The Bookshop of Yesterdays

by Amy Meyerson

  “We’re going to need a real website,” I said. “Not just a homepage. And a Facebook account. Instagram, too.”

  I expected Malcolm to fight me on this. Instead, he confessed, “I’ve always wanted to write a noir blog.”

  “I’ve always wanted to write a crocheting blog,” Lucia said hopefully.

  “Let’s not get carried away,” Malcolm told her. She stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Why don’t we do some stuff for kids, too? I can do a Dr. Seuss day,” Charlie said, and I felt that familiar desire to hug him.

  We compiled a list of events to advertise on our new website, beginning with Sheila’s book launch party, celebrations around the birthdays of Raymond Chandler, Hemingway and other staff favorites.

  “We can’t do more than one birthday a month,” Malcolm argued. “It won’t work if we oversaturate the calendar.”

  “But you’re the one who wanted both Chandler and Hemingway,” I argued. Their birthdays were two days apart.

  “It’s called brainstorming,” Malcolm said.

  “It’s called brainstorming,” Lucia mimicked, her voice loose with alcohol.

  Malcolm hopped up but Lucia was spry. He chased her until he had her cornered in the literature section. When he lunged at her, she sidestepped his hands. They breathed heavily and, just when Lucia turned to smile at me, Malcolm made a quick dive for her legs and tossed her over his shoulder. She kicked, her twig legs flittering in the air, as floppy as a dying fish.

  “Malcolm put me down! I’m serious.” He held her inches over the trash can as she squealed. After a few moments, he placed her on the floor. She punched his arm with little effort. “You’re such a child.”

  Still breathing heavily, Malcolm sat back down. “August is always slow.” He pointed to the names on the birthday list—James Baldwin, Charles Bukowski, Dorothy Parker, the nights blocked off for readings. “We shouldn’t plan too much. Maybe one reading. And Bukowski.”

  “But we have to get sales up in August. No way this is going to work if we have a slow month,” I said.

  “You can’t get people to come in if they’re all out of town,” he said.

  “The whole city is out of town? Everyone in LA?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I’m still running my crochet circle in August,” Lucia said defiantly.

  We set the calendar through the end of September, with a lightened schedule for August. In September we’d pick back up, a Roald Dahl day, complete with a chocolate fountain that Charlie promised to pay for if it didn’t pay for itself, a Ken Kesey night, regular book clubs and writers-group meetings until the fated day of October 1 when the mortgage payment and line of credit were due. On September 30, we’d throw a blowout party. A gala. A celebration whether we succeeded or failed. Either way, it would be my final goodbye.

  When our growling stomachs dominated the conversation, Charlie made turkey sandwiches in Prospero’s bare-bones kitchen. Over dinner, Lucia, Charlie and Malcolm swapped their favorite memories of Prospero Books. Lucia said she hated reading until she discovered How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Her memory was photographic. She could recall the eyebrow and lip piercings of each customer she’d sold the novel to, the silver rings and ankle boots they’d worn when they returned weeks later, asking for more recommendations. Charlie described his first day at the store, how he’d forgotten a bagel in the toaster and the whole café had filled with smoke. He’d thought for sure he would get fired, but Billy showed him how to use the timer, how to prevent accidents like that from happening again.

  Malcolm remembered the regular who had proposed near the table where we sat. The screenwriter, who could now afford his own office and rarely came into the café. When that writer had sold his first script, Billy had treated everyone to champagne. When another writer had learned his father had died, Billy had closed the café so the man could grieve alone. Once, a young man stampeded the literature section, tearing down one book then another, ripping out the pages of his beloved’s favorite romances. Malcolm had tried to intervene, but Billy stopped him. The boy shredded ten books before he calmed. He paid for the books without further outburst. After the boy left, Billy put the pages in a box, and tucked it away in the storage room for safekeeping. As far as Malcolm knew, the box was still there.

