by Mel Sterling
"Ben, could you work Wednesday night?" Lexie asked.
Ben looked up with a wary glance from the stack of paranormal romance books he was sorting. "Why?" The long, drawn-out word revealed his reluctance immediately.
"I'm really going to need help for this first open microphone poetry thing. I…just don't know what to expect." Anxiety rose; the urge to bite her lip was overwhelming, but Lexie curbed it. There was a lot she didn't know about running a bookstore, but she was the owner now, the boss, and she had to act the part. Wringing her hands wouldn't help.
Ben wrinkled his nose. "The open mic host usually tends to everything…we don't ever have to do much except set up the chairs and staff the counter…"
"Maybe not, but since I haven't been to one of these myself, I'd rather have someone with experience to back me up."
"Aw, Lex—the poetry's just so…" Ben glanced around furtively. There were only a couple of customers in the bookstore besides the man at the table, none within hearing, but Lexie noted approvingly that Ben respected the need to be professional about all things literary. Horace had mentioned that no matter how much of a fine arts degree student he was, Ben never denigrated the store's stock of ultra-pink romance and lowbrow thrillers, or commented unfavorably on customers' choices. "Just so…"
"…bad?" she finished for him, in a whisper.
He sighed. "Yeah. I mean…they're earnest and serious about their poetry, but I don't think we'll find the next Robert Frost or Anne Sexton here in Camden."
"I'll pay you overtime."
"Done."
Lexie sighed. She wasn't sure Horace's Books could afford such budget excesses, but she didn't want to fly solo for the first store event on her watch.
Ben stepped closer and jerked his head in the direction of the man seated at "his" table. "About Jack…"
"The table stays where it is."
"He and Horace really did have an arrangement. Jack's writing a book and Horace gave him a quiet spot to work."
"Horace didn't mention Jack to me. While he was sick, we talked about a lot of things. Some of the things…well, I'm not sure he was completely coherent, the pain killers sometimes clouded his mind. But one of the things he was very clear on, more than once, was that something was wrong in the store. Books would go missing, then return just a few days later. Or sometimes not. But they didn't come through the cash register, he was sure of that."
Ben shrugged. "It's called shoplifting. Sometimes people only borrow the books. Take them, feel guilty enough to return them."
Lexie shook her head. "Horace thought it was more. He couldn't put his finger on it. He couldn't be everywhere at once."
"Maybe that's why he agreed to let Jack sit in Rare Books."
"Maybe. But I think I'll try a different tactic. Keep tabs on browsers. Let the loiterers loiter in the chairs in the event space, no more chairs in hidden cozy corners of the store. We're going to start a bag check, too. Just too many backpacks and briefcases through here—"
Ben groaned. "It's a college town, of course there are bookbags—"
"All the more reason we should keep our eyes peeled and be more rigorous about our security." She slid a glance toward Jack Tucker, who had a tablet propped against his satchel, and a small keyboard lying in front of it. "Besides, this isn't a library. It's a store. We want people to buy the books, not borrow them."
Ben's brows drew together, and Lexie sensed he was about to object. Ben himself was a student at Camden Liberal Arts College; he and Lexie had planned his work hours around his class schedule. Horace believed in giving deserving young people work experience, but he also believed in supporting their education, so work schedules were secondary to class schedules. Of course Ben felt apprehensive about accosting his peers and stashing their bags behind the counter. It was onerous for all concerned.
"I'm serious." She held up her hand. "Maybe we can relax the rules later, but for now we need to tighten up this ship if it's going to keep sailing."
The thing she hadn't told Ben was how close to closing the bookstore really was. Horace's illness had taken all his savings, plus the profit Horace had been banking to see the store through the lean winter and spring after the holiday rush was over. It hadn't done any good; Horace's age, and the advanced nature of his illness, had taken him quickly once he asked Lexie to come stay with him in Camden. Inside six weeks he was gone, and the bookstore, his evil-tempered cat and his boxy little Craftsman house were hers. She was honored for Horace to have asked her to see him through his last days, despite how wrenching it had been. But promising him to keep the bookstore open was the most spontaneous thing she had ever done.
