Chapter Eleven
Diana was in today, floating between the various displays in a pea green sweater set and pearls. Occasionally she would click
her tongue before adjusting a book here and there, but mostly she waved both of her arms over Merritt’s handiwork and nodded
approvingly.
“This . . . is very good, Merritt. You may have a future in book staging.”
“Thanks,” Merritt said, holding back her sarcasm as she manned the register. “Huong helped.”
“Yes, and good for her,” she called to the memoir section, where Huong was reshelving go-backs. Diana tended to treat Huong, a twenty-two-year-old college graduate, like a
child learning to ride a bike. She’s doing great, Diana mouthed, and Merritt nodded, smiling in a way that genuinely pained her jaw.
Diana joined Merritt at the desk, raising reading glasses on a pearled string to her eyes and wiggling her fingers to indicate
that Merritt should slide down and relinquish the computer. While Diana began working at a rate of one click or hmm every ten seconds, Merritt set about applying a large rubber stamp to the brown paper totes they gave out as shopping bags.
“I really thought we’d be moving more of those Graydon Lyons books,” Diana said, causing Merritt to fumble the stamp and drawing
Diana’s eyes her way. “Oh, do that one again, dear.”
“What do you mean?”
“It looks like a kindergartener did it with her eyes closed.”
Merritt assessed the bag and found Diana’s characterization unduly harsh, but that wasn’t the point. “I meant about the books.”
“Oh, just look at that pile—a very good pile, by the way. Brava.”
“But how many have we sold?”
“All right, nosy little you,” Diana laughed. Merritt’s skin rankled as the older woman clicked and tapped away. “None today,
one yesterday, and . . . two over the past week. I have a crateful in the back that the publisher will be none too happy to
see again. I just can’t believe more people aren’t reading it.”
“Like, in the world?”
“What?” Diana asked, moving her glasses back to their resting place on her chest.
“Aren’t people reading it?”
Merritt had refused to google Serious Games and had avoided her mother’s copy of The New York Times Book Review on Sunday. A hope crept into her chest that maybe the novel’s performance at Goodenough Books was representative of a national
trend—
“Oh yes,” Diana said, cutting that hope in two. “It’s on all the bestseller lists. Just not in Whelk Harbor. Odd, isn’t it?”
“So odd.”
“Well, now that one looks like someone’s bled all over the bag, dear. Perhaps you should take a break.”
“I think I will, thanks.”
Merritt went to the back room and slumped into a chair. She was tired of this—the way the book seemed to haunt her and weigh
her down. Either she needed to give it up and read the thing or she needed to move on.
Okay, she decided. I will let myself feel however it is I feel about this thing for five more minutes. And then I will move on. Graydon Lyons
does not get to have a hold over me anymore. Do you hear that, Graydon? I relinquish you.
Ten minutes later, Merritt stood by the new releases display, holding the book in her hand, thinking that maybe reading just the first chapter wouldn’t be a total rejection of
her principles, when the bell over the door rang. It was Moishe, a kindly bald man Diana’s age who worked the afternoon shift.
It was time for Merritt to leave.
“Hello, Diana, hello, Merritt. Don’t read that, Merritt, it’s just dour and self-serious, and I wasted my weekend on it.”
Moishe’s literary frame of reference was mostly gay historical romance, but Merritt still fell a little bit in love with him
for a moment.
“Noted.” She smiled, and then she set about gathering her things.
In her parked car, Merritt ticked boxes in her head, making sure she remembered where she and Whit had left off so she could
spend the drive going over her plans for the day. How quickly she was able to mentally leave behind the bookstore and Diana
and Graydon and jump back into it with Whit. She had even begun humming a self-satisfied, ad-libbed tune . . . until her car
refused to start.
She sat listening for anything happening under the hood—as if she would know what that meant. After about two minutes of sitting
and thinking, the door to the bookstore opened. Huong walked out and came over to peer through the windshield. Merritt stepped
out of the car.
“I thought you might have died,” Huong said as she stood there in her oversized cardigan covered in comically large crocheted
daisies.
“I did not die,” Merritt groaned, “but my car did. Do you think you could give me a jump?”
“Do you know how to jump a car?”
Curses.
“No,” Merritt sighed. “Do you?”
Huong made a face of such pure incredulity that Merritt thought she might really believe Merritt had lost her mind.
“Message received,” she said, angry at herself for being the kind of person who hated all car stuff.
The door opened again, and Moishe and Diana wandered out.
