Haunting Jasmine

by Anjali Banerjee

  “I didn’t say a thing.” He holds up his hands.

  “Who else could it be?” A chill ripples across my skin.

  And this maiden she lived with no other thought / Than to love and be loved by me.

  “Why are you quoting Edgar Allan Poe?” I say. How do I know the quote came from Poe? “I’m not here to love any-one.”

  “I didn’t say you were.” Connor’s eyebrows rise.

  I shake my head. “He wrote that, didn’t he? Poe?”

  “Wrote what?”

  I’m going insane. “I have to get out of here.”

  Connor is beside me. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” I rattle the knob, but the door won’t budge. “We’re locked in.”

  “Let me try.” He pulls and turns the doorknob, to no avail.

  “Try again.” Connor and I both try to open the door. No luck.

  “Looks like we’ll have to climb out the window,” he says.

  “I think they’re painted shut in this room.”

  “Then we’re trapped in here forever.” Connor’s grinning, as if the idea isn’t so bad.

  “This isn’t funny.”

  He glances at my pants, my shoes, the door, and laughs. “I’m sorry, but it is. Let’s have coffee and discuss it.”

  “I don’t think so.” I twist and rattle and yank the knob, but the door doesn’t budge.

  It’s only coffee, he whispers.

  “Okay, okay,” I say.

  “Okay what?”

  “Fine, coffee. But it’s not a date. I don’t date.”

  Connor breaks into a dashing smile. “Hey, that’s great. Friday night? Around eight o’clock?”

  “Okay, okay. Fine.” I turn the knob, and magically, the door swings open, setting us free.

  Chapter 9

  I rush up the stairs and crash headlong into Auntie. She drops a pile of books. They clatter down the stairs. “Bippy, you look pale.”

  “The wind must have slammed the door in the parlor. I agreed to a date with that man, Connor Hunt....”

  “What man, where? What door?”

  “Here.” I pick up the books, lead Auntie down to the parlor. The door is wide open. Connor is gone, again.

  “There was a man in here?” Auntie says. “Splendid. You’re going on a date.”

  “It’s not a date. I didn’t mean to say date. He kept asking.”

  “I’ve heard of this Connor Hunt, but I can’t remember where. No need to worry. Enjoy yourself.” She rattles the knob. “See, this door does not lock. There is no lock at all.”

  “But—”

  “Look.” She shows me the smooth knob, opens and shuts the door.

  “I couldn’t open it.”

  Her brows furrow. She steers me back to the tea room. “Sit, take deep breaths. I’ll make you some tea.”

  Tea, her answer to everything. “I’ll tell him I can’t have coffee with him, next time he stops in,” I say, rubbing my temples. “I don’t know what got into me. I made a mistake. He said he was doing research on tractors or bananas. Or maybe kangaroos. He’s a doctor, too. How does he find time to hang around here? I can’t go out with him.”

  Auntie sits across from me, takes my hands in hers. “Bippy, you’re divorced, not dead.”

  I sigh. “Sometimes I feel... well, dead.”

  “You like this man?”

  “He’s annoying. I’ve seen him twice since I arrived... and both times, he asked me out.”

  Her eyes twinkle. “Why not ride the wave, go with the flow. Isn’t that what people say?”

  I rub my temples. Fatigue seeps into my bones, and the day is still young. “Okay, I give up.”

  “We haven’t much time. Come. Let me show you the shop.” She gives me a perfunctory tour of the computer system and checkout register. I try to memorize the keystrokes, but I’m a tad distracted.

  “You’re staying here tonight, nah?” Auntie says. “But you haven’t brought your luggage.”

  “I couldn’t drag it along the beach,” I say quickly. “I wanted to take the scenic route this morning. Ma and Dad will bring my stuff later on.” I feel terrible about lying to her.

  “I see. Acha.” Her face relaxes. “Goodness knows what would happen otherwise.”

  “I know—the house gets cranky.” All the more reason to stay with my parents.

