The Book of Speculation

3 JUNE 22ND

It’s an absurd hour for a phone call, but the more absurd the hour, the more likely someone is to be home. Though the sun is barely up over the water, Martin Churchwarry sounds as though he’s been awake for hours.

“Mr. Churchwarry? I’m so glad to reach you. This is Simon Watson. You sent me a book.”

“Oh, Mr. Watson,” he says. “I’m delighted to hear it arrived in one piece.” He sounds excited, almost breathy. “It’s rather fantastic, isn’t it? I’m only sorry that I wasn’t able to hang on to it myself, but Marie would have killed me if I’d brought home another stray.”

“Absolutely,” I say reflexively. After a brief pause, “I don’t think I follow.”

“It’s the bookseller’s occupational hazard. The longer you’re in business, the more the line between shop and home blurs. Oh, let’s be honest. There isn’t a line at all anymore, and Marie — my wife — won’t tolerate me taking up any more space with books I can’t sell but like the look of.”

“I see.”

“But you haven’t called about my wife. I assume you have questions.”

“Yes. Specifically where did you get it and why send it to me?”

“Of course, of course. I mentioned that I specialize in antiquarian books, yes? I’m a bit of a book hound, actually. I hunt down specific volumes for clients. Yours was part of a lot in a series of estate auctions. I wasn’t there about it specifically, I was there for a lovely edition of Moby-Dick; a client of mine is a bit obsessed with it.” There is a jovial bounce to his voice and I find myself picturing an elfin man. “There was a 1930 Lakeside Press edition in the lot I couldn’t pass up. I was lucky enough to have the winning bid, but wound up with some twenty-odd other volumes in the process, nothing spectacular, but saleable things — Dickens, some Woolf — and then there was your book.”

My book. I haven’t thought of it that way, though its leather feels comfortable in my hands, right. “Whose estate?”

“A management company was in charge of the event. I tried to follow up with them about the book, but they weren’t terribly forthcoming. If something has no provenance, their interest is generally low, and the lot it was part of was a mixed bag, more volume than quality. It belonged to a John Vermillion.”

The name is unfamiliar. I know little of my family. Dad was the only child of older parents who died before I was born, and Mom didn’t live long enough to tell me much of anything. “Why send it to me and not his family?”

“The name, Verona Bonn. Wonderful sounding. Half the charm in old books is the marks of living they acquire; the way the name was written seemed to imply ownership. It was too lovely to destroy or let rot any further, yet I couldn’t keep it. So I did a bit of research on the name. A circus high diver — how extraordinary. I discovered a death notice, which led me to your mother, and in turn to you.”

“I doubt it was my grandmother’s,” I say. “From what I know she lived out of a suitcase.”

“Well, another family member’s perhaps? Or maybe a fan of your grandmother’s — people do love a good story.”

Yes, a story. We are of course a good story. My hands slip and suddenly my coffee is on the kitchen floor, pooling in the cracked linoleum. I grab for a paper towel to mop it up and knock over the sugar canister. The old sour feeling settles in the center of my chest, a familiar sensation that comes with being the town tragedy. A mother who drowned herself, a father dead from grief, a young man raising his sister alone.

“Do you do this kind of thing often? Track down families of people who used to own your books?”

“More often than you’d think, Mr. Watson — Simon. May I call you Simon?”

Blood wells from the bottom of my foot, a dark red bloom mixes with the coffee and sugar. I must have stepped on a piece of the mug. “If you like.”

“Wonderful. I just last year came across a lovely edition of Scott’s The Lady of the Lake. It had a beautiful padded and embossed cloth binding. Inside there was a pressed violet that was forty years old if it was a day. A little piece of magic. The owner, Rebecca Willoughby, had written her name on the inside cover. Rebecca was deceased, of course, but I managed to find her niece, who was delighted to receive a book that her aunt had obviously treasured as a girl. She said it was a bit like meeting her aunt all over again. I’d hoped to have a similar experience with this book. Has it stirred anything at all?”

The conversation has jostled memories, but not pleasant ones. “You found me, so you must know my parents are dead.”

There is an awkward cough. “I’m terribly sorry. I apologize if I’ve caused any unpleasantness.”

“It’s been a long time.” I exhale. And the book is fascinating, and somehow connected to someone with an interest in my grandmother.

