Forry looked around. “This is a heck of a collection.”
Saul said, “You know, I may have something you’d be interested in.” He nudged Frannie and brought her to the back shelf.
Frannie took the opportunity to whisper to her uncle. “Did you tell Newpup that I’m gonna be waitressing here?”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“I don’t recall ever discussing it.”
“What, your summer is so exciting that you can’t work for your uncle?” Forry said, interrupting. He smiled, looking like a jolly middle-aged elf.
“Maybe I just want to work around the books,” Frannie said.
“Why don’t you hand Forry one of those books there,” Saul said, pointing at the top row. “One of the black ones.”
Frannie pulled one down (this took some straining, but she managed it) and turned back to Forrest. As she did so she caught the smell of pipe tobacco and, oddly, pumpkin pie. The book had no title. A notebook? Maybe Saul had Forry pegged for one of those writers who hung out in cafes all day. He was that, but he was too square, really, with the black slacks and jacket and tie. She handed the blank book to Forrest.
And then she swore that as Forrest opened the book, words appeared on the pages. One moment they were blank—exactly like the notebook she expected—and the next, there was writing there. Forry was reading as though he saw nothing odd at all; he was skimming a book someone had handed him. But no doubt about it: Frannie saw the writing fall into place.
Forry ran his hands down the title page and read aloud: “All the Good Monsters in Hiding.” He froze for a moment, and uttered a tiny, sad little exhalation of breath.
Frannie stood as close as she dared and looked at the pages, and then the world at the edges of the page disappeared and she—
Chapter 10
Because now we are, now I am in Paris, actually just outside the city, and I am freezing.
I am a tired and worn Private First Class in the US Army infantry and the cold emanating from the streets of Paris freezes our breath, freezes the sweat on our tongues and makes it hard to talk. My feet are numb, and my toes are in agony because I stepped in a puddle and the water has frozen through my boot, and somewhere far away I realize I will feel this cold somehow for the rest of my life. Some things will never go away.
Snow piles high at the curbs. Bombs have not fallen here this evening and townspeople move about, scurrying to local merchants who stay open to sell bread and cheese and sausage. The Germans still hold Paris, but they are falling even now, and these are the ugliest times. The bombs still fall, and the result is always ugly.
I am walking past a park with snow against rosebushes and pass a small church, and then I hear the whistle of bombs and run for shelter. I burst through a church door and find myself in a stairwell alone, with the church basement below. In the cold stairwell I get the feeling of people waiting because generally you get that after a while, and when I get to the basement, I expect to see men and women and children but instead I see monsters.
The Frankenstein Monster, tall and lean and patched together, the Wolf Man, the Hunchback of—the Hunchback of Notre Dame! Alive as late as 1945! The Phantom of the Opera. A seven-foot golem, surely not The Golem of Prague, but who can say?
“We came here to escape the bombs,” the Monster tells me in English. He speaks many languages. “But now we fear to leave this basement because the townsfolk will murder us. Is it not so?”
What is it about Monsters? Not the ugly kind we see each day, the Nazi commandants and the perverted teachers. But these Monsters—the ones I know and would die for. As bombs fall, we set at a church table and drink wine that Hunchback liberated from somewhere. These monsters have been forgotten because horror is all around us, we have supped full with horrors and these Monsters lurk not in our darkest recesses. They only reflect our innocence now.
What will we do?
The next day I must leave, and I tell the Monsters so. “Come with me, I will smuggle you out,” I say, reaching for the ridiculous. But the Frankenstein Monster refuses for his clan.
“I will remember you,” I say. Already I hear the whistle of more bombs and I must go. “I will never forget you. I will preach your gospel; I will make hearts sing of Monsters.”
The Frankenstein Monster nods. The Phantom looks up, hearing the whistle of the bombs. He sings, then—Sea Drift, a lovely modern opera, O Soul of sea foam and death, death, death.
The golem lights a cigar and gives me one, and I take it from the giant clay man and go.
I find my way back to barracks by evening and sleep like the dead, dead, dead. When morning comes, I am roused awake—and I feel the rest of my life coming. Months later I return to the church, but it is rubble and husk.
I will sing of the Monsters forever.
Chapter 11
Forry didn't say anything after what Frannie and he saw together. At once she became aware that he was walking out through the beaded curtain; he kept going until he was out of the cafe.
“What do you think he's going to do?” Frannie asked Saul.
Saul turned to her after the front door finished chiming and sighed. “Something wonderful.”
“What, uh, what just happened?”
“Did something happen?” He cocked his head and it glistened in the darkened room.
“I can’t describe it.”
“Blanks,” Saul said. “The books are called Blanks.”
“I thought—I could have sworn I saw things in…”
“In the blank pages. I wondered, ya know,” Saul said. “But I could tell. Your pop, he doesn’t see it. So it goes. Do you want to work for me?”
“What makes you think I want to work here?”
“You want to know more?” Her uncle looked at her and she found herself nodding.
“Come on, what is it?” she asked. “Is it a parlor trick?”
“Can you start tomorrow?”
She thought of the vision and the man leaving to do something wonderful, it was all jazz, but it was jazz that dared to be something more and happiness washed over her. “Absolutely! Marvy—I'll be here.”
She wandered out of the book section and into the restaurant, the music filling her ears; Truly and Betty were singing another Kingston Trio song, “Ballad of the John B,” but Frannie was lost in the reverie of the blank books and the story she had heard, whispering in her head like someone on her shoulder, reading a book to her. The restaurant was swinging, and she barely noticed it as she stopped by a sculpture of the 12 Apostles re-imagined as versions of Vincent Price in The Fly.
“Hey!” the girl Newp had introduced to her as Sheila yelled out, and at first Frannie thought the girl was calling to her, but there was an edge of anger in the voice, and as Frannie looked over she saw the girl pushing a guy she hadn’t met yet, a boy in a letter sweater like Archie Andrews, who snarled as Sheila drenched him in grape soda.
Newp was running from the stage towards their booth with a towel over his shoulder.
The boy howled and called the girl something ugly.
“Hey, Dick, language.” Newpup waved his hands with some theatricality. “This is a family place. Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll get you something?”