The Bookstore (17 page)

“Yes,” I say.

“How old were you when you read it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Prepubescent?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Nabokov is my favorite writer. A lot of people underestimate him.”

“But not you.”

“No. I think I am one of the few people who have a true sense of his stature. I collect Nabokov—first editions, juvenilia, ephemera . . . I won one of his cardigans on eBay two weeks ago. I like to think he wore it when he was writing the sofa episode.”

He stands still, waiting for me to speak. I say, “How can you be sure it is authentic?”

“There is a certificate, and I traced the provenance very carefully. And there are photographs of him in it. Well, one photograph.”

“Ah.”

“If you ever come across anything to do with Nabokov, no matter how inconsequential it might seem to you, please e-mail me. I’ll make it worth your while.” He hands me a card with “Chester Mason” written on it, and an e-mail address. I thank him. He holds his hand out to me.

“And your name is?” he asks.

“Esme Garland.”

“Esme Garland—oh, you’re the one . . .” He drops my hand. I am glad, because it was not a pleasant experience. He is backing away from me, with the same kind of restrained revulsion you would have if you were backing away from a deadly snake or a spider.

“Is anything the matter?” I say, although I think I know. The man who is captivated by a fictional nymphet is not going to be enthusiastic when confronted with a real pregnant woman. I feel like advancing on him down the aisle, womb-first.

“No,” says Chester, his face averted. “George mentioned that you were . . .” He bumps hard into a bookshelf. “I’ll just be at the N’s . . .”

As he disappears into the nether regions of the bookshop and
his own psyche, he is overtaken with a spasm through his whole body.

George comes back a little while later, disappointed, from a book call that yielded just one bag of novels. I do not need to help; I am released to study at home.

CHAPTER TEN

I
am upstairs one day involved in the ever-absorbing task of data entry when the door opens and a tall man comes in. He is wearing sunglasses and a greatcoat that Dickens would have been happy in. Now, it is the afternoon, and Americans wear sunglasses more readily than English people, owing to the fact that there is sometimes some sunshine here. Today, though, it is very dull, and even now that he finds himself in the warm gloom of The Owl, he hasn’t taken them off. This means he’s either a jerk, or he’s famous. Either way, he’s going to be stumbling about like Mr. Magoo in a minute.

He glances at Luke, but Luke is deep inside the
New York Times
, and doesn’t look up. The man, who has the floppy kind of hair that makes me think of posh boys at Eton in the 1930s, starts to look at the grammar and dictionaries section. He appears to be staring at our nine copies of Strunk and White, next to our much neglected Liddell and Scott. He keeps his hands in his pockets.

“Can I help you?” I call from the mezzanine. To turn to speak to me, he has to make a quarter turn. Most people in the world would do this. This man spins round the other way, through 270 degrees, and points up at me.

“I hope you can,” he says. Okay.

He comes up the stairs and when he is at the top he leans on
the banister. He takes his sunglasses off and runs a careless hand through his hair. It is Lyle Moore—international star of stage and screen. Well, screen. He has just won an Oscar for
Sapphire Dark
. There are probably women who would faint right now.

“You’re Lyle Moore!” I say.

“I know,” he says. “The truth is,” he continues, now putting his head to one side to stretch his neck, and shutting his eyes, “the truth is that I am feeling stressed. I need a little quiet, a little calm. I thought I would come in here and—you know—chill a little bit?” He opens his eyes again, looks straight into mine.

“Oh, yes, well, feel free . . . ,” I say. “There’s—you know—a—a chair at the back here, if you want to sit and read quietly . . .”

He smiles, with the whitest of teeth. Then he looks down, shakes his head, smiles, and then looks back up. In real life, he favors the acting style of the guys who play adorable vampires.

“So, do you work here?”

I so evidently work here. He must have good directors. I am thinking this, but it doesn’t matter what I am saying. My heart is pounding, and I desperately want to create a good impression. I say, “Was there a particular book you were looking for?”

“Yes,” he says, and smiles again. It’s like a weapon. “I want a book that is a classic and is still a great book to read.”

I have a mischievous impulse to offer him
Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.

“I think you would like Graham Greene,” I say, as I have just glanced around the shelves in a panic and seen his name filling a thick spine. “
The Power and the Glory
is wonderful.”

“Why?”

“There’s a great scene where a priest fights a dog for a bone,” I say. He gazes at me in silence. Maybe I should say something insightful about the overarching meaning of the book, but I can’t think of anything. Anyway, a
priest
fights a
dog
for a
bone
? I’d read the book that that was in.

“Okay,” he says. “So, do you have a copy of this . . .
The Power and the Glory
?”

I go to the mezzanine railing and reach for it.

