4
Patrick’s about to close the shop when someone walks in.
“Gracious,” the new arrival says, dramatically stepping backwards and clutching his chest when he sees Patrick holding Eleanor. “Tell me you didn’t make that.”
“Okay, first of all, fuck you,” Patrick says, leaning in to kiss Jerome’s cheek. “Second, there’s nothing wrong with babies.”
“Of course not, darling. But when an old queen—”
“I’m twenty-seven!”
“Like I said. Nobody’s seen you in weeks, and now I know why. Procreating. ”
“She isn’t mine.”
“Exactly how sure are you about that?” Jerome asks, one plucked eyebrow carefully arched.
He has on a fur coat but no wig or makeup.
It makes Patrick panicky when Jerome goes out in drag—it’s only a matter of time before he gets arrested—but when he told this to Jerome, he got an earful about how wearing false eyelashes in broad daylight isn’t any more of a crime than Patrick going home with every queer rare book collector on the East Coast. The worst part is that he was right.
“I always thought all white babies looked the same, but they can’t all look just like you. ”
“She’s my niece,” Patrick says.
The expression of camp scandalization drops from Jerome’s face. “Your brother?”
It hits Patrick that he’s going to have to go through this every time he tells someone about Eleanor. “Not coming home.”
“Well, shit,” Jerome says. “I’m sorry, baby.”
Patrick shakes his head. “What do you have for me today?”
Dooryard Books has some regular book scouts who come by every couple of weeks or months with a few well-selected books they think Patrick might want to buy, but they’re the minority.
More common are those who arrive with an A he’d climb out a window if he had to hear about a straight person’s sex life.
“I can close up on my own,” Patrick says, feeling merciful, “if you want to finish whatever you were watching with the Valdezes.”
But Nathaniel stays, never more than a few feet away as Patrick runs the cash register tape and locks up.
* * *
“Where do you get a violin restrung?” Patrick asks one morning when Nathaniel emerges from his bedroom.
He’s wearing one of Patrick’s t-shirts. Patrick tries not to notice the way the threadbare shirt shifts on Nathaniel’s shoulders as he reaches for a cup of coffee—he’s not as skinny as Patrick first thought.
“It’s just that you mentioned your violin needs work,” Patrick says when Nathaniel’s starting in on his second cup of coffee.
He doesn’t add: Susan asked me to flush the pills down the toilet and then she cried; the only time I’ve seen her smile in the last month is when she’s making music with you.
“It isn’t my violin,” Nathaniel says, finally looking up from his coffee mug. “It was in your shop.”
“Pal, that violin cluttered up the shop for years. I lowered the price to two dollars and still nobody bought it. It’s your violin now, good riddance to it, no take-backs.”
“Two dollars,” Nathaniel repeats, and now he’s all the way awake. “Two American dollars?”
“No, two Klingon dollars.”
“What in hell is a Klingon dollar?”
Patrick decides then and there that he’s closing the shop early on Thursday so Nathaniel can get some culture. “So, where do you get violins restrung?”
“Around here? I wouldn’t know,” Nathaniel says. “In general, a luthier. Anyway, I ought to save my money.”
“Shit.” Patrick scrubs a hand across his beard.
On his desk is a letter from Mrs. Kaplan, explaining that her sister is back in the hospital with an infection, so Mrs. Kaplan will be in Florida for at least another few weeks.
Patrick should have looked at the calendar and realized it was his responsibility to figure out what to do with Nathaniel.
“I owe you a month’s wages. Jesus. I’m so sorry. ”