Page 5 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“No,” Nathaniel says, appalled, like Patrick suggested cannibalism. That’s pretty much Patrick’s own attitude toward cooking, so he can’t really judge.
Patrick buys some eggs anyway, and also some butter to cook them in. Then he remembers that fruit exists, so when he comes home it’s with two overfull paper sacks. Nathaniel’s waiting at the door like he wasn’t sure Patrick was going to make it back alive, which is fair, because the trip took twice as long as it should have. Before he even got to the grocery store, he found a coatless girl at the entrance to the Sheridan Square subway station, a look of grim determination on her face and the piss poor judgment to solicit clients in broad daylight in front of what’s pretty widely known as a gay gym. He can’t afford to buy coats for every kid on the planet, but he can make sure girls barely older than Iris get a hot coffee and cab fare, so that’s whathe did. It’s about ten percent of what Mrs. Kaplan would have done.
Nathaniel takes his share of the groceries and scrupulously gives Patrick ten dollars. Patrick rolls his eyes and gives him back eight dollars, because just how much does this guy think a jar of peanut butter and some tuna fish cost.
While Nathaniel is bringing his groceries upstairs, Patrick checks the cash register. Nothing is missing. He isn’t particularly surprised. Whatever Nathaniel’s problems are, the contents of the cash register aren’t going to solve them.
Mr. Valdez has the night off, so the twins go straight home after school. When seven thirty rolls around with no customers and the sky is dumping snow onto the streets, Patrick closes the shop.
“If you let me use your kitchen, I’ll scramble some eggs for dinner,” Patrick says. Sometimes, inspired by the novelty of it, he’ll cook a couple eggs in a little pan over the hot plate in his apartment, but there’s no way that pan will fit enough eggs for two people.
Nathaniel accepts so readily that Patrick is sure at least one of them should be embarrassed about it.
“These eggs aren’t very good,” Patrick observes when they sit down to eat. They’re badly overcooked, but with some raw egg still visible. He doesn’t know how he managed that.
“An abomination,” Nathaniel agrees, and Patrick nearly chokes on his admittedly abominable eggs. Well, whatever Nathaniel is afraid of, at least he doesn’t seem to be afraid of Patrick. Patrick knows he isn’t exactly approachable. Hector—six feet tall and built like a truck—skittered away from Patrick for a full two months after the Valdezes moved in. Patrick isn’t sure what exactly he’s doing to be scary—maybe it’s his size, maybe it’s the beard—but whatever it is, Nathaniel’s apparently immune.
“I promise never to cook for you again,” Patrick says.
“In exchange, I can promise never to cook for you either. A fair trade.”
Now Patrick is sure of it: Nathaniel’s voice doesn’t fit. If Patrick shut his eyes, he’d expect that voice to come from someone in a suit and tie. He doesn’t, as a rule, spend a lot of time with people in suits and ties.
Patrick is trying to decide whether he’s going to ask some questions he won’t like the answers to or whether he’s going to go watchStar Trekin the peace of his own apartment, when the buzzer rings—not the one in this apartment, but the shop doorbell all the way downstairs. The only reason he can even hear it this far up is that it sounds like someone’s leaning against it. For fuck’s sake, nobody needs a book that badly.
“I need to get that,” Patrick sighs, checking his watch. The shop would normally still be open. It could be a late delivery. He runs down the stairs, aware of Nathaniel’s footsteps behind him. On the second floor landing, there’s a locked door that leads to Patrick’s apartment and the upper story of the shop, but it’s easiest to take these stairs right down to the street, then use his key to let himself back in through the shop’s front door.
When he reaches the sidewalk, he’s hit with a blast of freezing air and powdery snow. A customer is waiting at the shop door, a woman with long black hair cut in a fringe across her forehead, a suitcase at her feet and a—he’s very much afraid that’s ababyin her arms. She turns to face him.
“What thefuckis all this garbage for?”
“Susan?” He’s known her longer than he’s known practically anybody but she’s so out of context that he doubts his own eyes. “I’ll explain the garbage if you explain thebaby,” Patrick retorts. He pulls the key chain from his pocket and unlocks the door, then impatiently waves everyone into the shop. Why Nathaniel is still there is anybody’s guess.
“You knew I was pregnant,” Susan says in the near dark of the closed shop. “What did you think was going to happen?”
Patrick’s been doing his best not to think about it at all. He still can’t make sense of Susan—the same Susan whose locker had been next to his, the Susan who rolled his first joint and helped him definitively determine that he isn’t into women—as amother. Twenty-seven is a perfectly normal age to have a baby, but it still seems implausible, even with the proof staring him in the face.Susan and Michael have a babyis a nonsense series of words, like the phrases they make you repeat when you’re learning a foreign language. The monkey has a hat. My aunt has the pen. Susan and Michael have a baby.
“A baby,” Nathaniel says, sounding about as stricken as Patrick feels.
“I’m so glad we’ve all agreed that Eleanor is indeed a baby.” Susan shifts the infant higher on her shoulder, and Patrick sees that she has her guitar case on her back.
“Susan, Nathaniel is the new clerk. He’s staying here.”
“How old is she?” Nathaniel asks Susan.
“One week.”
“You flew across the country with a brand new baby?” Patrick asks. Shouldn’t they both still be in the hospital? Or at least in bed?
“I didn’t feel up to driving,” she snaps, and that shuts him up fast. “Why are we standing around in the dark?”
Patrick runs his hand along the wall until he finds the light switch. When he turns back around, the sight of Susan brings him up short. She’s so pale she’s nearly gray. The only color in her face is her bloodshot eyes. A dusting of snow is in her hair, still unmelted, and it’s that, for some reason, that sends a shiver down his spine.
The last time they talked—only a month ago, Susan blithely racking up a phone bill that made Patrick crazy to even thinkabout—she was in San Francisco with no intention of going anywhere else. The band was in its final death throes, Michael was in Vietnam, and a baby was imminent but not discussed. She wasn’t happy, but he didn’t get the sense that she was sitting in her apartment crying her eyes red, either.
“Susan,” Patrick starts, but he’s interrupted by the baby mewling.
“May I hold her?” Nathaniel asks, which Patrick might have found odd if everything else about this encounter wasn’t far weirder.
