CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mr. Phillips seemed to have adjusted his once-a-month doughnut schedule. He was in the office the following Monday—two weeks earlier than his usual visit.

I was at the cit file, trying to find some information about the history of the word hornswoggle for a correspondence, when I heard someone say, on the other side of the file, “No coffee today, John?”

And then Mr. Phillips replying happily, “Not today. Here on business today.”

“Oh? What business?”

“Oh, just poking around for a couple of baseball terms. A buddy of mine was asking me about ‘chin music’ the other day.”

“Ohhh. That kind of business.”

I didn’t recognize the other voice. It might have been Anna.

On Wednesday, two days later, I did a double take as I passed the coffee machine. There he was again, leaning casually by the coffee machine, talking to Dan.

“God, I just miss this place,” he was saying.

Dan was nodding, opening a little plastic creamer with his long, elegant fingers.

The sudden frequency of Mr. Phillips’s appearances was not, of course, lost on Mona. She dropped a note in my box:

Billy,

Your elderly gentleman friend seems to have come out of retirement. Could it have anything to do with a certain bit of information provided to him by that nice new young editor with the open, optimistic personality and the winning smile??

M.

Crumpling her note, I went to find Mr. Phillips in the cit stacks.

I arranged to pick him up on Friday.

“Where are we going?” Mr. Phillips asked as he got into my car.

“I thought we’d go somewhere different today,” I said. “Know of any good bars downtown?”

“Callahan’s,” he replied. “Hands down. On the corner of State and Bishop.”

“Alrighty,” I said.

As I headed in that direction, Mr. Phillips asked me what I’d been working on lately.

“Let’s see,” I said. “I looked at the cits for ‘icky’ today. That was mildly interesting, even though there was nothing new to define. And ‘icon.’ You know, the computer sense? I sent that one to Science.”

“That’s a shame, Billy. You can’t let Science have all the fun. I just went ahead and defined any science terms that interested me.”

“I’m sure they didn’t like that.”

“Yeah, Ed used to howl about that, when he’d catch it. He’d bounce my definitions back to Science and have them do them over again. Almost always they’d keep what I’d written. See, I’d only do it with terms I knew I could handle. I wouldn’t try to define, say, ‘ribonuclease.’ They can have those words to themselves.”

After I’d parallel-parked, I started to open my door. But Mr. Phillips didn’t move.

“You got any cigarettes?” he asked.

“No. Maybe they sell them inside. Let’s go.”

“Wait. Before we go in, Billy, I wanted to give you something.”

He took an envelope out of his coat pocket and handed it to me.

“Now you just leave poor old Mary Anne’s scribblings in the car for now, and worry about her later,” he instructed me. “We’re gonna enjoy our drink without her.”

“Are these—”

“Cits. Ready to go?”

I tucked the envelope under my visor. “Was it Mary Beth or Mary Anne?”

“Pretty sure it was Mary Anne.”

“Do you remember her last name?”

“No. But it would be easy enough to find it. Just look in the credits of some of the older Samuelson books. Her name’s bound to be in one of them.”

Once we got into the place, Mr. Phillips headed straight for a booth in the back. I was a little disappointed. I’d imagined us hanging out at the bar together, maybe doing a couple of shots of whiskey and cursing with the locals.

“What’s on tap, dear?” Mr. Phillips was asking the waitress. She was cute, with springy brown curls and freckles. She looked just slightly under age.

“Harp. Guinness. Budweiser,” she intoned.

“Gimme a Guinness, then. Please. Billy?”

“I’ll have the same. Thanks.”

Mr. Phillips propped his elbow on a Sam Adams coaster and scratched his ear. “So. What’ve you been research-reading lately?” he wanted to know.

“Some cooking magazines. Rolling Stone. And Motorcyclist.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. In fact, I’ve been thinking of getting a Kawasaki. I figure if I put just a tiny portion of my paycheck aside every month—”

“A motorcycle!” He snorted. “Don’t you think you’re a little young for your midlife crisis?”

“Yeah,” I said. “At my age, you just call it youth. I’ve actually had my eye on this one crotch rocket for a while. I could get a pretty good used one for about eighteen hundred bucks. Can’t you just see me zipping into the Samuelson lot on one of those puppies?”

Mr. Phillips shook his head as our waitress slid our beers in front of us.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, champ. I’m laughing at the situation. Marshall, the last guy who research-read that magazine, talked for years about getting a motorcycle.”

“What kind?”

“What kind? I don’t know. It hardly matters, since it was always a very hypothetical bike. A Harley, probably. But his wife would never let him. We all knew this.”

“Well, I don’t have a wife.”

“If you’re smart, then, you’ll get your motorcycle before you get a wife.”

“Plenty of time. I don’t have any prospective wives lined up.”

“Not that little Mona?”

“That little Mona? No. She’s just a friend.”

“You sure about that?”

“Umm … Pretty sure.”

“Maybe you ought to give that girl a chance. Maybe then you wouldn’t need to spend your Friday nights with some old fart from your office.”

“Don’t say shit like that.”

“Why not? Wouldn’t you rather be on a date right now?”

“Not necessarily. It bothers me when older people assume that younger people only prefer their own company.”

“You’re full of it, Homer. Tell me something. You ever actually been on a motorcycle?”

