A Short Walk to the Bookshop

by Aleksandra Drake

  "It's hard to imagine you hiking."

  "Do I not seem the type?"

  "Not really," I laughed.

  "Well, I guess there is a meteor shower this weekend. Frankly, it would be just as visible at home but he wanted to make a day of it and go up to Rattlesnake Ledge. Stephen is going too. He’s bringing his wife and kids too."

  "That sounds fun." My breathing was steady again and I wasn't in danger of crying anymore. I shrugged my blanket higher on my shoulder, tucking my phone against my ear. "You should go."

  "I might. Would you want to come too? I know they'd be happy to have you along."

  "I don't know." I said after a pause. I wanted to go. Well, more accurately, I wanted to want to go. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head telling me it would be good for me to get out with other people. Get fresh air. Look at some stars. Nothing about that sounded bad to me, but I couldn't tell ahead of time how I would feel on the day; if I will have gotten any sleep or if I will be nauseated or anxious.

  "Okay," Diedrich said simply. "Well, I will be leaving my place at six on Saturday. If you decide to come along just meet me there."

  "Thank you," I whispered. Delaying the decision made me feel better. This way I could hope for it, but not feel pressured to keep a date. I wondered if he had done that on purpose.

  "I started reading a new book today..." He began, and launched into a softly spoken report on the state of genre fiction in general and sci-fi specifically. I was only half listening to him, and I think he knew that. My heart beat in time with the comforting drone of his voice and I sank deeper into my bed and let my eyes fall closed.

  "Are you there, Sparrow?" he asked after a time in a near whisper.

  "Yes. But I think I can sleep now."

  "Good. Will I see you tomorrow?"

  "I think so."

  "Goodnight, Sparrow."

  "Goodnight."

  For most of the week it looked like there would be no trip to Rattlesnake Ledge after all. Clouds rolled in with the morning fog every day and it drizzled off and on persistently. Friday evening, however, the man on TV promised that the clouds would clear in time for the meteor shower. I still hadn't decided if I would go or not. I was working on the assumption that I would, but with the mental caveat that I could back out at any moment. That seemed to be the only way I could plan for anything anymore.

  On Saturday I got dressed as if I would be going, but all day I wandered the house with a stone of dread in the pit of my stomach. I waffled between anxiety and self-pity over the anxiety, but as six o'clock came around, I stuffed my pockets with treats for Athena and pulled on my jacket. I walked out my door with my jaw set and a carefully curated "fuck it, I'm going" attitude that carried me as far as Diedrich's door.

  He was just coming out, locking his door behind him, when I arrived.

  "You're here!" he said, masking his surprise with excitement.

  "I'm here. Is it really alright if we ride with you?" I nodded down at Athena. It had been drizzling in the morning and her feet were muddy.

  "I planned on it." He said, and showed me a fluffy bath towel draped over his other arm.

  His car was parked behind the building and it was pretty much what I expected. A bit of a clunker, with a chipped paint job, but once we had Athena situated in the back seat, it started up with rigor.

  "Is Rattlesnake Ledge far?" I asked, noticing that my hands were shaking. I shoved them between my knees and squeezed my legs together. As he turned onto the road I knew that there was no backing out of this now, and I feared that I wasn't ready for this kind of field trip after all. Worst case scenarios ran through my mind and in a matter of minutes I was absolutely certain that I would have a panic attack, throw up, and cry in front of everyone and have to be carted home like a lunatic.

  "It's not far at all. Have you never been there?"

  I told him I hadn't. I hadn't been anywhere beyond the park on the other end of town since I moved there, but I didn't mention that specifically. He spent the rest of the drive talking about the various trails and waterfalls around the area. He didn't try to lure me into conversation, he just chatted along calmly. I wondered if he did that on purpose to calm me down or if he was just filling the silence. Either way, it didn't matter. It worked.

  "Ah. There's Richard’s car," Diedrich said when we pulled into a little dirt parking lot at the beginning of a trail.

  As I got out of the car, Athena scrambled out after me and, with my permission, took off at a trot to sniff at the perimeter of the parking lot.

  "I should take her out more, I think," I laughed.

  As we headed toward the trail, she fell into step next to me, but I could see how excited she was to be in a new place and I felt guilty about only really walking her back and forth across town.

  "Thank you for inviting me.”

  He took a moment to answer, taking a few steps quietly. "Well Sparrow, I hope you know that people here care about you. People ask how you are. You're a part of the group now."

  "The group?"

  "The bookshop people." He said which a chuckle and a shrug. "It's not a large store, everyone ends up knowing everyone else. Nothing I can do about that. Truthfully, both Richard and Stephen specifically asked that you be invited."

  "Really?" It was surprising enough that Diedrich had invited me, and I was closer with him than the others. After the initial surprise, it felt pretty nice to think that they had been thinking about me and considering me a part of their clique. (If a group of middle aged men who frequented the same bookstore, and had little else in common, could be considered a clique.)

