A Short Walk to the Bookshop

by Aleksandra Drake

"I don't anymore. Not for a while. Anyway, it looks like more when it's piled up like this."

  "I may have some boxes at home, we can keep the pages together, at least." He said, picking up a stack of paper ripped from a cheap spiral notebook and tapping the bottom edge on the ground.

  "Now that I look at it all, I'm not sure I want to keep it," I said, taking in the mess.

  The house was so still and quiet that the silence felt thick and heavy, but Diedrich's voice floated through it so gently that he hardly seemed to disturb the quiet at all.

  "I can help you burn it all, if you prefer." he said

  "There's a wood pile at the back of the house. Will you start a fire in the stove?" I asked

  Chapter Fourteen

  The journals were gone and I didn't know if I missed them or not. I'd been carrying them around almost my whole life. It felt like I was missing a limb, but not a terribly important one. Maybe a toe. I could carry on fine without them, but there was definitely a vague feeling of loss. I knew that there were memories written in those journals that I would never remember again. Still, not having them at all was better than keeping the ripped pages as a constant reminder that Adrien had put his hands on them.

  The ride back from the house was silent, but in front of the bookshop, before he got into his own car to go home, Richard stooped to give me a hug. I managed to thank him, I think. He had helped Diedrich and I get rid of the journals and we had made a good start at removing the paint from the inside walls. In the end, it was early evening by the time we left. I had an awareness that I should have been more grateful than I felt. I didn't feel much of anything, really.

  "Are you hungry?" Diedrich asked, touching my shoulder and making me jump slightly.

  "No."

  He fed me anyway. In the quiet apartment, acoustically sealed with insulating books, he cooked me spaghetti. Feeling useless and tired, I sat on the couch, knees together, hands folded against my stomach, staring into the middle-distance like a drama actress.

  "You should have a cat," I said.

  "Huh?" He was in the kitchen, clanging about productively.

  "You should have a cat," I said louder.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "You just seem like someone who has a cat. The longer I stay here the more I keep expecting one to appear from behind a box of books." I stood up and gravitated toward him. When I got to the kitchen, he set a loaf of French bread in front of me with a serrated knife. Grateful for something to do, I sliced it carefully.

  "I feel like the quiet would drive me crazy." I continued "There's no way I could live alone without Athena."

  "It was difficult at first, but I got used to it, I guess." He was focused on separating noodles onto two plates, but it seemed like he was thinking about something else now. "Anyway, it's not so quiet now,” he said, looking up at me as he handed me a plate.

  He said it with a smile, but I felt a twinge of guilt at the reminder that I had disrupted his life. I wanted to apologize, but he wouldn't hear it.

  While we ate, Athena ate dog food out of a cereal bowl that slid across the kitchen floor. It gave us something to chuckle at as we struggled to think of what to say after the day we'd had.

  "How do you feel?" Diedrich asked when the dinner dishes were washed and the kitchen tidied up.

  "I don't know," I said, shaking my head. We were sitting on his couch again, I had my knees pulled up to my chest, my toes tucked under his thigh. "I don't really feel anything. Maybe I'm all feeled out and now I won't be bothered anymore."

  "I hope not."

  "I'd rather talk about you," I said. "You know so much about me, but I don't know the first thing about you."

  Diedrich smiled like he disagreed. "What is there to know?"

  "Do you still speak German?"

  "Sure. I don't use it very often anymore though."

  He waited for me to ask another question but I just raised my eyebrows expectantly.

  "My mother was a researcher, a geneticist, and ended up with a position at the University of Washington. When I was...oh, I think I was twelve or something, we moved to Seattle from Germany."

  "That's a delicate age."

  "Oh Sparrow, you have no idea. It was a nightmare,” he laughed. "I spoke not a word of English and I was just thrown into the battlefield of American middle school. And my father, bless the man, he had no idea what American children ate. I would go to school with my uncool clothes and my home cooked lunch, it was no wonder I didn't have any friends. I didn't know how to tell him that, even though he spent his evenings slaving over these wonderful traditional German dinners that I could take to lunch the next day, all I wanted in the whole world was a cheese sandwich on white bread like the other kids had."

  "And here we've been so focused on my trauma," I grinned "How did you end up in West Bend? We're a ways from Seattle."

  "Ah." He nodded. "That was Catherine. We went to the same schools ever since I moved to the states, but we only became friends in high school. I followed her to the university. We got married after graduating and she wanted to move back here. She's from here. Her family is here." His sentences got shorter when he spoke about Catherine, and he stopped looking at me.

  "What did you go to university for?" I asked, sensing his discomfort.

  "Ah..Bachelor of Arts, major in Germanics."

  "Oh dear." I struggled not to laugh.

  Diedrich's shoulders shook as he laughed, his face splitting in a rare full-toothed smile "My degree looks very nice in my filing cabinet."

  "Oh, I'm sure it's beautiful." I teased. "And useful, what with the expertise needed to run a used bookshop."

