“The Book Between Us”

[Note: “The Book Between Us” is a short story as imagined having been written by Valery Rockford after the events and timeline of the coda of The Fourth Winter. It is presented here as part of an imagined short story collection titled The Books Between Us: Beyond Echo and Shadow, possibly authored by her.]

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“The Book Between Us”

Valery Elizabeth Rockford

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I began writing fiction late enough in life to have accumulated more material than alibis, but early enough, I hope, to mistrust both. For years I made my living explaining what other people had put on stages and pages, and then, when the explaining began to bore me, getting their chaos onto the printed page. Criticism and publishing turned out to be poor preparation for deciding what to leave unexplained when it happened to me.

​

This was San Francisco in the mid-nineties, before ghosting was the word for it. Before a person’s unexplained absence or bad behavior could be made public, diagnosed, crowdsourced, and litigated before breakfast, someone simply failed to arrive. We waited, grew annoyed, invented reasons, and told the invention to ourselves and to our closest confidantes with such confidence that by midnight it had acquired the standing of fact.

​

Tara Anicca was six minutes into a story about a woman who kept selling houses she no longer wanted, when Daniel came through the door. He stopped just inside while his eyes adjusted to the dim room, and the moment I saw him, I knew Adrian was not coming. I checked my Bulova anyway. It was nine minutes past eight, and the empty chair between Claire and myself had been waiting for him since before the reading began.

​

Tara was in her mid-twenties, local, and launching her first collection of short stories that evening. The publisher was local too, one of those little presses that appeared every few years with a beautiful colophon, no money, and the absolute conviction that the literary establishment had overlooked something important. Sometimes they were right. Her collection was called Small Rooms, and I had read three of its stories because her editor had sent me an advance copy with a tactful note asking whether I might find occasion to mention it somewhere. I had promised nothing. Never rate a mojito before taking a sip.

​

Most of the people around our table were my women friends: Claire beside me, Ruth and Helen opposite, Nina at the far end, and two women from the paper whom I knew well enough to drink with but not well enough to telephone when sober. Helen’s husband had spent most of the evening leaning at the bar, so when Daniel quietly took the vacant chair beside me, he brought the table’s active male population to one. He sat carefully enough that Tara never broke cadence.

​

The woman in Tara’s story bought a house whenever somebody left her after selling the one she had lived in during the prior relationship. She did not need somewhere to live; she already had somewhere to live. The sold houses simply accumulated across the city of her resentment, empty monuments to departures she had refused to call losses. Tara read without performing, which was what I liked about her. She trusted the sentences enough not to decorate them with herself.

 

When she reached the final page, the woman was standing in the kitchen of the fifth house with its keys in her hand. Tara stopped there and closed the book. For two or three seconds, nobody applauded because everybody expected another paragraph. Then the room understood that she had given us all she intended to give.

 

I applauded harder than I meant to.

 

Daniel leaned toward me and murmured, “Hello.”

 

“Where’s Adrian?”

 

“He called me with regrets. He can’t make it tonight.”

 

“I had inferred that from the fact that you are sitting in his chair.”

 

“Something came up. He didn’t say what.”

 

That irritated me because it was exactly enough information to invite invention and not enough to restrain it. “He managed to say enough to dispatch you.”

 

Daniel considered the verb. “He asked me to come in his stead.”

 

“As what?”

 

“I rejected ‘substitute’ before I got here.”

 

“Wise decision.”

 

“Representative?”

 

“Worse. Keep digging.”

 

He smiled. “Chaperone?”

 

Claire had begun listening and laughed so loudly that Tara glanced toward us. I lowered my voice. “Adrian sent you to chaperone me? Christ, Daniel, is this 1823?”

​

“He asked me to keep you company and make sure you got home. I may have improved the title.”

​

“How old does he think I am?”

 

“Old enough to frighten him, apparently.”

 

That almost made me laugh, so I took a drink instead.

 

Daniel was a writer, younger than Adrian by enough years that their friendship had always struck me as slightly improbable but not paternal. He had published his debut novel before thirty and, depending on the reviewer, was either a promising American novelist or evidence that American publishing had become indiscriminate. I had not reviewed his novel, which probably explained why we remained on easy terms. There were also stories about the women he left parties with, too many for all of them to be fiction, although none I heard sounded like a warning, except the story that came to me from our mutual connection Elle; they dated long enough for any representation to have become complicated with vested interest. He had never been anything but decent to me. I liked Daniel in the provisional way one likes somebody who has not yet supplied adequate evidence to justify dislike. He was clever without announcing it in square quotes or footnotes, a quality rare enough among writers to deserve protection.

