The Bookstore (24 page)

“What is it?” Luke asks. I realize he has said it more than once. I do not know what he means.

He says, “You’re crying?”

“Oh,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s nothing. Hormones. Let’s go.”

We turn to walk uptown again, and Luke says, “I guess it’s all a little tough for you right now.”

I think guiltily of how I have just been proposed to by the man I am besotted by, who is also the father of my baby, and who also happens to be very rich.

I say, “Oh, it’s not all that bad.”

When we get to the Met, Luke asks for one adult ticket and one student. The ticket person says, “Thirty dollars.”

He pays the money, and then turns to me to give me my little metal badge.

“Thirty bucks? Do we get to keep the picture?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I
am on an afternoon shift. I have left my ring at home as usual, in the teapot.

David has been called in as extra help, because George is out on a big book call. David is always friendly, but I get the feeling he regards me as an object lesson in what might happen to him if he is not careful with the girls he dates. His taste, judging from the ones who come into the bookshop, runs to plump and pretty—the one who comes in most, Lena, is apple-cheeked and wholesome. David usually takes her “to look at the mystery section” for a few minutes if there aren’t many customers.

Luke is shelving. Bruce is hanging around until George gets back—apparently a book call of this magnitude requires all hands. Bruce still gallantly brings me tea whenever I come in, and so I sit and dunk the tea bag in and out, vainly hoping for flavor, as David and Bruce chat.

David is saying that it is about time we asked Towelhead Man why he wears a towel on his head. Bruce shakes his head. “Luke!” David says. “You should totally ask him!”

“I’m ‘totally’ not going to,” replies Luke, ramming some unhappy cookbooks into an already bulging shelf. “If the guy
wants to walk around the city with a towel on his head, that’s his business. He’s a good customer.”

“Man, I’d love to ask him. I’ll get you a double caramel macchiato latte with extra whipped cream if you ask him.”

“Tempting,” says Luke, with no enthusiasm at all.

“Oh come on. And it’s always the same one, right?”

“He might have several in the same shade,” I say.

“The guy’s a freak. Does he take it off in the house?”

“What about the woman whose hair is sort of solid on her head?” Bruce asks. “Or Captain Jim, with his parrot?”

“Or the entire family who dress up as the Romanovs,” says David. “Freaks, man, I’m telling you.”

“Who cares?” says Luke, suddenly impatient. “Are we all so perfect? Give them a break.”

David looks abashed. Then he perks up and says, “I guess we could all come into work with green towels on our heads, make him feel at home . . .”

George pokes his head in the door.

“Can I get some help out here?” he asks. We all go outside to the cab that George is unloading—every conceivable space in it is filled with bags full of books. The driver is barely visible.

We lug all the book bags back into the shop. There is no room for any customers.

George gets us all to price the easy ones—the paperback fiction, the cookbooks, and so on—and sets about pricing the art books himself. He takes up the first one, looks through it, raises his pencil to write the price on the first page, and then he pauses.

“You know, what I’ve always done is take a look through a book, look at the paper stock, the printing, the publisher, the actual content, and, taking everything into account, I price it.”

We wait.

“And?” says David.

“And now I can’t. The fact that I can check this book”—he is holding a book of photographs by Yousuf Karsh, and he weighs it in his hand as if he can value it that way—“the fact that I
can
check
this book on the Internet means that I
have
to check this book on the Internet. This could be the Karsh that all the Karsh fanatics out there have been thirsting for—I might be pricing it hundreds below its market value. And, equally, I can’t take the chance that for this book, Abrams didn’t have some sort of mental breakdown and had a print run of fifty thousand, so we’d get five bucks for it if we were lucky. It’s a sad truth, but it is a truth nevertheless, that I can’t price it without doing my due diligence. I have become imprisoned by the freedom of the Web.”

He hands me the book.

“Or to be more precise,
you
have become imprisoned, Esme. Go up there and make a start, and I’ll bring you some more when I have sorted through them.”

“How do you know what to pay for the books, then, if you’re so uncertain about what to price them at?” I ask.

George smiles mystically.

We work hard until the books are absorbed into the tiny space, and then Bruce leaves. I have a small pile of art books that I want to keep—working here there are constant temptations. One of them is a Christie’s catalog of medieval Islamic astrolabes, another is on the sketches of Lyonel Feininger (Stella would like that), another is on Jim Dine’s flowers. It is a fantastic batch. But I am being paid so little, and the baby is going to be so expensive. I can’t buy them, even with George’s discount. I can’t let them go, either. I put them in the reserve cupboard with my name on them, as I have with my wonderful career as an art historian, where my burning and single-minded passion for art makes me a byword for incisive critique.

David is settled comfortably downstairs with George and Luke. They have put on some Bob Dylan, and he and Luke are discussing his music, with an occasional interjection from George. The shop is often like this; they just hang out and talk. George is never out of patience when people want to learn; he must have made a great teacher before E. B. White lured him here. I think I will just have a quick look at prams and pushchairs on the Internet.

Stella saw a pram on Madison Avenue the other day, in the window of a chi-chi baby shop. She says it was in dove-gray fabric and had shiny chrome hubcaps, and it was eight hundred dollars. Now, in my mind’s eye, this pram is the platonic ideal of all prams, and it is the one I want. I keep meaning to stroll down Madison so that I can look at it.

