Page 36 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“I can’t believe they carry paperbacks here,” Patrick grumbles. “There’s nothing like used paperbacks selling for a dime apiece to make a store look unserious.”
“You’re unserious,” Nathaniel says.
“Nobody made this store’s manager put out free coffee,” Patrick says a moment later, but he squeezes Nathaniel’s arm while he says it. The quantity of unprompted touching happening this morning is making Nathaniel feel untethered.
They’ve walked a lot and probably ought to take a cab or the subway home, but Nathaniel doesn’t want the day to be over. It’s silly; they’ll spend tomorrow together, and the day after that. They’ve spent three months of days together. The only difference is that they’re out of the shop. They’re running errands. There’s nothing special about it.
He still doesn’t want it to be over.
“Let’s get lunch,” Patrick says, his voice gruff, like maybe he’s been thinking the same thing.
“Yeah, okay.” Nathaniel lets the distance between them collapse to nearly nothing.
Before they find a place to eat, they walk past a man sitting with his back against a building, dressed in what looks like army surplus, a duffel bag at his feet.
“Can I get you something to eat?” Patrick asks him.
“Fuck off.”
“Sure, but my brother just died in Vietnam and I can’t buy him any lunch, so.”
The man looks up at him, furious.
“Or, you know, money for a bus ticket or a night indoors,” Patrick offers. “I can do either.”
“I’m not going to your fucking church, man.” He looks warily between Nathaniel and Patrick. “And I’m not coming home with you.”
“Don’t want you to.” Slowly, telegraphing his movements, Patrick reaches for his wallet and takes out a few dollar bills and a business card, then bends and places them under the edge of the man’s duffel bag. “Take care.”
“Do you justdothat?” Nathaniel asks when they’ve turned the corner. “Whenever you see someone who needs help? You and Mrs. Kaplan are going to get yourselves killed.” He gets panicky when he thinks about Mrs. Kaplan sitting him at her kitchen table and giving him chicken soup a mere hour after meeting him.
“I can’t walk past someone like that.”
“He had a knife.” It hadn’t been a big knife, but it had been there, concealed inside the long sleeve of his coat.
“You’d have a knife too, if you were sleeping rough.”
“That isn’t the point. You don’t owe that to anyone. Your safety isn’t the price of Mrs. Kaplan helping you,” Nathaniel says. “You don’t owe a debt.”
“Of course I owe a debt! I’m sorry I put you in harm’s way—”
Nathaniel grabs Patrick’s sleeve and tugs him so they’re facing one another. “I don’t care about that! Tell me this isn’t a death wish.” Patrick has nobody to look after him. Mrs. Kaplan would, but she’s in Queens. Susan would, but she has her hands full looking after herself.
“Susan thinks it’s some kind of guilty Catholic martyr complex. It isn’t. It’s—” Patrick shuts his eyes. “I want—Ineed—other people to have the same chance I did.”
Nathaniel searches Patrick’s face. “All right.” He isn’t convinced that Patrickisn’tdoing this from guilt. He’s either a saint or he’s burdened by a tragic guilt complex. Or he’s a saint burdened by a tragic guilt complex; that seems par for the course when it comes to saints. Not a famously well-adjusted bunch.
“When Mrs. Kaplan helped me I thought I’d lost everything. I didn’t know how I was supposed to keep going. By the time I finished the sandwich she gave me, I knew I could hang on. And so I get this life. I get this.” Patrick gestures around them at some uninspiring office buildings and sluggish midday traffic, but also the blue sky and some pigeons. “I get this,” he says again, andnow he’s almost pointing in the direction of home. “Sometimes it doesn’t take much to do that for someone. Sometimes it’s just a reminder that you aren’t alone.”
Nathaniel sucks in a breath. “Patrick.”
“I know four dollars isn’t going to save anybody’s life. But I want to try. It isn’t a penance.”
They’re standing in front of the Western Union Building, and workers are spilling out onto the sidewalks for lunch. It isn’t the right place for this conversation. There isn’t a right place for this conversation.
Nathaniel thinks of the notebook in his pocket, thinks of all the good things in it, and how they add up to a bulwark against the abyss. “It took a lot less than four dollars for Mrs. Kaplan to save my life, and for you to keep on saving it.”
Nathaniel was planning to live out the rest of his days never admitting any of that aloud, or even in his thoughts, but he can’t stand here silently while Patrick confesses more or less the same sad story.
