Chapter 4

Chapter 4.

            “The van is upside down?” exclaimed Paul, after Jack and Cable dragged him out into the parking lot.

            “On its side, technically,” said Cable.

            “And he’s fine?” asked Paul.

            “He says he is.”

            Paul leaned up against his van and crossed his arms.

            “If he’s fine, do we all have to go?” asked Jack.

            “We don’t have to, I have to,” said Paul. “The van’s in my name. I mean, assuming he really is fine and that all we’re dealing with is the van, that is. There will be tow trucks and maybe police. This just happened a few minutes ago?”

            “Right after you told me to watch Lee,” said Cable.

            Paul looked at the clock on his phone. “There’s no way I’ll be back before the sale starts.”

            “We can handle the sale,” said Jack.

            Paul just looked from one to the other.

            “Yeah, we’ve got it,” said Jack. “For the Queen Mary shelves anyway.”

            “Have you even looked at the rest of the catalogue?” asked Paul.

            Jack shook his head.

            “I have,” said Cable. “I haven’t seen the books, but I did some research based on the descriptions online.”

            “Well, I can’t stand here and talk about it,” said Paul. He handed his notebook and catalogue to Cable, “I’ve got notes on some of it. The numbers in blue ink are my numbers, OK? The pencil notes are just notes. Ignore them. And also, make sure to take a look at the actual books for the things I’ve highlighted with the yellow marker. Those are lots that might be interesting, but I really needed to see them. Don’t go crazy on those, but—you know what; that’s too much – just forget it, it doesn’t matter. How could he flip the van?”

            “He said it was fresh pavement and there were no lane lines. Cars were racing all over the place and he just lost control,” said Cable.

            Paul climbed up into the bookstore van. “I guess I’ll be back to get you at some point. I don’t know if I’ll have to go back to Fredericksburg with the tow truck or what.”           

            “Just go,” said Jack, “we’ll take care of things here. Call us.”

            “Right,” said Paul.

            The van sputtered off, towards the highway. The boys turned back to the auction house.

            Just inside the front door, they were met by the Iron Sheik. His reading glasses rested low on his nose. He looked over their rims at Jack and Cable as they entered.

            “Is he leaving?” he asked.

            “Our brother’s having car trouble,” said Cable.

            The Iron Sheik looked as his watch. “I hope he’ll be able to make it back for the sale.”

            Cable didn’t quite understand what the older man was driving at. His face was inscrutable.

            “We’ll be handing it tonight,” Jack interjected.

            “Are you with Riverby?” he asked.

            “Yup,” said Jack, “Paul brings us in for a certain specialty we have.”

            Cable turned to look at his brother, startled.

            “When Riverby himself needs a specialist?” repeated the Iron Sheik. “Is that so? Do you mind my asking what your specialty is?”

            “Actually, we don’t really –“ began Cable, before Jack cut him off.

            “It’s private collection work, mostly,” interrupted Jack, “I’m not supposed to talk about it—“

            “No, you’re not!” snipped Cable, “Come on, Jack.”

            Jack continued, in a stage whisper to the Iron Sheik, “it’s sort of a royal commission.”

            “Pardon us,” said Cable, pulling Jack by the arm.

            “Lot’s still to do,” Jack whispered over his shoulder to the Iron Sheik as Cable led him back to the book room.

            “What are you doing?” said Cable angrily as they ducked through the curtain. “Are you crazy?”

            “What?” protested Jack, “I’m just messing around with him.”

            “And the reason for that would be what?” asked Cable.

            Jack shrugged. “Since when do I need a reason?”

            Cable shook his head. He opened Paul’s auction catalogue.

“I’m going back to work. I suggest you do the same,” he said. He squeezed between a couple other people over to the computer station they’d set up on the map case. There, he took his first good look at Paul’s catalogue. These descriptions, for the more than the three hundred lots in the sale, had been mailed out weeks earlier. Paul had researched the books and made notes in the margins. Some were in blue ink, some in black, some in pencil. There were lots that were circled in highlighter and others where just a word or the starting bid was highlighted. A few had stars beside them. Cable flipped from page to page. The notes continued all the way through. There were 64 pages. He had less than an hour. But Cable did not mind research, especially when it was computer work.

