Page 49 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“Well, that’s almost a set,” Susan says. “Ten songs.”
Nathaniel looks up from where he’s tuning his violin. “A set?”
“We could play somewhere. A coffeehouse, or that place we went to the other night.”
When Susan takes Nathaniel out to listen to music, she wears what she calls librarian drag—one of Patrick’s cardigans and her hair in a bun, as if she seriously thinks people won’t notice Suzie Larkin in the audience of a venue where she herself played only a few years earlier. Patrick usually stays home with Eleanor, waiting up for them on the new sofa that’s in the back of the shop next to the ratty armchair. Susan says she found the sofa on Christopher Street, but he thinks that might only be true in the sense that she found it in a store located on Christopher Street. It doesn’t smell like furniture you find on the street.
Sometimes, though, they pay Hector and Iris to babysit and Patrick lets himself get coaxed into coming along. He doesn’t really care about the music, but there’s something quaint about Nathaniel holding the door for Susan, and Susan letting Nathaniel order her drinks. That’s the real drag they’re doing, this playacting at courtship. There’s a healthy coating of irony, even camp, over the whole performance. Susan tolerated none of this from any of the men she dated, including Michael, but with Nathaniel they both know it’s make-believe.
“Do I want to play music in a coffeehouse,” Nathaniel repeats now, sounding baffled. Patrick had wondered if there was a goal to Susan’s songwriting this spring, or if she was whiling away the time.
“It wouldn’t have to be a big production,” Susan says. “I could call the owner and ask if they’d let us play a few songs. No big deal, but you can say no.”
“Let me think about it.”
“It might not be safe,” Patrick says. “You don’t have papers,” he tells Nathaniel. “Doesn’t he need a cabaret card?” he asks Susan. He remembers this being a giant pain in the ass for Susan and a lot of other musicians; the city fingerprints performers and might not issue a card to anyone with a record. There’s also a slate of unevenly enforced rules about whether dancing is allowed at places with liquor licenses. The point, according to Susan, is to make it difficult for jazz musicians—specifically Black jazz musicians—to make a living.
“The law changed last year,” she says. “Nathaniel won’t need a card. Venues still need a permit, but performers don’t.”
Later, Patrick finds Susan while Nathaniel is at the grocery store getting a box of macaroni and cheese for dinner.
“Are we sure it’s safe for Nathaniel to do a show with you?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because he’s hiding, right? He still asks me to make his checks out to cash.”
“Not everybody has a bank account.”
“Do you really think Nathaniel doesn’t have a bank account?” Patrick asks. “He wears penny loafers and told me to pick up a bottle of chianti the next time I pass a wine shop.” Patrick can come up with ways someone like that might fall on hard times, but not for them to stay there.
“What would he be hiding from?”
The problem is, Patrick doesn’t know.
* * *
When school gets out for the summer, Patrick starts paying Iris to work the cash register from six to closing three nights a week. Patrick swears he used to run the place single-handed, but now he’s barely getting by.
Somehow, word got out that Suzie Larkin is sometimes behind the cash register or playing the guitar in the back of the shop. It was only a matter of time: she’s been onEd Sullivanand her face is on the covers of record albums owned by a hell of a lot of people. But the people who stop by to gawk at her don’t usually buy anything, so that doesn’t explain why the shop is bringing in twenty percent more this year than it did last summer. Maybe it’s the free coffee. Maybe it’s the dog. Maybe it’s just that Nathaniel’s better at talking to customers than Patrick ever was.
“She’s robbing you blind,” Mrs. Valdez says one night after Iris helps close the shop. “Tell me you aren’t paying that child two dollars an hour.”
“After taxes, she’s only collecting something like minimum wage.” He’s kind of proud of himself for having figured out payroll tax.
Mrs. Valdez frowns at him for a long moment. “I think you really do believe that’s how minimum wage works,” she finally says. “All right, let my daughter shake you down. It’s no skin off my back.”
Patrick isn’t letting a high school student—however responsible—run the shop alone, not in a city where businesses get held up at gunpoint practically every day of the week. But if Susan’s in the shop, and one of Iris’s parents is upstairs, Patrick thinks it’s all right to step out for an hour or two.
“Want to go for a walk?” he asks Nathaniel.
“Only if we can stop at the barbershop.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I can’t take it anymore.” Nathaniel’s hair is long enough now to be nearly at his chin, and he fidgets with it constantly.
Patrick takes him to his own barber, who wastes no time telling Patrick he’s the one who needs a haircut. “Not today, Bill,” he says.
“You looks respectable,” Patrick says fifteen minutes later, when half of Nathaniel’s hair is all over the barbershop floor.
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.” Nathaniel’s gaze is fixed on his reflection, as he turns his head this way and that. He has a neat side part, honey-brown hair sweeping over his forehead and just barely reaching his collar. Sometimes Patrick looks at Nathaniel and sees the ghost of whoever he used to be.
