by Amy Meyerson
“I don’t want to fight, either,” I whispered, holding her tighter. That didn’t change the fact that we were fighting. Not in screaming matches, in you’re a terrible mother or you’re an ungrateful daughter. We were fighting in everything we weren’t saying, in the intensity of our embrace, in the fact that, eventually, we’d have to loosen our grip. We’d have to let each other go.
CHAPTER TEN
The smell of coffee lured me downstairs where Charlie was slicing tomatoes and washing lettuce for the day. He hummed along to a Bob Dylan song as he rinsed out a plastic bin for the onions.
“I love this song,” he said. “Whenever it comes on, it makes the onions sweeter.”
Charlie sang as he filled the display case with muffins. The scene reminded me of Mom, how her song commenced with the opening of the cookbook and continued until the meal was plated. If I asked her what she was humming, she’d quiet, surprised that the sound existed outside her head. I’d stopped pointing out the melodies of her meals. It was the only time I got to hear her sing.
Charlie broke down an empty box from the bakery that delivered pastries each morning. He handed me a muffin. “It’s fig with goat cheese. Sounded nasty to me at first, but they’re awesome.”
I pinched off a bite of the sugared top and popped it in my mouth. It was indeed awesome. Charlie threw the pastry box into the trash and wiped his hands across the front of his fitted jeans.
“They were Billy’s favorite. ‘Only two things I need in life,’ Billy used to say. ‘A good book and one of Tiffany’s fig muffins.’” Charlie wiped down the countertops and set out thermoses of coffee.
“Who’s Tiffany?” I asked.
“The baker in Atwater. Billy used to tell her she knew the way to a man’s heart.” Charlie laughed. “‘Too bad I like women,’ she’d always say.”
“Did Billy have any girlfriends?” I continued to nibble at the muffin, savoring it.
“None that I knew of. Billy was all about books. Books and earthquakes. The earthquake stuff only came out when there was a big one in the news, though.”
“And fig muffins? Books, earthquakes and fig muffins?” I said, and Charlie winked as he skirted past me to take down the chairs. “Did Billy ever talk about his wife?”
Charlie dropped a chair clumsily. “Billy was married?”
“To Evelyn Weston. She was the original owner of Prospero Books.”
“Are you sure?” When I nodded, Charlie said, “Huh, never knew that.” He seemed unperturbed by the revelation about Billy and Prospero Books.
At nine, we opened the doors for three women waiting to get first dibs on the fig muffins.
“Where’s Malcolm?” I asked. Normally, he’d staked out his domain behind the front desk by now.
“He texted. He’s having breakfast with a sales rep. Said to tell you he’d be late.” Charlie doled out a muffin to each woman.
“I can handle the front on my own,” I said defensively. I wouldn’t have expected Malcolm to have texted me—he didn’t even have my telephone number—but it still stung that I was an afterthought, extraneous to the daily running of Prospero Books.
“Never doubted it,” Charlie said.
The morning rush came and went. Charlie had an easier time managing the café when I wasn’t in his way, so I busied myself with the latest clue.
Whatever happened, I knew I would survive it. I knew, above all, that I’d go on working. Surviving meant being born over and over. It was easy, and it was always painful. But there wasn’t any other choice except death.
It was from Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong. I hadn’t heard of the novel, but it had sold over twenty million copies worldwide. We had one copy in literature, another in feminist fiction. I skimmed each one. Neither had a clue burrowed between its pages. According to the inventory system, there weren’t any additional copies stocked in the storage closet. Still, something in the novel had to lead me to the next person Billy wanted me to talk to. I occupied Malcolm’s position behind the desk and began reading.
At first, I was shocked by Isadora Wing’s frank voice. In 1973, she spoke candidly about her sexual desires in ways that, reading it forty years later, made me blush. The novel was chock-full of literary references. Isadora viewed her life through the novels she’d read, the characters she’d come to know. Since Billy hadn’t left anything in the novel, hadn’t highlighted any passages, the clue must have been somewhere in the books Isadora mentioned. Only there were too many references, too many titles, that may have harbored the next clue.