With his headphones on, this to block out distractions, he dove into the project, starting with the lots that Paul had marked with stars. Getting to the books themselves meant jockeying for position with some of the other people who were examining titles in the glass cases. Once or twice he ended up pulling down a book that Lee also seemed interested in. Cable made a note of that as he went.

Jack had already looked through the books he needed and just as he had hoped, there was nothing valuable or unusual amongst the shelves and shelves of bestsellers. Since that was all that he was hoping to buy, he turned his attention to other people in the room. His competition. The Fat Man, still clutching his canvas tote bag under his arm, was in earnest conversation with Benson White.

“No that’s not what I’m saying,” the Fat Man laughed nervously, “it’s your auction house and you can do what you want. But I’m sure that it was there before. I saw it with my own eyes.”

Benson, with his hands in his pockets, was backed up against one of the glass fronted cases. There was a smile on his face, but it looked like it was left over from a previous conversation. His eyes flitted around the room and when he met Jack’s gaze, he nodded slightly.

“I’m almost sure that no one has taken it out of the room,” said Benson. “Bud or Mr. Wembley or myself have been in the room all week long.”

“Probably not,” cajoled the Fat Man, “but if none of us can find it, that doesn’t do you or me much good. If it was on shelf 50 yesterday and someone slipped it onto shelf 150 today, with a bunch of magazines that aren’t worth anything.”

“I understand,” said Benson, “I do. Really I do. I’ll tell you what, if it doesn’t turn up before the sale, I will ask Mr. Wembley to make an announcement. How would that be?”

The Fat Man twitched his bangs out of his eyes. “Fine, fine. Like I said, it doesn’t really matter to me. I’d just think that you’d want to know where your books were. People could be taking advantage.

“I’m going to have Bud take a look. You said it was Max Ernst?”

“Klimt,” said the Fat Man, “Klimt.”

Benson stepped sideways to get around the Fat Man, and repeated, “Klimt” to himself as he ducked through the door to the front room. The Fat Man continued talking, as if the whole exchange had been a monologue.

“It’s just that, one of these days when something good does turn up, there’s nothing to stop someone from turning the dustjacket inside out or hiding it or something like that.”

When the Fat Man noticed Jack watching him, his lowered his voice, but didn’t stop muttering to himself. Jack made another circuit of the room and was interested to notice that someone else had shown up while he’d been outside – a female someone. Apart from the loud-whisperer, she was the only woman in the room. She was crouched down looking at a low shelf. The blue swirls of a tattoo were visible on her back where her maroon shirt and black pants didn’t quite meet. Jack couldn’t see her face because she was facing the other way. Long strands of hair blocked her face and her ponytail hung low to the floor. When she stood up abruptly and brushed her hair back, she knocked her glasses askew. Her face was flushed. She had the auction catalogue in one hand, a bouquet of brightly colored post-it notes blooming from nearly every page.

“Oh gosh sorry,” she said, straightening her glass, “am I in your way?”

She was slim and pretty, in a bookish way. Her eyes were sharp and blue, her features fine and birdlike without being fragile. A pen protruded from the knot of hair funneling into her ponytail.

“What?” stammered Jack, “hunh?”

“Are you trying to get past me? “ she asked, “I’m not really paying much attention, am I? You’ve probably been standing there forever.”

“D-um. No – guh,” was all Jack could manage.

She tucked her hair behind her ear.  “I’m just so excited.” She emphasized the middle syllable.

“Um, me too. For what?” said Jack.

“This set of Henty,” she said, pointing to a half shelf of books down low. “Oh gosh, that’s not what you’re here for too, is it?”

“No,” said Jack, than repeated himself with a bit more conviction and, he hoped, nonchalance. He forced a knowing twinkle into his eye and may even have raised an eyebrow, “No, I’ve got my eye on something else.”

She blushed at him, almost a red as her shirt. Jack suddenly realized that she might have thought he meant her, and he blushed too.

“Yes well,” she said awkwardly, “there’s lots of good things here.”

“Yes,” Jack blurted out, “the books. Lots of great books.”

“I’m Rachel,” she said, extending a hand n a very matter of fact manner.

“Jack Bonney,” said Jack. He took her hand. It was small and strong. She gave him a surprising squeeze then let go abruptly.

“Are you a dealer?” she asked him. She gestured at the middle aged men in the room, seeming to scan and remind herself of each of them in a split second.

