by Hayden Stone
Before I can escape the front desk, another customer approaches. A young man. He’s gorgeous—but never mind that. More important, he has a book in hand. I’m hopeful. A paying customer, thank God.
He’s dark-haired, about my age. Stunning, actually. There’s something very appealing about him, and he’s attractive in a styled sort of way. Even his hair cooperates, medium length in controlled waves. Clearly, he’s a man who knows about grooming. Meanwhile, I’m in a rumpled blue shirt and jeans as usual. To my credit, I did drag a comb through my mop of hair this morning, even if I gave shaving a miss.
“How can I help?” I ask.
“I bought this book last week.” American accent. Southern, maybe. A leather messenger bag is slung over his shoulder. The way he’s holding the book, I can’t see the title. The cover’s hidden against his trim chest, his hand cradling the spine, receipt poking out.
“All right.” A sinking feeling hits my stomach. Not a paying customer, then.
“I want a refund.”
“A refund?” I frown.
He nods, gazing at me in an entirely disconcerting way. It’s not helping my mood, even if he is attractive.
“The author’s an asshole,” he says, matter-of-fact. “I don’t want to support him.”
“A lot of authors are arseholes.” It tumbles out before I can stop myself. “Actually, it’s not just writers. Loads of people are arseholes. In most economies, the arseholes are doing quite well for themselves.”
Oh God.
He lifts an eyebrow. “I want a cash refund. That asshole doesn’t need more of my money, especially if the assholes are doing all right, as you say.”
I sigh. “How about store credit instead? I don’t do cash refunds.”
Eli’s going to give me a dressing down later if he can hear this. At least the shop’s full enough, the bell signaling the comings and goings of customers. At last glimpse, he carried several green books from the classics section.
“Shop credit’s not gonna do me any good back home when I go back in a couple of weeks. I think your policy is…” He smirks and his eyes dance. “Bollocks. That’s what you Brits say, right?”
I start to count to ten. Therapy’s taught me the value of taking a minute. “What’s wrong with the author?” I ask reluctantly, already regretting the question.
He waves a hand. Elegant fingers, I can’t help but notice. Long and lean, something that would be brilliant for a musician.
“I told you. Asshole. He did something on Twitter…” He shrugs.
Wearily, I rub my face with my hand. I do not like this man, even if he’s gorgeous. That’s merely a distraction, and I won’t be swayed. “Let me see the book. And social media’s best avoided, for the record.”
“You should know I’m a hit on Instagram,” he says cheerfully.
Of course he is.
He hands over the book. A poetry book. Second-hand.
“The author didn’t get any royalties from this sale. At least you can take heart in that.” It’ll be me that takes the hit, but I don’t want to share this information with a stranger.
I look at the receipt. Eight quid. Gritting my teeth, I open the till and retrieve a tenner and slide it to him across the counter. Our fingers touch. I snatch mine away as though seared by the sun.
“I recommend that you stay away from poetry,” I say. “The ratio of poets to arseholes is high. Alarmingly high. Rabble-rousers, the lot of them. In fact, it’s probably best to skip anything related to that entire form of literature, just to be safe. That includes prose poems and poetic prose.”
I stare him down. Not only am I a bookseller, but I want to ensure the protection of would-be readers from the ravages of poets. Best keep him away from Bukowski and Baudelaire.
“This is more than I paid…” he says, startled as he looks at the cash in his hand. “Are you sure?”
I nod once. “What’s that saying Americans have? The customer is always right?”
He chews his lip before flashing a grin to rival Eli’s. It doesn’t help my dark mood.
He takes a shop card, glances at it. “Is this like the British Barnes and Noble?”
“No. Certainly not. Out.”
The grin returns, a searing dazzle of bright through the dark of the shop. Quickly, I turn away as my face burns. Never mind him.
“See you next time!” And with that, the door jangles shut behind him.
Chapter Two
On my best behavior, I ring through a shocking number of green books. It turns out The-Woman-Who-Wanted-Green-Books is a most serious connoisseur, with at least a couple dozen selected from the Classics and Collectibles section. There’s no rhyme or reason to the subjects, ranging from textbooks on botany to world cultures to Victorian literature. All hardcovers, all vintage, with a strong preference for gilt lettering. Eli’s in cahoots with her that it’s better to catch the light. He says bling books sell. We make arrangements for someone who will come by to pick the books up for her later in the afternoon. They sit in a pile on the back counter, along with the parcel I need to take to the post office.
I take a drink of the dregs of my coffee. It’s more like I’m drinking the memory of coffee, but in a caffeine emergency one does what one must. I feel like the one who’s been dancing all night, and not Gemma. Maybe the sofa bed is catching up with me after all.
Eli joins me.
“Remember those heady days of yore, when people used to read books?” I ask.
“Such cheek. You just sold thirty books.” Eli’s grin is unrepentant. “It’s not even one o’clock and you can close shop for the day.”
“Very funny. So far today I’ve sold books based only on their looks, processed one return due to a misbehaving poet, and sold two bestsellers that were ghostwritten.”
“It’s fine,” says Eli. “Look at how busy it is in here.”