I needed a distraction, but the near-empty store wasn’t offering it. The arrangement of the history books had bothered me every time I walked by their paltry, alphabetized shelves. I pulled the books down and piled them into centuries, restocking them from our forefathers—Native American history was housed on the other side of the store, a subsection of underrepresented voices—to the present. Prohibition into the Teapot Dome Scandal into the Spirit of St. Louis and the stock market crash. Of course, it wasn’t that simple. I couldn’t decide whether to put the books on FDR together before World War II or to litter them throughout. Or perhaps the historical biographies should have gone with the other biographies. I organized them as best I could. Messy as it was, it was certainly better than storing them alphabetically.
The bell rang and it took me a moment to recognize Elijah without his pinstripe suit. He wore a T-shirt and board shorts to match his surfer hair. When he spotted me kneeling in the history section, he walked over.
“I was in the neighborhood,” he claimed. We made our way through awkward small talk about how I was settling in, how his summer was going.
“Can I get you a coffee?” I asked.
“No, I’m late to meet a friend at the observatory for a hike.” He leaned against the history shelves I’d just reorganized as he bent down to tug his sock up his calf. “You haven’t been returning my calls.”
“You called?” I aligned a few books that sat too far forward on the shelf. They definitely looked better chronologically.
“At least half a dozen times. I talked to Malcolm. There was a restaurant looking for a space around here. They found somewhere else, though.”
“Why would they think Prospero Books was available?”
“It’s a friend of a friend.”
“And you told them we wanted to sell?” I couldn’t decide who I was angrier with, Elijah for working behind my back or Malcolm for making decisions for me. “I’m still not planning to sell, not until I find someone who will keep Prospero Books Prospero Books.”
Elijah frowned. “We should really get ahead of this. We’ll get considerably less if the bank forecloses.” We, as if we were a team. As if we were aligned.
“I appreciate your effort here.” I put my hand on his back, trying to guide him to the door. He was taller than I was, firmly footed, not going anywhere. “But please, no more friends of friends. When the time comes, we’ll find a buyer who wants to keep the store going.”
“No buyer is going to want that. No sensible buyer, anyway.”
“I’ll take a nonsensible buyer.” A nostalgic buyer. A bibliophile. A philanthropist. “As long as it’s someone who’s willing to keep the store a bookstore, that’s all that matters to me. This is Billy’s legacy.”
“Miranda.” He said my name like we were playing hide-and-seek and he was trying to lure me out of my hiding spot. “I really don’t think you understand the situation here. You’re responsible if the store goes bankrupt.”
The bell on the door rang, and without turning, I knew it was Malcolm, that he was watching us, his clear eyes stunned and livid. What had he called Elijah? An illiterate hack? What was I, then, for seemingly inviting him to the store the one morning Malcolm was out? And what was Malcolm for not telling me that the illiterate hack had called?
“Elijah,” he said, and Elij
ah saluted him. Malcolm nodded coldly to me. I matched his stare. He disappeared behind the desk where he could hear our conversation while remaining safely out of view.
“This isn’t going to go away,” Elijah said as he headed to the door. “I’ll call you soon. This time, answer my call.” His sneakers squeaked on the wood floors as he left.
I walked over to the desk area where Malcolm was reviewing a digital book catalog on the computer.
“Any messages you forgot to tell me about? Maybe a few from a lawyer who just left?”
“They’re in the book,” Malcolm said, clicking the mouse.
“What book?”
Malcolm handed me a spiral notebook of pink slips. I filed through eight messages over the last ten days, where Malcolm had written my name at the top, above a message that simply said The Vulture. “You’re serious?” I flapped the book in his direction.
Malcolm laughed. “It’s an apt description.”
“Malcolm! This is funny to you?”
“A little.” Malcolm shrugged and kept typing notes to himself as he browsed the catalog.
