Book Lovers

11

BUT SHE WASN’T due until next month,” Dusty says.

“Trust me: I tried telling her that.” I pick at a bit of peeling paint on the gazebo as I watch a plump bumblebee drunkenly spiral through the flower beds. The woods are thick with the creaking-door chirp of cicadas, and the sky’s turning a bruised shade of purple, the heat thick as ever. “But Charlie’s really excited about this book, and from what I hear, he’s great at what he does.”

Dusty says, “Didn’t we submit Once to him? And he passed?”

I tuck my phone between my shoulder and ear, moving my frizzy bangs aside. “That’s right, but even then, he was adamant that he would love to see your future projects.”

A long pause. “But you’ve never worked with him. I mean, you don’t know what his editorial tastes are like.”

“Dusty, he’s in love with these pages. I mean that. And looking at his other titles . . . I think Frigid makes sense for him.”

She sighs. “I can’t really say no, can I? I mean, not without seeming difficult.”

“Look,” I say. “We’ve pushed this deadline back before, and if we have to do it again, we will. But I think, timing wise, with the Once movie coming out, your release couldn’t be positioned much better. And I’ll be there every step of the way. I’ll run interference — do whatever I have to do to make sure you’re happy with how this book turns out. That’s what matters most.”

“That’s the other thing,” she says. “With Once, there was all this time. I had your notes before we sold the book, and — this is all happening so fast, and I knew with Sharon, we could make it work, but — I feel sort of panicked.”

“If you want my notes, I’ll get you notes,” I promise. “We can fold them into Charlie’s, so you’ll have two sets of eyes on it. Whatever you need, Dusty, I’ve got you, okay?”

She lets out a breath. “Can I think about it? Just for a day or two?”

“Of course,” I say. “Take your time.”

If Charlie Lastra has to sweat, I won’t complain.

Four of my clients have decided to have simultaneous meltdowns, about everything from overzealous line edits to lackluster marketing plans. Two more clients have sent me surprise manuscripts, mere weeks after I read their last books.

I do my best to honor my promise to Libby — to be fully present with her after five every day — but that just means I hardly come up for air during the workday.

As different as we are, my sister and I are both creatures of habit, and we fall into a rhythm almost immediately.

She wakes first, showers, then reads on the deck with a steaming cup of decaf. I get up and run until I can barely breathe, take a scorching shower, and meet her at the breakfast table as she’s dishing up hash browns or ricotta pancakes or veggie-stuffed quiche.

The next fifteen minutes are devoted to a detailed description of Libby’s dreams (famously grisly, disturbing, erotic, or all three). Afterward, we FaceTime with Bea and Tala at Brendan’s mom’s house, during which Bea recounts her dreams while Tala runs around, almost knocking things over and shrieking, Look, Nono! I’m a dinosaur!

From there, I head to Goode Books, leaving Libby to call Brendan and do whatever else she wants during her treasured alone time.

Charlie and I exchange sharp-edged pleasantries and I pay him for a cup of coffee and then settle into my spot in the café, where I refuse to give him the satisfaction of glancing his way no matter how often I feel his eyes on me.

By the third morning, he has my coffee waiting by the register. “What a surprise,” he says. “Here at eight fifty-two, same as yesterday and the day before.”

I grab the coffee and ignore the dig. “Dusty’s giving me her answer tonight, by the way,” I say. “A free coffee isn’t going to change anything.”

He drops his voice, leans across the counter. “Because you’re holding out hope for a giant check?”

“No,” I say. “It can be a normal-sized check, just needs a lot of zeroes.”

“When I want something, Nora,” he says, “I don’t give up easily.”

Externally, I’m unaffected. Internally, my heart lurches against my collarbone from his closeness or his voice or maybe what he just said. My phone buzzes with an email, and I take it out, grateful for the distraction. Until I see the message from Dusty: I’m in.

I resist an urge to clear my throat and instead meet his eyes coolly. “Looks like you can forget the check. You’ll have pages by the end of the week.”

Charlie’s eyes flash with a borderline vicious excitement.

“Don’t look so victorious,” I say. “She’s asked me to be involved every step of the way. Your edits go through me.”

“Is that supposed to scare me?”

“It should. I’m scary.”

He pitches forward over the desk, biceps tightening, mouth in a sultry pout. “Not with those bangs. You’re extremely approachable.”

