Haunting Jasmine (8 page)

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Authors: Anjali Banerjee

Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women

BOOK: Haunting Jasmine
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“Excuse me? Hello?” I turn the corner, but nobody’s there. I return to the man.
“Are you looking for books for…
yourself
?” I say. I don’t mean to sound—or look—incredulous, but I can’t help it. The man must have just learned to read. He must be sixty years old.
His face reddens in blotches. He tosses his book on the table and hurries toward the exit. I run after him. “Sir, wait!” But he leaves in a whirlwind of shame.
“What was that all about?” Tony asks behind me. He peers out the window. “What did you say to him?”
“I asked if the picture books were for him.”
“Brava, Jasmine. Score.” Tony rolls his eyes.
“The poor man. Should I go after him?”
“Let him go. He’ll be back.”
But the man does not return. I wish I’d caught his name.
My eyes are itchy from dust, and I’m shivering. The heating system must be on the blink. I close the two open windows, which both popped open on their own, after I fiddled with them.
In the evening, I’m about to close the store, when a slim, tanned woman in a double-breasted Burberry raincoat rushes in, cheeks flushed. She’s bony and compact, no part of her wasted. “Hello, Jasmine. I’m Lucia Peleran.
Doctor
Lucia Peleran. Welcome back to Fairport. Is the town the way you remember it?”
I step back and smile. How does she know who I am? “My aunt must have told you about me.”
“We’re
delighted
to have you back.” She gazes closely at my face, so I can smell the faint odor of peppermint on her breath. “If you ever need your back adjusted, you pop right on down to Fairport Chiropractic, and I’ll get you fixed right up. You look like you might be out of alignment.”
I roll my shoulders and turn my head from side to side. “Nope, I feel just fine.”
Her penciled eyebrows pull together. “No kinks? I would think a woman in your situation might have a few knots.”
“In my situation?” My stomach tightens. What does she know?
She waves a bony hand, her fingers like the bare twigs on a leafless shrub. “We’ve all been there, honey, believe me. Just about every woman in this town.”
“Been where?” I’ve been shoved into an unwelcome spotlight.
She leans in close. “I went on a terrible date right after
my
divorce, as well. He wanted to get me into bed. And I realized that it was too soon.”
“Excuse me,” I say, clenching my hands. “I’m not interested in discussing my personal life.”
She keeps right on going. “I needed to take care of myself, go to a spa, sit in a hot tub. An adjustment is what you need—”
“I’m absolutely fine. I’ve been alone for nearly a year.” I told Auntie about my one disastrous attempt to go out on a blind date soon after the separation—a setup orchestrated by my best friend, Carol. I wore a red dress that caught in the car door. I burst into tears before we even reached the restaurant, and the poor man had to take me home. Auntie shared this personal story with strangers. I’m going to kill her.
“The pain takes a long time to go away,” Dr. Peleran is saying. “My role is to free up your vertebrae so your own body can repair any damage and return the bones to their correct positions. It’s the body’s innate intelligence.”
My innate intelligence is telling me to run away now. For all I know, the entire town of Fairport knows my intimate secrets.
I take a deep breath, unclench my hands. “May I help you find a book?”
She bustles past me, turns into the Cooking section. “I’ve only just returned from California. I’ve
got
to have a cookbook I saw there.”
“What book was it?” I can’t tell a cookbook from a travel guide, but I pretend to be the next Rachael Ray or Padma Lakshmi or whoever is the current guru of the Food Network.
Lucia touches the books, her red-nailed fingers flitting along the spines like giant lady beetles. “I can’t remember the title or the author.” A strange look passes across her face—a fleeting expression of terror.
“Can you be more specific?” I gaze at a cryptic ocean of subcategories—diet, diabetic, vegetarian, Chinese, Indian, quick meals, gourmet. Sandwiched in among the new books are collectibles—Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, True Grit. “What letter did the author’s name start with? We could look up the book on the computer.”
“Computer?” She stares at me blankly, as if all words have tumbled out of her head.
“Are we looking for a type of ethnic cooking?”
She motions with her hands. “Yes, Californian!”
California is not an ethnicity.
“What kind of Californian?”
“Wonderful recipes from the coast.”
“Okay, a coastal city—Los Angeles, San Francisco.”
“No, the East Coast.”
“The East Coast of the United States?”
“No, California.”
“The east coast of California is Nevada.” I keep my voice polite, helpful.
“The book was big, kind of square. There was food on the front—maybe a curry bowl? Maybe a bright green cover. Colorful. Maybe rice? Or noodles. The arrangement was perfect, all the food so appetizing and enticing.”
I show her various books, but she keeps shaking her head. The knot tightens in my neck. A high-pitched, quirky voice slides through the air.
It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate—you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.
The smell of baking muffins drifts in, probably carried on the wind from the bakery down the street.
Lucia goes on talking and talking. A headache creeps across my forehead. I don’t care about cookbooks. I don’t care about rice or noodles or finding exactly the book she discovered in California. Lucia Peleran and my perfect, happy sister should get together to discuss the menu for the wedding, but I can’t stand this another minute.
“Stop!” I say, interrupting her monologue.
She freezes, her mouth half open.
I pull one book off the shelf, then another, and another, and throw them all on the table until they form several tall piles. “Here are cookbooks, dozens of them, hundreds. Just choose one and be done with it!”
Lucia gapes, her mouth opening and closing in slow motion, her eyes blinking. She narrows her gaze at me. “Well,” she says, “divorce can make you crazy, too.” She snatches a book from the top of a pile, and the whole stack comes crashing down.
Chapter 11
 
