Further, from "Artifacts"

    When the phone rang, she let the machine answer it.
    "This is a message for Rebecca Mulroy, confirming your ten o'clock appointment with Dr Ostler on Wednesday the seventeenth. If you are unable to keep this appointment please contact our offices to reschedule. Have a nice day." Her physical therapist's receptionist was at least concise; her calendar, on the wall beside the fridge, corroborated. Without sparing a glance to the book, she made lunch, chopping vegetables with irritated care.
    The rest of the day went by without incident; she checked her mail, took her medication, and put her left arm through the limited exercises the doctor had recommended, letting everything else fall into place around her. That evening, after dinner, she stood for a long time in front of her bookcases, eyes falling on one and another volume, not quite ever deciding which one to read. For the most, a glance at the title was sufficient to call up the whole book; others held their places on her reading list, not moving up. When she went to bed she still hadn't examined the book he'd left.

    On Thursday, it rained, and she spent an hour dragging the houseplants into the back yard to enjoy it. She spent the two hours after that at the café down the street, watching the late rain sluice down the big plate glass windowpanes, hitting passersby and rolling under car wheels. The book she took with her, jammed in her satchel at her feet, rubbing elbows with a sketchbook and her gardening journal, awaiting further inspection.
    "The plants. How long have you been gardening?" Standing in her back doorway, he had put the question to her, the sky a brassy ache outside.
    "Since a little after the accident. It wasn't a garden yet, though. I had an aloe that my aunt had split off and given to me, and a couple of plants that people had left for me in the hospital. Taking care of them gave me something to do. Step one was figuring out what they were."
    "And?"
    She'd wiped the mulch off of her hands, turning on the drip hose before going in for the day. "Spathiphyllum and dieffenbachia. Green, easy care, popular florist plants. The spathiphyllum is a reliable indoor-flowering plant, also known as the Peace Lily. Both been separated and repotted since. There was also a small potted ivy. It's in the hanging basket in the kitchen."
    "I see." He was always dry, so she paid no mind to his aridity.
    Coffee gone cold, she traded it to Andy behind the counter for a warm-up and a glass of water; at her table, she filled in the blanks in the journal, added a few notes in the side columns, and closed it, watching rested fingers of both hands on the cool cover. When, after a moment, nothing moved, she put the journal back in her satchel; she let her right hand find the book, smooth leather intercut with a complex design she hadn't taken time to study yet. Never looking at what her hand was doing, she let her arm swing up and place the book on the table, a solid and satisfying mass.
    A thick, heavy volume, bound in a dark leather, the front cover, while attractive, gave no clue to its contents and so she opened it, surprised to see the frontispiece, while attractive, not in the language she had expected. P. VERGILIUS MARO, it read, and beneath that, AENEID: no publisher's imprint or editor's credit followed below, though, and no forward or preface was found on subsequent pages. She flipped forward, past a table of engravings with intriguing names, and found herself face to face with the only words she recognized in their original form: Arma virumque cano. There were no footnotes, and though she turned to the back cover, she found no glossaries nor explanations. Staring dumbly at the epic in front of her, Rivkah could think little other than this: he had left her a book she could not read.

Heh. But a pretty book.

Posted by J on Saturday, December 26, 2009 05:40 PM

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