They stood—the citizens, new and old, of Equinox—on the sidewalk, just outside the yellow caution tape, under the tired eyes of a couple of potbellied state cops, their hands on the butts of their service revolvers. The citizens’ faces were turned toward the clapboard walls of the Equinox Inn, the oldest continuously operating hotel in central New York, upon which the instruments of destruction advanced with grim slowness, as if in a dream. Upon some of the faces—those of some lifetime residents of Equinox, and of a few of the more sentimental students—tears appeared, and were wiped away with trembling hands. Other faces registered awe, or apathy, or excitement. Newcomers, whom everyone had seen around but to whom nobody had much yet spoken, gathered in a little cluster across the street, on the front lawn of the college. If you passed by them, you might have heard their curious voices discussing what architectural wonder Happy might be planning to erect in its place—to them, clearly, this demolition was merely a natural step in the process of improvement that they had been promised in their full-color real estate brochures. And over at the south corner of the property, where the caution tape was wound around a giant sycamore, its branches near to bare, stood a wedge of twenty or so protesters, flanked by more cops, with Ruth Spinks at their apex, chanting:
Hey hey! Ho ho!
Happy Masters has got to go!
Ho ho! Hey hey!
The Equinox Inn has got to stay!
But it had begun to rain, and the police, saps twitching in their hands, were keeping them far from the building; and the noise of the machines was drowning out their words, which anyway had already been dulled by repetition.
Those voices at once fell silent when at last the wrecking ball was loosed from its moorings and swung into the northeast corner of the Inn. The clapboards and plaster imploded underneath it, a crashing squeal like the gates of hell swinging open. The rain gutter dangled from the drooping roofline, and blown-in insulation snowed to the ground. Some people gasped, somebody screamed. The newcomers, across the street, gently applauded (and what, Ruth would later wonder, were they applauding exactly? Progress? The obliteration of history? The ascent of Happy? And she would decide, with a sigh of disappointment, that it was merely the spectacle of technology, the force of man’s wrath against his own creation, that had so delighted them) until somebody yelled at them to knock it off.
The view through the hole was like a dollhouse cutaway; framed prints still hung on wallpapered walls, a frosted-glass shade still concealed a ceiling bulb.
Janet Ping stood by herself in a purple raincoat, the hood covering her face. Her friends were with Ruth, but she had avoided them, preferring to remain here, at the opposite side of the house, where there was not yet much to see. She had been awakened out of a very pleasant dream, which lingered in her mind, and in her loins. She had never been inside the Equinox Inn, and never would.
The mayor slouched on the sidewalk, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. It was apple season, generally his favorite time of year, but today his face bore the signs of unhappiness and advancing age. A careful reconnaissance would have shown him to be glancing at Ruth in evident shame, and Ruth glancing at him in evident frustration, but never at the same time. In time, he turned around and went back, head hung, to his orchard.
Reeve Tennyson was watching from his office. He was worrying about Sally Streit, about Happy Masters, and about his future. He pressed his nose against the cold window, leaving a grease stain that his assistant, Ellen, would rub away in irritation while he was at lunch later in the day.
Dave Dryer did not leave his apartment over the bar. He was lying on the sofa, last night’s video game still playing its demo mode on his television, an empty bottle of whiskey on its side on the floor nearby. He was not asleep, neither was he fully awake. He was drunk for the first time in six months and feeling the intensest pain he had experienced in two years. His hand cupped his mouth and his face was swollen like a plum. Though he did not yet know it, some vessel in his mind was full at last and had begun to slop over.
Happy Masters, meanwhile, was most definitely asleep. Foam plugs filled her ears and a black satin mask covered her eyes. Her lips were formed into a gentle smile, the smile (you might insist, if you saw it) of a child.
The wrecking ball again sliced through Equinox Inn, and splintered hunks of timber and dusty wallboard tumbled to the ground. Soon, the near side of the Inn fell away with a hideous rip, like a peal of thunder. Onlookers jumped when it hit the ground; a sudden gust lifted and tossed their damp hair. As if awakened from sleep, the protesters resumed chanting, an alternate verse this time—
Dolly, Dolly, leave our town!
Equinox is sacred ground!
Dolly, Dolly, leave our town!
Knock some other building down!
