An Imperfect Librarian - Elizabeth Murphy [38]
“Are you OK?” I ask.
She doesn’t say anything but she holds me tighter. I reach my arms down over her back. Her shirt feels damp. The dance floor is so crowded we can barely move. The cowboy closes his eyes while he picks his guitar and sings about haunted dreams, whispered names and vacant hearts. She doesn’t move except to follow my steps. When the song ends, she raises her head off my chest and stares up at me. “Can we go?” she says.
I wipe a strand of hair out of her eyes. “You can’t drive.”
She kisses my neck. “Take me home? Stay with me?”
I pull her close and bend down to kiss her head.
That night, after a calm ride under a clearing sky and waxing moon, I visit her shower for the second time. We blanket our bodies in soap then waltz in the shower. From the bathroom, we head to the top floor of her house where the six sides meet and where the heat from the woodstove hides from the drafts.
She’s already downstairs when I wake in the morning. She serves me homemade bread with local butter and her marshberry jam. After breakfast, we go to the cove below her house where we throw sticks into the waves. The dogs fight with each other to retrieve them. We compete to see who can skim rocks the farthest. She drops two miniature beach rocks into my pocket. “Hold onto these. When you put your hands in your pocket, rub them between your fingers, close your eyes then imagine you’re here in the cove, at Cliffhead, with me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
i read, therefore, i am
WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO be so happy about?” Henry says.
“Must be the weather.”
“Are you mad? The rain is coming down horizontal. What were you doing this weekend?”
“Same old thing.”
“Not out at Blackhead with that Reading Room woman, were you? I hope not.”
“It’s Cliffhead and her name is Norah Myrick.”
“I called you but there was no answer,” he says. “I wanted to know if you’d chauffeur me around while I scouted for space to rent for my bookstore.”
“You can’t retire for another four years. Why are you looking for space now?”
“There’s no harm in being prepared. Who knows? I might open it before I retire. There’s a space on Duckworth Street that would serve the purpose. Fabulous view of The Narrows. I might put a coffee shop in the back after a few years. l’ll have the finest bookstore in eastern Canada, maybe anywhere in the country. Why settle for anything less than the best, right, Carl?”
“I have just the title.”
“Allow me to guess,” he says. “Bits and Bytes Books?”
“Not quite. Ever hear of William Buggage, Bookseller?”
“Name doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Finally, I found something you don’t know.”
“You’re allowed one tidbit of information more than me,” he says. “There wouldn’t be a measure of my own greatness without a relative indication of the degree of your intelligence and knowledge.”
“William Buggage: Rare Books, Charing Cross Road. He’s a character in one of Roald Dahl’s short stories called ‘The Bookseller.’ Buggage scans the papers daily for death announcements of wealthy gentlemen. He cross-references with the Who’s Who. From there, he picks a widow to defraud for some of the late husband’s money. His assistant, Miss Tottle, prepares letters for the widows to offer condolences and to demand thousands of pounds for outstanding book purchases supposedly made by the late husband: Why Teenage Girls Prefer Older Men or How To Please Young Girls When You Are Over Sixty.”
“I must pick up a copy of that last one for myself,” says Henry.
“Without exception, the widows always pay up. Then, one day, something unexpected occurs. A Mrs. Somebody, I forget the name, it doesn’t matter, arrives in the shop with her son and two other men. Buggage has made a mistake by sending her a letter. It’s simply not believable that her husband could have purchased those volumes. Tottle and Buggage launch into their adopted roles. They lecture her about how men will be men and there’s no harm in it. Then,