The Moment of Everything (15 page)

Nimue had started showing up at the Dragonfly more and more often, “helping” Jason shelve books in the depths of the stacks. I’d glimpsed them one day over the top of a row of books in the Presidents section, the faces of all those leaders of the free world staring down on them from the spines. Her arms had encircled his neck, fingers interlaced, the way you’re instructed by other girls to kiss a boy in middle school.

And, of course, the canoodling back in the stacks also made me think of the absent Rajhit. I hadn’t heard from him in a week, since the scene at his place. I’d pictured the book there with him a thousand times since, and I tried hard to think of why he took it. It was just so weird, how he kept repeating that it wasn’t my fault.

“You’re so sweet to remember my sushi,” Nimue said, staring into the plastic tray Sasha handed her from the grocery bag. “No brown rice? They usually have the brown rice California rolls at Whole Foods.”

For the most part, Sasha’s face stayed frozen in indifference, but I saw one eyebrow arch upward with annoyance and she lifted the Safeway bag to show Nimue the logo.

“Oh, I see. It’s no problem. I don’t suppose they had low-sodium soy sauce there, did they? Regular soy sauce always makes me feel so bloated.”

This time Sasha’s face didn’t look so passive.

“There’s some in the mini fridge in Hugo’s office,” I said before she could reply.

“Oh, great. Thanks!” Nimue started to rub her wooden chopsticks together while it became apparent to me that she expected me to go fetch the soy sauce for her.

“It’s in the mini fridge,” I repeated. This time she got my meaning and pulled herself out from behind Jason and glided back into the stacks as if she were doing me a favor.

Sasha was by the counter now with money for the last
Gunslinger
novel.

“What’s the deal with Jason and her?” I whispered.

Sasha looked back over her shoulder, then leaned in toward me over the counter.

“It’s penance dating.”

Dae-Jung, under the delusion he was being stealthy, side-stepped over from the Connie Willis table. “We don’t know that.”

“Please,” Sasha said. “It’s her idea of volunteer work. She’s always with the biggest stud muffin knight she can find. But then she gets a crap rep for being a bitch after giving roadhead to that squire her knight sent to pick her up for the Twelfth Night weekend. So what does she do now? She snuggles up to Jason. You know…melt the bard with a heart of steel. He never wrote love poems until she came along. Only battle epics.”

These words she spoke, they sounded like English and yet…So many questions swirled around in my mind. Knights? Squires? Twelfth Night? Stud muffin? I started with the most perplexing of all. “Jason wrote a poem?”

“Poems. He’s got lots of them,” Dae-Jung said. “They’re really good. He’s a bard in our kingdom.”

I was still processing the plural of
poem
when the rest of what he said sank in.

“He’s a who in your what?”

“He’s a bard in the Kingdom of the Mists,” Sasha said. “It’s an SCA thing. Society for Creative Anachronism.”

“You’re telling me that not only does Jason write poetry, but he also…well, I’m not quite sure what a bard does. Are there tights involved?”

“We call them leggings,” she said with an impressive eye roll. “Bards write, perform. Sometimes they’re musicians. Sometimes they sing. Jason’s a poet. He’s really great. You should ask to read some of his stuff.”

Jason wouldn’t even let me go near his Heinlein. There was no way he was going to let me read his poetry.

“No one expects it to last,” Sasha said. “But she’ll get social cred for the effort and be inserting herself back in line for queen before the end of the summer.”

“Look! Look! It’s your people!” Dae-Jung held out
Doomsday Book
toward me, then dropped it on the counter like it was going to eat his arm.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Your people!”

“My people are from South Carolina.”

“Not family people. Book-writing people. No, not people who write books. The people who write in books.”

I snatched up the book and frantically flipped through the pages. Had Henry and Catherine written in another book? It made no sense.
Doomsday Book
didn’t come out until the nineties.

“It’s there,” Dae-Jung said, pointing to the title page. The rest of the group had gathered around me, even Nimue, who draped herself over Jason’s shoulders.

“‘To a lover unknown,’”
I read.
“‘I have been inwardly guided this day to leave this note for you in hopes that you will find me. Come be the muse for my man song and we will both sing to the Goddess for her blessing, just like Henry and Catherine. Love in all being, Ralph.’”