“If you don’t want it, I understand. I’d just ask that you send it back to me rather than disposing of it — I’ll happily pay the shipping. It’s just such a pretty book, and so old. I suppose I can convince Marie to let me keep one more.”

The thought of disposing of something that has survived so much is abhorrent. “No, I’ll hang on to it. And I’m perfectly capable of keeping it safe. Weirdly enough, you’ve sent it to the right person. I’m a librarian. I work with archives.”

“How perfectly apt.” Churchwarry laughs, and I begin to understand some of his delight in passing books on. There’s a certain serendipity, a little light that’s settled in my sternum.

He asks a favor of me, gently, as though expecting my refusal. “Will you let me know if you find out why your grandmother’s name is in it? It’s not important, of course, I just love to know my books’ history. A quirk of mine.”

I will look into it, not because he’s asked, but because I should. Too much of my family has been lost to the haze of time and forgetting. “I will,” I assure him before hanging up.

My hands feel large and clumsy. I stick a Band-Aid to my foot, shove on my shoes, and watch the sun climb over the water. I don’t mop up the coffee or the sugar mess. Later. An hour passes after hanging up from Churchwarry and the unsettling conversation. How I spend it, I can’t say.

* * *

Closing the door requires an abrupt tug, surprising it into shutting, another side effect of an aging house and slipping-away land. I’ll have to rehang it. Maybe Frank can angle it with a lathe. I toss the book onto the passenger seat, then wince. It’s a crime to abuse anything this old.

The drive to Grainger Library runs the long way through Napawset, through the three-block historic district, where all the houses are from the Williams family — colonial boxes built by brothers who divvied up the town in 1694—curving around the harbor road, past the marina and fiberglass boats Frank hates, winding through Port and the captains’ houses that tourists call charming. Port is packed with cars lining up for the ferry to Connecticut, and the big boat, huge jaws open, is swallowing sedans and sports cars. The harbor road climbs a hill crowned by a monastery, then dips down, following the salt marsh before turning toward the center of the island and a flat stretch of land, in the middle of which is the Grainger.

Leslie and Christina at the circulation desk confirm I’m late. No one is ever in first thing in the morning and the children’s reading groups don’t start until ten o’clock, but the ignominy of lateness is still present as I walk past the director’s office to my desk in reference. I hear the hollow thudding of Janice Kupferman’s heels pacing her office. Yes, she saw me.

Sliding into my chair usually feels like coming home, but today it’s troubled. I set the book on my desk and stare at it. I should start on grant applications, or the never-ending stream of purchasing requisitions that inevitably get denied. After a few attempts at a statement of need for an update to our electronic catalogs and reading lists, I find myself gazing at the reference stacks. The Grainger feels like mildew and has a mood of disrepair.

The library’s mainstay is the whaling history archive. Though Napawset never saw much in the way of actual whaling, Philip Grainger, the library’s founder, was a man obsessed. Upon his death he willed his entire collection of documents on whaling and Long Island to the library. Shipping records, art, nautical charts, market prices for whale oil and soaps, manifests — some sixty years of collecting housed in two large windowless rooms on the second floor. It’s Janice’s pet project and the source of our funding, though most of us wouldn’t mind seeing it go.

Over by an ancient microfiche machine, Alice McAvoy restocks shelves. There’s something hypnotic about her thick red braid. Not quite red — strawberry blond. I watch it sway, timing my breath to her hair. I can almost hear the gentle swish, almost disappear into the sound.

Alice turns toward the scratching rustle of a tweed suit headed in my direction. Janice Kupferman on the move.

“Simon? May I see you in my office for a minute?” Janice asks.

“Absolutely.”

Janice’s office is low ceilinged and fits her fireplug build, which leaves me distinctly out of place. Sitting in her office chair requires me to eat my knees.

“Sorry,” she says, seeing my predicament. “There’s never any money for furniture.”

“It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

“Yes, I suppose you would be.” A tired smile rounds the just-forming jowls that indicate passage through middle age. “How long have you worked here? Ten years, at least.”

“Could be. I’ve lost track.”

She sits across from me, putting three feet of wood-grain laminate desk between us. “I hate this,” she says. Each word is punctuated with a head shake that makes her earrings jiggle — dolphins, hung by their tails, peeping under a precise brown bob. “I really hate this.”

