Chapter 9
Nine
On Thursdays, Clemence goes to the bookstore and talks to Toby.
She doesn’t tell the people in her life that this is what she’s there for, but she lets everybody know that she’s found another job.
Her work at the bookstore too is like the box of matches and the needle with thread, another item gathered.
The entire block owned by Crampton Goldberg is transformed into someplace different now that Clemence knows its history, and she feels connected to it.
This is how a woman builds a life, and she’s sorting the books.
Mrs. Yeung’s church is looking for donations for their upcoming winter jumble sale, and books are always a big seller, she says, a bit of information that makes Clemence feel good about the world for once.
She is performing the same tasks at the bookstore that she has been doing in her own life, establishing order, making space where everything was crowded before.
Cluttering the aisles are boxes of books that have never been opened, and these are mainly used as furniture when a rare customer sits down on them to browse the shelves.
Clemence opens one box and finds that the books inside have literally turned to dust, bindings made redundant as the pages disintegrated, but not all the boxes are all as bad as that.
In another, she finds vintage editions of V.
C. Andrews novels, spines barely cracked.
And there’s one stuffed with all the copies of The Pilot’s Wife that she’d been wondering about on her first visit.
She tells Crampton about Mrs. Yeung and the church jumble sale, reminding her that there are more books within the walls of the shop than she could hope to sell. Crampton consents to donate some of the overflow, though partly in the interest of making the shop into less of a fire trap.
“And you’re talking to Toby?” she asks. Toby is hiding again, and Clemence will have to head into the maze to find him. To talk to him. She’s promised Crampton Goldberg, who insists he needs the company.
But Toby does not agree. Clemence finds him upstairs on a ladder with a roll of duct tape, because there’s a hole near the ceiling where mice are getting in, leaving droppings among the microwave cookbooks.
No doubt if he slipped up there, that delicate man would wind up in traction, and Clemence resists the flutter in her person at the thought of Toby tied up.
The tape, she suggests to him, might not be the most effective arrangement. Surely mice could chew through such a barrier? And Toby welcomes her feedback as much as he appreciates anything she offers him, which is pretty much not at all.
She stays by him, not to talk, because she has no desire to be a distraction from the matter at hand, to send him toppling, but because if it happened, she’d be able to call an ambulance right away.
Breathing a sigh of relief as he climbs down the ladder, returning to safety, but then he trips over a box and she catches him. He lands right in her arms.
Toby is more substantial than she’d imagined—and yes, she’d imagined plenty.
This is what a person does with their unsuitable attachments after all, idle fantasies, but in these, it was always more like holding a feather, because he’s so slight, but the reality of holding him is that he has all these sharp angles, shoulders and elbows.
He has a pimple on his lip, the very worst place for such a thing.
Clemence is close enough to note the patchy way his eyebrows are connected, and oh yes, this is intimacy.
And the way he has entirely submitted, his whole body gone slack, Clemence wondering how he’s managed to lose consciousness without hitting his head.
But Toby is dramatic—after just a few shifts together, she knows this.
Although he’s not an actor, but a set painter, an artist who had to give up the trade, he’d explained to her, when he developed an allergy to the paint.
He’d completed a college diploma, but there’s nothing he can do with his training now.
And after wasting years on futile dreams, Toby is resentful of anyone whose achievements vaguely resemble success, Clemence discerning that he finds her own presence only vaguely tolerable because he gets to feel superior when he’s with her—a strange and novel experience for him—being, after all, the store’s full-time employee, while she stops in for a few hours a week on some whim of Crampton Goldberg’s.
Toby lives in one of Crampton’s apartments, a bachelor above the old shoe store.
When his college program was completed and he couldn’t find work, Crampton gave him this job, which he doesn’t seem to realize is charity.
Toby’s arrogance, Clemence supposes, is a posture to compensate for his lack of anything to be arrogant about.
“There you go,” she tells him, setting him back on his feet.
Dust and spiderwebs are caught in his shaggy hair, but this is what happens when you spend long enough in the bookshop.