Everyone was silent for a moment, until Sasha asked the question that lingered in all our minds.

“What’s a ‘man song’?”

Dizzy placed his hands on his hips, stuck out his chest, and shook his shaggy red mane.

“You play your man song on your man flute. It is an ancient art only the fiercest of manly men can perform. Be forewarned, it makes gym bunnies throw their kilts over their heads in glee.”

“Sometimes I want to crack open your head and look at the pictures inside,” said Jason.

Dizzy held up his hand. “Caution, my friend. Many a soul has gone forth there only to return forever scarred.”

“This Ralph guy picked
Doomsday Book
?” Dae-Jung asked, taking the book from me. “Don’t most of the people die of plague in that book? He couldn’t have picked up
To Say Nothing of the Dog,
which at least has romance in it.”

Dizzy held up
Daughters of Darkness
from a cart by the counter. “Christ, I found another one. ‘
I know you’re out there. I know you’re looking for me. I’ll be lurking about in these stacks, waiting for you to come. I’ll be watching. Careful, I bite. —Georgie
.
’
Yeah, well, that’s all very…um…” He looked behind him into the stacks. “Okay, it’s a little scary. But sexy scary. Anyone got a pen? I’m writing him back.”

“That book’s about lesbian vampires, lamb chop,” Dae-Jung said, taking the book from Dizzy and putting it back in the cart.

“You can’t blame them for trying,” Nimue said. “I mean, to find your love in a book? How amazing is that? Books are so sexy. Bookstores are sexy. And people who work in bookstores, don’t even get me started.”

She turned and gave Jason a fashion magazine smile. Behind her, Sasha stuck her finger down her throat. But Jason looked as if Nimue had just unspooled his twine.

“Maybe there’s more,” Jason said, looking up at her, completely besotted.

Everyone turned slowly, peering into the stacks as if they were indeed the enchanted forest Jason had described to Nimue, with magical chipmunks in the shadows sputtering glitter out their tuchuses. Without a word, each of us started toward the stacks slowly, as if a sudden movement might scare the notes away.

It didn’t take me long to find one. It was in
Possession
by A. S. Byatt, basically a personal ad from a woman named Sarah who was looking for someone who would make her laugh and lie on the sofa with her and listen to
This American Life
. A note in another book was a quote from a Neruda poem. And another said that the writer would be in the Shakespeare section every Friday afternoon at two, waiting for someone, anyone, to show up.

I put the books back where I found them. I stood in the middle of the aisle. I could see the image I’d visualized that day with Rajhit in the stacks: that the roof was off the Dragonfly and that I was looking down at all the movement in the stacks. I could see Jason, Nimue, Dizzy, and everyone else inching through the stacks, sifting through books to find those tender confessions of longing. I could feel all the stories around me. Not just the stories conjured by the authors, or even the note writers, but the stories of the books themselves. Someone had bought each one of these books brand-new and fresh out of the box. There was something about the book—the cover, a random page, the summary on the book jacket—that compelled him or her to buy it. But that was only the beginning of its journey. And whatever that journey was, the Dragonfly was only a stop along the way. And now the books all around me were conveyors of hopes that we are not alone.

I knelt down, sitting back on my heels, fingers on my temples, trying to understand what I’d unleashed. But all I could think about was Rajhit. I just wanted to erase the last week and reset at that moment right before whatever changed changed. I wanted to go back and say something else, something that would keep us from that “it’s not your fault” moment. Or say something that would make it my fault, because then I could fix it. My mind grasped for something to do, something to say to him. I could leave him a note. Yes, a note. A note in a book. Not like Henry and Catherine with all the gushing and the fireworks. We would be us, starting over with our own book. But what book? I had to find the perfect one. And I wouldn’t be leaving it in the Dragonfly. I’d take it to his place and leave it at the door, tuck it inside the screen.

And then I stopped. What would the note say? “Miss you!” with a heart dotting the
i
? “Meet me in the park at noon?” “Call me?” with my sought-after digits? Thoughts of what he would think, what others would think, even what I would think. God, I sucked at this.

