The Bookstore (34 page)

All three of us stare at the floppy Bible in George’s hands. Mitchell raises his eyes slowly and George does the same. Their gazes lock, and Mitchell grins.

“I’ll take that copy of Hamlet.”

George, sphinxlike, goes to get one. He comes back with it.

“Three dollars, please.”

THE WHOLE OF
New York is becoming immersed in Christmas, although Thanksgiving kept it at bay for longer than at home. It is an all-out riot of commercialism, instead of the high-bred results of it displayed in cool understatement out at the coast. The windows of the big stores on Fifth Avenue are glittering fairy tales draped with diamonds, and the Rockefeller tree is lit, and the Cartier building is wrapped in a huge red bow, and a vast crystal star sparkles over Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, and Salvation Army Santas ring bells on every corner, and every tree is wrapped from its trunk to its smallest twig in tiny white lights, and entry into any shop means being forced to listen to “A Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Jingle Bell Rock.” The Owl is giving away little paper cups of mulled wine, heated up on a hot plate on the mezzanine. The wine is costing George a fortune, because he is insisting on organic ingredients. Organic wine is not so difficult, but organic nutmegs are a different story.

At the height of all this, when every New Yorker of any race or creed seems saturated in the yuletide spirit of bringing light and warmth to the darkest part of the year, I sell a book to a customer
and wish her a merry Christmas. She stares back at me as if I have said, “Blessed be Odin.”

When she has gone, Luke says, “We don’t say ‘Christmas.’ ”

“We do say ‘Christmas,’ ” says George, “but we wish each other happy holidays.”

“It’s like saying ‘Oriental,’ ” says Bruce. “You can’t say ‘Oriental.’ ”

“But I don’t get that either,” I say. “You can say ‘Occidental.’ ”

“Only if you say it occidentally,” says David.

“Is this real?”

“It’s real,” says George, in a considering tone. “It’s just a courtesy that’s arisen from so many different faiths and nationalities living cheek by jowl. It’s more or less axiomatic that nobody should impose a belief system on anybody else, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so,” I say, although that doesn’t count for George and his evangelism for goji berries and maca roots. “When I’ve finished work, I’m going to buy a holiday tree.”

“You see, you pick things up real fast,” says Luke. “You’re gonna be fine.”

The Christmas trees are brought from Vermont by monosyllabic men in warm clothes; they seem alien, closer to the earth, silently contemptuous, like gypsies. They bring in their trees and stand them up on the pavements, so that swaths of Broadway are suddenly transformed into dark, pine-scented avenues.

The Koreans beneath my apartment import their own trees, and then trim them all into uniformity with a chain saw—all the buds, all the branches that stick out beyond a supposed Platonic ideal are shaved off without compunction. In December, I go to sleep at night lulled not by the swoosh of passing traffic, but by the buzz of Korean chain saws, sharpening each Christmas tree to a fine point.

That evening, I buy a little tree from the Vermont men, since they troubled to come all the way down here and this might be their only income for the year. They shoot it through a netting machine and at first I carry it, but it is too heavy, so I drag it the last two blocks down Broadway.

I put it up in the corner of my apartment and drape it with lights from Duane Reade. Mitchell has work to do and can’t come round, but he is amused that I have bought a tree, and says I should make it into a New York one, and that he will bring me baubles in the shapes of hamburgers, yellow taxis, New York pickles. It is a peculiar experience, to put a tree up by myself. It lends itself to loneliness, of course, but also to reverence. However little I involve myself with religion, I am still decorating a Christmas tree, unprompted, alone. It is not entirely empty of meaning.

Stella comes round, and tells me I need cranberries. She goes downstairs and comes back with a bag of them, and we spend a peaceful evening threading garlands of dark red berries. We wouldn’t do such a thing at home; we feel as if everything has to be bought, made of plastic or glass, to be all right on the tree. Is it because England is damper, and they will go moldy, or because we have lost that connection with the earth that Americans still have?

When she has gone, I sit in the dark contemplating my bright tree for a long time before I click the switch and take myself off to bed.

IT IS FRIDAY
morning, sparklingly icy and cold, and I am working at The Owl with Bruce and George. Luke isn’t here yet. I am tidying up and taking down the Christmas decorations. They are discussing a film about a woodcutter who is a ski-jumper in his spare time. New Yorkers talk about films all the time, in the same way that the British are supposed to talk about the weather. They talk about old ones, new ones, big ones, obscure ones, the peculiar Polish one they just saw at the Angelika from 1937, the Matt Damon one they just saw at the big Sony on 64th, the English one they just saw at the Paris, and
The Godfather, The Godfather, The Godfather
. Reviewers come into the store, talking about movies, and then street guys come into the store and talk about movies
with the reviewers. The street guys get to see all the new ones at the huge Sonys, because they pay admission for one, and then they just go from screen to screen all day long. DeeMo can keep up with any film reviewer who crosses his path, as long as the film has been shown at the Sony.

Sometimes people come into the store in midsentence, and the sentence can be about the sustained brilliance of Jacques Audiard, or that
How Starbucks Saved My Life
is
still
in development, or about how in the end you can’t beat George Cukor, and didn’t that lame remake of
The Women
a few years back prove it (that one was Bruce), about how an actor can go to either one of the Coen brothers and ask a question about the movie they’re shooting, and the brothers are so in sync with each other that you will get the same answer no matter what, and isn’t that something?

It could be a way of not talking about politics, religion, or sex, but I suspect they all care more about movies than any of those other three. I can’t join in very well, and they don’t like it when I do, so for a while, I just listen.

