I wandered a hall in one direction, then the other. I checked the suite number, forgot it, checked again. I headed down another hallway, the numbers going down when I wanted them to go up. Finally I found it, a set of double glass doors, directly across from the elevator where I’d begun.
“Dr. Lausson, yes? You’re here!” It was the archivist I had spoken to that morning. Lucy. She looked like a bird, sheathed in a bright blue dress that shimmered in the overhead lights, a plume of dyed orange hair. I liked her immediately. I thanked her again for arranging my visit. She grinned—she was happy someone was interested in the collection. “We went through so much trouble acquiring these papers. I’m glad they’ll see some use.” Lucy looked past my shoulder, behind me. “I thought you were bringing an RA. Just you today?”
My cheeks flushed. “Yes. Just me.”
She led me to a private room, the table laid with the materials she’d pulled. She apologized for the smallness of the accommodations; they were short on space today. It did feel a bit like a cell, strangely high walls with no windows. “No, this is perfect.”
“I’m jealous you get to spend the day with these. My day is just email, email, email.” She laughed and left me alone, the door clicking shut behind her.
The whole trip suddenly seemed ridiculous. I didn’t know what to think of Tyler’s hasty departure. Did he have some reason of his own for coming down? He hadn’t mentioned any friends. I tried topush my worry aside. He was right, it was a gorgeous day. And I would get better work done on my own; he would probably just talk my ear off with all his stories about people who meant nothing to me. I pulled the first box toward me. Legal documents and lease holdings. Nothing of immediate interest. Strange what survives the passage of time. What’s remembered, what’s resigned to the dustbin. There is something so arbitrary in it. Why—I lifted a sheet from a stack, a report from an accountant in 1939—these papers and not something else? But maybe this is what always remains of a life: columns of addition and subtraction, a balancing act.
Lucy had pulled a guide as well. I scanned it and opened another box. A stack of the journals. The author was long dead, and he meant nothing to me—he was just a way to get at the story of Leopold and Loeb. Still, I felt a voyeuristic thrill as I lifted out the first of the notebooks. The industrialist accounted for his days with an almost comic sense of self-importance, recording mundane details with hallowed specificity. As I read, the piling up of insignificant facts—times and locations of meetings, a list of phone numbers for hotels in New York—became oddly compelling.
I was about to move on to another journal when I paused on a longer entry—many were just half a page, but this one ran for several. Throughout, he referred to individuals by their initials, and my eyes landed on F. L.—Florence Leopold, Nathan’s mother. I checked the date. March 6, 1924. A few months before the murder.
F. L. joined for lunch today. She was impressed and said so several times; the new cook is doing an excellent job. I toldF. what a chore the hiring had been. You cannot depend on others for that, I explained. You must take responsibility for your staff. The meal was served on the new China which the manager at Marshall Field’s had set aside especially and which F. also admired.
She was accompanied by N. He has always been a strange child to me. Well, he is a young man now but he has the air of a child about him still. He holds himself with a petulant disdain. He reminds me of a ferret, darting eyes and flared nostrils. N. has a friend R. who stopped at the house just before two o’clock; I was surprised and not pleased by his unannounced arrival. They were to attend a lecture at the university. R. is a handsome fellow but there is something undignified or presumptuous in how he intrudes upon a space. Just a look from him and he seems to be leering at you. I do not know what it is but there was something I found … repellant is too strong a word. Off-putting is fair. Truthfully, I was happy when they left.
Later that evening, went with M. to the Athenium for a show. It was not very good.
Historians have debated whether Nathan Leopold and Robert Loeb were actually gay and, if so, actually lovers; only later accounts referenced this explicitly. But in the uncle’s depiction—an overgrown, petulant child and an undignified, leering intruder—the wheels of homosexual panic churned already. I felt a quick and satisfied kick. This was a great discovery. I took photos of the pages and made some notes.
There wasn’t time for a deep dive; I would just familiarize myself with the papers for my next visit. I was eager to get to the arrest and trial and moved ahead. The cousin’s account was lurid but sporadic; at times the murder and its aftermath dropped out completely; for him it was a sideshow, a minor affair. But what was there was great—no one had written about this. When I’d started the project as my dissertation, I had gotten so fixated on the technical details of murder cases I took an internship in a forensics lab. I wanted to find out how they talked about things so I could better interpret the texts I was examining. My peers thought I was crazy; lit scholars don’t usually sully themselves in the trenches. But I had a feeling of an unknown world waiting to be unlocked. And I got that feeling again, poring over the journals.
I was cross-checking some dates when there was a knock at the door and it opened—I jumped.
“Sorry!” It was Lucy. She sounded surprised at her arrival as well. “Sorry, sorry!”
I laughed. “It’s okay. I was deep in it.” How many hours had passed?
She leaned over me to look—I could smell her perfume, robust and powdery. “Find anything interesting?”
“Definitely. I’m excited.” And I was.
“Wonderful—I hate to stop you. But we’re starting to close. We can arrange for you to come back soon, of course.”
“I got so caught up, I didn’t realize it was seven already.”
“Oh no, did I not mention we were closing early at six? I’ve been so scattered. There’s an event. They’re taking the entire floor and just told us last week. Like we don’t have things to do. It’s a bunch of local elected officials and some board members—something forfunders.” She rolled her eyes at the last word as if to say—you know how they are.
The sun had started to drop, the air cooling in its descent. I had an hour to kill. I was hungry, I’d skipped lunch. When I told Safie I was coming down (omitting Tyler), she told me about a Middle Eastern place. “You have to go,” she said. “And get the lamb.” I had mapped it, not far from campus. Maybe Tyler would be hungry, too. I could wait; it seemed okay to share a meal down here.
I set off in no direction—it felt good to stretch my legs. Sawyer stifled: smaller buildings, narrow paths, fewer people, the same faces day after day. I felt a buzz at being somewhere new and unfamiliar, surrounded by strangers. I wondered what Tyler had been up to. Had he been alone all day? He seemed like someone who could slip seamlessly into whatever place he landed. Not me. As I walked, I found myself looking for his face among the packs of students.
I kept checking the time; I was nervous not to be late. As I wandered, the sun set, and in the cobalt blue of dusk, the buildings and paths became indistinct. I moved in hurried strides, headed in what I hoped was the right direction. I had wandered farther than I meant to, down some steps to a walk along a heavy stone wall circling a small lake, its black waters depthless and still. I spun around, searching out the stairs I’d come down, and caught a scent of something. I lifted my shirt and sniffed: nervous sweat and library funk.
A young couple, walking close and bent over a phone, passed by.
“Can you point me toward the library? I’ve gotten lost.”
“Which one?” the girl of the pair asked.
“The main one, I think?” Though I’d spent the day there, the name escaped me. “Lots of glass?”
“Thompson. That way.” She motioned behind me; I’d just come from there. “It’s like a ten-minute walk or something.”
“Shit”—it was already seven; I would be late—“pardon me.” But they were walking away, back at the phone. I hurried off, wishing I had taken Tyler’s number. What if he was looking for me and got lost? The faculty handbook must have rules against misplacing students.
