Chapter 20 #2
Ella hummed, nodding. “My parents moved here when they were eighteen, already married. My mom said they’d come down to the Village and wander around when they both got off work since it was right by their jobs. I would do the same when I was old enough to wander around by myself.”
“When was that?”
“Fifteen, the same year I started working at the store.” We approached a staircase leading into a small stone covering, arches all around it. “At the time, I thought I was so adult, but I shudder at the thought of my little brother in the city by himself.”
I smiled at that. “Is it just you and him?”
“There’s four of us. It’s me, Maya, Jorge, and then Carlito.” As we descended the stairs, she said, “Leo only mentioned having one grandson.”
“Just me. I have a few cousins on my mom’s side, scattered around the South.”
When we got to the bottom and entered the covering, the walls had ornate tiles on them, poised to look almost like stained glass windows.
The acoustics were perfect, too. A man stood in the near center with a trumpet and a hat on the ground.
He’d alternate between playing and singing “La Vie en rose.”
We stood at the edge of the man’s crowd, listening as he played “Dream a Little Dream of Me” and “What a Wonderful World.”
Ella stepped forward, tossing a couple bucks in his hat, and he nodded at her in thanks as he played his trumpet.
Once we exited the terrace, the stone continued out in front of the water, a fountain sitting in the middle.
There were buskers, poets writing poems for a dollar, and people just sitting on the edge of the park, hoping to catch some of the mist on a hot day like this.
“Doesn’t this make you love New York? It’s a whole different world up here. We get so caught up in our own neighborhoods and boroughs that we forget there are millions of us wandering around this city. Everyone with their own life of love and loss and dreams.”
“It’s hard to believe we’re in the middle of the city right now,” I admitted. “It all makes me miss home.”
“C’mon, we’re heading this way,” Ella said, gently touching my arm to lead us to a trail past the park. “I think I have an outdated image of Tennessee in my mind.”
I smiled, taking in the sound of birds chirping for the first time in a month and a half.
“Maybe I’m biased, and you probably feel this way about New York, but to me?
Nothing compares to home. I love my drive home from work, especially when the windows are rolled down and you can smell the fresh grass and hear the cicadas.
Or when the sun sets over the mountains and you realize just how big this world is.
It’s a lot of different things at once.”
“Like New York,” she said thoughtfully.
“Except you can’t spot someone dressed as a furry on your commute home.”
Ella tilted her head back in a laugh and my body warmed. These days, it seemed harder to get a genuine laugh out of her. Nowadays, she was so serious, laser-focused on finding a solution. On the floor, I could hear the booksellers murmuring about her, wondering if something else had happened.
I was flooded with pride at earning two of her real laughs today. Her fake laughs at the store were rare in and of themselves, and to earn a real one without even trying patched the parts of my soul that had weakened.
“Here we are!” she announced. There was a small line of people outside a green shed that had “Central Park Boathouse” written across the top. Small rowboats dotted the pond.
“A little bit of Tennessee and a little bit of New York, the perfect mix.”
“Ella,” I said skeptically, eyeing the rowboats. “I’m not sure if I’ll fit.”
“Oh, pish posh, you’ll be fine. C’mon, let’s hurry before a crowd comes.”
Once we paid, they led us to the boat and explained only one person could row.
“Your arms must be good from your football throwing days, no?”
“I did more of the catching than throwing.”
As I spoke, Ella slipped into the passenger side and said, “Oh, then a perfect opportunity to develop those muscles!”
These rowboats were obviously old—and finicky. It was hard to row in anywhere but one direction. The lake couldn’t have been all that deep, but Ella was so excited by everything she saw.
“Oh, look at those flowers!” She leaned forward nearly out of the boat to point at them.
I stopped rowing abruptly and grabbed onto the sides of the boat. “Ella, you’re going to tip us over.”
She ignored me, basically on her knees as she pointed in the other direction. “Do you see the frog?”
“We’re gonna see the bottom of the lake if you don’t sit down.”
She sat down with a huff and said, “You’re no fun.”
“You’ll thank me when we can get on the subway all dry.”
I rowed us around the lake, under the bridge and along the edges as people passed us by.
I could hear the faint music of traffic, but for the most part, I could pretend I was back home.
New York wasn’t my favorite city, but Ella was right; maybe if I just explored a bit more I could find things like this to fall in love with.
Ella pulled out her phone from across from me and said, “Okay, obviously the events with Joey didn’t work out—”
“Hey, hey, no work talk.”