I got up and dusted off my momentary lack of dignity. I started to turn to go back to my eBay sales, back to where I was before all of this began, when I was myself. And then I saw them. Dizzy and Dae-Jung. They were at the end of the aisle, a good twenty feet of fiction away from me. Dae-Jung was leaning back against the row of books facing me, Dizzy next to him, turned toward him. They were looking down at a book, in that way that people do when they really want to be looking at each other.

As he pulled his Volvo into the driveway, the headlights blinded me and I raised the hand holding the glass of bourbon to block the beams. Hugo paused at the bottom step to our front porch, then sat down on the top one.

“You’ve barely been in the store this week. Anything I should know about?” I asked.

“Nothing comes to mind,” Hugo said. He nodded toward the glass in my hand. “Anything you want to tell me about?”

“Nothing comes to mind.” I drained it.

I’d left game night at the Dragonfly and walked home. The night air was heavy after a hot day, a rare warm summer evening. It seemed to be a waste not to drink my way through it.

“I am a coldhearted witch who is impenetrable to the mysteries of love,” I said.

Tears welled and rolled down my cheeks as I looked at him. I rubbed my eyes and felt Hugo’s hand on my shoulder. I leaned toward him and rested my head on his knee.

“What’s this all about?” he asked, brushing back the hair from my face. “This isn’t about romance novels.”

I shook my head.

“Have you eaten tonight?”

I held my stomach. It ached for food. But I wanted to hurt a little more.

We sat there in silence, Hugo rubbing his hand in a circle on my back like I was six and had stubbed my toe.

“When I was in my twenties,” he said, “I spent a couple of years in Paris. Okay, I followed a woman to Paris. She left, but I stayed.”

“This is going to have a happy ending, right? I need a happy ending.”

“Yes, I fell in love with another woman there.”

“Oh good.”

“Older. Married. Two children.”

“For heaven’s sake, Hugo.”

“We met in the Mélodies Graphiques, a stationery store on Rue du Pont Louis-Philippe. I could not stop thinking about her. I went to the store every day, hoping I would see her again. One day, I looked in the guest book, thinking I might find her signature from the day she was in. As I’m leafing through it, I see a message.
Meet me at La Vinchey
. I knew it was her. It was a restaurant in the Latin Quarter. But the date was two days before. I had missed her. I went to the restaurant and asked after her, but they didn’t know of the woman I meant. I was despondent. Then one day, I’m walking through a park, taking pictures, not at all close to the shop or the restaurant, when I see her. She’s sitting on a bench, reading a John le Carré novel, of all things. I sat next to her. And it began from there.”

“You were lovers?”

“For several months. She would leave messages where she could meet in the guest book of that stationery shop. I had no money. I think that’s what she liked about me. That and my Idaho manners. But one day the notes stopped. I came to the shop every day and sometimes multiple times a day. Then one day, the man who owns the shop says to me, ‘Stop asking so many questions and listen for the answers. It’s time to go home now.’”

I waited for more, the big finish. But he sat quietly.

“Not that I don’t appreciate your sharing your personal tragedy there, Hugo, but I’m wondering how that little story’s supposed to make me feel better.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is that what we’re doing?”

“There are no limits for how much you suck at this,” I said.

“This is not exactly my forte,” he said. “Usually when there’s a woman who’s unhappy in my presence, I do things that you and I don’t do.”

I pushed myself to an upright position and patted his knee, my knobby pillow, with an alcohol-heavy hand. “And why is that? Not that I’m offering an invitation. But you go all Casanova on anyone else you meet with a vagina and a heartbeat.”

His beard stretched across his face as he smiled. He reached out and tweaked my chin.

“You’re just much, much too precious.”

I felt a good cry coming. I didn’t want to cry. With as much bourbon as I had in me, it was going to hurt. I lay my head back down on his knee.

“I don’t like who I am,” I said.

I felt his hand on the back of my head. “Then I’ll have to like you enough for both of us.”

I told him about my fight with Rajhit. After I’d gotten it all out, Hugo stood and held a hand out to help me up. We went into his apartment and soon udon noodles were soaking up the bourbon in my stomach. Hugo wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, the faded moose-patterned one he’d had since his days as a Boy Scout in Idaho.

“I brought you a present,” he said.

