Page 13 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“No, two Klingon dollars.”
“What inhellis a Klingon dollar?”
Patrick decides then and there that he’s closing the shop early on Thursday so Nathaniel can get some culture. “So, where do you get violins restrung?”
“Around here? I wouldn’t know,” Nathaniel says. “In general, a luthier. Anyway, I ought to save my money.”
“Shit.” Patrick scrubs a hand across his beard. On his desk is a letter from Mrs. Kaplan, explaining that her sister is back in the hospital with an infection, so Mrs. Kaplan will be in Florida for at least another few weeks. Patrick should have looked at the calendar and realized it was his responsibility to figure out what to do with Nathaniel. “I owe you a month’s wages. Jesus. I’m so sorry.”
“You paid me two weeks ago.”
Two weeks ago, Susan gave Patrick an apparently random amount of cash for February and March rent. Before taking the money to the bank, Patrick gave Nathaniel a handful of ten-dollar bills, said “Wages?” and then forgot about the entire transaction until this moment.
“Okay, New York minimum wage is a buck sixty or seventy, I can’t remember. Let’s call it two dollars. You’re easily working eight hours a day, so that’s forty hours a week.”
“Not really. Some of that time I’m looking after the baby.”
“This is shitty bookkeeping, but I’m just going to consider baby work and shop work as the same thing, two bucks an hour, eight hours a day, five days a week. That’s eighty dollars a week.” Patrick will chip in half that amount for the babysitting. Eighty bucks a week is probably fifteen more than anybody’s ever made as either a babysitter or a bookstore clerk, but Patrick isn’t nickel-and-diming the only person on this planet who Eleanor can stand. “So, I owe you one eighty for the last two weeks.”
He unlocks his desk and reaches for the checkbook.
“No,” Nathaniel says.
Patrick still with his hand in the desk drawer. “I can’t really pay much more—”
“I won’t take money for taking care of Eleanor.”
This might be some kind of macho refusal to get paid for women’s work, but Patrick feels like that kind of man would refuse to do the work in the first place. “It’s work. There are people who take care of babies for a living.”
“Obviously,” Nathaniel says, peeved. “That isn’t the point.”
“What, exactly, is the point? I’m not letting you work for free.”
“How do you plan on stopping me? You can’t force a person to take money.”
Jesus Christ. Patrick doesn’t have the patience for this. “Fine, be my guest.” He begins to fill out the check. “A hundred ten, then.” Nathaniel, who apparently does algebra with the Valdez twins for fun, can divide one eighty by two and discover it isn’t a hundred and ten, but he only makes an exasperated noise.
“Cash would be better,” Nathaniel says.
“Don’t worry, I made it out to cash.” Patrick manages not to roll his eyes. Does this guy really think that Patrick was going to make out a check to “Nathaniel Smith”? It takes Nathaniel three or four tries to remember to answer to “Mr. Smith” when Hector and Iris are trying to get his attention. They’ve started to call him Nathaniel, which means Patrick might finally win his campaign to get them to stop calling him Mr. Fitzgerald.
“When will you want me to leave?” Nathaniel asks, folding up the check and putting it in his pocket. “Mrs. Kaplan said you’d put me up for a month.”
Patrick feels like the rug’s been pulled out from under him. More fool him. Usually, if one of the strays has done any work whatsoever, Patrick finds them work at another bookstore. There isn’t enough work at Dooryard Books for another employee. They just don’t do that much business. It’s the rare book sales that pay the bills, and Patrick handles those. When he needs time off, or he has to be at an auction or book sale, either he closes the shop or Mrs. Kaplan pitches in for a few hours.
Now, though, even with Nathaniel sometimes manning the cash register, Patrick’s behind on everything else. There’s a lot of work he can do while holding a drooling baby, but he draws the line at repairing century-old rare editions.
And then there’s Eleanor: they need the extra help. Susan likes Nathaniel, the baby likes Nathaniel, and that’s a majority vote, so Patrick doesn’t need to consider whether his decision has anything to do with the fact thathelikes Nathaniel.
“Who said anything about leaving?” Patrick tries to sound impartial. “If you want to stay, there’s work for you here. If you want to go, I can find you work at another store. Either way, you can stay in the spare room if you want.”
Something frustrated and tired crosses Nathaniel’s face. “Of course I’ll stay.”
Patrick tries to look like someone who isn’t giddy with relief. “Same deal? Five days a week, time off as needed?”
“I’ve been working every day.”
“So now you have two days off. Slow days are Monday and Tuesday,” Patrick says. “Go have fun.”
