The Moment of Everything (9 page)

I felt warm blood running down my leg as I biked home, but I had a possessive need to see my mother. I could never envision my father with anyone but her. All I could think then was that my mother must be gone, that their house would be absent of her forever. No matter how separate I felt from them, I had believed in their happiness. I needed to believe that feeling absent to them was the sacrifice I made for the great love they had for each other.

I was out of breath as I abandoned my bike and let the screen door slam behind me. I stood inside the house, panting in the unlit foyer, disbelieving that my mother was really there, sitting on the third step of the stairway next to the golf bags, her fingers entwined around her knees. Her grandmother’s clock chimed 3:30.

I sat beside her on the step. I was crying. I hadn’t noticed until just then.

“Mama.”

She stood up and folded her arms, walked to the screen door, and looked up at the patch of sky beyond the front porch, away from my tears and my bloody leg.

“Smells like rain,” she said. “We probably won’t be able to go at all now.”

“Mama, I was at Daddy’s office,” I said. How could I say the words? What words were there to say about this thing I knew? “Mama, I need to tell you something—”

Her hand cracked like lightning against my face. My head knocked against the wall and shook the pictures above. Pain flooded my brain, and I saw nothing but spots and her silhouette in the light from the door.

“You have nothing to say to me,” she said.

I smelled the scent of her face powder and lipstick and the whiff of alcohol on her breath.

I jumped up, and she didn’t try to stop me as I rushed past her. I picked up my bike and rode to Dizzy’s. Miss Velda sent Dizzy for his car.

“Georgine knows,” she said in the backseat of Dizzy’s Rambler, her arm around me as Dizzy drove us to the emergency room, where I’d get my knee stitched up. “This isn’t the first time. But she can’t talk about it. If she talks about it, it makes it real. And then she’ll have to do what she can’t bring herself to do.”

The Rambler’s windows were rolled down, and I lay my face against the cold metal of the door. Dizzy woke me up when we got to the hospital.

“Your father will be home soon,” Mama said on the phone as I sipped from my blue Solo cup. “I should warm up his supper.”

My mother—above all, Mrs. Mason Duprés—dancing for her prince.

“No, no. I remember. I’m Henry.”

This came from one of a group of three older gentlemen, regulars who came in on their lunch break to stock up on Terry Pratchett or to look for that one Isaac Asimov they’d never read. His name was Mike and so was his friend’s. The third was named John. Two Mikes and a John. They called themselves the CIA Bathroom.

“You’re not Henry,” said the other Mike. He was wearing a
Maker Faire
T-shirt and a NASA security badge. He stood behind the first Mike, who was going through a shoe box of pegs for the bookshelf rail slots. “You didn’t even move here until 1974.”

They’d been at this for twenty minutes. I’d been trying to fix a broken shelf in the Self-Help section, around the corner from Sci-Fi/Fantasy, when the three of them placed their books on the floor and took over. Chivalry was not dead in Silicon Valley. It just masqueraded as engineering prowess.

“It could have happened in the seventies,” I said.

“Mike, I’ve known you thirty-four years and I’ve never seen you write with a fountain pen,” said John, shorter than his friends and with the wiry build of a late-in-life runner; he sat on the floor holding up the shelf while his two friends took their time relieving him. “Henry’s notes were written with a fountain pen.”

“I remember distinctly,” said Mike #1, rubbing his belly over the logo from a chili cook-off competition.

“No one remembers anything distinctly about the seventies,” said Mike #2.

“Okay, say you are Henry,” said John, still holding up the shelf. “Why did you start writing in a book? Why did you call yourself Henry?”

“It’s not like we had Match.com back then,” Mike #1 said.

“So you just start writing in a book…,” said Mike #2, still holding the box of pegs.

“With a fountain pen,” said John, who had by now stacked two columns of books below the broken shelf so he didn’t have to hold it up any longer.

“What is it with you and the fountain pen?” Mike #1 asked.

“…hoping that some beautiful woman would start writing you back,” said Mike #2.

“Calling yourself by some other name,” said John.

“Well, it worked,” said Mike #1.

“It worked for Henry,” said John.

“Precisely,” said Mike #1.

All week, men had been coming into the Dragonfly claiming to be Henry. They all seemed to have some sort of collective memory of this wildly romantic version of themselves—after a heartbreak, a divorce, a particularly good acid trip—when they did such things as start a correspondence in a book with a woman they’d never laid eyes on.

“Nineteen sixty-one,” said John. “The date above the first note says 1961. Did you time travel during the seventies as well?”

“Apparently, I’m not supposed to remember,” said Mike #1.

They went on and on, taking three times as long to fix the shelf as I would have on my own, while I gazed up at the Self-Help section for guidance.

