Sex Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 6) (14 page)

Some laughter.

Quiet laughter.

Then:

“And I feel as though I have made ‘so long a speech.’ So I must end it. There is just one thing I want to announce, though, before we all disperse to go about our revolutionary—and my Sisters and Brothers, I honestly do feel it to be revolutionary—work. And that thing I want to announce is this: I do hereby declare my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States.”

CHAPTER NINE:
 
BEWARE OF GREEK SHIPS BEARING WOMEN

On the morning of May 8, one week after Laurencia Dalrymple’s announcement of her candidacy for presidency and slightly less than two months before the termination of sex in the United States of America by order of Nina Bannister, Nina herself received a letter from Helen Reddington.
        

She was able to read it sitting in the kitchen of the apartment she shared with Senator Dalrymple, since ample security measures had been set up to guarantee a modicum of privacy for the two women living there.

The letter read as follows:

Dear Nina,

Congratulations on everything you’ve been doing! Bay St. Lucy is ecstatic and proud. At least the women are. The men walk around looking kind of stunned.

I know you’ve got a million things to do, Nina, and Jackson tells us that you’ve probably also got a million letters to read and answer. So I’ll make this brief.

We have an idea. Actually, it was John who suggested it, but when I heard it, I knew his instincts were right on.

You remember the horrible
Hamlet
that turned out so disastrously. I’m sure you couldn’t forget it, and I never will. That time spent under domination from Clifton; the slaps, the verbal abuse, the beatings—and, of course, the horrible way he died.

No, I’ll never completely get over that, as happy as I now am with John and the animals.

The idea, though, Nina—the idea of the play itself, and having it done at the Auberge des Arts here in Bay St. Lucy—that idea was valid.
 

The one performance we actually got to give was a good one. The idea of using the roof of the Auberge as the battlements, and having Hamlet peer out over the gulf as though it were the North Sea…

…that all worked, and we produced a great tragedy, if even a greater tragedy hadn’t overshadowed it.

So…

…why don’t we mount another production?

I’ve already talked to people in New York. Given the publicity you’ve stirred up, they’re wild about it.

We’ll do it on the Fourth of July. The July 4 Slumber Party sponsored by the Worldwide Movement of Lissie International!”

Except, Nina, we won’t do
Hamlet
.

The New York Shakespeare Company does other classical works, you know.

Sometimes they do Greek tragedies.

Sometimes they even do Greek comedies.

This time they need to do
Lysistrata
.

And I need to play the lead.

I’ve just finished reading the play for the first time, Nina. I’m ashamed that it’s taken me this long. But it’s a fantastic play! It’s hilarious! The scene when the horny woman tries to get out of the Acropolis, saying that she’s pregnant—and they whap on her big stomach and find out there’s a soldier’s metal helmet in there!

I can be Lysistrata, Nina, I know I can.

Like I say, I’ve already talked with a number of New York production people I know. The ideas are flying back and forth like wildfire. And there’s money. Bay St. Lucy’s rich, you know that. Big oil is still behind you, and their CEO still loves you—she’s a feminist at heart.

The Company itself is willing to invest and invest big time. Lissie Day—which is what the Fourth is being called now for short—is
your
day, and you are centered in Bay St. Lucy. So—remember the play’s first scene, in which the Spartan women, muscular old Lampito leading them, comes into Athens to meet with the Athenian women and Lysistrata? Well, we’ll add a bit to the script and have them sail across the Saronic Gulf and land at Piraeus, which is only a few miles from Athens.

They could have actually done this!

Of course, we’ll hire the Gulf of Mexico to play the Saronic Gulf.

Water is water, right?

And if our Gulf could play the North Sea…

….but it gets better!

There’s a shipbuilding club in Boston that wants to take part. They claim to be able to construct for us a vessel that looks exactly like one the Spartans might have used.

We’ll meet the Spartan women right down there on the beach in front of the Auberge des Arts!

And get this: at the end of the play, all the choruses unite and dance together, celebrating the end of the war. We’ll switch the ending, though. At the end of our play, Lysistrata will announce from the rooftop of the Auberge whether forty new women have been put on ballots nationwide for the November elections. If the answer is
yes
, then the whole community, audience and all, will dance, sing—and basically get ready to have an orgy.

