The Word Exchange (29 page)

Maybe as a result, not all were very eager to talk to me, especially when I asked about Doug. Some seemed to believe I was his daughter and expressed concern that he was still gone. A few said they hadn’t heard of him. If any knew his whereabouts, none confessed. And no one had any idea what OXIDP meant. Several seemed to grow suspicious when I mentioned Doug’s name; a handful even asked if I worked for Synchronic.

Regardless, though, of how willing Society members were to talk to me, they all handed over whatever pamphlets they carried. One, printed on red paper, had the header “NAUTILUS KILLS.”
⁵
(It was clear that the anonymous author hadn’t actually seen a Nautilus; the leaflet described something conical, “about the size of a saucer,” outfitted with at least one tiny needle.) An excerpt follows:

Another handbill, “ARE YOU A SLAVE TO MEANING MASTER?,” was printed on stock the green of old paper money. It described a game that had exploded in prominence since its release in early November. Part of Meaning Master’s appeal, the authors speculated, was in how deceptively simple it was to “win”: players simply strung together random letters to make “words,” then gave them “meanings.” It was repetitive, bright, and aesthetically pleasing, and those who created the most popular words each week got small cash rewards and a modicum of recognition. But another reason for its surging success, the pamphlet insinuated, was that it might also be psychologically addictive for Meme users. Although even non-Meme players seemed more than usually devoted. (The average number of rounds played in a single sitting was supposedly near forty.)

Profits, the brochure explained, were derived from “ad revenues; point-of-purchase sales (downloads are $5.99); subscriptions ($2.99/ month after the first month ‘free’); add-ons (if you want a definition assigned to a new word, for instance, instead of having to invent your own, they’re 9¢ each); etc.” But the
real
money the game was generating for Synchronic, the authors claimed, came from increased sales on the Exchange—a correlation they didn’t explicate.

A brochure Weiming gave me was far more disturbing. It was about the
NADEL
and included a photo, taken a few years earlier, of Doug in his office, smiling, surrounded by piles of paper, his hair and beard a little wild. It pressed a bruise on my heart. The caption, though, elicited a very different response: “Contrary to rumor, Dr. Douglas Johnson, the
NADEL
’s Chief Editor, has had nothing to do with the creation or dissemination of the so-called word flu, nor with the corruption of his Dictionary,” I read. Obviously I wanted to know what all that was supposed
to mean. And Weiming weathered my storm of questions with kindness and equanimity. Then he explained that he hadn’t written it and didn’t know much more than I did.

There were also blue pamphlets outlining advice on preventing and reversing the language virus. Those I found strewn everywhere: cafés, park benches, sidewalks. (Not so many being read, alas.) Many of the suggestions were the kind of commonsense advice doled out during other virus scares: to wash hands, cough into sleeves, wear masks, visit the doctor at the earliest sign of serious symptoms. But it was also the first mention I saw of language therapy, and one tip it included for those recovering from word flu was to read.

I’d already been following that advice inadvertently each night after I got home—taking different routes, trying to make sure no one was behind me, checking my block for the unmarked cop car before carefully locking myself in. I’d read books of Doug’s I’d taken from his office as I searched futilely for references to OXIDP, but also my own old books and magazines. Ever since the night Bart had stayed over, I’d been revisiting them. (We were speaking less and less often by then, but they’d started to be linked in my thoughts with him.) And even before I picked up that blue pamphlet, I found that reading gave me a certain relief—one form of escapism that seemed safe, and maybe more than safe. I felt saner—less fragmented—after reading for an hour.

On December 5, the day the Merc reopened—a Wednesday, the same day of the week I’d seen Dr. Thwaite skulk into his secret meeting—I ventured east with a sense of resolve and something like destiny. Feelings that derived at least in part from desperation. Nearly three weeks had passed since Doug had gone missing, and I wasn’t any closer to finding him, despite spending nearly all my time looking. I was very close to giving up.

