maven

When the papers went crazy, I knew everything might very well explode. Still, I resigned myself to the stern presence of my fellow word mavens. There was at least an odd comfort in submitting to the long silence of the day. Reliable and insistent, it served as a kind of protector. I was reading a book about drug slang, underlining the word “stash,” and you came to my desk. When you saw what I was reading, you said, Now you’re talking. You said that junk slang was your favorite, and wanted to know if there was a chapter on junk. Then you asked if I’d finished that other book yet. No, I whispered. I was unraveling fast. Was it a trick question? What exactly had been in that article that I hadn’t had time to read? Was there something suspect near the corpse? Were you smiling, Red, because of something you knew?

32

I started with this one because I figured it was the most likely to spark a telling reaction.

I watched the old man as he held it close to his eyes. “Word mavens,” he mumbled, then sipped his coffee.

He squinted and read it again.

“I’ll be damned,” he said finally.

“Does this mean something to you?” I asked, trying not to sound accusatory.

“Maybe. Definitely something familiar here. I can’t place it exactly, but …”

“What about this thing about the corpse?”

“That’s pretty odd. You got me there.” He sipped his coffee noisily and looked unconcerned.

“Doesn’t this sound like a story about the Samuelson office?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty wild. I guess I’m a character in it too.”

“You don’t find that a little bit …” I searched for a word that wouldn’t sound accusatory. “Scary?”

He shrugged. “Sure is interesting. But after forty years at the place, I’d be more surprised if such a story didn’t include me.”

“Do you have any idea who might have written it?”

“Nope. Do you?”

“You know a lot more about Samuelson than I do. I was kind of hoping you’d have some ideas.”

“Well, Billy,” he said. His tone suddenly turned grave. “The place isn’t exactly a fortress of mental well-being. You know what I’m saying?”

I nodded dutifully. A few bizarre quirks notwithstanding, no one I’d met at Samuelson seemed all that close to the edge. But I wanted Mr. Phillips to keep talking.

“Offhand,” he continued, “I can think of five or ten editors who could have lost it at some point while they were there. Maybe one of ’em started scribbling out a schizoid little story.”

“What do you think of this corpse business, then?”

“Let’s hope that’s just creativity. Or insanity.”

I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. He drank his coffee and smacked his lips placidly.

“There’s more,” I said.

“Then lemme see,” he said.

I handed him subtext, the one that mentioned blood on Red’s hands. He squinted at it for a couple of minutes.

“Well, whadya know?” he said. “I was wrong. Where’d you find these?”

“What do you mean, you were wrong?”

“It wasn’t one of the nutcases who wrote this. I’ll be damned.”

He picked up his coffee, but this time he set it down again without slurping.

“Who was it?” I asked, trying to control my voice. Try not to seem too eager, Mona had coached me earlier that afternoon.

“What else have you got?” Mr. Phillips asked. “Show me, and I’ll tell you for sure.”

I handed him the rest. “I’ll give you a minute to look at them. I’ll be right back.”

Mr. Phillips grunted in reply.

Once I was in the men’s room, I waited a good five minutes. This had been Mona’s scheme. She’d made copies of all the cits. She wanted me to give Mr. Phillips an opportunity to bolt with the cits and see if he took it.

When I returned, he had all of the cits spread out on the table before him. A few had big soggy brown spots on them.

“I had a little spill. Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry.

“So you think you know who wrote these?”

“There was this gal. Real nice young gal. Her name was Mary Beth. Or—Mary Anne, was it? Your age when she worked here. It was years ago. You were probably in diapers then.” He rubbed his chin. “Damn. I should have recognized it in that first cit.”

“Did you know her well?”

“We chatted quite a bit, for a while. Just a nice young lady. Unfortunately, when I read these now, I wonder if the girl wasn’t a little cuckoo. I suppose no one is safe, really …”

“But it seems like she addressed these to you. At least some of them. Like this one here—‘Were you smiling, Red, because of something you knew?’”

“Yeah. Isn’t that something? You think refills are free?” Mr. Phillips gazed distractedly over at the coffee bar.

“Definitely not at a place like this,” I said, trying to reestablish eye contact. I couldn’t tell if he was evading or just a little bored.

“Even for a senior citizen?”

“Especially not for a senior citizen. What makes you think it was the girl you’re thinking of?”

“She and I were both interested in history. Had a particular era in common. A common interest.” He eyed me with mild amusement. Now it seemed he was scrutinizing me, instead of the reverse.

“Hmm,” I said.

“Let’s just say I know it’s her. Say, Billy—”

“Yup?”

“You’re suspicious of me, aren’t you?”

“No,” I said quickly.

“Yes, you are. You thought I might take out a revolver and shoot you when I read that cit. The blood on my hands and all.”

“No,” I insisted. “‘Does this cit mean anything to you?’” he said in a dopey, vaguely imitative voice. “Billy, you’re a gas.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that before.”

“All right. Never mind. I apologize,” Mr. Phillips said. “I’ll tell you what I know about these cits. You got any more, by the way? Or is this all?”

“This is all. All the citations here are for words that were first used in 1950,” I explained.

“Really?”

Mr. Phillips spread the citations across the table and began reading them again.

“We’ve started looking in 1940 and 1960.”

“I don’t think you’ll find anything there, Billy,” he murmured, still gazing down at the cits. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“Um …”

Mr. Phillips looked up at me, then harrumphed. “Never mind, then,” he said, and went back to the cits.

“Poor girl,” he said, after a while. “Try 1951. 1952. 1953.”

“Why?”

He handed me the cit for paperbound.

“Read this one again,” he said.