He handed me a small hardcover. Another of the Waverly novels,
The Tale of Old Mortality
. It was part of the same set he’d been reading for weeks, an 1898 edition in fairy forest green and mischievous gold lettering.

“Open it,” he said.

Inside the front cover was written, “Betty Valentine, 514 Fifth Street, Indiana City, Iowa.” The letters were long and narrow like figures in an art deco painting and below her name and address was a class schedule and a record of her grades in each. Betty was not an exceptional student. But she was a gifted artist. The next pages showcased pencil drawings of young women with long curly hair, their bodies bent over their laced toe shoes. Each one was labeled with a title such as “Exercise A” or “I’ll Never Get This One Right.” On these pages, their sapling limbs bent backward and forward, invulnerable to gravity. And on the copyright page, she’d penciled the faces of Betty’s friends around the date 1897. Darlette, with big Betty Boop eyes and rosebud lips; Rosetta, with a curl slicked down against her forehead; Lodoak, with a pixie cut and a bow; Yamtia, with a beauty mark; and Ricardo, with a pointed chin and pointier sideburns. And on the blank page facing the preface, Betty abandoned the ladylike pirouettes and drew a chorus girl alone on a gilded stage with velvet curtains, lace trimming her open-backed costume, with one high heel lifted off the floor and an arm reaching high above to hold a feather boa and cover her face.

“Why the Waverley novels?” I asked. “I’ve been wondering.”

“I’ve been wanting to read them for a long time now,” he said. “It just seemed like the right time.”

“Thank you,” I said, holding the book close. “It’s beautiful.”

We sat in silence for a while listening to Miles Davis play “Bye Bye Blackbird” like a woman had ripped out his heart and backed up over it in a big powder blue Cadillac. And that made me think of another heartbreaker.

“Where do I know the name Nimue from anyway? It’s been bugging me.”

“Merlin,” he said, his eyes still closed, his clasped hands now cupping the back of his head. “She stole all the poor old bastard’s secrets, then trapped him in a cave until he went mad. He was so in love he didn’t care.”

“Jesus Christ on a cracker. Who the hell names their child after someone like that?”

“It’s just her SCA name. The Society for—”

“Creative Anachronism. Yeah, I heard about that. How do you know so much about this anyway?”

“It all started in Berkeley in the late sixties…”

“I’m guessing there was a woman involved.”

He sighed. “Roxanne de Bouvier was the name she gave herself. I met her in a physics class. She gave quantum entanglement a whole new meaning.”

“Please stop there, I beg of you,” I said. He chuckled and I couldn’t help but join him. When it came to women, his appreciation was endless, though I’d recently noticed a drop in the number of women who came by the store looking for him, asking about him, asking about other women looking for him. I still couldn’t imagine Hugo losing his charm. The earth would have to start spinning in the opposite direction. No more signs of Miss Portia. Even Mrs. Callahn seemed to be keeping her distance.

“This isn’t going to end well is it?” I asked. “Frederick and Nimue.”

“Nope. Train wreck. Any day now.”

“I don’t suppose there’s anything we can do to stop it.”

He yawned, stretching his arms over his head and arching his back, looking a lot like Grendel in the process. “Not a thing.”

When I got up to leave, I kissed him on the smooth top of his head and told him I’d see him at the store tomorrow. I tried to give him his moose blanket back, but he shook his head and told me to keep it. It was when I got to the door, the blanket rolled up under my arm, that the words came spilling out of me before I could stop them.

“How would you like a partner at the Dragonfly?”

The night of the SVWEABC meeting, the Dragonfly vibrated with the laughter of women. Hugo circled the front of the store offering dates wrapped in prosciutto with one hand and refilling wineglasses with the other. Waves of giggling whispers followed him as he moved from group to group. He was infinitely pleased to have so many beautiful, smart women in his store at the same time, and I think the SVWEABC was just as pleased with him. I may have provided Hugo, the atheist that he was, a vision of what heaven would look like.

I caught sight of Avi, who toasted me with her wineglass from one of the chairs we’d borrowed from the funeral home down the street. Our preparation for tonight had all the organization and planning of a kindergarten invasion of a Baskin-Robbins. There was frantic dusting and vacuuming, and, right before the meeting, a strategic placement of a ficus tree from Cuppa Joe over a curious stain in the carpet. Hugo had hauled over the side table Mama sent me the day of my first SVWEABC meeting. It looked so natural between the two chairs that I wondered why I hadn’t thought to bring it in before.

