The Kukulkan Manuscript by James Steimle

waited for her next to her magazine. She took a sip and set the glass down before noticing…words, quickly scrawled next to the title of Albright’s paper.
    In blue pen the letters read,
    Can you believe this?!! Figure it out Alred!
    Alred stopped thinking.
    She read the words again without realizing she was holding her breath.
    Standing quickly, Alred looked around the cafe. She scanned over everyone’s face as fast as she could.
    Looking down, she read the short sentences again. Again. Again. She touched the words. The blue ink came off on her dry index finger.
    She jumped to the front door and pushed it open.
    “Hey!” Immediately Bruno was behind her in the doorway as she took three steps into the dark wind. “Not thinking about taken off before pay’n, are you little lady?”
    Alred looked through the blackness, but didn’t find anyone. Few cars pushed by the cafe on the two-lane road. Three empty automobiles waited against the curb, one of those across the street in front of an out-of-business donut shop. Yellow lamp lights painted everything a dirty orange color.
    She kept her feet still, so as not to panic the old man, but her eyes went through every car window, ducked under every tree pushing out of squares chopped in the sidewalk, cut left and right through the shadows, searching….
    “Little lady?” Bruno said, watching her wisely.
    “Did you see anyone at my booth after I went into the restroom?” she said.
    Bruno shook his head beside her. “Was keep’n my eye on you and my work. Someone take your purse? No one steals from my place! I’ll—”
    “No, no. I just thought…”
    Slowly she turned back into the warm cafe, and Bruno left her alone, though she felt his eyes following her.
    She went back to her table and read the words again, written just to the left of the title. She sat and stared at the two sentences and Albright’s title for a full minute. “What’s going on here?” she asked the air in a whisper.
    Catching Bruno watching her from a distance with a concerned look on his face, she closed the scholarly magazine and gathered everything in haphazard order to leave. Freezing, she thought about all the people who could have written the words. Why? What did they mean? She opened the magazine again and read the message.
    Can you believe this?!! Figure it out Alred!
    Bruno appeared again, looking busy and just conveniently in the area, though Alred had seen no customer near her booth for the past hour. “Everything all right, ma’am?”
    Her face wouldn’t change shape. She pictured other students she knew writing the message. What would they know about it? How did they know this was her booth when she wasn’t present? She pictured Professor Masterson scrawling out the message with his thin fingers holding a gold pen, his face smiling in a twisted knot of tight flesh. Or Professor Kinnard, or Wilkinson, or Arnott, or Goldstien. She had seen professors pop into the cafe twice since she’d arrived this evening. Both had been from the Math department. Why would any of these instructors write these words?
    Perhaps Porter had come by, seen the journal, and deduced it to be hers!
    But Alred had the nagging feeling that this was what Ulman’s handwriting would look like in a hurry. He’d written her from Guatemala when he first thought he was close to finding something.
    Porter or one of the other professors wouldn’t have seen her journal since she sat so faraway from everything.
    She crushed her eyelids together, not wishing to ponder the question any longer. She moved to pack up again, but saw the old man with the wise blue eyes. “You wouldn’t know anyone by the name of John Porter would you,” she said. But realizing how silly that must have sounded, she quickly looked away, amending the question with the words, “No, of course you—”
    “John D. Porter? Know him good and well! The tall skinny Mormon boy who gets a grin when he knows he’s make’n other scholars sweat