The Bookshop Hotel

by A. K. Klemm

  She rested for a minute while the woman bustled around, loading the rest of the leatherbound loot into boxes and laundry baskets. Worst case scenario, those books would sell for ten dollars apiece. Best case, depending on the title, seventy-five. She’d done well. She slipped a business card across the table with the money. Matthew had them printed just that month, too.

  “The Bookshop Hotel?” the woman asked.

  “Restored from The Lily Hollow Hotel.” AJ didn’t get a chance to say more.

  “Oh, I love that place! Well, I’ve never been, but my parents were married there. I grew up just staring at the photos in their wedding album. I thought it was torn down or condemned now.”

  “No, I restored it. My great grandfather owned it. It’s a bookshop now. Call me if you don’t sell the rest of those paintings, or anything else for that matter. I’ll drive back out and pick through what’s left before you go.”

  “Wonderful. Thank you.”

  “Thank you.”

  She still had a hundred dollars in the console of the car that she hid from herself during big sales like this. She drove past the others on the list, popped into a garage sale on the way, and came out with a five-dollar coat rack. Peering in the rear view mirror, she saw the girl still following, so she popped onto the highway and headed home. Every few miles, AJ checked to see if the girl was still there, and she was, just chugging away in her ancient Volvo.

  When AJ finally pulled into Aspen Court, she saw the girl’s eyes grow wide. AJ parked around back, and the girl boldly pulled in as well.

  “Can you help me carry the stuff in?” AJ asked the girl.

  The girl nodded and picked up a load. Matthew poked his head out the side door and set a cinder block against it to keep it open as he helped haul boxes.

  “Looks like it was a good trip,” he said, eyeing the stuff and the girl.

  “It really was.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Ivy,” the girl said, finally speaking. One of her dreadlocks found its way to the corner of her mouth, but she shook it free. Her hair was a mess and yet looked wildly cool. Dreadlocks, braids, curls—she seemed to have a little bit of everything spilling off her head.

  “Hi, Ivy. I’m Matthew.”

  He didn’t bother to ask where AJ had found her, and Ivy didn’t bother to offer any more information. What do you say to someone in a situation like this? “Hi, I stalked your girlfriend and followed her here because I had nothing better to do,” didn’t sound like a promising start to any relationship.

  “Picked her up in Briar,” AJ announced. “I thought we could use a cashier.” She looked meaningfully at Ivy who took a minute to process what was happening. This crazy lady knew she’d been stalked all day, and she was offering her a job.

  “Yes!” Ivy said, nearly dropping the box on the floor when she caught a full view of the lobby-area-turned-bookshop. “I’d love to.” Her heart literally skipped a beat. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I know,” AJ said. “I know.”

  “These are incredible!” Matthew interrupted AJ and Ivy’s exchange as he carried box after box out of the jeep and into the service elevator.

  “I know. I’m pretty shocked that I got such a good deal.”

  “I didn’t think you took that much with you.” He heaved another box into the elevator.

  “I didn’t. Got them super cheap.”

  “These paintings are pretty awesome, too.”

  “I know. I’m torn as to whether I should put them in the rooms or sell them.”

  “Both. I want this one in my room. We could line the stairway and tag the rest.”

  “Yes, good.”

  He set the paintings against the wall to the downstairs office.

  “I only paid fifteen apiece, but we can sell them for a hundred.”

  “Sounds good. And the books?”

  “We can start looking them up tonight. Most will go for twenty-five to fifty each. I want the lamps in the café. We could set up a display of some of the books on the mantel.”

  “Nice fall-down doll.” Matthew plucked the little wooden Curious George out of the box.

  “Oh, I forgot about that.” AJ took it from his hand and headed up the stairs. When she came back, she had a little stack of Curious George books, and she placed it by the register with the doll to the side of them Vanna White style.

  Matthew had everything in the service elevator by then, and he waved to Ivy to join him. “Going up,” he told her.

