Pulling off an old, dusty copy of The Histories from the top shelve, which was so high she needed to use the step ladder, Kate opened up the book, whose pages yellowed long ago, and a piece of paper fell out, flittering to the floor like the first snowflake in winter. She stepped down. She picked it up. She read it out loud: Mr. Wong 678-9078. Above the English writing five Chinese characters were written on it. She squinted her eyes. How long had it been there she wondered? The book looked old, but the piece of paper was fresh and the ink unfaded. Did someone leave it there by accident? Since the book was so high on the shelf was the number to some organized crime syndicate based out of Shanghai and they thought since the book was so old they could just leave the message in there so no one would read it? Or maybe it was just an old man who wanted to help or a kid playing a prank?
Kate always did have an over-active imagination. She spent days hovering over fantasy books at The Philadelphia Free Library. She marveled at the beauty of it. At the marble. Of the grand staircase when you walk in. of all the books. Of the bums who routinely made hasty exits through the heavy doors after being shooed away by security. It all enthralled her. But this, this was the most exciting thing so far she found since she moved to the city to attend Penn a year ago. Should she call she thought; she had to.
Never much of a party girl, she spent long days at the library. Because of this here friendships, if you could call them that, were not many. Mostly it was helping others with homework, though she did accept an invitation from one girl to go to a keg party in an apartment in West Philly. Needless to say she got drunk and sick and then even sicker. She puked everywhere. When the partygoers found out she had never drank before they made it a point to make sure she became plenty wasted. She hadn’t drank since.
But this was brand new excitement. She took out her cell phone and called the number. It rang. It rang. It went to a voicemail: this person has yet to set up their voicemail. Bye. How rude was that message she thought. Maybe he’d see the missed call and call back. She would. She always answered her phone. She didn’t get many phone calls and when she did it was usually prank calls. She reckoned that someone had scribbled her cell number on some bathroom stall.
But the characters haunted her. What could they mean? So she headed to the nearest Chinese restaurant she could find. She walked across Vine Street and then passed a street vendor who looked Chinese and was selling hot dogs and pretzels out if a lunch truck.
“Excuse me, sir. Could you tell me what these Chinese characters mean?”
“What just cause I look Asian you think me Chinese I Japanese get out.”
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“Ha! You fell for it. I’m just joking. Yeah, I can try my Chinese isn’t that good though. I’m second generation.”
“Oh, God, you scared me for a second,” Kate said handing him the paper.
“It says something about,” Mr. Wong squints, “about, about a book holds a house of gold. It’s a proverb, meaning you should read since knowledge is money and gets you places. Where’d you get it?”
“In an old, yellowed copy of The Histories by Herodotus at the library.”
“Ha. That’s funny. Probably some joke. But why the English name and number. A girl as pretty as you should spend more time enjoying life and less time trying to figure out vague mysteries. Maybe that’s what it meant.”
“No. I don’t think so. Maybe This Mr. Wong loves the book and is dying and is giving away all his money to ever finds it.”
“And maybe today and I’ll go home and find that someone has paid all my bills.”
“Funny.”
She scurried back to the library, dodging speeding cars on Vine Street like Frogger, afraid that someone else might take out the book before she could check it out. Running up the library steps after dismissing several angry and unmentionable comments for motorists her sundress swirled around as she an up the steps, swung the doors, and made it back to the shelf where the book that contained the note still sat.
“Hmm, there doesn’t seem to be a barcode on it, young lady. Where’d you get this again?” said the little, old librarian more familiar with the Dewey Decimal system then any “new fangled technology” as she often called it to some of the younger and more hip librarians.
“It was in the Map department on the second floor,” Kate gasped.
“Now why on earth would a history book be in the Map department?”
“I don’t know. Maybe someone misplaced it. Maybe someone put it there. Maybe it’s some sorta message.”
“Message? Let me take a look-see. Oh, here in the second to last page is the sleeve and card for the old system. The one that worked when books weren’t misplaced. Ah, this is quite a find young missy. No one has taken out this book since 1979. You weren’t even a twinkle in your father’s eye yet.”
“1979?”
“Yes, now let me just take this back and get it logged into the new system.”
The old librarian waddled to the desk behind her and gave the book to some guy who placed a bar code in it, typed something into the computer and handed it back to the old woman.
“There you go now honey.”
“Thanks,” Kate said, smiling and handing her card to the woman. With that she left.