I’d sink into the chair but it’s too cramped. I know what’s coming. “Budget?”

“The town cut us this year. Badly. I’ll try and fight them as much as I can, but—”

“Blood from a stone?”

At her nod, any hope of a bonus to fix the bulkhead dries up.

“There must be something, a grant somewhere we haven’t gotten.”

“I’ll keep trying, but the realities are what they are.” She doesn’t need to say it. Recessions don’t breed interest in whaling history. “I don’t want to, but I may have to let someone go. It isn’t personal; I’m having this talk with everyone, but provided the town doesn’t budge, someone has to go.”

Someone. It’s no accident that she mentioned the years I’ve been here. Alice is the only one close to me as far as seniority and I have three years on her. Alice also does programming. Programming can’t be replaced by an updated electronic catalog. “I understand.”

“I’ll do everything I can, Simon. Nothing is set, but it felt wrong not to let everyone know what’s going on.”

“Absolutely,” I say. When I started at Grainger I thought Janice was priggish, but after years of watching her I know that the day I met her she was already beaten by cuts, grant denials, and begging. If she let two girls in circulation go she might save me or Alice, but the resigned look, even the way she stretches across the desk as if to reassure me, say that she won’t fire two people to save one. Bulkheads, terracing, foundation repair, roof work. None of it will be possible. I need another way.

“I’ll try,” she says when I get up to leave. “Would you send Alice in?”

“Sure. You’ll get the money, Janice. You always do.” It’s hollow. We both know it.

I don’t need to tell Alice a thing. Janice’s office walls aren’t thick, and everything she heard is written on her face.

“I’m sure it’s me,” she says.

I force a smile. “I’m sure it’s nobody.” Janice’s door closes with a heavy click.

Two women sit by the front windows, knitting. The tapping of their needles echoes through the stacks. Reference is still quiet. I am once more alone at my desk. I put in calls to Springhead and Moreland Libraries to see if cuts are hitting them as hard. They are, which is daunting. I call over to Liz Reed at North Isle. “Tell me something good, Liz.”

“How good?”

“Discretionary dollars, or new pay lines.”

“Don’t talk like that, Simon. I’m a married woman.” Though I chuckle, she knows it’s serious. “Job hunting?”

“Not yet. There might still be a spontaneous nationwide interest in regional whaling history.”

She doesn’t laugh. “I can send you a link to a listserv site that might help. Just remember, we’re not librarians; we’re information professionals. You can use me as a reference.”

“Thanks, Liz.”

I hang up and wait for Liz’s email. From the corner of the desk the book stares at me. An interesting object in itself, it appears to be both diary and account book for a traveling show. Peabody’s Portable Magic and Miracles, a whimsically ludicrous name. Why my grandmother’s name is inscribed on a back page is a mystery. The early pages detail the running of the show, listing various towns, money made, and traveling routes. Elaborate handwriting makes the narrative sections a difficult read, but they center on the development of an act involving a mute boy, Amos. The last portion of the book is horribly damaged. The leather on the back is ruined and the ink on the last pages is a wash of brown, blue, and black — reduced to its base elements by chromatography and time. Thumbing through reveals a second owner; where the earlier pages were filled with sketches, the latter are neat, free of drawings and confined to lists of income, dates, and names. Then the water damage.

Janice’s door clicks open and closed as she works her way through the entire staff. Marci, the children’s librarian, has just gone in when I see it. There, in plain black letters, a name. Bess Visser. Dead. July the 24th, 1816. Drowned.

I know that name. Worse still, I know the date. The flinch is involuntary and almost painful. My mother drowned on July 24th.

“Simon?” Alice looks over my shoulder. Tired. Frank’s daughter is a neatly put together woman. I know her too well to call her beautiful, though an upturned nose, sharp chin, and thoughtful eyes make her so. She’s just Alice, which is everything and nothing, and awkward because I’ve seen her every day since I can remember. Unrealized or unrequited, choosing between the words doesn’t change what Alice and I are, or that she is off-limits. Because of Frank. Because of my parents. I run my hand down my face. She sighs.

“Janice will find the money,” I say.

“She always does,” Alice says. “Trust in the archive.”

“In the archive we trust. Liz at North Isle is sending over leads. Just in case.”