Most days I don’t see Libby until after work. Sometimes I even get back to the cottage before her, and she guards her alone time so jealously that every time I ask her how she spent those nine hours, she gives me an increasingly ridiculous answer (hard drugs; torrid affair with a door-to-door vacuum salesman; started the paperwork to join a cult). On Friday, though, she joins me around lunchtime with veggie sandwiches from Mug + Shot that are about eighty percent kale. With a full mouth, she says, “This sandwich tastes exceptionally unplugged.”

“I just got a bite of pure dirt,” I say.

“Lucky,” Libby says. “I’m still only getting kale.”

After we eat, I return to work and Libby turns her focus to a Mhairi McFarlane novel, gasping and laughing so regularly and loudly that, finally, Charlie’s gruff voice calls from the other room, “Could you keep that down? Every time you gasp like that, you almost give me a heart attack.”

“Well, your café chairs are giving me hemorrhoids, so I’d say we’re even,” Libby replies.

A minute later, Charlie appears and thrusts two velvet throw pillows at us. “Your majesties,” he says, scowl/pouting before returning to his post.

Libby’s eyes light up and she leans over to stage-whisper to me. “Did he just bring us butt pillows?”

“I believe he did,” I agree.

“Count von Lastra has a beating heart,” she says.

“I can hear you,” he calls.

“The undead have famously heightened senses,” I tell Libby.

Throughout the week, the rings around Libby’s eyes have faded, her color returning and cheeks plumping so quickly that it feels like those strained months were a dream.

In direct contrast, every day darkens the circles around Charlie’s eyes. I’d guess he’s having trouble sleeping too — I have yet to fall asleep in our dead-silent, pitch-black cottage before three a.m., and most nights I startle awake, heart racing and skin cold, at least once.

At precisely five, I close my laptop, Libby puts her book away, and we head out.

My concerns about Sunshine Falls disappointing her have largely come to naught. Libby’s more or less content to wander, popping into musty antique stores or pausing to watch an impressively brutal seniors’ kickboxing class in the town square.

Every so often we pass a placard proclaiming to be the site of a pivotal scene from Once. Never mind that three separate buildings claim to be the site of the apothecary, including an empty space whose windows are plastered with posters reading, RENT THE APOTHECARY FROM HIT NOVEL ONCE IN A LIFETIME! PRIMO LOCATION!

“I haven’t heard anyone say primo since the eighties,” Libby says.

“You weren’t alive in the eighties,” I point out.

“Precisely.”

Back at the cottage, she cooks a big dinner: sweet summer corn and creamy potato salad with crisp chives, a salad topped with shaved watermelon and toasted sesame, and grilled tempeh burgers on brioche buns, with thick slices of tomato and red onion, all smothered with avocado.

I chop whatever she tells me to, then watch her rechop it to her liking. It’s a strange reversal, seeing the things my baby sister has mastered that I never got around to. It makes me proud, but also sort of sad. Maybe this is how parents feel when their kids grow up, like some piece of them has become fundamentally unknowable.

“Remember when you were going to be a chef?” I ask one night while I’m chopping basil and tomato for a pizza she’s making.

She gives a noncommittal hm that could mean of course as easily as not ringing any bells.

She was always so smart, so creative. She could’ve done anything, and I know she loves being a mom, but I can also understand why she needed this so badly, the chance to be a lone person before she’s got a newborn attached to her hip again.

Like every night so far, we eat dinner out on the deck, and afterward, once I’ve washed the dishes and put everything away, we scour the trunk full of board games and play dominoes out on the deck, the strands of globe lights our only illumination.

A little after ten, Libby shuffles to bed, and I go back to the kitchen table to hunt through apartment listings online. Soon I have to face the fact of the wonky internet and give up, but I’m not even close to tired, so I stuff my feet into Libby’s Crocs and wander out into the meadow at the front of the cottage. The moonlight and stars are bright enough to turn the grass silvery, and the humidity holds the day’s heat close, the sweet, grassy smell thick in the air.

Feeling so entirely alone is unnerving, in the same way as staring at the ocean at night, or watching thunderclouds form. In New York, it’s impossible to escape the feeling of being one person among millions, as if you’re all nerve endings in one vast organism. Here, it’s easy to feel like the last person on earth.

Around one, I climb into bed and stare at the ceiling for an hour or so before I drift off.

On Saturday morning, we follow our usual schedule, but when I walk into the bookstore, I come up short.

“Hello there!” The tiny woman behind the register smiles as she stands, the scents of jasmine and weed wafting off her. “Can I help you?”

