“I still love you.”
“And I still love you.” And I knew she meant it.
Sylvia’s eyes turned serious and her lips tightened. It was the look she got when she was lining up her facts, ready to make an argument to the jury.
“Gina, we need to talk about this. It’s easy for me to live my life the way I want to live it. It’s much easier for me than it is for you. I know that, sweetheart, I really do. My life is open. The person I appear to be is what I am. The two fit together—I don’t have to explain anything later on at some awkward moment.”
I must have acted like I was going to object, but she beat me to it.
“I know you’re going to say, ‘What about us? How did that happen?’ Well, that was just what it was at that time—it doesn’t go beyond that.
“My point is that I know how difficult it is for you to find the right relationship. What you are doesn’t fit with everything else. I know that guy at the bar didn’t appeal to you, but what if he did? What would you say to him? How would you…”
She was searching for the right word, but I interrupted. “Maybe I should just start wearing a name tag. It could say, ‘My name is Gina, and I’m…”
Sylvia stopped me short. There was a flash of anger on her face, and that was mixed with a few hurt feelings. She was trying to be helpful, and I was being sarcastic. And she knew it.
“I’m just trying to help out. Maybe it’s a mistake for me to do so. I know you don’t thrust yourself in front of people, and I respect that. I think that’s one of the things I love about you the most. But at times you seem so lonely and frustrated.”
True.
I don’t know if I was lonely or frustrated at that moment, but I knew what she was talking about. Sylvia was getting antsy—maybe worried that I might start complicating things with her. But I wasn’t going to do that. Our relationship was what it was. It wasn’t going to change, and I wasn’t going to push it. After we split up, she’d gone back to her old girl-friend—the one she’d lived with before we met. Sylvia knew I didn’t think Margo was good enough for her, but she didn’t want me reminding her of my opinion.
However, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I was just reflecting on the fact I was Gina Perini—a bookseller who was lucky enough to have a very talented lawyer as a friend. Sylvia was the one person in my life who knew everything about me. When my life got lonely, she could sense it. When things from the past would dog me, she knew what I was facing. She was the only one I trusted, and every now and then I had to grab onto that thought and cling to it.
Sylvia gave up for the moment trying to follow my mood shifts.
“Maybe we should talk about something else.”
I nodded in agreement. The waitress came back in time to give us a needed break.
“Let’s order some wine and get started on it before the food gets here.”
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Hayes Street Books was only a few blocks away, and my apartment was in a flat above the bookstore. To get there, I walked up Gough Street, took a ninety-degree turn left, and then went a couple of blocks west on Hayes. It was one of the many things that surprised me about San Francisco—all the streets in the main part of town were at a very logical right angle to the other. Where I grew up, nothing was like that. The streets meandered around hills, following the whim of a country path, or they traced the edge of a fortification that some warlord had erected centuries ago to keep out the peasants. But San Francisco was part of the New World—in fact, it was as far west as you could go in the New World without falling into the ocean. Back when it was a fresh-faced American city, some very earnest pioneers, who had just marched all the way across the continent, probably thought they should create a nice, rectangular grid like all the other American cities. My guess is that it never occurred to them that superimposing right-angle streets on a city with steep hills would produce a collection of sheer cliffs and roller-coaster streets. It was something that would drive visitors slightly crazy over the next two centuries.
Sylvia offered to walk with me to my flat, but I told her no. She was probably worried about me. There’d been times in the not-so-distant past when I’d been known to panic without warning. The war that had chased me out of the Balkans had officially ended, but my own personal slice of that bloodletting was far from over. I knew I’d probably be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. Still, I’d grown calmer lately. Maybe enough time had gone by to ease things, or maybe it was just the distance—or maybe I was kidding myself. In any event, the streets of Hayes Valley were filled at that moment with a happy Friday night crowd. You had a better chance of being smothered by a restless group of twenty-somethings who were spread out across the sidewalk than being accosted by an attacker or a bad memory. Besides, I knew it was easier for Sylvia just to walk in the opposite direction from the restaurant and grab the BART train. She’d be back at her house in North Oakland in a half hour, and I wouldn’t be monopolizing any more of her time. She might even get there soon enough to keep Margo from quizzing her about me.
What was my type? I couldn’t get Sylvia’s question out of my head. I looked into the shop windows along Hayes Street, walking slowly as I pondered the question. There was a sale going on at Dish. They had some cute jackets on display, but they still looked like they were out of my price range. I loved the vintage skirt that I’d bought a week earlier at Ver Unica, but I didn’t see anything like that in the window. What was I looking for in a relationship? I seemed to revel more in discovering clothes than in finding a lover. Maybe I was fated to be a perennial window-shopper.