Clemence has taken to having a second bath when she gets home before lunch, washing off the grime, and yes, thinking of Toby’s hands on her body as she pours the jug of water over her head and shoulders, and her thoughts of this have been so vivid that it’s as though it’s actually happened.
In fact, when she looked down after he’d fallen and found him in her arms, the scene felt so familiar, and it didn’t surprise her that he’d linger.
But of course, it should have. Once Toby regains composure, he jerks away from Clemence, as though she’d startled him, and turns around, refusing to acknowledge that she may have saved his life.
He doesn’t say a word, and takes off, possibly embarrassed, leaving her among the cookery books, forcing her to follow him back through the store, because this is what Crampton demands of her, and also because it’s kind of fun.
He settles back down behind the counter with a book, always a Restoration play, which is when Toby feels that drama peaked, and nothing even half decent has been produced since then, or even before it—don’t mention Marlowe or Shakespeare, because he’ll pretend he’s never heard of them.
Clemence takes her seat amid the books and the boxes, resuming the gathering of titles for Mrs. Yeung’s jumble.
There’s an entire box of 1980s Harlequins, with gorgeous covers, all of the women wearing shoulder pads.
Would Clemence herself dare to file these away in Women’s Fiction?
And why not? Who gets to make the distinction?
No, these she’s taking away for donation to the church, because she knows somebody’s going to snap them up, and they’re doing no good to anybody packed away in the bookstore.
She hears the bells at the door, assuming it’s Crampton, because Clemence has never known anyone else to walk into the store, and she’s afraid to turn around because Toby seems to be ignoring her right now, and Clemence isn’t sure if Crampton will hold her accountable for that, and dock her pay, but the footsteps are heavier and she glances over her shoulder to see a tall Black man in a tailored suit.
Clemence is slightly gratified—albeit embarrassed—to see that this customer gets the same service she’d received from Toby on her first visit, having to clear his throat three times before Toby lowers his play and notes the customer’s presence.
“There’s a bell,” she calls out to him from her perch.
Toby and the customer glance over at her in confusion.
“In case you need to get his attention,” she explains.
“I mean, for next time,” and the man turns back to Toby, explaining that he’s looking for books on hats, European millinery history in particular, Toby sending him upstairs to the books about fashion, and then slouching back into his chair, exhausted from the exertion of all that.
Clemence is concerned that Toby is malnourished. He doesn’t cook; he barely eats. She’s offered to bring him an apple or a banana, but Toby claims that he hates fruit.
“How can you hate fruit?” Clemence demands. “That’s like hating ‘seasons.’ Or ‘dessert.’”
“I also hate seasons,” says Toby. “I have allergies.”
“I just think,” says Clemence, unpacking a box of 1970s National Geographics that surely belong in the recycling, “that if you took better care of yourself, you might have more energy.”
“I’ve got energy,” says Toby, lowering his book again. “My problem is ennui, but that’s got nothing to do with diet.”
The customer comes back downstairs with an armful of books, and Toby consents to let him make the purchase.
“Has anybody ever come in here and not found what they wanted?” Clemence asks.
“Well, not a lot of people come in,” admits Toby, “but yeah, no.”
Clemence packs three boxes of books to take to the church, a mix of the romances, 1990s Oprah’s Book Club titles, and a bunch of paperbacks about true crime and Satanic panic, which are especially sinister with their pages trimmed in red.
She’s also found a pile of cowboy novels, essentially romance for boys, and by now she’s managed to clear enough space in the bookstore’s central aisle that a person might walk down it without having to step over anything.
Even Crampton is pleased by the improvement.
She leaves the store with the boxes piled almost higher than her head, although that means she can’t see what’s in front of her. The balance is precarious.
“You’re not moving out, are you?” someone calls on the sidewalk. His face is blocked by her heavy load, but she knows that voice.
Charles removes the top box from her tower.
“Hey,” she says, at the sight of his smile.
“You looked like you were struggling,” he says, but now he’s found himself unsteady, too, a bit of a wobble. He hadn’t expected the box to be so heavy. “What have you got in here? Lead weights?” he asks as he regains his balance.