by Gayle Forman
“If I’m such a coward,” I say, the blood thrumming in my veins, “why are you hanging out with me?”
“You know, that’s an excellent question!” Chad shoves back against the table, cursing as he maneuvers around it. It takes a while, and by the time he’s out, the waitress is back with our meal.
“What about your food?” she asks. “Not hungry?”
“No.” Chad throws down a twenty and looks at me. “I lost my appetite.”
* * *
I get the food to go and head back to the truck, where Chad is sulking in the driver’s seat. I climb into the passenger side and he peels out of the parking lot, not saying a word. I assume we’re going straight home. But he drives us to the club and, still not speaking to me, gets out. I scramble after him but he goes into the bar, which I’m not allowed in. So I sit in the empty club for an hour, then two hours, composing a treatise in my head on what a dickhead Chad is.
I’m a coward? Because I made some basic inquiries about a questionable procedure in a different country? No. Chad’s an asshole. He always was an asshole. He’s just using me. And I’m sorry, but who doesn’t know that Gone Girl was a book first? An ignorant buffoon is who.
The opening band starts playing: they are loud and unpleasant, a groaning bass beat that sounds more like moving heavy furniture than music. I contemplate calling Ira and asking for a lift home, but Ira is sick, in bed, asleep. I’m stuck. As usual.
“Didn’t expect to see you here.”
It’s testament to just how foul my mood is that the sight of Hannah Crew walking though the mist does nothing to make me feel better. She plops down next to me, her fishnetted legs inches away from mine, hoodie up, tight around her face. “You must a be a glutton for punishment.”
“Yeah. That tracks.”
“You here with Chad?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I came with him. But he’s in the bar. I think. I don’t know. I can’t go in there.”
Hannah nods. “I get that.” She touches my wrist. Her nails, painted gunmetal gray, are bitten down to the quick, and picturing Hannah gnawing on her fingers makes my heart twist.
“Want me to have someone get him?” she offers.
“Who? Chad? No. Chad can go to hell.”
“You two have a falling out?”
“No! We’re not even friends.”
“You seemed pretty close.”
“We’ve only known each other a few weeks.”
“Time’s not always a good measure of things like love, you know.”
“Right. Feelings are not facts,” I say pulling out some of Sandy’s rehab lingo.
“Exactly,” Hannah says, staring at me. After a bit, she stands to go.
“Well, if you want to be alone . . .”
I don’t want to be alone. I’m so tired of being alone. “Stay. Please. I’m sorry. It’s just been a day.”
“They’re all days,” she replies. “You take ’em one at a time.”
“I’m trying to.”
She sits back down.
“You want to talk about it?”
I shake my head. “Not right now.”
“Okay,” she says. And we sit there, in silence, but it’s not awkward. It’s comforting, like Hannah is someone I’ve known for a long time. Like someone I was meant to know.
“I’m sorry I compared your band to waterboarding,” I say.
“Please. I’ve heard worse. And at least you were telling the truth.”
“But I wasn’t. I hadn’t even heard you when I said that.”
“And now that you’ve heard us, did it change your mind?”
“Uh-huh.” I pause. “Not waterboarding, more like garden-variety drip torture.”
“So a lesser water torture?” Hannah asks, gripping her chest. “Be still, my heart.”
Be still, mine.
“It really isn’t personal,” I tell her. “I’m just not a music person.”
“Not a music person,” Hannah repeats. “What does that even mean?”
I shrug. “Music doesn’t do that thing to me it does to other people. Books do. But not music.”
“So it’s an either/or?”
In my family, yes. An age-old distinction. Years of defining myself in alliance with Ira, in opposition to Sandy. “Maybe?”
“Then explain Patti Smith.”
“Patti Smith?”
“Musician. Poet. Author. Genius. She wrote one of the most incredible albums of all time, Horses, and she wrote some of the most incredible books too. Her memoir Just Kids is my bible.”
I make a note to read Just Kids. Or try to.
“Music and books are not distant cousins,” Hannah continues. “They’re more like fraternal twins. Different ways of telling a story.”
“People say that, but lyrics just don’t do it for me.”
“Lyrics are just one part of it, like dialogue is in a book. But songs have so much more. Texture and pacing and emotional build.” Her excitement is so infectious I nearly believe her. “If they’re done right, that is. It’s hard to write a good song, much less a perfect one.”
“What makes a perfect song?”
“That’s totally subjective, but to me it’s a song that uses all the elements, instrumentation, pacing, lyrics, to deliver an emotional experience. It’s what I want our songs to do. But . . .” She grins at me. “It’s impossible. Because what’s perfect for me might be noise to someone else.”
“I don’t think any song will be perfect for me.”
“Well, you’ve thrown down the gauntlet.” Hannah kicks my ankle. “I’m gonna have to find you a perfect song.”
“Now who’s the glutton for punishment?”
Hannah laughs. “You gonna stay out here and mope or come inside? There’s a cooler full of club sodas waiting in the green room.” She stands up, dusting off her backside, and reaches a hand for me. I grab it and she hoists me up and we just stand there for a minute, hand in hand.
