Page 23 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“Call me if you decide to go see it,” Viv says as Patrick and Nathaniel leave, talking about some or another movie they’d read about.
When they get home, Nathaniel corners Patrick in the back room. “Can I paint the kitchen?”
It takes Patrick a moment to realize that Nathaniel is referring to the back room. “Why?”
“The walls are stained. It’s ugly. They sell paint at the hardware store, you know.”
Patrick does, in fact, know, but it has never once occurred to him that he might want to put that knowledge to practical use. Still, Nathaniel needs some kind of job to do. The store is getting aggressively clean and Nathaniel has taken to wiping down surfaces while Patrick is still using them. His inventory of the downstairs books is well underway, and if Patrick doesn’t play his cards right, it’s only a matter of time before Nathaniel starts bugging him about unpacking the boxes upstairs.
“Sure,” Patrick says. “Take the money out of petty cash.”
Patrick offers to go to the hardware store himself, but Nathaniel insists that he can do it on his own. In the end, Susan goes with him, claiming that she needs to stretch her legs and that terrible things will happen to Eleanor’s liver if she doesn’t get sunlight.
An hour later, they come back with a gallon of paint in one of the uglier shades of green. It’s the green of mouthwash and hospital linoleum, a green that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist in nature, or in bookstores, or anywhere else.
“It matches the stove,” Nathaniel explains, visibly pleased with himself. Patrick doesn’t have the heart to say that the stove is ugly too. He just opens all the windows so they don’t asphyxiate.
When Hector and Iris come by after school, Hector crosses himself and Iris says “very bold” and then they change into old clothes and help paint the trim and cabinets white.
That night, while the paint dries, Nathaniel takes Patrick’s coffee maker from upstairs and places it on the butcher blocknext to the sink. Next to it, he arranges Patrick’s kettle and hotplate. Five coffee mugs that Patrick’s never seen before hang from hooks under the upper cabinet.
“This way we don’t have to run upstairs every time we want a drink,” Nathaniel says. “And any customers who want some coffee or tea can help themselves.”
“Any customers who want a drink can leave and go somewhere that serves drinks,” Patrick says.
Something shutters in Nathaniel’s expression and Patrick feels like an asshole, but seriously, this is a bookstore. The idea of people coming in and drinking his coffee and leaving mugs around his books makes him feel faintly ill.
“Youlikeyour customers,” Nathaniel says. “You pretend not to, but I see the way you light up when one of your favorites comes in. I’m not saying you have to give refreshments to anyone who wanders in off the street, but this store is effectively your living room. When Jerome comes in, it wouldn’t kill you to give him a drink and a place to sit. Viv would love an excuse to stay. The other day, Gary looked like he was about to collapse. You do less for strangers.”
Patrick wonders how much this has to do with the fact thatNathaniellikes the regulars. He can barely stand to leave the shop, so customers and scouts are the only new people he can talk to. He’d seen the look on Nathaniel’s face when Viv suggested they see a movie: he’d wanted to go, but was afraid he couldn’t. He’s effectively trapped in this store unless Patrick or Susan go with him.
But Nathaniel seems to believe what he’s saying. He looks almost uncomfortably earnest; there isn’t the faintest whiff of bullshit in anything he said.
“Most of the business is rare books,” Patrick says. “We don’t really depend on foot traffic. I’ve gotten into the habit of thinking of customers as a distraction. But,” he says, with thefeeling of edging out onto thinner ice, “of the two of us, you’re the one who really likes the customers.” And it’s true. Nathaniel chatters with customers so well and so naturally that Patrick leaves the cash register entirely to him when he’s working. “And I think you’re lonely here. Most people would be,” he hurries to add when Nathaniel looks insulted.
Nathaniel goes to the sink to fill the kettle with water. When he speaks it’s with his back to Patrick. “I always worked in a busy office. The same people, year after year.”
“You miss it,” Patrick says. It sounds like Patrick’s idea of hell.
Nathaniel looks like he’s about to have one of his spells so Patrick grabs the kettle and plugs it in. It occurs to Patrick that Nathaniel waited until the shop was closed and they were alone to instigate this conversation, presumably to spare Patrick’s feelings, only to have the tables turned on him. Patrick squeezes Nathaniel’s arm.
“I do miss it,” Nathaniel says. “God, what is wrong with me?” He draws in a breath. “In any event, it isn’t safe to have the coffee maker balanced on a stack of books and plugged into the same extension cord as the refrigerator and hotplate, so the coffee maker needs to be moved down here anyway.”
“It’s a good idea. I might as well bring down my refrigerator too, or we won’t have any milk for our coffee.” It’s only a little refrigerator, the kind that comes up to his knee, and it’s no trouble for Patrick to carry it down the stairs himself.
“Thank you,” Nathaniel says when Patrick’s finished plugging in the refrigerator and Nathaniel has poured them both cups of this revolting chamomile tea that Susan likes.
“Any time,” Patrick says, and he means it.
* * *
“Youarestill here,” says a voice that’s all too familiar.
Patrick turns from where he’s shelving some books. “Hi, Luke.”
“You never write, you never call.”
“How’s California?” Patrick asks.
