Chapter 16
Sixteen
Clemence sees Toby for the first time since she started dreaming of Toby, for the first time since she kissed him—although Toby usually has Charles’s body when she finds him in those dreams, and sometimes he’s actually Charles altogether.
Even though these days, with school back in session and the allure of his sexy doctor wife, Clemence doesn’t see Charles at all, and it’s Toby who arrives in her life every Thursday on those morning shifts for which Crampton pays her with ancient bills stuffed in recycled envelopes.
Clemence had wondered if things with Toby might be different after what transpired the day of the head wound, but at first it’s hard to tell because he’s got his face in a book, more conspicuously than usual.
She can’t even see if the wound has healed, and he refuses to look up.
So she waits; but surely they’ve developed a rapport.
Why does this feel like they’ve gone back to the beginning?
Because Toby stays frozen, his whole body clenched. She goes to ring the bell, and only then does he speak: “Please don’t. I can’t stand that sound.” He’s still hiding.
She says, “Nobody at any level of literacy could spend that long on a single page. I know you’re not reading.
” Reaching over the desk to push the book down, and there he is—that face, those lips, those sad eyes, and the cut on his head is healing well.
Proud of her first aid, she reaches out to touch the wound, but Toby recoils.
“What?”
“I don’t understand what you’re doing,” Toby says. “Are you making fun of me? Is this a joke? Because I don’t get it.”
“I was just—” says Clemence, but she actually doesn’t know what she’s doing, either. This was never supposed to be part of the script.
“Like maybe it’s an elaborate set-up?” he continues.
“With Crampton, and that old lady at your house. I don’t understand, but I don’t appreciate being someone’s joke.
” He’s speaking very deliberately, and Clemence can tell that he’d practised these lines, and honestly it only makes him more endearing more because she can see the inner workings of his heart. Oh, Toby.
She doesn’t want to further upset him. “She made you soup,” Clemence tells him.
“My landlady, Mrs. Yeung.” She has carried the jar over in her bag, and now she takes it out and puts in on the counter.
“You should put it in the fridge. It’s very good soup.
And nobody is making fun of you.” Her voice is quiet and calm.
No sudden moves. “I’m here for the books. ”
“You have to talk to me.” He accepts the soup. He’s picked up the jar, is examining its contents.
“But I like that part.” She shrugs. “I like you.” She really does, inexplicably. “Is that okay?”
“Maybe?”
“I’ll try not to bother you,” she says. “Leave you to your reading for now,” and she tiptoes over to Women’s Fiction, looking back once to see that he’s watching her. She waves, and he waves back. He’s not quite smiling, but she can see that he could be if he tried.
A person has to be the change they wish to see in the world, Clemence thinks, as she once again sets about the task of rearranging shelves in a bookstore crowded beyond capacity.
Her ex-husband never believed this, scoffing at her self-importance.
“You’re just one cog in one wheel of a system,” he’d say.
“A system set up for your failure.” Whenever she’d complain that the system didn’t work, he’d counter that it was working precisely the way it was intended to, for the rich to profit and the oppressed to be oppressed, and what was the point of anything short of a revolution, which was never going to happen?
This was how Toad justified his work as an analyst for an international mining conglomerate, destroying pristine acres of Bolivian rainforest in the process.
When she’d first met him, he had dreams of being a botanist.
Maybe Clemence hasn’t changed the world, but she’s changed her world, and who is to say that doesn’t matter?
She spent so many years being complacent, going with the flow, and she’d been miserable.
And now she’s not miserable anymore, she’s even happy, or approaching something like it.
She has purpose in a way she never did when she was writing about wedding gowns and bridesmaid shoes.
The cogs all count for something, is what she’s thinking, as she’s envisioning “Classics” and “Modern Fiction” shelves.
Much less offensive to her own sensibilities, women’s stories up there with all the others.
She wonders if this ever might be a place where people browse.
If they got rid of the dust, they’d be able to welcome shoppers with respiratory ailments.
What if they took away some of the books stacked in front of the window and dared to let in a bit of light?
“Toby?” she calls, and she knows he’s heard her because she hears him sigh. “Would you ever think of bringing chairs in here?”
“We’ve already got a chair,” he points out, and he’s right. There’s a big cozy chair across from the cash, except it’s easy to miss, stacked high with boxes of books and piles of books.
“But like, what if we had chairs that people could sit on? Somewhere comfortable to sit where they could browse through their books?”
“They could go to the library,” he says. “They don’t even mind if you sleep there.”
Clemence stands up and heads over to face him again, everything less strange between them now that they’re talking. “I’m thinking of ways to freshen things up.”
“Fresh is a stretch,” says Toby. “If you were looking for something fresh, wouldn’t you go someplace else?”
“But that’s the point. Wouldn’t it be good if the store was even a little bit busier?” Toby’s grimace suggests that he doesn’t think so. “Isn’t the point of a store to attract customers? This place is off-putting. The first time I walked in, I almost turned around and walked back out again.”