Jack’s mind raced. Was it good or bad to be a dealer, in this context?

“I’m just helping out my uncle,” he settled on. Non committal.

“One of these guys?” she asked. Apart from the fact that her glasses were still not straight and that Jack yearned to prolong this conversation, he would have found a way to bail out at this point. He did not like to be questioned so directly.

“No,” said Jack, “he’s not here. We’re, uh, we’re handling the auction for him tonight.”

“So a dealer, then?” she persisted.

He felt his ears start to heat up again and knew they were reddening as well. He looked down at his hands and then noticed once again that her catalogue had more notes protruding from it than Paul’s had. She must be a dealer as well; who else would mark up the catalogue that way?

“Yes,” said Jack, nodding, “a dealer. Like you.”

She looked down at her own catalogue, and then waved it between them and bobbed her head. “Guilty,” she said, smiling.

Jack smiled too. He nodded. But he could think of nothing to say. She opened her eyes wider, seeming to wait for him to speak. Jack was glad to have her attention on him, but what had happened to his vocabulary?

            “So the Henty set?” he blurted out.

            “Oh gosh yes,” she said. She put a hand on his arm and lowered her voice. “please tell me that you’re not bidding on it.”

            Jack was about to answer, but she continued.

            “No of course, I couldn’t ask you not to bid on it. Don’t answer that. But promise me that if you buy it, you’ll let me come to you shop and visit it.” She released his arm with a gentle shove that nearly knocked Jack off balance. “But seriously, if there’s anything you are interested in that you want me to stay away from…”

            She cocked her head and gave him a knowing glace. Or what he assumed would have been a knowing glance if Jack had any idea what he was supposed to know. He nodded eagerly and, he feared, a bid stupidly, and said, “Definitely.”

            “Miss Rachel,” said Bud loudly, from behind Jack.

            “Hello Bud,” she smiled broadly and stepped past Jack to give him a hug.

            “How’s Winston?” said Bud, “how come we don’t see him any more.”

            “You know why,” she said.

            “That’s what I was afraid of,” said Bud. After every sentence, his mouth moved once or twice more like he was chewing gum (which he wasn’t) or was being dubbed in English. Jack smiled at him.

            “You go easy on her,” Bud said to him.

            “I will,” he said.

            “I’m supposed to be looking for a –“ Bud looked at his little spiral pad, “—Klimt. You seen it?”

            “The Krakow monograph?” said Rachel.

            “Little thing,” said Bud, “In with the art books,”

            “I thought I did,” said Rachel, “Over here.” She took Bud by the arm and started to lead him away. “It was nice to meet you,” she said to Jack, “we should talk before the sale.”

            “Definitely,” said Jack again.

            He watched her go to the shelf of art books where the Fat Man’s drama was unfolding. Then, gradually, as her attention was gone and its after-effect fading, his mind filled with all sorts of interesting and funny things to say. He was glad that Cable, still plugged into his headphones, had not witnessed that exchange.

            Benson had slipped back into the room and was talking with the man at the library table, who was still poring over the old engravings in a book Jack hadn’t seen yet. “So I told the widow,” he was saying, “I can’t do anything with your records, but if you want me to sell those golf clubs, I think you’re looking at close to ten thousand dollars.”

            Jack phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Quinn.

            Jack headed back out towards the parking lot to talk.

            “What’s going on?” Jack asked.

            “This sucks,” said Quinn. “Is Paul still there?”

            Jack said he wasn’t.

            “I didn’t buy the insurance from the rental agency and the police say that our gold cards don’t automatically cover it.”

            “Are you OK, though?” asked Jack.

            “Of course,” said Quinn, “why wouldn’t I be?”

            “I’m not going to answer that,” said Jack. “So the cops are there? Is the van totaled?”

            “Most likely,” said Quinn.

            Jack stood out on the front steps with his phone. The only other person out there was a plump, gray bearded man, smoking a cigarette. He wore an olive green shirt and a silk lavender tie. He gazed towards the sunset and breathed deeply of the poisonous smoke. Jack coughed.

            “Paul should be there soon,” said Jack, “He’ll take care of it.”

            “It’s not going to be pretty,” said Quinn, “he told me to get the insurance.”

            “Don’t worry about it,” said Jack.

