Jokers Wild Page 0,166

lived-in look. At least that's how Jennifer thought of it. Brennan put the bags containing the food on the counter that divided the kitchen nook from the rest of the room.

"Make yourself at home," she said as she turned to put the coffeepot on the stove and got two plates and utensils from the cupboard. She turned back to see Brennan standing in the middle of the apartment, an impatient expression on his face. "You want to see the book?"

He nodded. She took the bag off her shoulder and put it on the counter next to the food. She selected a box, ladled a portion of shrimp fried rice onto her plate, and reached for the box with the sweet-and-sour chicken.

"Well, go ahead."

If Brennan noticed the resignation in her voice he gave no sign. He strode forward eagerly, took the pouch, and looked inside. Jennifer kept her eyes on the food. She took a forkful of the chicken and somehow it didn't taste as good as she had thought it would.

"Is this a joke?" Brennan asked after a moment, his voice flat and emotionless.

He was holding up Kien's diary.

Jennifer swallowed. "No, no, I don't think so," she said in a small voice.

He thumbed through it, disbelief on his face.

"It's blank," he said, fanning the pages for Jennifer to see. "I know." She put her fork down and looked at Brennan for the first time.

"What the hell happened?" Brennan demanded, anger growing in his voice. She could see his jaw muscles jump as he clenched his jaw tighter and tighter.

"Well, the nearest I can figure is that the ink didn't translate when I ghosted the book. You see, it takes special effort to make dense material like lead, or gold, insubstantial, and he must have used something like that to write... with... you see..."

Her voice ran down as the storm gathered on Brennan's face.

"I. Went. Through. All that shit. For. A. Blank. Book." He said each word as if it were a sentence.

"I couldn't tell you," Jennifer said. "At first I didn't totally trust you. Then, when I saw how important it was to you, I just couldn't find a way."

Brennan stared at her silently, and she flinched, expecting him to scream, to throw the book, to strike at her, to do just about anything but what he did.

"A blank book," he repeated. The storm on his face broke and vanished as quickly as it had gathered. He sank down unseeingly into the large stufled chair near the bookcase, rose up slightly and picked up the hardcover copy of Scaramouche that was open, face down on the chair. He looked at it as if he'd never seen a book before and muttered, "Ishida, my roshi, if you could only have experienced the events of this day. What lessons could be learned. Tell me." He looked at Jennifer with serious, questioning eyes. "What lessons can one learn from a blank book?"

"I-I don't know," she faltered.

He shrugged. "I don't know either, yet. A new koan to meditate upon." Brennan thumbed through the diary again, a bemused expression on his face. "Of course," he said after a moment, "Kiev doesn't know the book is blank. Doesn't know that at all."

He smiled, the first real smile that Jennifer had ever seen on his face. He looked at Jennifer and his smile broadened, turned into laughter. It was joyful, cleansing laughter. Jennifer sensed he hadn't laughed out loud in a long time. She felt herself smiling as well out of relief and because of the recognizable, binding companionship that already lay between them.

Brennan stood, still laughing and shaking his head. He walked over to the counter. His eyes and Jennifer's were on the same level. If anything, he had to look up to see into hers.

She'd never seen him before with a true smile on his face, and she liked it. He told her, without saying anything, that he liked what he saw when he looked into hers.

He took his hood off and dropped it on the counter. Some of the tension had gone out of his face and he looked years younger than when Jennifer had first seen him.

"Did you get any egg rolls?" he asked.

She looked down at the little boxes filled with Chinese food, and felt a strange, unexpected, unanalyzable stab of joy.

When Jack finally managed to find Freakers, he understood why it wasn't the kind of all-night dive that advertised itself strenuously. Those who needed to know where it was, found out.