  "Comes in handy all the time."

  "Are your parents still in Seattle?" I asked, still slightly shell shocked at imagining a twelve year old Diedrich with his lunch box.

  "Nope. No. During my senior year of high school my grandparents, my mother's parents, both fell ill. She wanted to go back to make sure they were being taken care of. I remember my father trying to talk her out of it. She was doing so well at the university. But she's a headstrong woman and she had decided that no one could take care of them as well as she could. So they went back. I nearly went with them. If it weren't for Catherine I probably would have, but I stayed behind. Their illnesses ended up being long term. Terminal, actually. And by the time they were gone so much time had passed that it didn't make sense for my parents to move all the way back again. They were settled."

  "So you don't have any family in America at all?" I asked.

  "Well. I was married for a time." He said with a little grin "But when Catherine died, my connection to her family was more or less severed as well.

  I didn't know what to say to that other than the obvious. That it was sad. That I couldn't imagine how strange it must be to live in the same town as people who were once family. How lonely he must be and how I felt sorry for him. How I wanted to hold him and not let go and make him feel better.

  "How did you end up with a bookshop?" I asked instead.

  He cleared his throat. "When Catherine died, I couldn't manage the whole house by myself and, as I was just holding down a job at the library, it was difficult to afford. So I got this apartment. The space below used to be a salon, and I would get my hair cut there. I'm sure I was the only man whose hair they would cut, and only because I was the sad man upstairs."

  I threaded my fingers through his and he squeezed them

  "The salon became more popular and moved to a different location and the space was empty. I don't remember how I got it in my head to turn it into a bookstore in the first place, to tell you the truth. I can't remember the exact moment. But once I decided, it happened pretty quickly. Maybe too quickly. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, honestly. I almost went out of business within two years, and it was really tight for another five. But..." He shrugged his shoulders.

  "Here you are," I supplied.

  "Here I am."

  The clock on the back wall ticke
d.

  "Customers made for good surrogate friends. In the end, I think the bookstore was a good idea, at least socially, if not financially," he added.

  "Not really ‘surrogate’ friends anymore, though."

  "No. Not anymore."

  "Are you tired, Diedrich?" I asked. He was gazing at the top of the coffee table, but he wasn't seeing it.

  He nodded.

  “It’s still early.”

  “I won’t fall asleep on you. We can go for a walk or whatever you like,” he said.

  “Oh no,” I chuckled. “I meant, it’s still early, but should we maybe just go to sleep now? I’m tired too.”

  He looked relieved when I said it, and we silently went through our routine of jockeying for the bathroom sink before getting into bed. This time, I nestled into the crook of his arm from the outset, and he wrapped his arm around me warmly. I wished he would kiss me goodnight but I knew he wouldn’t. Instead, I tilted my chin up to kiss the side of his neck, breathing in the scent of whatever it was he wore. Aftershave? Cologne? Just plain soap? I didn’t know, but the scent of it was familiar and comforting as he squeezed me close in response and I splayed my fingers over his chest and fell asleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The morning was gray and rain-filled clouds hung so low that the mist clung to the windows. Diedrich’s bed was warm and soft and I briefly considered just calling in to work again. Paula would understand, probably. I only considered it briefly though, as safe and comfortable as Diedrich was, a return to normalcy would be good for me.

  As if he had sensed me thinking about him, Diedrich stirred.

  "What do you need today?" He asked after sighing sleepily and opening his eyes to see that I was awake.

  "I need to go to work. I need to go a whole day without hearing or thinking about that man."

  "Okay." He said and, without looking up, I could tell he was smiling. His fingers trailed up and down my spine, making goosebumps raise along my arms. He smelled amazing, like books and leather. I ached, wanting him.

  "It's book club tonight," he said, interrupting my train of thought.

  My eyes shot open. "I didn't read it."

  He laughed, and with my ear against his chest I could listen to the resonant space inside him where the laugh originated. "Me neither, not for a long time anyway. Let’s just say we did read it.”

  I grinned at the implication that he would actually be participating in the meeting.

  When we got up, I tried my best to go through the motions of getting ready to go to work as naturally as possible. My heightened anxiety over the closeness of Adrien battled with my sense of safety over the closeness of Diedrich. I swung from one state to the other, unable to settle on one mood.

  "Let me." I said, watching him slide a tie around the back of his neck. He didn't always wear them, but I was glad for the opportunity to tie it for him.

  He relinquished the silken tie to my hands.

  "Getting dressed up today," I noted.

  "This shirt doesn't look right without a tie." He said with a shrug, but when I quirked an eyebrow at him he grinned. I let myself believe that he wanted to look good for me. He always looked good. Always, always. But I did like the tie.

  He swallowed when my fingers dragged over the skin of his neck, which I absolutely did on purpose to see how he reacted. His breathing seemed measured. Strained, even. I found myself mentally chanting, as I tend to do. Only this time it wasn't in an attempt to cool a burgeoning panic attack.

