Page 16 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“That’s what Iris and Hector say,” Nathaniel explains. “I don’t think it’s a compliment.”
“No, it wouldn’t be.” Patrick digs in his pocket for change. “Hold on, okay?” He goes to the jukebox, drops his dime in the slot, makes his selection.
“This is one of Susan’s first songs,” Patrick says when his song comes on. It’s “A Sailor’s Life,” a traditional ballad that Susan adapted pretty freely. He remembers her listening to a grainy recording on the three-album folk music anthology she bought with the money she got for her fifteenth birthday. He sat on the floor of her bedroom, doing his geometry homework while she was in her own world, strumming a few bars, scribbling something in her notebook, putting the needle back down at the beginning of the track, and then doing it all over again. Sometimes people act like Susan simply finds an old song and sings it, easy as that, but she labors over those songs just as much as the songs she writes from scratch.
“Oh,” Nathaniel says after a minute. “It’s lovely.”
When Patrick pressed that button on the jukebox, he hadn’t remembered that “A Sailor’s Life” is about a woman whose husband dies at sea. He’d only been thinking of fifteen-year-old Susan, her hair in her face, her guitar in her lap.
Now he’s thinking of Susan nearly thirteen years later. He’s thinking about Michael. He’s held it together for a month and he isn’t going to get shaken up by a song on a jukebox, a song he’s heard a thousand times. He takes a deep breath and finishes his beer. He’s aware of Nathaniel—not watching him, but carefullynotwatching him, giving him space to be a basket case in private.
“What kind of beer is this?” Nathaniel asks when Patrick has a hold of himself. It’s the most neutral question in the world and Patrick could hug him.
“It’s just Schlitz,” Patrick says, and Nathaniel takes a thoughtful sip like he’s never had a Schlitz in his life.
They eat their lunch to the accompaniment of the random assortment of music that other patrons have selected on the jukebox—some old standards, some Motown, a lot of Top Forty. With each song, Patrick tells Nathaniel about the band or artist, and whether—according to Susan—they’re drug fiends, philanderers, or sex pests. Nathaniel listens, amused by Patrick’s gossip, but also intrigued by the music, not at all like a man who thinks everything recorded after 1955 sounds like noise.
When they get back to the shop, Patrick hauls the record player down from his bedroom and plugs it in at the back of the shop. Then he fills a milk crate with records and carries that down too.
“Have at it,” he tells Nathaniel.
Susan raises her eyebrows, but she comes to sit next to Nathaniel on the floor, the baby on her belly next to them, gnawing on the edge of a Rolling Stones album.
5
In the middle of March, Patrick comes home from an estate sale to discover that Nathaniel finally got the back room cleared out. Susan’s in the back of the shop, curled up in an armchair she dragged in from the street, Eleanor in her lap. They all take a moment to stare at what Nathaniel’s uncovered.
“That’s a kitchen,” Susan says, pointing out the obvious. “Or at least it was forty years ago.”
Sure enough, there’s a sink, an enormous white and green oven, and an ancient icebox made of dark wood with blackened iron hinges.
“It doesn’t plug in,” Susan says, peering behind the icebox.
Nathaniel starts laughing. It’s not the first time Patrick’s heard him laugh, but it’s rare enough that Patrick has to stop what he’s doing and just…take it in. “You put ice inside,” Nathaniel says, “and it keeps your food cold.”
“Ask Mrs. Kaplan when she comes back,” Patrick says when Susan’s still peering skeptically at it.
“Are you sure?” Susan asks. “But where did the ice come from?”
“The iceman,” Patrick says—because, seriously, they had icemen when he and Susan were kids.
“The iceman,” Nathaniel agrees.
Susan looks back and forth between them like she thinks they’re both pulling her leg.
“This room is bigger than I thought it would be,” Patrick says before they can get into a fight about ice, even though a quarrelsome Susan is a normal Susan, and therefore a relief.
“Imagine,” Susan says. “A room seems bigger when you take out four hundred boxes of books.”
“Don’t worry,” Nathaniel says. “I put the book boxes upstairs, where all the other book boxes will keep them company.” There’s a bit of acid in his tone and a glint in his eye.
“It wasn’t only books,” Patrick grumbles, playing along.
“True. There were invoices from 1928, a file folder of recipes cut out of magazines, and a pipe. A chest of drawers that’s now in my bedroom, a highchair—”
“I want that.”
“It’s already in your apartment,” Nathaniel says.