  In half an hour, I’m back in my regular clothes and we’re dragging Auntie’s two giant suitcases down the stairs and out the front door. My family has arrived. They all step out of the car—Gita in a designer trench coat and heels, Ma and Dad more conservatively dressed. Dad grabs both of Auntie’s suitcases and drops them in the trunk.

  Ma purses her lips, her way of disapproving of her elder sister’s adventures in India. If only she knew the real reason for Auntie’s trip. The two sisters are so different—Ma tight and controlled, Auntie flowing and flighty. Only their luminous eyes and rounded chins betray the family resemblance. Auntie makes the first move, wrapping her arms around Ma. Ma concedes, then steps away. “Be good,” she says. “No craziness.”

  “I’ll be crazier than usual,” Auntie says, winking.

  “Keep an eye on your passport, and watch out for suicide bombers,” Ma says. So her warnings aren’t reserved for me. She doles them out freely.

  “Stop worrying all the time. I’ll be fine,” Auntie says.

  “Have you packed the gifts?” Ma says.

  “Why do you think I have two suitcases?” Auntie points to the trunk. “Chocolate, shampoo, ballpoint pens, clothes, books, perfume, soap.”

  Gita hops up and down, shivering. “You’re going to have a great time, Auntie. Live it up. Don’t forget to bring me—”

  “You’ll have a most beautiful wedding sari,” Auntie says.

  “And kurtas and chappals. I want kajal and sandalwood oil and turmeric—”

  “I shall bring you an entire bazaar.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Gita says.

  I stand back, away from the wedding excitement. If Gita knew about Auntie’s heart problems, she would not make such demands.

  “Have you brought Bippy’s luggage?” Auntie asks.

  I give Ma a help me look. I hold my breath.

  Ma nods. “Ah, yes—we’ll bring it over later on. No room in the car right now.”

  I let out my breath.

  “Good. She must stay here,” Auntie says.

  “Just come back healthy,” I say. “One month.” I give her one last hug. I try to memorize the smell of Pond’s cold cream and the parchmentlike feel of her skin.

  She pats my cheek one last time before getting into the passenger seat of the car. She shuts the door, and Dad reaches over her to pull the seat belt across her lap.

  Ma and Gita pile into the backseat, Ma giving me a quick, questioning look. I shrug, then wave and back up toward the house.

  Auntie opens the window. “Wait, Bippy. Come here. I nearly forgot.”

  I rush to her side. She beckons me close, whispers in my ear. “Remember to have fun, Bippy!”

  I squeeze her shoulder and smile. “Fly safely.”

  Dad taps the steering wheel. “We’re going to be late!”

  “You must take care,” Auntie whispers. “Enjoy the moments while you have them.”

  I wave her off. “Don’t worry about me. You get well.”

  Dad starts up the car, and a plume of exhaust rises from the tailpipe. “We have to go.”

  “I’ll call you,” Auntie says.

  I step back onto the sidewalk, arms crossed over my chest as Dad pulls the car away from the curb. As my family disappears around the corner, I’m suddenly alone with the bookstore, the rain, and the rising windstorm.

  I’m in way over my head.

  Chapter 10

  In Auntie’s messy office, I tackle the stack of paperwork on her desk. She has many unpaid bills and unsent invoices. She’s managed to run this business smoothly for years. Her illness must be distracting her, or t
he down economy is affecting her bottom line.

  When Tony arrives, he gives me a perfunctory nod and checks the answering machine. He’s dressed in various shades of evening—deep turquoise and black and gray—and sips espresso from a paper cup from Fairport Café. As he listens to the messages from customers, he jots notes, then looks around, shaking his head, hands on his hips. “I try to organize this place. Never makes any difference. Go figure.”

  I wave a Puget Sound Energy bill. “Should I pay these? Does she have a checkbook?”

  Tony snatches the bill from my hand. “Oh, girl, you don’t want to go there. I’ll pay these. She asked me to.”

  “Then what does she want me to do?”

  Tony makes a grand gesture with his arm. “Take care of the store. Get out there.”

  “But nobody’s here yet. I’m better with numbers. I could balance her accounts. I’m sure there are more bills to pay, invoices to check—”

  “And a bookstore to run. I’ll show you. Come with me.”

