Chapter 7
Heathcliff
“Your friends are weird.”
“Ashley’s not my friend,” Mina says through clenched teeth as she types my dictated emails.
I notice that whenever I call someone a ‘dim-witted cockatrice,’ she changes it to ‘sorry for the inconvenience, sir.’ But she’s had a harrowing morning, what with being cursed by my presence and assaulted by James Moriarty’s charm, so I let it slide.
This time.
“She spent an hour here, notwithstanding her visit earlier, and she didn’t leave the Sociology section once,” I point out.
“That’s weird?” Mina leans closer to the screen as she taps the keys.
“The Sociology section is the bookshop dead zone. It’s where we stash all the books we can’t put anywhere else. No one buys from the Sociology section, not even sociology professors.”
Mina pretends to write on an imaginary notepad. “Note to self: No one buys from the Sociology section, especially not my weird ex-friends. See, I’m learning so much about the book trade already. Now, what do we do for lunch? I’m starving. Do we go out or—”
“I don’t go out. Enough people are mucking about in the shop as it is, without seeking out their ignorance in my free time.”
“Well, I could go up to the flat and whip us up something—”
“No. You don’t go upstairs.”
Mina’s face falls. I curse myself inwardly for my harsh tone, but I have to make certain that she doesn’t go up to our flat.
It’s filled with our secrets, plus a bunch of paintings Morrie hung up for Quoth that I suspect are stolen.
And a Mt Everest of horse poop that I haven’t cleaned up yet.
If Mina goes up there, she’ll run a mile from us, and I can’t say I’d blame her.
She might run a mile from us anyway if I keep barking at her.
It’s probably for the best anyway, but something inside me wants to keep her close.
I sigh as I tug open the top drawer of my desk. “I’ve got plenty of food right here.”
Mina bends over to peer into the drawer at my stash of cold pork pies, dried sausage, and chocolate bars.
She points to a discoloured lump at the back. “Is that an anthill?”
I ignore the face she pulls and grab a chocolate bar. “If you’re going to be a nag, you can go out. Fetch us something fried or coated in sugar.”
“Fine.” Mina shuts down the computer and grabs her coat. “It’s my treat this time, but if you want me to scavenge lunch every day, it’ll be an extra fifty pence an hour.”
You mean that you’ll feed me and I don’t ever have to leave the shop? Marry me, woman.
“Sold.”
“Croak!” adds the raven from the top of the staircase as Mina makes her way down the hallway.
“And some berries for the bird,” I yell after her.
“That’s an extra quid!” she calls back as she slams the bookshop door behind her.
“Croooooak!”
Shortly after Mina left, my friend Earl comes in and settles himself into the chair by the window. Wordlessly, I hand him a book I set aside for him, and the pair of us pass a whisky bottle back and forth and read in companionable silence.
A large shape moves out of the corner of my eye. I glance toward the window, but Earl is happily buried in his book. I squint at the glass behind him, just as Lancelot gallops past the window atop his horse, wearing the most ridiculous plumed helmet and a look of grim, knightly determination.
Oh, no.
I leap to my feet just as the shop bell chimes, and a delicious curry smell assaults my senses. “Did the cat bring us a surprise?” Mina calls out. No doubt Earl’s pungent odour has reached her nostrils, too.
I sink back into my chair just as she appears in the doorway, her hair frizzy from the rain, her arms filled with a tower of Indian food and a punnet of blueberries. A bottle of white wine sticks out of her back pocket.
She doesn’t ask about the medieval knight galloping around the neighbourhood. Judging by the number of questions she usually asks, that means she hasn’t seen him. I relax back into my chair. Our secret is safe… for now.
“This reeks of chilli and foreign spices.” I pull the lid off a rogan josh as Mina rolls over a stool to join me. She pinches her nostrils.
“Of course it does, it’s curry. How can you smell anything over that reek? Are you sure there’s not a pile of rotting fish in the back of that desk drawer?”
I feel a little bad for Earl. “It doesn’t smell so terrible.”
I lean back and shove a mouthful of rogan josh into my mouth as I crack open my book again.
“Huh. I guess your olfactory senses have been blunted by years of living in bachelor’s squalor, and that’s why you don’t want me to go upstairs.
