A Short Walk to the Bookshop

by Aleksandra Drake

  He wasn't happy about my newfound laziness. He wouldn't say anything to me about it, but I could see it in his face. The man was a terrible liar. Every morning he attempted to lure me out of bed with coffee. Occasionally he would succeed.

  I felt strangely peaceful, like time was passing around me and I was standing still. Even in the midst of it, I knew it wouldn't last.

  Chapter Seventeen

  "Good morning, Paula." Diedrich said, looking up from his book and smiling at the newcomer. His coffee was still too hot to drink, and was steaming on the glass counter top.

  Paula looked around. "Is Sparrow here?"

  Diedrich cleared his throat and shut his book. "No. She's upstairs. I'm sure she's still asleep."

  "Oh," Paula looked surprised, given that she was off for lunch. Diedrich would have liked to be surprised as well, but he had grown used to Sparrow sleeping in too late. Her whole demeanor had changed as of late. When he spoke to her, she seemed almost normal. She responded naturally when he engaged her, but she had stopped initiating conversations, and much of the push and pull of their dynamic had flattened out. She slept all the time. And if he didn't bring her into conversation she would spend the whole night without saying a word.

  He supposed it was rich of him to have so much worry about that particular behavior since he had gone for twenty years never speaking to anyone after six in the afternoon when he closed the store. But it was unusual for her.

  "Would you like me to go and see if she is up?" Diedrich asked Paula.

  "Oh no, I wouldn't want to trouble you. Just let her know that I came by and I'm hoping to hear from her soon. She's difficult to get in touch with lately and we worry."

  Diedrich offered her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

  "I think it would be good for her to know that you worry."

  "Do you know if there have been any...developments?"

  He shook his head. "It seems like he has a pattern of escalating and then disappearing for a while."

  "If only I had stopped him.”

  "Don't blame yourself. He will get himself caught one of these days." Diedrich said, with no hint of the fact that he himself was racked with guilt for not being there to stop him either. It was absurd, she had been just across the street, nearly within his line of sight, when Adrien had arrived. He didn't even know anything was amiss until the cops had pulled into the parking lot. He'd abandoned his store and run across the street as soon as he saw the police, knowing they were for her, but he'd been absolutely unable to get past Laura to see Sparrow. By then, it was too late. Adrien had gone.

  "How are you doing?" Paula asked, suddenly turning the focus onto Diedrich. His eyebrows rose in surprise.

  "Me?"

  "I just mean, I'm all in knots about this and you're even closer to the situation than I am. I just get so angry that she has to deal with all this, you know?"

  Diedrich's lip twitched. "I'm not typically an angry man, but this Adrien boy well...I really do hate him. I will sleep better when he is behind bars and out of our life forever."

  Paula nodded and he sensed that a genuine hatred for another person was as unusual to her as it was to him.

  "Anyway, I don't mean to keep you. Just let her know I was here."

  "I'll certainly do that, Paula." Diedrich said, smiling gently as she left. When the door was clicked back into place, his smile melted away. That morning, he had noticed the wrinkles between his eyebrows. He didn't normally notice them, so the sudden awareness made him suspicious that they were deeper than they were before. The white hair that curled out of his temples seemed thicker too. He wasn't sure if the stress had aged him, or if it was just his subconscious way of reminding him that he was an inappropriate boyfriend for a troubled thirty two year old woman.

  He went back to work on logging new books and finding places for them on the shelves. As ever, his mind strayed to Sparrow, only these days that particular mental meander was a trail to nowhere. It was as if time had stopped. The days were blending into each other and nothing was changing. He thought about her constantly, but there was nothing to think that hadn't been thought through a hundred times already. His mind was a broken record, going over the same facts over and over.

  He had to try to break her out of this slump. She was afraid to go outside, and that needed to end. It was hard enough to live beneath the dripping dome of pacific forest even when you did get out of the house regularly. Locked up in a dusty apartment beneath the dripping dome of pacific forest was even worse. He should know.

