, most of it ninteenth century Russian literature. Hey, there’s something called ‘Foundations of the Path’. That’s not literature. It looks like some sort of new age self help book...” And as he tried to tug the book off the shelf, Adrian and the kitten on his shoulder vanished. “Adrian!” Simone ran, and stopped at the bookshelf where her partner had once stood at. She began pulling the few books that were there. Most of the books landed at her feet. The remaining kittens stopped what they were doing to watch her. The new age book went flying past the railing to land with a loud slap on the floor below. “Adrian!” She pounded the now empty shelf. Adrian was gone. |