” Mina reaches for the naan wrapped in tinfoil.
“Go on then, grab some utensils and dive in. If that rogan josh is too spicy, I’ve got us butter chicken and a couple of samosas and even a bottle of cheap plonk to celebrate your genius decision to hire me and the fact that I’m going to turn this place around—Heathcliff, that smell is foul.
We can’t keep letting that bird defecate in here, it’s giving this bookshop a really bad—”
Mina stops short as her bad eyesight follows her nose to the source of the smell. Earl looks up from his book and waves at Mina, his other hand nestled in the front of his jacket.
Mina leans over the desk and waves her hand under my face.
“Um, Heathcliff,” she whispers. “I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s a dishevelled man reading in the corner.”
“Of course I noticed.” I toss down the book and lift the lid on another container. “Did you get any onion bhaji?”
“If you hate e-commerce stores and people with mobile phones, surely you have a thing about men stinking out the shop?”
“Earl doesn’t have a home. He sleeps on a park bench. It’s cold and wet outside, and he wants to read books, and the best thing is… he does not own an ereader.”
Earl waves at Mina. She smiles and waves back.
Then she turns back to me, still smiling. My chest clenches. “You’re sweet, for a grumpy bastard.”
I tear off a piece of naan and soak it in rogan josh. Indian food is the best, although probably what we’re eating bears no resemblance to actual Indian food. “Maybe Earl and I have common interests.”
“Why don’t you let him crash on your sofa upstairs, then?”
“Are you making a joke? He smells. I’m not having him near my stuff.” I pull two wine glasses from the second drawer and set them on the desk.
“You keep wine glasses in your desk?”
“I work in the book industry. There’s always a reason to drink.”
I yank out the cork and pour us both a drink, daring another look out the window to check that the mounted Lothario is nowhere to be seen while Mina stares off into space. Thankfully, Lancelot’s quest has taken him elsewhere.
Hopefully for a long gallop off a short cliff.
When I glance back at Mina, she’s staring at me with an intense look on her face. As soon as my gaze meets hers, she averts her eyes to her curry, and a deep red flush creeps across her cheeks.
I’d give my entire first edition collection to know what she’s thinking right now.
“If that girl wasn’t your friend, who is she?” I ask.
“Just a girl I knew,” Mina mumbles into her curry. “I suppose she was my friend once.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Good. I fucking hate talking.”
We finish our food, sharing some with Earl. Mina pulls a book from the crime shelves, and the three of us read. Eventually, Earl inserts a dirty Wimpy Bar receipt as a bookmark, shoves his book under the chair, and shuffles out of the shop. Grimalkin hisses after him.
“Don’t bother the customers, Grimalkin,” I mutter without looking up. “He doesn’t have another cat with ’im.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Mina rise from her chair, cross to the window, and slide Earl’s book out from beneath the chair. She smiles at the title, which I can’t see, and shelves it back in the ‘animals’ section.
At four o’clock, Morrie barges into the shop – a hurricane of long limbs and annoying smirks.
“Ooh, who brought wine?” He grabs the half-finished bottle and pours the dregs into a glass while I shoo the last time-waster out and lock the door.
“I did.” Mina slides onto the stool beside the desk and tries to swipe the glass out of his hand, but Morrie waggles the glass over his head.
“You didn’t bring enough.”
Mina lifts a perfect eyebrow. “You going to push me off a waterfall over it, Moriarty?”
I snort.
The raven swoops in from upstairs and lands on the armadillo. “Don’t let anyone else in,” I tell Mina. “We’re closed, and I don’t want—”
There’s a clattering noise from the front hall, like something suspiciously heavy and book-like hitting a wooden floor.
Oh no, you don’t.
“Get away from that fucking mail slot,” I sprint for the hallway. Quoth swoops after me. But we’re too late. The perpetrator has already fled the scene, leaving behind only a messy pile of battered paperbacks on the floor beneath the mail slot.
I kick one of the offending volumes, my lip curling as I read the title.
Dan Brown.
Every single one of these is a bloody Dan Brown.
Why can’t people shove useful things through the mail slot, like medieval siege weapons or French chocolates?