But obviously, eight hundred dollars of pram would be lunacy. I might feel obliged to have more babies to get the wear out of it. I need to be more pragmatic.

I type “best pushchair” into google. Instantly, a pop-up comes to the middle of the screen that does not seem to have much to do with pushchairs and prams. It is saying “CLICK HERE FOR LIVE PUSSY!” It is flashing. The words are red on black.

I look downstairs. They have opened a CD, unfurled the paper booklet, and are arguing about lyrics. It is the word “live” that catches me, as if “pussy” is something that produces a repellent fascination, writhing under the gaze of the camera. Perhaps it gives a clue to both the fascination and the repellence. I could use this when I am presenting my paper on the male gaze; would that silence Bradley Brinkman? I click. I look. I am immediately sorry. They deliver on their promise. All the pictures look more or less the same to me, but then I’m not a connoisseur.

My curiosity is more than sated. I click on the little X to get rid of it. It does not go.

George is of course starting his ascent up the stairs with a new pile of books for me to check. I click the cross more frantically. More things pop up. There are many improbably large breasts, and ever more explicit pages are proliferating all over my screen. George is nearly here. I try to click on more Xs; nothing happens.

“These might need looking up on a number of sites,” says George. “And for
Principia Mathematica,
you might try the auction records—”

I duck under the table, get hold of the cord, and pull it, hard. American plugs are much easier to pull out than English ones. The computer dies with a gentle electronic sigh.

George is frowning at me.

“You did that because . . . ?” he says.

“It . . . it was making a really weird noise,” I say.

“What sort of a noise?”

“A kind of ratchety beeping noise,” I say. I am scarlet.

“Were you doing something of a nefarious nature?” asks George politely.

“A bit,” I say. “I was looking at prams.”

“Prams?”

“Pushchairs.”

“Pushchairs?”

“Strollers.”

“Ah. And I came up and caught you.”

“Yes.”

“Next time, just try the confession part without the breaking-the-computer part.”

He puts down all the books.

“I have another book call next week, Esme, on West End Avenue. I thought it might be informative for you to come along, if you would like to?”

“I would,” I say. “I’d like to see how it’s done. Are we going to play good bookseller, bad bookseller?”

“Almost certainly. It’s at four next Thursday.”

I check my diary, and have no lectures or seminars. “I can come. Thank you. It’s nice of you.”

“As a matter of fact, it isn’t. I have a feeling you’ll be an advantage in my hard-nosed dealings. I take a pregnant English girl with me, I might get a break on the books. Now, do you think you can put the computer back on?”

While I am back under the table, sticking the plug back in, I hear a voice I recognize. An assured, East Coast voice. He is saying he doesn’t need help with anything, that he is happy to browse.

I freeze under the table.

George is sitting opposite me, reading the start of the first volume of
Principia Mathematica
. He hasn’t noticed Mitchell. Instead
of getting up, I peep from under the desk, down the stairs. He is standing at the counter, and Luke is standing too, almost as if he is squaring up to him. They make an interesting contrast. Mitchell looks immaculate, full of poise. Luke doesn’t.

Mitchell is looking above Luke’s head, at the sets of books that are above the CDs.

“Is that a Yale Shakespeare set?” he asks. Luke says it is, without looking. He is still standing; why doesn’t he sit?

“Is it complete?” Mitchell asks.

Luke takes the first volume down to look inside it. It clearly doesn’t help him, because he calls up to George and asks him.

George, disturbed from his studies, sees me on my knees under the table, evidently hiding. His gaze flows over me without any apparent pause. He says it is complete except for the sonnets.

“We could probably source a volume of the sonnets, sir, if you are interested in the set.” He meets my eyes before adding, “We have staff who are very adept on the Internet.”

Why am I hiding under the table? Because I haven’t got round to telling Luke and George about the proposal. The last thing they knew was that the father was “not in the picture.” And I decided not to wear my ring here either—it seems in bad taste to flaunt it in front of the homeless guys. And it feels so heavy. And I am not used to it yet.

I peep around the stairwell. Mitchell is holding his hand out for the book. “Could I take a look?” asks Mitchell. Luke hands him the little blue book. Mitchell says, “Is Esme here?”

I slide back into my seat and look over the railing. Is the tension in me or in the whole shop?

“Hello, Mitchell,” I say.

“Well, hello,” he says. They both watch me as I get up and come down the stairs. I am blushing again by the time I reach the bottom. Mitchell hands the book back to Luke without a look or a glance.

“Thanks, Luke,” I say.

Mitchell’s eyes widen at the implied rebuke. He turns and says,
“Yes—Luke. Thank you so much.”

“This is Mitchell,” I say. “And, Mitchell, this is Luke, and up there, that’s George.”

Mitchell nods up at George, and then looks around airily. “I’ve heard a lot about this place but I have never been in here before.” He has, when he brought my shoe.

“Well, now you’ve found us, we hope you’ll be a frequent visitor,” says George.

“Esme is besotted, obviously. She can’t stop talking about you all for two minutes together. I think she sees you two, in particular, in a mentoring capacity? At any rate, she quite clearly looks up to you, Luke.”

Luke responds with the slightest motion of his head. I can’t remember talking at all to Mitchell about Luke.