by Gayle Forman
The third brick lands when I realize I’m telling Ira right now. There is no more putting it off.
The fourth brick lands when I pull up to the store and see both Ike’s and Chad’s trucks parked out front. It’s Thanksgiving week. Ike’s supposed to be in Walla Walla.
When I open the door, it’s like I’ve stepped through the wardrobe into Narnia. The store is unrecognizable. The shelves have been patched and repaired. The floors are leveled, the planks sanded and varnished. The Sheetrock plastered, primed, and painted. There’s now a small area by the café with two bistro tables. And a new sofa in the corner where Ira’s armchair once lived. In the back of the store is a freshly oiled butcher-block counter with Gaga situated in the middle like a queen. Next to her, a case full of Angelica Silvestri’s pastries, and beneath that, a minifridge with yogurts and juices. Next to the front counter, where I usually sit, is a brand-new computer, the browser page open to a website that reads BLUEBIRD BOOKS & CAFÉ.
“He’s back!” Chad shouts.
And then everyone—Ira, Bev, Ike, Richie, Garry, Jax, Angela Silvestri, and an older woman with a walker who I recognize as Beana—all turn to me. “Surprise!” they shout. As if it’s my birthday. As if, like the store itself, this is a gift I want.
Ira bounds up, coffee-cake crumbs clinging to his beard. “Can you believe it?”
No. I can’t. I shake my head.
“When we heard you were with Hannah,” Chad says, throwing a glance at Jax, “we figured you’d be together till she left and we wanted to have it all ready.”
“It was Penny who gave us the idea,” Ira says.
“Penny?” I croak.
“When she asked about our opening, we realized we should try to be ready for the holiday season,” Ira explains. “We went on a spree and now we’re aiming for Black Friday. All we have to do is let things dry and put out the books, but Chad’s nearly finished organizing them all.”
“A spree?” I ask, my head spinning.
“And now we were thinking,” Ike continues, “we ought to have a grand reopening around the holidays. Like maybe get some Seattle authors to come up. Have a party. With music, even.” He looks at Jax.
“Yeah, I’ll talk to Hannah,” they say. “We can play an acoustic set.”
“What do you think?” Chad asks. “Do you love it?”
I can’t answer. I’m buried under a house of bricks, suffocating from all my lies.
“How?” is all I can manage to ask.
How did I let it go this far? How do I wreck everything I touch? How do I keep hurting the people I love?
“Easy,” Chad replies. “Teamwork. And a little bit of cash.”
“How much cash?” I ask.
Chad shrugs. “A few grand. But it’s an investment, not a loan.”
“Is that why you withdrew all the money from your bank account?”
“Yeah,” Chad says. “Wait, how’d you know about that?”
“What about the Stim?”
Chad looks sheepish. “I backed out of the Stim.”
“What? Why?”
“I changed my mind.”
“What about your deposit?”
Chad shrugs. “I lost it.”
“Why? Why would you do that?”
“My priorities changed.”
“Chad, you shouldn’t have done that!”
“I thought you of all people would be glad.”
Penny was right. Chad emptied his bank account for the store. And he backed out of the Stim. To invest in the store. To think I warned Chad about being scammed by Frederic. I should have warned him about being scammed by me.
“I know I should’ve checked with you,” Ira says a bit bashfully. “But we wanted to surprise you. After everything you’ve done, we wanted this for you.”
“Everything I’ve done?” I scoff. “You have no idea what I’ve done.”
“Of course I do,” Ira says, smiling. “We all do.”
“No. You don’t. Because what I’ve done is sell the store.”
Ira’s still smiling, as if he doesn’t or can’t comprehend what I just said. So I repeat it. “I sold the store. To Penny Macklemore.”
“No,” Ira says. “You’d never do that.”
“I would and I did, Ira.”
“But you love the store,” Ira insists. “You love books.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t even read anymore. This place has made me hate books. And I used to love books. I used to think they were miracles like you do. But now they make me sick, like strawberries do.”
When I mention strawberries, Ira’s face goes white. His lips form a fish shape. “You don’t want the store?” he asks in a tattered voice.
“No,” I say. “I never did. And that’s why I sold it to Penny.”
“Buy it back,” Chad says.
“I can’t. And I don’t want to.”
“When did you do this?” Ira asks.
“After the shelf broke. When I found your credit-card stash and it was just so obvious, it’s been so obvious for so long, that it wasn’t coming back. And I just wanted it to end. Because the waiting for it to end . . . I can’t go through that again.”
I spin around, jabbing a prosecutorial finger at Chad. “And then you showed up with your ramp idea.” I swivel toward Ike. “And then you built a better ramp. I kept telling you to stop but you went ahead anyway and then you brought the paint and then you . . .” I pivot back to Chad. “Built your database and started talking about partnerships and it got Ira’s hopes up . . .” I turn back to Ira. “And you were so happy. I haven’t seen you like that since Sandy died, since Mom left . . .” My voice breaks again but I push through. “And I thought, maybe I could change Penny’s mind, get the store fixed up, to how it used to be, and you could take it over. I tried to back out. I tried. So many ways. But it didn’t work. Because it can’t work. Because there’s no coming back from extinction. Can’t you see? We’re dinosaurs. The asteroid has hit. It’s time we accept that and move on.”
