The Pepper In The Gumbo: A Cane River Romance

by Hathaway, Mary Jane

  But he knew he wouldn’t. Even as he considered it, he pushed it back out of his mind. Paul walked to his briefcase and pulled out the tidy pile of old pages that he’d cut from the Alexander Pope poetry book. Opening the portable scanner, he gently started to feed the pages through the machine. The red seraph logo on the side was the only thing that connected ScreenStop to his other life.

  There was only one way to resolve the mystery of Alice. He would meet her face-to-face and see if she really was everything her bookshelf claimed to be. The only problem would be that she wouldn’t know who he was. To her, he would be Paul Olivier, businessman.

  Paul swallowed a lump of unease. This was more complicated than he thought it would be. But he couldn’t think of any other way around the problem. He knew one thing for sure. He had to know if Alice Augustine, Natchitoches bookstore owner and swapper of intimate shelf portraits, was for real.

  Chapter Seven

  I force people to have coffee with me, just because I don’t trust that

  a friendship can be maintained with any other senses besides a computer

  or a cell phone screen. ― John Cusack

  Alice sat down at her desk and stared at Van Winkle. It must be great to sleep one’s life away in a patch of sunshine. She wished with all her might that the legal letter would disappear, along with “Norma the beloved niece.” She rubbed her parents’ wedding rings between her thumb and forefinger, trying to calm her thoughts. There was no use worrying about it right then. She couldn’t do a thing until she found a lawyer.

  She wandered the store, desperate for some distraction from her anxiety. She wanted to call this woman and ask what gave her the right to take something that wasn’t hers. More than anything, she wished she could talk to Mr. Perrault.

  Apart from the customer looking for books by BWK, no one else had opened the door. Alice had enjoyed talking to Karen, and had even exchanged phone numbers with her after the woman mentioned wanting to talk about the books she’d read with someone over coffee. Karen said the online forums were fun, but they could never replace a face-to-face book discussion over coffee. With that, Alice warmed to her completely. As different as they were, they were also very much alike. They both preferred friends to be of the breathing variety, rather than the cold screen and profile picture type.

  Alice caught sight of her little shelf of personal books and grimaced. She should know better than to share private information with strangers. But he’d seemed so real, so much like herself. They even had the same small volume of poetry, The Seraphim and Other Poems. Except for the science fiction part. She couldn’t see how reading that much sci-fi would serve anybody well in the real world.

  With every new email, she’d been drawn in to the conversation, beginning to think of him as a new friend. After an hour passed with no response, Alice wished she could snatch back the picture and hide it away. She’d been flirting and was ashamed of herself. Maybe he hadn’t read it that way, but she felt the way her heart rate quickened every time she’d seen a new message. Of all the traits she respected the most, loyalty was one of the highest and she hadn’t shown Eric any loyalty this morning.

  A lot of people would laugh at her scruples, but Alice saw it very clearly. She’d become momentarily infatuated with someone she’d never met and completely forgotten Eric. Again. He was coming to take her to lunch in less than an hour and he hadn’t even crossed her mind.

  Alice hung her head for a moment. Eric deserved better. He deserved honesty. Slumping into her chair, she caught her reflection in the long mirror across the room. She sat up straighter. Starting now, she’d be a better person, inside and out. She squinted. Maybe she’d neglected her outside a bit, too. Her normally tan skin reminded her of Dickens’ description of Miss Havisham’s wedding dress: “pale, like something shut up inside too long.” The shock from this morning showed. She put her hands to her cheeks and rubbed them. Maybe she needed to get into the sun a little more. Her dark hair was going every which way, but that wasn’t unusual and she didn’t bother to redo her ponytail. Her brothers used to joke that she looked like Marge Simpson in the mornings, her hair a towering column of crazy curls. It wasn’t quite that bad at the moment, but it was definitely not a smooth, professional look. She didn’t really care. She had bigger problems.

  She drew back her lips, showing off her best asset: straight, white teeth. The mirror was dusty and the glass wavered with age, but the image reflected wasn’t too bad, considering. She turned her face to one side, and then the other, keeping her wide smile in place. Squinting, she lifted her chin and noted the softening of her jawline. Every year, she looked more and more like the old photos of her mother.

  “It doesn’t bother me. Doesn’t bother me a single bit,” she said into the quiet, but she heard the lie in her own voice.

  She tossed her ponytail over one shoulder and flashed another smile. Her upper-eye area seemed puffy. She hadn’t cried when she’d read the legal letter so maybe she was retaining water. She widened her eyes and smiled again, trying to reproduce the look of a girl ten years younger.

  The barest echo made Alice’s heart drop, along with her smile. She whirled in her chair, hoping it was just the mail falling through the slot, or Charlie coming in early so she could go to lunch. A man stood just outside the glass door, eyes fixed on her. He was young, tall, with straight black hair. His tailored button-up shirt and jeans said he was wealthy and on vacation. His expression was a cross between amusement and confusion.

  Alice held his gaze, willing him to move on. Her mind flashed to the letter, but that lawyer had lived in Houston. This man was likely a customer, but she didn’t care if he was looking to buy half her inventory, she wanted him to keep walking. He’d caught her preening at the mirror and she didn’t think her ego could hold up under a whole conversation.