It was my second full day as a Dragonfly employee, but having spent so much time here, it felt like much longer. The Dragonfly catered to a broad clientele, who occasionally showed the charming eccentricities of Dickens characters. There was Miss Miranda, as tall as she was wide, who was overjoyed when Hugo found a copy of the cookbook her husband kept throwing away in hopes of never having to eat that meatloaf recipe again. And the woman with a pug she carried in a front-facing baby carrier who liked Janet Evanovich and Ian McEwan and had taken up with Steinbeck on Hugo’s recommendation. There was the man who sat on my Kik-Step in the back corner, reading through the stacks of sheet music like they were novels. Hank, another regular, who only last Wednesday bought
How to Win at Craps
,
A Cultural History of Masturbation
, and four Agatha Christie novels. And, of course, there was Gloria, who came in twice a week with her NPR tote bag, Tuesdays for Mystery and Fridays for Romance. She always paid in loose change she kept in a plastic bag. And the CIA Bathroom, who had to constantly remind one another of what books they’d already read.

After Mike, Mike, and John finally finished with the shelf, I accompanied them to the front of the store and wrote up their purchases in the big leather binder Hugo kept at the counter.

“So Mike,” I said. “If you’re Henry, where did you ask Catherine to meet you in the last note?”

“That wasn’t on the website,” Mike #1 said.

“I know,” I said. “I didn’t post that part. For just this reason.”

Mike #2 and John turned toward him, looking smug and hopeful at the same time.

“The bar at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose,” Mike #1 said.

“Enjoy the Cherie Priest,” I said, smiling and handing him his books. “If you run into the real Henry, send him my way.”

“Working here has turned you into a cruel woman, Maggie,” Mike #1 said as his two friends pushed him toward the door.

“Just the way you like me,” I called back.

Jason came out of the stacks to drop an empty box by my foot before disappearing back into the stacks. As far as I know, he and Hugo had never exchanged a word about his indignant resignation. He had just come back into the store yesterday, grabbed a stack of books, and started up where he left off.

I looked up at Hugo, who was sitting in his chair reading another of the Waverley novels.

“Sorry about Jason,” I said.

Hugo waved me off. “He quits every couple of months or so. He spends a day in Pioneer Park reading comic books and waiting for his friends to get off work. Then he comes back here out of boredom.”

Pioneer Park.

It seemed odd that the scene of Henry and Catherine’s meeting would also be the spot for Jason’s sulking.

I took a left at Biographies, a U-turn around Twentieth-Century History, and a sharp right at Poetry to get to Romance. In my first cleanup project, I’d arranged the Romance section by genre—bodice-busters in Historical Romance, cosmos-on-the-cover titles in Chick Lit, vampire cowboys along with demon lovers in Paranormal Romance—with a special display section of eighties classics from Harold Robbins and Jackie Collins. I’d spent days finding them all over the store, behind and between diet books, astrology books, biographies, even Ellery Queen mysteries. Books to make you thin, to take away the pain in your back, to teach you spells, to make you mad or make you cry. Then I picked up an autographed 8 x 10 glossy of Johnny Depp at a garage sale and hung it beneath the Romance section sign. It wasn’t like I’d found a cure for cancer, but getting the Romance section together felt like progress. If anyone were to actually stumble into the Dragonfly, make their way through the obstacle course of boxes and books at the front of the store, and navigate the labyrinth of stacks to the far back corner, I’m sure they’d show their appreciation for all my work by buying many, many romance novels.

I’d moved a Kik-Step stool back here, anticipating moments like I had now where I could spend a little time with the book. A chapter here, a few pages there. I felt like I owed it to the novel to actually read it again after all these years. I could see why people were so critical of it. It wasn’t very lyrical, and you could tell Lawrence had an ax to grind, which always bugs me. But I could also see why so many, like Henry and Catherine, embraced it. It wasn’t just the sex, it was the stark longing that drew me in. Wanting someone, thinking of him all day, and then letting yourself be in love. I wanted that kind of longing. The dull nothing of losing Bryan was beginning to feel like torture beyond any heartache. I was bored with it.

I was in the middle of a chapter when I felt another presence. I slowly looked up to see Grendel on the shelf above Johnny Depp, looking down at me as if to say, “You mere mortal.” We stared at each other, our eyes locked in an epic battle of human encroachment in the wild animal’s habitat. I’d removed his favorite pile of books, a mountain of Sue Graftons, from a spot in Hugo’s office that got a strong patch of sun between four and five in the afternoon. And ever since he’d lurked, following me along the heights of the bookshelves, like one of Stephen King’s ghosts, waiting for his moment of revenge.

Yowling, he launched himself at me. I jumped up, trying to avoid him, but he got me on the shoulder. I screeched and dropped
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, while he bounded from my shoulder to the top of the bookshelves across from us, but not before leaving four deep scratches on my skin that started to bleed through my white T-shirt.

