Willy should have known that Lanky Harper’s interest in her fiction was primarily financial.—How many copies of In the Night Room are stashed away in that vault?
—Five. He bought three when it came out, and as soon as the Newbery was announced, he bought two more.
—Five copies? I guess he liked it a lot. Her mind had returned to Mitchell Faber, whose intrusiveness had contained an unexpected quantity of appeal. At least Faber had been unafraid actually to talk to the tragic widow, instead of swaddling her in clichés. Secretly, dark Mitchell Faber rather thrilled Willy Patrick: he was the kind of man for whom everyone else’s rules were merely guidelines.
So there he had been, Tim Underhill, in the good old Fireside, trying to act as though his hands weren’t shaking so badly that the mushrooms fell off his fork; and trying to look as absorbed in the crossword puzzle as he was every other morning. The words kept blurring on the page, and none of the clues made sense; above all, Underhill was trying simultaneously to figure out and ignore whatever his murdered nine-year-old sister had been shouting at him from the other side of West Broadway. Contradictory desires were difficult to fulfill, especially when wrapped in such urgency. April bending forward, shouting at him, bellowing, frantic to get her message across…
‘Mr Underhill?’
Tim turned to see the face of an eager black-haired man of forty or so, still boyish, and radiant with what looked like mingled pleasure and bravado. A fan. This kind of thing happened to him maybe three times a year.
‘You got me,’ he said, dropping his hands to his lap to conceal their trembling.
‘Timothy Underhill is right here, right smack in the Fireside. Just like a normal person.’
‘I am a normal person,’ Tim said, stretching a point.
‘I yam what I yam, hah! Didn’t you say that once? In print, I mean?’
He had quoted Popeye? It sounded remotely possible, but possible. Barely.
‘Would you do a big favor for me? I’m a fan, obviously—who else would barge in on your little breakfast, right? But I’d really appreciate it if you signed some books for me. Would you do that, Mr Underhill? Would you sign some books for me, Tim? Is it all right if I call you Tim?’
‘You carry my books around with you?’
‘Hey, that’s funny. You’re a funny guy, Tim! Ever think about going into comedy? No, the books are back in my apartment, I mean, where else would they be? If I had ESP, I’d have them with me, but no such luck, right? But I live right down the street, be back in five minutes, less, four minutes, time me with your watch, check it out, see if I’m wrong. Okay? We got a deal?’
‘Go get the books,’ Tim said.
The fan made a pistol with his hand, pointed it at Tim, and dropped the hammer of his thumb. He whirled away and was out the door. Tim realized that he had never given his name. As fans went, this one seemed slightly off, but Tim wished to preserve an open mind about anyone who bought his books. Anyone who did that had earned his gratitude.
Today’s admirer stretched his patience nearly to the breaking point. After twelve minutes, Tim began to simmer. He liked getting to his desk by ten, and it was already 9:40. If he gave up on the eggs he didn’t want and abandoned the puzzle he couldn’t concentrate on well enough to finish, he could avoid dealing with the fan, who had been overassertive, overintrusive, and was unlikely to be satisfied with merely a couple of signatures. He would want to talk, to swap phone numbers, to find out where Tim lived. He’d escalated from ‘Mr Underhill’ to ‘Tim’ in less than a second. ‘Tim’ did not want to encourage a fan who told him he was a funny guy—it gave him the willies. So did the shooting gesture with which the man had left him.
Again, he saw April before him, cupping her hands and shaping her mouth to shout…
Whistle to us? That could not be right.
Tim let his fork clatter to his plate, signaled the waiter for the check, and returned his pen to his pocket. Rain streamed down the windows of the diner, and when the door swung open, a few drops spattered onto the tiles. Tim sighed. A wet hand swept the sodden hood of a sweatshirt off his admirer’s glowing face. The fan held up a yellow bag bearing the likeness of Charles Dickens.
‘Did you time me?’
Tim looked at his watch. ‘You were gone at least twenty minutes.’
‘No, six, at the outside. I would have been here earlier, but the rain slowed me down.’
The fan pulled the books one by one from the shiny bag and stacked them about an inch north of Tim’s plate. They were copies of lost boy lost girl, as yet unpublished. He had received his box of author’s copies only a short while before. ‘These babies stayed dry, anyhow.’ The fan wiped his face and pushed the moisture back into his thick black hair. ‘Must be a great feeling to sign a book you wrote, huh? Like “This is my baby, get a good look, ’cuz I’m one proud papa,” right?’
Tim wanted to get rid of this character as soon as possible. ‘Where did you get these books?’
The man slid the books nearer to Tim. ‘Why? I bought them, didn’t I?’
Water dripped from his sleeves, and drops landed on the Times crossword puzzle. In a small number of squares, the ink melted into the paper.
‘Okay,’ he said, and sat down in the chair opposite Tim. ‘Sign the first one to Jasper Kohle, that’s Jasper the normal way, and Kohle is K-O-H-L-E. My full name is Jasper Dan Kohle, but I only use my middle name on checks and my driver’s license, ha ha. Inscribe it however you like. Have fun. Use your imagination. You could say, “To Jasper Kohle, I yam what I yam.” ’
The only thing worse than someone ordering you to be inventive when you signed their book was someone telling you exactly what to write. This fan had managed to do both. Tim looked at Jasper Kohle, for the first time actually taking him in, and saw someone whose cheerfulness was laid on like paint. His eyes had no light, and his smile displayed too many teeth, all of them yellow. He was ten to fifteen years older than he had first appeared.
‘You didn’t go to your apartment,’ Tim said. ‘You ran all the way to the bookstore, and then you ran back. I don’t understand it, but that’s what you did. But the real problem is this book hasn’t actually been published yet, and it’s not supposed to be on sale. The copies aren’t even supposed to have shipped to the bookstores.’
‘Come on,’ Kohle said. ‘You must have some kind of problem with trust.’
‘If I looked inside that bag, I bet I’d find a receipt with today’s date on it.’
Kohle glowered at him. ‘Let me ask you a question, Tim. Are you this pricky to all your fans?’
‘No, I’m just interested in your explanation.’
‘I wanted more.’
‘More copies of the same book?’
‘I have four at home. But since you’re here, I thought I should get three more, so I’d have three signed, plus four backup copies. One of ’em I’ve read, but that’s all, just one.’ He nudged the books still closer to Tim. ‘Don’t inscribe the second two, just flat sign them and put down the date. On the title page, please.’
‘You wanted seven copies of lost boy lost girl ?’