 

After the reading, Tara answered questions. A man near the front asked whether the woman who bought the houses was based on anyone she knew. Tara said no, watched disappointment cross his face, and added that she was based on everyone she knew.

 

“Does that include you?” somebody asked.

 

“Especially me.”

​

I wrote that on a napkin without knowing why.

 

When the formal part ended, the room broke into the usual small republics. Tara moved to a table stacked with copies of Small Rooms while her publisher hovered nearby pretending not to count how many remained. I bought one and handed it to her.

 

“Who am I making it to?”

 

“Nobody. Just sign it.”

 

“You don’t want a message?”

 

“We’ve met twice.”

 

“Three times.”

 

“Then we’re practically family.”

 

She laughed and signed only her name. That pleased me more than an inscription would have.

 

When I returned to the table, Claire had arranged another gin in front of me and Daniel had acquired a club soda on ice. “You weren’t supposed to encourage me,” I told her.

 

“I didn’t. Ruth did.”

 

Across the table Ruth raised her glass. “Never leave a woman under-watered.”

 

“This isn’t water.”

 

“It contains water.”

 

“Scientifically impeccable.”

 

Daniel glanced at the glass and returned to the conversation without saying anything. I noticed that he said nothing, which annoyed me more than a comment would have.

 

Adrian was supposed to have been sitting there. He knew Tara’s work, knew I planned to attend, and had said he would come. We had made no explicit arrangement for afterward, but after six years of knowing someone, certain sentences acquired continuations of their own. Come to the reading could become come back afterward without either person having to diagram the transition.

​

Instead he had sent Daniel.

 

Tara eventually joined us with champagne, and the next hour wandered through books, theatre, landlords, money, bad reviews, excellent reviews of bad books, and the peculiar San Francisco conviction that appearing in print three times qualified one to run a literary series. Tara told us that the story she had just read had taken seven years to finish. Helen observed that seven years seemed a poor return for twelve minutes, and Tara replied that this was writing. I told her not to repeat that near my editor.

 

By eleven, Claire and Ruth were putting on their coats. Claire looked at me, then at the empty glass in front of me, and asked how I intended to get home.

 

“In my car.”

 

“Who’s driving?”

 

“I am.”

 

Daniel spoke before Claire could. “No.”

 

I turned toward him. “No?”

 

“Adrian specifically asked me to make sure you got home.”

 

“And behold, I shall.”

 

“How?”

 

“The automobile remains one of the century’s better inventions.”

 

“Whose automobile?”

 

“Mine.”

 

“And who’s driving it?”

 

I looked to Claire for assistance. “Would you please explain to this boy that I possess a driver’s licence?”

 

Claire buttoned her coat. “You possess lots of things you shouldn’t use tonight. Your car is at the head of that list.”

 

“Traitor.”

 

“To evidence.”

 

Daniel finished his club soda and stood. “I took a cab here, and I’ve only been drinking soda.”

 

“Then this intervention has been rendered theoretical.”

 

“You brought yours.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I can drive yours to your place and get myself home in a taxi.”

 

There are arguments that remain persuasive until one stands up. The floor had become less dependable than I remembered, and Daniel watched me discover this without offering the satisfaction of comment.

I handed him the keys. “Scratch it and I’ll kill you.”

 

“What do you drive?”

 

“If you have to ask, give them back.”

 

Outside, the fog had settled so low that every streetlight looked separately wrapped. Daniel found my car, adjusted the seat backward, and started the engine while I settled into the passenger seat.

 

“You know where I live?”

 

“Adrian told me.”

 

“Of course he did.”

 

“He thought it might become relevant.”

 

“Prescient.”

 

We drove through the wet city with the windows fogging at the edges. I watched Daniel’s hands on my steering wheel and thought about the empty chair. Before we had gone six blocks, an idea came to me with such completeness that for several seconds it felt less like a thought than a plan.

 

I could sleep with Daniel.