Behind me, Quoth makes the nyuh-nyuh-nyuh sound that indicates he’s laughing at my pain.
I toss a Da Vinci Code at him, which he dodges with a disgruntled “Croak!”
Don’t hurt me! I’m sorry for laughing. I love Dan Brown, I swear.
I gather up the books and stomp back into the main room, where Mina and Morrie are laughing and making goo-goo eyes at each other.
I dump the books on the rug. “You turn your back for a bloody moment, and they’re shoving these through the mail slot.
I’m going to board the bloody thing up. People are monsters. ”
“Agreed,” Mina pipes up. “Anyone who reads Dan Brown is a monster. They’re not even good enough to recycle.”
“We could burn them in the fire to keep ourselves warm,” Morrie suggests, rubbing his shoulders.
“And toast marshmallows!” Mina adds.
Morrie turns to Heathcliff. “Mina’s perfect. We have to keep her.”
“Croak!” The raven agrees.
“Meow,” Grimalkin chimes in.
Mina picks up one of the books and inspects the spine. An idea sparkles in her emerald eyes. “Hey, actually, could I take some of these? I think I could make something out of them to sell. My mother’s always going on about diversifying your income streams.”
“We sell books,” I growl. “But not these books.”
“You might, after I’m done with them. Trust me. You got a spare box?”
I dig a cardboard box from my office, and Mina sorts through the stack for books in decent condition. Morrie takes the opportunity of my distraction to usurp my chair, his icicle eyes dancing as he watches us work. He winks at me, then turns to Mina.
“So how was your first day, gorgeous? Don’t spare the juicy details.”
“Don’t you want to talk about your job—”
“I’m just dandy. I have some money stashed away. Tell me about working with Old Cantankerous.”
“It was fun.” Mina smiles at me, and I think my heart might burst out of my chest. I’ve never before been described as ‘fun.’
I want to be fun for Mina. I want to be everything she needs.
As I return her smile with what I hope is one of my own and not a grimace, the red flush appears on her cheeks again, but a moment later, it disappears, and her eyes darken with sadness. She shakes her head and turns away.
“Hey, earth to Mina.” Morrie snaps his fingers in front of her face. “You went off somewhere. Your face has gone all blotchy.”
“I’m fine. I’m just a little terrified of that archaic thing.” She points at my computer – an enormous boxy thing that Morrie often refers to as ‘The Difference Engine.’ “Does he even have a website?”
“We don’t need a website.” I stomp off to tidy the Poetry shelves.
“I’ve been trying to get him to make one for years,” Morrie says to Mina. I shove books onto the shelf with such force that they hit the books on the other side and send them flying.
“It’s the twenty-first bloody century. Every legitimate business needs a website. How do people find the shop?”
“I don’t want them to find the shop!”
Morrie flashes Mina a smile that’s pure cruelty. “Here’s an idea, gorgeous. Come around to my place tomorrow night. We’ll build a website. He doesn’t get any say in it.”
“Why don’t we just work on it during the day? Your place is his place, and it’s not as though you have a job to go to.”
“Can’t. I’m heading down to London for a standing appointment with my bank.”
You mean that you’re going to see one of your compatriots in your criminal web to deposit the ill-gotten gains you stole from your company?
“You go to your bank in person?” Mina sounds astonished. “And you call Heathcliff a dinosaur?”
Morrie blinks. “It’s a very specialised bank. What do you say? I’ll be back around seven, so you could come by at eight? I’ll make sure he leaves the door open for you.”
Mina’s face lights up. “You mean, I’d get to go upstairs?”
“No!” I yell from behind the bookshelf.
“Yes.” Morrie grins.
“Croak!” agrees Quoth.
Mina reaches out and shakes Morrie’s hand. “It’s a date.”
Morrie looks over at me and winks. I don’t know whether I should throttle him or kiss him.
Mina is coming to our flat tomorrow evening.
Our flat… with its piles of rumpled clothing, dusty books, Morrie’s wall of kink toys, possibly-stolen art on the walls, raven feathers everywhere, bathroom straight out of a nuclear fallout zone, a time-travelling room, and a pile of medieval horse poo on the rug.
Fuck.