So . . . yeah. Trying to find a reference to anything related to rips in the fabric of reality was literally like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Making things slower, I insisted that we take the time to keyword each document as we went. Anyone who looked through the documents was asked to enter searchable terms summarizing what the document said, making information easier to find in the future. We were already in there, reading the things. Might as well archive them more thoroughly while we were at it.
Given our rate of progress, I estimated we’d be through our document research about . . . never.
That said, there was something soothing about sitting next to Jack, day after day. Shoulder-to-shoulder. Reading documents. Asking questions. Every four or five minutes, hearing Jack give a voice command or dictate a summary.
I found it comforting. Us . . . like this . . . it was kinda nice.
Not that I would ever tell Jack that. He would tease me about it endlessly, and my feelings toward him were still new and tender and easily bruised.
“Look at this,” he said late one evening, pointing to his screen.
I leaned over, noting what he was working on.
“Whoa. Why are you even looking at ol’ Cesareil Pompaso’s stuff?”
“I thought it interesting that he had the same name as your father.Wasyour father named after him?”
I shrugged. “I certainly hope not. That man was a lunatic—Cesareil Pompaso, not my father.”
Jack simply raised an eyebrow at me, gaze pointed.
“Funny.” I clacked my tongue. “Yes, I know all D’Angelos are insane, but Cesare ‘il Pompaso’D’Angelo has the distinction of being the only D’Angelo heir to go insanebeforehe actually went insane, if you get my meaning.”
Jack cocked his head at me, leaning back in his chair. “Why call him Caesar the Pompous if he was insane? Why not Cesareil Pazzo, Cesare the Crazy?”
“Apparently, he was an utterly narcissistic douchebag. An arrogant windbag of a man. He was one of the Enlightenment D’Angelos—”
“Yes, the record says he was born in 1684.”
“Exactly. Cesare had a serious case ofkeeping up with the Joneses. This was the era of Versailles and absolute monarchies. Cesare saw himself as the supreme ruler—the Caesar, if you will—of his little earldom. He ran the family businesses into the ground and spent enormous sums of money on absurd things. He picked fights with other families and single-handedly destroyed most of the wealth the D’Angelos had built over the previous centuries.”
“Sounds like a typical aristocrat.”
“Hah! You would know.”
“Funny. Very funny.” Jack grinned along with me, his tone teasing.
“Thank you. Where was I?”
“Cesare.”
“Yes. Basically, Cesare the Pompous was the dictionary definition of a megalomaniac. He considered himself to be the next Nostradamus. He hired a scribe to follow him around and record everything he said. So not only was he a pompous windbag, he was averbose, pompous windbag. I think my grandfather calculated that ten percent of the entire D’Angelo archive is comprised of Cesareil Pompasoexpounding on his greatness—”
“I think you’re holding back. Tell me how you really feel.”
I pointed a finger at him. “You’re smirking now, but after the hundredth page of ‘I have the best visions’ and ‘No one in the history of the world has seen all the awesome things I’ve seen’ . . . trust me, you’re going to want to scream. EVERYONE ignores his writings because he’s so pretentious, it’s painful to read, and there’s nothing there but the arrogant ravings of a diseased mind.”
I may have been panting and slightly shouty at the end. But, honestly. Cesareil Pompasowould drive a Quaker to drink.
I was also thoroughly enjoying myself. Given his lopsided smile, I think Jack was too.
He nodded slowly, mouth skewing more to one side. “Soooo, you’re suggesting I should simply ignore this bit here where he says, ‘I know all the secrets. The universe tells them to me and me alone. I know about the gaps and the ragged tears in the fabric of our world. Read on and you will find the answers—’”
“What?!” I lurched out of my chair and staggered behind Jack, intending to read over his shoulder but ending upinhis shoulder instead.
Fortunately, Jack didn’t seem to care. It was a milestone in our relationship, I think. We had reached the point of being able to simultaneously occupy the same space in reality without it being too weird. Like sharing spoons or couch cuddling in an extremely metaphysical sorta way.
