Bailey Peters
Forgetting Chuck Taylor
Copyright © 2019 by Bailey Peters
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1
Eva
It wasn’t that Eva Perry disliked people. It was just that they swarmed around her so consistently between the hours of 8:00 AM through 5:00 PM Monday through Friday and on Saturday nights that she often felt overwhelmed by their neediness and chatter. To be more specific, she worked with brides as a wedding planner.
Eva’s professional life had gone smoother than anyone would have anticipated. Her undergraduate degree was a bachelor of arts in English that her parents loudly mourned spending a neat $80,000.00 on at one of Raleigh’s private women’s colleges. With no intention of obtaining a teaching license or going back to get a graduate degree, they feared she would be under their roof forever.
Instead, she enrolled in a certification program to become a wedding planner and scrounged up enough money to rent out some square footage in the liminal space downtown between the posh and sketchy areas. Other young professionals flocked to Eva’s block for the vegan dessert shop and the record store to the left and right of her. She called the top floor home and filled the bottom portion with what seemed like an endless supply of tulle, linens, cake stands, and centerpieces. She hired college interns from her Alma mater to market her services to the school’s rich alumni. After a steady year of forking over regular chunks of her paycheck to the school’s fundraiser as though it were a tithe, she obtained a hard to snag partnership with the chapel on campus that all the undergraduate women dreamt of as their future wedding site. There was a waiting list two years long at any given time to have your nuptials there and it could only be booked through Eva. The school event coordinator had seemed equal parts bitter and relieved about the shift of responsibilities.
Eva’s brides seemed to adore her. They complimented her straightforward fashion (pencil skirts, pumps, and pearls with a loose bun tucked in place with her pencil) as chic. They joked that they didn’t mind her exorbitant prices because she doubled as a counselor for last minute jitters and worries about husbands with commitment issues. They trusted her recommended vendors, appreciated her keen eye for discounts and knew she’d be there at the ready with clear nail polish to stop any runs that appeared in their hosiery on the big day. Eva was gracious when handling the minute details of their wedding day timelines and their bridezilla meltdowns. She kept emergency tailors on speed dial, coaxed hotels into giving better rates on their room blocks, and talked craft breweries into giving her reception kegs at the cost she’d pay for a few cases of midlist beer from the convenience store.
The thing she was proudest of was running a successful woman-owned business. She wanted to open doors for other minority-owned companies and made an effort to promote their goods and services whenever she could.
Staying on top of her game was exhausting. At the end of the workday, she felt no rush to catch up with friends over martinis the way the brides likely did. Eva was a woman that believed in ritual. She’d retreat to the corner upstairs she had deemed to be her reading nook, an area covered in a soft spread of satin she could lay her weary bones down on, back propped up by a plethora of pillows. A small bookshelf housed thin collections from her favorite poets. Beside it, there was always a haphazard pile of library books. She only purchased books that were time treasured and sacred to her. Eva was pinching pennies and living frugally so that she could buy herself a home with a wraparound porch and columns that would make her feel like she was in Gone With The Wind . Hardbacks were an expensive luxury she would purchase to fill her home with after she could afford a down payment for the house itself. Eva could easily go through the better part of a novel and a glass of wine before she ever thought to make dinner.
Thursday nights were her one exception. Thursdays, she made her pilgrimage to the library, armed with a tote bag and a list of book titles. Currently, she was making her way through the Times magazine list of the best one hundred books of all time. Each visit, she would also make sure to pick up a book on a whim so that she could feel a bit more spontaneous and less like she was completing an assignment. They were usually plucked from the shelves designated for librarian recommended picks. Each librarian had a shelf lined with books, covers facing out, that would call to Eva with their jacket art. She was very rarely disappointed in their suggestions, though some librarians seemed to have closer tastes to hers than others did.
She had a long love affair with libraries. In college, she had volunteered at the nearest public library, sure that it would be an outlet to help her find the person she’d plan her own wedding with one day. Eva had imagined herself working at the checkout counter when a handsomely rugged man in flannel and Chuck Taylors would lock eyes with her as he handed her a copy of J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories and his yellow borrower’s card for her to scan. For the most part, the only guys she saw there were the retired men that finally had time to read and fathers perusing the children’s section with their little ones in tow.
Eva’s brides liked to pry about Eva’s love life as though her entrance into the celebration of their unions made them equally entitled to information about whether or not she was partnered. Usually, this irked Eva. When Amanda teased her about it, however, she didn’t seem to mind. Amanda was too low maintenance to require a wedding planner, which was probably why her rich and tightly wound parents required her to have one. When Amanda did imitations of her mother’s explicit instructions on ways to ensure the wedding “was a refined affair” instead of “a tasteless show of impropriety”, Eva would have to clutch her sides in laughter. Amanda took beer to her cake tastings, wore hoop earrings that should have been left in the 90’s, and had an affinity for leopard print that was equal parts exciting and unfortunate. Amanda mortified her mother just as much as she gave Eva a secret thrill.
