by Amy Meyerson
“Isn’t it sweet that I’m jealous?” And there was that cute voice again.
“It’d be sweeter if you were nice to me.” I kicked at the sidewalk.
“I looked up tickets for next week. They’re pretty expensive. I have some miles you can use.”
“Jay...” It sounded like I was about to break up with him. “There’s so much going on here. I need a few more weeks.”
“What if I came there?”
“What?” My voice had more surprise in it than it should have. The excuses swirled through my brain. It was too expensive. He would hate LA. He had camp. His mom would be disappointed if he didn’t stop by his parents’ barbecue, and we both knew how much he hated to let down his mom. There was no good reason for him not to visit me other than the simple, unfortunate truth that I didn’t want him to come. And worse, I didn’t even know why.
“It was just a thought,” he said when I didn’t respond. “I should probably go.”
“Jay,” I said before he hung up. “I really do want to see you.” I wished I hadn’t said really, as though it was something I needed to prove.
After we hung up, I leaned against Prospero’s window, watching a couple at the light on the corner. There was probably an appropriate emoji for neglectful girlfriend atones. A cat or monkey shedding a tear, an explosion of hearts that would rain across his phone, even a selfie of me making a puppy dog face.
But Jay still hadn’t asked me about Billy. He hadn’t asked me about Prospero Books, either. Why should I want him to visit when he wasn’t interested in anything going on here? Anything besides Malcolm, whom Jay accused me of fucking—almost as if he wished I were.
* * *
Time seemed to expand while I waited for Sheila. Each hour, each day, loitered like a customer that wouldn’t leave but had no intention of buying anything. Even if I didn’t have the next clue, I wasn’t about to sit around idly twiddling my thumbs as I waited for her to return. So far as I could tell, Sheila’s letter had offered me a key new detail: Billy blamed himself for Evelyn’s death. Was he driving on a dark road after one too many drinks? Had he convinced her the headache she complained about was nothing, when really it was the first sign of an aneurism?
I added what little information I’d gathered on Evelyn to my original Google search: Evelyn Weston, Los Angeles, Death, Prospero Books, 1980s. This still wasn’t enough for the internet. The Central Library downtown cataloged the LA Times and LA Weekly since their inception. If her death was a tragedy, it wasn’t lurid or unusual enough to have made the papers. I skimmed 1984 for an article on Los Angeles’s newest bookstore, Prospero Books, or an advertisement Evelyn may have taken out in the paper. The sole mention of Prospero was in an LA Weekly theater review of The Tempest at the Ahmanson Theatre. The Los Feliz Ledger wasn’t in publication until the early 2000s, so no chance of anything being written about her there.
With the library a dead end, I searched the bowels of Billy’s apartment. Evelyn wasn’t in the top shelf of Billy’s closet. She wasn’t crammed into the coffee table chest, in the silverware drawer with the disposable chopsticks. She wasn’t lingering in Prospero Books, either, not in a folder among the paperwork detailing years of decline, not in a file on the desktop.
“Looking for something?” Malcolm asked when he spotted me on the floor behind the front desk, every paper from the filing cabinet cascading around me.
“Why isn’t there any paperwork from before the early 2000s?” I held up a book order from 2002, the earliest document I could find.
“We have a limited amount of space.” Malcolm took the paper from my hands and inspected it. “Not even sure why we have this.” He balled up the book order and threw it into the trash.
“Hey!” I grabbed it out of the trash and smoothed it as best I could. “That could be important.”
“For what? Audits only go back six years.”
“It’s the store’s history,” I told him, resisting saying more.
“The store’s history?” He took the order from my hands. “What exactly does the fact that we ordered twenty copies of The Lovely Bones tell you about the bookstore?”
That, like the novel, the store was burdened with tragedy. While Susie Salmon might not be narrating from above, death still hovered over the store.