  The walk through the woods was both refreshing and somehow nostalgic. Everything was woods, but these were slightly wilder trees than back near town. The forest was dripping, but the sky was blessedly clear. We hardly spoke as we walked up the path, letting the birds speak for themselves, until we reached an area where you could sense the clearing behind the next batch of tree. There was an impression of expanding, of empty space. The incline that had been working on my calves for the past mile had taken us to the top of an exposed cliff.

  I stopped short, taken aback by the abrupt expanse.

  "Wow," I said. "There's so much air."

  Diedrich chuckled quietly at my side. He understood.

  There was a group of people, bookshop people, my people, in a grassy space to the right but I carefully approached the ledge first before greeting anyone. The vista that spread out below looked like a postcard. The jagged mountains framed a blanket of green that surrounded a greenish blue lake at the bottom. I inhaled, drawing in the air from across the horizon deep into me. It felt like I had developed a crust inside me, clinging, dry and brittle, to my lungs and stomach and heart and kidneys. When I sucked in the cool mountain air, I thought I could hear crackling inside me as the crust broke and flaked off into bits. I closed my eyes and let the breeze flow across the mountains and lift the ends of my hair. I focused on the way the wind felt through my eyelashes.

  Athena tugged gently on her lead, wanting to join the group and probably get away from the cliff. Did she think I was going to jump? The thought crossed my mind in an instant, not that I considered it seriously. It was just like when you have been driving for a long time and your brain tells you to hook left and drive into oncoming traffic. You don't do it, you don't even really think about doing it, but the thought pops up from somewhere hidden in the back of your mind. It's a possibility, even if it's a remote one.

  Finally I let go of the view and followed Athena. Diedrich was on the outskirts of the gathered group, one foot in their conversation but turned towards me, watchful. When I smiled at him he smiled back and turned his attention to a woman who Richard seemed to be introducing.

  "Sparrow!" Stephen said, approaching me with a hearty slap to my shoulder blades. "Glad Diedrich dragged you out here!"

  "Me too." I laughed, Stephen seemed three times his normal size out here in the wild. "Though there wasn't any actual dragg
ing, you know. I wanted to come. I'm glad I was invited."

  He winked knowingly at me and I wondered how much, if anything, Diedrich had told them about me. I would ask Diedrich later.

  Stephen’s grandkids were running around, carefully on the other end from the ledge under the watchful but unobtrusive gaze of every adult there.

  Stephen went back to cooking hot dogs on a humorously small camping grill, but it smelled good all the same. As long as I didn't think about the anxiety I was still carrying around, I thought that I might be able to eat.

  When Diedrich settled into a camp chair near the grill, I pulled a chair up so close that the arms of our chairs were nearly overlapping, and sat down. Happy as I was that I was surrounded by people who I could consider friends, he was my anchor.

  "Uh...Sparrow?" A little male voice piped up just behind me. "Can we play with your dog?"

  Athena, who was tucked under my chair, raised her ears and cocked her head, but didn't move to stand.

  "Sure. Yeah. Um, yeah of course." I patted Athena "Wanna go play?"

  As if she were a laborer who had just clocked out of work on a Friday afternoon, Athena hopped up and trotted merrily with Charlie back to the area where the kids were playing together.

  Diedrich leaned over conspiratorially. "They've been eyeing Athena since you got here."

  I looked back at Athena, and seeing her trotting protective but playful circles around and between the kids gave me a twinge of guilt.

  "She doesn't get to play enough."

  "Sparrow! Ketchup? Mustard?" Stephen called, holding up a paper plate with a naked hot dog on it.

  I was acutely aware of darkness settling in as the evening wore on. I could feel it in my body like a chill. I tried to push away the creeping feeling of dread by chatting with people. I stayed near Diedrich the entire time, yes, but I was also introduced to Richard's plus one, a pretty woman who I already decided not to tell Paula about. I melted into the group, quiet but smiling, included but not prevailed upon to be witty.

  As soon as the sun dipped below the horizon line, the children excitedly spread out blankets on the ground and laid down on their backs, looking up at the sky as the darkness deepened.

  Stephen’s granddaughter saw the first meteor, gasping loudly and pointing to it. Three separate conversations dropped off mid-sentence as everyone's face snapped up to the sky.

  We had counted eight meteors and two satellites when I shivered so badly that my shoulders shook. An instant later a warm weight fell over my shoulders and Diedrich was sitting next to me with his jacket off. I wrapped the jacket closer against me and wanted to lay my head on his shoulder like I was used to doing now, but even though it felt normal for me in private, the thought of anyone seeing me like that made me anxious.

  Staring up into space made my neck hurt and gave me vertigo, but I looked forward to telling my mom about the excursion I took. She was going to be proud of me.

  "I'll drop you off at home," Diedrich said later when we piled back into his car with Athena.

  "Thank you."

  "Well, thank you for coming, Sparrow. Truthfully, I might not have gone if you didn't. Everyone there with their family or a date...it's a little strange for me."

