6
“This is very upsetting to me,” Nathaniel says, sounding aggrieved enough that Patrick puts down the latest Antiquarian Bookman and turns his attention to what’s going on at the back of the shop. Nathaniel is sitting at the table between Iris and Hector, correcting their math homework.
“It’s the same material you were learning last month,” Nathaniel says, tapping their textbook with the eraser end of a pencil. “Is your teacher obsessed with simplifying equations? Simplifying them stupidly, I might add.”
Nathaniel’s hair falls across his forehead as he scribbles something on a piece of paper.
The radiators are having fits, so it’s warm enough in the shop for Nathaniel’s sleeves to be rolled up.
On his left wrist is a watch: brown leather band, round face, gold details, in decent shape by the looks of it.
Your watch is the first thing you pawn, so either that watch is an irreplaceable heirloom or Nathaniel never got to the point where he needed to pawn things.
“How do you remember this stuff?” Patrick asks. Years of calculating sales tax, mark ups, and the percentage he owes book scouts has left him able to do a lot of math in his head, but anything more advanced than solving for X got left behind in high school.
Nathaniel looks up. “It wasn’t exactly irrelevant to my job,” he says.
“What was your job?” Iris asks. “I mean, what kind of job do you need this for?” She sounds like a kid who just found out you can feed animals at the zoo for a living.
“Engineers use math a lot more advanced than this,” Nathaniel says.
“Economists. Statisticians, too.” None of that answers what he did for a living.
“Anyway.” He taps the paper he just scribbled on.
“That’s what it should look like. There’s a better book around here somewhere.
” He gets to his feet and scans the shelves.
It takes him less time than Patrick might have guessed to find whatever he’s looking for, but then again he’s started inventorying the browsing stock on the first floor, insisting that Patrick’s method of simply remembering what he has is deplorable, unseemly, and a crass embarrassment.
“Here,” Nathaniel says, handing the book to Iris, open to a page with diagrams and equations.
“We carry math textbooks?” Patrick asks.
“Imagine, if only you had a list of books in stock,” Nathaniel says, and Patrick supposes he walked right into that.
For the next hour, Nathaniel works with Hector and Iris. Patrick goes back to what he was doing at the front of the shop, but occasionally hears laughter. By the time the twins leave, Iris looks almost ecstatic.
“You’re both too smart to be in that class,” Nathaniel says. “We just covered a full unit in barely an hour.”
The twins exchange a look. “Puerto Rican kids don’t usually get put into the advanced classes,” Hector explains. “At least, not at our school.”
Nathaniel presses his lips together. “I see. Well, if they’re going to teach you like you aren’t capable of learning, you’ll need to learn it on your own.”
Patrick bristles, because the real solution would be for the twins to be in the correct math class, but Iris perks up like she’s been offered an ice cream cone.
“It won’t be so bad in college,” Nathaniel says. “At least, I hope not.”
“That was nice of you,” Patrick says after the twins leave.
“It’s an outrage,” Nathaniel says. “Hector is smart enough to do whatever he wants with his life, but Iris is—well. It would be a bad thing for a mind like that to go to waste.”
The door chimes ring, and Patrick turns to see who walked in. It’s a man in a coat much too heavy for a relatively mild March day, and he’s carrying a stack of books so high that Patrick can hardly see his face, just an unruly thicket of iron gray hair. He has an oilskin knapsack over his shoulder.
“Gary?” Patrick asks. “Put those down. Here, let me—”
“You can have them after you pay for them,” Gary snaps, placing the teetering pile directly onto the floor.
“Sure, sure,” Patrick says. Gary is one of the more peculiar book scouts.
Seven or eight years ago, after a stint in the merchant marines, he hit hard times and Mrs. Kaplan took him in.
From what Patrick can gather, he sleeps at YMCAs or in the back of the rusted out 1954 Hudson Jet he drives up and down the coast, scouring estate sales and church fairs, looking for books.
“Why’s it so clean in here?” Gary asks, looking around him with an expression of disgust. “Ain’t natural.”
“Nathaniel here is relentless,” Patrick says.
“Oh no,” Gary says. “You need the dust. Makes people feel like they’re getting a bargain.
” He turns to Patrick and takes a book out of what looks like an old pillowcase.
“You’ll want this. First edition, perfect copy, inscribed.
” It’s Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat . And it really is perfect—there isn’t a mark on it, no bumped corners, binding tight, not a single tear in the jacket.
It looks like it’s been on someone’s shelf in an air conditioned room for the past thirty years.
“It’s a beauty.” He and Gary proceed to haggle, a well worn patter that they’ve been through a dozen times and could both probably predict the outcome down to the decimal point.