  Please want me. I prayed.

  “Are you nervous about work today?”

  “Yes,” there was no reason to act like I wasn’t. “It’s so nice and safe here.”

  He stroked my cheek with his thumb. “I’m glad you feel that way. But Paula works Mondays doesn’t she? And Heather cares about you too. Besides, refusing to be shaken and carrying on as usual is a good middle finger to whats-his-name, isn’t it?”

  I chuckled under my breath. “I guess so.”

  “You’ll be fine.” he promised.

  As I hurried across the street, the morning coolness making my hackles rise, I forced my hair back into a ponytail hastily. At the door to the grocery store, I looked over my shoulder back at the bookshop. Diedrich was at the counter, his head bowed over something. As if he could sense me looking, he looked up and raised a hand silently. I waved back, then scurried in for work.

  -----

  It was a slow day at the bookshop and Diedrich wondered if Sparrow would come back from work before he had made his first sale of the day. It wasn't anything alarming, it was rare for him to be busy during standard business hours mid-week. Still, it would be nice to have something to show for it when she got back.

  She had told him that she'd be back for lunch but, fool that he was, he had encouraged her to stay at work and take lunch with Paula. The unselfish part of him knew that she couldn't let her new friendships suffer during this stressful time. But now he was alone with his selfish side and he didn't know what to do with himself while she was gone.

  What had he done before? Read? Impossible.

  He flicked through a gardening book, eyes lingering over the radiant blooms of flowers that would never grow in the Cascade mountains. He could work on his accounts. There was always bookkeeping to be done, but facing a chart of impersonal numbers and cold calculations would be even worse than longing after desert flowers.

  That afternoon, three elderly women came in together. Needlework, general fiction, and romance, respectively. They were women he knew by face and genre, but not by name. They managed to talk his ear off and offer a welcome respite from bruising his ribs thinking so hard about Sparrow, and yet the entire time they never revealed their names. They left just as much strangers as they had come.

  Sixty dollars richer and down five books, at least he wasn't skunked when she came bounding back across the street, laden with two shopping bags.

  He wanted to barrage her with questions as soon as she came in. How did she feel? Was she tired? Did she need to eat? Had she thought about him as much as he thought about her during her first shift at work since coming to stay with him?

  "Good day?" he asked instead.

  She smiled, putting the bags on the counter.

  "Sure. Uneventful. Except for the wine."

  "The wine?"

  "A toddler got loose and toppled a section of the wine bottles. Giant mess. The mom was so mortified I couldn't be upset though. So if I reek of alcohol, don't worry."

  "And what's this?" he asked, peeking into one of the shopping bags

  "Collateral damage." She explained, pulling out two boxes of chocolates with slightly damp, wine-stained corners.

  "The other bag is snacks for book club. I thought cheese and crackers..."

  "Good idea," he said distractedly, watching her fingers deftly tearing into the packaging of one of the chocolate boxes. He felt stupid and gauche, like a teenager again, obsessed with the way she shifted her weight on her hips and how her lips pursed in concentration as she struggled with the cellophane. He was reminded of how she’d given him permission to kiss her “any time” and wondered if all this restraint was as important as he’d made it out to be in his mind.

  "Diedrich?"

  "What?" He asked, realizing that she'd been talking just then.

  She laughed knowingly. "Scissors?"

  "Oh! Yeah, back room. Uh...let me.." He wandered toward the back room to the sound of her quiet laughter.

  By the time he had emerged with the scissors she was perched on the edge of the couch at the back of the store.

  "It's like they don't want you to get at the chocolates," she laughed.

  Scissors made easy work of the box and soon he was torturing himself watching as she bit into a dark chocolate filled with cherry. She seemed like a different person again. She was perky, bubbly even. She moaned softly as she chewed. Did she know? Was this on purpose? She licked her bottom lip then smiled up at him, innocent as could be, and Diedri
ch had the distinct impression that she and Paula had talked about him over their lunch.

  "Eat some of these." She said, standing up and wiping her hands on her pants. "I'm going to run upstairs and shower and change. I don't think smelling like an alcoholic is a good move for book club."

  "Okay," he said idiotically.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The sunlight was wan and orange when people began to arrive for the book club. Summer was already slipping away, I noticed, remembering how quickly evening turned to night in the winter months.

  "Time has flown by," Paula remarked quietly as Stephen arrived, seeming to read my mind.

  I frowned, unsure if I agreed. In some ways it'd been one of the longest summers of my life.

  Richard arrived with his normal noise and circumstance. He beamed at Paula and collapsed into a chair, his long legs sprawling out under the table. His copy of Pride and Prejudice was distinctly rattier than it had looked when he got it. The corners of the paperback were curled and there were multiple scraps of multicolored paper that stuck out of the top.

  "In my experience," Stephen began, upon seeing Richard's book "that many bookmarks either means they loved the book or they hated it."