He rolled off her and collapsed. They lay there panting, too drunk and too spent to say anything. Relationships like this never end good, McCloskey thought.
— Chapter 20 —
WE HAVE MET TOO LATE
“Are you reading Alice Adams?” Daphne asked.
“You mean in the Star? No. I read the book a while ago. Where are they?”
“The apparition in the mirror.”
Vera Maude remembered the passage “who in the world are you?” Alice looks in the mirror and her image transforms into that of the creature she feels is responsible for the lies she tells, lies meant to make her seem like she is someone other than who she is, someone of a higher social class. But at the end of the day, she is who she is and nothing can change that.
Let that be a lesson to you: to thine own self be true.
Daphne and Vera Maude were cataloguing newly arrived fiction titles. Daphne was seated at the desk behind the counter and Vera Maude was leaning over the counter with her back to Daphne. They each had a pile of books in front of them. Daphne just finished the card for Tarkington’s Gentle Julia and was reaching for the next book on the pile.
“Ooh — here’s one,” said Vera Maude.
Daphne looked up from the desk. “One of my favourites?”
“Yep. Guess which one.”
“Hutchinson?”
Vera Maude shook her head.
“Rinehart?”
“Nope.”
Vera Maude flashed the book at Daphne. “Haggard,” she said in a deep, dramatic voice, “Virgin of the Sun.”
Daphne made a face.
“Shipwrecked sailor lands on Peruvian virgins, becomes white god of the Aztecs. Look — pictures.”
“I’ll tell my brother,” said Daphne.
“How many more have you got?”
Daphne checked her pile. “Not many,” she said. “Eight or nine. How about you?”
“The same,” said Vera Maude.
“Anything good?”
Vera Maude tipped her pile and scanned the spines. “Chambers, The Flaming Jewel; Deeping, Orchards…”
“I loved Lantern Lane.”
“…Marsh, Trailer of Toils; Robinson, Mustered Men; Van Vorst, Queen of Carpathia….”
“You’re making those up, aren’t you?”
“Let’s take a break,” said Vera Maude. “Feel like running over to Lanspeary’s? I’d love a Vernor’s.”
“There’s an idea.”
Daphne stuck her pencil in her hair and got up from the desk. Vera Maude flipped up a section of the counter and saluted her as she passed through the checkpoint.
“Cover me,” said Daphne.
She could be okay, thought Vera Maude, when they were by themselves. It was really only when they were around other people that Daphne became an absolute cow.
The library settled lazily into the afternoon. A table of veterans was reading Westerns. Some girls were thumbing through fashion magazines. There was a woman trying to corral a small group in the children’s room. Vera Maude shifted her pile of books, stretched her arms up over her head, and yawned.
“Excuse me; do you keep back issues of the New York Times Book Review?”
Vera Maude went to answer but lost her capacity for speech. It was Braverman.
“Ah — yes, yes we do. I mean we generally, we usually —”
“I’m looking for the June 11 issue. Would you have it?”
He had his artist’s case with him.
“Wait here a minute, I’ll go check.”
She returned momentarily with it.
“Thanks.”
He found an empty table and sat down. Vera Maude watched him flip through it. He smiled when he found what he was looking for. She casually walked around the counter and began to straighten chairs in the general vicinity. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the page he was reading. It had a small headline and an illustration.
“Excuse me, Miss.”
Vera Maude turned to find a young girl standing behind her with an armful of books.
“Do you have any books about fairies?”
“Ferries?”
“No — fairies.”
Vera Maude glanced back at Braverman. He was engrossed in the article and looked like he might be a while.
“I’ll show you where they are. Let me help you with those.”
Vera Maude bent down, scooped up the little girl’s books, and brought her back to the children’s room. When she returned a few minutes later Braverman was gone.
Damn.
“Where’s the copy of the Book Review that man was reading?”
“Behind the counter.”
Vera Maude pounced on it.
“Don’t worry; it’s all in one piece. And your Vernor’s is on the desk.” Daphne paused. “You’re welcome.”
Vera Maude was already riffling through the Review, looking for a page that resembled the one Braverman was reading. Nothing looked familiar. Then she turned it upside down and flipped through it again.
On the right — my right.
Then she stopped flipping.
‘With James Joyce in Ireland.’
She had this article in her scrapbook. She skimmed it, looking for some sort of connection. A man who knew Joyce in his youth wrote it. He was trying to reconcile the young man he knew then with the author of the now infamous Ulysses.
Colossal parody … Homer … Divine Comedy … “I’m afraid you have not enough chaos in you to make a world” … he talked about walking the streets of Paris … his ideal in literature is that which is simple and free … He was glad he had left Dublin.
She looked at the caption below the illustration.
Did not this youth say to Yeats, “We have met too late; you are too old to be influenced by me.”?
“We have met too late,” muttered Vera Maude.
“Reading with your lips again?”
Vera Maude folded up the paper. “That man that was just in here, the one reading the Book Review, have you ever seen him in here before?”
“Sure,” said Daphne. “He’s been in here looking for copies of a Toronto paper. I forget which one. He told me has a friend that’s a foreign correspondent. He was probably just trying to impress me.” Daphne stopped and grinned. “Are you interested? You go for Yanks?”
“No, and not particularly. Have you ever talked to him?”
“He never has much to say. Why? What’s up?”
“I don’t know. I think he might be a bootlegger. Don’t act so