She looks like a woman who’s spent her life outside, her olive skin permanently freckled, the sleeves of her denim shirt rolled up her dainty forearms. She has coarse, dark hair that falls to her shoulders; a pretty, round face; and dark eyes that crinkle at the corners to accommodate her smile. The crease beneath her lip is the giveaway.

Sally Goode, the owner of our cottage. Charlie’s mother.

“Um,” I say, hoping my smile is natural. I hate when I have to think about what my face is doing, especially because I’m never convinced it’s translating. I wasn’t planning to stay long, just an hour or so to work through some more email before meeting Libby for lunch, but now I feel guilty using the Wi-Fi for free.

I grab the first book I see, The Great Family Marconi, one of those books fated to be hurled across a room by my sister, then picked up by me. Unlike Libby, I loved the last page so much I read it a dozen times before flipping back to the front. “Just this!”

“My son edited this one,” Sally Goode says proudly. “That’s what he does, for a living.”

“Oh.” Someone get me a public speaking trophy, I’m on fire. Only speaking to Libby and Charlie for a week has clearly diminished my capacity to slip into Professional Nora.

Sally tells me my total, and when I hand over my card, her eyes slide across it. “Thought that might be you! Not often I don’t recognize someone in here. I’m Sally — you’re staying in my cottage.”

“Oh, wow, hi!” I say, once again hoping I come across as a human, raised by other humans. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too — how’s the place working out for you? You want a bag for the book?”

I shake my head and accept the book and card back. “Gorgeous! Great.”

“It is, isn’t it?” she says. “Been in my family as long as this shop. Four generations. If we hadn’t had kids, we would’ve lived there forever. Lots of happy memories.”

“Any ghosts?” I ask her.

“Not that I’ve ever seen, but if you meet any, tell them Sally says hi. And not to scare off my guests.” She pats the counter. “You girls need anything up at the cottage? Firewood? Roasting stakes for marshmallows? I’ll send my son over with some wood, just in case.”

Oh, Lord. “That’s okay.”

“He’s got nothing to do anyway.”

Except his two full-time jobs, one of which she just mentioned.

“It’s not necessary,” I insist.

Then she insists, saying verbatim, “I insist.”

“Well,” I say, “thanks.” After a few minutes of work in the café, I thank her again and slip out into the dazzlingly sunny street to cross over to Mug + Shot.

My phone gives a short, snappy vibration. A text from an unknown number.

Why is my mother texting me about how hot you are?

This can only be one person.

Weird, I write. Think it has anything to do with the fact that I just went to the bookstore in nothing but a patent leather trench coat?

Charlie replies with a screenshot of some texts between him and his mom.

Cottage guest is very pretty, Sally writes, then, separately, No ring.

Charlie replied: Oh? Thinking about leaving Dad?

She ignored his comment and instead said, Tall. You always liked tall girls.

What are you talking about, Charlie wrote back, no question mark.

Remember your homecoming date? Lilac Walter-Hixon? She was practically a giant.

That was the eighth-grade formal, he said. It was before my growth spurt.

Well this girl’s very pretty and tall but not too tall.

I stifle a laugh.

Tall but not TOO tall, I tell Charlie, can also be added to my headstone.

He says, I’ll make a note.

I say, She told me you would bring wood over to the cottage for me.

He says, Please swear to me you didn’t make a “too late for that” joke.

No, but Principal Schroeder was in the café, and I’ve heard the gossip moves fast here, so it’s only a matter of time.

Sally’s going to be so disappointed in you, Charlie says.

Me? What about her SON, the Rake of Main Street?

The ship of her disappointment in me set sail a long time ago. I’d have to do something WAY sluttier to let her down now.

When she finds your stash of Bigfoot erotica under your race car bed, maybe the ship will circle back.

Outside Mug + Shot, I lean against the sun-warmed window, the trees lining the lane rustling in a gentle breeze that heightens the smell of espresso in the air.

Another message comes in. A page from the Bigfoot Christmas book, featuring a particularly egregious use of decking the halls, as well as a reference to a sex move called the Voracious Yeti, which doesn’t sound remotely anatomically possible.

Libby walks into my periphery. “Already done with the Wi-Fi?”

“Thoroughly unplugged,” I reply. “Have you ever heard of the Voracious Yeti?”

“That a children’s book?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll have to look it up.”

My phone vibrates with another message: I find the Voracious Yeti highly implausible.

I find myself smiling, possibly with knives. So disappointing. Really pulls the reader out of an otherwise stunning work of realism.