  Reluctantly, I follow him out into the hall. I spend the next hour helping him unpack boxes of books, shelve titles, rearrange displays.

  “Don’t put this up front,” he says, grabbing a hardcover thriller, Don’t Look Now, from the windowsill in the parlor.

  “But it’s new. I saw this title in the airport. Don’t you have more copies?”

  “We’re not a chain store,” he says, brandishing an old thriller with a tattered cover. “We provide an alternative, other possibilities.”

  “Fine. Since you know so much about making the bookstore turn a spectacular profit, I’ll leave you to it. I have better things to do.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  I find a broom and a feather duster in a hall closet and set to work wiping every grimy surface. Tony comes up to me in the Antiquarian room and laughs. “You don’t expect your efforts to help, do you?”

  “A clean shop is a lucrative shop.” I try to open the window, but it’s painted shut.

  Tony keeps shaking his head, his sprayed hair remaining in place. “You don’t get it, do you? This store is special. You can’t force your will upon it.”

  “I can force anything I want.” I yank on the window again. No luck. “Does my aunt have tools? A screwdriver or something I can use to pry the window open?”

  A cracking sound pierces the air. The window pops open a few inches, letting in a blast of fresh air.

  “There you go,” Tony says, rubbing the palms of his hands together. “Air, all you want.”

  “How did that happen? There must be a touchy spring.”

  “Yeah, that must be it.” He walks away, shaking his head. “Air, she says. ‘A clean shop is a lucrative shop.’”

  The rooms are beginning to look half decent, slightly less cluttered, but no matter how hard I work, the bigger the task seems to become.

  Throughout the morning, a smattering of customers drifts in and out. A few people pop in to pick up books they’ve ordered.

  “My aunt needs to diversify,” I say, wiping down the ornate ceramic mantelpiece in the children’s book room. Tony is shelving a stack of picture books. “She should carry soap, candles, handbags, cheaper new paperbacks, like the ones they have in the grocery store. To bring in more customers.”

  “This isn’t a grocery store. Take a look around.”

  “She needs to come into the twenty-first century, make a modern niche for herself—”

  “She already has a niche.” Tony runs to answer the ringing phone. “Drop shipment on the fifteenth book,” he says into the receiver. “The whole order was supposed to arrive today!” He yells into the phone for a few minutes, then hangs up in a huff.

  “You don’t want me to improve on anything,” I tell him.

  “Use your intuitive sense.” Tony points a finger at his chest. “Your heart.”

  “I leave that to Auntie. I have another idea: she could expand—buy the business next door and turn it into a bookstore café.”

  “We already have a tea room. Didn’t you see it?”

  “But that room can’t compete with the Fairport Café—”

  “She’s not trying to compete. Okay, watch and learn. Look, there’s a live one.”

  A young bald man has stepped inside the store, shaking his umbrella. Tony strides up to the man and smiles. “How can I help you today?”

  “I’m looking for a coffee table book about garden cottages,” the man says in a reedy voice. He’s in a black trench coat, sleek with water.

  I step forward. “We carry many of those.” Even I know what a coffee table book is.

  The man looks at me blankly, as if I’m invisible and the air has spoken to him. “Built with green materials?”

  “The books?” I say. The heat rises in my neck.

  The man makes an irritated sound. “Cottages. Built with sustainable materials, energy efficient.”

  “There’s no such thing as an actual coffee table book,” Tony says, motioning the man to follow him. “The publishers don’t define their books that way. But I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

  I listen to Tony’s smooth voice recede down the hall, as he leads the man to the Home and Garden section. Fine, if Tony is so good at his job, he can do without me for a moment. I’ll search for a cell phone signal again. I hold up my BlackBerry in desperate hope, carry it down every aisle in every room, and somehow end up in the Sexuality section, where a woman is furtively sifting through books about female arousal.

  I hurry to the next room, my face flushed. I’m glad she didn’t ask me for help. That was a close call. In the next aisle over, a little girl begs her father for a fairy book. “This one, please, please. It’s only seven dollars.”