Her former life in Chicago seemed a world away. The day after Horace's funeral, she had returned to Chicago long enough to put most of her things in storage. She had sublet her apartment to a co-worker.
But most significantly, she had resigned her corporate accounting job. She was out on the proverbial limb. Within six months she expected to know if the bookstore could become profitable again. If not…well, liquidating the business wasn't something she wanted to think about, but she was a cautious planner.
"You wouldn't close the store—" Ben's voice was a bit too loud. Out of the corner of her eye, Lexie saw Jack Tucker's head lift and turn in their direction.
"Not right this minute, no." She kept her voice down. "We're going to be tightening our belts, and if inventory shrinkage is a problem, I mean to put a stop to it."
She surveyed the store. She'd loved playing hide and seek among the shelves with Great Uncle Horace on family visits when she was small. Even though she was very young, he had taught her to respect the books and how to handle the oldest, most fragile tomes with care. Horace's bookstore was a large part of the reason Lexie was a voracious reader. At birthday and Christmas each year, a box of books came in the mail. Horace always chose the perfect books for a little girl whose tastes grew and changed as she did. Like Horace's house, the store seemed filled with a rich gloom, not murky or unfriendly, but strangely cozy in its esoteric, fustily academic way. It was an ambiance she wanted to retain and promote. Like Aladdin's cave, Horace's Books was full of treasure.
Her gaze passed over Jack Tucker, who sat with his face turned toward the storefront windows, where Melville's cat tree stood in a shaft of sun, dust motes drifting slowly past the sleeping tabby. The light illuminated Tucker's cheekbones and shadowed his jaw. As if he felt her looking at him, he turned his head and met her gaze. She blinked, surprised by the depth of emotion she saw there, a peculiar lost expression that was erased by a wry smile before he focused on his tablet screen and set his hands on the keyboard again.
CHAPTER TWO
SOME NIGHTS THE OPEN mics went smooth as glass—decent poetry, happy poets, good sales at the register during the break, nobody grinding cookies into the carpet or spilling coffee. Or so the legend went, according to Ben.
Then there were nights like tonight.
Lexie stared around at the wreckage of the evening. Everyone had gone except for Ben, Gilly, Cyril the host, and Jack Tucker.
Her brows drew down. Jack seemed to be a fixture in the bookstore. In the three days since Horace's Books had reopened, Jack had been in the store all but a few of its opening hours. At the moment, he and Cyril were folding chairs and carrying them to the back room. Jack carried half a dozen at a time, three under each arm. Cyril managed four, reciting snippets he recalled from the evening as he walked back and forth. Ben roamed the aisles, checking for stragglers and cups, cookie crumbs, empty display easels, misshelved books and left-behind items. Lexie locked the front door and returned to the checkout counter to ring down the till. Gilly stood at the refreshments table gathering the air-pump carafe and other items.
The evening got its start in a gust of wind and a swirl of leaves from the town square as the first poet arrived. The front door opened, its brass bell jangling, and she entered, dressed in autumn finery, carrying a stick as tall as Lexie, carved with runes down its po
lished length. Oak leaves cartwheeled around her feet like skittish familiars. Her scarves and dagged hem blew in the breeze even after the door had shut behind her, settling only slowly. She stood tall and imperious and declaimed, "Thus, like a phoenix, our bookstore rises from the ashes of tragedy!"
"Oh, no," Ben breathed in Lexie's ear. They were setting out napkins and paper cups. "It's Morgan le Fay."
"Who?" Lexie hissed, staring in fascinated amazement.
"I can't remember her real name, but she calls herself a sorceress who draws her power from the earth mother."
"Why's she carrying a stick?"