“Just in case. Right.” Her eyes land on the book and she traces her fingers across the cover. “This is really old.”

“Someone sent it to me. I’m not sure why.”

“Ah, a puzzle. You like puzzles.”

I would agree, but the book feels different now that I’ve seen a familiar name. Drowned on July 24th, like my mother. It’s a small piece of awfulness. “It’s a little off. My grandmother’s name is in it. I spoke with the guy who sent it. He’s a bookseller, antiquarian type. Says he got it at auction. I don’t know what to make of him.”

“Did you run a search on him? This is a library; research wouldn’t be unheard of.” She leans against the desk. The subtle curve between her waist and hip is juxtaposed against the reference stacks. Alice in contrast to encyclopedias.

“I haven’t had time. I walked in the door and then Janice…”

We’re both quiet. It’s difficult to breathe when the air is pungent with the stench of oncoming layoffs.

“Dinner. Take me to dinner,” Alice says.

“Sorry?”

“I’ll help. Give me the name of the guy who sent you the book and I’ll check into him for you. In return, you buy me dinner. Not at the Pump House, either. I want to go somewhere nice with good wine. Today is terrible and I want to go out.” She pushes back from the desk, bouncing on her toes.

“I promise I won’t take you to the Pump House.” For so many reasons. Because it’s filled with blaring televisions, bloated people bent over stale beers, and because I worked there and ate enough shift meals that just the thought of the Pump House is nauseating.

“Perfect. Pick me up at seven so I can grab a shower first. What was his name?”

“Martin Churchwarry. Churchwarry and Son Booksellers. Iowa.”

* * *

Alice’s apartment is in Woodland Heights near what’s left of a strawberry farm, and when I pull up she is waiting for me. I take her to La Mer because it’s where you take women to dinner. It’s on the water and at night the lights from Connecticut shine across the harbor like they’re crying. The waiters have accents and things come with sauces — there may be a Saucier. Alice wears a short pink dress, cut for people to admire her legs. I do. At work she wears practical pants and flats made for bending, stretching, and the dust that comes with libraries. In high school I saw her legs in her field hockey skirt. They were good then; they’re better now. Her hair is half pinned behind one ear, the rest loose down her back. This is not a date. This is Alice. She smiles when I tell her she looks nice, a slight twist of her mouth.

“You clean up well too,” she says. Then the waiter appears and Alice orders a glass of wine. “Have no fear, I won’t break your bank.”

I laugh. It’s hard not to watch her lips touch the glass. “Did you come up with anything on Churchwarry?”

“I barely got to start. The shop is a real thing. Churchwarry and Son specializes in antiquarian books. It seems like he’s both the Churchwarry and the son. It’s a solo operation. I couldn’t find much on the man himself, though. Maybe he’s lonely and reaching out.”

I shrug. “Strange way of doing it. He didn’t seem that lonely.” He’d sounded cheerful, in fact. Absolutely alive.

“I wanted to dig a little more into his bookstore, but I had to help out in the kids’ room.”

“What happened to Marci?”

“She was crying in the bathroom after meeting with Janice.”

We agree that we deserve drinks while we still have jobs to pay for them.

“You’ll be fine, you know,” she says. “You’re the only one who can stomach reference.”

“Maybe. But half my job can be done by a computer. Ever apply for a grant that could eliminate half of what you do?”

“No, but that’s just because I don’t do grants.” She taps a nail against the rim of her glass. “The question is, have you applied for a grant that could eliminate half of what I do?”

“Never crossed my mind.”

“See? And that’s what will get you fired.”

We finish our wine and order more. Soon, we’re soft and smiling and talking about a Fourth of July and Frank nearly burning my father’s hand off with a roman candle. Alice swears it was the other way around, that she remembers her mother wrapping Frank’s hand with gauze. It’s difficult to reconcile the girl who launched herself off swing sets with the woman in front of me. I think she’s always had a boyfriend. Men from Rocky Point or Shoreham, vague people I never met. She might have one now. Our food arrives.

“My dad’s worried about your house,” she says, pushing a piece of asparagus around her plate. “I called him last week and he couldn’t stop talking about it.”

“I’m worried too,” I say.

“I don’t understand why you haven’t sold it.”

“There’s a lot of history in it.” My phone rings and Alice rolls her eyes. I promise to get rid of whoever it is, but when I pick up I know that I won’t.