Leaving the library and walking briskly down the city streets, through alleyways, passing the Chinese vendor who glanced at the book and shook his head while Kate pretended not to notice, she bumped into a bike messenger who was stopped on the corner of Market Street, knocking both of them down and tangling their legs in some weird, awkward embrace as cars zip by with passengers squinting at the sight of a hipster helping up a frightened girl gripping a book with her free hand.
The Comcast Tower thrusts its modern, mirrored reflection to the ground, unshakeable, the tower, seemingly small from the distance, dwarfed its older counter parts: Liberty One and Two.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Kate says, her eyes planted to the sky.
“Are you okay?” the boys says, his eyes roaming over their entangled legs as he pulls his one leg away from hers his denim jeans dragging across Kate’s smooth legs and past the yellow dress she wore.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she said pushing herself up and tucking the book in front of her breasts as he crossed her arms and starts to say something, before he interrupts.
“It was completely my fault, really. Us messengers don’t look where we’re going half the time and don’t care the other half. Hey, my name’s Ryan, Ryan Jeffries.”
“Kate, but I have to…”
“Hey, let me make it up to you. Would you want…”
“I really can’t.”
“But, well, here take my card. I’m an artist. If you change your mind, it’s nothing really. We could just grab a beer. Do you like art?”
“I have to go; I’ll think about it,” Kate says, shoving the card in between the pages of the book as Ryan gives a crooked smile and watches her step up her pace and fade into the distance, scurrying towards City Hall with William Penn looking down on her.
Back in her apartment, located on the ninth floor of an apartment building on 14th Street, she stared out the window as the moon rose above the skyline and the sun fell below the horizon, causing that beautiful, pinkish, purplish glow in the sky—the kind that cause young lovers to kiss like the never kissed before, dreaming of fairy tale love.
Kate started to pace around. She thought about the number. She thought about the vendor. The librarian. The sky. The book. She picked it up and started reading. Herodotus wrote that no one should take what he says as absolute truth only some version of it. How events were described to him and he was just a messenger that wanted to tall a story to make people think, smile, and give them some sort of guide on how history plays itself out in the grand scheme of things even if the history itself was filled with tall tales of one-eyes giants battling an armies composed of hundreds of thousands fighting an army of one hundred.
Sitting down on the fluffy, blue couch, she pulled her cellphone out of her purse that laid on the floor and slid open the key pad. Going to calls made, she realized she miss-dialed the number. So it wasn’t that the voicemail wasn’t set up, it’s that she called the wrong number. So this Mr. Wong does exist. The book does contain gold. But why gold? A smile broke out on her face like those you’d see on a thousand prisoners escaping across razor-wired fences and running into the distance across fields and into hiding. But Kate didn’t want to hide; she wanted to call. Was it too late? Would he answer? Was it even a phone number? Her mind raced. Her fingers trembled. Her heart pounded. This mystery that plagued her day might be solved. Or maybe it would drag on for weeks with her finding out where he lived after tracking him down and with him giving he her just rewards for being so generous as to return what was surely valuable and needed to be found.
She dialed the numbers. The phone rang. It rang again. Someone answered.
Outside rain started to tap on the windowpanes and the blinds started to rattle as the storm that was approaching all day materialized. Kate stared out the window. Her gaze so intense it could make grown men timid.
“Helwo, Mr. Wong’s.”
“”Hi, I’m looking for Mr. Wong.”
“Pick up or delivery>”
“I’d like to talk to Mr. Wong.”
“Mr. Wong. Who is Mr. Wong? This Chinese take-out and delivery prace. What you wike to order?”
“But I found your number in a book.”
“Phonebook. Yes, we advertise.”
“No it was in a book with a message saying something about books hold a house of gold.”
“Ah, yes. Ancient Chinese proverb. Very good. Books contain knowledge. What you like.”
“But…”
“You have too much time on your hands. Why not you go meet boy? Make famary. You seem very young to be chasing proverbs. Go live. That your fortune. Know what you like.”
Kate slid the top piece of the phone over the key pad and dropped it on the floor. The back cover and battery pooped out and darted across the room. A tear formed in her eye. No mystery existed. It was probably some student writing down a number to order Chinese as he was studying up on history and practicing his Chinese by writing down some stupid well-known Chinese proverb as practice for a test.
She gazed up at the ceiling, tracing he fingers over the book that rested on her lap. She opened it and felt another piece of strong paper. She looked down and it was Ryan’s business card. The only thing she didn’t think about all day. She looked out the window and then to her phone on the floor.
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