I felt a hand on my arm and looked up to see Rajhit standing next to me.

“Are you mortally wounded?”

“I’ll make it back to base, Captain.”

He reached around to his back pocket, and pulled out a crisp, white handkerchief. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen one. Leaving it in a quarter fold, he slid it under the collar of my T-shirt and pressed it down on my wound. I could still smell the heat of the sun in the cotton of his shirt. He leaned his head in closer to examine the scratch. Around us, I could hear the sounds of people moving through the stacks and sliding books off the shelves. An image of the store came to me, as if someone had lifted the roof off. I looked down at the maze of stacks, watching people moving to and fro, gazing at the shelves, their heads slightly tilted to read the spines. And there were Rajhit and me, in a dark corner, close and still.

“I was hoping I’d find you here,” he said. “Though maybe not bleeding.”

“Hugo should give me hazard pay.”

We both smiled and did that small puff of air thing that substitutes for a laugh when you’re trying to be quiet and unseen. We stood there, my cheek near enough to his to feel warmth from him. He blew a tender breath on my wound through my shirt. It was a small, quiet gesture, one I could have easily ignored as if it had never happened. But the quietness of it moved me.

“I wanted to talk to you about the bike,” I said.

“Is something wrong with it?”

“No, it’s great. It’s awesome actually. It’s just…”

He smiled and looked away. “You don’t like me.”

“Oh no, I like you. That’s the thing.”

“You don’t like getting gifts from people you like? You’re an odd woman.”

“You’re making this difficult.”

He smiled.

“I don’t think I’m the one making this difficult.” Without looking up at me, he whispered,
“‘I try to go on with my day, doing what is required of me, but I find myself here again and again, wondering where you are.’”

My eyes closed and everything in me seemed aware of everything in him. My hand came up and fingered the end of one of his curls. And as if that was what he was waiting for, he pressed his lips along my collarbone. The wet heat of his mouth permeated the cloth. Around me I could hear the daily business of the Dragonfly while back in my dark corner, Rajhit knelt in front of me and spread his hands over my hips while he kissed the top of my belly through Hanes cotton. His hands slid under my shirt, his fingers spreading over the small of my back, pulling me tighter against his mouth. I sank my hands into his downy curls and held on. Then I felt his fingers on the front of my jeans. He unsnapped them and peeled open the zipper. The first time I felt his lips and his tongue against my skin, it was right below my belly button.

Then he was standing, leaning against me, his arms shielding me. Someone else was here. I heard the shoes squeaking and, around his shoulder, I spotted Gloria’s porthole glasses scanning the titles as if we weren’t there, like one of those dinosaurs who could see you only if you moved. She slipped several books into her bag without giving them much of a glance and rounded the corner.

We were back as we were before, our faces side by side, our lips next to each other’s ears.

“I want to see more of you,” he said.

“I think you’ve just seen plenty of me.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I like it when you find me.”

When he kissed me, he tasted like green tea and cinnamon.

“Okay, I will find you,” he said, pulling away.

After he was gone, I dropped to the Kik-Step behind me and took a deep breath. The air still held the scent of him. There was no way something that felt this good was going to end well.

From somewhere in the store I got a whiff of Vietnamese takeout, and I remembered walking with Bryan to the little Pho Hoa around the corner and how he held my hand like it was a bag of groceries and how we spent the meal looking at our phone screens instead of each other. Whatever this was with Rajhit, it was better than that.

I stared at the shelves in front of me, the section I’d worked so hard on. Here was order, control. This was the one place in my life where things made sense. But as I looked at the perfectly ordered rows, the last names of authors jumped around the alphabet. Vampire cowboys were sharing shelf space with Mr. Darcy types and bare-chested pirates. Everything was out of order. I didn’t understand. It had been fine the day before. Dismayed, I leaned back on the shelves behind me, looking at the section as a whole, and realized that all of my hard work had been reassembled. The book spines were now organized by color.

“Jason!”

From the front of the store came a trollish laugh.

I sat in the dark, curled up in the papasan chair by the open back window, listening to the party next door. The notepad I’d been doodling on for the last hour was resting on my lap. I’d been trying to figure out how much longer I could survive on my minimal income. Hugo had lowered my rent by a couple hundred dollars, bless him. So now I had $400 after rent for food, utilities, phone, and anything else that came along. Movies were out. So were lunches for the most part. And there was only so much instant ramen a girl can stomach. I could move, find a shared house on Craigslist, but moving was expensive, too. By the time I came up with first and last month’s rent and a deposit, I’d be in the hole deeper than I was now. And I wouldn’t have Hugo next door. No, moving wasn’t an option.