“It won’t be funny when you have to return all those books you’re ordering because we’ve gone bankrupt.” I didn’t realize how loud my voice was until Malcolm was no longer smiling. His shoulders clenched. He was clearly rattled.
Malcolm scanned the store to see if anyone had heard me. The aisles were predictably empty at this time of morning, the writers in the café were fully absorbed in their imagined worlds and Charlie, fortunately, was busy running bagels.
“Upstairs,” he said like I was a child.
I followed him to the dark hallway outside Billy’s apartment.
“I don’t appreciate being reprimanded,” I said.
“I’m not going to fight with you in front of the customers,” he shot back.
“Why, because they don’t realize how broke we are? It’s not exactly a shocking secret that our sleepy bookstore is failing.”
“It’s not sleepy.” The hallway was too dark to discern his expression.
“How many books did you sell yesterday? Ten?”
“Seventeen actually,” he said as defiant as ever.
“That’s how many we should be selling in an hour.”
“Miranda, it’s the middle of summer.” I didn’t like the way he said my name any more than I’d liked the way Elijah did.
“No, it’s the peak of summer. Things shouldn’t slow down until the end of July.”
“You’re suddenly the expert?” he huffed.
“I’ve studied the sales reports, which is more than I can say for you.”
“They’re inaccurate. They don’t even include the used sales.” The floorboard squeaked beneath his feet as he rocked back and forth, collecting his anger.
“So now you’re going to tell me we make the bulk of our money from used books?” My frustration was on the verge of unleashing, too.
“It’s not nothing.”
I steadied my breath, trying to remain calm. “Look, Malcolm. I get it. I know I seem like a stranger coming off the street, but I spent a lot of time here as a kid. Prospero Books is special to me. I don’t want it to close, either.” My eyes had adjusted to the dim light and I could make out more of Malcolm, arms crossed against his chest, head turned away from me. Even when it was too dark to see each other, he still couldn’t face me. “We can’t keep pretending that everything is fine. Things have to change if we’re going to find someone who wants to keep Prospero open.”
“I thought you weren’t selling.” The surprise in his voice almost sounded like disappointment.
“I said I wasn’t going to close down, and I don’t want to, but I’m a schoolteacher. I have about eight hundred dollars in my checking account. I can’t keep this place afloat.” When he didn’t respond, I added, “You know I wouldn’t have taken Elijah up on his offer, right?”
“Yeah, I know.” His voice was clear, no wariness to it, and at least that was something. As least he believed I wouldn’t sell the store behind his back. Malcolm turned to look at me. I still only saw the shape of him, a blurry mass in the otherwise dark hall. As we regarded each other in the low light, I still wasn’t sure we’d be able to work together. We wanted the same thing, but we weren’t allies. We couldn’t be, so long as we kept things from each other.
* * *
“He’s completely impossible,” I said when Jay picked up. I paced the hall outside Billy’s apartment. Anger coursed through me like adrenaline, a fix that made me feel alive, and so I clung to it, even if I wasn’t sure why I was so mad.
“Who is?” Jay said, his voice heavy with sleep.
“Are you asleep?”
“Hmm. No. Just a catnap. I’m meeting the fellas later.” I hated when Jay called his friends “the fellas.” It reminded me that he was a dude, a bro, the kind of guy that played soccer and wore cargo shorts. He yawned, emitting his heavy breath into the phone. “Who’s impossible?”
“What?”
“You were complaining about someone.” He said complaining like it was something I did often.
“The manager,” I said dismissively. I suddenly didn’t feel like talking about Malcolm anymore.
“Malcolm?” I stopped pacing. Had I told Jay Malcolm’s name? I may have mentioned him once in passing, not enough that Jay should remember.
“I don’t know how Billy could stand him.”
“Why, what’d he do?”
“He...he...” What had Malcolm done? “He’s just a dick, is all.”
“You think any guy who doesn’t have a thing for you is a dick.”
“Most guys don’t have a thing for me.”
