on the phone we speak in generalities, yes?”
“Of course,” Elm said. “I’m so sorry.” She felt as though she were investigating a crime, pretending to be someone she was not in order to glean information.
“You are a member of a government agency?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“You must by law identify yourself if you are a member of a government agency. It is both EU and American law.” Was that true? Elm wondered. Or was that just something people got from the movies?
“I’m just a citizen,” she said.
“And you are calling from your home?” he recited.
“My place of business.” Elm began to worry. She hadn’t realized what she was doing. She was just calling out of harmless curiosity. She didn’t want to start an international incident. “Look,” she said. “Maybe I should hang up.”
“I suggest the same thing,” said the man. “You give me a number at your home and I will call you this evening so we can both talk freely.”
Elm said, “I don’t think … I mean …”
“Madame,” the man said. “If you will permit. You obviously called here for a reason. You were curious. You might as well satisfy that curiosity. There is reason for subterfuge, but only because there are those who would impede the progress of science. You are seeking information. There is still nothing wrong with that, even with your Patriot Act. Am I not correct?”
“Yes,” Elm said. She began to breathe faster. She felt a horrible sinking in the pit of her stomach; she realized she had made a terrible mistake that was going to reverberate for longer than she had anticipated. What had she started in motion?
She gave him her name and phone number and replaced the headset in the cradle.
She hit her home key and was immediately returned to a cached version of Tinsley’s site: brocade tapestry background, the trademark photo of her great-grandfather in Egypt next to an enormous amphora, links to departments. She stared at the page and permitted herself a small fantasy in which she walked out of a new clinic somewhere on the outskirts of Paris holding Ronan’s hand. But no, she corrected her reverie. He would be a baby. She revised the vision, holding him in her arms, remembering his wrinkled, red hands, the skinny legs that looked too big for his body, the slightly smushed head. Then she shook her head as if to get rid of the image, just as someone walked by her office door. Elm rolled her head on her neck, pretending to be stretching a kink, and not rebooting her mind.
Elm was supposed to be writing a press release, but she was unable to concentrate. Her heart beat fast, anticipating bad news. It was barely noon. Too early for lunch.
Sometimes looking at prints brought fresh language to her cortex, loosened her tongue enough to find new-sounding synonyms for important, major, chef d’ouevre, etc., so she headed down to the print room. She got off the elevator on the mezzanine. She would take the grand staircase, see what was happening on the floor. Emerging from the elevator, she had to appreciate, though it was not to her taste, the new entry, designed by a celebrity architect. The mezzanine floated above the main floor, turning what once had been a cavernous hull, like a high school gym, into a display place for hanging, appreciating, and admiring art.
The mezzanine walkway (or the mezzie, as facilities called it) extended from one side of the building to the other, but was only ten feet wide, so that views of the downstairs were not only unavoidable but the focus. Sculptures, or objets, were sometimes displayed here, but often the space was left intentionally bare. Today facilities had set out small pedestals at regular intervals, but they remained as yet artless, so that the walkway looked like a conceptual graveyard, or the control deck for a spaceship.
The main space was four stories tall, and the front wall of windows extended all the way to the top, their steel supports nearly invisible. The usual East Side traffic of nannies and children paraded by, and the normal array of large delivery trucks was blocking traffic. She stood with her hands on the railing and looked down over the first floor. It could have been the lobby of any enterprise: dark marble floors, receptionists, post-9/11 security measures (less ridiculous than in most businesses when the building’s museum-quality contents on any given day could exceed the gross national product of medium-sized nations). But