  “Oh, honey, no,” her father says, distracted. “That’s a waste of money.”

  The little girl says, “How many packets of cigarettes would that buy, Daddy?”

  Silence, except for faint laughter coming from the next room. The father takes the book up to the register. Big surprise—three customers line up ahead of him, tattered old books in their arms. What on earth did they find that interests them?

  Every chance I get, I run out to check voice mail, where I’ve found a blip of a signal five blocks down and two blocks over. Robert has not called back. He can’t sell the condo without me. I need to sign the papers. I haven’t agreed to anything.

  In the late afternoon, an elderly man, hunched and stiff, slips into the children’s book room. He checks through the picture books. Dr. Seuss, animal books...

  “Can you help me?” he whispers, then looks around. “Ruma always helps me.”

  “Books for the children in your life?” I say. Tony is in another room, helping someone else.

  The man blushes and nods.

  “What kind of book are you looking for?” I haven’t read a picture book in decades. Outside, the rain is falling steadily.

  “Easy ones,” he whispers.

  “For a girl or a boy?”

  “Boy.”

  “How old is he?”

  The man scratches his chin with a thick forefinger and thumb, his nails worn down. “I have trouble keeping track.”

  A book falls with a thud, one aisle over. A voice whispers, He does not want it for a boy, he does not want it for a toy....

  “Excuse me? Hello?” I turn the corner, but nobody’s there. I return to the man.

  “Are you looking for books for... yourself?” I say. I don’t mean to sound—or look—incredulous, but I can’t help it. The man must have just learned to read. He must be sixty years old.

  His face reddens in blotches. He tosses his book on the table and hurries toward the exit. I run after him. “Sir, wait!” But he leaves in a whirlwind of shame.

  “What was that all about?” Tony asks behind me. He peers out the window. “What did you say to him?”

  “I asked if the picture books were for him.”

  “Brava, Jasmine. Score.” Tony rolls his eyes.

  “The poor
man. Should I go after him?”

  “Let him go. He’ll be back.”

  But the man does not return. I wish I’d caught his name.

  My eyes are itchy from dust, and I’m shivering. The heating system must be on the blink. I close the two open windows, which both popped open on their own, after I fiddled with them.

  In the evening, I’m about to close the store, when a slim, tanned woman in a double-breasted Burberry raincoat rushes in, cheeks flushed. She’s bony and compact, no part of her wasted. “Hello, Jasmine. I’m Lucia Peleran. Doctor Lucia Peleran. Welcome back to Fairport. Is the town the way you remember it?”

  I step back and smile. How does she know who I am? “My aunt must have told you about me.”

  “We’re delighted to have you back.” She gazes closely at my face, so I can smell the faint odor of peppermint on her breath. “If you ever need your back adjusted, you pop right on down to Fairport Chiropractic, and I’ll get you fixed right up. You look like you might be out of alignment.”

  I roll my shoulders and turn my head from side to side. “Nope, I feel just fine.”

  Her penciled eyebrows pull together. “No kinks? I would think a woman in your situation might have a few knots.”

  “In my situation?” My stomach tightens. What does she know?

  She waves a bony hand, her fingers like the bare twigs on a leafless shrub. “We’ve all been there, honey, believe me. Just about every woman in this town.”

  “Been where?” I’ve been shoved into an unwelcome spotlight.

  She leans in close. “I went on a terrible date right after my divorce, as well. He wanted to get me into bed. And I realized that it was too soon.”

  “Excuse me,” I say, clenching my hands. “I’m not interested in discussing my personal life.”

  She keeps right on going. “I needed to take care of myself, go to a spa, sit in a hot tub. An adjustment is what you need—”

  “I’m absolutely fine. I’ve been alone for nearly a year.” I told Auntie about my one disastrous attempt to go out on a blind date soon after the separation—a setup orchestrated by my best friend, Carol. I wore a red dress that caught in the car door. I burst into tears before we even reached the restaurant, and the poor man had to take me home. Auntie shared this personal story with strangers. I’m going to kill her.