By My Side

by Grant C. Holland

  As Yale opened the door, he saw things in a completely uproar. A young woman and a slightly older man were shouting at each other. The children’s area of the bookstore was littered with books and magazines all over the floor, and a young girl, maybe four years old, was standing in the center of the mess with her hands spread wide, her face scrunched up, and crying at the top of the her lungs.

  While Yale looked around to try and find Derek, there was a tap on his shoulder. It was Derek, and he whispered, “I’ve called 911, but we still need to see if we can get him out of here. He keeps trying to threaten her. You help me, and we’ll get him out of the place.”

  “Who are they?” asked Yale.

  Derek hissed, “Never mind that. Just help me here. We’ll get him out of the store, and then I’ll explain everything.”

  “What if he has a weapon?” whispered Yale.

  Derek said, “I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t. If he had a weapon, I think we would have seen it by now.”

  The two adults were still yelling at each other, and the little girl’s cries only became louder and more piercing. Derek stepped forward and spoke in a firm voice. He said, “You both just need to calm down, and, Sir, I’m afraid that you need to leave the store now.”

  The man turned toward Derek and said, “I’m not going until I get my daughter!” He pointed at the woman. “She doesn’t know how to raise a little girl. I don’t fuckin’ care what the courts say!”

  Yale walked behind Derek just to the right of his shoulder. Derek continued to speak calmly. He said, “That’s not for us to decide right here in the bookstore. You need to leave right now, or we will make sure you are physically removed.”

  The man turned away from the woman just long enough for her to rush to the side of the little girl. She knelt down, pulled the little girl close, and tried to quiet her cries.

  Derek and Yale each slowly moved to opposite sides of the man. He was backed up close to a bookcase and cast furtive glances back and forth to each of them. He said, “Okay, fuck, I’ll leave, but if that woman shows up here again with my daughter, someone should call the police. I’m sure it will take her five minutes to show you what an unfit mother she is.” He spit the words out in a forceful, mechanical pattern.

  Just as he began to walk toward the door, they all heard sirens in the distance. The man asked, “What the fuck? You called the cops?”

  “Safety is my first priority,” said Derek.

  The man pointed a finger at the woman and shouted, “You’re gonna pay for this someday Christy,” and then he rushed to the door, pulled it open, and ran to the left down the street.

  The woman spoke softly just after he left. She said, “They will send him to prison if they catch him doing anything suspicious. He already has a restraining order.”

  Derek said, “I’m not gonna report him unless you want me to.” He paused, and then he said, “Wait, Christy…I know you. I think we met once very briefly. You live in Aaron’s apartment building, don’t you?”

  “Aaron Austin?” she asked. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  Yale nodded. “That’s him. He’s a tall, skinny guy.”

  Christy grinned and nodded as she squatted down and waved her hand for the little girl to join them. She said, “Guys, this is Sylvia. She means the absolute world to me, and we originally stopped in to find her some good books to read. Do you have any good suggestions?”

  Christy held Sylvia tight as she listened for a response.

  Derek asked, “How did you get here? Do you have a car?”

  Yale moved close to the entrance. The sirens stopped, and he heard the sound of car doors.

  Shaking her head no, Christy said, “We walked.”

  “All the way here?” asked Yale.

  “The apartment building is only about a mile away. It’s a nice walk in good weather. It just takes us about half an hour.”

  Derek asked, “Yale, would you give Aaron a call and see if he’s home? If he is, maybe he can give Christy and…you said Sylvia, right?”

  Christy nodded.

  “See if he can give Christy and Sylvia a ride home.”

  Standing up from the floor, Christy scooped Sylvia into her arms and said, “That is so sweet of you guys. We’ll have to figure out something to do for you in return.”

  Derek shook his head. “I just want to make sure you get home safe and sound. Aaron works from home a lot, and so he just might be available.”

  Yale joined them again and said, “Aaron is on his way. He said it will be just about five minutes.”

  “I’ll help you find some books for Sylvia,” said Derek, “And they are my treat. Don’t worry about paying for them.”

  * * *

  When Aaron arrived, it was obvious that he knew something about Christy’s problems with her ex-husband. He arrived almost exactly the same time as the police responding to the 911 call were leaving the building. Christy shared with them the basics of what happened, but she chose not to press any charges. The police officer in charge was kind and strongly encouraged her to call immediately if there was any hint of a future disturbance.

  Aaron said, “And call me right away, too. I’m just down on the floor below. I can be there in two minutes.”

  When they were leaving, Christy gave both Derek and Yale hugs while Sylvia kissed them on the cheek. “Come back and see us at the store sometime,” said Derek as they stepped out the door.

  With the commotion taken care of, Derek and Yale settled into work mode. Derek ran Yale through a quick and dirty lesson about all the operations of the bookstore. He gave Yale a detailed tour of the different book sections as well as showing him the thermostats for climate control and full details on how to operate the cash register and keep track of sales for the day.