  In turn, I told them how Billy had brought me here as a kid, how he’d said to pick a book, any book, and those novels contained more magic than if I’d bought them in another bookstore. I told them how Lee and Billy used to answer the phone, Where books are prized above dukedom, and Lucia repeated this as though it was a fight song, swinging her fist as she recited it again and again, books and dukedom, sloshing beer onto the table until Malcolm told her to settle down.

  I described Silver Lake in the ’90s, how there weren’t cafes and cheese shops. Instead, cars regularly were broken into, sometimes you even heard the echo of a gunshot.

  Malcolm lamented gentrification and displacement until Lucia yawned exaggeratedly and threw her napkin at him. “You live in Echo Park,” she said. “Don’t act so valiant.”

  We swapped memories of the store until the sky darkened, and the popping of illegal fireworks echoed outside. We followed the sounds to the roof, where we had a clear view of Echo Park and downtown. The succession of sparklers sounded like a war zone.

  Lucia and I dangled our feet off the roof. “I wonder how many fireworks we’ll be able to see from here.” She pointed east. “Definitely the ones at Dodger Stadium.” She drifted her finger west. Her words were slurred. “Maybe even in Century City and Santa Monica. It’s pretty clear tonight.” Malcolm and Charlie were at the other end of the roof, speaking intensely about something. “Secrets, secrets are no fun, unless I am a part of one,” Lucia yelled to them.

  “If you want to know what we’re talking about, come over here,” Charlie shouted.

  “I can’t move. Literally, I can’t feel my legs.” She punched her thighs. “Nothing.” The sky darkened around us. I could move, but I didn’t want to. “Is this what you thought you’d be doing for the Fourth?” she asked me as she took a swig from the tequila bottle.

  “You mean did I think I’d be trying to save a store owned by my uncle who I hadn’t seen in sixteen years? No, I didn’t think I’d be doing that.” The alcohol had made me lose control of the volume of my voice. Lucia covered her ears with her hands.

  “I’m right next to you. You don’t have to shout.” We both laughed until Lucia’s face stilled. “You haven’t seen Billy in sixteen years?”

  “I wouldn’t make that up.”

  “That’s so sad.” She rested her head on my shoulder.

  “It is sad,” I said, resting my head on hers. “It’s really sad.”

  Charlie shuffled over to our side of the roof and sat down clumsily next to Lucia. He threw his arms around her, grabbing the bottle out of her hand.

  “You only want me for my booze,” she said.

  Malcolm lingered on the other side of the roof. I walked over to him and we watched the firecrackers sparkling in the distance. Despite our teamwork, our promise to work together, I still wasn’t quite sure what to say to him when we weren’t talking about Prospero Books.

  “Sorry if I was being difficult in there,” Malcolm said.

  “You? Difficult?”

  “I was always after Billy to change things. It’s just now that he’s gone...” He watched the fireworks pop and fade in the faraway sky.

  “It’s okay. I get it,” I said.

  “But I stand my ground on open mics. Not everyone should be encouraged to find their inner artist.”

  I nudged him with my elbow. “Billy was lucky to have you.”

  Malcolm stared at me like he was seeing me for the first time. “You know, you’re different than I thought you were.”

  “Different how?” My voice was more
hopeful than I would have liked.

  “You’re—” A firework exploded behind us, saving Malcolm from finishing his thought. Lucia jumped to her feet and ran toward us. We turned as the sky ignited in pink and blue. Lucia put her arms around us and howled.

  “How am I different?” I shouted over Lucia’s shoulder. Malcolm winked at me, then returned his attention to the sky. I wanted to reach for his hand. I wondered what would happen if I pulled him downstairs and pushed him against the literature section, if I would kiss him, if he would kiss me back. He was objectively less attractive than Jay. Soft around the middle. His hunched shoulders always making him seem slightly uncomfortable. There was something about him I couldn’t shake, though, something I couldn’t deny, either. Who was I kidding? I would never reach for his hand. I would never make him my zipless fuck, my zipless kiss even. Not simply because I was with Jay. It required an abandon I’d never had. Still, I couldn’t help but fantasize what it would be like to be the type of girl who only considered the consequences later.