 

The thought had almost nothing to do with Daniel, which was the ugly part. Daniel was certainly attractive enough. Adrian had failed to appear and had sent a younger novelist in his place, so perhaps I could take the substitution literally. I imagined Adrian finding out. Better still, I imagined not telling him and allowing the grapevine to perform its usual efficient work. The San Francisco literary scene was a village with hills and echoes carry well in the dells; eventually somebody always knew.

 

For half a minute the fantasy pleased me. I imagined Daniel in my bed and Adrian’s expression afterward, and I mistook the imagined injury for satisfaction.

 

Then I looked at the man beside me.

 

Daniel had come because his friend asked him to. He had sat politely among my friends, spoken when spoken to and at no point did he make the topic of conversation orbit him, and was now driving my car because I had no business driving it myself. He had not flirted with me, judged me, or behaved as though these things accumulated interest.

 

Using him to hurt Adrian would require pretending Daniel was not actually there. Men had been doing that to women for centuries. I saw no reason to improve upon the tradition.

 

“Turn left here.”

 

“I remember.”

 

“Adrian tell you that too?”

 

“No. I’ve been to your building.”

 

“When?”

 

“An after-launch party for Paulson, who apparently lives in the same building. Two years ago. I recognized the address.”

 

“You were there?”

 

“For half an hour. I’ve recovered from being forgotten.”

 

At my building, Daniel parked carefully and handed back the keys. I looked at them, then at him. The earlier thought had not disappeared; it had merely acquired the embarrassment it deserved.

 

“Come upstairs.”

 

He paused.

 

“I have copy to finish,” I said. “If I’m going to be chaperoned, you may as well finish the assignment.”

 

“Lead on.”

 

My apartment was warmer than the street and smelled faintly of cigarettes, paper, and the lilies Claire had stolen from a hotel lobby four days earlier, then brought to me because she needed somewhere to put them. I kicked off my shoes and asked Daniel what he wanted to drink.

 

“Water.”

 

“How austere,” I jabbed.

 

“I was driving.”

 

“You said you’re going to taxi home.”

 

“I’m still accustomed to the principle.”

 

I poured him water and myself vodka. He saw the glass and gave me the same courtesy he had given me at the reading: nothing.

 

“Stop doing that.”

 

“Doing what?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“I can try to do less.”

 

My deprecated and recently discontinued Olivetti waited in the alcove off the living room with several pages already stacked beside it. I switched on the lamp and rolled the unfinished page into position while Daniel wandered toward the bookshelves. The review concerned a play good enough to deserve precision and dull enough to resist it, which is one of the critic’s occupational hazards. A terrible production gives you verbs. An excellent one gives you nouns. Competence leaves you rummaging for prepositions.

 

I had been typing for several minutes when I heard a book slide from the shelf. “Careful,” I said without turning.

 

“I’ve used books before.”

 

“Some people haven’t.”

 

After a pause, his tone changed. “My God.”

 

I turned. “What?”

 

“Is this what I think it is?” He was holding Deaths and Entrances.

​

“That depends entirely on what you think it is.”

 

“A first edition.”

 

“Yes.”

 

He opened the cover carefully and stared at it. “Signed.”

 

“Also yes.”

 

“Where on Earth did you get this?”

 

“At Oxford, a few years ago.”

 

“Just sitting in a shop?”

 

“An antiquarian dealer off the High. So, yes, ‘just sitting in a shop’ … under glass.”

 

He laughed softly and studied the signature again.

 

I had bought the book during a visit to England. The shop had been narrow, dusty, and inexplicably cold despite its being June, and the proprietor had taken the Thomas from a glass case after I asked whether he kept anything signed. The instant he placed it in my hands, I thought of Adrian.

 

He would love this.

 

I bought it with him in mind, carried it across the world with him in mind, and placed it on my shelf while waiting for whatever occasion would make the gift seem inevitable rather than sentimental. Perhaps no such occasion came. Perhaps twenty did, and I rejected each because the next might be more inevitable.

 

Adrian never knew.

 

Daniel read “The Conversation of Prayer,” so softly and precisely—as if he had written the poem himself—that it made me shiver. He had clearly read that poem aloud before, or lived it, I could not tell which. He then closed the book carefully and put it back exactly where he had found it. Not approximately. Exactly. I noticed that.

