The Illumination_ A Novel - Kevin Brockmeier [73]
He took a copy of Girls and Boys from the stack and said, “Hi there again. I was at that thing you did last night. Remember? The guy who said you were his favorite writer?”
She tried her best to smile without using her mouth—to express a smile—but even that was difficult. The ulcer on her lower lip was stinging, stinging terribly. She felt as if someone had taken the flesh, right there where her incisors met, and run it through a sewing machine: zt-zt-zt-zt-zt.
Before she could steel herself to answer, he hurried on: “Anyway, what I neglected to tell you yesterday is that I absolutely love this collection. Love. It. Especially ‘Small Bitter Seeds.’ That one’s my favorite. I read it in the Pushcart, and afterward I ordered all your books. Everything.”
To talk meant to suffer, as it had for much of the last four years, and she had become practiced at finding the most efficient path through a conversation. Usually she could touch all the major landmarks so glancingly and yet so deftly that the average person failed to notice she was even taking a shortcut. “Thank you. I knew you looked familiar. That was actually the title story until my editor told me no one would buy a book called Small Bitter Seeds. Now how would you like me to sign this?”
“Oh, this one’s for my father. Write, ‘To Jon Catau.’ That’s J-o-no h-n, and then Ka-too: C-a-t-a-u.”
After she finished the inscription and shut the book, she found him staring over her shoulder. The windows crowning the poetry shelves were filtering the light so that the trees outside, the lampposts, the buildings, all seemed to swim in blue Easter egg dye, but that wasn’t what had caught his attention. He was examining his reflection in the glass, and specifically the incandescent bruise on his arm. Gaze too long at your wounds, she had discovered, and your eyes would fill with phantom colors, like a sunbather drowsing on a beach towel.
One of the booksellers was repeating her name. “Ms. Poggione? Excuse me. Ms. Poggione?”
“Mm-hmm?”
“We were hoping you would sign some stock before you leave. And also we have this guest album with a page for all our authors. Would you mind writing something in it for us? Nothing fancy—just a few words will do.”
He slid the books across the table one by one, like a line cook prepping burgers, marking each title page with the jacket flap so that all she had to do was take a copy from his hand, cross through her name, and replace it with her signature. In the guest album she wrote, “Thanks for hosting me on this, the final leg of the great spring Age of Girls and Boys tour.” She added a doodle of a girl boosting a boy over her head like a circus strongman. The man with the bruise on his arm had withdrawn to the sanctuary of the employee recommendations shelf, but when she began gathering up her purse and jacket, he came loping back over to the table. With a sudden sweeping feeling of magnification she intuited that he was going to ask her to dinner, and in fact he did, forcing himself to meet her eye, then saying something that began, “I hope you don’t mind,” and ended, “a great little seafood place, the best in Seattle.” He was certainly sweet enough—a sweet, brave kid, and starstruck, by her, of all people—but the truth was that it hurt too much to talk, and she just wanted to return to her room and lie in bed with a mouthful of hydrogen peroxide foaming up over her gums.
“That’s very nice, but I’m afraid I’m not feeling well.”
“Oh. All right. I understand completely.” Meekly he asked, “So at least can I give you a ride back to your hotel?” Maybe it was the way his voice seemed to slip through the center of itself and form a knot, so like Wallace’s when he thought he had embarrassed himself, but she realized all at once that she could not disappoint him again. She resigned herself to another ten minutes of conversation and nodded fine, okay.
“Great! I’m parked out back.”
He led her down the staircase and across the ground floor, past circular racks stuffed with