Instead, I said, “In posterity, seemingly unimportant documents reveal the most about daily life, the tastes of the times, details that official documents overlook. It’s documents like that—” I pointed to the crumpled paper he was still holding in his hand “—that tell us the most about our past.”
“You want a soapbox to go along with that lecture?”
“You want a fist to go along with that attitude?” I curled my hand in protest. Malcolm rolled his eyes and tossed the order into the trash like he was shooting a basketball.
Since our conversation about the store, something had undeniably shifted between me and Malcolm. In the mornings when I arrived downstairs, he’d fetch me a cup of coffee. He maintained his position behind the counter, but he called me over when a customer wanted to place a special order, leaning over me as I typed the request into Booklog, close enough that I could smell the cinnamon of his deodorant mixed with a faint musk of his sweat. When three galleys for books on JFK’s assassination arrived, he asked me to choose one to order in honor of the upcoming anniversary.
Before his lunches with reps, we would sit behind the desk, poring over the publisher’s catalog. Malcolm would show me how to type questions I had about specific titles, where to mark how many copies I thought we should buy. Together, we printed out the last quarterly report to see what hadn’t sold. Together, we pulled down books and paid our respects before packing them up to return to the publishers.
At the end of the day, once Lucia was gone and we flipped the sign on the door to Closed, he would hand me a glass of Scotch. I tried to enjoy the burn of that strong liquor as we plotted ways to save the store. From various bookstores’ websites, I’d learned that our competitors were constantly inventing ways to broaden their customer base. Readings. Open mics. Book clubs. Writing workshops. Loyalty rewards.
“No open mics,” Malcolm protested. “I’ll tear my ears off if I have to hear anyone’s slam poetry.”
“Too bad we don’t sell alcohol. We could make a fortune off people’s bad art,” I said.
“I’m okay with loyalty rewards,” Malcolm added, “so long as you don’t get points for Twilight.”
“You’re such a snob.”
“Thank you.” He smiled. But buy ten books, get one free and flash sales on the Russians, Roald Dahl and our bestsellers wasn’t going to be enough to keep the store afloat.
“What if we put frequent buyer cards in the coffee bar across the street?” I suggested.
“You really want to be associated with a place that has tasting notes for its coffee?”
Malcolm was better at rejecting my ideas than offering his own. He didn’t want to hold any events beyond the occasional reading and a few monthly book clubs. He refused to sell literary themed matchbooks or tote bags, anything that reduced the classics to kitsch. He wouldn’t budge on the locally roasted coffee beans that cost twice as much as nationally distributed beans, on the health insurance plan for our modest staff, not that I wanted to take dental and vision benefits away from Lucia and Charlie. While his oppositions were always on intellectual grounds, they were merely excuses. I called him elitist and pretentious, qualities he embraced, and we both sidestepped an obvious truth. Letting go of parts of the store meant letting parts of Billy go, too. So we created a giant path around Billy, circumventing the Billy that Malcolm had spent each day with, the Billy who had crafted wild adventures for me as a child, the Billy who still plotted journeys for me as an adult. He could have been our point of connection. Instead, we had another common interest, one that was easier to talk about, not so secretive. We ha
d Prospero Books.
* * *
One thing Malcolm and I could agree upon was soliciting help. That meant bringing in Lucia and Charlie. I hoped they could talk some sense into Malcolm, to make him see that changing the store wasn’t forgetting Billy but making it possible for us to continue to honor him.
The Fourth of July was the only day that summer the store closed and thus the only day everyone was free to meet. That morning, I woke to an exploding firework emoji Jay had sent. It was the first time he’d initiated contact with me all week. While he’d answered when I’d called him, which I did daily, he’d stopped talking about the picnics, the bocce ball, the beach trips we’d take that summer. I understood why he was hurt, but Jay was close with his family. He dropped everything—dinner plans with me, a movie we’d bought tickets for, a walk along the Schuylkill, everything except soccer—if his sister needed him to help her put together a dresser or if his mother wanted him to go to a brunch or gallery opening. He should have understood that this was my version of those society events, those dressers and bookshelves. When the fireworks dissolved from my phone’s screen, I threw the phone across Billy’s bed and tried to go back to bed.