If
no
––then the women of Bay St. Lucy head for the gym.

Along with women all over the country.

Every major TV station will be carrying this thing, Nina!

What do you think?

Still your most adoring student,

Helen

It took Nina perhaps five minutes to read the letter.

After she did so, she walked into the study, took out her own letter writing paper, and wrote simply:

Helen,

I’m there.

Nina.

CHAPTER TEN:
 
A NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY

Nina Bannister loved the library.

It was her second soul, so to speak.

She was thrust into the world of politics; not just politics in general but POLITICS FOR WOMEN!

And what did she know about the subject?

Women were ruling countries all over the world, and women were taking on major roles in running her own country.

What did these women have to say about their struggles, their difficulties, their defeats, their victories?

And so, the same night she had received news of Helen Reddington’s
Lysistrata
production—which she found to be a superb idea—she took a cab to the Georgetown University Library. Having been told that, of course, she could access the catalogue and shelves, even as a visitor, as long as she checked nothing out. And having been shown, in answer to her inquiry concerning the quietest place to read, to a vacant carrel on the tenth floor (spring semester had just ended—there was a good deal of room in the library).

Having done all of these things, she glutted herself on the contents of one of the nation’s finest university libraries.

By eight o’clock, she had a paper cup of vending machine coffee in front of her (against library rules but she was all alone up here, so who was to care?)—and she was reading the publication blurb which appeared on the back cover of Dee Dee Myers’
Why Women Should Rule the World.

The blurb read:

What Would Happen If Women Ruled the World?

“Everything could change, according to former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers in her book
Why Women Should Rule the World
.
Politics would be more collegial. Businesses would be more productive. And communities would be healthier. Empowering women would make the world a better place—not because women are the same as men––but precisely because they are different.

Blending memoir, social history, and a call to action, Dee Dee Myers challenges us to imagine a not-too-distant future in which increasing numbers of women reach the top ranks of politics, business, science, and academia. Reflecting on her own tenure in the Clinton administration and her work as a political analyst, media commentator, and former consultant to NBC’s
The West Wing,
Myers assesses the crucial but long-ignored strengths that female leaders bring to the table. ‘Women tend to be better communicators, better listeners, better at forming consensus,’ Myers argues. ‘In a highly competitive and increasingly fractious world, women possess the kind of critical problem-solving skills that are urgently needed to break down barriers, build understanding, and create the best conditions for peace.’”

My kind of woman
, thought Nina.

And she plunged into the book.

By nine o’clock, she had finished it and felt like a prophet newly inspired.

Yes
! Dee Dee was right, and
No!
Nina was not insane nor were the Lissies, nor was Laurencia Dalrymple!

Forty new people on national ballots.

Between now and November.

It could happen
!

And if it did not…

…well, there would be a nation of men watching baseball games on television late into the night on July 4.

Thus inspired, she left her carrel unattended for a few minutes, got a second cup of coffee, left it steaming on the desk, and took a short bathroom break.

During this time, she had no idea that a figure had entered the carrel and dropped a tablet of some kind into the coffee.

So that everything looked precisely the same when she returned, opened
The Life of Anne Richards,
and took a sip.

Different taste?

Probably her imagination.

She was on page 23, when she went quietly asleep, her head on the desk.

The door to her carrel being closed, no one saw that she was there.

At midnight, the library closed.

She awoke at one AM to find herself alone on a deserted tenth floor.

There was a moment’s panic.

How would she get out?

Then she realized that the doors leading to the stairwells all opened outward. There would be, at most, a bit of embarrassment if she should encounter a watchman stationed on the library’s main floor.

Were there watchmen at one in the morning?

Were watchmen needed?

Were there roving gangs of thugs intent on breaking into the stacks in the wee hours, after nights of clubbing and binge drinking, intent on pillaging whatever they could find of fourteenth-century English literature?

The speculation gave her a smile as she got her things together, turned out the small reading light burning in the shelf above and just before her…and, unfolding like an accordion, forced her sleep-ridden knees to straighten.

She turned, exited the carrel, and peered through the austere and musty stacks.

Emergency lamps secreted high in corners emitted enough glimmering light so that she could see the elevators. They would not be running now, of course, but there were stairwells adjacent to them.
 