“A, that’s not true. And B, you think most guys are dicks.” Bro or not, Jay could make me laugh.
I slid down to the dusty wood floor and leaned against Billy’s apartment door.
“I miss you.” His assessment of me was wrong. I was never the girl who got noticed at a bar—that was usually Joanie—and I prided myself on trying to find something good about everyone, a necessary skill if I was going to continue to be a teacher. The moment you grew cynical about America’s future was the beginning of the end.
“We’ll see each other soon, right? Do you know when you get in?”
Into what? I almost asked, then I remembered: Fourth of July. I’d said I’d be home. I’d wanted to be home. “I haven’t gotten my ticket.”
“For next week?”
“If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been a little busy.”
Jay paused, waiting for me to apologize for being short. When I didn’t, he said, “I gotta shower before meeting the fellas. I’ll call you later.”
I stayed on the floor after we hung up. If the roles were reversed, I would have been furious that he hadn’t bought his ticket. I would have accused him of taking me for granted. Still, I couldn’t quite motivate myself to feel sorry. With everything going on, it had merely slipped my mind. Jay should have understood.
* * *
For the rest of the afternoon, Malcolm kept his distance behind the front desk, setting aside his reading when a customer solicited his help or a deliveryman needed him to sign for a box of books. At one, Lucia replaced Charlie behind the bar. I sat in the back, rereading Fear of Flying and watching the quiet habits of the store, habits that were too quiet, habits that needed to change if we had any chance of keeping Prospero Books open.
One by one, the writers left until only a couple clearly on a first date and Dr. Howard sat in the café. Malcolm told Lucia she could take off early, and she hastily wiped down the empty tables, dashing out before he could change his mind. I continued to read about Isadora Wing’s sexual exploits. What struck me more were the passages about her relationship with her mother. Isadora both adored and blamed her mother. She said she had two mothers: the one who loved her
and made her feel safe and the one who would have been an artist if not for Isadora and her sisters. Maybe all mothers were a bit like Isadora’s. My mother certainly was. She was two people, the one I’d always known and the one I never could.
“The zipless fuck?” Dr. Howard said. I quickly shut the book, covering its title with my hands. “Oh, dear, I’ve embarrassed you.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be reading it in public,” I confessed.
“Don’t be silly. That novel transformed generations of women. It encouraged them to masturbate, to claim ownership over their desire, to have zipless fucks. It’s a right of passage for the emancipated mind. You should read it so many times the spine cracks in half, bursting Isadora Wing wide open.”
Although in earshot, the first-date couple was too busy trying to decode each other to have heard Dr. Howard’s monologue. Still, I wanted to crawl under the table.
“Men have been writing about women’s desires for centuries. It’s only right that a woman should account so candidly for her own. It’s only right that you celebrate it.” Dr. Howard stood and rose his fist into the air. “‘Throughout all of history, books were written with sperm, not menstrual blood,’” he shouted as if Jong’s words were a mantra.
The couple stifled laughs, locking eyes with each other as they shared their first real moment together. Malcolm chuckled as he dusted the shelves. I tugged Dr. Howard back to his seat. Sex always embarrassed me, particularly when it was a man my father’s age talking about ejaculation and a woman’s time of month. I closed Fear of Flying, reminding myself not to read it in the presence of Dr. Howard again, lest I wanted a cheerleader for my sexual awakening. Besides, reading it again and again wasn’t getting me anywhere. There should have been a riddle or a keepsake in the book, something that led me to the next clue. I tried to ignore the growing fear that Billy may have had too much faith in me.
The couple finished their coffee and left. Dr. Howard began to organize his books into neat piles, the sign he was leaving. All of his books had been read so many times that their spines were cracked in half, and that’s when it clicked. Cracked spines. There were hundreds of used books in Prospero Books, editions that Elijah had said weren’t logged into the computer system, copies that Malcolm insisted made a sizable dent in our mounting debt. There had to be another copy of Fear of Flying, a used copy I’d overlooked.