The shop is still impressively busy for a Saturday. There may even be more legitimate book buyers in the lot.
“I just don’t want books to become ornamental fetishes for decorators.”
“Who knows what sort of fetishes decorators have?” Eli shrugs. “Besides, she wasn’t a decorator. Not quite.”
I glance at Eli as I shuffle some of the collectibles on the shelf to fill the gaps left by the Green Book Debacle, as I will now think of it. “What was she, then?”
“A designer. A set designer, actually.”
I frown. “A set designer?”
Eli nods. “That’s what she said.”
“Isn’t that an ungodly sum of money to spend on books that will never be read?”
He claps my shoulder. “Clearly, they have some sort of budget. Now, darling, I must be off. Ryan will be wondering what happened to me.”
“Thanks for your help.” It’s true: I am grateful. If only I didn’t feel so raw inside.
As though Eli’s reading my thoughts, he gives me a hug and kiss on the cheek.
“Cheer up, Aubs. One day it’ll all be old news. You’ll see.”
I sigh. “Say hi to Ryan.”
“I will. Stay out of trouble. Or find the right kind of trouble. Saturday night in Soho and all that.” Eli winks. The bells on the door ring behind him as he leaves.
Before long, my dark mood starts to lift as several paying customers come through after all. A couple of hours pass in the blink of an eye before Gemma and I get a break.
“I need to run a parcel up the street to the post office,” I say.
Gemma hops up to sit on the front counter, her legs dangling in polka dot Mary Janes. “Go. I’ve got this.”
I hesitate. She just laughs. “Take your phone. I’ll text if there’s a mob. Does that make you feel better?”
“Marginally.”
She waves me off. Taking the parcel, I head into a sparkling afternoon. The sudden br
ightness hurts my eyes as I put on my sunglasses, the parcel tucked under my arm. Heat rises from the tarmac. The pavements are full of people coming and going. There’re also quite a few parked lorries and trailers jamming everything up. A queue of traffic is at a standstill, backed up the lane.
The end of the street is blocked off. Which is where I need to go to get to the post office.
Frowning, I look around. On the other side of the barricade stand people in the occasional cluster in every spot of shade to be had. One group has people with lists and headsets, engrossed in serious conversation. Another group has people holding…plates of food?
Someone walking past the first group calls out cheerfully to them. “Better get over to catering before I eat it all.”
Catering? What is this, an impromptu street festival?
Craning my neck and doing my best to glimpse between two trailers from where I stand at the barricade, I can almost see the post office. Or where the post office ordinarily is, and the yarn shop beside it. Instead, the post office and several of the usual shops along the street front have changed into an entirely different streetscape. The post office is no longer recognizable as such. It’s been transformed into a grocer’s.
Westminster City Council or the event organizer should have sent out notices about whatever’s going on, because this is bloody inconvenient when a man needs to get to the post office on a Saturday afternoon.
Or the wool shop, for that matter, even in July.
When a man walks by with a boom mic over his shoulder, I finally clue in.
A groan escapes me. Filming. Eli mentioned it when he arrived at the bookshop earlier. I should’ve remembered. The day’s chaos has already worn me down.
Resigned, I shift the parcel under my arm. It doesn’t need to go out till Monday, and I hardly want to spend my lunch break wandering London for a post office that hasn’t turned into something else.
Instead, I come up with a new plan for a takeaway coffee and sandwich to bring back to Barnes Books. After a couple of false starts, thwarted by more trailers and filming-related inconveniences around the neighborhood, I reach the coffee shop. Mercifully, the café hasn’t fallen victim to the chaos.
I round the corner to the café’s entrance. “Oh!”
“Holy fuck!”
I nearly crash into a man hurrying on his way out of the coffee shop, who stumbles. Veering to the side, I barely keep upright.
He does an awkward juggle with the coffee, but his leap back is easy and athletic. For a long, terrible moment we both see the coffee flip up, then careen to the pavement, exploding in a hot mess. In the chaos, I drop my parcel, which now sits in a puddle of coffee.
“Oh my God, I’m so terribly sorry—” I blurt.
“No, it’s my fault—”
“Are you all right?”
“Fuck, your package—” he says.
Even in this terribly embarrassing moment I gulp and flush scarlet about unintended package innuendos, and packages suitable for fucking, and oh fuck, it’s that infuriating man—that very beautiful man, I may add—from earlier.
I swallow.
“I hope you’ve been avoiding poets.” Desperate, I rummage in my pockets for napkins. Did he get burned?
He bends in a swoop and fishes my parcel out of its coffee bath before passing it to me. We nearly knock heads.
“Shit—”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” I ask.
We’re in an awkward sort of crouch, staring at each other.
Coffee drips from the parcel.
My face burns, rivaling the scorching afternoon. With my complexion, it’s plain for the world to see. And especially by this man, who has a front row seat.
On the edge of my vision, a young hipster couple stops. They murmur to each other, something on the edge of my reality.
What’s more pressing, aside from an immediate stiffening in my jeans, is that it’s impossible to draw in a breath. When I manage, hot air fills my lungs. His gaze is very intent on mine, his eyes the color of storms and seas.