            The plump man dropped his cigarette and stamped it out. Then he picked it up and put it carefully in the ashcan by the door. He caught Jack’s eye and said, “Beautiful sunset. Exquisite. Don’t dawdle now, we’re going to be starting in just a few minutes.”

           

           

           

            

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

            It was easier for Jack to work hard and fast when he was doing it ironically. He loved this Queen Mary project. It was he who, months earlier, had persuaded Paul to let him and his brothers take over this peculiar tangent to the book business. Now, in the final week leading up to setting sail, he could hardly sleeps night for the excitement. He loved that here, at the swanky auction house, among experts in various esoteric fields, he was turning water into wine. And he loved that he could do in right under their very eyes. Here he was, dressed like a book dealer, acting like a book dealer, for all anyone knew, trying to be a book dealer. While all the while, he was just measuring shelves and buying books by the foot. He went through the motions – consulting his printout of auction lots, pulling books from the shelves and flipping to the title pages, ostensibly looking for autographs and indications of edition. It was the same things everyone else was doing, except Jack was making sure that those indicators of value and scarcity were absent from the books on his most-wanted list.

This was the third time Riverby had been tapped to update the library on the Queen Mary. The ocean liner made much of its library in its advertising literature, but when his uncle had been on board a decade ago, he came home unimpressed. He had contacted the company and offered his services – to keep the library fresh and current, in exchange for a state room on board from time to time – and a relationship had begun.

It was vacation reading. The literary equivalent of an all you can eat buffet, which the ship also provided. Books for people to lay open on their chests while they napped pool-side or to set on their bedside tables like hard covered teddy bears for grownups with dispensable income. Or yes, perhaps ever to read and then inadvertently to steal when they disembarked. Two thousand dollars for a week crossing the Atlantic, they must figure, what’s one little paperback book? You’re supposed to take the soaps and the towels, right? So why not a book? That’s why they put the gaudy QM2 stickers on them so prominently.

But this past winter, for some reason, the boys had had the hardest time finding the right sort of books. Their usual sources, library sales, auctions, flea markets, had all been inexplicably barren. With the deadline just days away, they had only 45 boxes of books. They needed at least twice that many. In the 27 auction lots in this sale that were glossy hardcovers or appropriate paperbacks, Jack saw the answer to their worries.

As he looked over the books, he also saw that no one else in the room was paying any attention to this part of the collection. The couple with the spiral notebooks were still talking in not-quite-hushed tones about their discoveries. There was a large pear shaped man with bowl-cut hair looking furiously through the art books. He clutched his canvas tote bag under his arm as he worked, as though it were full of secrets that he was afraid would spill out if he set it down. He was wearing a ribbed black sweater and dark blue pants that were wrinkled in all the places that bent and disconcerting threadbare in all the places that rubbed or stretched during the bending. Jack knew him as The Fat Man, from Paul’s stories of auctions past. He was an art book specialist and a very conservative bidder. He only bid on things that he knew he could sell quickly. He put one book back on the shelf and pulled out the next. He flipped through the pages without looking at them, then took out the next book and repeated the operation.

“Did you see a little monograph on Klimpt in here?” The Fat Man asked another browser standing near him. “I know it was here before. I saw it before. I think someone may have taken it.”

The other man, a thin, bald professorial type shook his head.

“That’s the thing about this arrangement,” continued The Fat Man, to no one in particular, as he pulled out the next book and rifled through it, “you leave all the books out like this and some things are going to walk away. It was a five hundred dollar monograph.”

As he looked through more volumes, his agitation seemed to grow. He muttered, “I knew I should have told Benson to put it in the case. You know, I try to play by the rules here, but this is just what happens. I’ve seen it before, too. Things either get lost or damaged.”

The professorial type, who was sipping white wine from a glass and not really handling any of the books, glanced his direction again and the Fat Man used the opportunity to direct his rant at him.

“One time it was an original drawing by Dali. During the preview it was tucked inside a book and then after the sale, it was gone. Another time a set mysteriously got split up so that volume one was on one shelf and volume two was on another shelf and volume three on a third. The only was you could reunite them was to buy it all, so right away that’s more than most of us can afford.”

“What are you looking for?” asked the bald man.

“Oh nothing,” said The Fat Man, “it doesn’t matter now, does it?” He laughed a nervous, high pitched laugh.