“Of course.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. There was this guy I knew in college. He was a little older, a part-time student. He let me take a couple of little spins on his Honda.” Admittedly, he’d only allowed me one spin, but it was such a long and thrilling ride that it felt like it should count for more. “It was awesome, going that fast. With one of these sport bikes, you get the speed of an Italian sports car at a tiny fraction of the price.”

“So you want to go fast. That’s what it’s about, then?”

“Well, no. I mean, it’s not just about speed. It’s also about how light you feel, and the way you lean into the curves, this way and that. It’s just the most smooth, natural thing.”

“Huh. Well, in that case, maybe I should try one myself sometime.”

“You can take a ride on mine, then.”

“Right,” said Mr. Phillips. “That’s what Marshall always said.”

“Well, I really mean it.”

“Billy, you know what you remind me of?”

“What’s that?”

“Maybe you haven’t seen many war movies. So maybe you won’t know what I mean.”

“I’ve seen Full Metal Jacket quite a few times.”

“No, I’m talking older war movies. In those movies there’s always a nice young soldier who everybody likes. Works hard. He believes in his fellow soldiers and his cause. And he’s willing to make sacrifices.”

“This is supposed to be me somehow?”

“But he’s shot in the end,” said Mr. Phillips, shaking his head. “Almost always shot, in the end.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Why are you telling me this?”

Mr. Phillips shrugged and sipped his beer.

“I suppose I meant it in a cautionary way,” he said.

“How could that be cautionary?” This conversation was starting to annoy me. I much preferred the one about my motorcycle fantasy, which we hadn’t quite finished.

“Maybe I should’ve put it in the form of a piece of advice,” Mr. Phillips said with a snicker. “Don’t let yourself get shot in the end.”

“All right, just shut up,” I said, plunking my beer down hard.

“What’s that, Homer?” Mr. Phillips cupped his ear. Probably he thought he’d heard me wrong.

“As if I have any control over what happens in the end.”

“I was just kidding around, champ.”

I shrugged, hoping he truly hadn’t heard the “shut up.” It had slipped out before I’d had time to remember who I was talking to. We both drank our beers. Someone played Fleetwood Mac on the jukebox.

“So,” Mr. Phillips said. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about? Or is this just a social outing?”

“Yeah, well. I was sort of curious about something. I was noticing this week that you’ve been spending a lot more time back at the office. Um, is that just a coincidence, or—”

“No. Of course not. I’m just trying to help you out. Took a gander in the file myself, and found those cits for you.”

“What year are they from?”

“Nineteen fifty-three. Figured you hadn’t worked your way up that far yet. And I figured right. I found a few.”

“You looked through all the 1953 words?”

“No. Not yet. I wanted to, but you nabbed me first. I only got through ‘H,’ but there really wasn’t much after ‘C.’”

“You find anything good?”

“Yeah. There’s some stuff in there, that’s for sure. I’m not sure what it means yet, but I think I have a general idea. Something weird happening in that poor girl’s head, that’s for sure.”

“Well, thanks,” I said slowly. “I can’t wait to read them. But you should let us find the rest. There’s no need for you to make special trips to the office. I know it takes you a while to get there on the bus and everything.”

“Special trips. Hogwash. Samuelson’s my second home. Always has been. And you kids sure seem to be taking your time with this. You’re still looking through 1951, aren’t you?”

I nodded. He was right about us taking our time. Mona and I had agreed—the last time we hung out—to split the remainder of the 1951 list.

“I was curious. Trying to help. Nothing to worry about. It makes Needham nervous when I come around, but there’s not much he can do about it. I might be retired, but I’m just as much a part of the family as him. Been there longer.”

“But you don’t work there anymore,” I pointed out.

“When you were at a place forty years, that hardly matters. I trained most of the definers. I trained Dan.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Guess that makes me your grandfather.”

“Actually, speaking of Dan—”

“Yeah?”

“That girl who we think wrote the cits—” I stopped. I’d been thinking about how familiar her boyfriend seemed, with his height and awkward sincerity. Each time Dan lumbered past my desk, I grew more certain of it. “Any chance she was, you know, seeing Dan?”

“Seeing Dan? You mean dating Dan?”

“Yeah.”

“Yep. It seemed like they saw each other quite a little bit, those two. Seemed like they were steadies. But they never acknowledged it. Around Samuelson, some people tend to be a little private. Maybe you’ve noticed?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Yeah, Dan’s no exception,” Mr. Phillips continued. “Nice fellow, but no exception.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“Nope. Anyway, he never said much about it. To me, anyway. I trained Mary Anne too, by the way. Neither of them said anything about it to me, but you could tell they had something going on. Why do you ask? Something must’ve come up in the cits.”

“Sort of,” I admitted.

“You care to educate me?”

“I’ll show you next time. I’m pretty sure he’s the one she’s calling Scout. Just the way she describes him seems … familiar.”

“So are you gonna show the cits to Dan, then?” Mr. Phillips wanted to know.

“I don’t know … should I? You implied I should keep them to myself.”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking of Dan when I said that. Dan’s got quite a sense of humor, believe it or not. And maybe he could tell you a thing or two about them.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe sometime. Maybe later on.”

Mr. Phillips and I each ordered a second beer, but he started to drowse into his after a few sips. When I suggested heading home, he didn’t object.