It was the middle of the afternoon, the air so cold that my breath froze. Bright spears of light stung my eyes. I nodded to the officer in the squad car across the street, then walked the four wide avenue blocks to the library, glancing behind me as I went.

The city had changed for the holidays. As I passed the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and glyphs of Rockettes, mothers towing toddlers to cafés by their mittens, windows graffitied with spotty snow and wreaths, and shoppers strolling arm in arm down Fifth, it was possible to believe for the length of my walk that everything was fine. I stopped
for a hot dog at Forty-seventh Street. “Here’s your dog, doll,” the vendor said. “Keep smiling.” Every word perfectly clear, composed, like the shop window behind him, reflecting us back.

There was no mistaking the Mercantile Library: its name was chiseled right into the stone, below the bank of third-floor windows. Two carts of marked-down books were on sale outside, and an urn carved above the door seemed hopeful to me then, a symbol not of death but immortality. The timelessness of words.

As I stepped into the warm, dim anteroom, any mantle of worry lifted. Unbuttoning my coat, I walked past a pair of leather couches, a wall of books. At the reference desk my eye caught a sign announcing meetings of societies for Proust, Trollope, Musil. Johnson. I thought of Doug, and in that moment the thought made me smile.

But the librarian didn’t seem amused. “May I help you?” she asked coolly, tapping her seal-slick hair. Pretty pale hands extruded from dark cardigan sleeves. I’d forgotten the Merc was a private library.

I tried to keep smiling; when she asked if I was a member, I thought my lie sounded almost sincere. And at least she didn’t ask me to repeat it. (My fingers still reflexively felt in my pocket for my tube of pills.) But she wanted to see my card. When I patted artlessly at my coat, she asked, unbending, for ID, indicating their registry—a large wooden cabinet with tiny drawers: a card catalog, I later learned. “I don’t have that either,” I said. Her mouth scalloped in a scowl. But when I explained that I’d just given up my Meme and hadn’t gotten around to procuring a new form of identity, she sighed and slid a clipboard toward me. “Don’t forget next time,” she said.

I wavered just a moment before signing
Alice Tate
. Blushing, I realized I’d taken Bart’s last name. It gave me a flashback to lower school, in the days before the Meme—before most lower schoolers even had cell phones—and to scribbling pages of
Anana Ringwald
and
Tobey Johnson
, my name and my crush’s conjoined. Did my subconscious think I wanted to be Anana Tate? I shook my head. Those weren’t the feelings I had. Bart either.

I climbed the first stairs I saw, an open metal flight that took me to a mezzanine reading room. It resembled my grandparents’ parlor in their Connecticut country house. Same high ceilings and table sheen.
Herringbone floors. Baubled chandeliers. Musky smell of old leather. I sloughed off my coat on a chair by the Johnson collection, near the baby grand. Imagined Doug beneath it, snoring a sweet, humble music, and my eyes pricked.
⁶

I thought I was alone. But soon, as I looked around the room, I heard an unusual sound coming from a hidden corner. The jangly melody of metal on metal. As if a janitor were walking by with a bouquet of keys.

Curious, I strode to the other end of the room, pretending to need an atlas beached on a table, and found that the odd sound was coming from a woman’s gold bangles, which lightly bubbled together each time she turned a page. She looked like she was taking a break from Fifth Avenue: large sunglasses perched on shoeshine-black hair; white turtle-neck; tweed skirt; spike-heeled knee-high boots. She looked not unlike my mother, actually. And she was studying me with a judgment-fringed intensity worthy of Vera.

Marking her page with a slender finger, she watched me hoist the atlas—which was smudged and greasy, as if it had last been used by a mechanic—and carry it back across the room. I dropped it with a smack onto a leather ottoman. When I opened it, a skinny paperback—some sort of index—fell out. I didn’t take much note at the time. Just jammed it back in and flipped desultorily through the dirty atlas. Turned to the map of Iceland, which was the pale beige of a cornflake. Scratched Reykjavík with a ragged nail.