 

I went back to the typewriter and spent another ten minutes losing an argument with three paragraphs. The vodka was doing useful work elsewhere but nothing for syntax.

 

Behind me, Daniel said, “You’ve used ‘however’ three times.”

 

I stopped typing. “Have you been reading over my shoulder?”

 

“Not intentionally.”

 

“There is no accidental way to read over someone’s shoulder.”

 

“Your type is enormous.”

 

“It’s twelve point.”

 

“Imperial.”

 

“Would you like to be thrown out?”

 

“Not until Adrian’s contractual chaperoning requirements have been satisfied.”

 

“I hate both of you.”

 

He let me struggle another minute before asking, “Can I see it?”

 

“The review?”

​

“Unless there’s another document around here currently losing a war with ‘however’.”

​

“No.”

​

“Fine.”

 

I typed another sentence, disliked it, and typed it again.

 

“Give it here.”

 

“No.”

 

“Ronny.” I turned. He had one hand extended, but there was no performance in the gesture. “I write for a living.”

 

“So do I. Doing it right now, in fact.”

 

“Yes, which is why another pair of eyes might help,” he said.

 

“I did not invite you upstairs to edit me. I know you were an editor before becoming a novelist. Doesn’t mean I want you to edit this.”

​

“I know you know. So let me scan it for hiccoughs. Typos.”

​

That was more effective than an argument. He did not grin or turn it into flirtation; he simply waited until I pulled the pages out and handed them over.

 

“Proofread. Don’t rewrite.”

​

“Understood. That’s the contract.”

 

“If you change my voice, I’ll break your fingers.”

 

“I need those.”

 

“Motivation.”

 

He sat at the table with a pencil while I finished the final paragraph. He found a repeated word, a missing article, and a sentence whose pronoun grammatically referred to the theatre rather than the actress. Then he tapped one paragraph with the pencil.

 

“This says the production doesn’t trust the audience.”

 

“It doesn’t.”

 

“But later you say the final scene works because it refuses to explain itself. Those aren’t necessarily contradictory, but right now they sound pretty much ... well ... contradictory.”

​

I reread it. He was right.

​

“I hate you.”

 

“You’ll live.”

 

I changed two sentences.

 

“Better.”

 

“Don’t enjoy this.”

 

“I am enjoying it immensely.”

 

The finished copy ran six pages. I read it once more, then Daniel did, and at twelve twenty-three I fed the pages into the fax machine. It squealed and clicked as it dragged my judgments toward the newspaper one sheet at a time.

 

“Modern literature,” Daniel said.

 

“Modern criticism.”

 

“It sounds painful.”

 

“It is.”

 

When the confirmation sheet came through, so did the peculiar clean relief of surviving a deadline. “Done.”

 

“Congratulations.”

 

I walked to the bookshelf and took down Deaths and Entrances. Daniel watched me cross the room, and when I held the volume toward him, he did not reach for it.

​

“For you.”

 

“What?”

 

“For helping me get to the church on time.”

​

“Veronica...”

​

“Take it.”

​

“This?”

​

“Yes.”

​

“It’s a signed first edition.”

​

“I am aware.”

​

“You bought it in Oxford.”

 

“Excellent memory.”

 

“I corrected a pronoun or two.”

 

“And several other things.”

 

“Then give me a bottle of wine or a pat on the back.”

 

“I don’t have one of either worth giving.”

 

“This is ridiculous.”

 

I pressed the book lightly against his chest until he had to take it or let it fall. “For proofreading.”

 

He looked down at the cloth cover. “You don’t give someone this for proofreading.”

​

“I just did.”

 

He opened it again, looked at the signature, then closed it with the same care he had shown before. “Thank you.”

 

“You’re welcome.”

 

I did not tell him about Adrian. I did not tell him that the book had crossed an ocean because I had once imagined placing it in another man’s hands, or that it had waited for years while I kept postponing the gesture. None of that belonged to Daniel. Saying it would have made the gift carry a message he had never agreed to deliver.

 

For him, the reason was simple and true: he had helped me finish the review and get it out without having to blush. For me, gratitude was only part of it. Irritation was there too, and perhaps some childish satisfaction in giving away something I had privately intended for the man who had failed to appear that evening. Motives rarely queue politely enough to be interviewed one at a time.