—but their hearts, it was clear, were no longer in it. The Inn was lost. The battle was over. The crowd of newcomers, their confidence restored by the triumph of the machines, continued their polite applause.
“I bet there’s a body in here,” Jennifer Triesman could be heard to say from among the dejected.
“Or something,” April Cort replied. “Evidence that needs to be destroyed. Something that proves she killed Glenda.”
“Better watch what you say,” Ty warned. “I’m sure she has spies.”
“She can fucking try to kill me if she wants,” Jennifer spat. “I’m not afraid of her.” She waved her arms in the air and raindrops sprayed off of them. “Come get me, bitch!” she shouted.
The rain began in earnest then, and the crowd began to break up. Happy had never showed, disappointing both the protesters, who had hoped to jeer at her, and the newcomers, who had hoped to get to be her friend. A few people slipped and fell in the mud. Other people helped them up. Everyone went back to school, or to work, or home.
By day’s end, all that remained was a hole in the ground.
* * *
But the previous night, something else had happened. Two students up late studying at the Hayao Shinohara Memorial Library stashed their backpacks underneath a desk, stole out into the dark, and indulged in a bit of mashing on a bench underneath the famously sheltering eaves on the woods-facing side of the building. The air was cool, there was a drizzling rain, and they huddled together with their hands inside one another’s sweaters, keeping warm.
What happened next became a matter of some contention, since one of the two women didn’t fully regain consciousness until the middle of the following day, and even then remained confused about what she had seen and heard; and the other had been nearly hysterical with worry over her friend. However, it seems clear that the women’s injuries were caused by falling bricks, and the bricks had most definitely come from under the eave that protected them from the rain. The student who was hurt less severely in the accident remembered hearing a sort of scraping sound from above—a squirrel, she recalled thinking—and being startled by a downpouring of dust. Mere seconds later, the bricks fell, injuring one student’s shoulder and arm, and knocking the other one quite unconscious.
The less injured student, however, claimed to have seen a figure in black stealing away from the library, a thin man in dark clothes and a mask that covered the face. When asked how, in complete darkness—for the light that usually illuminated the bench in question was burned out, which is why they chose this particular one in the first place—she was able to detect the presence of the mystery man, the student was unable to answer, other than to insist that he was real, and that she had definitely seen him.
But Equinox students tended toward paranoia, out here in the isolation of a small town, and so the campus police, after taking her statement, chose to ignore this portion of the story.
As it happened, Reeve Tennyson’s mid-semester meeting with the board of trustees was the following afternoon.
* * *
The old ladies occupied one entire side of the conference table. Before each of them, arranged on identical miniature willow ware trays, lay a small plate of ginger snaps, a ramekin filled with red globe grapes, and a steaming cup of tea. At this moment Reeve (who slumped alone on the opposite side) was cursing the work-study girl who had prepared their tea, for a little white tag hung over the edge of each cup, and the ginger snaps were thick and soft, and the grapes, against his specific instructions, were seeded. One of the five old ladies had tried a grape, and her eyes had widened in horror, and she had daintily removed the offending clot of seeds and placed it underneath the rim of her saucer, and none of the rest of them had touched a thing since.
Reeve wasn’t sure which old lady that had been—the short one with the dye job, of course, he had seen her do it, but he didn’t know their names. Yes, yes, he knew the names, but not which trustee each belonged to. Perhaps the short one was Mrs. Pearl, and the tall one with the mannish shoulders was Mrs. Jensen, and the corpulent old bat with the perm was Mrs. Kenilworth, and the black one with the white afro was Mrs. Peterson, and the wide-faced one with giant ears was Miss Chast. But probably not. Shorty, Manny, Fatty, Fuzzy, and Dumbo. Those were their names, as far as Reeve was concerned.
It was Fatty whose voice broke the uncomfortable silence. She said, “Let me get right to the point, Mister Tennyson. I told you there were two issues that demanded immediate attention. Let us tell you what they are, and you may address them.” She spoke in a grand falsetto, like some grande dame of yore, but the accent was pure Buffalo.
Reeve surprised himself by answering, “I am gratified by your expediency.”
“First,” said Fatty, ignoring him entirely, “there is the incident, to which we have just today been made privy, of the crumbling library that nearly killed two innocents.”
