Page 51 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
Nathaniel’s sitting at the cash register playing Susan’s old guitar, and Susan’s playing a new guitar on a beanbag chair that absolutely wasn’t there a few days ago. Eleanor’s asleep in the carriage.
When Patrick realizes what they’re playing, he nearly laughs. It’s an appallingly folksy rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “I Was Made to Love Her.”
“This is terrible,” Mrs. Valdez says, walking into the shop a few minutes later. She still has on her nurse’s uniform and it looks like she’s coming home from a long shift.
“I’m passing around a petition to make them stop,” Patrick says, heading to the back of the shop to pour her a cup of coffee.
“I’ll sign it,” Mrs. Valdez says.
“So mean,” Nathaniel says, but he and Susan have a wordless conversation and start playing one of the prettier murder ballads. The dog nudges Patrick’s leg until Patrick scratches his head.
He knows it isn’t forever; he knows they’ll leave. But today he isn’t letting that fact stop him from feeling almost unfairly lucky.
16
Walt can usually be relied on to sleep until somebody jangles his leash at him, so Patrick isn’t expecting to wake up to a wet nose in his face and the sound of whimpering. When Patrick opens his eyes, Walt is staring tragically at him. It’s barely light out.
“All right, all right.” Patrick scrambles to put on some pants and shoes, then snaps the leash on Walt’s collar and opens the apartment door as quietly as possible so they don’t wake Nathaniel. Walt tugs at the leash. Usually Walt has to be practically dragged around the block in the morning, then passes back out a few minutes after they come home. Whatever labor union he belongs to regards forty-five minutes as the longest shift anyone can work without a nap.
But today Walt is bounding down the stairs faster than Patrick would like, when Patrick stops dead, the leash going taut in his hand. Books are all over the floor. It looks like the shop’s been ransacked.
And the sound—he can hear the traffic coming from Bleecker. The front window is smashed, and there’s glass all over the floor.
Patrick drops the leash and runs back upstairs to check the safe. It’s closed. The glass case, however, is empty, one of its sides shattered.
He should call the police. That’s what you do when there’s a break-in, right? You call the cops, and they take down yourname and contact information and don’t do anything about it other than notice if you have a record. Practically everybody he knows has had a burglary in their building at some point, and all the police have done is confirm that, yes, there sure are a lot of burglaries in the city these days, have you thought about putting in an extra lock?
Walt starts poking his nose into Patrick’s leg, which puts Patrick in mind of the only thing that’s clear: dogs need to get walked no matter what. He picks Walt up so he doesn’t get glass in his paws and only puts him down on the sidewalk when he’s sure there aren’t any shards of glass.
When he gets back, he finds Nathaniel standing in front of the cash register, ashen.
“There you are,” Nathaniel says. “I thought you’d been—I don’t even know what I thought. Don’t you ever, ever do that again.”
Nathaniel gets peeved and cross every day of his life but this is something else. “Don’t disappear after the shop’s been robbed?” Patrick asks, aiming for levity. He carries Walt into the kitchen and puts him down, then gives him a bowl of dog food. Nathaniel follows them, cornering Patrick against the counter.
“Yes! These are things nobody should need to tell you. I was worried sick.” His fists are clenched and he looks furious.
“I spaced out,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“That much is clear!” Nathaniel’s hands are on Patrick’s chest, now, his fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt and into Patrick’s skin like he needs the proof that Patrick is really there. “Think of how you’d feel if you woke up and the shop was in mayhem and I was gone.”
Patrick shudders. He takes Nathaniel’s hands in his own. “I would have had a heart attack.” He thinks he nearly did, just imagining it. Maybe if he were a little less frightened, a little less addled by the break-in, he’d be warier about how they’restanding here, admitting—something. That they care about one another? That’s hardly an admission. What, after all, have they been doing for the past few months, if not caring for each other? That isn’t a secret.
But Patrick learned long ago not to let his happiness depend on anyone caring for him. Or so he thought—clearly the lesson hadn’t stuck. Nathaniel bends his head and presses his lips to Patrick’s knuckles and the sensation reverberates through Patrick’s body, seismic.
“What did they take?” Nathaniel asks, disorientingly practical while Patrick’s mind is still reeling from the shock of what Nathaniel just did, his thoughts ricocheting between imagining Nathaniel being hurt and the fact of him safe and close and having just touched Patrick in a way that doesn’t allow any misinterpretation. Nathaniel drops Patrick’s hands. “What did they take?” he repeats.
Patrick tries to get himself under control. “Everything in the glass case. Everything in the cash register, but that was only twenty dollars because I went to the bank yesterday. The typewriter. The safe is still locked.”
“That’s all?”
“Who knows? I can’t exactly tell what’s missing when half the books downstairs are in a heap on the floor.”
“What about your files?”
“Myfiles?” Patrick can’t imagine what burglars would think they’d find in the file cabinet of a book dealer. Still, he turns toward the cabinet. It’s on its side, its contents all over the floor.
Nathaniel takes a breath, lets it out. “Why would they take your typewriter?”