  “Over here!” Charlie pointed west where three separate sets of fireworks flared in the distance. They burst erratically, releasing concentric circles of color. They must have looked as brilliant across the city as the fireworks at Dodger Stadium looked from Prospero’s roof. I pictured Mom at the beach, sitting on the blanket beside Dad, their hands entwined as they watched the white filaments fall into the ocean. Was she thinking about me as she watched the fireworks? Was she thinking about Evelyn and Billy, about the stories she could never tell me?

  Another firework erupted and Lucia raised her beer. “Here we go,” she shouted. Yellow filaments fell like rain as their centers exploded in patriotic blue. Before the blue dissipated, another firework went off, followed by the gunshots of a dozen more. We stood shoulder-to-shoulder, watching too many fireworks to count. For ninety seconds, it seemed the sky might never quiet. As the last firework faded to dust, Lucia shouted again. “Here we fucking go.”

  Several people cheered from the backyards that surrounded us. We joined them, uniting our cries with theirs, draining our vocal cords, but we didn’t care. We screamed until we were hoarse and our throats ached.

  * * *

  Renegade fireworks blazed for hours. At some point, we’d stumbled downstairs where our shouts were too loud for the slumbering store. Drinks materialized. I didn’t know what they were. I didn’t know how many I had. I didn’t know when or how I’d made it upstairs. In the morning, I was on Billy’s bed, alone, yesterday’s jeans glued to my thighs. I had hazy memories of calling Jay, the slur of sleep in his voice as he reported our bed empty without me. Fuzzy recollections of me offering to do things that would make him feel less alone, trying not to say Malcolm’s name by accident, avoiding the fact that I’d decided to remain apart from him for the rest of the summer. Jay laughed at my attempts to talk dirty, telling me he missed me, and we reached a truce because, despite the disappointment, despite the fighting, we still had that thing between us.

  Billy’s bedroom grew light. I stayed in bed, thinking about Jay. When I finally returned home at the end of the summer, he would meet me at the airport with flowers, and when I saw the flowers, when I saw Jay, I would remember how much I liked him. I would be thankful that I hadn’t acted on my desire for Malcolm. School would begin, and we would lesson-plan together. We would take shortcuts home through West Philadelphia that never saved us any time. We would act like colleagues in the halls, we would become lovers again at home, and it would all feel complete.

  But as I summoned those images, as I tried to recall how happy I was in my life in Philadelphia, I was distracted by the more immediate image of Prospero Books, of Malcolm’s inscrutable stares, of Charlie’s dimples, of Lucia’s chaos, of Billy’s clues. Could I really leave if I hadn’t solved Billy’s quest? If I hadn’t discovered what happened to Evelyn? Why Billy and Mom fought? Could I really take off for the east coast if Mom and I still weren’t speaking? If our relationship wasn’t repaired? And how could I leave if we saved the store? Was there any chance we would save it? Would any of it help? The book clubs, the parties, the readings? Maybe there was no fighting change, and Prospero Books was just another relic of yesterday’s Silver Lake, an obsolete store that couldn’t adapt. I tried to convince myself it was the hangover talking, the drop in dopamine that followed the rush of tequila, but in the gray morning after, the whole thing seemed impossible.

  Very few things indeed were really impossible. Had I forgotten Alice’s words so quickly? Billy believed in these words. He wanted me to believe in them, too. I had to try. I had to do everything I could to save Prospero Books.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Within a week, we had flyers and postcards tacked to every corkboard in every coffee shop and public library in Los Feliz, Silver Lake and Echo Park, complete with famous literary quotes and Prospero Books’ insignia.

  To learn to read is to light a fire. —Victor Hugo

  Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. —Mark Twain

  We read to know that we are not alone. —C. S. Lewis

  I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. —Jorge Luis Borges

  Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. —Frederick Douglass

  I cannot live without books. —Thomas Jefferson

  I contributed the last two.

  On our front door, Malcolm tacked a poster for our newly formed book clubs, four in total. One for small presses and debut authors we hoped to lure to the store. One on literary LA, at Malcolm’s insistence. One on world literature, at Lucia’s. One on the classics, old and new, which at a store named after Shakespeare seemed to go without saying.

