A Dead and Stormy Night

by Steffanie Holmes

  “Well, I could go up to the flat and whip us up something—”

  “No. You don’t go upstairs.” Heathcliff pulled out the top drawer of the desk. “I’ve got plenty of food right here.”

  I peered into the drawer, which was stuffed full of moldy pork pies, dried sausage, and chocolate bars melted into eldritch shapes.

  I pointed to a discolored lump at the back. “Is that an anthill?”

  Heathcliff grabbed a chocolate bar and slammed the drawer shut. “If you’re going to be a nag, you can go out. Fetch us something fried or coated in sugar.”

  “Fine.” I grabbed my coat. “It’s my treat this time, but if you want me to scavenge lunch every day, it’ll be an extra fifty pence an hour.”

  “Sold.”

  “Croak!” added the raven from the top of the staircase as I made my way down the hallway.

  “And some berries for the bird,” Heathcliff yelled after me.

  “That’s an extra quid!” I called back as I slammed the bookshop door behind me.

  “Croooooak!”

  As I pushed open the heavy door twenty minutes later, splattered with rain and laden down with a tower of Indian food, a bottle of white wine, and a punnet of imported blueberries, a foul smell hit my nostrils, like death and moldy socks and stinky cheese all rolled into one.

  “Did the cat bring us a surprise?” I asked as I slid the food down on Heathcliff’s desk and rolled over a stool to join him. The odor burned my nostrils so bad my eyes watered.

  Heathcliff grunted and yanked the lid off a rogan josh. “This reeks of chili and foreign spices.”

  “Of course it does, it’s curry. How can you smell anything over that reek? Are you sure there’s not a pile of rotting fish in the back of that desk drawer?”

  “It doesn’t smell so terrible.”

  “Huh. I guess your olfactory senses have been blunted by years of living in bachelor squalor, and that’s why you don’t want me to go upstairs.” I spread takeout containers across the desk. “Go on then, grab some utensils and dive in. If that rogan josh is too spicy, I’ve got us butter chicken and a couple of samosas and even a bottle of cheap plonk to celebrate your genius decision to hire me and the fact that I’m going to turn this place around—Heathcliff, that smell is foul. We can’t keep letting that bird defecate in here, it’s giving this bookshop a really bad—” I stopped short as my eyes followed my nose to the source of the smell. In the wingback chair under the window sat a disheveled gentleman wearing jeans that were more holes than fabric. He wore a trench coat stained with streaks of filth, and his wild hair looked like it hadn’t ever seen a comb or a shower. He had a book open in his lap and one hand thrust into the front of his jacket. At first I thought he was being filthy, but his hand was over his breast. Still, weird.

  I leaned over the desk, where Heathcliff had his nose in a book, his heavy boots crossed on top of his keyboard while the computer beeped in protest. I waved my hand under his face, but he didn’t look up at me.

  “Um, Heathcliff,” I whispered. “I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s a hobo reading in the corner.”

  “Of course I noticed.” Heathcliff tossed down the book and lifted the lid on a container, frowning at its contents. “Did you get any onion bhaji?”

  “If you hate e-commerce stores and people with mobile phones, surely you have a thing about smelly hobos stinking out the shop?”

  Heathcliff glanced over at the homeless man, who didn’t seem to have noticed my arrival. “Earl doesn’t have a home. He sleeps on a park bench. It’s cold and wet outside and he wants to read books, and the best thing is… he does not own an ereader.”

  My chest panged at his kindness. Living in New York had hardened me against homeless people, but Heathcliff was right. There was no one else in here and it was miserable outside. “You’re sweet, for a grumpy bastard.”

  Heathcliff grunted as he tore off a piece of naan and soaked it in rogan josh. “Maybe he and I have common interests.”

  “Why don’t you let him crash on your sofa upstairs, then?”

  “Are you making a joke? He smells. I’m not having him near my stuff.” Heathcliff pulled two wine glasses from the second drawer in his desk and set them on the table.

  “You keep wine glasses in your desk?”