  There was no more room in the westerns section. He shoved in another Louis L'Amour anyway, making the shelf so tightly packed that the elderly men who frequented this section would likely need assistance making their selection. Diedrich didn't care, he just wanted to get rid of the stack of books cluttering his counter.

  He decided that he would try to convince her to go on a walk with him the following afternoon. If she demurred he might invite along more people. Going to a park with a group of people couldn't be dangerous, even if Adrien was stalking her every move. If he just gathered everyone together and kept Sparrow well surrounded at all times, Adrien would never get up the nerve to bother her again.

  Diedrich imagined a literal circle of friends, hands clasped, surrounding Sparrow like a cartoon version of the police secret service.

  He rubbed his eyes. While Sparrow had been sleeping more than ever, he had found himself lying awake night after night. Worrying. A deep heaviness had settled into his bones, a tiredness that made it difficult to focus on anything. He couldn't imagine how Sparrow had coped with the lack of sleep she had been getting before. He had a newfound appreciation for how sweet and gentle she had been when they first met, because lack of sleep only made him irritable.

  At lunch time he trudged up the stairs, expecting to find Sparrow still in bed. He was surprised, then, when he pushed open the door to find her sitting at the cluttered dining table, nibbling toast and reading a book.

  "You're up," he said

  She smiled over her shoulder. When she smiled now it broke his heart. He knew she wasn't well, but it seemed like she had become less willing to show it even to him.

  "I was waiting for you," she said

  She stood up and turned around, sliding onto the table instead so that her bare legs swung slightly in the air. She had taken to wearing his shirts and nothing else. He couldn't complain about that. She tilted her head and he noticed that her hair was damp as it tumbled over her shoulder.

  "And you've showered," he said.

  "Don't act so surprised," she said with a grin that belied the hollowness in her eyes.

  "Well, you've been depressed."

  She didn't say anything for a moment, just looked at him. Then she sighed very quietly. "I wouldn't say depressed. Just tired is all."

  "Really?"

  "Depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain. I don't have that. What I have is an impossible situation."

  Diedrich smiled tightly. "If you say so."

  "Leftover curry?" she asked.

  "Yeah. Listen, I was thinking of getting Chinese tonight for dinner."

  She looked up from scooping curry chicken out of a tupperware and onto plates to grin at him. "That sounds great."

  "Then, I was thinking, maybe we could go on a walk."

  "A walk?" she said, looking away again and busying herself with the plates.

  "I think it would be good for you,” he continued.

  "Good for me?"

  There was a long pause as she microwaved both plates and brought them to their spot on the couch.

  "I'm not sick. I'm fine, Diedrich. I'm used to it,” she said, taking a large bite.

  "You're different now than before."

  "You keep saying that but--"

  "You are." He said, mustering some stubbornness to his voice "You can’t continue like this. Maybe an appointment with a psychiatrist would be a good idea."

  That was the wrong thing to say. Even
before she opened her mouth to speak he could feel the energy radiating off her. She bristled like a cat and hesitated.

  "There's nothing wrong with me."

  "I didn't say there was anything wrong with you, Sparrow. Just that...I'm doing my best to keep you safe and happy but I'm out of my depth. I'm not qualified. I don't know what's best for you."

  "What's best for me is for Adrien to fuck up and get himself arrested and out of my life." She said, punctuating the fact with another bite of chicken.

  "I know,” he said gently.

  He watched her swallow, then hover her fork over the plate. She sucked in her lip and bit it.

  "I'm sorry." She said. "I know you're trying to help. I don't know what's best for me either. But I have experience with therapists. It was one thing when Adrien was in jail or on parole. When I could be reasonably certain that he wasn’t hovering outside my window at any moment. Then, it really was a psychological issue. But now...this is really happening to me. It's not mental illness. It's not me. It's him. This isn't post traumatic stress. This is...I mean...the trauma is ongoing,” she laughed joylessly.