“Should I get someone?” asked the bald man.

The Fat Man didn’t answer. He only continued to work his way down the shelf of oversized books, shaking each one as he went. The bald man used the moment of silence to slip out of the book room, back into the main gallery.

Jack counted volumes and made notes on his printout. 40 volumes on this shelf… pay $20-$30 for them.  65 volumes here… try to get them for less than $35. When it was books like this, there wasn’t much skill or expertise involved. That was why Cable was drawn to the better, rarer books. Cable was always more comfortable, if not outright happier, when subtlety and complexity played a role. His penchant for obscure details and deep research gave him an edge in those situations. When it came to appearances and snap judgments, though, Jack was unparalleled.

“Franklin, what are you looking for?” The black man with the Wembley polo shirt came in from the front room. “That man said something is missing.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Bud,” said The Fat Man, “it seems like it’s always something, doesn’t it?”

“That’s what you say,” said Bud, cheerfully, “Maybe I’ve seen it. What are you after?”

The Fat Man’s hair hung down into his eyes. He got it out of the way not by brushing it aside with his fingers, but by shaking his head – twitching his head – to rearrange his bangs. If the new arrangement were no better than the previous, he’d just do it again, until he could see.

“It was a little monograph on Klimpt,” he said, “32 pages. Printed in Poland in the fifties. About this big.”

“Klimpt,” repeated Bud. “He’s the one that did the mosaics, isn’t he?”

The Fat Man laughed his nervous laugh. “Among other things, yes.”

“Yeah, I know him” said Bud, “Somebody else was asking me about that. It was on the shelf you’re looking at, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” said The Fat Man, “but it isn’t now. Obviously. That’s why I’m looking for it.”

Bud took a small notepad out of his back pocket. “Lot number one oh two.”

“Did you see it yourself, before?” asked The Fat Man.

“No, I just wrote down the bid for this other guy,” said Bud, “I didn’t see it.”

“Well if you’ve got a bid for someone on this lot, I’d call them up if I were you and tell them the Klimpt piece is missing,” said The Fat Man.

“Yeah?” asked Bud.

“Or you’re going to have a disappointed customer,” he laughed.

“You tell me if you find it, OK?” He made a note in his pad. “I’ll ask Benson if he’s seen it.”

Jack worked his way to the end of the row of low shelves running down the center of the room. He’d filled in prospective prices for about half of the lots he wanted. In looking around the room at the other people, he was surprised to realize that he seemed to be working harder than most of them. The majority appeared to be more interested in chatting with each other than in looking at the books.

“Oh, with the ebooks selling so cheap now, I’m just glad I don’t have to make a living off this anymore,” said one paunchy middle aged man.

“I’ve been having good luck with digitizing,” said another. “At 99 cents a copy, I can sell the same file a dozen or more times if it gets a seller ranking over 200,000 on Amazon.”

“But isn’t that still just $12 dollars?” asked the first man.

“Before their commission, it is. They’re taking thirty percent now!”

“And for twelve times the work. Not for me,” said the first man.

Jack moved to the other side of the low bookcases, and in so doing moved into range to overhear another conversation. This one was between a gray haired man who was seated at a table with an old leather bound book open to a detailed engraving and a darker skinned man with a striking beard. It was black beneath his chin and silver everywhere else. His moustache, which stood out from his face and curled up at the ends like a true handlebar, was jet black. His hair, swept back from his face and worn a little longer than was fashionable, was silver. He stood with his arms crossed over his barrel chest and with his feet far apart. Jack would not have been surprised to see him wearing shiny blue boots that turned up at the toes and ended in tassles. Instead he was wearing a gray oxford shirt and black pants. He wore a dark green silk scarf around his neck, with a twist and a loose knot at the neck, and a matching pocket handkerchief. The silk had veins of gold in it which, unfurled, might have been Arabic writing, or which might as easily have been paisley. The man matched, in all detail, the description of Paul’s longtime nemesis at the auction house, the fearsome Iron Sheik. Jack positioned himself as close to the two men as he could get, without attracting attention.