  “I work in the book industry. There’s always a reason to drink.” The cork lasted all but a second under his strong fingers. As Heathcliff poured the wine, I let my mind wander, and it went straight to a fantasy of Heathcliff flinging the stacks of books and computer off his desk, throwing me down, and consummating our already combative working relationship with the most intense fuck I’d ever experienced.

  I bet Heathcliff uses words like consummating, which is totally okay if he can give multiple orgasms…

  Damn, what’s wrong with me? He may be hot, but he’s my boss. And he’s also a dick.

  A huge dick.

  I bet he has a huuuuuge dick…

  Oh Aphrodite, save me.

  I stared hard at my curry, hoping Heathcliff would attribute my red face to the high levels of chili.

  “If that girl wasn’t your friend, who is she?” Heathcliff muttered between bites of naan.

  “Just a girl I knew,” I said into my lunch. “I suppose she was my friend once.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I fucking hate talking.”

  The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of books and rotting fish. After an hour or so, the homeless man inserted a dirty Wimpy Bar receipt as a bookmark, shoved his book under the chair, and shuffled out of the shop. As he passed Grimalkin in the hall, the black cat hissed and swiped at his ankle with her lethal claws. “Don’t bother the customers, Grimalkin,” Heathcliff muttered without looking up from his book. “He doesn’t have another cat with ‘im.”

  Curious as to what had held Earl’s attention, I waited until Heathcliff was occupied with a customer and slid the book out from under the chair. Our homeless friend was devouring The Cutest Book of Cats. I guess it goes to show. I shelved the book back where it belonged.

  At four o’clock, Morrie ducked through the door. “Ooh, who brought wine?” He grabbed the half-finished bottle and poured the dregs into a glass while Heathcliff shooed the last browser out and locked the door behind him.

  “I did.” I slid onto my stool beside the desk and tried to swipe the glass out of his hand. Morrie sure had a habit of just taking what he wanted, even if it didn’t belong to him.

  Morrie held the glass over his head. “You didn’t bring enough.”

  “You going to push me off a waterfall over it, Moriarty?” I lifted an eyebrow.

  Heathcliff stomped back into the room, Grimalkin scurrying around his feet. The raven swooped in from upstairs and landed on the armadillo. “Don’t let anyone else in,” he growled at me. “We’re closed, and I don’t want—”

  There was a clattering noise from the front hall, like something heavy hitting a wooden floor.

  “Get away from that fucking mail slot,” Heathcliff thundered, sprinting for the hallway. Sensing mischief, the raven fluttered after him.

  “Did you have a nice day at work?” I asked Morrie.

  “The company lost eighty-five million quid,” he said casually, sipping his ill-gotten wine and flipping through a lurid paperback about Jack the Ripper. The raven fluttered back into the room and perched on the back of the chair.

  “What?”

  Morrie’s eyes flicked down the page. “Yup. The money just vanished from the accounts. Poof, like magic.”

  “How are you not more worried about that? Do you still have a job? Will you even get paid?”

  “I was let go, along with everyone else. The company was bollocks, anyway. They never acted on my suggestion to institute a bring-your-pet-to-work day. I was going to let this guy loose on the middle-management fat-cats.” Morrie reached up and tickled the raven under the chin. The raven made
a hyuh-hyuh-hyuh sound deep in its throat, almost as if it was purring.

  “But you don’t have a job! And eighty-five million quid doesn’t just disappear—”

  “Fuck,” Heathcliff returned with a stack of Dan Browns. “You turn your back for a bloody moment and they’re shoving these through the mail slot. I’m going to board the bloody thing up. People are monsters.”

  “Agreed,” I piped up. “Anyone who reads Dan Brown is a monster. They’re not even good enough to recycle.”

  “We could burn them in the fire to keep ourselves warm,” Morrie suggested, rubbing his shoulders.

  “And toast marshmallows!” I added.

  Morrie turned to Heathcliff. “Mina’s perfect. We have to keep her.”

  “Croak!” The raven agreed.

  “Meow,” Grimalkin chimed in.

  I picked up one of the books. “Hey, actually, could I take some of these? I think I could make something out of them to sell. My mother’s always going on about diversifying your income streams.”