  "I understand,” he said. “But please consider seeing someone. I feel like I’m watching you waste away.”

  -----

  I was hungry. My stomach had been growling, waiting for Diedrich to come up for lunch. But the chicken sat like a stone in my stomach. With each passing day, Diedrich was growing more and more distant. Every time he looked at me now he looked so sad. Like I was breaking his heart.

  "I know you're trying to help," I said again.

  He smiled that sad smile that was threatening to kill me these days and ate his lunch.

  "How’s..how’s the shop?" I asked after a time.

  "It's fine. You can come down, you know."

  "I know." I said. I didn't say that I was terrified of stepping past the apartment's threshold and out into the world where Adrien lived. Even the bookshop was too dangerous now, in my mind. It was right on the sidewalk, with that big bay window. He could watch me from there. I remembered my therapist talking to me about agoraphobia. But phobias are related to irrational fears. My fear wasn't irrational, and I wouldn't go back to a doctor. Not until this was over.

  "Paula came by to see you."

  "Oh?"

  "She's worried about you. She says everyone over there is. She said she's been trying to get a hold of you."

  "I know." I said "It's hard to talk on the phone. I don't know."

  "I need you to try." He said, a firmness in his voice that I had been noticing more and more.

  He deserved so much better. He'd had a hard life on his own. Literally, on his own. He needed someone vivacious and able to drag him out into the sunlight. Instead he had me, and all I seemed to be able to do was drag him back into the shadows with me.

  After lunch he went back downstairs and I washed the dishes in silence. I had been trying to do housework for him. He had a lot of stuff, mostly books and papers, that I didn't know what to do with but I cleaned around them. I dusted and wiped walls and cleaned sinks. I'm not sure if he noticed. The hope was that I would be able to assuage my all consuming guilt by performing household tasks, but it never helped.

  It had been years since this all had started. Back in Texas, I was fresh out of college with a fortune in debt and a childish hope for the future. I was working in a gym as a receptionist, which had precious little to do with my shiny new Developmental Psych degree, but it was a good job. I was surrounded by health nuts who ate weird things but were generally nice people anyway. The hours were good. I could swim any time I wanted for free. I didn't dread going to work in the morning and I was eager to pick up as many hours as I could. I wanted to rent an apartment on my own and I needed a new car, so making money was my top priority.

  My manager was only too pleased to have hired someone as eager to work, and to please, as I was. When Adrien hired me, I remembered how bright and cheerful his smile was and how, when he took me on a tour of the gym, all the trainers and people who worked there greeted him so excitedly. He seemed like a great person to work for and everyone liked him.

  There was another manager, the owner actually. His name was Paul and he was kind of an ass. He didn't come in to the gym all that often but when he did he would skulk around pointing out things that we weren't doing correctly, according to him. Everyone sort of bonded over our disdain for Paul, and Adrien became the de facto Person in Charge over all of us. But that was good, because everyone liked him.

  He would always take his lunch at the reception desk and that was when I really got to know him. He was eager to be friends with everyone there, though some people said he played favorites with the female trainers over the male ones. I was never sure about that but I heard it on a couple occasions from some of the trainers who had been there a long time. I figured, well, Adrien was a man and female physical trainers are, almost by contract, in peak physical condition. It wasn't his fault for subconsciously favoring them.

  Over the course of months I found myself excusing him a lot.

  First there was the issue with Belinda. She started working there just a few months before me, and she was adorable. Tiny, with long red hair that she wore in a thick, bouncy ponytail. Like all the trainers, she wore black leggings and a tank top with the gym logo on it, but somehow she made even that plain uniform look like a fashion statement. I always thought the cutest thing about her was her nose. It turned up slightly at the end, the perfect button nose, almost cartoonish in how sweet it was.