Absinthe, at the corner of Gough and Hayes, had the usual crowd at the bar. It was another favorite of mine and my go-to restaurant if a publisher’s rep offered to take me to lunch or dinner. There didn’t seem to be anyone of interest in there at the moment. Sylvia thought I needed a more systematic approach for finding companionship, and she was probably right. The normal kind of minglings and mixers don’t work very well for me. She said I should set my sights on someone strong, masculine, and confident. But I knew she had it backward. Men like that scare me. But it wasn’t so much that they frightened me physically. It’s just that men who are that immersed in their own maleness usually wear me down. I can deal with a man’s emotional needs—but if his needs are packed away so deep that he doesn’t even know he has them, that blocks off any attempt at intimacy. I was slowing starting to realize something about myself that I wasn’t too happy to admit: I seem to do better with men who are on the brink of falling apart.
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The window of Hayes Street Books looked darker than I liked it to be. As I crossed the street and got closer to the store, I tried to think of ways to lighten it up. Maybe I could lighten up some of my apprehensions as well. As with most bookstores, our front window thrusts itself trustingly out toward the street hoping to draw attention. The books in the window are all proper enough–looking, but if you looked closely you could see ideas and provocations behind those covers that might drive some people over the edge. You can never be sure who will be offended by what they see. A few weeks earlier there were two men outside the window, grumbling about a display I had arranged of books portraying the impact of gun violence. They glared at me with a wordless hatred as I stepped past them and into the store.
My mood usually perks up when I’m inside and surrounded by books. Late in the evening, I usually don’t do much more than poke around, making sure that the most important books are face-out instead of spine-out. When you manage a bookstore, you can always convince yourself there’s something more to do—move some shelves, change the display on the tables—even if you spend the next day unconvincing yourself of the same thing. My apartment is upstairs from the store, and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. The owners of the store also own the building, so when they retired they offered to let me live upstairs as part of the deal for managing the bookstore. The
re was a promise that they’d sell me the store someday, but it was left pretty vague. Still, the convenience of the deal appealed to me. There was no commute, and I could get downstairs whenever I was needed. I realize now that they probably knew me better than I knew myself. If they wanted someone so obsessed with the bookselling business that she’d be there looking out for things around the clock, then that’s what they got—me.
Miriam Brown, my assistant manager, was running the store that evening. She’s our unofficial ambassador to the African-American community a few blocks to the west of us—a group that seems to be growing smaller by the day under the pressures of gentrification. She’s also my right arm and, I have to admit, knows some of my bad habits. Miriam sometimes does an imitation of me selling books, mimicking me as I try to put a book into someone’s hand, letting him or her touch it, as I sing the praises of the author and give a little teaser about the plot. I suppose that’s true. I usually count on a book cozying up to the customer and saying, “You need me.” Miriam claims that I’m trying to put the idea in the heads of customers that if the book is perched on their bookshelf, people will see it as evidence of their good taste. Am I that bad? I’m not sure, but Miriam is usually right about me.
That evening, Miriam was arranging chairs in the back of the store for our children’s story time that was scheduled for the next morning. Morrie, who delighted in his role as storyteller-in-chief, had already placed the books around the wall before he’d gone home earlier. It was beautiful display, but I winced a little whenever I saw an array of children’s books like that. It made me think about things—things from the past. There was a little child…but now she’s no longer a child, if she’s alive at all. When I think about her, it saddens me that she may have missed all this. Did anyone give her a big picture book as she was growing up or watch her face as she traced her fingers around the outlines of the animals? Did anyone sit next to her and read her a story? Did anyone laugh with her as she went through the experience of learning how to read? If she was anywhere at all at that moment, she was now a teenager. I just hoped she was okay. I knew better than to dwell on any of that. Still, I sometimes had a hard time shaking those thoughts, as I trudged up the stairs to my apartment.
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Why did I become a bookseller? The idea planted itself in my mind years ago and then bubbled to the surface later on. At the time, I was a scared and desperate teenager. Looking back, I suppose you could glamorize what I went through by calling it some sort of odyssey. But if there was any poetry attached to that experience, it escaped me. I was running for my life—and from my life. The last thing on my mind was my future career.
I was hiding out in Dubrovnik, but for me that city had become a trap. Even though I’d snuck across the boundary from Bosnia and then into Croatia, I had no place else to go. I’d been evading capture for several months, hiding in the back streets, but I feared that my luck had run out. And it wasn’t just my own safety I was worried about. I knew that anyone who had been connected with me during those months was in danger. I had to leave Anja and the others, because if I stayed there, I would be putting them in more peril than they already were. Anja had taken Jelena and the others from the place in the mountains where they’d been hiding, and they had moved once again. I was hoping they’d found someplace safe. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if they were caught.
I hadn’t yet become Gina at that point in my life—that came many months later. For the moment, I was just a kid full of self-doubt. And as dangerous as it was for me to hide out in the back streets of Dubrovnik, I realize now I might have been in even more danger if I had made the change that was awaiting me in the future. As it was, I was just a lost-looking waif who was able to wander around without drawing too much attention. Still, I knew my time was short. If I stayed there much longer, I’d be found.