Amanda and Eva’s Thursday afternoon appointment was one of Eva’s favorite kinds—the appointment to discuss the honeymoon. Because most of Amanda’s family didn’t approve of her fiancé, many of them had found excuses to RSVP that they were sending their regrets and couldn’t attend. How their old money Amanda could possibly consider marrying a chef that went to culinary school instead of obtaining a four-year degree and an MBA was beyond them. They imagined Jamison coming home to her with cuts on his hands from the careless use a of paring knife, reeking of the fryer. Amanda hadn’t batted an eyelash over their snobbery.
“Here’s the silver lining,” she had said over the phone. “The fewer the people that show up, the less steak I have to spend money on. That just translates to a better honeymoon. It’s time to reallocate some funds!”
Eva flipped through travel guides with Amanda that afternoon, showing her glossy photos of Mayan ruins and white sand beaches. “You know, I could show you more targeted ideas if you could tell me what you envision you and Jamison doing together,” Eva fussed after Amanda turned down what felt like her sixth honeymoon suggestion in half an hour.
“I want to feel like we’re stepping out of a fairy tale book or a Victorian novel,” Amanda said, leading Eva to wonder how much her new friend actually read given the vast difference between those two particular types of tales.
“It sounds like we’re taking you to London, then,” Eva said, stealing a
Lonely Planet guide off the shelf so that she could flip to pictures of Buckingham Palace and St. John’s Gate. Amanda grabbed the guide, humming to herself, and started quickly earmarking pages as she flipped through them, deciding without Eva’s commentary what she’d like to visit and see. Eva made a mental note to tack the book onto Amanda’s mother’s tab.
“Where I’m honeymooning is settled, then. We just have to figure out where you’re going to meet your prince charming, hmmm?” Amanda said, raising her eyebrows above the book cover.
“If you take me with you to London, I’ll just jump out once you’re near London’s Madame Toussad’s wax museum. I hear there’s a replica of Prince William there.”
Amanda tossed Eva a chocolate truffle she had fished out from the bottom of her purse. “I think we can find you someone with a pulse and a full head of hair. In the interim, since I’m the one that has to fit in a wedding dress, you are welcome to eat all the sweets my culinary prince makes for me.”
“Deal.” The women smiled at one another warmly, then got back to business. The budgeting and nitty-gritty details were always a lot less exciting than the brainstorming part of trip planning. Amanda tended to zone out when they talked numbers. To her family, money was no object.
* * *
That night, Eva found herself standing in front of the Suggested Reading bookshelf at the library longer than usual. She took the time to read each librarian’s biography and look at their pictures. On the bottom row, there was a card with the name Taylor and a blurb that said, “Bio coming soon”. A question mark served as a placeholder for where the picture would be. “Okay, mystery man,” she said. “What suggestions do you have for me?” She’d already swiped books from nearly all the other shelves on past visits.
That night she took home two books from his shelf—The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Both were set in London and penned by authors she adored. While she felt silly for thinking so, it felt like some kind of sign that maybe the universe was conspiring to send her a romance of her own, after all. Maybe this Taylor could be her prince charming. They had similar taste and both seemed to hear London calling.
Eva’s mother had been a superstitious woman, looking for signs everywhere. If your eyes caught the clock just as it turned to 11:11, it was a sign you were meant to make a wish. When she wasn’t sure what to do about a situation, she’d open her Bible to a random page, throw her finger down, and the verse it landed on would sway the choice she made. While Eva had rolled her eyes at her mother’s quirky beliefs growing up, Eva had also developed a bit of a tendency to look for signs from the universe about what the future may hold. A bookshelf was as good a place as any to find Mr. Right.
Eva envisioned intellectual sparring over brunch with a goateed man. She envisioned thick novels with weathered spines arranged carefully beside thick, dripping candles as wedding centerpieces. She shook the thoughts out of her head, knowing her professional life was making her delusional about her personal one.
She flung herself onto her bed to toss and turn with the impatience of a sixteen-year-old girl.
Eva woke at 5:00 AM to the aroma of her coffee machine going off on its timer. She wanted to flip her pillow over to the cool side and burrow back in but instead rose responsibly to make her spinach and egg white omelet. Eva ran her typical loop around the neighborhood as the newspaper delivery men finished their early morning routes, waving to them as beads of sweat dripped from her face to her chest. Concluding the rest of her pre-work rituals, she showered, applied her J’Adore perfume, and put on her grandmother’s pearl earrings that she’d worn every day for years. By 8:00 AM, she was tired of her complacency with the familiar and bored with herself.
She thought about calling Amanda and asking to join in on her Friday night bachata class, but she couldn’t quite imagine herself swinging her hips to Latin music with sweaty strangers. It seemed like it might be easier to wade slowly into extending her nonexistent social life.
In between appointments, she went to the library’s website and clicked on the Speak to a Librarian function. She typed in her name and the chat box appeared.
TAYLOR: Hello! How can I help you?
Maybe this is another sign, she thought.
EVA: I was wondering if you could provide any assistance for individuals seeking to start a book club? I thought it might be fun to get a group together and it seemed like the library would be the best place to start.