No sooner had I drifted to sleep than the phone beeped again. Dad’s texts always appeared as orders, no punctuation, no caps—call me, check email, tell me about school, get better. It should have been no surprise when I opened the latest message, confronted simply with, what time tonight. While it was his age revealing itself, his ignorance to the nuances of modern forms of communication, I still read his words stripped of emotion, devoid of excitement at the prospect of seeing me.
Every year, Mom and Dad invited the Conrads, their neighbors and oldest friends, over for a barbecue before walking to the beach to watch the fireworks. I didn’t remember Mom inviting me to join them. She must have assumed since I was home, I’d spend the holiday with them. We hadn’t spoken in eleven days, not since we watched the Dodgers as Dad snored on the couch. On Sunday, I hadn’t called to tell her I wasn’t coming to their cookout. In turn, she hadn’t called to see why I hadn’t shown up.
I can’t make it tonight...plans at the store, I wrote.
Okay, he wrote back. He didn’t say they’d see me soon or ask if I was planning to come over that Sunday. Just, okay. It felt like the seeds of a breakup only worse because family is supposed to be unconditional. But Sunday barbecues and baseball games couldn’t make us what we always were to each other. Only talking could, the one thing we were unable to do. So I resigned myself to this continued state of limbo with my parents, with Jay, and decided to focus on Prospero Books and our meeting scheduled for that afternoon.
Lucia and Charlie reluctantly agreed to meet for lunch, making us promise to be done by three. In preparation for the meeting, I printed reports off Booklog, not just the end-of-day sales on our store but averages aggregated from other independent bookshops that were more successful than ours. I made spreadsheets, cataloging our operating costs and break-even point. If we sold only hardback books, we’d have to sell sixty-five each day to make ends meet. A paperback every three and a half minutes. I didn’t want to think how many cups of coffee that was.
I bought sandwiches at the cheese shop at Sunset Junction and a six-pack of IPA from Northern California that I knew Malcolm liked. Malcolm arrived before the others, planting himself behind the computer to prepare for our meeting. I opened a beer and brought it to him.
“My favorite.” He stared intently at the label. “You think there’s any chance this will work?”
“We have to try,” I said.
The bell on the front door chimed and Lucia stormed in. “I’m going to need food before I have anything nice to say.”
“The things she gets away with by claiming low blood sugar,” Charlie said, following closely behind. Lucia saw the sandwiches on the table, unwrapped one and devoured it before she even sat down. “There’s something wrong with you,” Charlie said as Lucia swallowed the final bite.
Lucia wiped her mouth. “Let’s get this over with. Charlie and I have a bonfire to get to.”
“It doesn’t start for another four hours.”
“I can think of a thousand and one things I’d rather be doing than this. No offense,” she said to me. I shrugged, pretending not to be hurt.
“I’ll make it as quick as I can,” I said, knowing that once I told her she might soon be out of a job, she wouldn’t be in such a rush to get to a fire on the beach.
“Is something going on?” Charlie asked. “You two have been awfully chummy lately.” I snuck a peek at Malcolm and saw the distinctive reddening of his cheeks. I was pretty sure I was ruby, too. “You didn’t sign us up for a reality show or something?”
“Charlie,” Malcolm said, his voice coated in disgust, “I’ve turned down literally every location scout who’s tried to shoot here. You really think I’d deign to put Prospero Books on a reality show?”
“I would hope not,” Charlie said.
“Scouts have wanted to shoot here?” I asked Malcolm.
“It’s never been right.”
“But think about how much money we could make.”
“We’d have to close shop, and it’s never worth it. Besides, I wouldn’t do that to our customers.”
“I’m sure they can find somewhere else to go for a day or two.”