  Once on the third floor, the boxes were toted into a sorting room. Things were piled all over the place, but in an organized bit of chaos.

  “What is this place?”

  “The Bookshop Hotel. Didn’t you know before you got here?”

  “No, I sort of followed her here.”

  “Of course you did. She’s good at getting things to fall in her lap. Were you actually looking for a job?”

  “I didn’t think I was, but now I totally want to be here.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In my car, for now.” Ivy wasn’t sure how he’d take this, and at first, she thought they were going to kick her out.

  “Not if you decide to work here you won’t.”

  Ivy grimaced and then smiled as Matthew opened a door to a room further down the hall. “It’s a hotel,” he said. “AJ lives there, and I live here.”

  After spending some time training Ivy on the register and showing her the ropes of the place, Ivy and Matthew processed a few boxes of the books and hung all the paintings up the massive winding staircase. That took most the day and turned out to be more exhausting than expected.

  Around dinner time, Matthew cooked up some pasta in the café, and the three sat around a table and attempted a bit of small talk. When Ivy finished her food, AJ handed her the key to suite 2D and said simply, “Move in.”

  Matthew chewed his food slowly and watched Ivy head out the door to start gathering stuff from her car. He was excited for the business. Hiring a new employee meant they were doing well. It meant that he could get some sleep and not work nearly as hard or around the clock. AJ was great about taking advantage of lulls throughout the day to allow them to nap or relax, and it was awesome living there and not having a commute.

  Sharing a kitchen with the café, they always ate fairly well. But he had turned into bookstore clerk, handyman, barista, and chef all at once. This new girl would at least ensure that he didn’t have to pick up any shifts at the register, too.

  Disappointment came in an unexpected wave. It meant they would no longer have these quiet dinners together, alone. It meant there was a third person upstairs sharing their hall, the employee library, and their lives. He hadn’t realized until Ivy walked through the door that afternoon that his partnership with AJ had become the most important relationship he’d ever had. These months restoring this building to its former glory in a fresh, new way had fed him, built him up, gave him a whole new outlook on the meaning of having a purpose.

  Would a third person change it all?

  Then again, having a third person at the shop would free him up to go take a week or two off and be somewhere else for a while. He was itching to go, to be somewhere else, even if it was just Briar for the weekend. Maybe AJ would want to take a break with him.

  “It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory.”

  — Paulo Coelho

  Matthew

  For Matthew, the first few months at The Bookshop Hotel were simultaneously quiet and loud. Before the store had even opened, a working crew hung around hammering most of the day.

  Matthew and AJ were silent partners. In all the banging and clamor of the renovation, he usually had earphones in, and she usually buried herself in the rhythm of a saw or screwdriver. They pointed and gestured over the noise and settled in together on the couch for a movie and hot beverage at the end of the day, if they didn’t pass out first. A lot of time was spent together, but there was very little conversation.

&nb
sp; Outside of her mannerisms, her goals for the shop, and what he heard around town, Matthew didn’t really know much about his boss, yet he felt close to her. He knew how she lived, how she liked her coffee, her favorite things to eat, how long it took her to fall asleep, what stumped her, and what motivated her—without a word.

  He’d only been moved in for about a week the first time he heard the thrashing and crying from down the hall. Terrified, he rushed down to her door, which was unlocked, and he poked his head inside only to get hit with a book.

  “Ow!”

  The crying stopped. “I’m so sorry.” Her face was red, and her hands shook. Her room was a wreck, but nothing was broken. “You were probably trying to sleep.”

  “Not yet.” He wasn’t sure whether or not to enter. He barely knew her, just that she worked hard and that she was a widow. Until that moment, he hadn’t imagined her to be crazy, but she looked pretty wild with anger, and she’d turned over half the furniture. Then it dawned on him. This is what grief looked like. Her eyes were puffy, and her voice a little raspy when she said, “I’ll be quieter. You go to sleep.”

