The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Straight and Tarot

Previously: "The Substitute Student" 

There's still time before your meeting with Sydney, time that you should probably use to change into your disguise. But you're curious, and decide to seize the chance to follow her and spy on her without being recognized.

Only after you're parked does the irony of it hit you: To avoid being recognized, you're going to spy on her under your own face.

The characteristic odor of Arnholm's Used Books—dusty paper, cardboard, and oiled wood—hits you in the face when you enter, like a folded newspaper swatted across your nose. Ted Arnholm is at the register, and he glances up at you over his half-rim glasses before turning back to the paunchy man with the white whiskers he is waiting on. In the children's book corner two small girls are squalling over a picture book while their mother (?) patiently tries corralling them. But of Sydney there's no sign.

Arnholm's is a rabbit's warren of rooms, some of them spilling up a flight of stairs onto the second floor, and the shelves are packed close together so that you'd have to make an almost row by row search. You start by looking for Sydney in the romance section, but that one is empty. So are the gardening, health, and lifestyle areas, which are the next ones you scope out. Literature is also abandoned. You give up on trying to anticipate where she might have gone, and settle in for a systematic search.

You finally glimpse her cascading blonde hair through a gap between two shelves. Her head is turned from you, and she is looking down and muttering to herself in an excited whisper, but you can't catch her words or her mood better than that. When she half turns, though, you see that her brow is deeply furrowed, and her lips are working. There's a flush in her cheek.

You duck when she spins with a flourish toward the shelf you're cowering behind, and you drop into a crouch. From this lower vantage you can only make out her knees and calves (and what amazing calves they are: tapered, and strong) between the bottom of one shelf and the tops of the books below. You peer up, and can just make out the hem of her short skirt. A little dab of saliva appears at the side of your mouth.

Her hand drops to her side. She's clutching four books, only one of them a paperback. "Gods," she mutters.

You glance around. Judging by the titles you're in the History section. Is that one of Sydney's favorite subjects?

It doesn't take long for you to grow bored, and on your haunches you scuttle crab-wise down the aisle until you can stand up without attracting attention. You tiptoe over to peek around the corner into the aisle where she is standing.

She has changed into a short white skirt and a fuzzy blue-and-white sleeveless sweater. A beret the color of fresh milk jauntily tilts atop her head. She now has a whole armful of books clutched to her chest, and is awkwardly flipping through another one.

Somewhere in the store, a cell phone goes off.

Sydney jumps and drops her books. She doesn't pick them up right away, though, but pulls her own phone from her pocket and checks it. Even from twenty feet away you hear her gasp Fuck! Then she does scoop up the books and carry all of them away.

You hop down the aisle to watch as she marches up to the register and drops them in front of Ted Arnholm. His eyebrows twitch as he looks at the pile, then goes through them, one by one, tapping prices into the desk calculator. He murmurs a price at Sydney, inquires whether she has an account, then accepts the credit card she holds out to him. Not until she has bagged and carried her purchases out do you relax.

You return to the spot—as near as you can guess—where she found her purchases. Your heart tries rotating in your chest when you see one of the titles still on the shelf: Magic: Theory and Practice. You look over the rest of the shelves and realize that you're in the Occult and Metaphysics section.

Sydney McGlynn—that girl who looks like the stereotype for a cheerleader—is into magic? You scratch under your cap. Only a chime from your own phone reminds you that you've an appointment to keep with her, and you still have to change.

* * * * *

"Hey, sorry I'm late," you honk as you swagger up to a back booth of The Crystal Cave, where Sydney is waiting. Your surveillance operation has left you feeling like you've gained an advantage over her, and your confidence is correspondingly swollen.

She smiles, then flinches as you drop your backpack with a thud onto the table in front of her. "That's okay, I was just catching up on some reading," she says, and lays aside a thick paperback. The cover is upside down from your perspective, but the lettering is big enough that you can easily read it anyway: TAROT. "I was waiting for you to get here," she continues, "before getting me something."

"What do you want?" you ask. "My treat."