TAYLOR: Absolutely! We have book club kits that can be checked out. They typically serve ten or less individuals and provide a set of the same novel and a list of reading questions. There are also tips for the host that are included if you want to provide a themed night with dishes from the cultures referenced or dishes that are directly mentioned in the novel, where applicable.
Eva bit her lip and decided to be brave.
EVA: I’ve been reading a lot of Victorian lit lately—started rereading The Picture of Dorian Gray last night. Are there any starter kits for comparable novels?
TAYLOR: A patron after my own heart! Unfortunately, book club kits are typically made up of books that are a few years removed from being on bestseller lists. It’s easier to keep enough of them in stock when they’ve fallen out of fashion. There generally isn’t enough interest in Victorian literature to justify having more than a few copies.
EVA: That’s a shame. I read more in the way of classics and literary fiction than I do bestsellers.
TAYLOR: A book snob, huh?
Eva began to type a retort but stopped. An ellipsis appeared on the screen to show that she was hesitating over her keyboard.
TAYLOR: Forgive me, a purist! I only kid. I’m relieved when people walk in and want to read something that isn’t Harry Potter . You’d be amazed at how long those books created a wait list. If someone walked in and asked me to help them find something truly literary that wasn’t required, I think I’d fall over.
EVA: I forgive your hasty judgment. This time. You’ll just have to refer me to a good book to make it up to me.
She sipped her coffee, grinning into her cup.
TAYLOR: I have a book club outside of work. We meet at Coffee and Crepes over on Cabarrus Street. If you can swing it, we’ve got a meeting next Wednesday at 8:00. We’re reading The Bridge of San Luis Rey .
EVA: I’ll be there. Thanks for the invite!
TAYLOR: No, thank YOU for saving me from the unbearable agony that is the chat duty. From here on out, I’m likely going to be answering the same five questions over and over this morning, most of which have nothing to do with books.
EVA: How will I know you on Wednesday?
TAYLOR: I’m tall, I’m loud, and I’ll have a copy of the book.
Eva left work before 5:00 on Friday, too distracted to feel guilty about leaving brides’ emails unanswered for once and drove across town to the other library so that she could check out a copy of the book. On the way home, she detoured at her favorite high-end consignment shop and got a little black dress that was not so little that she couldn’t also wear it to work.
The world had always been hers for the taking, one page at a time. It occurred to her that the story she could live out might surpass those that she read in the security and air conditioning of her loft.
* * *
Because fits of estrogen and adrenaline are best when shared, Eva called Amanda.
“I know weddings. I know them inside and out. But I don’t know how to get to the wedding part.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want to go on a date. Specifically, with a librarian. That I have not met but have spoken to over the internet.” She explained in hurry, words tumbling out. It was 4:49 on Wednesday. She had three hours before book club. She was losing precious time.
“Most people use a dating website for this, you know. Not the library website.”
“It takes all kinds, different strokes for different folks—that’s not what’s impor
tant. I need you to dress me. I have not been on a date in a very long time.”
The beauty of living in downtown Raleigh is that when you summon a fellow urbanite, they can show up in less than 20 minutes.
“Take the dress off,” Amanda instructed. “This is not a funeral unless you’re going to be a book club joy kill.” She swarmed around Eva’s head, plucking out bobby pins from the carefully structured chignon, buzzing with purpose. Once Eva’s hair had been loosened from her ponytail holder’s vice grip and was teased out by a comb in Amanda’s purse to satisfaction, Amanda slapped Eva’s rear like a football player running victory laps around the team.
“Direct me to your closet, coach.”
Amanda surveyed rows of pashminas and dry-clean only numbers. “You have effectively curated a museum of cashmere and strict school mistress clothes, but you have to get to the roleplaying phase of your in-progress relationship before these will be of any help in the romantic department,” she teased.
After much digging, Eva was released into the streets in a wrinkled concert tee and jeans that had been waiting for their bureau drawer jailbreak for a very, very long time. Skinny heels, Amanda’s nude lip gloss, and a pushup bra worked their illusionary magic on her tiny frame.
“Your tiara, Cinderella,” Amanda said, sliding a pair of aviator glasses over Eva’s newly big hair.
“No one wears sunglasses inside at night time.”
“Incorrect. The great one hit wonder Cory Hart did. And so do women so interesting, important and busy that they can’t be bothered to take them off the top of their head.”
Like that, Eva’s Jersey Shore fairy tale godmother disappeared off into the traffic from whence she came and Eva climbed in her car.
2
Eva
As should be expected, Eva was early.
Coffee and Crepes was large enough that you could have a small gathering of people without it being an inconvenience to other customers, but just barely. There were only a handful of people in the room. Not seeing any indications that they were her fellow bibliophiles, Eva placed her order at the counter for a vanilla chai tea. While she waited, she looked over the printout that she had prepared for book club. Significant quotes, unanswered plot questions, and themes had all been outlined as though she was preparing for an English lecture.
Forgetting Chuck Taylor Page 1