  He did the opposite. He swung the door open and started cleaning up. She just stayed on the floor and watched him pick up the nightstand and return it to its rightful place.

  “I’m ok, really,” she said when he was done and put his hand out to take hers.

  “You can be ok and still need a change of scenery.”

  Suite 2A had been crammed with all the furniture that wasn’t being used elsewhere and had previously made up the hotel lobby—an old circular couch, a few chaise lounges, four wingback chairs, and rolls and rolls of area rugs.

  Matthew was still holding AJ’s hand in his own. It was small and calloused from all the hard work around the building. The top of her head barely made it to his shoulder, and he didn’t consider himself a tall man.

  “I want to make this a living area,” he said. “For us.”

  She hiccuped as she opened her mouth to answer, and he realized that she was quite possibly drunk.

  AJ eyed him sheepishly. “I had wine,” she said.

  He started laughing, and soon, she joined him. They laughed until they both gave up on standing in the doorway, and each stumbled into their own chair. When the giggling stopped, AJ surveyed the room.

  “An employee library and living room would be nice. Fix it up however you want, and we’ll get some bookshelves in here. If there’s ever something you want to stash for yourself but don’t wish to buy, we’ll just keep it in here. Like Shakespeare and Co.”

  She was calm again. Resolved. They sat there until she nodded off in the chair she was in, and he left her until he was certain that moving her would not wake her up. He scooped her in his arms, carried her to her room, and tucked her in bed. She was tiny and light.

  When he got back to his own room he walked straight to the mantel where he’d placed a framed picture of a woman. He took the frame in his hand, stared at it a moment, and tossed it in the trash, frame and all.

  The next morning, AJ woke up to a tap on her door and a throbbing headache. Matthew came in with a glass of water, a mug, and a pile of toast.

  “Hangover breakfast,” he said.

  “You are the best assistant ever.”

  “Yep.”

  “I should thank your boss from that internship, eh?”

  “I’ll give you the address. Hearing how awesome I am will surely piss him off.”

  She offered a half-smile and guzzled the water. “What time is it?”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s Sunday. No work crew today.”

  “Thank God.” She threw her head back on the pillow.

  He patted her knee and left her. When he came back a few hours later, she was sleeping, so he went back to his room with a book and ate the sandwich he’d made for her. A few more weeks passed, and nothing was said of the matter, until one day around three in the morning, he heard furniture and screaming again.

  The door was locked this time, but he heard glass breaking inside, so he busted the door open. The suite doors were thin, and it was easy to get past the locks. He ran to the bathroom and found her there.

  The mirror was broken, glass was shattered all over the tile, and her arms were bleeding. Grabbing her arms was difficult—he was afraid to press any glass further into her skin. Her white t-shirt was splattered with blood, and he finally got ahold of her and pulled her into him.

  “Stop. Stop.” He was stern, and his grip was strong but gentle. He didn’t know what to do with this woman. She was typically so calm, so normal, so steady. Until the middle of the night when she just… wasn’t.

  She cried for nearly an hour until she just fell asleep against him. He lowered her into the empty bath tub and brought a pillow to prop her head up and then went to the broom closet at the end of the hall by the elevator to get cleaning supplies.

  He swept the glass, mopped up the blood, washed his hands, and then sat at the bathtub with the trash can and went to work plucking glass out of her arms and hands. He checked her feet for any loose pieces she might have walked on because she hadn’t been wearing shoes, bandaged a nasty cut on her hand, and then scooped her up and carried her to bed.

  There was a journal left open on her nightstand, and he caught a few sentence fragments referencing the shop, her marriage, Kevin, and not knowing what to do. He took his eyes off the book, feeling like an intruder. He sat down on her bed, wondering what he should do. Leaving her alone didn’t seem safe. Staying there seemed inappropriate. His eyes lingered to the journal. It was open. He could read it and she’d never know. He could find out what she was thinking, what was wrong, what she expected of him. But he wouldn’t. He didn’t. He left the room.