I am up a ladder when Luke comes in—I’m trying to dust the edges of the shelves with a feather duster. All I am really doing is rearranging the dust. They’ve moved on from the woodcutter movie. Now they’re talking about the exceptional acting ability of someone called Petula Maybelle. I don’t know who that is, but the name makes me think she isn’t about to give Judi Dench a run for her money. I’m getting primmer by the minute. Luke is immediately in it with them, and now they’re on to a discussion of Natalie Portman.

“Her looks, I can take or leave, you know? I just like her because she’s so smart,” says Bruce. I dust more vigorously.

“You okay up there, Esme?” asks George.

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t like you going up that ladder in your condition,” says Bruce.

“I’m
fine.
”

“What do you think of Natalie Portman, Esme?” asks Luke.

“I’ve heard her interviewed, and she’s very, very smart,” I say.

“And beautiful,” says Luke.

“Very beautiful,” I say. I look down at the three of them. “You must have a high bar, Bruce.”

Bruce looks pained. “It isn’t that . . .”

“Why aren’t there any female directors?” I say.

“Any?” says George, his eyebrows raised. “Esme, I’m shocked. There’s Jane Campion and many others.”

“Amy Heckerling, Sofia Coppola, Nora Ephron . . . ,” says Bruce, and saddens suddenly. “I’ll sure miss her.”

“You see?” says Luke. “You’re trying to suggest these women don’t matter? Are you an antifeminist, Esme? Is that a new movement?”

I don’t answer. I feel very upset—in proportion, out of proportion? I stay up on the ladder so that nobody can see my face. They disperse to various occupations. Luke stays behind the counter.

“We were just teasing, you know,” he says quietly. “You seem kind of prickly today.”

I manage a tiny smile of acknowledgment, but the upset won’t die down.

When a customer comes to the counter and claims Luke’s attention, I go down to the bathroom in the basement. I decide, in the wake of the conversation upstairs, that I am not going to put up with the lipstick-mouth toilet seat any longer. I am going to speak to George.

Then I notice that there is blood on my underwear.

Dizzy with fear, I check. I am bleeding.

I make a bit of a pad out of toilet paper, and go back up. They are all still chatting.

I go upstairs to the dark green chair at the back and call Dr. Sokolowski’s secretary. She puts me through immediately when I explain.

“Miss Esme Garland? You are bleeding?”

“Yes.”

“It is spotting, or heavy?”

“Heavier than spotting, but not—not
very
heavy.” It is difficult to judge, to separate reality from fear.

“Ah. Hold please.”

I hold, and look at the bookshelves, and do not think.

“My secretary is calling the hospital now, and arranges you to have a sonogram. My secretary will call you back when this is arranged. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Do not worry too much, Miss Garland. Bleeding is in the first trimester very normal. There are many reasons, and often it means nothing to have bleeding.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“But—when you have had the sonogram, please call me again, Miss Garland, and we will proceed from where we are.”

I stay in the chair. The Wizard of Oz books are all opposite, in a locked glass case. I wait.

My phone rings—it is the secretary, I can go immediately to the hospital for the sonogram.

I call Mitchell. His phone goes to voice mail, so I leave him a message and send a text. And then another so he will see I am in a panic. I get my stuff and come back up to the front of the shop.

“We’re on Anita Ekberg,” says Luke.

“We went a bit wild when you left,” says Bruce, grinning as if they’ve all been naughty.

I turn to George. “I have to go,” I say, “I—I have an appointment at the hospital.”

George’s frown comes quickly. “Is it anything serious?”

“No, they just want to check up on me. It’s all right. I’m fine. I am sorry to be just walking out of my shift, though.”

George waves that aside. “Do you want company? You shouldn’t go on your own—”

I pretend to be impatient. “No, no, really, it’s just a straightforward thing. I—”

It occurs to me that I should say that I forgot about the appointment, or they’ve changed the date of it, but I am not up for any of
that. I just want to be allowed to go without fuss. Perhaps George can see that, perhaps he can’t, but at any rate, he nods, says, “I’ll get you a cab,” and strides outside.

I pick up my bag and follow him out. The men are quiet. DeeMo strolls up as I wait on the pavement.

“What’s happening?” he asks.

I tell him where I am going, and he asks me if anything is wrong. I say nothing is wrong. George gets me a cab, and as I get in it and tell the driver where I’m going, DeeMo gets in the other side.

“I’ll come for the ride,” he says. The cab driver looks round at me fast, his eyebrows raised, and I say it is fine.

“Did I ever tell you what first got me in trouble?” DeeMo says. I shake my head. “I was sixteen and I owed these guys some money. So a brother gave me a gun.”

“That wasn’t very responsible of your brother.”

“And I went into the bank, to a teller, and pointed it at her, and I robbed the bank.”

I look over at him. He’s looking out of the other window. “How could you do that to someone, DeeMo? She must have been scared out of her wits.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt her.”

“She didn’t know that.”

“No, and the judge didn’t know either.”

“Were you wearing a stocking over your head?” I cannot imagine the terror that woman must have felt.

“No, a ski mask.” DeeMo starts chuckling. “That’s where I went wrong, man. She gave me this money, but no bag. She said she didn’t have a big bag, just those little bags for nickels and dimes and shit. So I get a shopping bag from this woman in the line, and fill it with the money, and run out, and ten yards outside the bank it fucking breaks, and the money’s all over the sidewalk, so I take off the ski mask and stuff the money in there. And there’s hundreds of dollars falling out of the face part, and I’m trying to
run away, and I’m leaving a paper trail of bills . . . you laughing? This ain’t a funny story, no, ma’am.”