  "Two loners at the social event is better than one?" I said off-hand, paying more attention to how the moonlight fluttered on the walls of trees towering over both sides of the winding road. When he didn't answer right away I looked over at him, expecting to see how that moonlight illuminated his profile as he drove, but I accidentally caught him looking at me too. He looked away, but not fast enough.

  When we got to my house, even from the car I could see the dark outline of a box on my porch. This was the third box he’d sent me. The last one had contained a pair of heels so high they looked like a joke. No one could have worn them standing up. But he knew my shoe size, which struck me as particularly insane. How could he know my shoe size? How could he guess something like that?

  I'd spent the last week thinking about that, fixating on the shoe size. I didn't dare trying to burn the shoes. They were mostly plastic. I'd taken them to the edge of the backyard, where the grass butts up against the forest, and thrown them as hard as I could into the thick foliage.

  It was late, past midnight. And I was tired, my defenses were down. The contrast of the nice, normal evening I'd had against the silent box on the porch was too stark, and I cried.

  "Diedrich, I'm scared," I said, frozen to the passenger seat, staring at the porch.

  "What happened? What's wrong?" He asked, shifting uneasily in his seat when he saw me wipe a tear off my cheek.

  "Will you come inside with me?" I asked, not even attempting to prevent my voice from wavering. Who cared if he knew how scared I was? In fact, I wanted him to know.

  "Sure. Of course I will. But what happened between ten minutes ago and now? Did I do something wrong?"

  I shook my head and got out of the car. The breeze felt colder now, whipping around me with more cruelty than it had on the ledge. On the porch, I picked up the box, it was largish and flat. Probably more lingerie.

  Inside, Athena did her rounds as usual as I stood on the threshold with Diedrich beside me.

  Stepping into the living room, I dropped the box on the coffee table with an audible clatter as it caught the edge of a plate I'd left there this afternoon.

  "This place seems larger than when Evelyn lived here," he continued, walking in timidly behind me.

  "Yes well, grandma had a lot of shit."

  He paused. "I suppose. Is it the box, Sparrow? Why are you scared of it?"

  Diedrich tilted his head slightly to the side. I sighed, tossing my sweater over a chair but then immediately crossing my arms and rubbing my hands over the goosebumps on my arms.

  "Back in Texas. That stalker I told you about? He got into my house. I don't know how many times for sure, but definitely twice. I mean, twice there was definite proof. He broke the lock on my window. My bedroom window. When he got in the first time, he left a note on my pillow. That was the worst thing. The turning point, I guess. Before that, I knew he was keeping tabs on me, following me in his car. Stuff like that. But I wasn't really afraid. I figured he would get bored and just..get over it with time. But when he got into my house..." my voice cracked and I took a shuddering breath. Through the tears in my eyes I could see the conflict in Diedrich's posture. He wanted to hold me but wasn't sure if he should. I didn't know if he should either.

  "He's found me again. I don't know how. There was a fake Facebook account he made, I think he might have contacted my old friends or something. Pretending to be me. Anyway, he's sending me things." I nodded toward the box.

  "He's sending you things?" his bushy eyebrows rose "What things?"

  My face went hot and I shook my head. "I don't want to say."

  He seemed to understand. He nodded. "Okay. Have you told the police?"

  "It's just so upsetting, you know?" I blurted, dropping my arms. "He got into my house and that was the thing that broke me. Like, I'm broken, Diedrich. I obsess over locks all day long. I'm constantly thinking about my fucking windows. Anywhere I stand or sit I can only think about where I am in relation to the windows. If I can be seen from outside. He got into my house and now he's doing it again. It’s like he shows up on my porch every few days and I bring him right in."

  I reached for the box and started opening it, pulling at the tape that held the box closed, but Diedrich stepped forward and slid it from my hands.

  "Don't open it,” he said, gently but firmly. "Don't make it worse for yourself."

  "I have to know..."

  "Why? No you don't. Just throw it away.” His voice was stern.

  I stared down at the floor. Diedrich's shoes, specifically. I nodded. He put his hand on my shoulder, warm and heavy, and slid it down my upper arm. It was clumsy, but I appreciated the attempt at comfort all the same and leaned into the touch.

  "Sit down," he said. I saw him toss the box on the ch
air behind him as he guided me to the couch and sat down next to me.

  "Do you think he's nearby? Are you safe?"

  I shrugged.

  "Who is this guy, Sparrow?" Our knees touched and he was turned towards me, one hand splayed between my shoulder blades. He still smelled like the forest.

  I closed my eyes. "His name is Adrien. He was my supervisor at work. He was really nice at first. He flirted with me all the time and honestly I really liked the attention. So I led him on, I guess. But when it came right down to it, I didn't want to date him. Outside of the store, I didn't want to see him. He was nice enough but I didn't like the things he laughed at, you know? He kept asking me out but I kept saying no. He got mad. He fired me, but I kept seeing him everywhere. At the grocery store. When I went out with friends. I shouldn't have led him on. I knew I wouldn't want to date him. I don't know why I did that..."