  AJ woke up feeling guilty. She remembered hitting the mirror and Matthew coming to the rescue, but she didn’t remember where the bandage on her hand had come from.

  She got up and tiptoed to the shower. It was still dark outside, and the bathroom light had been left on. Matthew had cleaned up after her, apparently. She pulled the bandage off and inspected the cut on her palm in the light. The bleeding had stopped, and Matthew had done a decent job cleaning it and putting a butterfly Band-Aid on it. She sat on the edge of the tub and turned on the water, gingerly testing the temperature.

  While she waited for the water to warm up, she ran her hands over her feet. There was a tiny sliver of glass still stuck in her heel, and she pulled it out, tossing it in the tub to wash down the drain.

  No more late-night bottles of wine, she thought. Wine definitely did not bring out the best in her these days. Granddaddy Jack always said they were mean drunks, but she’d never tested the theory before now. Everything she’d never had the courage to say to Kevin while he was alive seemed to come out of her once she got near the bottom of the bottle, as though she could scream him back into existence and make him be better, make him want to be the way they had been when they were younger. Make him be alive.

  When they were kids, Kevin was all smiles after a football game, proud of himself, proud of her, proud of his town. No one would ever know that he was also somewhat embarrassed by all the attention and how hard he worked to not let anybody down. She remembered feeling special in knowing that. She remembered feeling special when he said, “You don’t expect anything from me. I like that.”

  She hadn’t expected anything out of him then. She didn’t expect anything until she fell in love with him, and that was when it all started to change. It was the worst when it should have been the sweetest.

  AJ switched on the shower and got undressed. Under the heat, she let herself relax. Sure, she was angry at Kevin—for being Kevin, for withering, for dying. But she was angrier with herself for marrying him, for letting him wither and withdraw, for not speaking up, for not understanding what he was capable of behind the wheel of a car, for not being able to admit to anyone that the car accident was Kevin’s fault, and that it probably wasn’t even an accident.

  Her bones fel
t good under the water, but she looked at her hands and her puckered skin and knew she should get out. She was just wasting the utilities. Matthew might want hot water later, and they still hadn’t replaced the water heater.

  She dried off, wrapped her hair in a towel, and pulled her clothes on. House slippers on her feet, she took the stairwell to the kitchen and found herself face-to-face with Matthew, who had two coffee mugs in hand.

  “I was coming to check on you.”

  “Thanks. I’m fine.” She took the coffee, and he stepped back into the kitchen and leaned against the counter.

  “Nice hat.” He pointed at the towel. She nervously pulled it off her head and chucked it to the laundry bin they kept by the fridge for towels and aprons.

  “What’s in the oven?”

  “Corn casserole. It’s good comfort food.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Corn, cheese, corn, cornbread, and corn.”

  “Sounds yummy.”

  “My mom used to make it when we were sad.”

  “Ah.”

  “How’s the hand?”

  “It’s fine.”

  He reached out and cupped her face, tucking her wet hair behind her ear. “Good.”

  She looked away from him and awkwardly bit her lip. The words “I’m married” came to mind, but before she could say them, she realized that she wasn’t. She looked down at her left hand, the ring still there.

  When she’d woken up in the hospital, her rings had been removed. Her fingers were in splints from the accident. They had smashed into the dashboard. After the splints came off, a nurse brought the rings in and asked if she wanted help getting them on. Her right arm was still in a cast and sling.

  “Just set them there.” AJ pointed to the hospital tray. She stared at them for two days.

  AJ didn’t actually remember the car accident, but she read the accident report and saw the news. And she knew Kevin. She stared at the rings and wondered what she should do. Normally, she’d ask Kevin, but he wasn’t there. Or Granddaddy Jack, but he was too sick to come to the phone.