"That's not a stick, it's her magical staff. C'mon, Lexie, get with the program." Ben's brown face creased in a grin as he turned his back, trying not to laugh. Morgan le Fay stood in the arcs of chairs Lexie and Ben had put out for the crowd. She opened her arms wide, closed her eyes, and revolved slowly, palms up, fingers cupped.
"'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes,'" intoned a dark, honeyed voice from the stacks behind Lexie.
That voice. It made her catch her breath, at the same time the words made her laugh. She turned, smothering the laugh behind her hand, and found Jack Tucker lounging against a bookcase. She appreciated that his shoulder didn't press the books. "Shakespeare, right?"
"Or Ray Bradbury." He straightened. "Mind if I stick around? The people-watching at these open mics is epic."
"The events are, of course, open to the public, but please don't mock our customers," Lexie chided. Jack did not look repentant.
The connecting door to The Campus Cup and Saucer opened, and Gilly came through backside first with an industrial-sized thermal carafe of coffee in one hand and a platter of cookies in the other. Ben leaped to help, earning himself a pixie grin from the pink-haired barista.
"Oh, thanks, Gilly!" Lexie exclaimed.
Gilly smiled. "I have to lock up The Cup and put the espresso machine to bed, but I'll be back for the open mic." She batted her sticky, glittery lashes at Ben. "Save me a good seat? Not too close to the front. Some of the poets get a little…energetic." Her humorous and cheerfully mocking gaze slid to meet Lexie's.
Jack murmured, "She means they spit when they slam their poems."
Lexie bit her lips to stifle another appalled laugh.
"I know just the spot," Ben promised. He headed for a couple of chairs toward the edge of the seating and draped his sweater over them to indicate they were taken. Ben was probably crushing on Gilly, though Lexie had never heard him mention her name.
In the event space, Morgan le Fay was still communing with…whatever it was. Lexie couldn't look away. Her life as a corporate accountant in Chicago hadn't prepared her for the realities of life in a liberal arts college town. She'd thought of herself as broad-minded and perhaps a bit jaded, but just three days in retail had shown her the world could still surprise her, sometimes on an hourly basis. As Morgan le Fay rotated, her eyes opened slowly, and she saw Lexie staring at her.
"Here she is, our savior!" Morgan le Fay swooped down the aisle, heading for Lexie, her arms extended as though to embrace her. "Blessed be!"
Lexie heard herself making a choked sound just before Jack Tucker moved in front of her with several books in his hands, thwarting the sorceress's attempt at a hug. "I'll take these before you close the register for the event," he said.
He was only inches from her, so tall that she craned her neck to look up at him.
"Uh. What—? I mean, yes, of course." Lexie stood staring for another couple of seconds before her feet started working. She escaped to the cash register counter, with Jack sauntering up, and the sorceress left behind confused and vaguely outraged.
Jack stacked the books on the counter with a grin.
"You didn't have to do that," she said, for his ears alone. "But thank you."
"Oh, yes, I did. She was coming for you with a full head of steam. You'd have been crushed, a little girl like you. I couldn't let that happen."
"You…uh, probably don't really want these books."
Jack looked them over. Three copies of the same book about stitching canvas for tote bags and deck chair covers. She liked the smile lines his face fell into, and the humorous shrug. "You're probably right. It's a small price to pay—"
"I'll reshelve them later," she promised, setting them down behind the counter. "Meanwhile, why don't you have a cookie for your good deed?" She tilted her head toward the table where Ben and Gilly had put the refreshments. Jack's dark gaze dropped to her mouth for an instant, as if imagining a cookie there, and Lexie's heart jolted. One hard thumping beat, but it was enough to fluster her and make her inhale sharply.
Thankfully, the open mic host, Cyril, came through the door, slung about with a microphone, its stand, and tiny amplifier. She hurried to meet him, rubbing her cold palms over her skirt to warm them.
"The place looks great!" Cyril gushed. "We're all so glad to be back at Horace's Books. We held the last two open mics next door at The Cup, and it's just not the same."