“Yes,” Reeve jumped in, “yes, and we’re taking care of that as we speak, I’ve called a building inspector to come and—”
“I beg your pardon, Mister Tennyson,” said Fuzzy, “but you are interrupting Mrs. Jensen.”
“Sorry.”
Fatty—that is, Mrs. Jensen, it now appeared—shook her head, as if brushing off a mosquito, and went on: “Thank you, Jeanette. As I was saying, Mr. Tennyson, the crumbling library. You may call off your building inspector, we have already found one independently, and he will be making his assessments tomorrow.”
“Oh,” said Reeve.
“The five of us happened to have dined yesterday with Mrs. Masters, and it was she who provided his name and telephone number. And an excellent dinner, might I add.”
“The fois gras!” yelped Dumbo. “It was très yummy.”
“And a lovely house,” Manny said with a near-smile.
“Lovely,” echoed Shorty.
“Um,” Reeve said, “and what was the, er, occasion? For your visit to Happy?”
Fuzzy fielded this one, with stentorian articulateness. “The future,” she barked, “of this institution.”
“That’s right,” Fatty interjected, wresting control back from Fuzzy, whose narrow face registered a dignified irritation. “Since she arrived here some months ago, she has become concerned that Equinox College is on the wrong path. That, if we wish to continue on to the twenty-first century—”
“We’re already there, Dear,” Shorty observed.
“Thank you, Flora, that’s very informative, but as I was saying, if Equinox College wishes to remain a force for the education of American women now and further into the twenty-first century, then changes will have to be made.”
“Of what sort?” Reeve asked, full of dread.
“Business training, for one,” Fuzzy interjected. Her deep voice, penetrating eyes, and excellent posture seemed to admit no other possibility. “Statistics show that our students earn, on average, far less over the ten years following graduation than students at comparable institutions. These women are the architects of tomorrow, Reeve. Our endowment depends on them.”
Shorty said, “So true, so true.”
“And Happy offered her help, I assume?” Reeve had to ask.
“Mrs. Masters suggested to us,” Dumbo clarified, in the voice of a very small frog or toad, “that she contribute a significant amount of money for the business education of women. She would like to expand her new work-study program. She would like to hire new teachers.”
“Yes, indeed,” Shorty confirmed.
“In exchange,” Reeve asked, slumping in his chair, “for what?”
It was with evident excitement that Dumbo blurted, “For a seat on this board!”
“Miz Masters would like to have greater input into the way this institution is run,” Fuzzy intoned, “and I think you will agree that there are few women more qualified to do so than she.”
“I bought my granddaughter a Zulu Akimbe doll and book!” Dumbo cried.
“Not,” Fuzzy said with a small cough, “Miz Masters’s finest moment.”
“Well, Jeanette,” Fatty inquired, “what about Sally the slave girl? You like her, don’t you?” Reeve was not, he thought, imagining the cavalier edge that had crept into her voice.
But Fuzzy merely rolled her eyes. “Please, Emily, you know that Mr. Tennyson is uncomfortable with ethnically challenging conversation.”
Reeve slid farther still into his chair.
“As for the library, Mr. Tennyson,” Fatty was saying now, “Mrs. Masters has also offered to build us a new one, should the structural problems be systemic.”
“And they just might,” Shorty piped up.
“You’re kidding,” Reeve said, his shoulders up around his ears.
“It’s true!” trumpeted Dumbo. “Frankly, I never liked that library. It looks like a broken pop bottle. I’m not at all surprised it’s unsound.”
“Ugly. Ugly,” said Shorty.
Reeve spoke cautiously. “Has Ruth been informed of this plan?”
Fuzzy scowled. “I hardly see why she should be concerned. She is the steward of the information housed within, not the keeper of the grounds.”
“Ah,” said Reeve. “I see.” There was an uncomfortable silence, which Reeve broke by spinning his teaspoon in a little circle on the tabletop. He said, “What’s the second thing?”
“I beg your pardon?” Fuzzy inquired.
“The second thing we have to discuss.”
“I should hope, Mr. Tennyson,” Fatty said, “that we have nothing more to discuss, because the other item on our agenda is our accreditation problem. Please do tell me that you have this firmly under control, and we need not address it this afternoon.”
The ladies glared. Reeve nodded, as if to himself, and spun the spoon again. “I have it,” he croaked, “firmly under control.”