  Yale grew more and more concerned about his ability to move the bookstore forward as Derek showed him the details. Yale noticed just how dim the lighting was in some areas, and he could tell that many of the books had been sitting on the shelves for months, probably even years. He figured that, just like a grocery store, it was necessary to rotate the stock once in awhile.

  He also noticed that Derek’s accounting records for keeping track of money going in and out of the bookstore were sketchy at best. He asked Derek how they knew which books had been sold. Derek shrugged and pointed out the sum total of sales for the day. Yale didn’t think it took a genius to realize that it might be important for future planning to know which specific books were sold not just the total amount of money received.

  Derek said, “Well, I think that’s all of the basics.” He looked around the space, and then he said, “Oh, I need to show you the back door, too. I keep it locked almost all of the time, but when you do open it, it sticks. If there is an emergency, don’t start thinking that you’re trapped inside the building. Just give the door a good shove with the shoulder, and it will come open.”

  Yale dutifully followed Derek to the back door, and they took turns opening the door with a strong shoulder check. Derek asked, “So what do you think, buddy? Are you ready to take this on?”

  Yale had deep-seated insecurities that were already poking at him, but he was never one to back down from a challenge. He also saw the job as his contribution to the effort to help Derek get back on track and return to some kind of normality. Selfishly, Yale knew that taking over the bookstore responsibilities would also result in more time spent with Derek.

  He said, “It’s a big job, but yeah, I can do it. You’ve got yourself a bookstore manager, Derek!”

  They shook hands and smiled at each other. Yale was happy to finally see a real smile on Derek’s face. He was sure that he hadn’t seen one for weeks.

  Just as they re-entered the store from the back employee area, the little bell on the front door rang announcing the arrival of a new customer.

  It was Mrs. Tina Ellis. She called from the front, “Yoo Hoo! Is anybody here?”

  Yale broke out into a jog toward the front of the stor
e. Breathlessly, he said, “Mrs. Ellis! It’s so good to see you.”

  She smiled from ear to ear. “Oh Yale! I thought I just might find you here. I remember you talking about trying to give your friend a little bit of help. By the way, your work on my kitchen table turned out perfectly. There is no more wobbling, and it just seems like it’s brand new even though my great great grandparents brought it over on the ship from Germany.”

  Derek caught up to them. He offered his hand in greeting. He said, “I’ve heard Yale say many wonderful things about you, Mrs. Ellis. Welcome to Undercover. Is there anything in particular we can help with?”

  She pushed a bracelet further up her left arm and said, “Come to think of it, why, yes, there is. That is the reason that I stopped in. When I was a little girl, there was a long, long series of romance novels that I read. When I finished them, I went back and re-read the whole series again. As a little girl, I must have read those books at least ten times. The characters were adults, but I’m certain that they were written primarily for teenage girls. They taught such delightful lessons about manners.”

  Unfortunately, when I married Edgar, I thought that I was all grown up and I wouldn’t need them anymore. I donated them to the public library and that was that.”

  Yale asked, “And you are looking for them again?”

  Mrs. Ellis said, “Yes. I was feeling nostalgic the other day, and I got the warmest sensations thinking about those books. It made me want to read them once more. I called the public library, and they don’t have them, but they said they could order them from other places. I thought I would check to see if by chance I could just buy some of the books here.”

  Derek asked, “Who is the author Mrs. Ellis?”

  She said, “They were written by Agnes Moodle. I know it’s a funny name, but she was such a good storyteller.”

  Derek said, “I do think we have some of them. I remember when they came in.”

  Yale tried not to laugh, but something about the way Mrs. Ellis pursed her lips when she said “Moodle” made him break down. He started to laugh and soon all three of them were laughing out loud while Mrs. Ellis clapped her hands.

  8

  Derek

  Yale leaped into running the bookstore with such gusto that it was obvious to Derek that they should have come up with the deal much earlier. He went back to his former trailer one more time and gathered up the things that were important. That meant two suitcases filled with clothes and one big cardboard box with personal items. Yale said, “They can just burn all of the furniture along with the trailer itself for all I care. I really need to start new.”

  The apartment already had basic furnishings. It had a reasonable bed, couch and two upholstered chairs. In the kitchen there was a table that could seat up to six with a leaf added in. None of the furniture was high quality, but Derek was just happy that his best friend was no longer living in a dump.

  Three days after Yale started working in the bookstore, Derek felt completely comfortable to leave him in charge and go home to dive into his writing projects. It wasn’t completely easy for him to leave. The sense of personal responsibility for the bookstore washed over him, but Yale ushered Derek out the door waving his hands and finally just using his body to push Derek through the doorway. Derek peered back in through the window one more time and then dragged himself to his car.