The Militia had agents up and down the Dalmatian coast, and they had eyes everywhere. At one point I was certain that someone was following me. I caught a glimpse of a man taking my picture, but he darted away before I could find out who he was. I was sure, however, he’d be back soon with his friends. The border with Bosnia was just a few kilometers away, and these people weren’t going to let an international boundary stop them. The Komandant and his friends were close to tracking me down, and I knew they had revenge on their minds. But in Dubrovnik, I had my back to the sea. If I stayed there, they’d find me. And if they found me, I’d be dead.
And while I was still trying to escape that shooting war, I realized I was fighting a mini-war within myself. During my months in hiding, some basic issues about my own identity were starting to force their way to the surface. These were questions that would dominate my life in future months, but for the time being I couldn’t focus on them. I was too confused and terrified. At that moment, there was certainly none of the promise—even joy—that would open up to me in later years. I was just grappling with the deep fear that I was running from something without any idea of where I was going.
Dubrovnik was a strange place to be hiding at that moment. As one of the world’s great cultural treasures, it was awash in a sea of tourists. Each day brought a new group of happy, camera-laden people wandering through the streets, soaking up the historic riches. Many of them may have been dimly aware of the war that was going on less than a hundred kilometers away, but it didn’t seem to affect their enjoyment of the city. Dubrovnik had been bombarded for three months in 1991 during the early part of the war, but it had recovered to the point where it could present its rich, historic face to visitors once again. But I didn’t belong there. It was probably obvious to everyone that there was something about me that was out of place. The city was at peace, but I was still at war. I knew I had to get out of there, and at times it felt like the means of escape were tantalizingly close. When I wandered down near the port, I looked out across the Adriatic Sea and wondered if I could ever to get across the water to safety.
I’d been there a few days when I decided to follow an English-language tour group that was walking around the city, stopping at the various landmarks on Stradun, the main street. As I worked my way around the fringes of the group, I tried to be inconspicuous. Since I was dressed like a universal teenager—hooded sweatshirt, dirty jeans, and sneakers—I suppose I looked like any of the young stragglers from around the world who wandered through the city. But it was all an illusion. If anyone talked to me for a few minutes, they would probably figure out I was on the run from something. The group I had attached myself to was made up mostly of older people, walking at their own pace, focusing on the words of the English-speaking guide. I was listening too, because I was trying to soak up as much English as I could. Somewhere in my mind I knew it would come in handy. I was standing at the edge of that tour group, but suddenly my skin started to bristle. Someone was talking to me.
My fear blocked out everything. I was sure I had been found out, and I started looking around for a way to escape. It took me a few seconds to realize that the man was speaking to me in English. Then I finally realized that he was introducing himself and his wife, who was walking next to him. At that moment, I was so frozen that I didn’t hear much of what he said. To this day, I still don’t know his name. I must have nodded something in response, because he kept talking pleasantly. After a minute or so, I realized he wasn’t any kind of a threat. He was tall with a thick gray beard, and he had on a broad-brimmed khaki hat with a chin strap. He was wearing a gray shirt and khaki pants that had lots of pockets up and down the legs. His wife had on a sundress and a large floppy hat, and there was a camera hanging on a strap around her neck. They both appeared to be in their early sixties, maybe older. They were American tourists, and they just wanted to be friendly.
I finally realized what had caught their attention. There was a book sticking out of the pouch on my sweatshirt, and he recognized the title. It was a dog-eared paperback copy of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses that I had picked
up earlier that day for next to nothing at a local bookstall.
“Are you enjoying that book?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I had just started it and that my English was not good enough to catch the subtleties of Rushdie’s writing. I nodded yes, and he nodded back in satisfaction. We continued to talk while the group was moving on to the next stop, and I fell into a comfortable pace walking between the two of them. He asked me about myself, and I answered with only the vaguest generalities. At one point, he wanted to know if I knew about the controversy surrounding that particular book. I told him that I’d heard about it, but the truth is that I knew only the sketchiest details.
“There were death threats made against anyone who sold the book. Some of the big outfits wouldn’t touch it, but we decided to carry it.”
I must have looked surprised.
“My wife and I are booksellers in Massachusetts.”
He told me where the store was located, but I don’t remember what he said. I only knew Massachusetts as a blob on a map somewhere across the Atlantic Ocean. At the time, the only thing I could think to ask was whether anyone had attacked them for selling the book.
“We had a couple of threatening phone calls, and one night someone shot a bullet through the plate-glass window at the front of the store.”
The alarm must have showed on my face.
“It happened at night, so no one was hurt.”
My anxiety was still showing.
“I know. Maybe we should have been more cautious.” He nodded toward his wife who was walking slightly ahead of us.
“But we talked about it and decided there are times when you just have to do the right thing. We boarded up the hole in the glass and then put a big stack of The Satanic Verses in the window next to it.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think I could say anything without giving away too much about myself. The two of them just kept walking, and I kept walking with them.
Through the Bookstore Window Page 3