Getting Across

10.

Why is there a bookshop in this town of murder and rubble and decay? Here is Box Street, and here, in an oily pocket of spare-parts depots and fly-specked quick-lunch counters, is Nate and Holly Borden’s place. Five times as deep as it is broad, dusty, dimly lit, shelves overflowing with old books and pamphlets: an improbable outpost of the nineteenth century, somehow displaced in time. There is no one in it but a large, impassive woman seated at the counter, fleshy, puffy-faced, motionless. Her eyes, oddly intense, glitter like glass discs set in a mound of dough. She regards me without curiosity.

I say, “I’m looking for Holly Borden.”

“You’ve found her,” she replies, deep in the baritone range.

“I’ve come across from Ganfield by way of Conning Town.”

No response from her to this.

I continue, “I’m traveling without a passport. They confiscated it in Conning Town and I ran the border.”

She nods. And waits. No show of interest.

“I wonder if you could sell me a copy of Walden Three,” I say.

Now she stirs a little. “Why do you want one?”

“I’m curious about it. It’s not available in Ganfield.”

“How do you know I have one?”

“Is anything illegal in Hawk Nest?”

She seems annoyed that I have answered a question with a question. “How do you know I have a copy of that book?”

“A bookshop clerk in Conning Town said you might.”

A pause. “All right. Suppose I do. Did you come all the way from Ganfield just to buy a book?” Suddenly she leans forward and smiles—a warm, keen, penetrating smile that wholly transforms her face: now she is keyed up, alert, responsive, shrewd, commanding. “What’s your game?” she asks.

“My game?”

“What are you playing? What are you up to here?”

It is the moment for total honesty. “I’m looking for a woman named Silena Ruiz, from Ganfield. Have you heard of her?”

“Yes. She’s not in Hawk Nest.”

“I think she’s in Kingston. I’d like to find her.”

“Why? To arrest her?”

“Just to talk to her. I have plenty to discuss with her. She was my month-wife when she left Ganfield.”

“The month must be nearly up,” Holly Borden says.

“Even so,” I reply. “Can you help me reach her?”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Why not?”

She ponders that briefly. She studies my face. I feel the heat of her scrutiny. At length she says, “I expect to be making a journey to Kingston soon. I suppose I could take you with me.”