Neither one of us lets go as we walk toward the stage door right as Jax flings it open. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
Hannah glances at her phone. “I thought we weren’t up for another half hour.”
“Not you,” Jax says, staring at me. “You.”
“Me?”
“You’re Chad’s friend, right?”
“Is he okay?” My throat tightens. If something happened to Chad . . . when we were in a fight . . .
“He’s fine. Just come on . . .”
We follow Jax to the bar, pushing past the bouncer. There’s a small scrum around Chad, who has fallen off the barstool. “Where’s his chair?” I yell. The bartender points to the corner. I run and get the chair and help Hannah and Jax hoist Chad into it. He’s like a rag doll, though, and falls forward. Jax catches him just in time.
“He needs fresh air,” Hannah commands. “Let’s get him outside.”
“What about his tab?” the bartender asks.
“They’ll handle it,” Hannah says, pointing to Jax.
Hannah and I get Chad outside into the parking lot. Jax shows up a few seconds later with a bottle of water, which they prop against Chad’s mouth. “Can you drink this?”
Chad takes a few sips, then sputters, coughs, and pukes.
“Oh, boy,” Hannah says.
“Sorry,” Chad mutters, and then he retches again.
“Get it all out,” Jax says, patting his shoulder.
Chad shakes his head, miserable. “Sorry,” he repeats.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Jax replies before turning to me. “Can you get him home?”
“I don’t know how to drive his truck,” I say. “I’ll just wait for him to sober up.”
“You could be he
re all night,” Hannah says. “He’s really plowed.”
Jax looks back toward the stage door. “We gotta go on soon. Aaron, you stay with him out here. One of us will come back out to help you as soon as we’re done.”
“Okay,” I agree.
Jax leaves. Hannah lingers. “You gonna be okay?”
I nod.
“You’re a good egg, you know.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. I’m not. Chad was right. I am a coward.
“I gotta go,” she says. “We’re almost on.”
“Play extra loud so I can listen from here.”
“Don’t think I won’t!” she says, disappearing into the side door.
Chad’s mumbling something. I crouch before him. “What?”
“Betaable?” he says.
“What?”
“Behtanvil.”
“Oh, Beethoven’s Anvil. Don’t worry. We’ll see them another time.”
He nods. Then drifts off. It’s starting to rain, so I push him under the awning by the door. I can hear the band go on. Can hear Hannah sing “To Your Knees,” the same song they opened with the other night. From out here, it doesn’t sound so bad. I close my eyes and picture her boinging around the stage. My toe taps to the beat.
A while later Chad wakes up. Calls my name, then mumbles, “Ibuzsanedpus.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“IthinkIneedapiss.”
“You need to piss?” Chad nods. “Oh. Okay. How does that work? Do you need me to unzip your pants? Stand you up?”
He gestures to the satchel on the back of his chair. “Ziploc. Catheter.”
I open the satchel, find the Ziploc. It contains a bunch of foil-wrapped catheters.
I hand it to Chad but he’s so drunk he drops it.
I pick it up.
“You open it,” he tells me.
I look for an opening.
“Hurry!”
“Stop yelling! You’re making me nervous.”
I fumble with the foil and get it open. It’s a long tube with a suction cup at one end and a bag at the other.
“Now what? Do you need me to—”
“Fuck,” Chad says.
“What? What happened?”
But then I hear the sound of water dripping. And it’s not raining that hard. Chad hangs his head. “I pissed myself.” He puts his head in his hands. “I suck.” He shakes he his head. “I suck. I suck. I suck.”
“You don’t suck. It could happen to anyone.”
“Has it happened to you?”
“Not specifically, but trust me, I’m no stranger to humiliation.”
“Will you help me? Change? I keep a spare set of clothes in the truck.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
I fetch Chad’s sweats from the cab. I unzip his pants, pull them down. I clean him off as best I can and get the sweats on, before throwing the soiled pants in the dumpster.
“I’m sorry,” Chad says when it’s over.
I’m not sure if he’s talking about the piss, or what he said earlier, about me being a coward. But there comes a point when such distinctions cease to matter.
“I’m sorry too,” I say.
When You Reach Me
Because Chad’s still too drunk to drive when the set ends, Jax arranges for us to spend the night in a friend’s elevator-accessible loft. After ferrying us over in the van and getting us situated, they return to the club to load out.
It takes a while the next day to rouse a hungover Chad and fetch his truck from the club, so it’s past noon when we pull up to the store. Ike’s battered pickup is parked out front.
“Those guys doing more work for you?” Chad asks.
“No. They are not.” I jump out of the truck and bolt up the stairs. The collapsed bookshelf has been emptied of all its contents and pried off the wall, revealing a ghostly outline.
“What the hell’s going on?” I shout at Ike. “What’d you do to the bookshelf?”
“We had to pull the shelf off to find the source of the leak,” Ike explains. “As I suspected, you all got water in the walls.”