  She was plainly Adrien's favorite. From the very beginning, he had his eye on her and every spare moment was spent at her side. "Assisting" he would call it. She called it micromanaging at first, then creepy.

  When she left, it was so abrupt that people wondered if she had gotten sick or something. One day she was just...gone. A few days later her resignation came in the mail. She didn't even bring it in herself. There were no details in it and we ended up just throwing away all her things left in her locker because she never came back to retrieve them.

  With Belinda gone, Adrien began spending even more time at the reception desk next to me. It wasn't such a bad thing. He flirted with me and, even though I wasn't really interested in him, I let him keep doing it. It made me feel sexy, like I had some kind of control over him.

  When the flirting turned to outright asking me out on dates, I told him no. I laughed it off, mostly. I made excuses. He kept asking. Soon I did begin to dread coming in to work because I knew that he would ask me out again and I would have to come up with a way to refuse without upsetting him.

  Too polite and awkward to just be direct with him, I instead decided that the best course to take was to stop wearing makeup. Stop smiling. Stop styling my hair. If I wasn't cute, he'd get tired of me and leave me alone. It didn't work. Oh, he noticed, but it didn't deter him. I started to bite my nails, and the stress of going to work with him every day gave me headaches. I'd go home in the evening and stare at myself in the mirror and as time went on I recognized myself less and less. I started getting angry for no reason and for almost a year I distanced myself from all my friends because of how rude I'd become.

  One day I came in to work and Adrien called me into his office. I knew not to close the door behind me. He was sitting behind his desk and he didn't even look up from his computer when he said hello to me.

  "Go to dinner with me tonight," He said. He'd stopped forming his requests into questions a while back.

  "Not tonight," I said.

  "The gym is struggling in this economy. People would rather jog on the sidewalk than pay for a gym membership. Layoffs are going to be happening."

  I gritted my teeth together so hard they hurt, rage flaring up in me. "Are you saying that if I don't go to dinner with you, you'll fire me?"

  Finally he did look up at me and he was grinning. It was the most viscerally disgusting thing I'd ever seen.

  "No. I'm saying that you're fired either way. But if you're going to go
hungry, I'll pay for dinner."

  In that moment a wave of unexpected relief washed over me. I took his ugly smile and I laughed in his face, turning on my heel to walk out of that gym and never come back again.

  "You need to return your shirt." He said, and when I turned back his smile was gone and the muscles in his jaw flexed.

  I stared him in the eye and pulled the company issued t-shirt over my head. Women in sports bras and leggings and nothing else were standard fair at any gym, but he clearly thought he was humiliating me so I made sure to let him know that he was the one being humiliated that day. I threw the shirt at his face.

  "It still smells like me. That's what you want, right? If you store it in an airtight bag the scent might last longer."

  It felt good to walk out of the gym that day, but I would live to regret that last little hurrah. As time went on and he still refused to leave me alone, I would think to myself, if I'd just been nicer, maybe even gone to dinner with him, this wouldn't have happened.

  I relived that confrontation for millionth time as I swept the peeling linoleum in Diedrich's kitchen, again wondering what would have happened if I'd been gentler. Could it have been worse than this? I glanced at the window, my eyes going up and down the sidewalk, looking for him. Always looking for him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Down in the shop, Diedrich was having a crisis. This was evident by the state of his hair and the tottering pile of discarded distraction books on the table. He'd gone through gardening, and history, and was now working through a book of cross stitch patterns. Nothing could get his mind off of the trouble upstairs. Sparrow’s depression was like a festering wound. He loved her, but he wasn't helping her. If anything, he was a band-aid. She needed someone who knew how to help her with this. Just sitting there and watching her slide into a depression was not the behavior of a man in love, and he knew it.

  Just as he had several nights before, he walked up those rickety stairs to his apartment that evening with the intention of convincing her that he wasn't right for her, their relationship was entirely inappropriate, and that they needed to come to an agreement.