“It’s not happening, Miranda.” Charlie and Lucia shifted their attention from me to Malcolm, two children caught in the middle, not sure which side to pick.
“Well, we have to do something if we don’t want the store to go belly-up,” I shouted, exasperated, and Lucia gasped. We all fell silent. “I didn’t mean to tell you like that,” I said to Lucia and Charlie. “But we’re in a bit of a situation.”
I walked Charlie and Lucia through the spreadsheets and started the speech I’d prepared, how we had a loyal customer base, which was key. Now we had to double, triple, its size. We needed to attract those who viewed Prospero Books as little more than scenery as they waited at the coffee bar for overpriced lattes. Lucia nodded eagerly. I reiterated the ideas I’d posed to Malcolm. Readings. Open mics. Book clubs. Writing workshops. Loyalty rewards. I was as persuasive as a lawyer in a movie during opening statements. We could sell ebooks. Night-lights. Organizers. If we were going to keep Prospero Books a bookstore, we needed to make each day count, until the fated date of October 1.
After I finished my speech, I gave everyone a few minutes to process the news. Charlie scratched the grout between two tiles until Lucia made him stop. Malcolm finished his beer and opened two more, handing one to Lucia. They drained their beers, and I realized a six-pack wasn’t enough.
“Could we really close?” Charlie finally asked. I didn’t have the heart to answer him. Neither apparently did Malcolm, who picked at his scabbed-over thumb.
“Well,” Lucia said like she’d suddenly been hit with an idea. “We’re not going down without a fight.”
“You make it sound like we’ve already lost,” Malcolm said.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” I admitted. I highlighted the amount of minutes we had to sell each children’s book.
“You can’t isolate one inventory stream,” Malcolm protested.
“It’s just an example.” I showed our sales compared to the average sales of similarly sized indie bookstores across the country.
“This isn’t as neat a comparison as you’re making it,” Malcolm said.
“Why are you fighting me on this?”
“Because you’re positing the store unfairly.”
“Why aren’t we selling as many books as these stores?” Lucia said. “We have a prime location, loyal customers, a great collection. What are we doing wrong?”
Charlie filed through the spreadsheets. “Billy knew about this?” He sounded like a wounded lover.
“Come on now,” Malcolm said. “This isn�
��t Billy’s fault.”
It was Billy’s fault, but it didn’t do any good pointing that out. “There’s enough money in the account to cover our expenses until the end of September. We’ve got to make some serious changes if we want to stay open through the fall,” I said.
“Does that mean you’re thinking of staying?” Charlie asked me.
“I have to be back in Philly at the end of August.” As soon as I said it, I realized I’d already decided to stay through the summer. I tried to shrug off the guilt, the conversation I’d have to have with Jay, the continued strain it would add to our relationship.
“But you don’t have to sell. If we can get the store profitable, then it can stay in the family.” Charlie’s voice quaked, and I wanted to hug him because he thought of me as part of the clan, a better option than some random outsider, even a charitable outsider who might keep Prospero a bookstore.
“I can’t run a business from across the country,” I said.
“But Malcolm can run the store. He’s been doing it for years.”
“Charlie,” Malcolm chided. “We’ll find the right buyer.”
“If we have time to be choosy, it will end up in the right hands,” I said. “I’m sorry those aren’t mine.”
For a moment no one spoke. Lucia motioned she’d be right back and reappeared a few minutes later with a case of beer, a bottle of tequila and four shot glasses. I must have made a face when she handed me a shot because she said, “We’re in this together.”
We clinked our glasses and drained our tequila.
Across Sunset, the cheese shop, coffee bar and diner all closed for the day. Lucia looked at her watch but said nothing about the hour. Together, we listed the ways people found Prospero Books: foot traffic, the occasional reading and book release party, word of mouth, Yelp. Lucia poured another round of shots. The bottle was half-empty. We listed the ways they could find Prospero Books: ads in local papers, weekly events, book clubs, writers’ workshops, magazine launches, monthly specials, a blog.
