The Bookstore (16 page)

Stella is dressed in ripped black tights and high boots and denim shorts. She looks down at her outfit. “Don’t say anything. I’m taking photographs at Sappho’s,” she says. “I have to integrate.”

“You look great,” I say. The woman’s eyes widen.

I am summoned to the desk to fill out the insurance forms.
I ponder what kind of mess I will be in if my insurance doesn’t cover it. According to the stunningly unfriendly girl at the desk, it will be a thirty-thousand-dollars kind of mess, unless I have a caesarean, “and then it will be expensive.” Thirty thousand just to have a baby? Why? They are conceived, they grow, out they pop. People have them in cabs, on sofas, in fields. Where does the thirty thousand dollars come in?

“How was the lecture, honey?” Stella asks when I sit down again.

“Oh, it was great. I really like Diebenkorn, and he fits in with Thiebaud. I was thinking that if I found a third person that fitted in too, I could write the kind of thesis that you can turn into a popular book. Which wouldn’t hurt with the whole career thing. If I could make money writing, I could be with the baby more.”

Stella nods. “And you know, I’ll still be around. I will help as
much
as I can.”

There is a change in the way the couple are sitting, or in the atmosphere of the room. Disapproval hangs in the air. The woman purses up her mouth and glances at her partner, who does not see, but carries on reading his magazine. Stella, unfortunately, does see. She instantly covers my hand with hers.

“I just want you to know that what
you
are doing for
us
is
so
amazing,” she says to me, and flashes a big smile at the couple. “She’s made me
so
happy,” she says to them. The woman starts to smile back automatically, but it dies on her lips. The man just stares.

“Are you here to see Dr. Sokolowski?” asks Stella.

“No. Dr. DeSales,” answers the woman with a shade of relief, as if she could be contaminated by having the same doctor, and might wake up lesbian in the morning.

“Where are you guys from?” Stella says. “New York?”

She knows they aren’t. Even I can tell that, and I’ve only been here since August. The woman has a little frizzed fringe and is wearing too many colors, a high stripy polo-neck and a down vest. And she’s fat. And she’s wearing trainers. Nor does she have any of
the weapons that every New Yorker inevitably acquires for their defensive armory: the middle-distance stare, the iPod, the newspaper, the “don’t talk to me” radiation field.

“No,” says the man, and flexes his magazine to show that he doesn’t want to talk.

“No, Esme isn’t, either, are you, baby?” says Stella, leering fondly at me. “She’s from Englandshire.”

“Esme Garland,” says the receptionist. Thank God. I get up and whisper in Stella’s ear, “Stay here, you lunatic. I want to go in by myself.”

I was expecting Dr. Sokolowski to be a woman. He isn’t. He is a melancholy old man, and he is sitting behind a huge oak desk. He looks up, smiles bleakly, and says, “Miss Garland. I am Bartosz Sokolowski.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I say.

“So you got yourself in a little trouble?”

That makes me laugh. “Do you say that to all your pregnant patients?”

“No, no. I take sometimes a chance, and I see”—he taps his notes—“that you are European.” He waves all that aside, indicates that I should sit down, runs through the obligatory questions. He sighs.

“Please get undressed behind the curtain. Put on the robe that you see there. It opens up the front.”

I nod.

“Since I don’t see you before, I will give you a whole examination,” he says.

“Okay,” I say. I don’t expect him to be enthusiastic about this prospect, but he seems to be feeling lackluster about the whole encounter.

I come out in the green front-fastening gown. I am to lie down on the examining couch. He gets two paper towels and lays them assiduously in the stirrups.

“The metal is cold,” he explains.

He checks my breasts and my tummy, and then does an internal
exam, first with his fingers, then with the cold prongy thing that I have never seen but I imagine to look like an Alessi lemon squeezer. Then he washes his hands and goes over to the window. He sighs again. I am lying there practically naked, the gown open.

“Ah, Miss Garland from England,” he says, looking out over the rooftops of the Upper West Side. The sky is azure blue, and the next rooftop that I can see has pots full of orange lantern flowers on it, and a table and chairs. It appears to afford him no pleasure.

“Is everything all right?” I ask. I am worried that he has found something awful.

“Of course,” he says, and relapses into silence. Then he says, “You are young. You have everything ahead of you. When you have lived so long as I have, seen so much as I have seen, the savor goes out of your life. Perhaps it is best, so we do not cling on. You have chlamydia, but treatment is simple.”

“I have chlamydia?” I say.

“Yes, but many people who are very sexually active have this. We can treat immediately with antibiotics.”

He is still looking out of the window, and I still have my legs up in the air. My sadness flares up like a match lit in the dark. Very sexually active. I am one of many.

He turns back into the room, walks back over to me.

“And also you are a witch. You know this?”

I look up into his face. He looks back with wide-open blue eyes. “I am a witch?”

“Certainly.” He indicates two moles on my torso. “Secondary nipples—they are to feed a familiar. The witch’s mark.”

I tug my gown edges together. This is so different from the National Health Service.

“It isn’t to worry about, Miss Garland. It is special, but not to worry about. You can get dressed now.”

When I come out dressed from behind the screen, he indicates a microscope on the desk. It is facing towards me.

“Look, please.”

I look. There are hundreds of horrible cell things on the slide.
They look like bacteria, but I have no idea. They might be anything.

“This is what is in your vagina. It is chlamydia.”

Etiquette books are a little hazy on the proper response to this sort of remark. I say, “How interesting.”

“This example, it is not from your vagina, but if we sent a sample off to a lab, we would see something very similar.”

“So I am looking at chlamydia from someone
else’s
vagina?”

He clicks the light on the microscope off.

I say, “Can you tell how long I have had it?”