“Another strikeout?” Tony says after Lucia stalks out in a huff.
“I’m not playing baseball here.” I shelve the cookbooks, one by one. I don’t know what came over me. “We need to get rid of some of the oldest books. Donate them to charity—”
“Don’t you dare.” Tony grabs
Pasta Galore
from my hands. “Your aunt would have a fit. The old books give this place its character.”
“We’ve got an overload of character here. Way too much stuff.”
Tony clutches
Pasta Galore
to his chest, as if the dog-eared paperback holds the key to his survival. “Why do you think your aunt chose you? Not to clean out her inventory!”
“I’m good with numbers. I have a strong business sense. She knows I’ll spruce up the store. We need to order in the bestsellers in cooking. We need lights. It’s like a cave in here.”
“You put this one in the wrong place.” Tony pulls a hardcover off the shelf and places it on the next shelf over. “We organize these by subject, then, within the subject, by author.”
“Whatever, Tony. Nobody’s in here looking, anyway.”
“Ruma could have left the store in my hands. I could have done just fine without you. Now you’ve driven away more than one customer.”
“I didn’t drive anyone away. Lucia didn’t know what she wanted.”
Tony points at my forehead. “It’s your job to find out.”
“I tried.”
“Ruma can see things, sense things about people—about what they want and need. She has a kind of third eye.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I make a hocus-pocus motion with my fingers. “Third eye, my ass.”
“You can’t do this job using only logic. It’s not like giving someone a quote on a retirement portfolio.”
“They want a book, you give it to them. You figure out what they want.”
“Sometimes people don’t know what they want. Patience, grace, heart. Compassion. You need those qualities for this job.”
“What you need are wider aisles and plush armchairs.”
“The armchairs are fine.” Tony tucks the pasta book under his arm. “Did you stop to wonder why Lucia flew to California? Not for pleasure, or she would have remembered the name of the cookbook. But she was preoccupied. Her mother owned a house there but could no longer manage the property. She’s got some kind of dementia. You could have asked.”
“I’m not a psychic, or a psychotherapist.”
“Nobody says you have to be.” Tony follows me into the Classics section.
“Look, I’m sorry about Lucia’s mom. That’s sad. But I’m not here to learn her deepest secrets.”
“You don’t have to. You just have to care. Books are more than commodities to sell. Books hold our culture, our past, other worlds, the antidote for sadness.”
“If that were the case, everyone would be flocking to bookstores.”
“And maybe they should.”
“I’ve done great without books… for years. I don’t have time to read anymore.”
“Maybe you should make time.”
“I’ve been busy—”
“So you’ve lost someone, too. I see it in your face. That’s all you need. Tap into your humanity. All you need is a little empathy.”
“I have empathy.” What does he see in my face? There’s nothing in my face.
He presses a tattered paperback copy of
Pride and Prejudice
into my hands. “Use your empathy at the Wednesday night reading group. Ruma always leads at the meeting.”
“But I don’t know how to lead a reading group.”
“They usually meet in the tea room.”
“But—”
“Do you want to disappoint your aunt?”
“I’m not reading this.” I put the book on the table.
He sighs. “Suit yourself. Tomorrow morning Gertrude Gertler is coming in to sign
Fuzzy-Paw Pajamas
.”
“
Fuzzy-Paw…
?”
“Gertrude’s a little eccentric.” He shows me a flat hardcover picture book painted in benign pastels. Fuzzy bears in pajamas.
“What do you mean, ‘eccentric’?”
“Oh, you know.” He leads me into the parlor. “Just make sure the place is neat, and she can sit there, at that table. Blue Sharpie pen. Pink Post-it Notes.”
“Pink Post-it Notes?”
“Write the name of each person who wants a book signed, on the Post-it Note, and hand it to Gertrude so she doesn’t misspell the name.”
“Do we have pink?”
Tony glances at his watch. “We don’t have pink, and Office Onestop is closed. Blue will have to do.”
“You’ll be here tomorrow to take care of things?”
“I’ll make it as soon as I can. I have to ride the ferry, remember?”
I help him arrange the parlor for the book signing, propping a few copies of
Fuzzy-Paw Pajamas
on table displays, along with a selection of Gertrude Gertler’s other titles.
“Do we have more books?” I ask. “I count only six copies of
Fuzzy-Paw
and they’re all on display.”
“Your aunt was in a rush, so the books were ordered at the last minute, and they’re late. But they’ll be delivered by courier first thing in the morning.”
“First thing. You’re sure.”
“I’m almost a hundred percent sure.” Tony grabs his coat from the closet. On his way out the door, he pauses, his hand on the knob. “You’re staying here tonight, right?”
I’m putting on my coat, too. “Why?”
“You told your aunt you would.”
“What difference does it make?”
He hesitates, shakes his head. “You can’t leave this place alone at night.”
“Well, the poor old house will have to brave a few nights alone. It’s old enough to take care of itself.”
Tony laughs. “Do what you want.” And without further explanation, he is gone.
Chapter 12
 
When I arrive at my parents’ house, Gita has gone back to Seattle, and Ma is flitting around in a blue silk sari and a cloud of Joy perfume. She has transformed herself from American to Bengali in one change of clothes and a line of black
kajal
rimming her eyes.
“How was work?” She glances in the hall mirror, turns her head this way and that, jewelry flashing, and pats her short hair.

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