So much for oxygen. It’s a casualty too, like his coffee.
“I’m fine,” he says at last.
Finally, we rise, breaking the moment, me holding a dripping package and him looking mercifully unburnt and unharmed. Though, there goes an opportunity for some restorative mouth-to-mouth.
Where did that thought come from?
“C-can I get you another coffee?” I ask. “I should’ve paid more attention to where I was going. Off in my own world as usual.”
“It’s okay. Plus you gave me a tip earlier, remember?” He checks a very swish watch that probably rivals my shop’s stock valuation. “Fuck, I’m late. They’ll notice I left when I shouldn’t have—I’ll just grab something from catering. I probably should have done that in the first place, but then I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to crash into you, would I?”
The grin he gives before he sprints off leaves me reeling, left standing alone on the pavement, blood pounding a heartbeat in my ears and somewhere considerably lower.
When I return to the cool sanctuary of the shop, flustered and holding a sodden package, there’s no way of avoiding Gemma. I remove my sunglasses. She’s still sitting on the wood counter with the fan, engrossed as she reads…the book I’m currently reading. Maurice. Apparently, I’ve left the book somewhere where she would come across it.
She lowers the paperback to peer at me. Her eyebrows lift as she gazes at the bedraggled package in my hands. “It didn’t go well, then?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Cool. Say, Aubs, I never figured you as the romantic type.” She holds up the book. “Niche Victorian smut. Nice.”
“Give me that.” I try to pluck the book from her fingers as she laughs, holding it away from me. “It’s not smut. Or Victorian. It’s a gay fiction literary classic, and, for the record, Edwardian. Though potentially scandalous when it was written. There’s nothing wrong with erotic works.”
She inspects the page with the publication details, looking dead disappointed. “It was published in the 1970s. Doesn’t sound Edwardian to me. The cover doesn’t look that old-fashioned.”
“You know that thing about not judging books by their covers? The author wrote the novel in secret. It was published long after it was written.” I set the parcel down on the counter, unwrapping the book, praying that the cardboard sleeve has kept it from being ruined. “E.M. Forster.”
“Really?” Intrigued, she flips through the pages.
“There might be a note about the author or an introduction to the history of the work.”
“I skipped the introduction on purpose.” She frowns. “It’s got spoilers in it. At least they have the decency to warn people in the first paragraph.”
“There’s also a film…” I put the wet paper wrap into the bin. The cardboard sleeve is wet, too.
“A film!” She perks up. “Ooh, tell me.”
“You ought to read the book.” I work on freeing the book from the sleeve, soggy cardboard melting under my fingers.
“Aubrey, please tell me. I don’t want to search it and use data on my phone. Why won’t you set up wifi in the shop, anyway?”
“Because you’ll spend your life Twittering or scrolling or whatever it is that you do.” I crack open the unsoaked portion of the cardboard sleeve, fishing the book out. The invoice is a bit damp.
“Whatever. You’re very unhip for a hipster.” She snorts, then prods me. “The film?”
“It’s cleverly also called Maurice.” I flip through the book. It looks like it was spared a coffee indignity. Thankfully, it’s not a stock loss. “And I’m not a hipster. Take that back.”
“Ha. Never.”
Time to save face.
“The film was made in the eighties. Not a John Hughes fil
m, by the way. In case you’re getting your hopes up.”
“Look at you, Mr. Barnes. All film nerd, too cool for school.”
“Hardly.”
“Is anybody I know in it?”
“You might’ve heard of Hugh Grant.”
“Shut up!” Gemma gawps. She sets Maurice down while I sniff the salvaged book to check that it doesn’t smell of coffee.
“I’m so checking that out.” At last, she hops off the counter. “What exactly are you doing? Did the heat get to you?”
“Sniff this.” I present her the copy of War and Peace. “Does it smell like coffee to you?”
She sniffs and rubs her nose. “Nope. Just dust.”
Relieved, I put the book on the back counter. It’s where we put the day’s holds or orders. I try to keep it clear for things needing immediate attention. There’re a couple of official-looking pages lying on the otherwise bare surface. I pick them up. A filming notification, date-stamped from last week, plus another notification for a location request and to contact their location manager at my earliest convenience.
“When did this arrive?” I demand.
“Dunno. When you were out. I can’t keep track of everything.” She waves a hand airily.
“I wasn’t gone that long.”
Gemma shrugs. “Their location scout dropped it off. Alice something. She came with someone and they picked up all of the green books.”
“Right.” Belatedly, I realize the back counter is free of the palette of green hardcovers we put aside. “Did they say anything?”
Gemma reflects for a moment, leaning back against the counter beside the till. “That the shop is perfectly charming and with a few small changes it’ll be perfect for their shoot. Which is true. It’s very inviting, actually.”
She gestures broadly at the shop with its oak bookcases and colorful displays neatly arranged. A couple of rugs have been placed on the floor, which adds to the effect.
I scowl.
She nods. Then, alarmingly, she reaches into the front of her black and white polka dot V-neck blouse and plucks a business card from the strap of her bra. “Yeah, I think that’s it. Here. This is for you.”