  When he arrived home, he pulled out his cell phone and checked the messages. His phone buzzed in his pocket while he was at the bookstore, but he didn’t answer it. When he looked closely, he saw that it was a call from his editor. A voicemail message was left, and Derek listened to it carefully. The editor said, “I was just checking on the latest Houston Brant book, Derek. I’m sure that you’ve got it well underway. I just wanted to toss in a reminder that the first draft is due in two weeks. Neither of us wants to disappoint Static Den. You’ve had a lot of success publishing with them so far, and I expect it to continue.”

  Derek raised his hands to his face and breathed deeply. He wasn’t well underway with his Houston Brant thriller. In face, he barely had 5,000 words written. That meant he was less than a tenth of the way finished. Two weeks was plenty of time for a first draft if he could concentrate on writing. He thought that Yale taking over the bookstore was an event that happened just in time.

  Derek opened up his laptop computer to check out social media on Facebook. A wide smile broke across his face when he read the series of laudatory comments from readers about his romance novels. They couldn’t wait for more.

  Almost a year had passed since Derek started writing romance novels. For most of his life, he assumed that they were something less than the rest of literature, but a long conversation with a fellow author left him wanting to give it a try.

  In between the first two Houston Brant novels, when he would normally be taking at least a week break away from planning or writing novels, Derek sat down to something new. He wrote about a young man who was down on his luck having just been fired from the third job in two years. He went to his neighborhood bar in an effort to drown his sorrows and met the most handsome man he’d ever seen.

  Derek’s hero was certain that the handsome man had to be already taken, but it turned out that he was available. In fact, the man in the bar was also recovering from a horrible life circumstance. His boyfriend recently died in a tragic plane crash that was still making headlines as months later debris was still being located in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

  Derek wrote an entire novel describing how the couple came together, nearly broke up permanently, and then earned a happily-ever-after ending. It was Derek’s first attempt in the romance genre, and, unlike his thriller work, he opted to self-publish the novel. To his genuine surprise, it became a hit. Perhaps most surprisingly, it was fun to write.

  Derek’s second romance novel made more money than the first. In fact, it made more money than any one of his Houston Brant novels. Now, Derek was hard at work on the third romance novel with his fans chomping at the bit for the new material.

  He read one of the comments through three times. It made him feel particularly good. A reader wrote,

  “Your main characters feel so real, and they overcome such obstacles. Everything always turns out good in the end. I know that some of that is fantasy, but it gives me confidence in my own life. Things are rough at the moment for my boyfriend and me, but I’m confident we will have our happily ever after when I read your books.”

  One of Derek’s favorite parts of self-publishing was his ability to be in direct contact with his readers. They shared with him both the positives and the negatives in his books. They were also not afraid to let him know if something in a book particularly moved them.

  He was thrilled by the excitement that filtered back when he announced a new book on the way and shared details about it like the book cover or a sample chapter or two. The encouragement and excitement was infectious.

  Derek realized that he couldn’t spend long basking in past laurels. He left Yale in charge of the bookstore so he could get to work. He needed to sit down and dive deep into a work in progress. It had to be the Houston Brant novel. It was the book with a contract and a specific deadline.

  Unfortunately, Derek was having a hard time getting his heart back into thriller mode. He liked writing thrillers, and when he picked up a book of choice for pleasure reading, it was most likely to be a thriller of some sort. The pressure to finish wasn’t helping matters either. Derek was losing that sense of freedom that was so exhilarating when he first sat down to books.

  He rested his head in his hands and thought back to the work on the first Houston Brant thrillers. He told his friends in the Purple Pack about it, and they were constantly hounding him to read excerpts. Each of them picked out particular passages and said, “I bet you were thinking of me when you wrote that.” Sometimes they were right, and other times they were completely off the mark.

  Then an idea came to Derek. He wondered why he never thought of it befo
re. He punched Emma’s phone number into his cell and waited as her phone began to ring.

  She answered saying, “Derek! How are you? Is everything okay?”

  He laughed. “Why do you assume something must be wrong when you see that it’s me calling.”

  She said, “Oh, I assume something is wrong when anybody calls, unless the call has been prearranged. It might sound really sad, but I just don’t get that many phone calls.”

  Derek said, “Oh, you aren’t that much of a hermit. Anyway, I was calling because I had a question for you. This is totally hypothetical, so just let your mind run free before you answer.”

  Emma asked, “You’re working on a book, aren’t you?”

  “Wow, Emma, it’s like you took a really long pin and just poked that sucker right into the heart of my personal little balloon. There it goes — pffftttt! all around the room until that sad little lump of colored rubber flops to the floor.”

  Emma said, “That is some visual! I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mean it that way. Go ahead and ask me what you were going to ask me.”

  Derek laughed. “It’s not a big deal. I just thought I came up with something original and creative for a question. Here it is. ‘If you have just thrown yourself under a car to avoid an explosion, and then you see it rip through a storefront and scatter debris for fifty feet around, what would be your first thoughts and concerns?”

  She said, “Oh, I would be worried about whether anybody else got hurt. That would be my obvious first thought, but I would also want to scoot out from under the car to look around and see if there were any signs of a perpetrator to be hunted down.”