As soon as Patrick writes the check, Gary moves the books onto Patrick’s desk.
“Nathaniel, take a look at this,” Patrick says, holding out the Steinbeck.
“Where’s Edna?” Gary demands. He’s one of maybe three people Patrick’s ever heard call Mrs. Kaplan by her first name.
“Florida. Her sister got her gallbladder out.”
“Sylvia’s all right, isn’t she?”
As far as Patrick knows, Gary never met Mrs. Kaplan’s family, but everyone who’s spent time with her gets to know about the members of her family like they’re characters in a soap opera.
There’s Sylvia in Florida, a pair of sisters-in-law in Brooklyn, a ne’er-do-well brother who ran away fifty years ago, and about twenty great nieces and nephews who Patrick could identify on sight thanks to all the photographs he’s seen over the years.
Even now, Patrick’s hoping that Ezra makes first chair in the state orchestra and Sarah gets into Brandeis.
“She’s on the mend,” Patrick says. “How’ve you been?”
“Can’t complain.” Gary unbuttons his coat and shifts his weight.
He looks like he could do with a place to sit and a hot meal, or at least something to drink, but they used up the last of the tea bags that morning and Gary doesn’t drink coffee.
“Spent the winter in Baltimore, then drove up through Pennsylvania and hit some book sales in New Jersey. Found that Steinbeck in a barn in Tom’s River. Paid seventy-five cents for it.”
“Where are you heading next?”
“Finger Lakes, then maybe Maine for the summer.”
Patrick wishes him well, then watches as Gary leaves, his knapsack still slung over his shoulder, but fifty dollars richer.
“Does he have a place to stay?” Nathaniel asks.
“He doesn’t stay in one place too long,” Patrick says.
“A drifter, then.”
“Nathaniel. You’re a drifter.”
“Hardly. I,” Nathaniel says, “am a mental case.”
Patrick snorts. “Point taken.”
“I haven’t drifted a day in my life.”
Nathaniel gestures at himself with an ironic little flourish and Patrick arrests the motion, taking hold of his wrist. He taps Nathaniel’s watch. “I’m no expert on watches, but I bet this is pretty nice. A gift?”
“I bought it for myself.” Nathaniel doesn’t make any move to take his hand back, and Patrick doesn’t drop it, just shifts his grip so he’s more or less holding Nathaniel’s hand. Nathaniel still doesn’t pull away.
“Bet you had a job with a pension. Bet you have a set of golf clubs somewhere.”
“You’re right about the pension,” Nathaniel says. “Wrong about the golf clubs. But I do have a tennis racket.”
Patrick notes the present tense, like that tennis racket is sitting somewhere right now, ready for Nathaniel to come get it. He probably has a whole life waiting for him, no matter what went wrong for him last winter.
Patrick squeezes Nathaniel’s hand and lets it go.
* * *
“You can have your chair back after you’ve gone to the laundromat,” Nathaniel says.
He has his feet up on Patrick’s desk, Eleanor asleep on his chest, Leaves of Grass open in one hand.
“I had to wear my least favorite one of your shirts.” He’s wearing a pair of worn-out jeans and a plaid flannel shirt.
“I don’t look reputable at all,” he complains.
“What a princess,” Patrick mutters, and Nathaniel looks up at him, his expression torn between amusement and outrage. “Want to come with me? Susan will watch Eleanor and the shop if I do her laundry.”
“Of course I don’t want to,” Nathaniel says. “But I should.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“That doesn’t stop it from being true. I want to find out where the limits are.”
“The limits of what?”
Nathaniel sighs. “My sanity, I suppose.”
Patrick gathers all the laundry in a couple of pillowcases and makes Nathaniel carry one of them around the corner to the laundromat.
When everything is loaded into the washing machines, Nathaniel sits on a metal folding chair and resumes reading Leaves of Grass .
They’re the only two people in the laundromat, other than a bored-looking middle-aged woman behind the counter.
“What’s the verdict?” Patrick asks, sitting in the chair next to Nathaniel’s and gesturing at the book.
“I keep coming up with alternative explanations. He has a healthy appreciation for the male form, et cetera.”
“Most people do that. For what it’s worth, the letters are a lot harder to explain away.”
“I’m not doubting your expert opinion.” It’s unclear whether the expertise he’s referring to is Patrick as a bookseller or Patrick as a gay man.
“‘When I Heard at the Close of the Day’ is especially illuminating,” Patrick says.
Nathaniel begins flipping through the book. Patrick takes it from his hands, finds the right page, and gives it back.