Her eyes widened. “Just because we’ve left the confines of The Last Page does not mean it leaves us. We need to pivot from events to something more lucrative.”
“Or we could enjoy this nice—”
“The store is—”
“Ella,” I said softly. I put the oars down, so we floated at the whim of the water. “I know how you feel, but I think if we stop stretching our brains to come up with something, it’ll come to us when we least expect it.”
Ella looked down and clicked her phone off. “I just want to make sure we’ve done everything we can.”
“We will. Look, I’ve been a business consultant for five years now and I’ve never encountered anyone as determined as you. But it’ll eat you alive if you let it.”
She sighed heavily and said, “I know you’re right. It’s just all I can think about.”
“Me too. Trust me on this. The best ideas come when you least expect it.”
For a little while, Ella was able to relax. We moved around the lake in silence, pointing out things we saw (Ella a little more excitedly than me).
“Aw, look,” Ella said, nodding to a father and daughter in their own boat. The daughter had a lunch box, happily stuffing chips in her mouth.
Our boat bumped against theirs after a moment and the father and I shared a kind nod as we worked to row away.
“Hi,” the little girl said to Ella.
“Hi,” she replied. “I’m jealous, those chips look good!”
“They are,” the girl said seriously. “But my dad said if I finish my broccoli tonight then I get to buy two books, so I have to fill up on chips before then.”
Ella nodded. “That’s really wise. That way you can taste the chips when you’re eating the broccoli.”
“Exactly.”
“Where are you going to buy the books?”
“The book fair,” the girl said in a duh tone. “It’s coming to my school next week. Oh, we’re rowing away—bye!”
Ella waved back excitedly and turned to me, a light in her eyes. “Henry! That’s it!”
I held on to the sides of the boat again. “Ella, watch it.”
“How could we not think of a fundraiser?”
“We’re going to—”
“We could sell tickets!” Ella was talking to herself more than me, because I was working too hard to keep the boat upright as it wobbled the more excited she got. “And thank God we just started events back up!”
“Ella, we’re going to tip.”
She ignored me. “We’ll get authors to come and—”
“Ella, watch it—”
With that, the rowboat tipped into the Central Park lake.
We tried for a good five minutes to get back into the boat, but it was a lot harder than it looked. Eventually, the staff started yelling at us to just swim their way and Ella and I could barely contain our laughter.
We were lucky that May was only getting hotter and hotter, because on our walk back to the train, we pretty much dried off.
We ended up at a bar in the East Village, Kingston Hall.
It was quiet and dimly lit, a pool table in the back.
But there was a small outdoor section that Ella and I occupied, working rapidly through the details of the book fair.
She had asked the bartender for a few napkins and a pen since our phones needed a good soak in rice.
Our chairs were pulled close together, even though there was no real need.
I tried not to get distracted with the way her hair dried, curlier than usual, ever since she took it down from her ponytail.
Or the way her shirt was still drying, clinging to her figure.
I tried to focus on her hands as she scribbled, but even then, all I could do was wonder if they were soft.
“A genuine book fair,” Ella said, smiling down at her scribbles. “There’s no school in the summer so we’ll get all the traffic from kids. And we can score the nostalgia ticket from adults. We’ll set it up to look like one of those county fairs and circuses.”
“We could set the event room up to look like a circus,” I suggested. “Hang some red ribbons behind the fairy lights to create a cool glow.”
“Henry,” Ella said excitedly, grabbing my arm, her touch warm. “This is it. I know it is.”
“It’ll help,” I conceded. “It won’t pay back all the bills and it won’t keep the store afloat for a lot longer, but it buys us time, which is just as important. Right now, we just need to make sure we can pay off the debt and pay our bills and wages for a few more months.”
She nodded, coming back down to Earth a bit. “I know this won’t miraculously cure us, but this is what we need. Our first step.”
We went back and forth for at least two beers, coming up with different ways to decorate the store and cool offerings. Soon enough, it was all sketched out on bar napkins.
“We have to stay on budget, though,” I warned her.
“And probably tell the booksellers.”
“They’ll take it well,” I said gently.
Ella snorted. “Probably as well as they did as you becoming owner.”
“They could surprise you,” I said. “But you know they’ll be on board with whatever you ask of them.”
Ella tucked her hair behind her ears, grinning at me. “We might actually do it. We might actually save The Last Page.”