 

Daniel put the book carefully inside his jacket and picked up his coat. “I should go.”

 

“Probably. Your mission is accomplished.”

 

“Adrian will be relieved.”

 

His name brought the earlier fantasy back with astonishing efficiency. I could ask Daniel to stay. I could let ambiguity do the work, kiss him, take him to bed, and produce a symmetry almost vulgar enough to be beautiful: You couldn’t come, so I fucked the man you sent instead.

 

For one drunken second, I admired the sentence.

 

Then I looked at Daniel standing there with his coat and the book inside it. He had done nothing to deserve being reduced to grammar—subject, object, weapon—so I opened the door.

 

“Good night, Daniel.”

 

“Good night, Ronny.”

 

As he stepped into the hall, I called his name. He turned.

 

“Thank you. For all of it.”

 

His expression softened. “You’re welcome.” Then he left.

 

I locked the door, finished what remained in my glass, and considered calling Adrian. I did not. He had failed to come; that was true. He had sent Daniel; that was true, too. He had not called the venue and had them convey his regrets. Before I went to bed I supplied several explanations for those three facts, some cruel, some flattering, all internally persuasive.

 

That was one of my better talents then. I slept badly.

 

The following morning, I woke with a dry mouth, one foot outside the sheet, and a headache that arrived properly only after I stood. The apartment had the accusatory appearance rooms sometimes acquire after a night of drinking: two glasses on the table, the fax confirmation curled beside the machine, Tara’s Small Rooms where I had left it, and Daniel’s pencil marks still visible across the pages of my review.

​

There was a space on the bookshelf.

 

I saw it immediately. Oxford came back with irritating precision: rain on the shop window, the glass case, the proprietor placing the book in my hands, and my absolute certainty that Adrian would love it.

 

I went into the kitchen, poured orange juice, and added vodka. Not much. Enough. I drank half of it standing at the counter. The telephone rang at eight seventeen, and I carried the rest into the living room.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Veronica.” Adrian’s voice reached me before I had decided whether I was still angry.

 

“Where were you last night?” The question got there first.

 

“I got a call from San Diego yesterday.”

 

Something in his voice made me sit down.

 

“My mother had a heart attack.”

 

“Adrian—”

 

“She died.”

 

The room stayed exactly as it was, but every explanation I had built for his absence the night before lost its foundations at once. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“When?”

 

“Yesterday afternoon.” Before the reading. Before Daniel arrived. Before I had begun furnishing Adrian’s absence.

​

“That’s why you couldn’t come.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You sent Daniel. You could have just called the venue and relayed—”

 

“I asked him to make sure you got home.”

 

“He did.”

 

I took another drink. Adrian could not see it and had no reason to know it existed. “Are you in San Diego?”

 

“Not yet. I’m packing now.”

 

“When do you leave?”

 

“This morning.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“Heart attack. My cousin found her.”

 

“I’m so sorry.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Do you need anything?”

 

“No.”

 

“Do you want me to come?”

 

“No.”

 

The answer came so quickly that I felt it, though there was nothing unreasonable in it. His mother had died, his family was in San Diego, and whatever existed between us did not turn his grief into an invitation.

“All right.”

 

I heard movement at his end of the line, perhaps a drawer opening or papers being shifted. In those days a telephone gave you almost nothing of the room at the other end, which did not prevent us from furnishing it like it was a mental and emotional sport.

 

“When are you coming back?”

 

He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know when I’m coming back.”

 

I had asked when, and he had answered as far as he could. The drink was warm in my stomach, and the fear underneath the previous night’s anger had finally found the right door.

 

“Are you coming back at all? Is this about those poachers down there who’ve been on your case?”

​

He said nothing.

 

“Adrian? If you can’t answer me that, after everything between us, then I’ll take that as the answer….”

 

I waited.

 

There was a sound I took for breathing, although after all these years I would not swear even to that. Then the line went dead. For a while I kept the receiver in my hand before I put it down.

 

Tara’s collection was lying on the table. I picked it up, found the story from the night before, and read the last page again. The woman was still standing in the kitchen of her fifth empty house with the keys in her hand.

 

I closed Small Rooms. Across from me, one shelf held a gap exactly the width of a signed first edition.