  “We sell books,” Heathcliff growled. “But not these books.”

  “You might, after I’m done with them. Trust me. You got a spare box?”

  Heathcliff handed me one and I sorted through the stack for books in decent condition. Morrie flung himself down into Heathcliff’s chair, his emerald eyes dancing as he watched me work. “So how was your first day, gorgeous? Don’t spare the juicy details.”

  “Don’t you want to talk about your job—”

  “I’m just dandy. I have some money stashed away. Tell me about working with Old Cantankerous.”

  “It was fun,” I said, and I meant it. Heathcliff and Morrie were both profoundly odd, but despite Ashley’s visit, they’d completely taken my mind off my eyes and everything that happened. It didn’t hurt that they were easy to look at, and that every time Heathcliff growled something in his gravelly voice I imagined him saying my name as he thrust into—

  Yikes. I buried my reddening face in the Da Vinci Code.

  Plus, I was surrounded by books. Their comforting smell brought me back to my childhood, when they were my one escape from the shittiness that was my life. It was fitting that after everything that happened in New York City, I’d come back to Nevermore Bookshop to escape once more. Books really were my salvation.

  And I’ll only be able to read them for a short while longer.

  The thought slapped me across the face, startling me out of my happiness. The ophthalmologist said the changes would be slow at first – my peripheral vision would shrink away until I saw the world through a narrowing tunnel. Then I’d start seeing random colors and lights. Then, at some undetermined point in the future, I’d go completely blind.

  Blind.

  No more colors. No more turning the pages of my favorite books. No more fashion or art or fun. Only darkness. Only nothing.

  “Hey, earth to Mina.” Morrie snapped his fingers in front of my face. “You went off somewhere. Your face has gone all blotchy.”

  “I’m fine. I’m just a little terrified of that archaic thing.” Fishing for a change of subject, I glared at Heathcliff’s ancient computer, the only thing standing between me and Morrie’s hot, lanky body. “Does he even have a website?”

  “We don’t need a website.” Heathcliff yelled from deeper in the shop.

  Morrie leaned across the desk, his face lighting up with wicked glee. Up close, his scent hit me – fresh and tangy, lavender and vanilla, with a hint of something much, much darker. “I’ve been trying to get him to make one for years.”

  “It’s the twenty-first bloody century. Every legitimate business needs a website. How do people find the shop?”

  “I don’t want them to find the shop,” Heathcliff yelled.

  Morrie flashed me a smile that melted my panties. “Here’s an idea,” he whispered. “Come around to my place tomorrow night. We’ll build a website. He doesn’t get any say in it.”

  “Why don’t we just work on it during the day? Your place is his place, and it’s not as though you have a job to go to.”

  “Can’t. I’m heading down to London for a standing appointment with my bank.”

  “You go to your bank in person? And you call Heathcliff a dinosaur?”

  Morrie blinked. “It’s a very specialized bank. What do you say? I’ll be back around seven, so you could come by at eight? I’ll make sure he leaves the door open for you.”

  “You mean, I’d get to go upstairs?”

  “No,” Heathcliff yelled from the depths of the shop.

  “Yes.” Morrie grinned.

  “Croak!” agreed the raven.

  I reached out and shook Morrie’s hand. “It’s a date.”

  Chapter Seven

  Mum arrived home from her wobbleator sales seminar just as I put two bowls of leftover curry on the table. “I’ve had the most brilliant idea for my vibration training starter packs, Mina. I need you to go to the market and get me some cheap towels and water bottles. I’m going to peel the labels off and put my stickers on them.” Mum slapped a roll of garish stickers bearing an out-of-focus image of her smiling face and the words, ‘Vibrate Your Way to a Nu Life with Brenda Wilde.’”

  I cringed at the spelling of new. “Wow, Mum, those are… something.”

  She grinned. “Aren’t they splendid? Tonight I learned that branding is vital for an entrepreneur to succeed. My business mentor has a machine that prints these in an instant. And they only cost me two hundred quid—”

  “Two hundred? I could have got you something better off the internet for a tenner. Mum, how much are you spending on this new enterprise? You’ve got enough for the rent, haven’t you? Because Heathcliff isn’t paying me much and I—”

  “Relax, darling. I’m going to make it all back by Sunday, plus a two hundred percent ROI. That means return-on-investment. See how much I’m learning?” She paused. “Actually, better make that next Wednesday. But definitely no later. Will you go to the market?”

