Page 14 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
Nathaniel’s lips are pressed into a tight line.
“Or you can stay here,” Patrick says. “You live here. Nobody’s kicking you out. Read. Watch television. Get stoned with Susan. WatchAs the World Turnswith Mrs. Valdez.”
“That was one time. What about rent?”
Nobody should pay rent on an eight-by-ten room with no furniture other than a single bed, but Nathaniel doesn’t look open to that argument.
“I pay a hundred dollars a month, and it’s only that cheap because Mrs. Kaplan hasn’t noticed it isn’t 1935 anymore.” And because Patrick’s apartment is only a couple of storage rooms that happen to have access to a bathroom and a fire escape. And also because he’s basically the building’s superintendent, but Nathaniel doesn’t need to know any of that. “The going rate for a furnished room in this neighborhood is something like twenty-five a week, but a room at a bare bones hotel over on West Street would be something like fifteen.” Patrick’s well aware that his spare room—hell, his own room—is closer to the latter. “But I can’t charge you fifteen a week, because then you’d be paying most of my rent for me. So, seven a week, and I pay for groceries and utilities?”
Nathaniel sticks out his hand, and Patrick instinctively grabs it. “Thank you,” Nathaniel says without letting go. And then, surprisingly earnest, “I don’t want to be a charity case.”
“I’ve been a charity case, you know,” Patrick says. “Mrs. Kaplan’s charity case, as a matter of fact. Nothing wrong with that, not when you need the charity.”
“Oh. I didn’t mean—”
“No harm done.” He hasn’t let go of Nathaniel’s hand, and Nathaniel hasn’t let go of his. At this proximity Patrick can’t help but notice that he’s—well, it isn’t any of Patrick’s business what Nathaniel looks like. He’s Patrick’s employee, his tenant, and, in a way, his responsibility. He drops Nathaniel’s hand and takes a step backwards. “Now, let’s see where to get a violin restrung.”
Susan tells them that if the man who runs the guitar shop on MacDougal doesn’t stock the right kind of violin strings, he’ll at least know where to send them.
“You two go. Eleanor and I will stay at the cash register and grumble at anyone who comes in,” she offers. “That’s the job, right?”
Patrick rolls his eyes, but it’s a good sign if Susan’s teasing him. He puts on his coat, notices that Nathaniel’s only wearing a sweater, then takes off his coat and gives it to Nathaniel. He puts on a leather jacket that someone left at the shop ages ago.
Nathaniel hesitates at the door, still holding Patrick’s coat. In the month he’s been here, Patrick’s not sure Nathaniel’s left the shop for longer than it takes to put out the trash. He spends plenty of time looking out the window—the shop window, and the window in Susan’s living room that looks out over Jones Street. There isn’t anything to look at: wintry trees and dirty sidewalks, parked cars that shift back and forth according to alternate side of the street parking rules. Nathaniel looks outside in the same way that he looks at pizza, at a fresh pot of coffee.
“Have you always had a thing about going outside?” Patrick asks. “Susan’s like that about heights.”
“No. No, I just…” Nathaniel makes a noise like he’s thoroughly disgusted with himself.
“You can stay here, and I’ll go to the guitar shop,” Patrick offers, quietly enough that only Nathaniel will hear. “Or we can take a cab.”
“Why are you doing this?” Nathaniel asks, an edge to his voice. “You let me eat your food and wear your clothes and watch your television, and now this?” He’s holding Patrick’s coat up like it’s Exhibit A and he’s Perry Mason.
This is mighty rich, coming from a man who not five minutes earlier refused to take money for babysitting. But it’s not like Patrick’s never asked himself the same question, especially after one of the strays stole his typewriter a couple years ago. His only answer is that he doesn’t like to think about where he’d be if Mrs. Kaplan hadn’t helped him in 1958. He can’t walk past someone if there’s a chance he can do half as much for them as Mrs. Kaplan did for him.
It isn’t even like he’s doing that much, really. Usually, all he does for the people Mrs. Kaplan brings him is train them to work in a bookshop and give them lunch a few days a week. Maybe take them to the doctor or help them apply for jobs. It’s more than most people would do, but most people don’t have an old lady presenting them with good deeds that are ninety percent complete, a paint by numbers project.
Mrs. Kaplan calls it a mitzvah. Patrick, who hasn’t set foot in a church since his parents’ funeral, sometimes thinks it might be a sacrament, but then gets embarrassed by the thought.
“Look, the day Mrs. Kaplan met me, she put three stitches in my forehead because I wouldn’t go to the hospital. See that scar?” Patrick pushes aside his hair and points to his eyebrow. “Any normal person would have told me to get lost, but she fixed me up, bought me a sandwich, offered me a job, and gave me a place to sleep.”
Patrick hates telling this story. He doesn’t want to remember that kid: that kid had lost all his illusions and he’d lost them too fast. Patrick wants to avert his eyes. Maybe that’s why he makes himself tell the story—to all the strays, and to a lot of other people besides. It’s a kind of offering. It keeps him honest.
A man once told him that at AA meetings, you introduce yourself as an alcoholic because it’s a reminder of the problem you all have in common. Patrick figures anyone who winds up needing his help might want to know that he’s been there, that he’s part of the fellowship of people who could not possibly have gotten their shit together without some help. Sometimes, knowing about Patrick’s crummy past gives a person permission to accept half a sandwich or a five dollar bill or a bus ticket home.
“And so that’s why you gave me your coat,” Nathaniel says, the edge still in his voice. “And why you’re taking me to get violin strings? Because Mrs. Kaplan helped you?”
That was the answer at first, sure. That was why Patrick bought Nathaniel’s groceries and lent him some clothes and a spare bed. But now, for some reason, he says, “I gave you my coat because I have a lot more meat on my bones than you do.” He’s only been to the gym a handful of times since Susan moved in, but for the ten years before that, lifting weights was his only actual hobby. Pick the right gym at the right hour, and there’s even odds you’ll go home with someone.
Nathaniel’s gaze drops to Patrick’s shoulders, his chest, and it doesn’t mean anything because when you’re dumb enough to talk about the meat on your bones—Jesus Christ, Patrick, of all the things to say—people look at your body. It’s inevitable. But Patrick, because he’s truly on a roll, notices how long Nathaniel’s eyelashes are, how his eyes are more amber than brown. How long it takes for his gaze to get back to Patrick’s face.
“I’ve been brushing my teeth next to you for a month and—” It shouldn’t be embarrassing to say that he thinks they’re friends, or something like that. “We’re friends,” Patrick says firmly, pretending his face isn’t hot. His beard hides the worst of the damage. It’s fine.
Nathaniel looks—the fucker lookssmug,like he was baiting Patrick into admitting it. “Quite,” Nathaniel agrees, beforePatrick can get mad about it. “How’d you get hurt?” Nathaniel asks, looking at the scar on Patrick’s forehead.
“Cops. All right, let’s head out.”
Over at the cash register, Susan is trying to look like she isn’t listening. She’s heard all this before, but to her it isn’t the story of Patrick getting taken in by a lady who used her sewing kit to fix his face; it’s the story of Patrick running away without telling her or Michael. Just because now she knows the whole story doesn’t change what it must have felt like to them back then.