The evening was longer than Lexie could have imagined. Listening to the first thirty minutes of earnest, hopelessly awful readers, she understood why Ben had been reluctant to work. Some of the poems held glimmers of imagery that caught her ear, but most sounded like the trite and awkward self-examinations she had scrawled in the margins of her own school notebooks.
Gilly attended, though she flitted through the stacks more than she sat next to Ben. She wasn't the only one, either. A few poets spent the time browsing slowly, including one jittery, gaunt young man in a tilted beret who circled past the cookie platter time and again. Studying him, Lexie wondered if he got enough to eat. Certainly he was consuming plenty of caffeine and sugar this evening. He gave her an otherworldly smile when he noticed her attention, and slunk back to his chair. It wasn't long before he was up again, his thin fingers fidgeting across the broad spines of the books in the military history section. She lost track of him from time to time, but he always seemed to return to the audience and linger on its periphery, listening to a reader with his head cocked and that same strange smile on his face.
The bathroom door and toilet banged and flushed all evening. Midway through the reading she checked supplies, tidied, and replenished paper goods. She mopped up two coffee spills and made a note to provide hot cups with lids next time. She emptied the contributions kitty jar twice, to split between the store and The Cup to defray refreshment expenses. The group took breaks at the top of each hour, and Lexie rang up books and listened to poets tell her how sorry they were to hear of Horace's passing, and how glad they were the bookstore hadn't closed.
Then she noticed the jittery poet standing at the microphone, his black beret still slouched perilously on the side of his head, and paused to listen. Cyril announced him as, simply, Q.
Q gave a low bow to Cyril, took the microphone, and closed his eyes. A moment later, his eyes flared open, and it was as if a demon had entered the room.
He began with a growl, deep and animalistic, and his free hand in a claw, rising, slowly clenching into a fist. His audience, expectant, leaned forward. Next to Ben, Gilly sat up straight, staring raptly at the thin poet.
"Frost! Frost! Death! Frost and Death! Winter! Winter! Snow and Frost and Death and Winter! Frost and Death! Sex is Death! Death is Sex! I die. I die! I will never know Spring again. My manhood is Frost and wintry Death, Death, Death, Slayer of Maidens." His voice rose to a shout, and Lexie ducked behind the shelf next to her, hiding her face in her hands and stifling laughter.
"Shame on you," Jack Tucker murmured.
She looked up with a gasp. Her cheeks burned, but she knew if she took her hands away from her mouth, her snorting laughter would be audible throughout the store.
Behind them in the event space, Q said, "Thank you." There was applause, and Lexie used the noise to cover her whooping inhalation. She felt a little better after that, but in groping for the shelves to steady herself, caught Jack's arm instead. He tensed hi
s arm the instant she touched him, providing a secure handhold. He had rolled up the cuffs of his shirt. Beneath her palm was warm skin sheathing firm muscle, and the silky-spiky contrast of body hairs. For an instant she knew an insane temptation to smooth her hand upward along his arm, feel in more detail the way bone and sinew interacted.
Then she got hold of her wits.
Eyes wet with tears of laughter, she hoped Jack couldn't read her crazy thoughts about touching him. She hardly knew him, for crying out loud. He sat in her store every day, staring out the window or staring at his tablet, or prowling the stacks without purpose or goal. She was not a college girl transfixed by the mere sight of a strong male arm and a clean-shaven profile. She was a hard-headed accountant trying to get a grip on a struggling bookstore she had no real business running.
He looked down at her, skin crinkling at the outer edges of his eyes as a smile grew on his lips. The skin was weathered, as though he had spent a long time outdoors before choosing Horace's Books as a roosting place. A small bit of information squirreled away in the mental folder marked "Jack Tucker."
"I'd…uh, better get back out there."
"Why? They're doing fine on their own." His gaze held hers, steady and warm.
"Someone might want to buy a book. I shouldn't leave the register alone."