"No, it's my treat," she insists. "You're the one doing me a favor."

"No, first session's free," you improvise, "and I pay for your coffee or whatever myself. Just in case I suck at being a tutor. I don't want you going away thinking I suck at everything."

Sydney grimaces in embarrassment, but relents. When you return with a black coffee for yourself and a chai latte for her, you find both her books and your books unpacked and spread over the table. "I wasn't snooping through your stuff," she assures you. You only smile and tell her she saved you some trouble.

That Tarot book is still out, you notice, which is a little odd if she's wanting to get right down to business. You hesitate before saying anything about it, but the temptation proves irresistible. "So, uh, I guess you're into this kind of place?" You jerk your chin at the room.

It's really weird: Keyserling College is an engineering school, and is hard-core enough that it punches above its comparative weight. And yet it's surrounded on all sides by kooky, metaphysically inclined businesses. The Crystal Cave is probably the kookiest of them. Looming on the walls of each of the twelve booths is one of the signs of the zodiac, and each of the ten tables in the center of the room has a little metal stand with a card on which is printed a different astrological symbol. Someone told you once that they are symbols for the planets, and that the Cave uses them and the zodiac signs instead of letters or numbers to designate the tables, but it's still a strange thing.

Sydney grins and blushes. "I guess you mean this." She drums her fingers on the paperback, then slips it under the table. "You probably think it's really dumb."

"I wouldn't say it even if I thought it," you blurt back. "And I don't think it. I don't know enough about that kind of stuff to say anything."

"You don't?" Her grin tightens. "You never studied up on anything to do with, like, the occult?"

"Nope." You lean back and twine your hands behind your head. "Tell me about it."

She holds your eye for what seems like a very long time. You find yourself holding hers. The air between you cools distinctly.

She opens up her math book. "Maybe we should do some real work," she says.

* * * * *

You study with her for an hour. It's not a success. Oh, you're fluent enough at explaining things to her, and she does well under your tutelage. But she's only businesslike, and there's none of the little flirtations that her early behavior led you to expect. You also have the impression that she's pretending to be stupider about calculus than she really is. A couple of times you catch her applying knowledge and techniques that she later says she never learned or mastered. She treats you nicely enough, though, but when at the end you suggest getting together in a week for another session to prepare for the follow up quiz, she only says that that would "probably" work. You escort her out to the parking lot and wave her good-bye. Only after she's gone do you get in your truck.

Thirty minutes later, out of your disguise, you saunter into the municipal library. It takes you nearly ten minutes to locate Caleb, who is curled up in a back corner. His eyes flash when he sees you approaching, and his mouth splits to show you all his teeth. "Dude," you say, "where's that girl? You didn't—"

He hurls himself from the chair and grabs you. "Son of a bitch!" he growls. "Give me my goddam phone!" He shakes you till your teeth rattle.

"Sh— Sure!" You pull it out. "I was just coming to— Ow!" You nurse your hand after he's grabbed it away. "The fuck is biting you? Where's that girl?"

"She never showed up! Fuck! No texts from her, either." He turns blazing eyes up at you. "Did you do something to fuck things up with her?"

"What? No! You think I—? Caleb! Dude!"

He scrolls through his phone, and when he looks up again his eyes are screwed up hard. Jesus, you think. He's about to start crying.

"Well, she didn't show up," Caleb gasps. "And she didn't even send me a text. Did I fuck up the date? Was it supposed to be tomorrow?"

"No, you didn't fuck up the date. It was totally tonight. Dude." You lay your hand over his phone before he start tapping at it. "She's a bitch. She was totally leading you on, that's all."

Caleb flushes deeply, and tears spring into his eyes. "Maybe she just forgot, or she lost my—"

"Don't make yourself crazy," you urge him. "Just forget her."

Except you can tell that he's not. He's going to text her, or he'll talk to her tomorrow. You're going to have to move fast if you're going to use him to introduce yourself to Sydney.

Next: "The Bold and the Oblivious" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"