“It’s me.”

I mouth to Alice that it’s my sister and she waves me off. The benefit to knowing someone your whole life is that you don’t have to explain why certain calls must be answered. I excuse myself and go outside. “Hey. Where are you?”

“Some hole in the wall. Can you talk?” There’s a clinking sound in the background — glass striking glass. I ask again where she is.

“I don’t know. A mall parking lot. Does it matter?”

“Not really. You don’t sound good. What’s going on? I’m in the middle of dinner.”

“I had a really bad reading,” she says.

“What? The cards?”

“Yeah. I feel cagey and I want to talk to you. Can I talk to you?”

I look back in the window at Alice, sipping wine and eating. I catch her eye. She waves. “Yeah. For a little bit.”

“Do you remember when I cut my legs? I don’t know why I thought of it, but I was driving and my legs hurt and I needed to talk to you.”

“Why?” For a moment I think my phone’s gone dead. Three times I say her name before she answers.

“Remember? I slid down those rocks and you carried me. I must have been heavy.”

“Not at all.” I was thirteen and she was eight. She weighed nothing. “Do you need me to get you?” I could take her to a doctor, or a hotel, get her food, anything. “I’m with Alice, she can come too if you want.” Provided she’s still there when I get back.

“We were climbing on those boulders with barnacles all over them. Don’t know why we did that. Were we looking for snails?”

“Yeah. Enola, should I come and pick you up?”

“No, no. I’ll be fine. I had that bathing suit on, the black one with the pink dots. You were on the tall rock, Toaster. Stupid we called it that. I wanted to get to you.”

Inside, Alice chats with a waiter, who laughs and flirts with her. My date — it is a date, isn’t it? — continues without me.

“Yeah, I remember,” I say. At low tide the rocks crawl with life — barnacles, seaweed, sand fleas, and snails. We were on all fours, balancing on ledges, hooking fingers into crevasses.

“My foot slipped on a patch of seaweed.”

I remember the sound of her skin smacking the rocks, and reaching to grab her, but she was small and wet and my footing was bad. She slid all the way down.

“Enola? Can I call you back?”

She doesn’t listen. “The barnacles shredded me and the fucking saltwater stung so bad I thought it was eating me. It was so sharp. Then I got dizzy and everything closed in.”

“I saw you slip and the next thing I knew you were underwater.”

“I sank all the way to the bottom. My feet even got stuck in the sand. I screamed and screamed, and then you were behind me. You got there so quick.”

I grabbed her and felt the open skin on her legs. No, there had been no skin; bits and pieces of Enola hung from the rocks. I flipped her onto her belly and cradled her.

Alice looks out the window. I mouth One minute. She shrugs and drinks her wine.

“You carried me home,” Enola says.

She didn’t see the bloody trail we left in the sand. When I reached the house it felt empty though it wasn’t. Dad was at the kitchen table with a newspaper, drinking from a cup of what had once been coffee. He didn’t look up. I carried Enola to her room and dropped her, stomach down, on the bed, then rummaged through the medicine chest. Half of it was filled with Mom’s prescriptions. Six years expired and Dad still kept them.

Barnacle cuts are a wonder of nature — so many different kinds of bacteria and no way to avoid infection.

“You put iodine on me, you fuck.”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

I threw myself over her middle, holding her in place while she screamed. We stayed there for what felt like hours, me sprawled over Enola’s back, Enola on the bed, Mom’s medicine all over the bathroom floor, Dad in the kitchen nursing empty coffee cups.

“You were good to me, Simon,” she says.

I did what I could. She sounds calmer than she did when she first called. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. I just wanted to hear your voice. Sometimes you make me feel better.”

“Okay.” Bess Visser. I suddenly remember where I’ve seen that name. It was on a slip of yellow paper with two other names Mom had written down. I found it last year when I moved her dresser to patch a leak. The paper was hidden in the back of a drawer. Mom knew that name.

“Wait, did you say you were with Alice McAvoy?”

“Yes.”

“Alice. Nice. I should go. See you in a few weeks.”

“Enola?”

“Thanks.” There’s a click, and she’s gone.

Back at the table, Alice has finished eating and paid the check. I must look bad because she immediately asks how I am. I tell her that Enola just needed to talk. She raises her eyebrows but says nothing. I make all the proper apologies but everything feels off. My feet feel off. When I walk Alice to the car, I notice she’s listing. She mutters something about her heels and leans into my side, a comfortable weight.