“No, impossible. It can be dormant for many years, or it can be a fresh infection. It is bacteria.” He hands me a prescription. “It is important to take this. You do not want still to have this when the baby comes. It is possible that it causes blindness in the baby.”

I must have a very readable face. His expression softens. “Do not worry. It is easy to be treated. We will treat it. Your baby will be all right.”

“Right. Thank you.”

“At this stage of your pregnancy, I would normally see you each four or five weeks, but make an appointment for three, because of the chlamydia. You will also have a dating scan very soon, yes? The twelve-week scan, I mean. Good luck, Miss Garland. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

Stella is not there when I get out. She has left a note with the receptionist. It says, “Lesbian bondage waits for no woman.”

I wish I were a witch. I would cast pentagrams against hurt.

AT FIVE, I
get a call from George, asking if I can possibly fill in for an hour, as he is on a book call and Bruce has an appointment downtown. I say I can, and when would he like me.

“Now,” he says. “I’ve got Barney sitting there looking after the store. Take a cab and pay for it out of the register.”

Barney is a regular customer.

“Okay,” I say, “but Barney can manage.”

“Barney’s a lawyer,” says George. “If he opens the cash register he’ll bill me for five hundred dollars. But he’s agreed to sit there until you arrive.”

When I get there, Barney says, “Darling, I am so glad to see you. Once or twice in the last few minutes, I’ve been dangerously near to a sale. But I can stay for a while—my friend Philippe is picking me up from here.” He tilts his chin up, appraising me.

He often comes in late in the evening, and talks to George or Luke. He rarely takes much notice of me, but today he is short of options.

“You should wear Ralph Lauren. You would really suit Ralph Lauren.”

“Thank you. But Ralph Lauren is beyond my price range.”

“George said you were on some fancy scholarship at Columbia. But even if money is an issue—is there a man in this scenario?” He nods at my stomach.

“No,” I say. “No man.”

“So, my darling, the Ralph Lauren would be an
investment
. It’s going to be very tough to find a man now that Junior’s coming along. You need to bait your hook.”

“I’m going to straighten up the aisles. They’re looking really untidy.”

Barney doesn’t seem to be influenced by the fact that I have gone. He carries on talking to me, just in a louder tone, calling out, “Oh, wait a second, does he even
do
maternity? I’ll google it.”

I pick up the books that have slid into the aisles from their precarious piles.

“No maternity wear from Ralph,” he sings out. “Not that I can see, anyway. But . . . no man? You didn’t play that so well.”

I come back to the front. He is leafing through a big coffee table book. “Barney,” I say quietly. “There are customers. I am sure they don’t want to know all about my private life.”

Barney lays his head to one side, considering me. In a more normal tone, he says, “Does he even know? That he’s going to be a father? Do you know who it was? Was it a one-night stand?”

He has that New York conviction that if you want to know something, you just ask it. The other party is free to answer or not. Unless your upbringing gives you no choice.

“Yes, of course I know who it was. And he does know. Please can we not talk about this?”

His eyes open wide. “And he wants
nothing
to do with it?”

“I don’t think he does. He . . . shall we just say he’s not involved, now?”

“Is he married?”

“No, no.”

“Then what’s his problem? How old is he? What does he do? What is his background?”

“Barney . . .”

“Come on, tell me. Maybe we can figure him out.”

“I don’t know . . . there’s nothing . . .”

“Did he ask you to have an abortion?”

I hesitate, and so of course he says, “He
did
! And you wouldn’t! Does George know this?”

“No, why . . . Barney, nobody needs to know this stuff.”

“It’s all over, with this guy?”

I say it is completely and absolutely over. Barney is looking closely at me. I can see why he makes a good lawyer.

“And you’re devastated. That it’s all over.”

I am not going to say,
Why yes, Barney, that’s absolutely true
. I say instead, “I’m all right, as a matter of fact.”

He begins to browse through his book again. “Sweetheart, let me give you a word of advice. Get the guy’s name on the birth certificate. You don’t know what’s ahead; nobody does. Do yourself a favor and write his name in great big letters in indelible ink, right in the column marked ‘father.’ ”

“What kind of lawyer are you, Barney?”

“Corporate,” he says.

A woman comes to the front of the shop to buy a couple of paperbacks. She nods. “He’s right, sugar.”

I take the money for the books.

“I am totally right,” says Barney. He stares down at the book on his knee. “Oh, my, where is
that
?” he says. “The Church of the Ascension in Priego de Córdoba. Esme, look at this—you’re into art, right, and architecture? Look at this place.”

The woman smiles at me and leaves just as a very thin and handsome man comes in.

“Wouldn’t that be just like being in a wedding cake? I’ve got to see that for real. Oh, Philippe, hello, hello. Look at this! It’s in Spain, in Andalusia. I was just telling Esme that I have to see it.”

Philippe expresses suitable admiration. Barney makes a note of the name of the place and shuts the book with a clap. He catches sight of a man ambling by in a blue T-shirt, with a huge belly.

“Oh
dear
. Look, Esme, that guy passing now—he’s completely given up on women. You can tell by the way he dresses. Get my point about Ralph Lauren? I guarantee that guy is sitting there each night, watching
America’s Next Top Model
and getting the pages of
Truck and Track
very sticky. Philippe, shall we go to Cafe Lalo? I am dying to try their new peanut butter mousse cake.”

I am still alone in the shop when a customer comes in wearing pale green trousers with elastic cuffs at the bottom. He asks for George and for Luke, thus establishing his credentials as a regular. I remember the mention of green trousers from my first day, but I can’t quite recall his particular peculiarity. He has ginger hair, parted to one side, and it curls a little over his ears. He looks anxious, and rocks slightly on his heels and wets his lips with his tongue before he speaks again. It is to ask if I have read
Lolita
. Now I remember.