“It’s not what it used to be,” said the seated man. “It seems just a matter of money now. When was the last truly great discovery? Take this, for example.” He pointed to the engraving in the book in front of him. “It’s beautiful. 1525. All the plates present except the Satanic one, of course. But it’s become just a commodity. You can buy ten of them online any hour of the day. I remember the first time I saw one of these. I’d been searching for ten years in bookstores all over the continent. This little man came shuffling out of the back with his copy and I knew what it was before he even put it down. That one had the Satanic plate but not the Resurrection.”

“Is the Resurrection rare?” asked the The Iron Sheik.

“What, this?” the seated man pointed to the illustration. “They’re all rare, whatever that means nowadays.”

The Iron Sheik stepped closer and looked down at the engraving. He pulled his reading glasses down from where they had been perched on his head and looked closer. Then he opened his auction catalogue and made a note beside the photo of that book.

“What do they sell for?” asked The Iron Sheik.

“Five, six, sometimes seven,” said the seated man, leaning back. He held up his hands in dismay, “and to whom? People who never read them. They’re just ticking books off their checklists. And no doubt this one will go in that range as well. And yet here we are two hours before the sale and where are those people? I can remember when having a book like this come to town, come to a museum in town would have people standing in line just to see it.”

“Really?” said The Iron Sheik.

The seated man nodded and let out a long sigh, “I don’t know why I even bother. It might as well be socket wrenches, for all they care. Some internet bidder in Texas or Nevada is going to get it, anyway.”

The Iron Sheik opened his catalogue again and Jack could see him circle the listing for this book. Then he closed the catalogue and moved slowly over to where The Fat Man was. The Fat Man, meanwhile and for all his bulk, continued to work like a squirrel trying to unearth nuts he’d buried long ago. The Iron Sheik leaned in and took note of the lot number that The Fat Man was fretting over. Then he jotted that down in his catalogue as well.

Jack turned his attention back to the books in front of him, but before he could make any more headway, Cable appeared next to him and took his arm. Jack could tell by the look on his face that something was wrong.

Cable still had his earpiece in.

“We’ve got a bit of a problem,” he said. 

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

            Quinn Bonney stared at the long curve of brake lights stretching out in front of him on the highway. He could see flashing emergency lights in the distance and he hoped that that meant the end of the traffic jam. He played the padded steering wheel like a drum, enjoying the echo and the thrum of the top 40 music countdown in the empty cargo van.  He rocked back and forth to try to get the van to sway to the music on its fancy rental-van hydraulics. At six foot two, had been the tallest kid in his class ever since ninth grade. Now a senior in high school, with thick sideburns and a mop of curly oatmeal colored hair, he had had no trouble at all convincing the woman at the car rental agency that he was twenty five years old, thereby avoiding the $75 surcharge on under age renters. He pocketed the extra money Paul had given him to cover that expense and pondered whether to use it in the casino on board the Queen Mary 2 or to take Madison out for a decent dinner before he left.

            On the one hand, Madison was still under the impression that he was rich and a $75 dinner would go a long way towards maintaining that illusion. They could get the full fondue extravaganza with three kinds of meat and double dip chocolate dessert at the Melting Pot. If they went on a Monday night they could get bottomless virgin pina colada lemonades for free. $75 might even get them into a matinee movie before dinner, if they skipped Odyssey of the Mind and left straight from history class. It’d be a pretty nice flourish, thought Quinn, to surprise her with a going away date like that, before setting sail on the luxury liner. Who knows where that might lead.  He hadn’t mentioned to her that he was going on board to work nights cataloguing library books for his uncle. He preferred to leave her with the impression that it was a black tie affair, all high tea and how-do-you-do.

            On the other hand, she was going to find out eventually that those treasure chests at the end of the famous Bonney Boys adventure stories were not so boundless after all. His own college savings, Jack and Cable’s tuition, various gifts and whatnot that his parents had forced him to put away for the long term, left him better off than some people, to be sure, but he was hardly sleeping on a mattress stuffed with gold coins. If she only liked him for his money, she was going to find out eventually what the true state of affairs was. She’d put the pieces together – the tandem bicycle with a stuffed animal strapped to the back seat, the jeans with holes in the knees, the family vacations to ‘rustic camps’ in ‘out of the way places.’ Even if she thought now that it was all an elaborate ruse to mask his embarrassing wealth with conspicuously grungy behavior, she’d see through it before prom, wouldn’t she? You didn’t get to be captain of the glee club by being stupid, after all.