“It isn’t fair,” she says after we’re buckled in and driving back toward Woodland Heights. “You always looked after her. I know you did. Then she leaves and expects you to just drop everything when she calls.” She seems prepped and ready to go on but stops herself with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m drunk.”

I smile. “No, you’re not. You’re right, but it’s just how things are.”

“Well, it’s shitty.”

“Sometimes.”

We linger in the doorway to her apartment. I apologize again and promise to pay her back for dinner. She says not to worry about it. Her skin blanches where her hand touches the door frame.

“I need coffee,” she says. “Would you like coffee?” And then, because she’s complained about my family for me, bought me dinner, worn a dress, because we may not have jobs in a few weeks, because of the way her eyes close when she says coffee, and because she’s Alice and in that lives the difference, I take the risk and lean in. Her lips are soft, inviting. At this too, she’s better than me, perfect.

Her bedroom is a mix of practical and whimsical. An imposing hardwood desk lines a wall. Clean, square shelves are filled with perfectly organized books and pictures. Near her window hangs a small mobile made of periwinkles, broken moon snails, and tiny horseshoe crab shells — the sort of thing only a beach girl could love. It suits her. The bed is another matter. A mountain of pillows, different fabrics, sizes, different shades of pink. I start to laugh, but then her hands are on my shoulders, pushing me back, and falling on it is wonderful.

There are snaps and wires, zippers, hooks, and then there is skin, and yes, the freckles on her breasts are every bit as intriguing as the ones by her navel, her neck, and between her thighs. And then there is breath and touching, tracing all the places we’ve hidden from each other. Accustomed to whispering, even our laughs feel hushed, secret. Her hand runs down my back.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

Then there is the taste and feel of our bodies.

* * *

Alice sleeps on her side with her knees almost to her chest. She’s fallen asleep this way sunbathing on the beach since we were children. I lie awake, thinking about Enola’s call, the book, the house, and my job. I can’t keep the house if my job goes. Despite what I told Frank, I don’t want to sell, not when my parents are in the walls. I need money. Time. I need to call Liz’s leads. On the desk there is a photograph of Alice as a teenager, holding a giant bluefish. She’s thirteen or so, back when she had bangs. Frank must have taken the picture. Though he’s not in the photo, I can see him staring out at me from her grinning face. I should put my arm around her, but it feels a little strange. I slept with Frank’s daughter.

“You awake?” She sounds drowsy, happy.

“No.”

“Liar. I can feel you tapping your fingers on the headboard. You’re such a twitcher.”

“Sorry.”

“You worrying?”

“No.”

“You’re the worst.”

“I don’t want to keep you up. You look nice when you’re sleeping.” She looks perfect.

She nuzzles her cheek into her pillow and cracks a dark brown eye at me. “Thanks. You know, you don’t have to stay.”

“I want to.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to see your breakfast face. Go. It’s okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I know where you live.”

* * *

I take the turn by the salt marsh hard and the Ford’s wheels spin. Here’s the heart-in-throat feeling I’ve been avoiding. I’m about to lose my job. And the house — I’ve slept with the daughter of the only person who might have been willing to lend me the money to fix it. I don’t feel as badly about it as I should. I don’t feel badly at all, which is worse.

Back in the house I know it’s pointless to try to sleep. It doesn’t take long to find the slip of paper — it’s still in the dresser drawer. There are three names on it: my grandmother’s; a second, Celine Duvel; and there in round, wide cursive is Bess Visser. Alice was right. I can’t resist a puzzle.

The light from Frank’s porch is almost enough to fill the living room. He’s hung up a horseshoe crab shell to dry on his porch railing. It swings a little in the breeze. I think of Alice, alone in bed, and wish I’d stayed.

I write the names in a notebook and set it on my desk. Tomorrow I’ll dig up what I can on them. Then I list every name I’ve ever heard mentioned from my mother’s family — a pitiful handful. I open the book. The pages fall to a detailed yet crude sketch of a tarot card, a tall white building on a dark background rent by lightning. Below the sketch, delicately penned letters name the card the Tower. From a window in the tower, a man leaps, falling to the waves and rocks below.