Dad, where are you?
I thought, my throat burning with grief. I missed him very much. And for a moment, a sinker of sadness dropping in my stomach, I started to worry that I might not find anything at the Merc either. But then I heard the distant chime of the woman’s bracelets. Felt the itch of her invisible, critical gaze. And my anodyne resignation slipped away. In its place my resolve expanded again. I went back downstairs.

I managed not to react too strangely when the librarian referred to me as Ms. Tate, or when she noted, a little sternly, that she’d checked the rolls and found no record of me.

“What about Douglas Johnson?” I asked, emboldened.

“What about him?” she said. I thought I saw her eyelids tighten.

“What if I said I’m his daughter?” I asked. Thought,
Wood and glue
.

She tipped her head slightly to one side. “Are you?”

I dropped my chin. I also mentioned Vera’s name, which was evidently familiar to her. After a last scrutinous stare, she said, “All right. I think Douglas has a family membership. If you’re his daughter, I’ll write you a card.”

Relieved and appreciative, I smiled. But when I asked her, as casually as I could, if she could remind me what time the Diachronic Society meeting would start, she looked very doubtful again. She had no idea what I was talking about, she said. She said it very credibly. I repeated myself. But she firmly shook her head.

For a moment I lingered at the desk in doubt. Wondered if I should wait at the Merc until nighttime to see if any Society members I recognized arrived. Yet I wondered, too, if I’d made the whole thing up. It was a thought I almost couldn’t abide—the meeting had come to represent something absolute to me. A last threshold. I didn’t want to cross it.

But as I stood there hesitating, head swimming a little, I knew it was very possible, and even likely, that it had been a final, wishful invention. Steadying myself on the edge of the desk, trying to think what to do next, I thanked the librarian. Started to turn toward the exit. Then I heard footsteps clatter above, a light clanging at the top of the stairs, and a woman’s voice called down, “Anana?”

When I climbed back up to the mezzanine, the dark-haired woman was waiting.

“So you’re Douglas’s daughter,” she said, with a faint, hard-to-place lilt. “I thought you might be.” She held out her elegant hand. “Victoria Mark,” she said. And with a start, I realized I knew her—at least her name. She’d been an editor for Vaber, Ingmar, & Breuer before they’d closed their dictionary, and she’d become one of Doug’s most trusted contributors at the
NADEL
.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” I said.

“You, too,” she replied, face furrowing kindly. Lowering her voice, she explained that the meeting wouldn’t start until seven, up on the fourth floor. Then she gathered her things, donned and belted her coat. “See you tonight,” she said softly, and clacked away.

I decided to stay there, cocooned in safe, quiet calm. The occasional
click emanating from the librarian’s desk below. In the afternoon an older man appeared, an ancient yellow newspaper blooming from under his arm, and silently read in a nearby chair. The soothing rustle of pages reminded me of Doug. Eventually, stomach hissing, I went in search of food.

I returned in plenty of time and took the stairs up to four. My heart lurched as I opened the door. But it was deserted. Lights out. Stacks empty. No recent litter in the trash. The woman, it seemed, had lied. I was wondering why—was she a friend of Dr. Thwaite’s? Did she just not like the look of me, or something I’d said?—as I stepped back into the hall. And nearly collided with Phineas.

As he braced himself, his hand went to his head. Which was covered by a red hat. “Alice,” he said, startled. “What are you doing here?”

But I didn’t even have time to remind him that he’d been the one to tell me about the meetings; more people were coming up the stairs—including Victoria Mark, who squeezed my arm and smiled. “I thought you told us Douglas wanted her here,” she said, winking. Dr. Thwaite’s mouth fell open slightly. To me she said, “I was just on my way to find you—there are so many of us tonight, we’re meeting up on six.” As she continued past us, Dr. Thwaite watched her disappear. Then, still silent, he plucked off his red cap, hair a white firebrand of static, and with the other hand gestured at the stairs. “After you,” he murmured.