Page 31 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“Yes, well, I do know that. But we both know I don’t go anywhere without a minder.” Nathaniel means to sound matter of fact but it comes out pathetic. He pulls himself together. “I wanted to try. It was not a success.”
“You got back here all right, milk and all. That’s progress. Thanks for picking up the milk, by the way.”
Nathaniel scoffs. Progress.
“Susan shouldn’t have said that about you,” Patrick says.
“Hmm?”
Patrick steps close, and when he speaks it’s quiet enough that nobody else could possibly hear, even though there aren’t any customers. “She shouldn’t have said you were gay. Even if that’s something you told her, she shouldn’t have said anything.”
“She isn’t wrong,” Nathaniel says, expecting an emotional free fall that doesn’t come. Instead all he feels is embarrassed. To his surprise, most of that embarrassment has to do with how obvious he’s been, and less to do with the shame he’s been dragging around since he was a teenager. It’s difficult to be too ashamed about that around Patrick. “What I mean to say is that she mostly isn’t wrong,” he adds, because he doesn’t know how to make sense of this topic without papering over half a decade of his life.
“You don’t have to explain.”
Nathaniel almost wishes he did have to explain, about this and about everything else. Then Patrick would know exactly who he’s been feeding and housing, exactly who’s been rocking his niece to sleep. Nathaniel would have to leave, of course, but at least he wouldn’t be enjoying all this under false pretenses.
“And she still shouldn’t have said anything to me,” Patrick goes on. “If you told her something in confidence…”
There’s the faintest hint of a question in there and it takes Nathaniel a moment to figure out why. He’s about to say that he hadn’t actually told Susan, in case that’s what Patrick’s wondering about, but he effectively did tell her.If this is a seduction, I have terrible news.ThatwasNathaniel telling her. For weeks, she’s been making it clear that she knows, easing him into the idea.Save your sweet talk for Patrick.
Nathaniel spent his career watching his painstakingly assembled facts get reshaped into something that wasn’t thetruth. Even as he wrote his reports, he knew which facts were so inconvenient they’d have to be ignored, and which were nearly desirable and therefore would get exaggerated. One of the things he likes most about Susan is that she’ll have no part of that. Perhaps it isn’t ideal to go around announcing other people’s secrets, but the entire point is that it wasn’t a secret, it was a fact they were all delicately sidestepping. “I’m glad she did,” he says.
The shop door opens and they both pivot, like they’ve been caught in the middle of something more interesting than a conversation.
Mrs. Kaplan walks in. “I hardly recognize the place without all the dust,” she says, gazing around in wonderment. “You can see through the windows. Who knew?” Her eyes linger for a moment on Patrick and Nathaniel, standing at a distance that Nathaniel now realizes is abnormally close.
“Welcome back,” Patrick says, wry. “I don’t need to tell you who cleaned.”
Nathaniel raises a hand in greeting, feeling absurdly shy. The last time he saw Mrs. Kaplan, he’d been knee deep in a nervous breakdown, and he’d been a lot deeper than that when she’d taken him in. She’s seen him at his worst and there’s a cowardly part of him that hoped he’d never meet her again. He’d stumbled in here, half out of his wits, on an afternoon when she’d been working the cash register, Patrick apparently at a book auction. He barely remembers that day, only the matter of fact way she’d locked up the shop, hailed a cab, and brought him home.
“You look well,” she tells him before wrapping him in a hug.
“Thank you.” He hopes she knows he’s thanking her for more than the compliment.
Mrs. Kaplan releases him only to immediately hug Patrick.
“Have you been at thebeach?” Patrick asks, holding her at arm’s length and scrutinizing what does indeed appear to be a suntan. “Have you been playing shuffleboard and drinkingwhiskey sours forthree monthswhile the rest of us toil and strive?”
“Oh, take your mug and be quiet,” she says, opening a purse the size of serviceable luggage and producing a mug that says MIAMI in bright pink letters alongside a flamingo on a surfboard. “Do I get to see this baby or are you all holding out on me?”
When Patrick goes upstairs to get Eleanor, Mrs. Kaplan turns to Nathaniel. “I wasn’t sure I’d still find you here.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
She gives him a once-over—tan cotton slacks, a white oxford, and scuffed penny loafers, his everyday uniform since that trip to the Salvation Army—and says, “I’m not sure about that.”
Nathaniel could tell her that looking presentably employable—or like someone who was once employable—doesn’t amount to much. But he suspects that what she’s really getting at is that he walked away from something, and could theoretically walk right back to it. She probably thinks he worked at a bank or an insurance agency.
Patrick comes back down, carrying Eleanor, who is, thankfully, a distraction from Nathaniel’s past. Mrs. Kaplan compliments Eleanor’s fat little cheeks and wisps of sandy hair. “What color do you think her eyes will be?”
Eleanor’s eyes started out a murky blue, but in the last few weeks they’ve gotten clearer. Susan’s eyes are green, but that doesn’t seem to be the direction Eleanor’s are heading.
“Can’t tell yet,” Patrick says.
“Were Michael’s eyes the same color as yours?” Mrs. Kaplan asks. “That bright blue? I can’t remember.”
“Yeah.” Patrick swallows. “We both got our dad’s eyes.”