“What’s wrong?” Moishe asked.
“Her car is dead, and she has no idea how to jump it.”
“Thank you, Huong,” Merritt sighed. “Moishe, can you . . . ?”
“I’m afraid I don’t drive,” Moishe said, genuinely apologetic.
“No problem. I can always walk.”
She typed Whit’s address into the phone, remembering that he seemed to have walked to the bookstore the first time she saw
him there.
The house was five miles away.
“Jesus,” she said under her breath.
“Where are you walking?” Diana asked.
Merritt sighed. “Nowhere, apparently.”
“Where were you going to walk? I’m just leaving. I’ll give you a ride.”
Merritt had carefully avoided going into much detail as to why she needed afternoons off. She squeezed her hands into fists
as she spoke.
“I’m going to Whit Longacre’s house.”
“On a date?” Huong spat out with something like violence.
“No,” Merritt said quickly. “God, Huong. I’m helping him with some things. Purely business.”
Huong’s face did not change.
“Well,” Diana said through a lofty smile Merritt would have enjoyed flicking with her finger, “look at you. I can take you, but let’s be quick. I have to be at the salon at two.”
Diana escorted her farther down the brick-paved road to her car, a tricked-out silver Lexus sports car that confirmed Merritt’s suspicion that the bookstore was more of a passion project for Diana than a required source of income.
“So what is it exactly that you’re working on with Whit Longacre?” Diana asked, pulling the car out of its spot against the
curb.
Merritt clenched her teeth, frustrated with herself for not coming up with a lie before now.
“Just some . . . copy,” she said lamely. “Paperwork stuff. Pretty boring.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Diana said, and Merritt had no idea if she was being sarcastic. “How did you get connected with him? He’s
become very reclusive.”
“Well, his wife died,” Merritt said, unable to stop herself. But Diana looked unfazed.
“Yes, well,” she said as she signaled, “still, he wasted no time hiring himself a young, attractive woman to help. Despite having been an author for years, writing all those books as solo affairs.”
“Oh, gross, Diana.”
The woman laughed, enjoying Merritt’s forthrightness.
“It’s been a year. And anyway, it’s not like that.”
At a stoplight, Diana gave her a look. “It is not gross. You can’t be that far apart in age.”
Merritt was thirty. Whit was thirty-seven. She had looked this up sometime last week, trying to figure out how old he and
Helen had been when they had Annie, since they both seemed young to have had an eight-year-old. In an interview Merritt skimmed,
Helen spoke about getting pregnant unexpectedly at twenty-eight, sooner than she’d planned and right in the middle of writing
the first Greenwood Castle book—but this was all far more information than Merritt would ever admit to knowing.
“It’s not like that,” she said again, trying to blot out the words “young, attractive woman” from her memory.
The writing was going well for Whit. He was reminded of the time he’d switched from using a handheld can opener to an automated one—a wedding present.
The difference between the jagged grinding via hand crank and the smooth, automatic slice of the machine was astounding, and he couldn’t believe he’d been opening cans any other way up until then.
He imagined making this comparison to Merritt and laughed at the thought of her reaction to being associated with something used to unseal baked beans and Spaghetti-O’s.
She was funny and clever and so capable, and in short, Whit couldn’t believe he’d been trying for a full year to write this thing without someone like her.
He found himself waiting for Merritt to arrive in the space between dropping Annie off at school and lunchtime, and it took
a lot of effort to keep from opening the front door at the first sight of her car. Sometimes he would imagine Helen seeing
him like this, and he’d feel a dagger of embarrassment, but then the door would open and he’d be swept into the whirlwind
of their writing.
Today, when a Lexus pulled down the drive, he did let himself get the door. He was about to call out to ask if she’d gotten
a new car when Merritt exited the passenger side.
“Thank you,” she said in a hurried voice. “See you at the store.”
She slammed the door shut and began tramping quickly toward him before waiting for an answer, but the window was already rolling
down on the driver’s side.
“Hi there,” an older woman’s voice came from across the lawn. Then, to Merritt, “Let me know if you need a ride home, dear.”
“I’ll manage,” she said, climbing the steps at a brisk pace, her face knotted up in a get-inside-quickly look that drew a
stifled laugh from Whit.
“What was all that about?” he asked a moment later, back at the tea kettle.
Merritt finished chewing her sandwich before speaking from her usual place at the kitchen table. “That was my boss, Diana. From the bookstore. My car died after work, and no one knew how to jump it, so she dropped me off.”