  As if he knew what she was thinking, his mouth tugged up in a smile. Pushing the door open, he stepped into the dim interior as the tiny brass bell announced his arrival a few minutes too late. He walked confidently, as if he’d been born into privilege.

  When customers came in, Alice usually hopped out of her chair and came to see if they needed any particular help. But this time she felt rooted to the seat, like a toad caught crossing the highway, frozen in the high beams of an old pick-up truck. She watched him saunter in, gaze locked on hers, until he stood directly in front of her. The corners of his eyes crinkled and Alice edged his age up a little further, closer to thirty than twenty.

  He took in the snoozing Van Winkle, the piles of papers, her coffee mug steaming gently. He turned, slowly scanning the room. “A mirror,” he said. His voice was deep and his accent was local, but muted, as if he hadn’t been home in a long time.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I assumed you were having a conversation with someone you didn’t care for, but you were simply menacing your own reflection.”

  Several responses flew through her mind but she didn’t want to speak any of them aloud. She was a modern woman who treated herself kindly, including daily pep talks on body image and being good enough for any man who had the brains to look past bra size and her slight tendency to gain weight in the winter. If anyone had asked, she would have declared herself more confident and secure than the general female population.

  “I looked pale,” she muttered.

  A dark brow arched upward. “Feeling okay?”

  “Perfectly fine, thanks.” Aside from an ebbing tide of residual embarrassment. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for old poetry. Specifically Alexander Pope and Robert Browning,” he said.

  He was fit but bulkier than a runner. She would have said businessman from the understated watch with the leather band, but his shoes were battered black Converse. He was looking at her, a smile tugging at his lips and she realized she’d been giving him the whole body scan.

  She pushed back from her desk. “Our poetry section is small, but I have quite a few first editions.”


  “It doesn’t matter which editions. Anything will be fine.” He stepped aside to let her pass and she smelled something really good, a cross between a man and…old books. She led the way toward the front of the store and into the poetry section, but halfway down the narrow aisle she turned to face him.

  “Are you a collector?” No, she already that knew that wasn’t right. He would have specified an edition or a publisher.

  “Not exactly.” He smiled, but there was a tightness to his mouth. He glanced over her head. “Are they at the end? I can find them. No need to trouble yourself.”

  “Are you a bookseller?” She’d stepped forward without thinking. The sunlight was filtering through the range, hitting him in the chest, illuminating his neck and stubbled chin, putting his eyes into shadow. Something was wrong with this man who didn’t care which editions he wanted but smelled like he’d rolled in a pile of old manuscripts.

  “Kinda sorta,” he said. He shrugged, as if pretending to be mysterious and a little bit flirtatious. but as he moved, the sun flashed across his face and Alice caught the hint of panic in his eyes. He didn’t want to tell her what he was doing.

  “You’re not… You’re not one of those people, are you? The ones who rip out pages from perfectly good books to make horrible art that ignorant folk hang on their walls so they can feel literary and bookish?” She dropped her hand to the shelf, steadying herself against the thought. She stepped forward, her nose almost touching his chest, and inhaled deeply. He held his hands up in surprise and she caught his wrist, pulling his palm towards her. He smelled wonderful, because on his skin was the unmistakable scent of dusty books.

  She was filled with outrage. “You are. I can smell them on you. Murderer!”

  He laughed--a deep, warm sound. “I assure you. I am no book murderer.”

  “Then tell me what you’re going to do with them,” Alice said, dropping his hand.

  His gaze went over her head toward the leather bound books at the end of the row, like a hungry man who could smell gumbo simmering on the stove. He didn’t answer.

  “You can’t have them.” She crossed her arms. Everything about him spoke of privilege and wealth. He probably got his way in every bookstore he wandered into, especially with that laugh. Her bookstore was operating in the red but she’d rather die than let a book meet its end that way.

  “But you run a bookstore. Are you telling me that you won’t sell me any books?” His voice had dropped an octave and he spoke very deliberately.

  “That’s what I’m saying. They tell me you can find anything you need on the Internet so―”

  “They tell you that, do they?” His lips turned up, but there was steel in his smile.

  Alice ignored him. “I’m only prolonging the process a tiny bit but,” she tossed her hair back and straightened her shoulders, “I’ll be darned if I’m going to hand over a rare book to a… a book murderer.”

  “I said I wasn’t--” He rubbed a hand over his face. He was really nice looking, in an offbeat sort of way. If life were like the movies, he’d always be cast as the not-too-handsome supporting actor, the kind that viewers naturally trusted and admired. But she knew better.

  “People like you are the reason the world has given up reading,” Alice said. “Everyone is stuck on their phones and their computers, never bothering to pick up a book unless they want to make some horrible art out of it, which they can post on Facebook for all their friends. But these,” she touched the leather bound volumes, her voice rising, “are my friends. I only want them to go home with people who will treasure them.”

  His eyes narrowed. “That’s a lot of persnickety proprietary nonsense. And that’s also why you’re not making any money.”

  She sucked in air. “Who said I wasn’t making any money?”

