In the night room Page 0,62
nodding at a skinny, bearded man off to the right who was executing one-armed semaphores.
The man floated to his feet and said, “This is a two-part question. How hard is it to get an agent, and does anybody actually read the slush pile? I mean, how hard is it to get your work noticed?”
Groaning inwardly, Underhill gave a paint-by-numbers answer balanced between realism and optimism. As he spoke, he looked back between the marveling hippies and discovered that the drenched person was a she. Through her white shirt, dabbled with a sort of watercolor abstract red pattern, shone the X-ray outline of a brassiere. She was wiping her hair with another wad of paper towels, still staring at him as if he presented a puzzle some ruthless master had commanded her to solve.
The intensity of her interest compelled his own. Just sitting there, at the end of the last row of seats, she exerted what felt like a claim upon him.
Once begun, the questions washed toward him. Most of them were old acquaintances, more to be batted away with a stock response than to be answered. Where do you get your ideas? What was it like to work with another writer? What scares you? The woman in the last row never lost focus or looked away.
“I think that’s enough,” said Katherine Hyndman. “Mr. Underhill will now sign books at the table to your right. Please form a line, and those of you who have come with bags or suitcases filled with books, please wait at the end of the line.”
A quarter of the audience stood up and left; another quarter came up to the podium to talk to him. For forty minutes, Tim Underhill signed books. Every couple of minutes, he looked at the woman in the last row, who seemed prepared to wait him out. Inscribing books to Tammie, Joe, David, and Emsie, he began at last to wonder if this woman had come as an emissary from Jasper Kohle. He gestured to Katherine Hyndman, and when she came to his side he asked her to go over and start a conversation with that woman in the wet clothes for the purpose of coming back and reporting how dangerous or crazy she might be.
Katherine wandered toward the young woman, sat down beside her, and said something. Signing books, Tim now and then glanced over to see how things were going. It looked like an ordinary conversation, though the young woman seemed a little dazed. Katherine Hyndman stood up, glanced at him, and instead of returning to the desk disappeared into the back of the store. In her absence, the woman alternated between looking at the ground and taking peeks at him. Now she was the only person still seated in the reading area, and Tim could see that she had brought two bags with her, one a rolling case of the sort people take on airplanes, and the other a kind of medium-sized leather duffel bag. Both of these were off-white in color, almost ivory, and looked expensive.
Katherine Hyndman came back carrying a towel and gave it to the young woman, who pressed it to her face, then wiped it back over the top of her head and down to the back of her neck. Only three people remained in line, but the first two carried a pair of shopping bags laden with books, and the third man had a large suitcase.
“She’s not going to be any trouble,” Katherine Hyndman said, leaning down to whisper into his ear. “I couldn’t quite figure out what her story is, and she does seem a little disoriented. Basically, all she told me is that she wants to talk to you. Do you want us to do anything about her, or are you okay with the situation?”
“I’d like to talk to her, too,” Tim whispered back. “She seems sort of familiar to me, but I can’t place her. Did she tell you her name?”
“Sorry, I don’t remember it.”
Tim went back to signing. The last man in line thumped his suitcase, a battered old Samsonite, on the desk, and opened it to begin removing multiple copies of each of Tim’s books, plus a lot of pamphlets, bound galleys, and magazines. He looked about seventy or seventy-five, and as hard used as his old suitcase. His brown, wrinkly face disappeared into a wispy Confucian beard, and his recessed eyes were wary. An invisible cloud of cigarette smoke surrounded him, as did a faint undercurrent of