As she walked, she was just able to make out the titles of volumes surrounding her.

Piers Plowman

Annals of Fourteenth Century Literature

Second Edition, Chaucer, Troylus and Crisseyde,

Second Shepherd’s Play, Critical Commentary.

She moved with a kind of reverence as though she had broken into a cathedral on All Saints Day and was in danger of disturbing the relics. She had just passed from the early to the late fifteenth century when she heard someone walking through the stacks immediately to her left––perhaps four or five rows over—taking down books, opening them, and laughing softly.

She could not have described that laughter. It was robbed of gaiety, spirit or energy. It was a dry laughter, the color of ready-to-burn leaves.

And it frightened her.

She had no idea why.

The fact that anyone would be here at this time of night was, of course, disturbing. But then, she herself was here. The figure shuffling along through centuries of English literature could have been an eccentric faculty member…almost certainly was a faculty member…immersed in another time, chuckling over forgotten verses and untranslatable colloquialisms.

Faculty members had carrels that were not alcoves, as hers was, but entire offices. Surely, it would not have been surprising to find a professor sitting at his office computer at one AM; why would it be any different here?

Why was she frightened?

Dangerous people did not inhabit libraries.

She had almost convinced herself of that fact, and was on the point of identifying herself, when she heard a high cackling voice:

“I have been watching you.”

Then absolute silence, followed by the tiniest of clicking sounds, metallic, clicking, opening and closing, opening and closing.

And…click…click…click…

Finally she realized:

It was a knife.

“I have been watching you. I have been told to watch you. And I have. You and the others. The others who follow you.”

She could not move. She strained, almost against her own will, to see through the stacks, but there were too many of them. Nothing was visible except the implacable white-paneled ceiling above her, and, far to her right and left, windows that did not unlatch or move, opening out onto the campus with its rows of live oaks glowing in soft yellow streetlamps.

“You are detestable. And your goals are detestable. All of them.”

What was the next sound?

She could hear the book’s pages being carefully cut out, one by one. Then there was a scratching sound.

“There is a Hell. And a devil in Hell. And, if you continue in these perverse ways…”

After a time, she could smell smoke.

He was burning the pages.

She could see the wisps of smoke rising above the stacks , whirling in ashen clouds as they made their way up through the circular ventilator in the middle of the ceiling.

“You will burn in Hell. Just as this paper is burning.”

Then all sounds stopped.

The smoke continued to swirl in miniature rising funnel clouds, whirling aimlessly higher, drawn through the dust particles she could now see floating in what she had assumed, always, had been sterilized air.

Then she could hear footsteps moving toward the end of the fifth stack, a bit faster, shuffling, shuffling…until they reached the end of the row, and began making their way toward her.

She lifted her purse, slung it over one shoulder, and walked quickly to her left.

Whoever this was, she did not want to see him.

He had a knife, and he was ripping out and burning pages of books, at one in the morning, while telling her that she was detestable.

No, she needed to get out. And now.
        

It was as though she was in a canyon of literature, its walls towering above her, the river that had carved it having disappeared long ago, tile flooring all that remained of the fossilized creatures once inhabiting it.

Where was the break in the stacks?

There!
 

Turn there!

She did, breaking into an open area, a clearing…and there in front of her, the elevators.

The footsteps, purposeful now, were coming down the stack-row she had just left. She threw herself against the elevator and rammed the flat of her palm against the
down
button; it remained colorless, the elevators having been cut off.

From some fifteen feet behind her…for her back was to the shelves now... she heard a shout:

“Eve thou art dust! And to dust thou must return!”

And the footsteps continued, but with them, was interspersed the clicking sound.

Open shut open shut

Click click click click…

Above her and just to her right glowed the white rectangle with red letters:

Exit.

The fire door, leading to the stairwell.

She threw herself against the rod that ran horizontally across it, precisely the height of her belt.

It gave with her weight; she lunged against it, and the heavy, army-gray door swung open, groaning slightly as it banged against the rail of an inner metal inner stairway leading downward.

She spun around and glanced backward: through the foot-square glass window in the doorway she could see a figure emerge and come toward her.

She could also see that there was no way to lock the door from within the staircase.