I stood on the edge of the scene and thought to myself what a marvelous thing it was to be right where I was at this exact time. Even Jason couldn’t spoil my mood, though he was trying his best, bless his heart. He appeared at my side with a tall woman whom I remembered as Karen from the last meeting. She was dressed head to toe in black except for Tahitian pearls draped around her neck and a diamond ring big enough, if it caught the light just right, to redirect airline traffic.

“Uh, your friend here is interested in a novel about Vikings,” Jason said.

“Sounds more like your area of expertise,” I said, bending my head toward him and matching his low tone.

“I suggested
The Greenlanders
,” he said.

“Been there,” Karen added.

“But she says she’s looking for more spice.”

“And less scenery,” Karen said.

“So, uh,” Jason said, shrugging his shoulders, “more your area, maybe?”

“Bare chests on the cover?” I asked Karen.

“You’re brilliant,” she said, toasting me with her martini glass, which was curious considering I didn’t remember bringing martini glasses, let alone vodka. But from the looks of her purse, she could have been carrying around a full bar in there.

“Sandra Hill,” I said to Jason and pointed toward the Romance section. He looked at me blankly. “We got in a copy of
The Reluctant Viking
just the other day. Go. You won’t get cooties, I promise.”

Karen turned to follow him, but glanced back at me over her shoulder.

“Don’t you just love men who know their books?” she said, following him with a swivel in her hips that made me a little concerned that I’d sent him back there alone with her.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow dart across the floor. When I turned to look, there was Grendel running for the stacks, with the tail of the scarf I’d seen Avi stuff into her purse earlier trailing behind him like the cape of an evil villain. Many thoughts ran through my head. I could pretend I didn’t see it. Or Avi could forget she brought it. Or maybe Grendel would rip it to shreds and then present it to her as a gift right as she was leaving. I had to go after him.

In the Fiction section, I managed to catch sight of Grendel turning the corner. When I followed, he was gone. But there was a creaky library ladder leaning against the wall-side shelves. At the top of the ladder I could see the tip of Avi’s scarf dangling from a small space between two stacks of books stuffed at the top.

Trying not to think about what peril lay ahead, I started to climb up to Grendel’s new lair. From the top came a low growl just loud enough to make me look up. Two green eyes stared down at me from the dark cave of books. This wasn’t going to be easy.

I was two rungs up when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see Rajhit walking down the aisle toward me.

“You’re not going to climb up that thing, are you?” he asked.

I hadn’t seen him in over a week, not since I’d left his apartment that day. I’d busied myself with this meeting to distract myself from thinking about him, but now I had to grip the ladder to keep my knees where they should be. He was fresh out of the shower. His damp hair was combed back, a few of the dry strands falling on the side of his head. I resisted the urge to brush them back.

“I’ve got to get up there,” I said, pointing up at Grendel’s hiding place.

“I’ll hold it for you,” he said. As I began to climb, he reached around me to hold the sides of the ladder. I could smell soap on his skin.

“I didn’t know you were having a party,” he said. “I wasn’t going to bother you, but Hugo said he didn’t think you’d mind.”

“I don’t mind,” I said, reaching for the scarf. A low guttural growl came from the cave and I jerked my hand away.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” he asked.

“Maybe I’ll just buy her a new one,” I said. “It couldn’t be any more than six months’ salary, right?”

I turned on the ladder and stepped down it, facing him, into the expanse of his arms. I tried to pretend I couldn’t feel his breath through my shirt.

“I’m sorry about the other day,” he said.

I wanted to ask him what happened, but I didn’t want the hurt to come out in my voice.

“Everything’s changed so much, so fast,” he said. “A few weeks ago, I was selling my place, then I was thinking of going to Amsterdam for a while to apprentice at an antique bike shop there. Travel. Maybe come back here and set up a shop of my own. But now I don’t think I want to do that. At least not the leaving part.”

A wave of laughter washed through the party, and I heard someone call my name. We didn’t have much time.