Chapter 19 To Kind of Kill #2
His whole life had been shaped by a need to be useful, and his career choice had grown from that very instinct: helping customers, preserving stories, honouring life – starting with that of his father, to whom he’d dedicated his bookshop.
He’d always put other people’s needs and desires ahead of his own, finding purpose in what he gave, or shared with, others.
At school, his teachers described him as kind-hearted, curious, attentive – qualities the world often mistakes for weakness.
Those traits took a great deal of both imagination and courage. What would become of them if he ever acted on the dark fantasies he sometimes had about Salinas?
Mitch’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a person he hadn’t seen in years.
“So the rumours are true – you really are back!” cried Madame Ateltow.
She looked so genuinely moved that Mitch half-expected her to hug him.
“I’m back, yes.”
“So how was your trip? It must’ve been life-changing!”
“And what brings you in today, Madame Ateltow?” Mitch asked, his expression unreadable.
“What kind of question is that? Why, I wanted to see you, of course. I’ve missed our little evenings together. I never got the chance to thank you – or to say goodbye. You left so suddenly. My local bookseller tried her best, but it was never quite the same.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied stiffly.
Madame Ateltow bit her lip, adjusted a strand of white hair, and shifted uncomfortably.
“Are booksellers bound by professional confidentiality?” she asked at last. Her expression had turned deadly serious.
“Of course,” Mitch replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I don’t trust mine.”
“…To choose a book for you?”
“No, she’s actually quite good at that, but she talks too much.
You see, my son worries far too much about me – to the point of becoming a real tyrant.
He watches everything I do like a hawk, and he’s decided that because of what I read I’ve got my head in the clouds.
He says if I didn’t read so much fantasy I’d be more sensible about how I live. ”
“Sensible… in what way?”
“Well, for starters, he can’t stand that my political views differ from his.”
“Well now, that’s ridiculous. How old is this little tyke of yours?”
“He’ll be forty-two in December.”
Mitch sighed. “In that case, he’s a lost cause. It’s sad, how much control he has over you – and even sadder that he’s so closed-minded.”
“It’s not his views that control me, it’s the money.
I live off the pension he gives me. I can’t exactly tell him to bugger off, though God knows I’d love to.
Don’t judge me too harshly. I hope you’ll be in a better situation than me when you’re my age.
It was much harder for women of my generation to be independent than people think. ”
Madame Ateltow had met her husband while working as a teaching assistant in a middle school.
He’d been the principal. She had always been self-conscious about her appearance; if she’d been able to see herself clearly, she might have realized how attractive she really was.
Monsieur Ateltow had smiled at her every time she brought him a file, and his warmth had quickly convinced her that she couldn’t hope to find anyone better.
Back then, she feared nothing more than the idea of ending up alone and unmarried.
Some of the crueller students used to call her the ostrich because of her long neck and spindly legs.
Within six months of their first movie date, they were married, and she shelved her dreams of teaching to play the dutiful wife.
Monsieur Ateltow had been charming in the few months before they married, but things changed very soon after the wedding ring went on.
As the years went by, he revealed himself to be controlling, self-important, and far less intelligent than she had imagined.
The nonsense he spouted was endless. Worse, he had opinions about absolutely everything.
She was bored senseless for twenty years.
The birth of their son, Rony – who quickly revealed he’d inherited his father’s worst traits – offered only brief reprieve.
When Monsieur Ateltow was hit by a garbage truck on his Sunday bike ride, his widow discovered a hidden talent for acting.
Wearing a rather unsettling grimace, she snatched a shovel from the gravedigger and eagerly started burying the coffin herself.
Everyone around her mistook her behaviour for a sign of overwhelming grief – instead she was actually experiencing a profound relief at the idea of reclaiming her freedom, and the faint hope that she might, someday, find true love.
While waiting for fate to work its magic, she returned to teaching – mature students this time. Unfortunately, what little her husband left behind didn’t last, and her modest pension barely made a dent. It was then that Rony stepped in, providing her with a comfortable life – on his terms.
