Chapter 6
Tiddas chat 3
19 July 2023
Brynn:
If I’d got the first internship I’d be starting work today. Instead, I’m waiting to hear if I’m getting an interview at a doggy daycare and making spreadsheets of all the lit mags I’ve contacted while I’ve been here.
Dotty:
Don’t forget your mum’s Missions. You gotta have some fun too.
Bridie:
I always find Tinder entertaining. Plus, you could get yourself some free nights out!!
A few days after our night out, I wake to a bright, sunny morning, a stream of messages from the girls, and still no reply to the doggy daycare job let alone any of the others I’ve applied for. The way Hilde had talked about the daycare, I thought I’d at least have had an interview by now.
The idea of spending another day online looking for jobs makes me want to go back to sleep. But then I decide that the girls are right; I need to have some fun. I’m not at all interested in Tinder, so I pad across the bedroom and retrieve Mum’s envelope from my backpack.
I shuffle through the pages reading through the missions until I find one that stands out: ‘Go to a bookshop and buy a new book. Sit in a diner and read: NB I’ve said diner because the coffee comes in a pot and they’ll keep topping you up the whole time you’re there! (Tight arse forever!)’
Knowing that I can sit in the Midnight Diner as long as I want on one coffee (plus my stomach growls at the thought of a big plate of disco fries), I do a quick Google search for local bookshops in case I’ve missed a hidden neighbourhood gem, and realise the new Barnes & Noble on 87th Street that I’ve walked past a hundred times is opening today. Locals were so excited for it that they’d been leaving notes on the window under the ‘coming soon’ sign saying things like ‘We can’t wait for you to open!’, which made me smile every time I passed. Books were not ever going to go away and the neighbourhood’s anticipation proved that.
An hour later I’m lined up outside waiting while a bouncer counts people coming in and out of the store. A bookshop with a line outside and a bouncer! I snap a picture and upload it to my Instagram.
Inside, I breathe in the scent of new books and dodge the frazzled employees to take my time wandering around the shelves, listening to the chatter of people as they show each other book covers. I grin at the girls in the romance section who are clearly filming for their BookToks and wonder for a fleeting moment if I should start one myself. Might be a good way of getting a job? I make a mental note to call Bridie and ask her all-knowing social media advice later.
I spend ages browsing. So far I haven’t bought any books while I’ve been here. It’s partly because I don’t want to squeeze more into my already extremely full luggage when I go home, and partly because buying books feels frivolous when I don’t have a job and need to save money. Mum giving me a mission to buy a book is a big one: it feels like I need to make the choice extra special. I linger over a beautiful hardback edition of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, but reluctantly put it down knowing I have a perfectly good paperback copy at home and the words inside the cover are exactly the same. I think about grabbing a popular fantasy book, but then on a display shelf I find a hardcover copy of Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang and snatch it up immediately. I know that the viral book is about the publishing industry and I know it’s the perfect choice for the mission.
The line to check out is almost as long as the one to get into the store and I’m so jealous of the people carrying armloads of books. But of course it’s a good thing that people are buying lots: more books sold means more jobs.
As the line gets closer to the register, I watch with interest as a girl with a stack of papers approaches one of the workers and asks if she can leave her résumé. I already know from my job search that Barnes & Noble has an online recruitment system and that jobs here closed weeks ago—before I got here.
‘If you’re properly into books,’ the worker tells her, ‘you could try The Strand bookstore—they only take walk-in applications. But you gotta, like, know books because there’s a test on the application form. You gotta get, like, one hundred per cent to even score an interview with them.’
My eyes widen and I look down at the book in my hands. How much do I need this copy right now? Is it breaching the mission if I ditch the book and go to another store? I stand in line for a little bit longer but when it barely moves I make a decision. I leave the book on a table and sprint to the subway.
At The Strand, I resist the urge to browse the beautiful, famous bookstore, and go straight up to the information desk to ask for an application. The bookseller gives me a clipboard, takes my backpack and puts it in a locker so I can’t cheat, and sends me to a quiet room on a hidden top floor to fill out the form.
I race through all the usual parts of the application until I get to the quiz. It’s not so much a quiz as it is a game. Two columns, one of author surnames, the other of book titles, with my job being to draw a line between two to match the book to the author. I’m cocky as I match Toole to A Confederacy of Dunces , Swift to Gulliver’s Travels , and Atwood to The Handmaid’s Tale. There are a couple I don’t know and a few where I’ve heard of the book but my mind blanks on the author. Beads of sweat form on my upper lip as I contemplate A House for Mr Biswas and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. In the end, I know I’ve ballsed it up and head back downstairs to the desk.
‘How’d you go?’ the bookseller asks, a faint smirk on his face.
‘I’m guessing you won’t be calling me,’ I say, handing him the paper. I send up a silent curse for not taking many literature electives as an undergrad. At the time I’d felt smug opting out of the minor in literature because of the clear bias the reading lists had shown towards white male writers. I remembered getting ranty when I enrolled in a subject that had Heart of Darkness as one of the required readings. ‘I’m sure I’ll have a great time,’ I remember saying to a classmate. ‘A Blak student in a white classroom discussing potentially the most racist book of all time.’
On the way through the store, I pass an end cap with a huge display of the same Yellowface hardback that I’d put down at Barnes & Noble. I pick one up and head to the counter, deciding that while I may have failed the employment test, I can resume Mum’s Mission.
‘Oh my god, this book is sooooo good. It’s wild, it totally cracks open the publishing industry,’ the bookseller says. ‘Did you see it’s a signed edition too?’
My eyes widen. ‘It is?’
They open the front cover to show Rebecca F. Kuang’s signature across the title page. Thanks, Mum , I think as I pay for my purchase and head off in search of a midtown diner to read in for the rest of the afternoon.
I’ve just slid into a booth at the Orion Diner when my phone pings with an email inviting me to an interview tomorrow at Dogue’s Doggy Daycare in TriBeCa and I can’t help but smile to myself. Maybe New York isn’t magic for me, maybe it’s Mum’s Missions that are magic.