Innocence

“Did she have one?”

“She was a thief and maybe worse. She wanted to be kind, kinder than she knew how to be. But I loved her.”

“What was your father’s name?”

“She never told me.”

“My mother died in childbirth,” she said, and I thought that in a sense my mother had died from childbirth, eight years after the fact, but I said nothing.

The girl looked toward the rococo ceiling, where the chandeliers hung dark, gazed up as if the rich moldings around the deep coffers and the sky scene of golden clouds within each coffer were visible to her by some spectrum of light invisible.

When she looked toward me again, she said, “What are you doing in the library after midnight?”

“I came to read. And just to be here in the grandness of it.”

She studied me for a long moment, though I presented hardly more than a silhouette. Then she said, “Gwyneth.”

“What’s your last name, Gwyneth?”

“I don’t use one.”

“But you have one.”

As I waited for her reply, I decided that all the Goth was more than fashion, that it might not be fashion at all, that it might be armor.

When at last she spoke, she didn’t give me her surname, but instead said, “You saw me running from him, but I never saw you.”

“I’m unusually discreet.”

She looked at the set of Dickens novels on the shelves to her right. She slid her fingers along the leather bindings, the titles glowing in lamplight. “Are these valuable?”

“Not really. They’re a matched set, published in the 1970s.”

“They’re wonderfully made.”

“The leather’s been hand-tooled. The lettering is gilded.”

“People make so many beautiful things.”

“Some people.”

When she turned her attention to me again, she said, “How did you know where to find me, in there with the Lebow children?”

“I saw you leaving the reading room when he was in the street looking for you. I figured you must have studied the blueprints in the basement archives. So did I.”

“Why did you study them?” she asked.

“I thought the bones of the structure might be as beautiful as the finished building. And they are. Why did you study them?”

For maybe half a minute, she considered her reply, or perhaps she considered whether to answer or not. “I like to know places. All over the city. Better than anyone knows them. People have lost their history, the what and how and why of things. They know so little of the places where they live.”

“You don’t stay here every night. I would have seen you before.”

“I don’t stay here at all. I visit now and then.”

“Where do you live?”

“Here and there. All over. I like to move around.”

Seeing through her bold makeup wasn’t easy, but I thought that underneath she might be very lovely. “Who is he, the one who chased you?”

She said, “Ryan Telford. He’s the curator of the library’s rare-book and art collections.”

“Did he think you were stealing stuff or vandalizing?”

“No. He was surprised to discover me.”

“They don’t know I come here, either.”

“I mean he was surprised to discover me in particular. He knows me from … another place and time.”

“Where, when?” I asked.

“It’s not important. He wanted to rape me then, and he almost did. He wanted to rape me tonight. Though he used a cruder word than rape.”

Sadness overcame me. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

“Who does?”

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Does it matter?”

“I guess not.”

She said, “I’m eighteen.”

“I thought no older than sixteen, maybe even thirteen now that I’ve seen you up close.”

“I have a boyish body.”

“Well, no.”

“Well, yes,” she said. “Boyish the way that very young girls can seem boyish. Why do you hide your face?”

I was intrigued that she had taken so long to ask the question. “I don’t want to scare you off.”

“I don’t care about appearances.”