Ira sinks onto his haunches, eyes bulging, the panic returning as the room erupts into pandemonium, everyone yelling at once. Ike is shouting about selling the store. Garry and Richie are shouting about all the work they did. Angela is shouting about whether or not her crumb cake is needed. Beana and Bev are shouting for everyone to stop shouting.
My head is spinning and my heart is racing and my ears are ringing and it’s loud as shit in here but somehow I hear Chad’s quiet voice cut through it all. I have never heard him sound so angry.
“Don’t you dare,” he says. “Don’t you fucking dare call me a dinosaur.”
* * *
I run out of the store without looking back. I jump into the Volvo and take off, tearing past C.J.’s and the hardware store and the used-car lot, blowing through the traffic light, not stopping until I see a blur of blue.
Denim Blue. That was the name of the paint color Mom used on the porch swing. She used to repaint it every few years, so it would stay bright. “You have to take care of the things you love,” she said. Which she did. Until she couldn’t.
There it is, on the side of the road. Bart must have dumped it here. Like I told him to.
I stop. I load the porch swing in the back of the car. And then I keep going.
* * *
I have no idea if Daryl Feldman is going to be in his office. It’s Thanksgiving week. People have places to go to. Family to visit. But I’m flying blind here. The assistant is in, surprised to see me. “Did you have an appointment?” I shake my head. And maybe it’s the desperation reeking off me or maybe she knows her boss is an asshole or maybe it’s the Thanksgiving spirit, but she says, “Let me see what I can do.”
Five minutes later, I’m ushered in. Before Daryl speaks, I do. “The records are worth way more than forty-five hundred dollars. I
left the index here last time, and if you looked up any of the albums, you’ll see how valuable they are.”
Daryl Feldman stares at me from his modern and uncomfortable-looking and obviously very expensive desk chair.
“There’s a Pink Floyd Piper at the Gates of Dawn in there, first pressing, worth two fifty. A Replacements Stink, first pressing, two hundred. And more like that. Thousands more. They’re worth, ballpark, fifty thousand dollars.”
Daryl swivels back and forth in his chair.
“But I’ll sell them to you here, now, for twenty grand. At twenty grand, you’re still gonna make a shit ton of money.”
Daryl swivels some more. “Eight grand,” he counters.
If Penny were here, she would keep going, recognize this as an opening bid, part of the negotiation dance. But I don’t want to dance. I just want it to be over. And eight grand solves my most immediate math problem. It’ll pay Chad back for most of the deposit he lost because of me. I can take the $1,200 I’ve made off record sales and pay the guys for their work. We still lose the store. But once the asteroid hit, we were always going to lose the store. Like we were always going to lose Sandy. Like we were always going to lose Mom. Some things are inevitable.
“Deal,” I tell Daryl.
“When can I pick them up?”
“Today if you want.” I write down the store’s address and instruct him to make out the check to Chad Santos. Then I pry off the key Sandy gave me after I promised I would not sell his records. I slide it across Daryl’s desk. “Show this to Ira. Tell him you came for the vinyl. He’ll understand.”
* * *
Ira still keeps an old Rand McNally Road Atlas in the seat pocket. According to a distance chart in the back, the drive is fifteen hundred miles. I plot my course, running my fingers down and to the right, along the thick blue interstate lines, the way Ira must have done when he traveled from one end of the country to the other, not knowing what he was looking for until he saw her standing on the side of the road.
The Magician’s Nephew
Phoenix is the fourth sunniest place in country, the sun shining eighty-five percent of the time. I know this because I’ve Googled it as I’ve thought about places to live where the sky does not constantly cry. In my fantasy version, these places all have bright blue skies, open vistas, sunlight burnishing a copper Georgia O’Keeffe landscape.
But as I reach the outskirts of the city, the sights are oddly familiar: big-box stores, car dealerships with inflatable tube balloons, gas stations, fast food chains. Instead of damp and cloud-shrouded, it’s sun-bleached and violently bright, but otherwise, it feels the same.
Except for one crucial difference. Hannah is here.
I pull into a Circle K off the highway and use some more of my record-sale stash to gas up again and buy a travel pack of toothpaste, some deodorant, a new pair of boxers. I lock myself in the bathroom and clean off as best I can. When I feel halfway human, I extract my phone from the seat pocket where I’ve buried it and turn it on for the first time since I left home. It whooshes back to life with a cacophony of alerts, missed calls, voicemails, and texts. I ignore them all, and call Hannah.
She picks up right away. “Hey, baby,” she says. “I was just thinking of you.”
She was thinking of me. She called me baby. It’s going to be okay.
“I was thinking of you too,” I rasp.
“Are you sick? Your voice sounds hoarse.”
Somewhere outside Bellevue when the silence was already starting to make me crazy, I remembered the tape Hannah made me and popped it in. I listened to it, on repeat for twenty-nine hours, through Eastern Washington, across Oregon and Idaho, and into Nevada. I sang along, at first making up nonsense words and then, after repeated listenings, the real ones. I sang at the top of my lungs, even to the songs like “Clair de Lune,” which has no words. I sang louder than the wheeze of the Volvo’s beleaguered engine, louder than the voices in my head.
