He feels the scorch of my attention and turns. Morgan does not seem remotely surprised to find me watching. He’s wearing those damned nonprescription glasses again, and my pulse spikes dangerously.
Total avoidance has proved difficult to accomplish, as Moonville appears to have crushed itself down to the size of a boiler room and we have no choice but to bump up against each other constantly. The market. The post office. The shop. I’ve been haunting the Cavern of Paperback Gems even more than usual, or the night market, where I can hide under the wing of darkness. I most certainly have not been listening to his podcast. I do not read “Marvin Agassi’s” tastemaker column in theMoonville Tribune, which declares items to be “the moment,” such as sherpa ponchos and apple butter.
And I am not one bit affected that Morgan is walking this way.
“Zelda,” he greets me. I don’t know how he manages to make my name sound exactly like cleaning a knife with a silk cloth.
“Oh, are we speaking now?” I reply, not deigning to look at him. I grab several books without examining their covers, as my hands demand occupation.
Morgan glances. “What Happened in US History in 1957,” he reads. “Interesting choice.”
“Nineteen fifty-seven was an interesting year.”
“Name one thing that happened in 1957.”
“Sputnik.” I whirl away in a flourish of black tulle skirts and dedicate myself to the performance of looking engrossed in one of the other books I’ve just grabbed, a history of Vinton County coal mining.
Morgan is instantly vibrating with curiosity. I can see questions filling him like kernels exploding in a bag of popcorn. “Why’re you reading that? Is there a paranimal that lives in coal mines? Or eats coal? A paranimal that burns fuel and can turn itself into a vehicle? Please say it’s avian. We’ll call it a Hummer-bird. Tell me about everything that’s led you to this moment.”
“Is that an apology? I’m still angry with you for being angry with me for not being angry with you. It is exasperating. Now please exit my beloved eyeball, so that peace may be restored.”
Morgan considers the request. “I don’t know what that means, but my gut instinct is to say no. I will stay in your eyeball as long as I please.” He points at my right eye. “Right there. Swimming in all that pretty blue maelstrom.”
“You aren’t inmyeye, you are inaneye,” I correct archly. “The first set of doors to the library are the cornea. The second set are the pupil. The foyer between is the anterior chamber, the desk is the lens. You and I are floaters in the vitreous humor.”
He regards me as though I am bedecked with a blue ribbon at a livestock exposition. “Extraordinary. I’ve always wanted to be a floater in vitro.”
“Vitreous.” I examine my coal mining book, whichcontains sepia photos of men and women with thousand-yard stares. Old photos are crown jewels. I’ve been amassing a sizable collection of daguerreotypes, tintypes, and ambrotypes that I’d like to compile into a book one day. One of my most prized possessions is my tintype of John Milne, who was one of the three inventors of the horizontal pendulum seismograph.
“What are you hunting for?” he wheedles. “Paranimals? Black Bear Witch information?”
“Not everybody is as obsessed with the Black Bear Witch as you are.” And this is true. Not everybody is. But technically, I’m inching into that realm: I’ve depleted a highlighter and attained three paper cuts in my pursuit of knowledge. Much of it is contradictory:The History of Vinton Countyby Gilbert Fauxhall declares thatThe Black Bear Witch steals children from their beds and leaves changelings in their place, butThe History of Vinton County, Part IIby the same author states,The Witch has been maligned by many, but she is a gentle soul who attacks only when provoked.
Morgan sidles closer, circling a picture I’ve been evaluating. “Thoughts?” he encourages.
I respond with the first sincere thought that pops into my head. “Everyone in this picture is dead now.” I ruminate over another photograph, showing it to him. “What level of decomp would you suppose this man’s at?”
“He’s bones. Why’ve you got so many books on mice?” He’s browsing through them.
I’m reviewing the coal mining book with gaining intensity. It cannot be helped. There are pictures. Maps. How can Ioverlook a map? “That’s not your business. Itcouldhave been your business, but…”
When Moonville’s coal mines started closing, the area very nearly became a ghost town, I read.
“But what?”
I don’t look up. “Hm?”
Indeed, Moonville as we know it today wouldn’t exist were it not for the resurgence of interest in love magic in 1915. Folklore replaced coal as a profitable natural resource, and…
Morgan taps the page. Asks a question, but my head is too busy to process it, so his words have to wait at a stoplight to cross.
…love tourism took off. The legend of love magic, in combination with ghost stories, made Moonville an attraction, and the dwindling town rapidly jumped from strength to strength.
Morgan vaporizes into the mists of time. Whispering pages, shuffling feet, distant voices garble, becoming restful white noise. I turn page after page.
“Sorry,” I murmur eventually. “What were you saying?”
But when I look up, Morgan is no longer hovering at my side. He’s strolling out of the library with all my books on mice tucked beneath his arm.