  “Mum, I worked all day. I don’t want to go back to town. And look, I made dinner. Plus, I had a project I wanted to start on tonight. Can’t you go to the market?”

  She pouted. “But darling, I was so busy with the seminar I haven’t had a chance to do my vibration exercises today. I can’t sell these machines if I don’t use them. Authenticity is important in today’s consumer market and—”

  “Fine.” I slurped up the last mouthful of curry and grabbed my coat. The last thing I wanted to do was head out again, not with Ashley wandering around the village. But I remembered I didn’t have the craft glue I needed for my book project, and I knew Mum wouldn’t let up until I ran her errands. “Car keys?”

  Mum shook her head. “It’s spewing black smoke again. I think it’s the alternator.”

  Great. “You don’t know what an alternator is. Mum, can’t you replace the car instead of spending more money on this business of yours? Then you could drive to an office job or—”

  “I’m not going to do that when all I need to do is sell fifty power-plate machines and recruit ten salespeople, I’ll be able to buy a brand new one. Take your cellphone and mace for safety.”

  I should bring her into the shop. I bet Heathcliff could teach her a few things about the perils of a retail business.

  I pulled on my coat, propped open my umbrella against the miserable winter drizzle, and stepped out into the moonlight.

  On the corner of our street was a playground where the council estate teens hung out at night, drinking home-brew piss and smoking whatever drugs they could get their hands on. I kept my head high as I jogged past, but they were too busy laughing at one of their mates hanging upside down on the monkey bars to notice me. Miracles did sometimes happen.

  A car whizzed past, the driver yelling something out the window. His harsh voice and lewd suggestion sent a shiver of fear down my spine. As I crossed the road, angry voices and the sounds of smashing glass poured out of the windows of the house opposite. Just another night on the
estate.

  Four years in New York City, and this place still terrified me. No wonder Mum tried every hokey scheme in the book to get out of here. I thought I’d escaped Argleton, but now here I was again, right back where I belonged.

  As I neared the village, the houses grew tidier, the gardens resplendent with winter blooms and gnomes peeking over stone walls. Tonight, there was a choir performance at the church hall, so the market teemed with people. Argleton villagers were serious about their hymns (although I suspected some of the eager shoppers were stocking up on hip flasks and snacks to get them through the evening). The market was an old Tudor home on the high street that circled the village green. It had been converted into a general village store. They stocked everything from groceries and souvenirs to basic household items and farm supplies. I ducked behind a display of Cadburys and checked the aisles for signs of Ashley. Nope, she’s not here. I threw myself into the fray and maneuvered my way to the homewares section. I found a couple of tubes of glue and some craft scissors, colored card and ribbon for my project. Next, I grabbed a stack of towels. As I leaned in close to check the price tag, a pair of glasses slammed into my face.

  What the fuck?

  I followed the arm that held the glasses up to a kindly old lady with an enormous floral tote bag. She waggled her glasses in front of me.

  “These will help, dearie,” she cooed. “I use them to see my crosswords.”

  My cheeks flushed. What the hell is she thinking? For one thing, I had a pair of glasses in my bag for close work (which I never wore because gross), and no way in hell her crossword specs were the same prescription. And also, did I look that pathetic? Was this my life now, strangers trying to give me their purple tortoiseshell glasses?

  “I don’t need those,” I managed to say. “I can see perfectly fine. I just thought the prices were scratch and sniff.” I shot to my feet and shuffled away, dropping a trail of towels in my wake.

  This is my life now. Everywhere I go, people are going to feel sorry for me.

  My arms wouldn’t stop shaking. I rounded the corner and dropped more towels. No way was I stopping to pick them up. Just grab the rest of Mum’s shite and get out of here. The lurid packaging on the shelves blurred together into a carnival of light and color, mocking me with words I couldn’t read.