“Here,” I say. “Greene was fascinated by God and guilt and death. Or Catholicism, for short.”

“Right,” says Lyle, flirting the pages with his thumb. “You’re saying Greene’s kind of a big deal.”

“Yes, I think so.”

He traces his finger down the blurb on the inside flap, and says, “So he’s English.” I am worried that he will think I am just recommending writers from my own village pump. I try to think of some Americans. I am surrounded by them. Who, who? The one who wrote about the horses.

“A lot of people think that one of the best writers of the last hundred years was David Niven,” I announce.

“David Niven? That name sounds familiar.”

“Yes. I think he has won the Pulitzer, and he wrote
Bring on the Empty Horses
—it won lots of awards, and it got made into a movie. It is supposed to exemplify Southern Gothic.” As he looks blank again I say, “Like
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,
” and his face clears.

“Kevin Spacey,” he says.

“Yes,” I say.

I glance down because downstairs Luke has moved, suddenly, as if in response to what I am saying. He vanishes down the side aisle for a moment, and then runs lightly up to us.

“Here’s a copy of the Niven,” he says, handing it to Lyle Moore. “Good to see you.
In the Wintertime
was a good movie.”

Lyle holds the book up at him in thanks, and then says, “Right, I guess I will go and sit back there for a spell.”

He heads to the back of the mezzanine—the chair is hidden by a high bookcase full of leather-bound books and what George calls “ancient treasures.” He can chill there for as long as he likes without being disturbed.

I go downstairs to see Luke, to marvel that we have a Hollywood A-lister upstairs. George has arrived, and is sitting on the second seat, so I stand at the counter. The store is now speckled with customers.

“What shall we do with him?” I ask.

“Do with him? We haven’t captured him, Esme—he’s not a golden marmoset or anything. Unless you want to creep up on him with your phone, take pictures you can send to
People
magazine?”

“Who are we talking about?” asks George pleasantly.

“We’re talking about Lyle Moore—the actor. Esme’s got him all settled in upstairs, reading David Niven.”

George looks mystified. “David Niven? Oh, because of the acting.”

“No. Because he’s under the impression that Niven is the greatest writer of the last century. Thanks to Esme.”

I clap my hands to my face. “Oh, Lord.”

“
All the Pretty Horses,
” says Luke. “The pretty ones. Not the empty ones.”

“But you
brought
him a copy of the Niven!” I say to Luke.

George is grinning broadly. “Esme, you should go and set the poor boy straight,” he says. “You don’t want him on Jon Stewart or Jay Leno talking about David Niven in the same breath as Philip Roth and Faulkner.”

“All right,” I say, despondently. “I’m going to sound great. ‘Hi, I was so nervous because you’re famous that I got mixed up between David Niven and Cormac McCarthy. And I have a hole in my tights.”

“I think you blew your big chance,” says Luke. “Never mind that he’s dating Palermo Crianza and just broke up with Tamsin Bell.”

Lyle appears at the top of the stairs with the copy of
Bring on the Empty Horses.

As he comes down, I say, “I’m sorry, I told you the wrong book.”

“No, you didn’t,” he says. “This is perfect. I’ll take it.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
am organized now, and make every second count, so that when I do laundry I am reading Danto, and when I have to sit at the front in The Owl I read Panofsky. I have Adam Gopnik to read in bed, and aesthetics journals in the bathroom; there is hardly a moment wasted.

I also read about what to eat, drink, do, think, and listen to for the good of the baby. I read
American Baby,
because I am going to have one. There are many things to worry about, and just about every worry can be lessened by a purchase. Unless you thoughtlessly purchase something worrying. You can apparently give your baby “head cancer” by using sodium lauryl sulfate, which is in most shampoos. Alternative shampoo-makers have lovingly removed it from their recipes, but rascally ones keep it in there, because it’s cheap and foamy. The dangers of sodium lauryl sulfate are entirely fictional, as far as I can see, part of Internet-spread mythology—like all the dire warnings that my mother used to forward to me, about having my liver stolen in underground car parks in Nottingham.

There seems no end to the efforts to which pregnant women are exhorted for the sake of the fetus—play Bach, read Keats, take up aquarobics, abjure sad thoughts, and one that I respond to with
especial sourness: “Be sure to get Daddy to talk to the bump. This can be a very precious bonding experience for all three of you.” There is a picture of a woman who surely only lives in the pages of American magazines, wearing linen and cotton in Maine shades. She is smiling up towards the ceiling as she lies on her white sofa, smiling with her white teeth, as the father bends his ear to the giant bump, and smiles with his white teeth too. I cannot stop staring at the picture. She is a deliriously happy incubator, proud to be perpetuating the American dream in shades of taupe and pale blue.