Page 17 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“You gave him a key?” Patrick whispers when Nathaniel is up front, talking to a customer.
“You live with him. So does Eleanor, half the time. Are you telling menowthat you don’t trust him?”
“That isn’t it.” Patrick doesn’t know how to explain that it’s one thing for him to give someone a key to his home, the shirt off his back, the money from his wallet, but he doesn’t expect anyone else to act that way. “I’m glad you like him.”
“I do like him. He’s mean.”
“Must be nice to have something in common.”
“Where are you from?” Susan asks Nathaniel that night. They’re all in Susan’s apartment, finishing up Chinese food. Nathaniel ate his with chopsticks in one hand and Eleanor asleep against his shoulder.
“Boston,” Nathaniel says.
Patrick looks up from his lo mein. Most people would say “I grew up in Boston,” or “I came here from Santa Fe.”
Patrick’s bullshit detection has always been reliable. He’d been twelve when his parents died, and the sheer volume oflies people told him in the ensuing weeks, ranging from “they didn’t feel a thing” to “everything happens for a reason” to “we’d be happy to have you boys come live with us” must have been enough for his internal bullshit detector to calibrate itself pretty accurately. Wherever Nathaniel’s from, it probably isn’t Boston.
“What do you do?” Susan asks.
Nathaniel gives her an arch look. “Well, Susan, I’m so glad you asked. I work in this bookshop you may have heard of—”
“Before,” she says. Patrick sighs. Michael always said Susan would have been a terrific FBI investigator; Michael, of course, meant it as a compliment.
“If I start in on my sad stories, we’ll all get indigestion,” Nathaniel says.
Patrick gives Susan a look that saysdrop it. Susan gives him a look that says she’s never done anything wrong in her life. “Let him be mysterious,” he tells Susan, because so what if Nathaniel is keeping secrets. You don’t wind up at rock bottom without some things you want to keep to yourself. Patrick would be a hypocrite if he argued otherwise.
“It’s unfair, because you know my sad story,” Susan tells Nathaniel.
“What’s unfair is that your hellion daughter has decided to attach herself to me like a barnacle.”
“I can take her,” Patrick offers.
“That’s quite all right,” Nathaniel says, waspish, and shifts the baby higher on his shoulder.
Patrick leans back in his chair, reaching for the record player to put the volume up, hoping to distract Susan from her interrogation. Yesterday, a dozen boxes arrived from San Francisco. Three of them were labeled RECORDS in a stranger’s handwriting—presumably Susan’s manager or former landlord. Nathaniel carried those three boxes up to Susan’s apartment, Patrick stacked everything else on the second floor. Nathanielspent the rest of the day calling the second floor a shocking disgrace, a veritable pigsty, and a stain on his personal honor.
Before dinner, Patrick put on the new Byrds record, which came out too recently for it to have sad associations for anyone at the table. He can’t tell if he dislikes the album or if he just isn’t in a mood to enjoy new things.
“Put on Jefferson Airplane,” Susan says, even though Patrick knows for a fact that Michael loved that band.
“Why don’t you ask him what his deal is?” she asks Patrick later, when the two of them are alone in Susan’s apartment and Nathaniel is across the hall watchingBatmanwith the Valdezes. Eleanor’s asleep in her crib and Grace Slick is on the record player.
“What do you mean, his deal?” He’s sprawled in Susan’s armchair. Susan’s lying on the sofa, a joint dangling from her fingertips.
“You know perfectly well what I mean. What’s he been doing for the past twenty years? He doesn’t look like he’s had a hard life.”
“You can’t always tell.”
“His teeth are perfect.”
“What a fucked-up thing to notice.” Patrick noticed the exact same thing.
“He’s obviously been through something awful. Why don’t you justaskhim? He talks like a banker, plays the violin like a professional, can’t go outside without having a fit, and refuses to say a single thing about his past. I don’t know why youdon’tcare. Everybody loves a mystery.”
“He’s a person, not a mystery,” Patrick says.
She groans and holds out the joint. “Obviously. Don’t be sanctimonious, Patrick, you’re better than that.”