  “I did.” He gestured to the center of the store. “No trinkets, no greeting cards. No board games or junior chemistry sets. No coffee mugs with inspiring quotations or T-shirts with Colin’s Firth’s face.”

  “I don’t run a Hallmark store. I sell―”

  “I know.” He stepped closer. They were just inches apart now. “You sell books. There’s no real money in books, you know. Especially if you work yourself into damp spot on the floor trying not to sell them, even to people who come in and ask for them ever so politely.”

  She blinked up, struggling to ignore that part of biology that convinces a woman that a handsome man means well, even when his words don’t add up.

  “Are you a book smuggler? Do you sell them on the black market? Just tell me what you’re doing and let me decide whether to give you the books,” she said.

  “The black market? You mean eBay?” He seemed honestly confused by her question.

  “Just tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “It couldn’t be worse than what I’m thinking. Anything that doesn’t physically harm a book should be okay.” She wasn’t sure if what she was saying was exactly true. She preferred that books be read, of course. She’d sold a beautiful set of Thomas Hardy to a realtor from Atlanta, who then moved it from house to house as scene-setting décor, never to be read. That still bothered her and every now and then, late at night, she dreamed of stealing them back.

  He shook his head, half-turning “You wouldn’t believe me. And there’s nothing I can say to convince you. I’ve met people like you before. Stuck in the past, refusing to move into the modern world. I could quote the greatest minds of the past century and you’d still believe technology was a curse.”

  Alice crossed her arms. “Give me one. And not a scientist. Give me a great mind, someone who wrote something I might actually have read.”

  “Alexander Pope. ‘Be not the first by whom the new are tried, not yet the last to lay the old aside’.” He gave her a look of triumph.

  It was strange to hear that name just hours after seeing it in an email. Alice shrugged. “That’s hardly a ringing endorsement. Sounds cautionary to me.”

  “I’ve met dozens of bookstore owners like you. I know how you think. Even if I did explain what I was doing, you wouldn’t approve because these books should be treated like the rarest treasures. Nothing else matters and you’ll do anything to inhibit progress.”

  Alice let that sink in. She wasn’t sure what was offensive about his statement. She’d had her share of being overlooked, especially by handsome men. Maybe it was because it made her sound so common, so bland. Resisting the urge to order him from the store, she said, “I can’t imagine that you know how I think. We’re nothing alike. You’re obviously some type of mid-level manager who wants a few pretty editions on your office shelf to impress the visitors.” She paused. “Except you smell like you’ve been rolling in old books.”

  He stood motionless for a moment, a look of disbelief on his face. “Mid-level manager? Is that your best insult?”

  “It’s just a guess. But although you say you know everything about me, all you did was point out the fact my store doesn’t sell trinkets. So, tell me what I am, if you’ve met dozens of me.”

  He blinked, as if not sure what to say. Then he shrugged. “Okay, I’ll tell you.” He turned and walked back down the aisle, headed for her desk. “You have a laptop, but I bet you only use it at work. You probably live close by in a little apartment that’s stuck in the last century. You don’t own a television. You might have a cell phone but you don’t use it.”

  He ignored her little sound of objection and walked to her desk, standing over her workspace. He pointed to her fountain pen, her mint green rotary phone, and Van Winkle. “You still write letters, and only email when you have to. You think people who play computer games are wasting their lives and losing brain cells. You probably believe the world is going to hell in a hand basket because of technology. If you could jump back in time a hundred years, you would be perfectly at home in a world without any technology at all.”

  He was perfectly controlled, but Alice could see the anger flashing in his eyes. “You think it was mor
e civilized, more humane, more genteel back then, and that people like you are the only reason the earth is still turning. You’re proud you didn’t drink the Kool-Aid like the rest of the deluded population. You’re on a mission to turn back the clock. Only difference between you and the last ten booksellers I’ve met is that you’re young and beautiful, but give it another forty years and a few more cats and ―”

  “Just hold on,” Alice interrupted. A little bit of her was replaying the ‘young and beautiful’ part, but the rest of her didn’t care what he thought would happen after another forty years. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I can’t believe you march into a bookstore, insult the owner, and still expect to walk away with rare books.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a moment as if he were counting in his head. Alice hoped she was giving him a headache. She’d never been so put off by a customer in her life. Her brothers had been urging her to carry mace in case someone broke in and attacked her. If only she’d listened. Nothing would have been more satisfying than to wave the little canister in his face and ask him to repeat that part about the cats.

  “They don’t have to be rare. Just old.” His voice was calm. He looked up and Alice knew he was waiting for her to ask him to explain again. She pressed her lips together. She hated riddles but she didn’t want to be the one to give in. There were at a standoff.

  There was a rustle from the stacks of paperbacks and Mrs. Gaskell walked between them, tail high, ears twitching.

  “Oh, and I bet your cat is named Darcy,” he said. “Book owners always name their pets after characters.”

  All the arguments she had been forming fled her brain and she felt her face go hot. “It’s a she, actually.” Darcy was perched not four feet above this man’s head but she wasn’t going to tell him that. But the cat had heard his name and for the first time in his life, decided to respond to it. He let out a low meow and jumped to the carpet between them.