            Then again, it was March now. Prom was only two months away. If he could play up this Queen Mary trip for a few weeks, maybe actually ask her to prom when he got back. Make a big deal about renting a limo and then see if he could unload the last of those Confederate banknotes on eBay to spring for a class ring… So what if she did only like him for his money? There were worse things. Like not having anyone to go to prom with.

It was all unfolding perfectly. Unless she went digging around on the internet and found his embarrassing old Amazing Race blog, he’d covered his tracks pretty well. No sign of him on the RPG message-boards any more. He’d deleted most of his dad’s family blog from the web (though he’d left it intact on the hard-drive and hacked the computer to lead his own family to that master file when they logged in, so they wouldn’t know it wasn’t getting out of the house any more). If Madison hadn’t googled him yet, there was no reason to think she’d do it now. Not with sectionals coming up in three weeks.

            Traffic squeezed from four lanes down to two as they neared the emergency lights. It didn’t look like an accident at all. It was a crew of line-painting trucks. At four o’clock on a Thursday. Quinn shook his head in disgust. He knew he was going to be in the doghouse when he got to the auction late. When he finally eased the van past the work crews, he noticed that they weren’t even working. Other drivers noticed it too, and there was a steady blast of horns as cars squeezed past. Then it was off to the races. Cars shot out of the congested lanes into the open road ahead like they were fired from a cannon. Tires burned as frustrated drivers floored the ignition pedals and raced their engines to make up for lost time. The rental van didn’t have much in that department, so Quinn checked his mirrors to try to slide over into the right lane. He couldn’t see well with the van’s solid sides. A wailing horn blared from his right as a silver BMW passed him on that side. With the blinker on, he stole a glance back over his shoulder, out the little rear window of the van. Nothing in sight. He started to change lanes, but there was another horn. A green Honda, again passing on the right. Quinn tried to straighten out back into his own lane, but a pickup truck from his left was already veering in front of him. He tapped the brakes. The empty van squealed in protest and started to skid. He straightened the wheel. The van leaned forward – those wobbly rental van shocks again – and Quinn thought he had it under control. Then the pickup trunk in front of him hit its own brakes hard. He was too close for Quinn to stop short. He had to change lanes to avoid contact. It was too crowded on the left. He swung to the right, into the next lane. There was a blare of horns. Quinn kept it steady into the right lane, speeding around the braking pickup. The van drifted slightly onto the shoulder and he heard the fine grit kick up in the wheel wells. In his mirrors he could see cars in his wake braking and swerving, but everything seemed OK. There were no lane lines on the new blacktop on this side of the paint crews. Quinn’s heart was beating fast, as he let the van roll back down to 50 then 45 miles an hour.

            All of a sudden, there was a blast of some sort from the road beneath him. Had he hit a pot hole? The van veered hard left. He wrenched the wheel to the right. He heard a scraping just beneath his feet. The van canted forward again. He couldn’t straighten it out, so he twisted hard right. As the van angled roughly onto the shoulder, Quinn saw a tire bounding ahead of him down the road. The grinding and scraping beneath his feet told him that it was his own tire. He tried to brake again, on the shoulder, but the three wheeled van skidded sideways. It was all in slow motion now. He had all his weight on the brake, as the van fishtailed on the loose gravel on the side of the new blacktop. Then, just as it seemed it would stop safely, something underneath the van gave way. Its front end lowered itself another notch towards the road. The stump of the missing front tire planted itself in the soft shoulder, and the van, pivoting on it, tipped ever so slowly onto its side.

            As the ground rose up towards him, Quinn hung onto the steering wheel. The van rolled gently, almost all the way onto its top. Then it settled down on its side with the driver’s side door on the ground. His backpack which had been on the passenger seat fell on top of him and his phone and notebook and bottle of iced tea fell out. The radio had somehow stopped and Quinn could hear cars racing past. He wasn’t the slightest bit hurt; he could tell that instantly. But he lay still, muscles tensed, for what seemed like a long while. Beneath all the sounds outside and the pounding blood racing in his head, he could hear another buzzing of some sort. At first he thought he might have hit his head. But it wasn’t coming from his head. It was coming from near his head. At his left shoulder, which was resting on the van door – the glass wasn’t even broken – his phone, set on vibrate, was alerting him to an incoming call.