“I’m fine,” I reply. “What are you up to?”
“Making coffee.”
“And after that?”
“I don’t know. Probably staying out of the way while my mother cooks.”
“Can you hang out for a while?”
“You want to fool around on FaceTime at ten in the morning?”
“Definitely.” I pause. “But I thought today we could hang in person.”
The line goes quiet. In the background the coffee maker gurgles and hisses. “Where are you?” she asks.
“In Phoenix.”
“You flew to Arizona?”
“Drove, actually.”
“Why?
“To see you.” In the ensuing silence, my phone beeps with two new incoming texts. I flick them away without looking. “So when can I see you?”
“Aaron,” she says in a measured tone. “I’ll be home in three days.”
“I know, but I’m here. I want to see you. Don’t you want to see me?”
“I do want to see you. But back at home.”
“Hannah, I drove thirty hours to see you.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“I know! But I’m here. Surprise!”
Hannah sighs.
“I really want to see you.” I try to sound bouncy, a guy in love doing something romantic and spontaneous. But I can’t even convince myself, let alone her. “I need to see you,” I add, voice breaking, unmasking my desperation.
Another sigh. But then:
“Come on over.”
* * *
I get lost on the way to Hannah’s house, which is in some gated community. I mistakenly pull into Desert Pines Estates and Sandpiper Estates before I finally see Hannah waiting at the gates of Mirage Estates. The guard lifts the rail and Hannah slides into the seat next to me, but when I turn to kiss her, she is saying something in Spanish to the guard and so I wind up kissing mostly hair.
“I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” I say.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“That’s why I’m here.” I paste over the awkward silence that follows with a jolly “Happy Thanksgiving!”
“Thanksgiving is tomorrow.”
“Happy early Thanksgiving. Here.” I grab a melting maple bar I bought at an earlier pit stop.
She shoves the candy into her hoodie pocket and looks into the back seat.
“What is all that?”
“Oh, nothing. I mean, it’s our old porch swing.”
“You drove your porch swing down to Phoenix?”
“It was sitting by the side of the road and I couldn’t leave it there, so here it is . . .” I trail off. “Do you want it?”
“No,” she says. “But I do want to know what you’re doing here.”
“I told you. I came to see you.”
“You drove a thousand miles to see me?”
“Fifteen hundred, but who’s counting?”
“Why?”
“Do I need a reason?”
“Yeah, you kind of do. This is weird, Aaron. I’ve been gone two days. And I’ll be home in three.”
“Look. I know it’s spur-of-the-moment, but my family doesn’t really do Thanksgiving anymore and I had a few days to kill and I thought I’d come down here and see you. So we could get to know each other more. I could see where you grew up. Where you went to school. That kind of thing.”
“You drove down here to get to know me better?”
“Yeah!”
She mulls this for a bit. “Okay,” she says. “Pull a U-turn and go back out the way you came.”
“I thought you lived here?”
“No, Aaron. I live in Washington. My parents live here.”
Right. They probably don’t know Hannah is involved with me yet. I hadn’t thought about that.
“Anyhow, you came do
wn here to get to know me, so that’s what we’ll do. Go out to the street and turn right.”
I do as she says and we’re back on the wide boulevard full of landscapers trimming the flowering hedges. Her tape is still playing on the stereo but suddenly I’m a little embarrassed, so I turn it off and we drive in silence past several more gated communities, past several more strip malls, until she tells me to slow down. “See that?” Hannah points to an anonymous storefront. “That’s where I did modeling class when I was younger.”
“You took modeling classes?”
“For six years. It taught me good posture, how to saunter down a catwalk, and which diuretics will help keep your goal weight.”
The edge in her voice is subtle but unmistakable. “Are you mad at me?”
“Take a left at the light,” she says, ignoring the question. We drive in silence, my mind spinning with what to say to make it better.
Hannah points to an adobe building with a massive parking lot and a marquee reading HILLSDALE LIONS. “This is where I went to high school.” She points to the football field. “That’s the field where I cheered at games.” She points to an adjacent cinder-block building. “And there’s the locker room where I gave my first blow job to my boyfriend, who was, naturally, on the football team. He told all his friends and that got me the nickname Hannah Blew. Which I pretended to be cool with. I still run into guys in town who call me Hannah Blew. Good times. Okay, now follow the signs for 101.” She points to a highway entrance.
“You are mad at me,” I say as I merge onto the highway.
“Why would I be mad at you? You came here to get to know me, so I’m giving you the super cuts of my life.”
We drive a few miles in silence, then she guides me off a ramp and down a dusty road full of mature oak trees. “See that one?” she says, pointing to a tree indistinguishable from the rest. “I wrapped my dad’s car around that tree.”
“I thought your accident was on the way home from a ski trip,” I say.
“The accident where I shattered my hip was on a drive home from Taos. This is when I crashed my father’s car while high on Adderall.”