“Where’s Ira?” I demand. “What did you do with him?”
“Do with him?” Richie scoffs. “He went to C.J.’s to get coffee because you don’t have any. What kind of bookstore doesn’t sell coffee?”
“It’s good we came when we did because any more water and this fine old shelf might really have been beyond repair. And that would have been a tragedy.” Ike strokes the wood. “She’s a beaut.”
“Sure is,” Garry replies, fondling the other side of the case. This would be creepy even if Ike hadn’t just deemed the shelf a she.
“Mahogany?” Richie asks.
“Yep. You don’t see craftsmanship like that anymore, do you?”
“No, you do not.”
“Same with these floors,” Ike says. “Red oak.”
“Tongue-and-groove, isn’t it?” Richie asks.
Ike nods approvingly. It’s like any second now, they’re going to have a circle jerk about the wood.
The bell over the door chimes and I swivel around, expecting Ira. But it’s Chad. “Just wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”
“It’s definitely not okay. These guys have commandeered the store.”
“Commandeered?” Richie asks.
“He likes to use big words,” Chad explains.
“No one’s commandeering anything,” Ike says. “We’re conversating.”
“There’s nothing to converse about! I already told you, we’re not painting the building.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Ike says. “We got bigger fish to fry.”
“What? No! No fish. No frying!”
“The water in the walls needs attention and you got some rotting joists.” Ike gestures to a section of floorboard that he’s pried up.
I feel sick. I was gone less than twenty-four hours.
“With the weight of these books,” Ike continues, “and the state of those joists, it’s a miracle the shelf didn’t fall clean through to the basement.”
“That would not be good,” Richie tells me.
“Yes, Richie. I am aware of that.”
“Well, you don’t seem aware, ’cause you didn’t do anything about it,” Richie replies.
“And this nice piece of mahogany,” Ike continues, pulling out his bandana to polish the bookshelf. “You can’t scrap it. Or replace it with metal shelves. Wood like this deserves a second chance.”
“Fine. You take the bookshelf. Give it a second chance, a third even. But leave us out of it.”
“But it’s your shelf,” Ike says. “We’d fix it for you.”
“If you’re talking repairs,” Chad chimes in, “I’d widen the aisles.” He looks bashful. “Just saying.”
“Ain’t a bad idea,” Ike agrees. “Floor space isn’t used as efficiently as it could be. You could sneak more shelves in here. Organize a bit better.”
“Or organize it at all,” Chad jokes.
“It is organized!”
“Yeah?” Garry points to the collapsed shelves. “Then why do you have cookbooks next to child psychology?”
I’m not explaining Mom’s organizational system to Garry. He wouldn’t understand. And it’s none of his damn business.
“It does seem pretty disorganized,” Chad says. “Do you even have an inventory system?”
“We do,” I say. Even though we really don’t. Mom used to keep track of everything on a spreadsheet but that hasn’t been updated for ages.
“A digitized inventory system?” Chad asks.
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
“No.”
“No? How do you sell your stuff online?” Chad asks.
&n
bsp; “They don’t!” crows Richie. “I went to the website but just got an error message.”
“I could build a database system,” Chad says. “I’m taking a class.”
“We don’t need a database.”
“What kind of bookstore doesn’t have a digitized inventory?” Chad asks.
“The kind that doesn’t serve coffee,” Garry answers.
“Or have a website,” Richie adds.
“We have a website!”
Chad looks it up on his phone. “Error message. Did you forget to renew the domain?”
I vaguely remember some emails a while back telling us we had to renew. But it was one of a thousand little fires I could never put out. And now the whole place is burning down.
The door rings again and in waltzes Ira, holding two coffees. Behind him is Bev, holding two more.
“Look who I bumped into,” Ira bellows. “Hi, Aaron. Hi, Chad. Do you want some coffee?”
“I’m all good, Mr. Stein.”
“Ira,” says Ira.
“Nice to see you all again,” Bev says. “I was telling Ira I got the title of the book that’s about A Wrinkle in Time but not A Wrinkle in Time. It’s called When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. I’m not sure if it’s pronounced like dead or like deed.”
“Aaron, can you look for When You Reach Me?” Ira asks.
“I need to talk to you.”
“That’s fine, but we help our customers first.”
“It’s important.”
“So are our customers. Please find Bev her book.”
“But, Ira!”
He stops me with a look.
“Fine,” I say, folding my arms across my chest and malingering in the philosophy and puzzles-and-games section because I don’t trust Ira, even hand-selling Ira, with these guys.
Ike starts talking to Ira. “So I checked the plans at the town clerk and you filed for plumbing permits a few years back. I wondered if you had plumbing in the wall?”
“Why are you checking our permits?” I demand.
“That’s the first step in any renovation,” Ike replies.
“Renovation? What renovation?”
“Aaron, I think you’ll have more luck over there.” Ira gestures to the middle grade/career section. He turns back to Ike. “There is plumbing in that wall,” he says. “Annie put it in herself. She wanted us to add a café.”
