The Book of Air and Shadows

closed for a month while they fix it up, and you can run the mail-order operation from any computer, can’t you?”
    “I guess. Where are you going to work out of?”
    “My place. I have a good deal of space. Let’s go.” She hoisted two of the folio volumes onto her hip.
    “You mean now?”
    “Of course. You heard what Glaser said: the faster we begin, the less damage from the damp. Get the rest of them. We’ll wrap them in paper for the trip.”
    “Where do you live?” he asked, lifting the ruined volumes up against his chest.
    “In Red Hook.” She was already at the shipping desk, stripping brown paper from a large roll.
    “You come from Red Hook on a bicycle?” Crosetti had never been to Red Hook, a region on the southeastern coast of Brooklyn behind what used to be the Brooklyn docks. There are no subway stops in Red Hook, because until the shipping industry moved to New Jersey, everyone in the area worked longshore jobs and walked to work, nor was there any reason for outsiders to go there, unless they wanted their heads busted.
    “No, of course not,” she replied as she wrapped volume six. “I bike over to the river and take the water taxi from the Thirty-fourth Street pier.”
    “I thought that was real expensive.”
    “It is, but my rent is cheap. You should put those in plastic.” Crosetti looked at the book he was holding. It had oozed a sooty liquor down the front of his tan trousers. For the first time he regretted not dressing entirely in black, like so many of his hipper peers; or like Carolyn. She excused herself and went upstairs, leaving him to wrap the rest of the volumes.
    When this had been done, the two of them took off east, with their burden stuffed into the wire panniers of Rolly’s bike, a heavy, worn vehicle of the type favored by food delivery personnel or, some years ago, by the Vietcong. His few attempts to make conversation being greeted by short answers, he fell silent; we’re not on a date, bub, seemed to be the message. On the other hand, it was a fairly pleasant day, in the low eighties, the humidity somewhat less than tropical, and being paid to stroll across town with even a silent Carolyn Rolly beat the hell out of doing inventory in a grease-smelling basement. Crosetti looked hopefully ahead to what might occur in the woman’s apartment.
    Crosetti had never been on a water taxi. He found traveling on one greatly superior to a subway journey. Rolly secured her bike to the rails at the front of the craft and stood by it, and he stood by her, with his hand on the same rail. The other people on the boat seemed to be tourists.
    “Are you all right?” Rolly asked him as they bounced down the middle of the East River.
    “Of course. I’m an old sailor. I spent half my life when I was a kid out on Sheepshead Bay fishing in crummy little rental boats. Would you like me to hold you out over the prow like Kate Winslet on the
Titanic
?”
    She gave him one of her formal deadpan looks and turned forward again. Definitely not a date.
    Carolyn Rolly lived on the second floor of a Civil War-era warehouse made of blackened brick, on the corner of Van Brunt and Coffey streets. Crosetti held the folios while she hauled her bicycle up the dark, splintery stairs. There was a heavy smell in the air he could not identify, sweetish and chemical at the same time. The door to her apartment was thick wood strapped with iron, painted battleship gray.
    Inside was a loft, and not the kind millionaires move into in SoHo. It was a room around sixty by thirty feet in area, with dark-stained wood-planked floors, from which there rose at intervals cast iron columns reaching to the gray stamped-tin ceiling high above. The walls were red brick, edged roughly with crumbling, filthy mortar. The room was oriented east-west, and light flooded in from tall dirty windows on either end, some of whose panes had been replaced by squares of plywood or grayish, tattered plastic sheeting.
    Rolly leaned her bike against a wall by the door, walked toward the window, and placed one of the folio packages on a long table. Crosetti followed, looking about curiously for some door or hallway that led to the living quarters. Rolly was already unwrapping a book. Coming closer, Crosetti observed that the table was handmade, its top composed of many short boards laminated edge-on and sanded to a satiny finish. The six stout legs were constructed of what looked like yellow fiberglass. He placed the rest of the