The Book of Air and Shadows

there and I called Emily and she picked me up. This was in Mechanicsburg, and I started to live with them. Do you need to hear this?”
    “Yes. So there was no Uncle Lloyd.”
    “No, I lied about that. There was Harlan, though. He started messing with me when I turned fourteen and Emily didn’t do anything to stop it, he had her beat down so bad. I got pregnant with Emmett when I was sixteen and with Molly four years later and what can I say about it but that was the way I thought things were. Harlan had a job at the battery plant, there was food on the table, and that’s how we lived. I had Emily and she had me and we both had the kids. You’d be surprised how many people there are in places like Braddock who live like that. Then Harlan lost his job and had to take a shit job in a Wal-Mart warehouse and Emily died and-”
    “How did Emily die?”
    “She got electrocuted by the washing machine. It was always kind of sparky, and Harlan was always promising to fix it but he never did, and we had to be careful around it. I sort of think she accidentally on purpose killed herself. He was beating her pretty regular by then.”
    “Uh-huh. And how does the bookbinding come into this?”
    Suddenly her face turned rigid. “You want to know my whole life story? Why do you? Because we had a fuck? That entitles you to the whole fucking five-CD collection of the life of Carolyn Rolly?”
    “No, Carolyn,” said Crosetti. “I’m not entitled to anything. But you came to me, in the middle of the night. Why? A warm bath? A drink of scotch? A chat about old times in the bookstore?”
    “No, but…look I need your help. I ran away from them. I didn’t know where else to go. And we don’t have the time to get into every detail. When they wake up and find I’m gone they’ll come here.”
    “Who’s ‘they,’ Carolyn?”
    “Shvanov’s people. There are four of them, in a hotel about two miles from here. They know where you are. That’s how I knew to come here.”
    “And now…what? We’re on the same side again? Why should I believe anything you say?”
    “Oh, God! I told you before, I don’t know how to behave with…
real
people like you. I lie, I get into desperate panics and I run and…Christ, can’t you give me another drink? Please?”
    He did. She drank. “Okay, look we don’t have time for the long version. Bookbinding-I took the kids to a doctor one day, for shots for school, and while I was waiting in the office…I saw this book. It was part of the decorations, you know? How some people have fancy bookcases with old hardcover books in them? Well, this doctor had one of those and Emmett and Molly were playing with them, taking the books down and using them like blocks and the receptionist told them they had to stop and I replaced them on the shelf and there was one of them that was called
The Bookbinder’s Art
and I swiped it. It was bound in half-calf with gold tooling. I don’t know why I took it. Maybe it was, it felt so rich, the feel of the leather and the paper, it was so
not
Braddock, like a piece of a different world that fell there by accident, right there in my hand, like a jewel. And when I got home I hid it and read it at night, every night, for months, and the idea that people could just make books by hand and they would be beautiful things…I don’t know why but it just got under my skin. And then Emily died and he started beating on
me
and I knew if I didn’t get out I’d be as dead as Emily, either he’d do it or I would, or I’d kill him. So I left. The first time, he caught me and locked me in the cellar and beat me so bad I could hardly walk. The next time I waited for his payday and I took five hundred in cash while he was sleeping and walked away and hitched a ride and ended up in New York and stayed in a shelter. I got a job cleaning buildings at night. I found my loft through that job. It was illegal and toxic, like I told you, but it was dirt cheap because the owner wanted someone on the property so scavenger gangs wouldn’t rip out the copper. That was the first time I heard Shvanov’s name.”
    “Why?”
    “Because he owned the building, or part of it. Able Real Estate Management. Okay, so I had a place to stay and I was a cleaner for over two years, working nights, spending all my spare time in the library reading about bookbinding and about the book business and learning what I had to know to fake a résumé. Then I quit the cleaners and got a job in a