A man obsessed with “clean living”, Rony had started by taking control of his mother’s diet, regularly inspecting her fridge and confiscating any sweets, allowing her only a single glass of wine a day, at dinner.
Years later, when Madame Ateltow had begun spending time – too much time, in his opinion – with a music teacher whose salary was well below what a man his age should earn, Rony (now holding an important position at a major bank) did enough digging to come to yet another stupid conclusion.
It was inconceivable that she had actually fallen for a penniless so-called artist – especially one with a scandalous passion for tango.
Clearly her books were to blame for her romantic delusions.
The next day, Alfred de Musset’s Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess, Marguerite Duras’s The Lover and Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence were all consigned to the garbage.
As his former literature teacher poured her heart out, slouched across the counter like it was a therapist’s couch, it dawned on Mitch that Rony had probably played a big role in Verner’s own romantic disappointment.
“Don’t worry,” he told her gently. “If your son ever does show up and ask questions – which I seriously doubt – I promise I won’t say a word. Now, with that out of the way, was there a particular book you came for?”
She didn’t answer right away, but got up and walked around the bookshop, her handbag dangling from the crook of her elbow.
“He’s the one who told me you were back,” she murmured, leafing through a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.
“Who?” Mitch asked, feigning ignorance.
He knew perfectly well she was talking about Verner, but he felt the need to prove his professionalism.
“We see each other sometimes, in secret. Just briefly, and not often enough,” she confessed. “He told me you’d gone off on a long trip. How lucky you are – that’s always been my dream.”
Her eyes widened as if she’d been struck by a revelation.
“You know, maybe that’s what I should do. Run away!”
“At your age, maybe try something a little less dramatic,” Mitch suggested. “You could talk to your son, for instance. Tell him how you’re feeling.”
“He wouldn’t listen. He means well, really…
he thinks he’s protecting me. And the moment I complain, he says I’m getting senile.
The truth is that children are awful – horrible little vampires that sink their fangs into your life and bleed you dry.
And it doesn’t get any better when they grow up.
I’m terrified that he’ll put me in a nursing home one of these days. Might as well be prison!”
“I doubt that,” Mitch replied, dryly.
“Anyway, I didn’t come here to weep and wail over my fate, even though that’s all I’ve done since I got here.
I’ll take this one,” Madame Ateltow said, holding up the Miller novel.
“I’ll hide it under my bed, next to my box of chocolates and my bottle of whiskey. They’ll make for a perfect evening.”
But she continued to pace from table to table, muttering to herself in a voice too low for Mitch to hear. Stopping in front of the Religion and Esotericism section, she turned to him again.
“If you ever need a hand getting things organized here, I’d be delighted to help,” she said – though her gaze was fixed firmly on her shoes.
Mitch thought the shop looked perfectly tidy, but Madame Ateltow’s suggestion was so obviously a cry for help that he paused for a moment to think.
“I have a better idea. How about this: you could stop by twice a week – let’s say on Tuesdays and Thursdays, around lunchtime.
It’s possible that someone we both know might just happen to be here at the same time.
And it’s possible that the two of you might spend some time organizing the storeroom a little. ”
Madame Ateltow’s face lit up like a lighthouse flashing across a stormy sea.
“How would this mutual acquaintance know when I’m going to be here?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Mitch assured her.
“And no one else would know?”
“Professional confidentiality,” Mitch replied, “and the back room doesn’t have any windows.”
Madame Ateltow pressed her handbag to her heart, her eyes full of tears. Mitch walked her to the door, promising that everything would be fine.
After she left, he found himself wanting to tell Anna about it. He’d already had to talk himself out of contacting her twice that morning, determined to comply with the instructions she’d left in her note.
* * *
Shortly before noon, Mitch locked up. That day, like every week, Salinas would be heading home for lunch. It was clear that he lived alone; his perpetual bachelorhood explained the evenings he spent in the brothel.
The prosecutor was a creature of habit and very little imagination. Whimsy was utterly foreign to him; even his car matched his suits. Everything in his life was meticulously ordered.