  We had finalized the details for our gala: Saturday, September 28. Literary costume. Twenty dollars a ticket. Two hundred tickets in total. Tickets alone wouldn’t cover the average monthly loss, but it was a start. We’d have a silent auction to account for the rest. Malcolm put calls into a local furniture store, a few salons and bike shops to solicit sponsors. I drafted a press release, which we would send to local newspapers and blogs. Lucia and Charlie commissioned their friends, bartenders and waiters across the east side, urging their bosses to donate free platters and cocktails for the gala, to auction off prix fixe meals. We needed these donations; more so, we needed the support of the neighborhood, the insistence that everyone from the local florist to the clerk at the hardware store couldn’t bear to see us close.

  Malcolm had a friend who worked at KCRW and managed to get us at fifteen-second spot on the morning music show to advertise Sheila’s reading, so long as we agreed to be part of the station’s benefits program. While Malcolm scoffed at the words ten percent off, the entire arrangement was a win for us. It would introduce a new cast of public radio-listening Angelenos to Prospero Books.

  Of course Sheila’s reading had to be on Sunday, at 7:00 p.m., smack in the middle of the Brooks Family Cookout. A few days before Sheila’s reading, Dad texted one of his orders, and I knew this one was meant as a command: come sunday. When I wrote back, I’ll try, he added, make your mother happy. I wanted to write back that she should make me happy, too. Instead, I told him that I’d do my best to make it. I didn’t want to imagine what type of command Dad would issue if I texted to tell him I couldn’t come, after all. Besides, the person I really wanted to talk to was Mom.

  It had been three weeks since I talked to her. Once, when I’d joined the art teacher as a chaperone on a tenth-grade trip to Italy, Mom and I hadn’t talked for a week. She made me promise to email every day, so she wouldn’t have to call the American Embassy to make sure I hadn’t been abducted, and I reported to her regularly on the students who had snuck wine, others who smelled of cigarettes, the coupling and uncoupling that occurred almost daily resulting in tears and, once, a fistfight. When I was stateside, she would become nervous after thirty-six hours of not speaking. At forty-eigh
t hours, the nerves bordered on hysteria. I never minded. It was one of the many ways I felt tethered to her. Even when we lived far apart we were integral to each other’s lives. Now that I was close, that hold was loosening. It was up to me to do something if I wanted that grip to tighten again.

  Mom picked up on the first ring. “Miranda, I’m at the market. They have rhubarb. I’m going to make a pie for Sunday. Do you want it with or without strawberries?”

  I paced Billy’s living room, searching for the right words. “I’m sorry to do this, but I can’t make it on Sunday.” I heard her cart squeak to a halt. “It’s our first event at the store. It’s not really something I can miss.”

  “Sure, I understand.” The cart rolled again.

  “Why don’t you come? Sheila Crowley is reading.” Momentarily, it seemed like the perfect solution. My parents would come to Sheila’s reading. Mom would remember Evelyn’s version of Prospero Books. She’d point out what had changed, what had remained the same. I would tell her how we planned to reinvigorate and save the store.

  “Sheila Crowley?” she said like it was a name she hadn’t heard in a long time.

  “She has a new memoir out. She had a big bestseller in the ’90s.”

  “I know who she is.” She sounded slightly offended, like I’d accused her of being poorly read.

  “So you’ll come?” I sat on the edge of Billy’s couch, eager for her to say yes.

  “I already bought fish for dinner.”

  “So have it Monday.”

  “We’re going to the Conrads on Monday.”

  “So have it Tuesday.” The cartwheels echoed through the speaker.

  “It will be bad by Tuesday.”

  “So freeze it.”

  “You can’t freeze thawed fish. It will ruin the consistency,” she said, appalled by the suggestion.

  “So throw it out, then. Please, I want you to come.” I scrunched my shorts in my fists, waiting for her to stop coming up with excuses, to just say yes.