My Korean Deli_ Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe [111]
Dashing inside wearing a crazed look, I find that crowds have begun to show up in the sizable numbers that I was worried about, and that a woman who in a nervous way looks just as crazy as me is standing by the door, scanning the faces of the crowd.
“Are you the editor from the Paris Review?” she says.
“Yes, I’m here!” I announce triumphantly. “I made it.”
Her expression shows that she couldn’t care less. “I’m the readings coordinator for the bookstore,” she says. Then, a bit snappishly (but with good reason): “Where are your authors?”
“What?!” I gasp. “They’re not here?” This is even worse than I had feared. Jamaica Kincaid I was nervous about, but Robert Pinsky I’d confirmed with by telephone the day before. “When does the reading start?”
“Five minutes,” the readings coordinator says. “I’m going to go look outside—you check the aisles and see if they came in without my realizing.”
So I start inspecting the aisles: poetry, fiction, cookbooks, dictionaries. The store is like the inside of a car that’s been in a hot parking lot all day. There’s no air-conditioning, and people are taking off their clothes and fanning themselves with the books they’ve brought for Jamaica Kincaid and Robert Pinsky to autograph.
And then I see her in the classics section, sitting on the floor, almost as if she were hiding. She isn’t wearing a hospital gown. But she does seem to be wearing at least six dresses, along with a pair of baby blue running sneakers. I almost trip over her long, pretty legs.
“Ms. Kincaid,” I practically shout, “you’re here!”
Her face does not exactly respond with equal delight. She looks as if she has been sitting on the floor for a long time and would prefer to go on doing just that.
“It’s hot in here,” she says. “Did you notice?” In her hands is a copy of The Iliad.
“I don’t think the air-conditioning is working. I’ll see if I can get someone to open a window. In the meantime, I don’t know if you want to come over to the part of the bookstore where you’ll be, uh … where you’ll be …”
Jamaica Kincaid is looking at me suspiciously. And who can blame her, given how demented I look? Then she starts taking off her shoes.
“Yes?” she says somewhat quizzically.
“You know, where you’ll be, uh …” I suddenly feel lightheaded. As if the heat in the bookstore and driving for four hours straight like a pizza deliveryman and not eating all day weren’t enough, I missed my afternoon coffee. Nevertheless, I manage to squeeze out that final word, “reading,” though more in the manner of a petrified rodent than the way I normally would.
“Reading?” says Jamaica Kincaid, causing a terrifying series of questions to flash across my mind: Does she know she’s reading? Or did I just happen to find her here in the Harvard Bookstore? What if my message never got through? Anything seems possible—anything but things turning out the way I had planned.
“Yes, well, I … You are going to read, right? That’s what all these people … the audience …” I look around: the store is practically rippling in the heat, like a desert mirage. Is it a dream, I wonder, and, if so, how much will I remember when I wake up? What does it all mean—The Iliad, the baby blue sneakers and Dwayne pulling out his own tooth?
“Yes, of course!” Kincaid suddenly says with the utmost good cheer, while putting her shoes back on. “Is the audience here? Where do you want me to go? Should I sign books afterward?”
Intense relief. I feel like kissing her toes. But then as we’re walking over to the podium, the readings coordinator hisses at me, “Where’s Robert Pinsky?”
“I don’t know!”
“We have to