“Most people do,” says Toby. “Not a bug; it’s a feature.”
“But it’s not sustainable,” says Clemence. “And all these books with nobody to read them—it’s a tragedy.” She turns back to the shop and looks around.
Toby says, “The books are fine. What can we do about it, anyway?”
Clemence says, “Now you sound like my husband.”
“You have a husband?” His voice rising an octave or higher.
Clemence faces him again, eyeing his expression carefully, which is mainly confusion. “Well, my ex,” she says. “It’s not official yet. But it might as well be. I’ve got to get used to saying ‘my ex.’”
“You’ve never mentioned him.” Is it possible he’s bothered by this?
“He’s not very remarkable,” says Clemence.
“My ex. Which was kind of the problem. I mean, you might like him.” This is an outright lie.
“A lot of people do.” That part is true.
“I wasn’t the right person to appreciate his qualities.
” This is one hundred percent an absolute fact.
Clemence says, “I think you’re not interested in attracting customers because you don’t like the idea of anybody showing up here to bother you. ”
“Well, yeah,” says Toby. “Why do you think I work here? And now you’ve disturbed the whole equilibrium, and you want to find a way to bring in more people? Can you imagine this entire building filled up with people like you?”
Clemence says, “If only.” It’s actually her dream.
A building filled up with people who are conscientious in their lifestyle choices, value books, and who would purchase ocean-friendly sustainable tinned fish if given the option.
“Can you imagine? Each and every one of those people buying and reading books? Bringing you soup?”
“And rearranging the bookshelves.”
“I am being the change I wish to see in the world, Toby. You should be proud of me. And if it weren’t for me, Crampton might be making you do all this reorganizing work. I feel like you should be grateful.”
“But if it weren’t for you,” says Toby, “there wouldn’t be reorganizing work at all. And I’d be reading my book. And I wouldn’t have hit my head.”
Clemence is tired of him now. “Well, then read away,” she says, her hand gestures a little too embarrassingly theatrical.
“Don’t let me stop you.” Toby really can be a jerk.
And why does she even care? It would actually suit his interests to conform to her fantasies, and it’s not her fault if he doesn’t see that.
If he insists on remaining the primary character in his own pitiful life, instead of embracing all she has to offer.
Which is, well, mainly, a little excitement, something bright to punctuate the days with, to let the sunshine in.
Isn’t that what Crampton is paying her for?
She has removed the Women’s Fiction and Literature signs already, yellowed papers dotted with white spots where thumbtacks had stuck them up for decades.
She is using damp paper towel to wipe down the shelves she’s clearing, dust that’s been accumulating for almost a century.
Made up of shed skin cells of so many people who must be dead by now, and she considers whether she ought to be showing more respect, if there ought to be some kind of ceremony.
Most of the ceremonies and rituals Clemence knows are superficial, devoid of meaning.
Something borrowed, something blue. As though a rhyme makes up for vacuity.
When Clemence married Toad, they’d made arrangements for a blue ribbon to be woven into her bouquet, but at the end of the day she’d realized this detail had been forgotten.
And, Clemence wonders, is this why the marriage had gone so wrong?
How does a person get to know things, the real things, things that connect one to knowledge and wisdom stretching back for centuries?
Clemence feels a hallowedness in the presence of these books, which is what she’d been missing at the church service.
And then, almost as though they know what she’d been thinking, had picked up on her vague blasphemy, the church bells start chiming the hour, all twelve of them, signalling that her shift at the bookstore is over.
Rising, Clemence straightens her clothes, and gathers used paper towels for the garbage.
Not intending to say another word to Toby, because he’d been rude.
Because, evidently, he didn’t even want to talk to her, anyway.
But she has to walk past him at the desk, because it’s unavoidable, and when she does, she’s both surprised and not surprised to see that he’s lowered his book already.
“You’re going home now?” he asks, and she nods. “You want me to walk you there?” he offers.
“Why?” she asks. Now she’s the one being rude.
“That time you bought me a snack,” he says. “It’s only polite.”
“Those aren’t terms existing in perpetuity,” she says. “You don’t have to.”
He says, “I know,” laying his book down.
He follows her out of the store, flipping to the Closed sign, and Clemence doesn’t feel compelled to fill the comfortable silence as they make their way along the sidewalk, around the corner and down her street.
He stops at the bottom of her steps, and shrugs. “Here you are,” he says.
But the next part surprises her. She really hadn’t thought he had it in him …
and then he goes and blows her mind by kissing her, on the lips, even.
Not even a peck. Eyes clenched shut and he’s kind of lurching toward her so there is absolutely no contact between their bodies, so yes, it’s as strange and awkward as all that, but also it really isn’t.
And then it’s finished, and before Clemence has even a moment to process what’s happened, Toby is gone.
Leaping up the street like some untamed gazelle, arms flailing, running like somebody who’s being chased.